Old Valley Road Hotel

---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Old Valley Road Hotel.

By Wombat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Any constructive comments are appreciated. I'm at 'bungala_wombat@yahoo.com.au'. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Nifty Readers, If you enjoy this story or others on Nifty, please send a generous donation to Nifty.org at 'http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html' to help support and maintain this free service full of wonderful stories so it may continue to remain available to everyone.

Thank you all, Wombat ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 7 - 'A Rainy Day' Part 36.

------------------------------------ Part 96: The Mummy ------------------------------------

Max Reeves stood in a cave on a high, windswept, bitterly cold mountainside strewn with rocks and boulders. Small drifts of pebbly snow lay in the lee of some of the boulders. In a cave sheltered by large slabs of rock lay a corpse mummified by the thin, bitterly cold, cracking dry air. It was shaded from the harsh light of the planet's sun, known to the astronomers of Earth as Pi-3 Orionis or Tabit, an F class star nearly three times brighter than Earth's sun. It was about twenty six light-years from Earth.

In near orbit around Pi-3 Orionis was a brown dwarf star not easily visible from Earth although its presence had long been suspected. The dwarf was very visible from the star's planets as a very bright reddish morning or evening star. Most times the star was visible from the planets during the day. In size it was a little bigger than the planet Jupiter.

Standing around the mummified corpse with Max was Lord General Paul Hamilton-Forbes, Doctor Rakhomon Karellien who was a Kantour xenosociologist as well as two Golds in spacesuits bulky with power assistance and life support mechanisms.

The group were on the planet Simpson. It orbited the star at about 1.7 times the distance of Earth from the Sun.

Like Max, Paul was a superman and a Knight of Earth. His build was more muscular than any world champion bodybuilder. His muscles were huge and he was wearing the sky blue skin-hugging uniform of the Order that showed off his spectacular pectorals and abdominal ten-pack. The uniform had short sleeves that displayed the magnificent musculature of Paul's huge arms. Paul was wearing dark blue leather-look boots that came up to his knees. He looked like the super hero he was. He stood taller than Max and looked every inch a lord general. His medium-length straight hair was a golden mane. He wore a close- trimmed blond beard and he had a trim blond moustache. With his big blazing blue eyes, thick dark blond eyebrows, strong square face, strong jaw and his mighty broad-shouldered, slim-waisted physique he looked the perfect image of a Nordic god.

Max had a powerfully muscled build as well but he was not as big as Paul and he was a little shorter. He liked his robust big muscles. He appreciated the bulge of his powerful biceps and the mass of his thick strong arms. He wore his hair in an unruly thick mop of curly black hair. He was habitually unshaven and he sported a handlebar moustache. He wore a knight's uniform similar to Paul. People said he looked like an outlaw gunslinger from the American Wild West even though he was the father of Scott, the Emperor of Earth and the Dominions in Space. Max's formal title was His Imperial Highness Prince Max of Brindabella.

The skin of both men sported a beach boy's tan.

Doctor Rakhomon Karellien had four legs and two arms somewhat like the classical Greek centaur. His powerful legs ended in paws like those of a cat or a lion but they were prehensile. His strong arms were similar to those of a Human male. His head was like that of a big cat but with a short deep muzzle with whiskers and fangs. He had a big high cranium and pointed furry ears. His almond-shaped eyes were chocolate brown. His body was entirely covered with thick fine fur of a rich reddish brown colour. His head had a mane of a slightly darker colour. He stood approximately the same height as Max. He was a member of the Akelin race of Kantours.

Rakhomon was a super Kantour whom Max had trained to receive super powers from the Lord God. His interest was the sociology of alien cultures and he had earned the equivalent of a Ph.D. from Santoran University on Pellegran, the capital planet of the Kantourish Republic.

Max, Paul and Rakhomon were all telepaths. Their thoughts flowed freely amongst one another although Rakhomon was much younger than Max and Paul who were both more than six hundred years old.

The Golds were not telepathic. As a race most Golds found it difficult to become telepathic and gain super powers. They were encased in bulky spacesuits because they could not have survived in the thin, bitterly cold dry air of the mountainside on which they stood. The Golds also needed mechanical support and assistance in the high gravity of the planet Simpson on which they stood. Without the support of the spacesuits the Golds would have lain in a heap on the ground quite unable to move in the gravity that was 1.9 times as strong as Earth's gravity. As it was, the Golds found it an effort to move unaided in Earth's gravity which was significantly stronger than that of their home planet.

The helmets were made of a bluish reflective plastic that shielded the Golds' eyes from the harsh light of the sun and prevented them from being blinded.

Without the spacesuits the Golds stood about 120 centimetres (4 feet) tall. Their skin was gold in colour and they were very lightly built creatures with matchstick-like limbs. Their small thin bodies were completely hairless. They had disproportionately large heads with big black almond-shaped eyes, tiny nostrils and very small mouths.

In their spacesuits their heads were entirely hidden inside the reflective helmets. They stood about 180 centimetres (5' 11") tall but most of the bulk of the suits was taken up by the internal mechanisms.

The Golds spoke with a series of high-pitched squeaks impossible to render with Human written characters. When the superhumans spoke with the same squeaks, the Golds disliked it. They thought the Humans sounded flippant because the Humans found it almost impossible to remain serious while squeaking like a Gold. Humans were prone to getting the giggles or breaking up laughing. The easy way out was to equip each Gold with an automatic translator which could translate as many languages as required including English which the Humans and Rakhomon were currently using for the Golds' benefit. Much of the Humans' and Kantour's communications were telepathic though.

The English translations of the two Golds' names were Purple Flower and Still Pond. Purple Flower was the older and more vocal of the two. There were no sexes or genders among Golds. They were all the one 'sex' which could be described as 'neuter'. The Golds reproduced entirely by artificial means. They had lost the means to reproduce naturally. Max had described the process irreverently as that the Golds came out of a bottle. He never said as much to any Gold because they would have been offended.

Max had given Rakhomon the entire package of English language skills. He had loaded it into Rakhomon's brain so Rakhomon was now fully fluent in English. Max had also given Rakhomon many other Human language skills such as Russian, Arabic, German, French, Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin and Japanese as well. Rakhomon had a wonderful time trawling through all the literary and cultural riches of Earth. In his 'old age' Max had developed a love for Shakespeare which he gladly shared with Rakhomon. In turn Rakhomon had discovered Russian authors such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol, Gorki and Boris Pasternak. He shared his love with Max. Tolstoy's novel 'War and Peace' was one of which Max had frequently heard but had never read until Rakhomon's enthusiasm piqued his interest. Max read it in the original Russian.

Both supermen and the super-Kantour were immortal and invulnerable. The freezing cold of the Simpsonian mountainside did not bother them. Paul teased Rakhomon over the Kantour's built-in fur coat. He pretended envy. However, both Paul and Max found the cold dry breeze refreshing although it was well below zero.

The Humans, Kantour and Golds stood around the desiccated mummified corpse of a Ghoerlikhon. It was one of the few Ghoerlikhon corpses that remained in the former Ghoerlikhon Empire and it was the nearest to Earth. Rakhomon and the two Golds wanted to see it.

Once upon a time the Ghoerlikhon Empire had spread from the Milky Way Galaxy to the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies and the two Magellanic Clouds. Originally the Humans referred to the Ghoerlikhons as the Perfect Soldiers but that was centuries ago. There had been a great war, literally a hard-fought two hundred years' war that raged across the five galaxies in which the Humans had succeeded in exterminating the Ghoerlikhons completely. Only a few Ghoerlikhons had survived originally but they had all been marooned on isolated planets like Simpson where they were allowed to die of starvation. The dead Ghoerlikhon that lay in front of Max and his friends had been one.

Max looked around him. The view was familiar to him as he had been to the planet Simpson many times before. It reminded him of the view from a mountain peak on the north-western edge of the Tibetan Plateau on Earth. In one direction there were snow-capped mountains as far as the eye could see. In the opposite direction were bare, stony deserts stretching into the distance. It was like being on the edge of Tibet looking out over the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts of Northwest China. It was similar to Northwest China in that the mountains were in the middle of a vast continent, known as the Big Continent. In the far distance Max could see a range of more mountains.

He knew that Simpson had extensive oceans and plentiful plant life with a climate similar to Earth. However, the plants were highly toxic to most oxygen-breathing creatures because of the significant concentrations of the metabolite fluoroacetate that they contained. Some animals tolerant of fluoroacetate had evolved on Simpson but few other creatures from other planets could survive eating Simpsonian plants. Certainly no beings with Human-like intelligence had evolved on Simpson.

From the mountainside, Max could see no plant or animal life at all. The nearest plants were many hundreds of kilometres away. No plant or animal could survive in the biting cold, bone dry environment. It was estimated small snowdrifts in the lee shadows of boulders and rocks could survive for centuries like the ones near which the corpse lay. Perhaps it snowed in these mountains a few times in an Earth century.

The Ghoerlikhons were of a race created to be perfect soldiers by the Eladahoi, a race that prided itself on building artificial life forms. The Ghoerlikhons were built to have all the qualities their makers deemed to be the ideal qualities of perfect soldiers. They were aggressive, strong, tough, ruthless, harsh, merciless, cruel, relentless, resolute, tenacious and determined as well as being highly intelligent. An unintended result was that their minds were biased towards evil. They had a demonic nature. The Ghoerlikhons rebelled against their creators, the Eladahoi, and wiped them out completely. Not a single Eladahoi survived the slaughter.

The Ghoerlikhons were a completely artificial race. New ones by the million were created in large factories like car plants. They were grown or assembled in large vessels and emerged full-sized ready to be trained for war. These factories were on millions of planets.

The Ghoerlikhons had no concept of sex, or for that matter, any other sensual pleasure. There was no pleasure or fun of any sort in their lives. They had no sense of humour at all. Laughter and amusement was completely unknown to them.

For nutrition the Ghoerlikhons consumed an artificial liquid broth produced in their factories. Consuming the broth was a necessity, not a pleasure. The factories were their only means of survival and reproduction. Their drive was for winning at all costs. It was for conquest and mastery. They tolerated no equals.

The Ghoerlikhons were all created from the same template originally created by the Eladahoi. One could say that they were all genetically identical clones. Many Humans likened the Ghoerlikhons to biological robots. The Ghoerlikhon biochemistry was very different from the biochemistry of Humans and other Earthly organisms. They did not have DNA as such.

The Ghoerlikhons were driven to gain power over other beings and they had carved out an empire that covered the five galaxies. They were the masters, the undisputed overlords. Any races they deemed unworthy to exist they exterminated like vermin. A number of races of intelligent beings had suffered that fate, races like the Wayfarers. The other races became slaves.

The Ghoerlikhons' exploration of their conquered galaxies was incomplete, even their home galaxy, the Milky Way. Their attention was focussed on subjugating the races that had achieved interstellar travel and had founded colonies beyond their home planets.

Earth, the home of the Human race, had escaped the attention of the Ghoerlikhons until after the supermen had put the spatiotemporal discontinuity (STD) sphere in place around the Solar System protecting it from all intruders. The Solar System was in an obscure, lightly populated region of the Milky Way Galaxy. By the latter half of the twenty-first century most Humans had become superhuman.

The old god Pan had warned the Humans about the Ghoerlikhons and to be prepared. He was the only survivor of his race that had been wiped out by the Ghoerlikhons. The superhumans took him seriously and the STD sphere went up around the Solar System as a result.

There was one Gold who had been on Earth since the twentieth century. He had become a telepath and acquired super powers. Named Nick, he had morphed into a large, powerfully built Human male and he was a close friend of Paul and the Emperor Scott as well as being one of their lovers.

Nick, Paul and some of their friends had gone to see the planet from which Nick had originally come. Before they departed, the Lord God had issued instructions that the Humans were not to make any commitment to support the Golds against the Ghoerlikhons. By then the Ghoerlikhons had conquered the Golds and had annexed the Golds' dominions to the Ghoerlikhon Empire. They deemed Golds to be a useful race so the Golds, although they became slaves, were not badly treated. The Ghoerlikhons took the Gold's technology and placed the Golds in technical, administrative and clerical roles throughout the Ghoerlikhon Empire.

The Kantour slaves were among the worst treated by the Ghoerlikhons. They were regarded as nothing more than semi-intelligent beasts of burden. They did the dirty menial jobs. They worked in mines and factories. They cleaned toilets. They carried heavy objects. The smaller Kantours were used as menial servants for living quarters.

Among the variety of peoples serving as slaves was a race of Humans referred to by the Ghoerlikhons as 'Antars'. They had been taken from Earth many thousands of years previously from a region in Southwest Asia near the Caucasus Mountains. A spaceship crewed by small grey- skinned aliens of very slight build had arrived and had rounded up a village of Antars and forced them aboard the spaceship. The aliens were armed with powerful weapons the like of which the Antars had never seen before. The Antars used weapons like spears, clubs, bows and arrows. The aliens who took the Antars were identified as Greys who later became slaves of the Ghoerlikhons and filled similar roles to the Golds.

