chapter one - tiny eden books

October 1994

    These are the first lines I’ve been able to write about our experience because the last month has been focused rather intently on survival. On September 2nd, 1994 at 04:20 GMT, I was forced to land my aircraft on this remote and uncharted island territory located at approximately 47°S 97°E. The plane is - or was - a Douglas DC-3/C-47 that had been converted into a Turbo-Prop version by a company in South Africa. It was registered to Charters Unlimited of Perth, Western Australia under the call-sign, “VH-CKO”, and was on lease to Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders. At the time of the landing, I made a final entry in the logbook stating that all of the crew and passengers were safe and no injuries were reported. Unfortunately, VH-CKO was a total loss.

     I am Pilot in Command (PIC) Günter K. Heyes, age 39, and I have over 15,000 hours total flight time. The members of my crew and some of the passengers have requested that I not share their last names in this diary, and I have agreed to honour their requests. My crewmates are Jessy, co-pilot, age 24; and Tracie, flight engineer, age 23. We were carrying five passengers who were volunteers with MSF: Andy, a mechanical engineering student from New Zealand; his friend, Martin B. Williams, a medical student using MSF as his internship; Sylvie K. Sachsner, a graduate student in chemistry; and her friends and lovers, Linda and Joy. Linda is a future female version of Bill Gates, and Joy is a graduate student in biology, particularly botany.

     The plane was in a safe and well-maintained condition, but due to the horrendous abuse such craft have to endure while in the services of MSF, we were returning it to Perth for a major maintenance schedule after 500 hours of service. Our flight plan was from Port Elizabeth, South Africa to Perth, Western Australia via the Kerguelan Islands. We had completed the first leg and dropped supplies at the remote scientific outpost Port aux Francaise on the main island, and we were planning to head for Perth the next day.

     Our schedule was moved up rather drastically when we were awakened at 0400 with an urgent Search and Rescue (SAR) request. We were asked to take off as soon as possible and use any spare time and fuel we might have available to search for the juvenile rehabilitation schooner HMAS Victoria Star, which had been sending distress signals from approximately the halfway point of our route to Perth. The Star was listed as having a crew of six sailor/counsellors and a passenger complement of 18 female juvenile delinquents. The teens had been ordered by the courts to spend time on the high seas to learn discipline, teamwork, and group dynamics as part of their reform program.

     The weather was on the stormy side; the sea was a rolling mess, and the air was turbulent enough to test both pilots and machines. I had descended to 3,000 ft to begin our search pattern in order to be able to locate any debris or life rafts should the ship have already sunk, but we had hardly begun our first pass when we were hit by sudden and unusually violent turbulence that seemed to last for hours. It was actually over within a few minutes, and after recovering from the turbulence, we passed through an unexplainable haze and a strong headwind from the east to find ourselves in perfectly clear air and sunshine. Before we could get our bearings, however, the craft lost all electrical power and instruments, and the compass began spinning in slow circles. Since there was no longer any power to the fuel pumps, it was only a matter of about twenty seconds before the engines quit, the propellers feathered to a stop, and I was flying “dead stick” with few options left.

     As I fought to keep the plane on straight and level, I looked back toward the wing on my left to make sure there were no fires or fuel leaks from the engines. I was pleasantly shocked to see mountain peaks rising to nearly 7,000 feet (ft) on an island that lay where the ocean should have been nearly two kilometres deep. A second island lay directly ahead, and I estimated it to be twenty nautical miles (NM) long and ten wide. This second island seemed more likely to offer a suitable landing area because its terrain was significantly lower and less rocky, not to mention that it was perfectly situated in our flight path. Since I had no choice but to ditch the plane, I aimed the nose of the craft toward a flat spot on the otherwise hilly real estate in front of us and estimated my glide distance at a difficult but manageable ten NM. Jessy and I were thankful for the sudden updraft that gave us a 3,400 ft head start, and we trimmed the plane in a damned hurry to get her to best glide. The sea still raged below us, but there was a low wall of reefs only a few NM ahead. I was surprised to see them in such cold waters, but I was grateful they were there because the water between the reefs and the island was almost perfectly calm.

     All I wanted was a safe ditching point beyond the reefs and perhaps with a little luck, a belly landing on a strip of sandy beach. Even trimmed for best glide, the plane seemed to sit still in the 50-55 knot (kts) headwind, but the altimeter was spooling down at only a gentle 100 ft/min. Whatever was causing it, I knew that the updraft was the only thing that would get us to the beach, and I hope it would continue to hold us in the air as we crawled toward the island. The updraft decreased when we reached the 1,000 ft level, and our rate of descent jumped rather suddenly to 400 ft/min. Fortunately, the headwind also dropped off to about the 30 kts range, which is much more normal for stormy conditions. We were still at 800 ft when we cleared the reefs, and I was relieved to realise that unless there was a sudden downdraft, we would easily make it to the beach. At 400 ft, the headwind dropped to 10-15 kts, the updraft went on its merry way, and we were left with the procedure of belly-landing an aircraft with nothing more than manual controls, a lot of muscle, and sheer willpower.

