A few minutes later she found her former enemy standing, crying in despair, surrounded by a dozen silly-looking bots. They looked like small metal horses or large dogs. They had four metal legs and a metal body shaped like a deer’s and a head that spun like a big tin can. On their backs they carried small rocket-like things and a mini cannon of some sort. Blanchfleur watched as two pairs of them broke away from the circle and, prancing about like horses on their springy legs, they quickly ran in giddy circles around her and herded her back inside the large ring of these creatures until she stood next to Gloria. Gloria wrapped her arms around Blanchfleur and held her tight like she was a frightened child.
Watching these robots dance and swing around them almost made Blanchfleur laugh because in a way they looked like a friendly herd of deer, but their constantly rotating eyeless heads reminded her that these were not animals, good or evil; they had no eyes, though they saw everything, and they had no hearts or souls either. They did what they were told, without conscience, without regret, then they returned to their lairs where they silently awaited their next command.
A heavy clap of thunder and an accompanying brilliant bolt of lightning startled Ueland as he worked frantically at the computer. He glanced out the window at precisely the best moment to see the two insiders, his daughter and their common enemy, now both reduced to helpless prisoners being herded inside the copter. His heart sank but he returned to the work he had no choice but to continue. And he could not fail. He must succeed.
Inside the chopper, Blanchfleur held Gloria close to her as the robots hopped aboard and moved to slots along the walls, where most of them folded up like jackknives and fitted inside. The rotor overhead increased its revolutions as the engine roared louder and the copter began to lift off the ground, but then, almost immediately, the engine slowed, the rotor gradually stopped, and the copter settled back to the ground.
The doors opened and the bots jumped out, leaving one of their number between the prisoners and the door as a guard. Through the windows of the copter, Blanchfleur watched as the pack of robots scampered up the hill toward the service building, toward Ueland and his computer.
“Great Goddess!” Blanchfleur yelled, and the guard robot pranced toward her. At the same moment, Gloria sprang from the mayor’s arms and threw her entire weight against the startled machine. Blanchfleur added her strength and the robot fell out of the machine and onto the ground. Blanchfleur slammed and locked the big door and the robot looked up at them, obviously confused, as it knew it mustn’t fire on its only way to return to base. In the distance the kill bots were firing at the service centre and there were loud explosions. The robot outside the copter decided it should join the pack and it bolted up toward the others.
Gloria was over by the control panel and Blanchfleur joined her. “The panel looks the same or similar to the panel on the train we came up on, doesn’t it? I wonder,” the mayor said. “Do you think it has auto pilot? It must, it carries robots.” She pushed the button that said, “Start” and the engine started up. She pushed the button that was marked with a “U” and the copter rose up in the air and hovered about thirty metres in the air.
Gloria was watching the attack on the service building as another explosion blasted part of a wall from the building.
“They must have seen us and were afraid they were being left behind. Do you think they can be afraid? They’ve stopped firing,” she said. “They’re coming back.”
Chapter 32:
Attack on the Camp
Tish heard it first: the distant roar of large aircraft and the far-off rattle of several guns. Some of the forest people must be under attack, she thought. She rose and woke Adam, who had finally dropped off to sleep. Together they walked outside.
“They must be attacking the new village the people spoke of,” Adam said once they were outside.
“Should we wake the others?” she asked.
He took her hand. They stood like that for a while and Adam said, “It’s better to let them sleep. If they know where we are we’ll be next. Let’s stay silent and still and hope they don’t know we’re here.”
“Should we try and help the people who helped us?” she said.
“I wish there was a way,” Adam said. “If they come closer we’ll wake everyone and try to hide. I expect the people know best how to get away in this place.”
They sat under the trees and watched the sky as scattered gunfire continued in the distance.
“Look!” said Tish, “The sky…what’s happening in the sky? Are those shooting stars?”
“I’m not sure,” said Adam. “There are too many of them to be stars. Quick, let’s wake the others.”
As the others ran from their shelters, the distant gunfire stopped suddenly and the shooting stars began to fall like rain, all across the sky.