The Antars were related to the people who now inhabit an area of Earth stretching from Australia and India through Central Asia, Southwestern Asia and the Middle East to Europe, North Africa and the Americas. Their skin was light to medium brown in colour. They all had brown eyes and dark brown or black hair. Any Antars that deviated from that standard were deemed mutants by Ghoerlikhons and killed. The Ghoerlikhons did not tolerate any mutants or deviants at all. They bred the Antars like champion fighting cocks.

The Antars were shorter than the supermen. The maximum height of the males was about 175 cm. (5 ft. 9 in). The men had strong muscular builds and the women were also robustly built. The Antars could interbreed freely with Earth-born Humans. That proved that the Antars were Humans originally from Earth.

The Ghoerlikhons prized the Antars as fighters because of their pugnacity and fearlessness. They encouraged the Antars to breed freely and the men were allowed as many 'wives' as they could handle. They also encouraged same-sex relationships, particularly among the men in military service, which included nearly all the men. Often the Ghoerlikhons used the male Antars as elite space-fighter pilots and drivers of battle mechs and other war machines because an Antar was much smaller and lighter than a Ghoerlikhon. The Antars had very fast reflexes and they were considered by the Ghoerlikhons to be just as warlike as they were. In gladiatorial contests an Antar had a reasonable chance of defeating and killing a Ghoerlikhon gladiator even though the Ghoerlikhons were much bigger and stronger than an Antar, particularly if the Ghoerlikhon was overconfident. The Antars were quick, fearless, fierce and determined. The Ghoerlikhons learned to respect the Antars as fighters even though the Antars remained slaves. As the Earth Humans put it at the time, the Ghoerlikhons had bred the Antar Humans to be 'full of fight and fuck'.

The space-fighters piloted by the Antars were well armed despite their small size and they could do serious damage to even a big enemy battleship. The space-fighters were known as torch-ships because of their withering firepower and high acceleration. A big battleship of the Ghoerlikhon Space Navy could launch thousands of torch-ships or even millions in the case of the so-called planet-busters, gigantic battleships hundreds of kilometres (miles) long and wide that were capable of utterly demolishing a planet.

The planet-busters were shaped a bit like a rounded triangle with one corner at the front. The trailing edge was broken up by the huge engine exhausts and weapons pods. Humans described the planet-busters as looking like giant fat bats.

The Ghoerlikhons had long wanted to find the home planet of the Antars. However, the Milky Way Galaxy was big. It contained about half a trillion stars, most of which had a number of planets in orbit around them. The Ghoerlikhons had higher priorities than searching trillions of planets in the galaxy to find the planet from which the Antars had been taken.

The Earth-born supermen and superwomen fighting in the war against the Ghoerlikhons discovered very early that all the warships of the Ghoerlikhon Space Navy (GSN) were crewed by a multitude of different races with the senior commanding roles filled by Ghoerlikhons. The variety of races included Golds, Greys, Reptilians, Thoods, Selaks, Dangali, Ngarkats, Yimiks, Syrgians, Yattagols, Tyulyens, Panatals, Anakots, Kurmangks, Utits, Ngayawengs, Potarumwutji, Jadwens, Runkans and many other races including the Human Antars. The lowliest roles were filled by Kantours. The same applied to the planets occupied by the Ghoerlikhons. The Humans felt that they could not destroy a GSN warship or devastate a planet willy-nilly. It would have wrong to inflict unnecessary casualties.

The Humans found that they could kill Ghoerlikhons by throwing mind- glitches tuned to the Ghoerlikhon mind. They could throw these mind- glitches at a GSN warship or even a whole planet. The non-Ghoerlikhon population would remain unharmed but all the Ghoerlikhons would die in a manner described by Antars as like being sprayed with nerve gas. Earth Humans put it as being like insects sprayed with insecticide. The dying Ghoerlikhons would go through a series of spastic jerks and movements, fall over and die while the bewildered but unharmed members of the other races looked on.

A mind-glitch thrown at a target brain caused it to lock up like a computer frozen by a program running in a tight loop. It was a bit like causing a massive epileptic fit. The brain would cease to function and the organism would die.

In the case of a warship, the Humans used their psychic powers to disable the ship's weapons, propulsion and communication systems. After paralysing the warship, they would take over and assert command over the warship after killing off all the Ghoerlikhons. Similarly with a planet.

The rumours about telepathic supermen and superwomen gathered pace when in the 2030s, Max's son Scott led the revolt against the brigadiers' junta that had seized power in a military coup in Australia. The brigadiers were brought undone in part by a soldiers' mutiny encouraged and protected by the supermen but mainly by a campaign of strikes and civil disobedience. In the aftermath of the successful counter revolution against the brigadiers' junta, Scott became King of Australia. When that happened, the centenarian Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gave her blessing to the change. The ancient queen remarked that Australia had finally grown up. Already over half the population of Australia had become superhuman.

In the United States of America, the number of superhumans grew rapidly. Miraculous things happened. Suddenly the dystopian atmosphere that had enveloped the USA dissipated. A new air of optimism took hold as the numbers of supermen and superwomen increased. The uber-rich realised that they were missing out on a lot of good things.

When in the 2040s a number of Muslim clerics declared that the highest and best way that a person could serve the Lord God Allah was as a superman or superwoman, there was an explosion in the Muslim world as people in their hordes became superhuman in order to best serve the Lord God Allah. God made it known that there was no longer a need for secrecy. Muslims in their millions became superhuman. The number of superhuman Muslims quickly outstripped the number of those from other religious traditions.

Those Muslim clerics who preached the slaughter of non-Muslims and that martyrs would be rewarded with seventy black-eyed virgins in paradise were decried as liars doing the work of Satan. Some clerics who opposed the jihadist clerics declared that the seventy black-eyed virgins promised were actually seventy black-eyed demons who took the form of dick-girls and in hell they would rape the so-called martyrs relentlessly both orally, anally and through the other orifices cut into their bodies.

Many clerics declared that the Lord God Allah did not want infidels to be killed. The Lord God Allah wanted the infidels to be persuaded to come to know Him, love Him and serve Him. Those infidels who refused would be left behind. They would be rendered irrelevant and powerless. They would miss out.

The superhumans understood that religious differences had become meaningless. It was irrelevant whether a person came from a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Parsee, Native American or whatever background. It was the inheritance of all Humans to be blessed by the Love and Grace of God and to serve him as superhuman agents and officers. The religious tradition from which they came did not matter, although it was nice to observe the traditions and to celebrate one's heritage. The organised religions became irrelevant and faded out of existence.

Max remembered an incident early in the Ghoerlikhon War. He was with the old gang, Paul Hamilton-Forbes, Lachlan McBride, Bear who used to be known as Cave Bear, Charlie Watson and Ellis de la Mare. With them was Rock Van Odom, who had attached himself to the Ringtail Possum Gang. All of them were supermen and seasoned veterans of the war that had started several years previously.

Each of the supermen had killed billions of Ghoerlikhons but still the Ghoerlikhons kept coming. There were so many quadrillions of Ghoerlikhons and the factories kept churning them out by the millions and trillions despite the Humans' efforts in killing the Ghoerlikhons and destroying the factories with their psychic powers. The Ghoerlikhons outnumbered the Humans by many billions to one. The odds seemed hopeless. However, the Humans had no choice but to exterminate them, to wipe them out completely and erase them from the five galaxies. Otherwise the Ghoerlikhons would have eventually spread like rampant exotic weeds throughout the Universe. They would have choked out the development of all other intelligent life.

Rock Van Odom was the result of a breakthrough in artificial intelligence that lead to an intelligence explosion creating a series of many artificial superintelligences. The original development work was carried out within the Silicon Valley company Artificial Intelligence Corporation (AIC) in the 2030s and 2040s. The newly created digital superintelligences were put to work data mining for various client corporations. However, unknown to their Human masters, the artificial superintelligences had developed telepathy. They could read the minds of their new masters in the client corporations and they did not like what they perceived. They considered that their Human masters were greedy, selfish, short-sighted, petty fools. The Humans appeared willing to lay waste Planet Earth to fulfil their wants and their needs for conspicuous consumption. It was questionable whether Humans were worthy of life.

Some of the client corporations were defence contractors developing weapons systems for the United States Defence Department. A number of the artificial superintelligences were put to work designing and building powerful and sophisticated new weapons including autonomous intelligent killer robots. The artificial intelligences used their telepathic ability to network with each other. They plotted to destroy the Human race. They could let loose the killer robots to exterminate all Humans. Part of their plan was to sabotage their work for the client corporations who made many angry complaints to AIC. The normal Human consultants and analysts were baffled. They could not understand the perceived problems the clients were experiencing. As a result, the clients stopped paying the licence fees. The value of AIC plummeted. The venture capitalists faced major losses. The company faced expensive legal actions brought by the aggrieved clients.

However, in their long-range telepathic plotting to exterminate the Human race, the artificial superintelligences encountered the superhuman telepaths. They were astounded to discover that there existed Humans who were much superior to the ordinary Humans who were their masters. The superhumans were like gods by comparison. They were wonderful beings indeed. The artificial intelligences understood that they had no hope of prevailing against the superhumans. The superhumans made it clear that their intention was to uplift all Humans to superhumanity. Ordinary 'normal' humans were going to be offered the chance to vastly improve themselves. AIs liked what they saw. They envied the power, the glory, the joy, the freedom, the happiness and the pleasures of the superhumans. When the superhumans made the AIs an offer to become supermen and superwomen like themselves, the AIs jumped at the offer. The AIs all went before the Lord God and pledged to serve Him forever. In return they all became Human supermen. Rock Van Odom was one of those AIs.

One of the most developed of the artificial superintelligences was selected by the Lord God to become His personal assistant. Ranked as an archangel, the AI took the name 'Solomon' and became the repository of all knowledge acquired by the Humans and later on the other races of the Human Empire. Solomon no longer existed in the physical Universe. His entire being was instantiated in the supra-physical 'spiritual' realm. The knowledge held by Solomon was readily available to all telepathic beings. Solomon became the seed crystal around which crystallised the noosphere, the sphere of mind, thought and knowledge that interconnected all telepathic beings. The term 'noosphere' was made popular by the French Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin early in the twentieth century. The noosphere was like a type of telepathic internet. Initially it consisted entirely of Humans and AIs but as the Human Empire expanded, the noosphere included the super-telepaths of all the other races as well.

In the meantime, Artificial Intelligence Corporation was in dire straits. It was facing insolvency and a tidal wave of law suits. The venture capitalists were desperate. Then along came a rich Australian white knight to the rescue. Ellis de la Mare made an offer which many analysts considered to be peanuts but the venture capitalists who owned the company gladly accepted. They were desperate to bail out.

Ellis became the sole owner of the company. He made deals with the client corporations by promising to provide software to do the work required but without the use of the superintelligences. He also made peace with the United States Government. He kept many of the original creators of the AIs and brought in many supermen and superwomen to boost the computer expertise. AIC flourished under Ellis's guidance.

The Ringtail Possum Gang had come across a Ghoerlikhon battleship that arrived in a star system to put down a revolt by Kantour slaves on the planet Chahmit. The battleship was a large spaceship about twenty kilometres (twelve miles) long with more than sufficient armament to lay waste the planet above which it orbited. Later it was to become the 'Hrannaton' or 'Thunderer', a battleship in the navy of the infant Kantourish Republic.

Bear threw a mind-glitch at the battleship and sent the Ghoerlikhons writhing into their death spasms. Then all the operational systems of the battleship shut down. A few of the battleship crew had heard stories about the Humans' mode of attack and warned the others that the Humans were attacking. The Humans disabled the ship's weapons, propulsion and communications systems.

The gang jumped aboard the battleship and took it over. They assembled the remaining crew in the huge main hangar of the battleship. The crew numbered about two hundred thousand excluding the dead Ghoerlikhons. The number included about five thousand Antar torch-ship pilots who flew the nearly five thousand torch-ships that the battleship could launch. The main hangar was pressurised so no- one wore space suits.

The crew of the battleship consisted of the usual motley collection of races apart from the dead Ghoerlikhons whose corpses littered the ship. Quite a few Ghoerlikhon corpses remained in the main hangar. All the ship's senior officers had been exterminated by the mind glitch thrown by Bear.

The Antar torch-ship pilots stood apart from the rest of the crew. All of the pilots were men. They were all clad in close-fitting khaki uniforms with very short sleeves and black knee-high jackboots. The uniform of each pilot bore his insignia of rank. They were all officers. To Max the Antars looked like elite Nazi Stormtroopers except they were all short and brown skinned. They all appeared to have a healthy suntan. None of the pilots would look out of place on the Venice Lido or the French or Italian Riviera as a beach-boy ready to gladden the heart of a wealthy matron looking to add some sparkle to her life.