     I came in over the water, began my flare, and pointed the nose at the flat stretch of sand on the north end of the island where the beach rounded from a west coast to a north one. I had hoped for soft sand, and I was pleased to see that I would get my wish. I didn’t know the tides, so I aimed to the right of a line of driftwood and seaweed that seemed to indicate the high tide mark and hoped for the best. A nice steady headwind, a few moments of tension, and then the tail wheel hit the sand and slowed the plane to the point that it could no longer sustain flight in ground effect. We heard the props bend under with the sharp groan of overstressed metal, and the sand crunched and ground against the belly and wings until the plane came to a sudden but gentle halt. That was the end of the flight.

     All of the crew and passengers were safe, and although no danger appeared to be imminent, we all exited the plane quickly so we wouldn’t be caught inside by an unexpected fire. We watched for a while from a safe distance, and when we saw no evidence of smoke or flames, we returned to the plane to take stock of our supplies and work on a survival strategy. Our supply inventory revealed that we had enough fresh food in the galley for two or three days, and there were enough K-rations in the life rafts to keep us going for three to four weeks. We also had three company issue .38-calibre revolvers and Andy's crossbow and Mauser K-98 WW-II German army rifle to protect ourselves, so we could easily hunt for food if we had to. Our water supplies were a more critical problem though, because what we had would last only last two days. Other than that, we were in pretty good shape.

     In spite of our situation, no one began the blame game. The MSF volunteers had been stationed at a certain place, and since their camp was the one we supplied most often, we were all well acquainted and on friendly terms. Just as all of us know that Sylvie, Joy, and Linda are lovers as well as friends, all of the volunteers are aware that I’m unmarried and bisexual. They also know that I’m probably the most left-wing, anarchistic, and libertarian person ever to hold an air transport pilot’s license (ATPL) as well as being a staunch proponent of intergenerational love and mentorship. I’ve often told them that if I were asked what the perfect family and society looked like, I would give the example of the Bonobo chimp. Most societies look down on at least some of those qualities, and taken together, they certainly weren’t going to be my ticket to land a job at Qantas. Fortunately, Charters Unlimited is a very unique airline that stands out for its desire to hire pilots and crews according to their skills, regardless of with whom they do what in the bedroom. This worked out rather well for my two crewmembers and me because in addition to being crewmates and good friends, we also liked to have a bit of private fun after duty.

   Our impromptu landing strip was simply a wide, flat, sandy beach that blended into grassland for a few miles before gently turning to low brush and then forests and hills. The temperatures were in the 10°C range, and it seemed perfectly liveable. We discussed our options and decided that our first priority was to find water and a place to set up camp, so we secured the plane and headed east to explore the area. We were looking especially for the small river we had seen near the forest as we made our approach. We walked in a loose group and checked the land according to what each of us thought to be vital. Since Andy was an experienced outdoorsman and hunter in his spare time, he kept his eyes glued to the ground for any sign of tracks or other indications of animals. Joy and Martin were engrossed in the local plant life, and Jessy, Tracie and I looked for anything that might help us get away from this place. Linda and Sylvie didn’t really know what to do, so they just ambled along with us and looked at the scenery.

     The real reason I haven’t been able to make any journal entries until now wasn’t related to the emergency landing or to the absence of writing materials. The real cause of my silence was what we found next. For as much as these islands weren’t supposed to be here, it was even less likely that there were people. Nevertheless, about 1.5 kilometres away from the plane, we encountered tracks of domesticated animals - horses and cattle to be precise. It was obvious from the way the sand had been churned up that they had stampeded, and I was pretty sure our forced landing had caused them to run. Animals are known to hear things humans can’t, and the sound of the wind over the otherwise silent plane’s wings, not to mention the noise of the actual landing, could easily have frightened them. The tracks were 45 minutes to an hour old, which was about the same amount of time it had taken us to secure the plane and walk to this point. After looking them over with his sharp hunter’s eyes, Andy told us that the tracks had been made by one horse and some 50 cows, which could only mean that a herdsman had been out with his cattle. I took that as a good sign because it meant that while there were people here, they were most likely not naked, club-wielding Neanderthals. They had at least mastered the domestication of horses and cattle, so they probably had some kind of relatively organized culture. Our luck seemed to be improving.