There were many cries, first of confusion and frustration at being awakened from various stages of sleep, and then turning to wonder and astonishment. They’d formed small groups of individuals familiar to one another and then into a common mass of bodies staring up and pointing at the brilliant overhead display.
Nora and Mabon were standing on one side of Adam and Tish, Alice close on the other side.
“They’ve done it,” said Nora, her voice excited and almost shouting. “They’ve really done it, haven’t they?”
“Do you think they’ll get back safely to us?” asked Adam.
“They better,” said Alice. “We can’t get along without them.”
“Will we be safe now?” Tish whispered to Adam, who was close beside her.
Adam paused and wondered what the right answer was. He wanted to encourage her but didn’t want to lie.
“It looks good. It looks like Ueland did what he said he would do. If those are satellites and war machines falling from the sky, there will be fewer attacks from the Federation and maybe no more attacks, at least until they figure out how to get more satellites up there. But we will still have to work hard to learn how to live out here in this wild place.”
“Let’s celebrate this night and start to work on tomorrow in the morning,” said Mabon. “We’ll enjoy the light show and then get back to sleep. Listen…can you hear anything? Can you hear guns and explosions? Can you hear copters or kill bots?” He paused and everyone stopped their chatter.
“I can hear something beautiful,” said Tish. “I can hear nothing but nothing.”
“Silence; there is silence all around us,” said Nora. “Let’s sleep happily tonight.”
Chapter 33:
Visitors
Late in the afternoon of the sixth day after the one that ended with what everyone called “the night the stars fell” for years afterwards, two visitors arrived from the new village up the river from where Nora and her group were looking over the food and the implements their hosts had left for them. One of them was the chief who had led them here.
Nora’s group waited shyly until the twosome closely approached where they had been sitting beside a pile of metal traps, pots and pans, snowshoes made of bent wood and sinews, bows and arrows of maple and poplar, spears with stone and metal points, and many other things.
“We have come to teach you of our old ways,” said the chief. “This is my son, Lone Cloud. He will teach you how to hunt, trap, and gather food from the forest and the water. He will teach you to build and repair wigwams. I will teach you how to prepare clothing and bedding from animal skins, how to clean and cook the food that is brought to you, and everything else you want to know. I will teach you how to meet all of your needs without damaging the places where you will live. You will be like us, a part of this place, and we will live in peace and harmony.”
Later that evening they were preparing the fires for night when a dirty and almost unrecognizable person stumbled into the tent that Adam and Tish were to share with the other children and Lone Cloud, and she fell
to the dirt floor. She was followed by another young man, who entered and stood silently above her.
“Who is this, Paul, and where did you get her?” said Lone Cloud. “No one is to be brought here without consulting our mother.”
“She was injured and has burns. She knew about all of you and said she was with you earlier. She was able to describe Mother and what she was wearing when she met you on the island at the head of the river. I knew it was safe, brother.”
Adam and Tish followed Lone Cloud as he approached the woman on the floor. Tish looked closely at her and cried out, “Her hair and face have been burned. Oh Great Goddess, it’s my grandmother!”
“I’ll get Nora, Mabon, and the chief,” said Adam. “Thank you, Paul, for bringing her to us.”
“Where did you find my grandmother?” asked Tish. She was on her knees up close to Blanchfleur. She was content to see that she appeared to be breathing normally.
Paul was standing beside his brother, Lone Cloud. They had been speaking quietly in the background. Paul was thin and very tall. The light in the sleeping wigwam was dim and it wasn’t possible to see the colour of his eyes, but they were large and focused on the young girl beside the older woman.
“This woman appeared at the house on the island. We spoke and we talked. I agreed to take her across the water last night. We travelled slowly today. Her collarbone is broken on the right and probably some of her ribs. She has bad bruises all over that side, too. Most of her injuries happened when a chopper motor stopped in mid-air and it crashed. She got the burns trying to rescue someone from a fire. I’m still mixed up. I think someone with her died on the copter, but I don’t know what happened in the fire.”
Several hours later, well past bedtime, after Blanchfleur was washed and treated by Nora and the chief using some of Mabon’s medicine for discomfort and his salve for the burns, everyone in Nora’s group, along with the chief and two of her sons, were gathered around Blanchfleur. She was awake and as comfortable as she could be. They were in Nora and Mabon’s wigwam, where Blanchfleur would be sleeping for the time being, and where she had asked to speak to everyone.