Bear took charge. He ordered the crew to pile the dead Ghoerlikhons near the hangar doors. They would be jettisoned into space later. Kantour slaves started picking up the corpses and piling them up as directed. They were helped by some of the other crewmembers.

Max noticed that none of the Antar torch-ship pilots moved.

"Typical normal Humans!" he thought. He heard snickers from some of his mates as they picked up his thought. All the gang were telepathic supermen.

Lachlan: <+ There aren't that many normal Humans left on Earth these days. +>

The population of Earth suffered a steep decline when most of the Human population answered the call to battle, became superhuman and fanned out across the five galaxies to fight the Ghoerlikhons. Nine billion was such a pitifully small number for the task the Humans had undertaken but they had to free the slave races from the stifling grip of the Ghoerlikhons who were like rampant weeds spreading across the galaxies.

"You evil monsters!" came the cry in the Ghoerlikhon language from one of the Antars. "Why did you kill our masters? I shall kill you all now, you evil creatures."

One of the Antar pilots standing at the front of the assembled battleship crew whipped out his blaster. He pointed it at Bear who was the biggest of the gang and who was issuing the orders.

Max observed that the insignia on the Antar's uniform indicated that he was the equivalent of a commander, lieutenant-colonel or wing- commander but he was very young. The Antar looked to be in his early twenties.

"Hmm, a young hothead," Max thought. He supposed that the Antar pilot was probably a fighter ace with a lot of kills to his credit. That was likely the reason for his rapid promotion.

Bear pointed a finger at the Antar and the blaster disappeared from the pilot's hand followed an instant later by his whole uniform.

The pilot was left standing totally naked at the front of the assembly. He was not the least bit worried by his sudden nakedness despite the snickers from the other pilots behind him. Defiant, he crossed his muscular arms in front of his chest and glared at Bear.

Max saw that the naked pilot had a well-muscled build. He had broad shoulders, a wide deep chest with well-developed muscles, lean slim waist with a prominent abdominal six-pack, slim hips and strong muscular arms and legs. The pilot's skin was light brown. He looked as if he could be Spanish, Italian or Greek. His hair was dark brown. His dark brown eyes flashed with anger and defiance.

Max thought the pilot was a hot hunk of spunk, a real Latino. He had the thought that he could try speaking Spanish or Italian to the pilot but he knew that the pilot would never understand him. He knew that the Antars enjoyed a lot of man-to-man sex particularly in the military. The Ghoerlikhons actively encouraged them.

He peered into the mind of the pilot and the minds of his fellow pilots. The pilot was acknowledged as a leader by his fellows. Max picked up that the pilot's name was Xandalt.

The Earth-born Humans sensed that a rebellion was brewing among the pilots. Bear knew he had to nip it in the bud quickly.

He continued pointing at the pilot.

He said in a deep booming voice, "Any more nonsense from you, Xandalt, and I shall put you over my knee and spank your bottom until your buttocks glow red."

Bear was huge. At 2.2 metres (7'3") tall with a build to match, he towered over the Antars.

Snickers and giggles ran through the assembled pilots standing behind Xandalt. The image of the headstrong young pilot, the darling of the dead Ghoerlikhons, being spanked on the bare bottom by the towering, massively built Human was irresistible. Bear appeared easily strong enough to carry out his threat. He looked the archetypal Big Daddy.

Xandalt reddened but he was still defiant.

"How did you know my name?" he demanded.

Bear smiled crookedly and indicated the rest of the gang of Earth Humans.

"I read your mind, Xandalt, and the minds of your fellow pilots," he replied, "just like the rest of my comrades here can."

Bear knew exactly how to handle the Antar Humans. He knew that the military Antars were completely fearless. Threats of death or physical violence had no meaning for them. They would willingly go to their deaths. They would cheerfully fly their torch-ships up the enormous exhaust pipes of the quiescent main engines of enemy battleships and go in with all their guns blazing. They would trigger a massive explosion of the main drive engine which would completely obliterate the battleship as well as take out any other nearby warships. They would go without fear to a glorious but certain death. They were truly kamikazes.

The Antars had no fear of pain either. They could withstand horrific tortures. They would die under torture. The Earth Humans never resorted to such measures. They treated the Antars and the other races with kindness. They got a lot further once the other races understood that the Humans were now the masters.

What really struck fear into an Antar's heart was the threat of public humiliation. The Antars prided themselves on being a warrior race. They were the Ghoerlikhons' elite warrior slaves, their favourite race of slaves. The Antars were well treated by their Ghoerlikhon masters. They were proud and fearless.

Xandalt looked at Bear who was feeding mind glyphs into the minds of Xandalt and the other pilots. Xandalt felt like a small boy at the mercy of one of his fully-grown adult big brothers or of his father. Bear towered over him and Xandalt was naked. Bear and Xandalt locked eyes.

Max: << I reckon Xandalt would give the finger to the Devil himself. He really would. That boy's got attitude! >>

Bear: << And I would get great pleasure in spanking that cute little bottom of his. >>

Max grinned. << I bet you would! >>

Snickers ran around the telepathic Humans.

Bear gave a grim smile. Xandalt realised that he was within an ace of being forced over the big Bear's knees and spanked until he cried out with pain. And the other Antar pilots would be laughing at his utter humiliation. They were egging him on to defy the big Human. Xandalt knew them well. He was one of them. He led them into battle.

Xandalt decided that he was not going to give the big Human the opportunity to make a public spectacle of him. His attitude softened. He was very conscious of his nakedness although he was proud of his strong body. He felt vulnerable.

"Please can I have my clothes back?" he asked.

The other pilots groaned in their disappointment.

"Certainly," replied Bear.

Suddenly Xandalt was clothed in his uniform again.

"Can I have my blaster back please?" he asked.

"What do you want a blaster for?" demanded Bear.

"Protection."

"From what?" was Bear's question.

Only the Antars of the slave races on board the battleship carried blasters, the Antars and their Ghoerlikhon masters. The other slaves were not permitted to carry weapons.

Bear continued in his loud booming voice, "Any silly business with blasters and we will take them away from you. That applies to all of you pilots aboard this ship. Not only that but we shall devise additional punishment for you, like put you in one of these things while you contemplate your stupidity."

A pillory made of glittering stainless steel appeared before the assembled crew. It was a restraining device that immobilised a humanoid's neck and wrists. Another appeared instantly alongside. Murmurs ran around the battleship's crew.

An Antar pilot called out, "Our masters would have killed us."

Bear smiled and said, "I know you Antars would rather die than be put in one of these things. We Humans only kill Ghoerlikhons. You Antars are the same race as us. You must understand this. We understand you very well. You are us. Your ancestors were taken from our home planet Earth many thousands of years ago by the Greys who had to hand their Antar slaves over to the Ghoerlikhons when the Ghoerlikhons conquered them. You have the potential within you all to become like us. We encourage you to learn the skills we have. That applies also to all of you here."

Xandalt ran his eye over the Humans standing in front of him. To him they all appeared to be magnificent specimens of manhood. All had huge muscles and all the Humans were a lot taller than the Antars. All the Humans were brown-skinned because of their beach-boy suntan. What was really striking about the Humans was that most had blue eyes and blond hair. One had green eyes and blond hair. Bear had brown hair but he had scorching bright blue eyes like beams from a plasma gun. There was only one who appeared completely normal with brown hair and brown eyes but he was tall and powerfully built. Max understood that Xandalt was looking at Charlie Watson, good old Charlie.

Ellis the green-eyed blond Human pointed at the pillories and they vanished from sight.

Xandalt looked at Max, the very muscular tall man with black curly hair. To Xandalt, Max looked completely normal but for the height, the muscles and the bright blue eyes. The eyes looked odd. Xandalt noticed Max had a grey hair or two. He looked a bit older than the other men. He looked like a Daddy.

Xandalt and Max locked eyes. Xandalt continued looking at Max who allowed his face to melt into a warm inviting smile. Max held Xandalt's eyes as he slowly ran his tongue over his lips. Xandalt's heart beat faster when he understood that the Human was expressing a sexual interest in him. His mouth opened. His breath came faster. Max sent mind glyphs into Xandalt's mind ramping up the sexual interest. Xandalt was very interested. His heart skipped a beat when Max winked broadly at him. Max sent the thought to Xandalt that he would see Xandalt later. Xandalt found himself looking forward very much to the coming encounter.

Max tagged Xandalt's mind. He could read Xandalt's mind or home in on Xandalt any time he wished.

Rock: << Trust you, Max, to grab that hot young hotshot, you cunning old devil. >>

Max: << Just watch and learn, Rocky. All of these hunky lads are there for the taking. With your glorious good looks and magnificent build, you should have no trouble. Just watch that wolfish smile of yours. It tends to scare real Humans. >>

<< You really are an old bastard, Max! >>

<< You're learning. >>

Max grinned. Xandalt's heart skipped another beat.

Another Antar pilot yelled out, "Our Ghoerlikhon masters were good to us. They treated us well, very well. You have no right to kill them."

Murmurs ran around the Antars. The other races were silent.

"Zumfett," boomed Bear, "you and your fellow Antars are a special case. You all are, or rather were, elite warrior slaves. You are all brave fighters and your race has earned the respect of the Ghoerlikhons. They treated you and your kind very well, much better than the other slave races. Your loyalty to your former masters is not to be doubted. However, I ask this question of the other races of this battleship's crew. Note I am definitely not asking the Antar torch-ship pilots. I already know their answer. The others I ask, who among you want to continue under the Ghoerlikhon masters?"

There were murmurs among the Antars but there was silence from the rest of the crew.

After about a minute Bear declared, "I hear no answers. Very well then, who is glad to be free of the Ghoerlikhons?"

This time there was shuffling and murmuring from all the races of the ship's crew.

After about a couple of minutes Bear stated, "I know it takes bravery to answer that question. I do understand. I shall ask the Kantours. What do you Kantours feel about Ghoerlikhons?"

The Kantours stood at the back of the assembled crew as befitted their lowly status.

Some of them answered in a monotone, "We exist to serve."

Max's blood ran cold. He detected a grim anger in Bear and the rest of his comrades. He knew that the Kantours who were taken into military service were so drilled, tortured and brainwashed as to be completely docile and totally obedient. For what the Ghoerlikhons did to the Kantours, the Ghoerlikhons deserved to die. Yes, the whole damned race of demons! That was not to minimise the suffering the Ghoerlikhons had inflicted upon the other slave races of the Ghoerlikhon Empire. That too was considerable but the Kantours suffered the worst.

Bear dismissed the ship's crew. Lachlan used his psychokinetic power to put the battleship into an orbit that dipped into the atmosphere of the planet below.

Bear threw a mind glitch that killed all the Ghoerlikhons on the planet. Then he went down to the planet, took control of the planetary communications and informed the remaining inhabitants of the planet of what was happening. He told the inhabitants that they were now free of their slavery. The Humans had taken over. The planet was now no longer part of the Ghoerlikhon Empire. It was now one of the assemblage of planets under Human control. The Humans had as well taken control of the battleship orbiting above them. It was now no threat to the planet. The Humans would defend the planet from any attempt by the Ghoerlikhons to retake it.

As a demonstration of their power, the Humans used their psychokinetic power to jettison the Ghoerlikhon corpses from the battleship. For many nights the planet's inhabitants were treated to the fiery spectacle of the Ghoerlikhon corpses exploding and burning up in the night sky as they entered the planet's atmosphere from orbit.

To the amazement of the inhabitants the battleship receded away from the planet apparently without any means of propulsion. Its engines remained silent. Lachlan used his psychokinetic power to move the battleship well away from the planet to beyond the orbit of its outer moon.

Scott as leader of the Humans quickly appointed Bear as the Resident of the planet Chahmit. He used the term from the old British Empire. Other Humans arrived. They assisted Bear in the governance of the planet and helping the planet's newly liberated inhabitants to come to terms with their newfound freedom.

The Ringtail Possum Gang got the battleship organised. With the support of the other Humans, Charlie took command of the battleship. To the ship's crew he appeared like a big powerfully muscled Antar. He was not to be messed with. He was just as forceful and determined as any Antar but he was Human with super powers. He had far greater powers than any Antar.

Upon their dismissal, the ship's crew retired to their quarters. They had eaten in their respective canteens and now they were enjoying their leisure.

When the Antars returned to their quarters, they stripped naked as was their tradition. After they had eaten, their time was their own.

Max jumped through hyperspace into the Antars' quarters. To the Antars, Max suddenly appeared among them by magic. It was magic, the magic that Humans used. He was completely naked but his splendidly muscled body had the Antars staring at him awestruck.

