Divine Deception: The Will Traveller Chronicals

by Robert James

  “Because with just a flick of my hand I could destroy you all. Does that give me the right to do so?” I asked the frighted and astonished audience. Then I flew out of the building and back to our TTV. About an hour after my brightly illuminated, unhurried return to our craft from the State Central building, a sight witnessed live by thousands and on TV by the whole State, Zoran arrived with the Governor General, Admiral and Commander dutifully in tow.

  Clearly, Zoran had added something significant to my performance with his words. I asked him what he’d said and cracked up laughing when he told me. After the meeting broke up, in most unusual disorder, Zoran had ‘confided’ in the three of them, that, upon the Supreme One’s imminent death, Lady Ursula’s control would cease and my two younger sibling would be put under house arrest, pending an investigation of their activities throughout the New World. Having confirmed the ‘accidental’ deaths of Lord Peter and Lady Margaret, with the suggestion of complicity by Lady Ursula’s own minions in Supreme House, the old man had made them feel safest by deciding to swear allegiance to me. Not out of any moral sentiments, I was sure, but simply to stay on the winning side. Sadly, the Supreme One, feeble as he was, could not be relied upon to make this fiction real anytime soon.

  Zoran ushered the three men into the slightly cramped but very comfortable main cabin. I remained standing in the doorway while the three men got settled.

  “Why do you need heavily armed guards everywhere?” I asked softly, looking around.

  “Not everyone agrees with the way we govern” Admiral Davis replied cautiously.

  “So you just shoot dissenters?” I asked rather flippantly.

  “Oh no Lord Robert” Exclaimed General Marsoni, trying to smile

  “The weapons simply act as an effective deterrent” He declared.

  “In fact it has been sometime since we’ve had to actually use them” He went on to tell me..

  “But you do use them if someone persists in their dissent, right?” I challenged quietly.

  “Only if they use violence to achieve their goals” Commander Richards replied defensively.

  “And what are their goals?” I asked him “Why aren’t they happy?”

  “Well, not long after the raids, we, that is General Adams and his staff” Commander Richards explained, adding “He was State leader at the time. Anyway, he decided to cease issuing licences for places of entertainment to private individuals. He created the State Amusement Board. It was an important industry to the State and it needed to be controlled” Richards told me confidently.

  “Only the State had the capital to rebuild the whole district” General Marsoni took up the story “With better quality establishments and strict controls, there is no crime and no-one gets ripped off up there” He pointed to where the famous red light district used to be.

  “So now the State owns the entertainment industry as you call it, the Port itself and?” I paused “Is there any private enterprise at all in Sentoria?” I asked the three men.

  “We have created generous grants for anyone who is willing to set up an industry in the hinterland and we have had quite some success with that” Admiral Davis answered; I’d seen that in their film

  “The biggest problem we have now is finding staff, and I can’t see that getting much better unless the childbirth restrictions are eased” The Admiral added, looking at me meaningfully.

  “I hereby Divinely decree that, for the next ten years, all childbirth laws are rescinded in Sentoria” I pronounced in the expected way. The three men began to thank me profusely “However, there are more immediate problems and I want them dealt with now” I stated. I gave them an order to go on television and declare that a compensation board would begin to hear claims, at the start of the following week. They were also to announce that they were seeking respectable individuals to apply for licences to take over State owned entertainment venues.

  Of course they were only too pleased to announce the lifting of birth and marriage restriction, but none too happy about the privatization of their lucrative little sideline. By the time our little onboard meeting was over, I felt that I had done what really was the will of the majority of Sentorians. Although these three men ran a racially imbalanced, highly chauvinistic military dictatorship, they had, in truth, done well by most in the State. Their television announcements would return this State to the path of fairness, if perhaps not decency. After all, with its birthright of pirates and brothel keepers, Sentoria had a rather jaded sense of morality that was all its own. Now, at least, justice would be done and the door to true prosperity opened for all.

  That evening they did exactly as I had ordered and the City/State erupted into spontaneous gaiety. We watched from the transom of the TTV, about fifty meters up, as happy people poured out onto the streets. Thousands upon thousands of prayers to marry and have children had been answered, those people whose lives had been destroyed could now rebuild them, the government was finally loosening its monopolistic grip. Reasons a-plenty to celebrate, and celebrate they did, till the wee hours of the morning. At one stage, more than ten thousand people stood below our T.T.V. and chanted my name. General Marsoni called, quite early the next morning, to invite Zoran and I, along with the crew and guards, to a ‘grand festival’, at which we’d be banqueted and entertained.

  I had to remind the Captain that I could adequately guard our craft in their absence, before my loyal travelling colleagues would agree to come. I was quite sure they would enjoy Sentoria’s unique interpretation of entertainment, and, anyway, they’d not been off the craft since we left Supreme House. Having parked the TTV in the centre of the main plaza, and disembarked, I placed a pale golden mist around it. There was no need to tell the interested crowd not to go too near. A cavalcade, led by the Governor and I, in the old style, open limousine, received a really enthusiastic reception this time. The crowd was four to six deep all the way to the Sentoria exhibition hall. The magnificent building was adorned in keeping with its traditions and extremely broad morality.

