Divine Deception: The Will Traveller Chronicals by Robert James Page A

a baseball catcher
and the beam did a perfect reflection, right back to the place it
came from! The tall thin man stared in disbelief as a fist-sized
hole appeared in his upper stomach. He looked back up at me, then
fell forward. I had Jarrat collect his laser device, while the crew
got very smartly to work, preparing two of the largest, fastest
T.T.V’s in the Supreme House’s garage. With more time to look, I
could see these were fighting craft. Rows of barrels were just
visible and missile launching tubes ran both sides, fore and aft.
It was thirty minutes or so before the super sleek craft were ready
for their pilots to fly them to the West Pass. With our mission
complete, we headed back to Red House, to gather our people and
guide them up a secret trail, on the west side of the crater.
    Poor Susan was in
shock, as were many of the young ladies and even one or two of the
men. Seeing ‘Gods’ die. Me and my laser bouncing trick, and with
their world crumbling around them, who could blame them? Zoran had
our ‘escort’ lock up the T.T.V. garage crew, to prevent them
sounding any alarm, and all seemed quiet, as we left via a back
passage way, normally used to take the garbage out. The two buggies
and four air bikes which stood out on the Red House’s front
courtyard, gave the appearance that I still had visitors, and
guards. With the men well laden, the women much less so, and Zoran
and I carrying nothing, because ‘It would not be right’, we made
our way quietly around behind the blue house, then up through the
well vegetated forest floor.
    Soon our little
party of ‘escapees’ reached a very well hidden cave entrance. Once
the cobwebs were cleared away, we entered and, almost immediately,
came out the other side. There, in a small clearing, our two space
craft looking T.T.V’s gleamed in the moonlight, waiting for us.

Chapter Three
    “So you don’t have
much recall from before you left Sire?” Zoran asked, as we sat in
our now still and silent T.T.V.
    “Virtually none at
all Zoran, what I know I’ve learned since I returned” I answered.
We had left the outside of the Supreme House’s crater and, at the
request of young Jarrat and Rachael, as conveyed via Zoran, had
flown over to Willow Vale, where their parents, and all the other
Supreme House’s retired staff lived, in a ‘resort-like retirement
village’ founded by the first Supreme One’s wife. But we had
arrived after midnight, so we had parked quietly, beneath some tall
trees, and all the Red House staff, as well as the two, three man
crews of the T.T.V’s, were getting some sleep.
    We had a momentary
scare when the T.T.V radio chief ordered our two crew to return to
base, until I pointed out that, if they tried to, I’d have to kill
them. That pretty much settled the matter. Now, I was trying to
work out what came next, by getting some facts from this wise and
loyal old man. Zoran had explained that most people born in the
Supreme House’s civilian community, which numbered over a thousand
souls, went into House service, after their twelve years of
schooling. The brightest ones go up to Admin House, where the
Patriarch’s views on world issues are formulated. The rest go into
production, which involved farming, making soft goods and clothes
and light manufacturing. Only one in five of the women were allowed
to remain fertile.
    “That’s better
than the New World Lord Robert” The old man replied to my negative
response “It’s usually less than one in eight” He told me.
    “In Centropolis,
it’s currently one in ten” Susan Proust, whose lovely head lay on
my lap said, with sadness in her soft voice.
    “How do they
decide?” I asked her.
    “It’s a lottery,
but isn’t all of life?” She asked resignedly. Through these two, I
had now acquired a fairly clear picture of the world I was in. But
there were so many occasions when one of them surprised the other,
with facts and information that was totally contradictory to