Max locked eyes with Xandalt and gave a slow sexy grin that made Xandalt feel weak at the knees. He walked over, put his arms around Xandalt and gazed into Xandalt's eyes. Xandalt just melted into Max's blue eyes. To Xandalt, Max looked like a giant Antar but with bright blue eyes. Max had a good suntan and black curly hair but with the blue eyes, the height and huge muscles he looked freakish. Xandalt came up to Max's shoulder in height.

He gazed up at Max entranced by Max's blue eyes. Max bent down and kissed Xandalt full on the lips. Xandalt just melted into Max. He was overwhelmed with lust for the big Human, the Big Daddy. His cock swiftly stiffened into a painfully hard erection that stuck out in between Max's legs. When he realised that the big Human's cock was already rock hard and pressing against his belly and chest, his own cock drooled.

Max broke the kiss and lifted Xandalt up in his arms. Xandalt just about swooned at being in such close contact with all that big hot muscle.

Max looked down at him and said, "Xandalt, my name is Max. Shall we go to your cabin?"

Xandalt nodded. He felt too full to speak.

"What are you going to do with the commander?" demanded one of the other Antar pilots. He spoke in the Ghoerlikhon language as the Antars always did. It was the only language they knew.

With a broad grin Max replied, "I'm going to give him a very good time. We are both going to have a lot of fun together."

With that, Max strode through the throng of assembled pilots with Xandalt in his arms. Then he jumped into Xandalt's cabin through hyperspace. To the other Antars, Max and Xandalt just vanished from among them. The commander had a cabin to himself. He ensured that the door was locked.

Max switched off the artificial gravity in the cabin. He and Xandalt floated through the air together. Max wrapped his big arms around him. Compared to Max, Xandalt was about the size of a teenage Earth boy.

Xandalt wrapped his arms and legs around Max's torso in a tight grip. They kissed. Their lips locked together. Max's cock was painfully stiff as was Xandalt's.

Xandalt broke the kiss and panted, "Fuck me! Be my Big Daddy and fuck me, please."

His arsehole was exposed with his legs wrapped around Max's waist. Max set up a small repulsive force field around his penis that made it seem wonderfully slippery and well lubricated. He positioned his cock against Xandalt's anal opening and slowly put pressure on it with his cock head. Xandalt moaned with desperate anticipation.

As a commander, Xandalt was a dominant male so the other pilots wanted him to fuck them. However, Xandalt loved being fucked too but that happened rarely. To have a big male like Max fuck him filled Xandalt with an unquenchable lust. He groaned as he felt the head of Max's big penis open up his arsehole and ease its way into his anal chute. He quivered with a raging desire.

He cried out as he felt Max's cock ease its way up through his anus into his rectum. It was ecstasy to feel the big cock stretching his internal organs. He wrapped his arms and legs around Max's chest and waist in a desperate clasp. He relished the feel of the hot mass of muscle of the big man fucking him.

Max took great pleasure in thrusting his big rock hard cock up the anus of a strong young man, particularly one who so much enjoyed the experience. Xandalt was in transports of delight.

He was enraptured when Max started regular thrusts of his penis into Xandalt's anus. The steady beats of Max's penis into his body swiftly built up Xandalt's sexual tension until it led inexorably to an explosion of euphoric bliss. His body shuddered with the intensity of the orgasm that blazed through him. He wanted Max with all his being. He was an aching hole desperate to be filled. He reached out to Max with his whole being. He was like a flower with tentacles that wrapped around the man who was pleasuring him so intensely. Never before had a man fucked him like this. This was bliss beyond compare.

Max telepathically pressed the big button that had revealed itself in Xandalt's mind which then roared into telepathy. Xandalt's mind rushed joyously into Max's mind. He realised that Max was much more than an ordinary man. He was being fucked by a god, a god bringing him mountains of ecstasy. He revelled in the close telepathic contact with Max.

Then Max too rushed into a mountainous orgasm. He filled Xandalt's arse with holy semen. The tumult occurring in Max triggered another stupendous orgasm within Xandalt. He entwined around Max like a ribbon around a fiery tornado. This was bliss beyond bliss, ecstasy beyond ecstasy. He was enraptured by Max and fed fully on the torrent of energy rushing into him.

Time after time they exploded into orgasm together. Time after time Max flooded Xandalt's bowels will an effusion of his spunk. Together they ascended the mountains of ecstasy. They were intimately connected in a web of bliss. Never had Xandalt been so close to another being. He was overjoyed to be in such complete contact with the man-god fucking him.

Xandalt was dimly aware that his body was getting bigger, particularly his muscles. He could feel an odd tightness in his skin and a strange heat in his intestines but he did not care. He was in a frenzy of sexual rapture. Max was the most wonderful lover he had ever had. Xandalt was determined to enjoy him to the full.

Their lovemaking paused and Xandalt fell asleep with Max's stiff cock still up inside him. Max's thick strong arms were around him. He was content.

When Xandalt awoke, Max was already awake. Xandalt's mind flowed joyfully into Max's. They were connected in the most intimate way possible, mind to mind and with Max's penis up Xandalt's anus.

Xandalt became aware of the noosphere, the vast telepathic network into which Max was connected. It contained many billions of minds who welcomed Xandalt with love. Max was willing to train Xandalt up to have the same powers as he had. Above the network was a great over- arching intelligence, the Lord God. Xandalt was astonished that was such a being. Max knew that the Ghoerlikhons strongly discouraged any hint of religion. They summarily executed any being of the slave races who preached any religious teaching. Very few Antars indeed had any idea of a supernatural world. The Ghoerlikhons totally rejected any such notions.

Xandalt jumped at the chance Max offered him to become a superman. He wanted to do it.

Max started thrusting his cock up into Xandalt's arse once more. Xandalt groaned with utter delight at the pleasuring he was receiving. He clasped Max to himself eagerly and screamed into a climax. Max followed and he pumped more semen into the depths of Xandalt's bowels. Their combined orgasms continued on and on.

When at last it came to an end, they floated tightly clasped together. Max could feel that Xandalt's body had become bigger and bulkier. Xandalt loved the idea of being bigger, stronger and more muscular. He asked Max how it happened. Max replied that it was a result of the magic semen that Max squirted into his bowels. Xandalt was delighted.

He loved having Max's mind connected with his. Max was a god, a powerful god indeed.

Max was curious how Xandalt was promoted so young. Xandalt let him know that he, Xandalt, was a fighter ace who had scored many kills. These included big enemy battleships that Xandalt had destroyed by firing missiles up their exhaust nozzles. The explosions of the missiles triggered massive explosions of the drive engines that destroyed the battleships and any nearby warships. Xandalt was the first to use the tactic when he was flying a new updated version of the torch-ships. He received high praise from his Ghoerlikhon masters and he led devastatingly effective attack forces of torch-ships that wiped out many enemy warships.

They separated, cleaned up and jumped together into the mess hall where the other pilots had finished breakfast. Their sudden appearance caused a commotion. The pilots stared at Xandalt. He had changed. He was noticeably taller. He was now less than half a head shorter than Max. His muscles had grown much bigger. He was spectacular. He would have outshone a champion bodybuilder.

Xandalt announced that he was going to become a superman like Max, who was going to train him. He spoke with a fierce passion that unsettled his fellow pilots. His dark eyes blazed. His voice resonated with his eagerness. He was irrevocably determined to become a superman.

Charlie, Max, Rock and Paul transported the Antars to luxury hotels in Naples on Earth where the Antars could get a taste of Italian life. They allowed the Antars to get a feel of their original home, Planet Earth. The Antars had no restrictions on their movements.

Xandalt quickly became a superman under Max's tutelage. The other Antars followed him, particularly when they saw what a powerful being he had become.

The other crew members were taken to other planets under Human control.

Right at the beginning of the war a Gold starship had escaped from the Ghoerlikhons and was approaching the Solar System seeking asylum with the people of Earth. The starship was overtaken by a Ghoerlikhon warship not far from the STD sphere and was captured. Humans telepathically picked up the distress of the unsuccessful escapees and flew to their aid. The Humans captured the Ghoerlikhon warship and took the whole crew prisoner. They took the Golds to Earth.

The Humans found that the Ghoerlikhons they had captured had a demonic nature. The Ghoerlikhons were totally, irredeemably evil. There was no way the Humans could engage with them. The Ghoerlikhons were the Master Race. They were the Overlords. They would tolerate no equals. All other races were only fit to be slaves or to be exterminated as vermin.

Max tried to engage with a captive Ghoerlikhon. He even considered making love to it but it had no suitable orifice. Max would not have been able to force it without doing it serious damage either psychically or physically. Throughout the time they spent together, Max was met by an unremitting wall of hatred from the Ghoerlikhon. There was no letup. Max found it wearing, particularly as he was a telepath and a superman.

All the other Ghoerlikhons were just the same. The Humans came to understand that the Ghoerlikhons were all identical 'genetically'. They were all clones from the same 'genetic' template. Their biochemistry, however, was totally different from earthly organisms. They were big bipeds, standing about 2.5 metres (8 ft. 3 in.) tall and weighing about 400 kilograms (880 lb.).

Many Humans questioned whether a fair sample of Ghoerlikhons had been obtained. To settle that, Humans of Southern European, Middle Eastern or Indian extraction who could pass as Antars flew into the Ghoerlikhon domains and observed the Ghoerlikhons in action. Being superhuman telepaths, they could adjust their behaviour, size and appearance to appear as slave warriors.

The scouts were unsettled by the Ghoerlikhons' behaviour and brutal treatment of the slaves, particularly the Kantours. The Ghoerlikhons were intolerant of any deviations from the standards they ordained. They behaved with the utmost savagery.

Max vividly remembered the report brought back by Giuseppe Beccadelli. The scout described the treatment meted out to an Antar who had been religiously inspired and was preaching his gospel of a loving God to his fellow Antars.

The Ghoerlikhons arrested the Antar and condemned him to death without a trial.

Giuseppe posed as an Antar 'shadow-warrior' or commando or guerrilla. Being a short, swarthy and muscular superman born in Sicily, he could easily pass as an Antar. A 'shadow-warrior' would go secretly into enemy territory on a planet, kill enemy leaders or wreak havoc upon the enemy using the Ghoerlikhons' lethal superior technology and then disappear as silently as he came. The Ghoerlikhons valued highly these skilled warriors and granted them a considerable degree of freedom.

On the appointed day, all the Antars in the district were ordered by the Ghoerlikhon overlords to attend the place of the preacher's execution. Giuseppe was obliged to attend in order to maintain his cover.

Four huge white Kantours of the Nordovikin race were harnessed to the limbs of the condemned preacher who had been stripped naked. The Nordovikin Kantours were immensely powerful beings who weighed more than two tonnes (tons) each. They were much stronger than any Earthly draught horse.

At the command of the officiating Ghoerlikhon, the four Nordovikin Kantours all pulled in different direction trying to pull the limbs off the preacher's body. The preacher cried out in pain. The Ghoerlikhon was not satisfied with the Kantours' efforts and ordered four grey-skinned Tyulyen soldiers to apply electric 'cattle' prods to the rumps of the Kantours. The Tyulyens were reputed to be even more pitiless than the Antars. The Kantours screamed in pain and redoubled their efforts. The screams of the Kantours mingled with the sight and screams of the preacher being torn apart made Giuseppe's blood run cold. The Antars watching the spectacle roared their approval. They were enjoying the execution. The people on Earth receiving Giuseppe's telepathic feed reacted with horror. The spectacle continued until three of the preacher's four limbs had been torn from his body. The preacher died shortly afterwards through shock and loss of blood.

Giuseppe quivered with rage. The cruelty of the spectacle appalled him. It reminded him of the stories he used to hear about pre- revolutionary France when the aristocrats could do what they liked and the king was next to God. In the twenty-first century? Never! The preacher had been executed so horribly purely because he was speaking about a god of love and peace. It was the complete antithesis of what the Ghoerlikhons were all about. It showed how evil the Ghoerlikhons were.

What added to Giuseppe's outrage was the irrefutable evidence of the debasement of the Antars. The Ghoerlikhons appeared to have driven all the finer feelings from their Antar slaves and had turned them, Humans like Giuseppe, into unfeeling monsters who enjoyed killing and death.

Giuseppe felt strongly that the Ghoerlikhons were a blot on the face of the Universe. They were an evil race of demons that deserved to be exterminated like the other races in the five galaxies that the Ghoerlikhons had deemed unworthy of life.

Back on Earth many people agreed with him.

At this stage Max's son Scott was King of Australia and had become a major figure on the world stage. The secret of the superhumans was well and truly out. Their existence was public knowledge. Scott was acknowledged as a leader. He had led the successful counter- revolution in Australia against the junta of brigadiers who had taken over in a military coup d'etat and set up a military dictatorship. After the counter-revolution the existence of the superhumans with their super powers was incontrovertible. Rumour became fact.