  It was, quite literally, covered with life sized, if not life like, statues of naked women of all shapes and sizes. Though we were taken through a special entrance, at the rear of the building, I got a good look at the excited men and women who were waiting to enter. They were definitely there to party, exotic outfits seem to be the order of the day for the women, regardless of age, and exposed bare chests under colourful shirts, tucked into pirate type pants were the norm for the men. Except for the ever present guards, there was not a uniform to be seen. We were ushered to our luxury VIP box and got settled in. From our elevated position, above the centre of a slightly raised dance floor, it seemed as if the festivities had already begun.

  Cameramen, located around the dance floor, flashed brazenly sexist shots of the gyrating bodies on the dance floor onto large flat screens which were arranged along the walls of the circular show room. Our food laden glass table was most enjoyed by the Captain and his crew, looking super impressive in their Divine House T.T.V. uniforms. The six young guardsmen, who looked far more striking in their uniforms than their Sentoria contemporaries, seemed to have trouble deciding whether to eat or just stare at the stunning, skimpily clad girls on the floor. The whole place was ornate, the domed ceiling held a multitude of lighting grids, and there were perhaps two hundred tables down there.

  As the pulsating music gradually increased in volume, more and more of those seated came down and joined the dancers. By the time we’d finished our sumptuous meal, that floor was one solid mass of human sexuality. Jammed together and swaying to the now pounding music. In fact, no one seemed to really care who did what to whom! With our tables cleared and removed, leaving a ten metre oblong space around us, six strikingly attractive girls came over and invited the guards to dance with them.

  “It might be an idea to divest yourselves of the weapons and body armour gentlemen” I suggested knowingly. Politely refusing their beautiful new companions’ help, the young guards did as I suggested
, placing everything at the Captain’s feet.

  “Guess I’m the guy who doesn’t get to have fun today” The Captain joked. So I put a protective golden mist around the lot.

  “My sincerest thanks Lord Robert” The Captain thanked me, as three more extremely beautiful women, all Eurasian, entered right on cue. Within a few minutes Zoran and I presided over as erotic a dance party as one could imagine. The entire place seemed to move, as if it were breathing with the music. Suddenly, the music slowed to a mellow, soothing feel and the kaleidoscope of lights dimmed to a pale coloured darkness. Neither Zoran nor myself needed any explanation for the semi dark, nor for the still quite loud romance inducing music that played on.

  A large, formally attired black man entered our darkened box and spoke directly for a minute or so into Zoran’s ear. The old man leaned over to me, grinning in spite of himself.

  “Lord Robert, it seems that because of your position they don’t feel right entertaining you in public” Zoran told me, adding, with just a touch of understandable envy “You’ve been invited to a private room, where Sentoria’s famous pleasures await you”. I grinned back at his impish old face as I rose

  “You know, one could really get to like this place Zoran” I murmured in his ear, then followed the black giant just ten metres, to a beautifully carved door. He opened it, I entered the dim room and he closed it behind me. The lights came up slowly, revealing three totally naked Indian girls, each of them with the most perfect body and exquisite face. When the music started, they began to dance very intimately with each other. Then, two utterly gorgeous white girls entered, removed their flimsy clothes and proceeded to erotically undress me. In no time I was surrounded by five virtually perfect naked females, doing things to each other, and to me, that I had never even thought of. When Sentorians say ‘let me entertain you’ they really do mean it!

  Chapter Eight

  As we flew low over Sentoria’s so-called safety band, we saw several of the crab-like cyborgs prowling around. Commanders Richards and Davis had accepted my invitation to do a little aerial exploration of the vast lands to the north; they stood beside me.

  “That’s one way to insure no illegal immigration” I commented, as two of them chased down an unfortunate deer like creature, the beast had strayed onto the desert strip. It was virtually disintegrated by their two rapid firing machine guns. The previous evening, at a far more sedate dinner, after the day’s wild festivities, Marsoni, five of his male colleagues and myself had a very fruitful discussion. I had suggested, among other things, that the State’s labour shortage might be more immediately relieved, by importing suitable people from the North.

  The two older men came as close to scoffing at the idea as they dared, but Richards and the other three, who, like him, were in their thirties, saw some merit in the idea. It seemed logical that there would be many millions of men, women and children living in this vast Northern continent, much of which had never been seen by white men. According to the history proffered as truth by the Supreme House, and totally accepted by the people of Sentoria and the men on board our T.T.V. we were travelling over what was easily the most dangerous place on the planet, at around fifty kilometers an hour, just meters over the treetops

  Though it was largely unexplored, those who managed to get back alive from exploratory expeditions reported a variety of large carnivorous animals. They also reported small some communities of primitive peoples, who, according to that dubious history, ‘were savages who seem to be the least developed on the planet and attacked on sight, without any provocation’. Given the pathological dishonesty of the Supreme House, I doubted that was what we would find. As soon as we came across some open ground, after some twenty, uneventful kilometres of flying due North from the safety band, I asked the Captain to land. I wanted to feel this place out, one of those things you can’t do from inside a hermetically sealed craft.