Once they were all accounted for, except the smallest of the children, Blanchfleur told them about finding Gloria hiding on the train in the tunnel and how she insisted on coming along. She had been a nuisance most of the time and had nearly inadvertently ruined their mission and led to their deaths to boot.
“But in the end,” said Blanchfleur, “she saved my life — probably all of our lives. She and I had been captured and trapped by a herd of four-legged robot animals which actually herded us into their helicopter and went to attack the service building where Ueland was trying to contact the servers to unleash his killer virus against the entire Federation’s military and mass communications systems. There was one of these killer robots guarding us and Gloria caught it off guard and, with a bit of help from me, pushed it out the door.”
“What happened then?” asked Tish, her eyes bright. Adam watched her closely, glad she was asking the question that was on all their minds.
“Gloria and I figured out how to get the copter started and airborne,” she said, her voice tired.
“Did you crash it?” asked Tish.
“No,” said Blanchfleur, “the chopper fell when everything stopped. It must have been Ueland’s failsafe virus, because everything stopped working at the same time, all of the robots and the helicopter, too. I didn’t know about the robots stopping until later, though. All I knew was that the motors in the chopper stopped and the lights dimmed to emergency battery setting and then we hit the ground. I was unconscious for a while and when I woke up and got my brain going I could feel the pain. It took me a while to untangle myself from the debris around me. I was confused and frightened, thinking the robots had shot us down.
“Then I found Gloria. She must have hit her head hard, because it had been bleeding profusely and she was completely still. I couldn’t find a heartbeat and she was no longer breathing. I looked outside and there was still barely enough light to see the robots curled up in the jackknife position all over the space in front of the service building, which was smoldering and burning as I watched. It took me a while to exit the copter and to make my way up the hill.”
“Did you find your father?” asked Adam, his voice cautious and concerned. “Is Doctor Ueland okay?”
“I got inside the ruins, passing fire and heat and broken glass and fractured metal and wood. My father was pinned under a great pile of rubble, but he was alive. I told him his virus had worked and that he had probably saved everyone and how Gloria had been a hero like him. I told him I loved him. He asked if I was hurt and I said I was okay. He was very weak and was afraid that I would die in there. He told me my hair had been burned and that my skin was very red.
“I spotted the computer and its case on the floor outside the heap of debris that held him. I stayed and held his hand until he was gone. Just before that he looked into my eyes and said he loved me, too, and that he was proud of me.”
“Did you leave the case behind?” asked Mabon.
“I took it and hid it in one of the ventilation ducts in the tunnel. I hope no one ever finds it. We need to make a better, kinder world for all of us, for everyone everywhere. Once I got out of there, I started for home.” She paused. “I need to sleep now. You should go to bed.”
EPILOGUE
“Do you really think we can make a better world?” asked Tish when they were back in their wigwam. The others were asleep, the older ones snoring in chorus.
“I don’t know,” answered Adam. “I grew up in a better place than this; at least I knew how to live there. This is all so new and scary.”
“The same for me. I liked Aahimsa. Life was nice there,” said Tish.
“Yes, but I want to live where nobody has to kill anyone on purpose,” said Adam.
“Do you think that’s possible?” asked Tish, yawning and nearly asleep.
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “But I’m going to try. Goodnight, Tish.”
“Me, too… I’d like that. I’d really like that. Goodnight, Adam.”
He looked up at the opening at the top of their tepee. The satellites were no longer falling and there were only stars shining brightly overhead. He looked over at Tish, who was now asleep. Her face was as peaceful as the starry sky. I’d really like that, too, he thought. He felt warm inside and realized he didn’t feel scared anymore, just cozy and tired. He felt like he was home again in the Happy Valley, and he couldn’t wait for tomorrow.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the uncountable many who have inspired my love of reading and writing: parents, teachers, librarians, editors, publishers, book sellers and the written legacy of those who worked to make the world known, and the decency, peace and justice sought-after through their writing.
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