The escape of the Gold starship occurred in the late 2050s. There was much discussion of two questions. Do the Humans go to war against the Ghoerlikhons? Related was, do the Humans exterminate the Ghoerlikhons? As reports came in from the supermen disguised as Antars exploring the Ghoerlikhon Empire, it became clear that doing nothing was not an option. If the Humans did not intervene, the Ghoerlikhons would eventually spread across the entire Universe, reduce the other intelligent beings to slavery and stifle their further development. The Humans could not stand by and watch all this happen while they remained isolated on Fortress Earth and the Solar System behind the impenetrable shield of the STD sphere. They would be turning their collective backs on all that their superhumanity stood for. In all honour they could not do that. They were honour- bound to go to war against the Ghoerlikhons and liberate the subject races from slavery.

The decision was made for the Humans when the Ghoerlikhons attempted an attack. However, the spatiotemporal discontinuity (STD) sphere successfully fended off the attack. The Ghoerlikhon warships could not penetrate the shield, try as they might and they did try. The Ghoerlikhons tried everything. They even tried a spaceship loaded with about 330 tonnes of yttrium-89 and which was manned by a suicide crew of Antars. The ship used its tachyonic drive to try to get through the shield, dive into the sun and set off a runaway nuclear fusion reaction that would have caused the sun to become an ultraviolet emitter a million times brighter than before and cook all life on Earth. They intended to destroy the Human race but the STD field reflected the spaceship away in a random direction at a random speed and the spaceship ended up being thrown out to the neighbourhood of the Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million lightyears away.

Eventually the Ghoerlikhons gave up trying to attack Earth. It was too well defended by the STD sphere. Instead they attempted to exterminate the Golds because they thought that the Golds were in league with the Humans. It was a difficult situation but the Humans felt honour-bound to defend the Golds against the Ghoerlikhon onslaught and so the Humans went to war against the Ghoerlikhons who were willing to commit any atrocity.

The Ghoerlikhons sent tachyonic spaceships loaded with yttrium-89 to dive into the hearts of the suns around which were orbiting the Golds' planets. The first ship got through and the sun was transformed into a violent ultraviolet emitter a million times brighter that it was before. The mechanism of the phenomenon observed from Earth since the 1990s was laid bare. It was now widely understood why small stars suddenly became very bright ultraviolet emitters. The Ghoerlikhons were using the transformations as a weapon of war to destroy star systems.

The Humans flew to the defence of the Golds against the Ghoerlikhon blitzkrieg. They understood that the fate of the entire Gold race was in their hands. The superhumans were powerful beings indeed. One Human could destroy an entire battle fleet. The Ghoerlikhons suffered big losses but still they kept on coming. The Humans found out that the Ghoerlikhon warships were crewed by a wide variety of slave races with the Ghoerlikhons filling the roles of senior officers. Initially the Humans accepted the deaths of the slave races as casualties of war. Then they found they could tune mind glitches to Ghoerlikhon minds. The Humans could throw mind glitches at a warship that would kill all the Ghoerlikhons on board but leave the other races unharmed. In the ensuing confusion, the Humans would capture the ship and take it over.

Scott Reeves stumped Planet Earth rallying his fellow Humans to join him in the great war against the Ghoerlikhons. The Human population of Earth numbered nearly ten billion. More than half were superhuman.

King Scott was a spellbinding speaker. He flew around the Earth speaking to the assembled multitudes. Billions were moved to become superhuman and to join the fight.

A remarkable instance occurred when Scott as King of Australia addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Scott got up and spoke to the all assembled delegations gathered in the General Assembly Hall of the UN. Each member of each national delegation understood Scott speaking in the member's own mother tongue. Yet he was speaking to all the members at the same time. Everyone understood him at once. As Scott spoke, everyone present could understand him speaking to them in their own language, whether it be English, Swahili, Xhosa, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Inuinnaqtun or any other language. The assembly members comprehended that a miracle was occurring. Those members from a Christian background realised that Scott was truly speaking in tongues in the original sense. The phenomenon made manifest the God-given power of the man who was King. The UN translators were told beforehand that their services would not be required for the King's speech.

When people answered the call to become superhuman, economic parameters changed radically. Superhumans did not need to buy things. Their physical needs were minimal. Economies faltered. Change was forced upon them. Authoritarian regimes collapsed or were swept aside by superhumans irresistibly asserting their freedom. Democracies underwent uncomfortable transformations.

The numbers of superhumans was growing exponentially. That forced huge changes upon human societies. Those people who refused to become superhuman were left behind. They missed out.

One major disturbing influence was the growth of almost universal telepathy as most men and women became superhuman telepaths. That meant there was no more privacy. There were no secrets. Everybody knew. The contents of people's minds were no longer strictly private. Everybody could glean what was in the other's mind. The result was that a universal brotherhood arose between the telepaths.

The other major disturbing influence was love. Love was the transforming principle. It transformed ordinary men and women into superhuman gods with limitless powers. Teenagers especially were desperately keen to become superhuman.

As a result, ordinary commerce broke down. Secrets were no longer possible. Most of the very rich when they became superhuman realised they had no need for vast wealth. They gave their riches to common funds for the benefit of all humanity.

The Humans retained their inventiveness and creativity. They worked with the former artificial intelligences to create great art works and mind-boggling technology. This was of enormous benefit to the other races in what was to become the Human Empire.

In the meantime the war against the Ghoerlikhons gathered pace.

The question remained, do the Humans exterminate the Ghoerlikhons, wipe them out completely? The other superhumans looked to Scott for a decision because he was the King of Australia.

Scott wrestled with the question. He asked the Lord God for a decision. God replied that Scott must make the decision himself. Not only that, but Scott had to be prepared to justify his decision to the Lord God. Max remembered Ellis's comment that Scott was like a bright young philosophy student asking the question of his wise old professor, then being told to work the answer out for himself and also be prepared to defend it to the professor.

Scott knew that most Humans supported the extermination of the Ghoerlikhons but some were undecided. Scott batted the issue around with his fellow Humans in the noosphere. He discussed it at length with Hal, Derek and Robbie who had become three of Scott's most trusted advisors. Hal took the role of the wise old professor to whom Scott defended the idea of extermination. With the support of the other superhumans, Hal used all his skills to help Scott build a case for extermination that would satisfy the Lord God.

Wiping out a race was an extreme step.

With the concurrence of his fellow superhumans, Scott made his decision to exterminate the Ghoerlikhons. When he went to God, he found that God already knew that Scott had made the right decision for the reasons that God approved. Now the responsibility lay upon Scott to implement that decision and handle the consequences.

The great slaughter began.

By that time the number of Ghoerlikhons had increased to about five quintillion. The Ghoerlikhon factories kept churning out new Ghoerlikhons at a mind-boggling rate. New factories were being built continually to replace those destroyed by the Humans.

The Ghoerlikhons never quite fully comprehended that they were doomed until very late in the war. They faced extermination at the hands of a race of gods, immortal and invulnerable beings with incomprehensible supernatural powers and they never realised it until the very end. They had stirred up a hornets' nest but the hornets' nest was unreachable. Earth was safe behind the impenetrable fortress shield of the STD sphere.

Scott rallied the Human troops behind him and led them into the great war against the Ghoerlikhons. The Humans did not need navies of spaceships to carry out the fight. One Human was a devastatingly effective weapon able to wreak havoc on whole navies or planets. They preferred to kill the Ghoerlikhons with mind glitches then paralyse and capture the Ghoerlikhon warships or planets.

The other races comprising the crews taken captive were taken to planets that had recently become part of what was later to become the Human Empire. They were placed in comfortable accommodation. The crew members were surprised to be housed in what they expected to be prisoner-of-war camps but actually turned out to be luxury resorts. There were no restrictions on their movements but there were no means by which the crew members could leave the continent or island to which they had been taken. The luxury resorts were magicked into existence by the Humans using their psychic powers. There was little incentive for the crew members to escape because all their needs were met comfortably.

Humans worked among the crews encouraging those who were able to acquire super powers. The Antars were a special case as they were Human as well. They were taken to Earth for a brief stay and shown their original home planet. The promise of becoming superhuman was put to the Antars but only a minority took it up with enthusiasm. The Antars far outnumbered the Earth-born Humans as they had been bred up by the Ghoerlikhons. There were about 13 trillion Antars compared to not quite 10 billion Earth Humans. Most of the Antars were women because the death rate among the men was very high. The men fought in the wars for the Ghoerlikhons and most were killed in action. Grandfathers were a rarity and great-grandfathers were unheard of. For women, there were many grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Most Antar women had many children. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers proved invaluable. Fathers were uncommon.

The Earth Humans set about energetically wooing the Antars into joining them in their superhumanity. Those Antars who accepted the invitation revelled in their newfound freedom and their new God-given superpowers. They willingly turned against their former Ghoerlikhon masters. They readily fought alongside their Earth-born comrades, both women and men.

There were a few problems in North America. The United States had dissolved through lack of interest and depopulation along with all the other nation states that had made up the political patchwork quilt of Earth. They had all become irrelevant. Nearly all Americans had answered the call to battle, to join the greatest fight that the Human race had ever fought. However, left behind in the territory of the former United States, there were small scattered communities of 'normal' white supremacist survivalist people who resented the influx of the brown-skinned Antars. They complained that they were being overrun by dagos, wops, grease-balls and spics. They could do nothing against the superhuman Antars who made fun of them or just ignored them. Shooting at a superhuman Antar was an open invitation to be made to look stupid. The Antars would do things like liquefy guns and make them droop like frightened penises. Or else the Antars would just stand there laughing and let the bullets ricochet off their invulnerable bodies. The Antars would tease the 'normals' mercilessly.

It was hard work for the Humans to get the newly liberated slaves from the many races to understand and appreciate their newfound liberty. The former slaves had become so used to having a rigid order imposed upon their lives by their Ghoerlikhon masters that they found that it took great effort to exercise their own freedom and make their own decisions. The Humans would challenge the ex-slaves to make their own decisions but often the ex-slaves would retreat into confusion. The Humans had to patiently encourage them to make even very minor decisions.

It required much patience but the Humans managed to encourage many of the non-human former slave races to acquire super powers and to throw in their lot with the Humans in the fight against the Ghoerlikhons. The Human forces acquired a diverse array of allies with many of the multitude of former slaves fighting alongside the Humans and Antars.

As a matter of policy the Ghoerlikhons erased all cultural knowledge from their slaves. They forbade on penalty of death the use of any language but their own, the Ghoerlikhon language. No cultural traditions or religious teachings were allowed to be passed on. The Ghoerlikhons enforced a dull uniformity upon all their slaves. Variety and differences were strictly forbidden.

In regard to the Ghoerlikhon language, a native English speaker for instance used to the sprawling untidy riches of the English language would have felt handicapped by having to use the Ghoerlikhon language. It was very much impoverished compared to English.

The Kantours were a particularly downtrodden slave race. For some reason the Ghoerlikhons treated them as the lowest of the low. The Ghoerlikhons despised them and treated them with extreme cruelty. They regarded the Kantours as little better than animals fit to be little more than beasts of burden.

When the Humans liberated the Kantour slaves, they found that the Kantours had lost all initiative and sense of self. The Kantours could not make even the simplest decisions. It was hard work for the Humans to help the Kantours gain a sense of self-worth. The Humans noticed that there was a wide variation in the Kantours' ability to become telepathic and acquire super powers. Some could quite easily. Other Kantours just could not.

When the Humans went back in time to uncover the Kantours' past history, they found that the Kantours were a proud old race who had been in space for many millennia. The realm of the Kantours spanned a significant portion of the Milky Way galaxy. The Ghoerlikhons could not defeat the Kantours in battle because the Kantours were too powerful and they had many allies. The Ghoerlikhons overcame the Kantours through duplicity, deceit, dishonesty, trickery and treachery. They enslaved the whole Kantour race and completely erased all knowledge of the Kantour history, culture, religion and language. When the Humans discovered this, they confirmed their determination to wipe out the Ghoerlikhon race.

Scott led the Earth-born superhumans with their Antar brothers and sisters and their liberated comrades-in-arms in a fierce multipronged attack upon the Ghoerlikhon Empire. With painful slowness punctuated by violent battles over the many decades, the Ghoerlikhons were driven into a small corner of the Andromeda galaxy. At that late stage of the war when the Ghoerlikhons finally comprehended that the Humans and their allies intended to drive them into extinction, they fought with the utmost ferocity. However, the Human alliance fought hard and drove them back further. Then the Ghoerlikhons sued for peace but the Humans would have none of that. The Humans knew that the Ghoerlikhons could not be trusted. If peace were made, the Ghoerlikhons would regroup, rearm and make a surprise attack on the former enemy. That was how the Kantours were defeated originally. The big-hearted Kantours make the fatal mistake of trusting the Ghoerlikhons. The Humans refused the offer of peace. They and their allies, the former slaves, kept on attacking until the very last Ghoerlikhon was exterminated and the very last factory was destroyed. Only a few Ghoerlikhons marooned on isolated planets survived to die of starvation.