  We came gently to rest in a clearing that would comfortably house four football fields. I took two rather nervous guardsmen with me and alighted from the T.T.V. With my fearful guards, their weapons at the ready, I walked towards the nearest edge of the clearing, perhaps two hundred metres away. We heard a low growl, actually more like a snort, and both young men went into instant combat mode, their death-dealing weapons pointed at where the noise had come from. I telepathically ‘heard’ a pre-teen girl’s voice.

  “Mother, look, they’re over here” Then, a two and a half, maybe three metre tall grizzly bear came crashing out of the semi tropical forest and reared up on its back legs.

  “Hold your fire lads” I told the two guardsmen.

  “Junior, you just wait for me you hear?” I ‘heard’ a typical concerned mother’s voice urge, as the huge but, obviously young bear started towards us. I focused on his plate sized brown eyes.

  “Hadn’t you best wait for your Mother young man?” I telepathed. The young bear froze, ears back, eyes even wider.

  “Who said that?” He asked silently, too afraid even to look around.

  “Me, standing over here dressed in red” I replied telepathically.

  “But you’re a human aren’t you?” The huge young bear asked.

  “Yes, I am” I replied telepathically.

  “But we can’t talk to humans, we just scare them away” The huge creature looked at me “Why aren’t you afraid?” He asked, the fearsome young giant was a touch disappointed.

  “Should I be?” I asked “Are you going to eat us?’ I asked him.

  “Oh, yuck, ugh” The young bear was nauseated at the thought “You don’t know much about bears do you?” He asked me, adding “All we eat is fresh vegetables and fruit” The young giant corrected me. Just then mum arrived and, faced with the largest living thing any of us had seen, the guards took off for the T.T.V.

  “Lord Robert!” They yelled “We have to go, please come away”. They, of course, knew nothing of my conversation with junior. However, even after the giant beasts which I’d encountered in Carabindy, she was still terrifyingly huge. At least as tall as those ten metre elephants when she was still on all fours legs!

  When the mother bear stood human-like, she was absolutely the largest living thing I could imagine, and the most terrifying. Her paws were the size of a bulldozer’s scoop. She stared at me.

  “Junior, stay back, this one can hurt you real bad” She told him, ready to defend him.

  “How do you know that Mother bear?” I asked telepathically, intrigued by the almost human look of surprise on her face.

  “Could that be you speaking to me?” The fur covered giant queried, looking down at me.

  “Yes Mother, to me too, he can speak to bears” Junior confirmed.

  “How can this be?” The massive but gentle mother bear asked me, drawing her son, who was much younger than I’d first thought, to her. I was able to explain with remarkable ease, especially as she knew nothing of the Divine House or the New World.

  Of course, that I was able to tell part of my story standing right opposite her gigantic and expressive face, ten metres off the ground! And that I occasionally punctuated my words with explosive balls of energy, which I drew from this powerful land itself, did provide some additional credibility to my words. This was an articulate and intelligent being, not a human perhaps, but not a carnivorous animal, that’s for sure. She felt humans were ‘gross’ because we eat me flesh!

  “How did you know that I could hurt junior?” I asked the enormous Mother bear.

  “You do not know? Truly?” She found that truth hard to believe.

  “For decades, ships like yours have come here, led by men in dress exactly like you, to hunt us like wild animals” She told me.

  “But surely not in red like myself?” I protested, hoping not to hear what I did.

  “Oh yes, more often than not, in red. And only the ones like you can kill us” She added. The jungle was, in fact, teaming with wild animals, but, with the exception of ‘small dogs that eat rodents and the like’, there were no c
arnivorous beasts among them.

  “There used to be humans living here abouts” The bear telepathed “In fact, this clearing was one of theirs, but your ships came and cleared them out years ago” She told me.

  “They killed them?” I asked, fully expecting the worst.

  “No, only those who resisted” She answered “They took all the girls and young women, burned the place down and told the rest to go North or they would be killed” She added.

  “How far to their nearest village now?” I asked the Mother bear.

  “Not too sure now-a-days” The gentle giant answered, adding “Small groups come to dig and take away rocks, we usually scare them off, we know what will happen if we don’t” She told me.

  “How many of your kind are there up here?” I asked the gigantic Mother bear.

  “Some say two, three hundred thousand, I don’t know really” She replied. Having thanked her and her still awe-struck son, I floated from the two giant grizzlies back over to our T.T.V. and the waiting equally awe-struck crew and guardsmen.