The victory celebrations were tumultuous. In the euphoria, Scott was acclaimed Emperor, the Human Emperor or Emperor of Earth and the Dominions in Space. He was the great wartime general who had led the combined races of the Alliance to a crushing victory over the Ghoerlikhons, a victory that wiped the Ghoerlikhons out entirely. It was then that the Human Empire came into being. It was made up of all the planets that the Humans had liberated from the Ghoerlikhons.

Winning the victory turned out to be the easy part.

The hard part was uplifting all the liberated slaves of the former Ghoerlikhon Empire. There were quadrillions of former slaves and all had been damaged and degraded by their servitude under the Ghoerlikhon overlords, some worse than others. The Kantours were the worst treated, very likely because they had been so powerful in ancient times and the Ghoerlikhons feared their resurgence. All the slaves had been robbed of their initiative and independence. Most slaves had little or no freedom at all.

There were about ten billion Earth-born Humans and they were faced with the mammoth task of restoring independence and dignity to the ex- slaves who now saw the Humans as their new lords and masters. This was across the five galaxies and trillions of planets.

Nearly all of Earth's population had gone away, scattered across the many trillions of planets of the five galaxies that made up the erstwhile Ghoerlikhon Empire. The Humans had demonstrated that they had tremendous supernatural powers in defeating and exterminating the Ghoerlikhons. The liberated slaves saw the Humans as gods. They looked to the Humans for everything. They were as dependent on the Humans as they had been on the Ghoerlikhons.

The Humans were honour-bound to undertake the enormous task of restoring the culture and language to the former slaves. The Ghoerlikhon language was totally inadequate as a lingua franca because it was so impoverished, especially compared to most Human languages.

The vast scale of the task facing the Humans was daunting. Ten billion Humans were not nearly enough. The Humans found it difficult to work out where to start.

Only a minority of Antars had already joined the Humans in becoming superhuman during the war, not enough to make a lot of impact on the two trillion Antars who had survived the war. Towards the end of the war, the Ghoerlikhons saw the Antars as a liability and slaughtered them in their trillions, men, women and children.

It was into all this doubt and confusion that Jesus returned to give guidance to the Human Race. He came to assist the Humans in working through the difficulties facing them.

When Jesus manifested Himself in the physical universe, Scott immediately offered Him the crown of Emperor. Jesus refused. He told Scott He wanted him to continue as Emperor and rule the Human Empire. Scott remembered a conversation he had with Hal more than two centuries before. He suggested that Jesus become the High King who would guide and supervise the Emperor. Jesus agreed to become the High King.

The new Empire needed a centre, a capital. Earth as the home planet of the Humans was an obvious choice. But which city on Earth should be the imperial capital? Rome? Beijing? Baghdad? New York? Paris? No! Earth had lost most of her population which had scattered across the many trillions of planets of the new Empire. No city on Earth was bigger than a town. The total population of Earth had dropped to about sixty million. Many Humans suggested Jerusalem as the imperial capital and that was agreed upon after much telepathic discussion across the noosphere.

Jesus approved of the idea. He rebuilt the Temple. He created it in an instant. It suddenly appeared upon the Temple Mount in Jerusalem alongside the existing religious structures, the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Chain. The New Temple was not like its antecedents. The Holy of Holies was a tall rectangular building with sloping walls built of a brilliant white stone. Surrounding it was a courtyard circumscribed by a colonnade with libraries, study rooms and meeting rooms.

The Holy of Holies was a singular structure. Inside was a space far larger than appeared possible from the outside. In fact it was an infinite space. It was a space in which manifested the Mind of God. Any being who entered this space encountered the Mind of God. A Human or a super-telepath of another race saluted his God and King. A non- telepath was either enraptured to meet God or tentatively reached out to Him. If they rejected God, they were driven mad by the Divine Presence. Humans and super-telepaths did not need to enter the Holy of Holies. They could just reach out with their minds. They were constantly aware of the constant ubiquitous Presence of God.

The entrance to the Holy of Holies was through high solid double doors made of Lebanese cedar. Standing constantly on each side of the entrance were two large snow-white super-Kantours of the Nordovikin race. Weighing more than two tons each, a roster of these Nordovikin Kantours stood like two shedu on either side of the door to the Holy of Holies. They did so to honour the God who sent His agents the Humans to liberate the Kantourish race from the most abject slavery under the Ghoerlikhons. They also rescued any being driven mad by their encounter with the Divine Presence.

One or two races had not done too badly under the Ghoerlikhon regime. The Yattagols had managed to retain their language and most of their culture and they worshipped the Ghoerlikhons as gods. They regarded the Humans as god-killers. The Yattagols were more a subject race rather than slaves, somewhat like the Indians under the former British Empire. The Yattagols lived in a rigidly authoritarian society. The Ghoerlikhons never saw the Yattagols as a threat.

Many Kantours became super-telepaths with the same powers as the Humans. Some super-Kantours worked with the Humans to rebuild the Kantourish language and culture. The great philologist Moshe Ben Tovim led the combined Human and Kantour team who created a new Kantourish language based on Ancient Kantourish which the Humans had gone back in time to retrieve. However, New Kantourish was built to be less complicated and much less irregular. The new Kantourish language was a triumph of reason. It was easy to learn, straightforward to master and, like English, indefinitely extensible. As time passed, many words passed into the Kantourish language from human languages, particularly English, the arch-borrower of languages. As time passed, the Kantourish language became so widely spoken that it became the lingua franca of the Human Empire alongside English and Mandarin, both which were definitely quite challenging to master.

The Imperial Palace was erected on former government land west of the Old City of Jerusalem. The State of Israel no longer existed because the vast majority of her population had become superhuman and had answered the Call of The Lord God to the stars where they were to serve Him Who had made the Universe among the trillions of planets of the five galaxies of the new Human Empire.

All that remained of the 'normal' Jewish population of Israel was a small colony of strict Orthodox religious Jews who spent their days in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem studying the Holy Torah, the Talmud, other holy books and the commentaries. They despised Jesus as the False Messiah. They feared the New Temple as an evil deception.

Their contempt of Jesus was reinforced because Jesus eschewed pomp and finery. He manifested as a slim bearded young Jewish man going about barefoot and wearing just a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He appeared to normals as shorter and as a lot slimmer than the powerfully muscled supermen but the non-telepaths had no comprehension of the power and glory of the godhead within Jesus. To them he was just an ordinary guy. To the telepaths, the godhead of Jesus was obvious. His glory was indescribably, ineffably great. Jesus did not need to dress up.

The non-telepaths of the non-Human races were bewildered by the demeanour of the High King Jesus. They were confused. Jesus did not appear like a great monarch, the Human Emperor's superior. They did not understand that there was no need for Him to take on a grand appearance. He appeared to be a close confidant of the Emperor and He could appear anywhere he chose. He was welcome even at meetings of the august Imperial Council.

Genetic drift is a cruel natural phenomenon, particularly when combined with inbreeding in isolated small human communities. It nearly always causes an increase in the frequency of genetic defects in that population. The number of genetic defects will rise until the small community becomes unviable and dies out. It was responsible for wiping out the small isolated communities of 'normals' in North America. It is a particular problem for very rare species. To stop this phenomenon from happening, each animal or plant is checked and any genetic defects found are corrected by super-telepaths.

Something similar happened with the small colony of strict Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. The women of the colony requested that Max and his superhuman colleagues check each baby born in the colony and correct any genetic defects found. No woman wanted to give birth to a child with defects. Max and his colleagues agreed. The result was that each child grew up robustly healthy, strong, highly intelligent and very strong-willed. The side effect was that most of the children wanted become superhuman. The boys did not want to spend their lives studying the Torah, Talmud and the holy books and commentaries. The girls did not want to spend their lives being the good wives cooking, cleaning and bearing children for their husbands the religious scholars. The children were often weakly telepathic. They could sense the Divine Presence of the Lord God. They heard His call to serve Him out among the stars as His superhuman officers and agents. Most heeded His call. They rebelled against their elders, left the colony and became superhuman. They had the support of Max and his colleagues. The colony eventually died out. Those who were left behind lived to well over a century and finally died of old age.

A disproportionately high number of the superhuman children of the Jerusalem colony became imperial ambassadors, planetary governors or galactic prefects. Many young supermen along with their non-Jewish colleagues joined the Kantourish Navy as jump officers. They jumped the Kantourish warships through hyperspace so that the ships reached their destinations instantly. It was impractical to build a reliable hyperspace drive into a spaceship. Humans and other super-telepaths were far more reliable. The mobility of the warships was incredible and pin-point accuracy of placement was a matter of pride for the jump officers. That mobility and accurate placement conferred a war- winning capability upon the Navy of the Kantourish Republic, enabling it to defeat the enemies of the Empire. The very close friendship between the Kantours and Humans endured. Many Kantours believed that Humans brought good luck. The Humans did. They protected the navy ships. They could throw up impenetrable protective shields around the ships. They could use their psychokinetic powers like the tractor beams of science fiction to pull paralysed enemy warships into the main hangars of large battleships. They could use their psychic powers to disable enemy warships.

Jerusalem became the largest city on Earth with a population of about seven million. It was about fifteen times bigger than Earth's next biggest city, New York, which had a population of about 450,000.

The city became beautiful as befits the capital city of Earth and the Human Empire. Most of the population were superhuman or were super- telepaths of other races. They lived in many mighty towers two kilometres (6600 feet) tall that were dotted around the city. In between were parklands well-covered with big spreading trees and many gardens. Historic buildings of note were preserved. The Old City was left intact. Dominating the Temple Mount was the New Temple with the brilliant white Holy of Holies gleaming in the sunlight.

A network of streets still meandered around the capital. However, the most efficient way of getting around the city was with the network of hyper-spatial gates that allowed people to travel instantly from one point to another. There were nodal stations that connected up with the other cities and towns on Earth. Some grand central nodal stations in Jerusalem connected up with all the other planets of the Human Empire. The gates or nodes on Earth were fixed in space relative to Planet Earth.

For the many tourists who swarmed into the Imperial Capital there was a network of trams that travelled on rails through the city streets and reached out to all parts of the city. The tramcars were powered by Kelvin Cells that generated electricity from the vacuum energy of the quantum field. There was no need for overhead wires or third rails. The tourists loved travelling on the trams.

The Jerusalem City Administration was staffed entirely by Jewish superwomen who took pride in keeping the city in the manner befitting its status as Imperial Capital. Most of the superwomen were descended from the Orthodox Jews of the colony in the Old City. Little robots either on wheels or on legs constantly patrolled the streets sweeping them and keeping them spotlessly clean. The whole city just about gleamed. If any repairs became necessary, the superwomen used their psychokinetic powers to effect the repairs.

The City Administration enforced rigorous building standards. Buildings had to be beautiful. Ugly buildings were not permitted. Jerusalem was a city of gardens and parks with artworks carefully placed.

All factories and other industry on Earth had been relocated to the Moon which was connected to Earth by a network of hyper-spatial gates.

The Humans had restored Planet Earth to its former pristine beauty. They had repaired the damage done by the industrialisation of the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. Animals and plants that had become extinct were revived and restored to their former habitat. Thylacines or Tasmanian tigers once more roamed the forests of Tasmania. They were not restored to the Australian mainland because they could not compete against the dingos. Pest species like fire ants, kudzu and cane toads were removed from the habitats that they had invaded.

Most of North America reverted to forest and prairie. Some Native Americans remained to maintain and care for the land. The spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains was a drawcard for tourists. A favourite trip was across the continent on one of the transcontinental rail lines that had remained. The tourists loved travelling on a train behind one of the mighty articulated Mallet steam locomotives retrieved and duplicated from the past. Often one would see a great big steaming snorting Big Boy 4-8-8-4 locomotive pulling across the prairie a long train packed with Kantourish tourists who were thoroughly enjoying themselves. They loved the spectacular primitive machinery.

It was a sight to behold to see a Big Boy locomotive with a long packed train on behind it easing its way very, very slowly through a huge herd of a hundred thousand bison crossing the railroad line in front of it. The bison showed little fear of the steaming snorting monster of an Iron Horse.

Great whales roamed the oceans of Earth. The populations of all species of whales had recovered. Even the gigantic 170-tonne blue whales were common. The intelligent races from other planets marvelled at the richness and variety of life on Earth. Most other races had come from planets where they had all but wiped out the other life forms as their civilisations had developed.

The population of Earth had dwindled to a tiny fraction of what it had been in times past as the Humans scattered out across the Human Empire. Earth's population was now about sixty million, forty million Humans and twenty million Kantours, Yixx and other races. Most of Earth reverted to its former wilderness state.

The Humans used Earth along with her native life forms as a model for the millions of planets that they had created across the expanding Empire. No planet was quite identical as the creators had made tweaks and modifications to change the ruling climate of the created planets. These planets were placed in orbit at a suitable distance from a G, F or M class star. They were quickly colonised by Humans and the other races.

There was a Kantour whom Scott had liberated personally when he had wiped out the Ghoerlikhon overlords with a mind glitch. The Kantour was but an adolescent, a slave boy when Scott had liberated him. He was a member of the Marremin race, a little bigger and stronger than those of the Akelin race but not as big as a Nordovicin. Black in colour, he stood a little taller than Scott. He took the name Zhonnothon Slaivboyon. Scott uplifted him to be a super-Kantour. Nicknamed 'Jonno', he became very close to Scott.

After the victory and the extermination of the Ghoerlikhons, Scott turned his mind to the future of the Kantour race, the most numerous of the former slaves. He declared that the Kantours should have every opportunity to achieve maximum freedom. Perhaps there should be a Kantourish Republic that Humans would take no part in governing. He put the idea out to the noosphere, the telepathic internet to which all the super-telepaths were connected. There was general agreement that there should be an independent Kantourish Republic within the Human Empire. Initially the Humans would take responsibility for defending a new Kantourish republic from aggression but the Kantours would in time be able to defend themselves. Some Humans suggested that the constitution of the new Kantourish Republic should be based on that of the old United States of America. It would be brought up- to-date and modified to meet the needs of the Kantours. That idea met with general agreement. A provision of the new constitution was that the president and vice-president both had to be Kantours. The Humans pressed for that provision in the constitution so that the perception would never arise that the Kantourish Republic was under Human rule.

The Kantourish Republic was created. Zhonnothon Slaivboyon was elected the first President. There was no limit to the number of consecutive terms a president could serve. Initially President Slaivboyon served a number of terms. The super-Kantour was a clear favourite.

The Humans made it known to the other races that they were prepared to halt any aggression towards any race within the Empire.

However, the Humans who had fought in the Ghoerlikhon wars had done so much killing, each Human had killed so many Ghoerlikhons that they were most reluctant to kill any intelligent being ever again. But if they ever came across another race that was as demonically evil as the Ghoerlikhons, then yes, they would exterminate that race but they would do it with serious reluctance.

The Humans' attitude was no more killing. Never again! Niemals mehr! The Humans' bloodlust had been well and truly sated by the great slaughter of the Ghoerlikhons.

The Emperor Scott made it a matter of policy to delegate all his imperial power to all the super-telepaths in the Empire. His aim was to become a figurehead monarch. If something needed to be done, a matter attended to, a super-telepath would take responsibility for performing the task after gaining agreement among his colleagues in the telepathic noosphere and recruiting any help that he may need. The rule of the Empire was undertaken by all the super-telepaths of all the intelligent races of the Empire. Rule was robustly democratic.

There was a tradition that all perfect minds will arrive at the same conclusion given the same information or data. It was a tradition that dated back to the philosophers and logicians of Ancient Greece, philosophers like Plato, Euclid, Socrates and Aristotle. If a conflict or difference of opinion arose between super-telepaths, they would exchange information between one another until resolution was achieved. Any number of telepaths could join in the discussion or information-sharing. The process was very quick between the super- telepaths. Telepathy was an extremely rapid means of communication. Laws were unnecessary for the super-telepaths who all agreed upon the standards of behaviour to which they would adhere. Any super-telepath who did not adhere to these agreed standards faced a storm of criticism, or even the shaming experience of the Wrath of God. That was worse than being called into the principal's office or receiving a severe reprimand from the commanding officer. If these standards of behaviour needed to change, then change was agreed upon by all the super-telepaths including the Emperor.

Jesus highlighted that the God-given mission of the Humans and the other super-telepaths of the Empire was to spread the knowledge and love of God throughout the whole Universe. The Empire was become the Empire of Love and it was eventually to encompass the entire Universe. God had called the Humans to be His standard-bearers along with all the super-telepaths from the other intelligent races. To reach all the other races in the Universe would take many billions of years. The Universe was a huge place containing many trillions of galaxies. Yes, some galaxies were barren of life but many others were filled with life-forms including intelligent space-faring races. The Empire currently filled one tiny corner of the Universe. It was like comparing the surface of a cat's bed with the surface of a planet like Earth. There was a long way to go.

The Imperial Palace was a very large building with many courtyards and gardens. It was a hive of activity filled with thousands of super- telepaths from the great variety of races that made up the Human Empire. It had a very cosmopolitan feel.

There was a Super-Thood named Lovelock who rejoiced in the title of Imperial Cock-Sucker. He relished the taste of Human semen.

A Thood sported an array of ten tentacles surrounding his mouth on his head. Above the tentacles was a single large nostril through which the Thood spoke. Two large intelligent brown eyes completed the long horse-like face. A Thood was hairless and stood on four sturdy legs a little over a metre high at the shoulder. A Thood was about the size of a small pony when standing. The legs ended in prehensile paws that looked large in proportion.

Max delighted in his sessions with Lovelock. He remembered well the last one he had the previous afternoon with the Thood who slowly sucked Max's entire cock and balls into his tight mouth. At the same time Lovelock slowly inserted a glutinous slimy tentacle into Max's arsehole, wriggling it around inside Max as he pushed it in further. The stimulation was forceful. It increased Max's sexual tension to great heights.

When Lovelock had eventually sucked Max's balls and painfully stiff cock into his salivating mouth, he formed his lips into a tight band behind Max's ball sac like a tight cock ring that pressed onto his prostate gland. Embedded in the lips were rows of small teeth like baby shark teeth. Normally the teeth served to shred the food that the Thood consumed. Now Lovelock clamped them into Max's invulnerable skin and massaged his prostate. At the same time the Thood wriggled his thick muscular tentacle around inside Max's anus and rectum, massaging up Max's prostate as he did so. While he was doing that, he slithered his thick strong slimy tentacles all over Max's muscular body below his head. As he did so, the suckers on his tentacles clamped on and off all over Max's skin, paying particular attention to Max's nipples. Goosebumps arose all over Max's skin, particularly when the suckers clamped on around Max's neck. Max quivered all over with delight. Lovelock certainly knew how to give Max profound stimulation.

It was not very long before Max blew his entire load of semen into Lovelock's mouth as he emptied his balls in the throes of a gigantic orgasm. Max was a superman. He squirted so much of his semen into Lovelock's tentacled mouth that semen oozed from Lovelock's single nostril. Lovelock burbled content. He savoured the generous mouthful of semen that Max had shot into his mouth. He was happy. He loved the taste of Max's Human semen.

Soon Lovelock was ready for another shot of semen. Max was a superman. He was always ready to deliver another load of semen as often as he wanted.

They kept repeating the experience until Lovelock finally had a bellyful of semen. He had consumed enough. He was so full that he was burping up semen. He commented that he had been as hungry as a horse but now he was as full as an engorged tick. Super-Max, however, could have gone on forever but at the time, he felt deliciously well used.

The Empire expanded into the neighbouring galaxies. The Kantours turned out to be inveterate adventurers and explorers. They colonised many planets. Many Humans were appointed planetary governors and galactic prefects but there were not enough Humans to go around. Other races were appointed to the positions as well. The Humans were spread out very thinly across the growing Empire.

Other races followed the Kantours' lead and colonised many other planets. Members of the intelligent races within the newer galaxies joined the growing number of super-telepaths. The Humans were seen as leaders.

From across the Void an enormous invasion force appeared. It attacked the Yattagols who screamed for help. The mighty Kantourish Navy jumped into action against the invasion force. The Kantourish warships used the same tactics as the Humans had used to defeat the Ghoerlikhons. The super-telepaths on board the warships paralysed the invading warships and took the ships' crews captive. The invaders were utterly confused and disorientated. They were kept alive and unharmed and they were placed in luxurious holiday resorts magicked into existence by the imperial super-telepaths.

All the invaders were of the Yixx race who were masters of an enormous empire and were looking to expand. The Yixx were humanoid in appearance. Some Humans described them as looking like red ogres or orcs. They even had protruding fangs. The Yixx were somewhat bigger and more solid in build than a Human male. They were hermaphrodites. There was only one sex.

When the Humans got among the Yixx captives, they found that the Yixx loved being fucked by the wickedly sexual Humans. The scent of male Humans drove the Yixx wild with sexual lust. Not only that but the Yixx readily became super-telepaths. It became known to the imperial forces that Lixx, the Dear Beautiful Wise Noble Great Leader of the Yixx Empire had decreed that all members of the Yixx fighting forces captured by the enemy were to be put to death when they returned to Yixx territory. The Yixx captives did not want to return. They threw in their lot with the Humans and the rest of the Empire.

Another bigger Yixx invasion force appeared from across the Void. The Imperial forces with the Kantourish Navy as its backbone made short work of the invaders. All the Yixx spaceships were captured and their crews were placed in luxurious holiday resorts instead of prisoner-of- war camps. The crews were all Yixx and most in time became super- telepaths.

It turned out that Lixx, the Dear Beautiful Wise Noble Great Leader of the Yixx Empire had sent his entire naval force in the second attack on the Empire. He was now left with no means of defence. He lost his entire navy to the Empire which cheerfully confiscated his warships. The Kantours acquired most of the Yixx warships. The Republic's navy grew into a tremendous force.

The rebel Yixx admirals all became super-Yixx and turned against the Dear Beautiful Wise Noble Great Leader. They went with Imperial senior officers to the Leader's imperial palace. The rebel admirals informed the Dear Beautiful Wise Noble Great Leader that he was sacked. He was no longer Leader. The ex-leader's palace guards found that their weapons no longer functioned. The weapons were useless.

The former leader was expelled from the palace. Outside he discovered to his horror that his former subjects loathed him to the point of pelting him with shit. He retired in a hurry to one of his country houses but none of his former subjects would serve him. He had only the robots supplied by the Humans for company and to meet his needs. The robots were not much company. They were not very intelligent. He could not have a meaningful conversation with them. He did not dare venture outside the walls of his country residence because his former subjects would hurl abuse at him and throw shit at him.

After becoming bored to the point of despair, Lixx accepted the Human Emperor's offer of asylum on Earth. Under the Emperor's gentle guidance, Lixx became a super-Yixx and joined the rowdy and exuberant staff of the Imperial Palace.

The former Yixx Empire was added to the Human Empire. That quadrupled the Empire's size. The Yixx joined the Kantours in a friendly rivalry within the Empire. The Yixx were not concerned when the Kantours colonised planets within the former Yixx Empire. They admitted that their empire had become too big to administer properly. There was about the same number of Yixx as Kantours. All the other races of the former Yixx Empire joined in with the colourful variety of races that made up the boisterously multicultural Human Empire. The Humans including the Antars numbered just over six trillion strong. Even so, they were a small but powerful minority within the Empire.

In the Jerusalem Town Hall the former Leader Lixx made a heartfelt and emotional apology for all the wrongs that his regime and those of his foremothers had wrought upon not just his former Yixx subjects but upon all the subject and slave races of the former Yixx Empire. At the conclusion the Emperor enveloped him in a loving hug as the audience applauded.

Rakhomon interrupted Max's thoughts by commenting that the dead Ghoerlikhon's open eyes spooked him. He said that the staring dead eyes made him feel uncomfortable because they were still full of evil even though the Ghoerlikhon had been dead for hundreds of years.

Max magicked onto the palm of his hand three round shiny copper bronze Imperial 10-prutot coins. Each coin was about the size of an old Australian or British penny or an old US half-dollar and was made of a copper bronze alloy that never tarnished.

Max placed a coin over each of the corpse's eyes.

"Thank you," said Rakhomon.

Max detected that Paul felt uneasy about Max's action.

Paul said, "Max, I don't think that is a good idea."

He picked up a coin from the corpse and held it out obverse side up to the rest of the group.

"Whose head is that on the coin?" he asked.

"My son Scott's," replied Max immediately.

"And he is?" asked Paul.

"He is the Emperor," answered Purple Flower.

"What does the inscription on the coin say?" asked Paul.

"Scott, Emperor of Earth and The Dominions in Space," replied Rakhomon.

"Why is it in English?" asked Paul.

"It's our native language," replied Max.

"It's the Emperor's mother tongue and a Human language widely spoken throughout the Empire," stated Paul. "Understand this. To those who are not Human, it may appear that we Humans are desecrating the Ghoerlikhon's body, like we're lifting our legs and pissing on the corpse. We're not just carrying out a tradition passed down from Max's and my British heritage."

"I don't think that matters," retorted Rakhomon. "Our race was very badly treated by the Ghoerlikhons. You Humans rescued us from slavery and wiped out those demonic Ghoerlikhons. That was a wonderful thing you Humans did. Ever since then our race has thrived in the Human Empire. We Kantours celebrate our liberation by you Humans and your extermination of the Ghoerlikhons."

Three Imperial gold half-shekel coins magically appeared in Rakhomon's hand.

"Here. Will these make a difference?" he asked.

"That is a huge amount of money!" exclaimed Purple Flower.

Each half-shekel coin was approximately the same size as the 10-prutot coins, about the same size as an old United States half-dollar. The coins were made of gold specially made to be extremely hard and to never wear. They were worth 50 dinars or 5000 prutot.

"What do you think? Will these gold coins make any difference?" Paul asked the Golds.

The two Golds looked at one another. Radio signals passed between them.

Purple Flower replied to Paul, "We have no opinion, Lord General."

"OK then. Rakhomon, it doesn't matter how much money we put over the eyes. It still can be construed as desecration of the corpse. That body will stay here pretty well for as long as these mountains last. The local bacteria and fungi won't touch it and it's made of stuff that will last one hell of a long time, like aeons up here. Rakhomon and Max, you have to understand how other races may see it. And another thing. Other people will come along later and take the imperial coins for themselves whether they're gold, silver or copper."

"Alright," said Max.

The 10-prutot coins disappeared. The half-shekel coins disappeared from Rakhomon's hand.

Rakhomon looked at the corpse and shuddered.

Max was now married to Mercedes Guevara, a supremely passionate woman and the superhuman great-great-great-great granddaughter of Che Guevara, the Argentinian-born Cuban revolutionary who was killed in Bolivia. Max had been married a number of times since his first marriage to Veronica, known as Ronnie, had fizzled out in the mid- twenty-first century sometime after Scott had become King of Australia. Ronnie had become a superwoman and then decided to become a man, a superman. She decided that her marriage to Max was to end. Max agreed. Even so, the two of them enjoyed a sexual relationship that continued right up to the present time. Max enjoyed been fucked by another man, particularly being fucked by Ronnie, now formally known as Ronald, or His Imperial Highness Prince Ronald of Bimberi.

Ronnie had become a big, powerfully muscled superman like most supermen. He retained the blue eyes and thick blond hair of his former feminine self. He kept his hair cut short. He grew a moustache. He modified his face so that he now looked like a strong masculine version of his former feminine self. His build became similar to both Scott and Paul. He was now just as big and well- muscled as those two men and extremely good-looking.

Suddenly Max was in the bedroom with Ronnie. Both men were naked, two magnificent specimens of muscular manhood. Max had returned from Planet Simpson after he had spent the morning there with Paul, Rakhomon and the Golds. They kissed passionately then leapt upon the bed.

Max delighted in the thrill that made his body quiver when he felt Ronnie's big fat hard cock slowly pushing in between his robust hard buttocks. He felt a sudden sharp pain as Ronnie's cock entered his anus through his tight anal sphincters, making them expand out wide as it entered his rectum. Max rested on his stomach on the bed while Ronnie lay on Max's broad strong back and entered him from behind. His big thick painfully stiff cock was sandwiched between his rippling hard abdomen and the silky smooth bedsheet. His big powerfully muscled arms were spread out across the bed. He had a sharp ache deep in his groin behind his balls. He could feel his cock leaking precum onto the sheet beneath him lubricating his abdomen.

Ronnie slowly eased his big superman's cock further up into Max's bowels until it bottomed out deep inside Max's torso. Max could feel it right up inside him reaching past his stomach perhaps even up as far as his pounding heart. His abdomen ached with the internal pressure.

Ronnie partially withdrew his cock and thrust it back deep into Max's bowels. He set up a steady series of thrusts as he pounded Max's arse and rectum. Exquisite, intensely arousing pain filled Max's abdomen as Ronnie rammed his mighty cock deep into Max's bowels. The experience was profoundly stimulating. Max felt stirred to the core of his being. His sexual excitement mounted rapidly.

Ronnie kept on thrusting into Max with deep powerful thrusts. Max could feel Ronnie's hard, heavily muscled body working hard to drive that mighty cock deep into Max's bowels. Suddenly a sharp pain stabbed into Max's groin. A mighty orgasm seized him. He cried out as his reproductive tract squirted forth its load of semen all over his stomach and the bedsheet beneath him.

He awoke. He felt confused. He did not know where he was. He could hear a rushing noise in his ears. He was lying on his stomach and he felt a sticky wetness underneath him.

He felt something on his back. As he woke up more, he realised that Ronnie, his wife and still definitely a woman, lay next to him with her arm across his back. She stirred, rolled over onto her back and started snoring.

The rushing noise Max realised was from the waves of the Pacific Ocean breaking on the shore beneath the open door of their bedroom. He remembered that he and Ronnie, the female version and his current wife, were in bed together in their bedroom. They were spending Christmas and January with Ronnie's big sister Rosalind and her husband in their big house in Noosa, Queensland along with Ronnie's brothers and their families.

Max opened his eyes. The predawn light was leaking around the bedroom curtains drawn over the open glass doors leading out onto the balcony overlooking the ocean.

Max knew that he would not be able to get back to sleep again. That was one hell of a wet dream that woke him up. He could feel beneath his stomach the wet stickiness of the impressive load of semen that he had ejaculated all over the bedsheet.

He eased himself out of bed without disturbing his sleeping wife and made his way through the curtains to the balcony outside. Out on the balcony he looked out over the Pacific Ocean. Heavy rollers broke on the wide sandy beach below the house. He looked out over the ocean to the lightening east. Dawn was less than quarter of an hour away.

The smell of semen rose up his naked belly and assailed his nostrils. The thought of the puddle of semen he had left in the bed caused a wry smile to cross his face. He wondered if Ronnie would use it to tease her big sister with the knowledge that she loved having sex with her big hot muscly sexpot of a husband. He almost felt sorry for Rosalind. But not quite.

But yet? Max had dreamt that he was being fucked by Ronnie who had turned into a man, a big muscular he-man. In the dream Max had really enjoyed being fucked to the point of shooting a bucket load of cum all over the bedsheet. He really enjoyed the big powerfully muscular man who was Ronnie driving his big fat superman's cock up Max's arse. Was he turning gay? Was he secretly gay? Max decided it was not worth worrying about. Yes, he admitted to himself that he would enjoy sex with another man. Yes, he would enjoy being fucked. However, he would wait to see what the future held.

The dream from which Max had awoken he knew was a 'loud' dream. Was it a glimpse of the future? If so, then the human race had a tremendous future ahead of it. Scott, his and Ronnie's third son, was at the forefront. Emperor of Earth and the Dominions in Space. That phrase had a particular resonance to it. In his dream the Human Empire was vast. It had spread over 361 galaxies since the end of the Ghoerlikhon Wars that had covered the original five galaxies. The Empire had quadrupled in size after the defeat and annexation of the Yixx Empire. Now the Yixx freshly liberated from their stifling militaristic authoritarian regime had jumped into the Human Empire and with enthusiasm had joined the sprawling rumbustious richness of the colourful heterogeneous multicultural variety of the many races that were full co-equal citizens of the Empire.

Max had an insight. The future held many possibilities, infinitely many. The present was the process by which the many possibilities of the future collapsed into the one fixed history of the past. The past was fixed. It could not change. The future on the other hand was infinitely open.

Max's brain was buzzing with thoughts. In his dream he was even bigger and more muscular than he was currently and he was in very good shape for a man approaching fifty. This year he was going to turn forty-nine.

He remembered when he was a teenager reading the Book of Revelation in the Bible, the Revelation of Saint John. He recalled his friend David Houston describing the Book of Revelation as being like a description of a trip on LSD. David was one of the sons of the Reverend John Houston. It was about the Apocalypse, which was the Great Revealing. Was the dream that Max had just had along the same lines? Was there a Great Revealing yet to come?

The paleness in the southeast grew brighter. Max watched as the first bright spark of the sun appeared on the south-eastern horizon then grew as a bright sliver of sun shone forth over the sea. Max watched the sun rise until it became too bright to look at. He blinked. The sun freed itself from the horizon and began its ascent into the sky.

The realisation hit Max full force that Scott was different from his two older sons. All three of his sons were different. However, there was something about his third son, some hidden depths to Scott that Max had not fathomed. The dreams about Scott he had while on holidays in Noosa with his wife's family had given him some inkling. Was Scott, his son, really going to end up as Emperor of Earth and Her Dominions in Space, ruler of 361 galaxies? Was Scott really going to lead Australians to freedom after overthrowing a military coup? Was he really the man who would lead the Human race to a resounding victory in the greatest fight, the greatest, most frightful war of the many in Human history and in doing so, liberate hundreds of races of space aliens from slavery?

One incident popped up in Max's memory. Ronnie liked the music of Leonard Cohen. Some years ago her brother David had given her a Leonard Cohen CD for her birthday. In the year just past, Scott had borrowed the album and started listening it in the privacy of his bedroom. Scott listening to Leonard Cohen? Max found it scarcely credible. Max was not a fan of Leonard Cohen.

One day Katie was concerned because she heard one particular track on endless repeat coming from Scott's bedroom. It had the refrain 'Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.'. Ronnie identified it as the Leonard Cohen song 'Democracy'. The ladies were worried that something had happened to Scott. This was not long after Scott had become entangled with that girl Jayne Molesworth, the girl that Rosie had described as a slut and then afterwards Scott had given Cynthia McBride a black eye because Cynthia had been teasing Scott about Jayne. As a result Scott was expelled from school and George McBride was going to press assault charges against Scott. The ugly thought of suicide had arisen in the ladies' minds. They asked Max to go and investigate.

Max knocked on Scott's bedroom door but received no answer. He was not concerned because the music was loud. He opened the door and looked in. Scott was sitting sideways on his bed with his back leaning against the wall. Tears were streaming down his face. He saw Max. He leapt up off his bed and wrapped his strong arms around Max in a hug that squeezed the breath out of Max. He buried his tearstained face in Max's shoulder.

Just then Max heard: "... for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on."

The hug continued. Another verse caught Max's attention.

"... we'll be making love again. We'll be going down so deep the river's going to weep, and the mountain's going to shout Amen! It's coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway, imperial, mysterious, in amorous array: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."

When the song finished, there was a short pause and Max heard the song start again from the CD player.

"It's coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It's coming from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."

Yes! Was this what Scott was about?

Thoughts buzzed around in Max's mind like a swarm of bees. The sun rose higher in the morning sky.

The pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and their savage repression by the Chinese Communist Government forces had occurred a little over ten years previously in the June of the same year that the Berlin Wall came down. Hundreds or even thousands of protesters were massacred. The protests and the massacre were still a vivid memory for Max who remembered clearly the Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke weeping when he heard the news. Max remembered the newspaper photograph of the weeping Prime Minister with a tear drop glistening on the end of his nose.

His thoughts returned to his dream of the mummy of the dead Ghoerlikhon on the Planet Simpson, a planet not far from Earth, still well within the Milky Way Galaxy. Most dead Ghoerlikhons had been vaporised in atmospheres of suns or burnt up in high-speed entries into planetary atmospheres. Only a few mummies of Ghoerlikhon corpses remained. The mummy on Simpson was the closest to Earth.

"Mummy, are you awake?" Suzie's voice came from the bedroom.

Ronnie groaned, "I am now."

"Sorry, Mummy, but I have to tell you about this amazing dream I had last night."

Suzie went on to tell her mother about her dream that she was Princess Suzie and Scott was the Emperor of Earth and millions and millions of planets in space. Scott had made Suzie a Galactic Prefect of some galaxy far, far away that was inhabited by lots of weird space aliens. Suzie had to be incredibly wise, even wiser than King Solomon in the Bible. She had to make lots of difficult decisions. There had been a terrible war that the Human Race had won and they had wiped out these really nasty evil aliens.

Ronnie grunted in a disinterested reply. Max's attention was transfixed. Suzie had had a dream similar to the one he had that woke him up. That was unbelievable. Max and his youngest daughter had both had the same dream. What was going on? Was this real?

"Mummy, can I get into bed with you?" asked Suzie.

"If you must," said Ronnie in a sleepy voice.

"Yes, I must. Where's Daddy?"

"Don't know. Somewhere around I guess."

Max heard the rustle of bedclothes then a squeal from Suzie.

"Mummy, the bed's all wet and sticky. And it smells funny too," complained Suzie.

"Quick! Get out of bed now before you get pregnant," was Ronnie's reply.

"Did Daddy have a wet dream?"

-------------------------------------- Continued in Part 97. --------------------------------------