     We had followed the tracks for hardly more than 100 metres when we heard muffled cries from near a lone bush. Whoever it was, he or she was obviously in severe pain. We went to investigate and found the small figure of a boy crumpled behind the bush. He was clad in leather riding pants, moccasin boots, a hemp fabric shirt, and a leather vest, and on his belt were a knife and a kind of whip. I guessed that he was the herdsman and had been injured when his horse had thrown him during the stampede. He was in bad shape; his hip was either hurt or broken, and his back was badly scratched as though he had been dragged in the stirrups for some distance. He was lying toward his left in a locked position and was supporting his upper body on his left arm. His head was moving well enough, but it was plain to see that any other movements or attempts to get up caused him excruciating pain.

      He was crying and obviously scared to death, but in spite of the contortions of his face from the pain and shock, he was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Based on my scale of growth vs. age perception, I estimated him to be eleven or twelve years old. He had bronze-coloured skin, an oval face, black hair, and a short but not Asian nose. His eyes were oval as well but again not Asian, and they were so blue and sparkled with such intense beauty that I was completely entranced. When he saw us, however, he turned as pale as his dark skin would allow.

     The boy was clearly terrified, but it seemed to be more than just a simple fear of strangers. He yelped in terror when Andy removed the K-98 from his shoulder in order to get into his backpack for something to try to help. I knelt beside the boy and tried to comfort him, but all he could do was stare at my holstered .38 and scream. He was probably afraid of us, but he was definitely afraid of our guns. I quickly removed the gun and holster from my belt and tossed them several yards behind me. He stopped screaming then, but his face still registered hysterical fear, so I reached out and gently touched his cheek to calm him down. I was rewarded with the most bewildered look I can ever remember seeing on anyone. I held his head and stroked his hair while talking calmly to him, and Martin came over to examine him to determine the extent of his injuries. The boy slowly seemed to realise that we meant him no harm, and he began to relax. He took the weight off his arm and settled back to rest his head on my legs.

     After gently poking around a bit, Martin said that although the boy had a lot of bruises and had obviously been hit hard, he didn’t appear to have broken any bones. Martin’s assessment was that the extreme pain was caused by a bunch of pinched nerves and there was nothing he could do but let it heal on its own. Andy began working on a makeshift stretcher while I opened my canteen and offered the boy some water. He drank a bit, and between his tears of pain and residual fear, he finally managed a relaxed look and what I thought was a faint smile.

    Suddenly we heard a sound. Before we could react, we found ourselves surrounded by some twenty riders. It was difficult to gauge their ages because they were all extremely young looking and had the same long hair and beautiful features as the boy. It was also impossible to tell if they were male or female because they were all fully dressed in loose-fitting, soft leather clothing. It was obvious, however, that they took no pleasure in seeing us; we were looking at the business ends of twenty very powerful crossbows. The rest of our group backed away from the boy, but I didn’t move because I was still supporting his head, and the position he was in seemed to be the only one that allowed him to keep his pain under control. As our people moved away, the boy said something to the new arrivals in a beautiful, song-like language. His words were answered by two arrows slamming into the ground near my knees.

     The boy called out again with more force and less melody, and one of the riders finally dismounted and came toward us. The youth picked up Andy’s rifle along the way and inspected it carefully to determine the make and look at the manufacturing label. Andy had always prided himself on owning one of the few remaining K-98’s with an engraved swastika, but the symbol only seemed to cause an outbreak of hatred yet one more time in its sordid life. The rider was visibly livid and held up the gun while shouting words that needed no translation to convey the anger in the young voice. When the youth ignored the boy’s repeated pleas and kept talking to the other riders, the boy finally lost his cool, and his anger joined his pain to create a surprising force in shouting some command to all of them. The commotion stopped, and the riders stared at him with silent, puzzled expressions as he took my hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze. A second rider finally dismounted and came toward us, and I was able to determine from his stride and build that he was male. He was between 13 and 20 years of age, and despite his stern expression, his face was as beautiful as the boy’s. When he knelt beside me and took my place holding the boy’s head so I could get up and join the others of my group, I was surprised to see that his eyes were dark brown instead of the being the same stunning blue as the others’.

      He was crying and obviously scared to death, but in spite of the contortions of his face from the pain and shock, he was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Based on my scale of growth vs. age perception, I estimated him to be eleven or twelve years old. He had bronze-coloured skin, an oval face, black hair, and a short but not Asian nose. His eyes were oval as well but again not Asian, and they were so blue and sparkled with such intense beauty that I was completely entranced. When he saw us, however, he turned as pale as his dark skin would allow.

     The boy was clearly terrified, but it seemed to be more than just a simple fear of strangers. He yelped in terror when Andy removed the K-98 from his shoulder in order to get into his backpack for something to try to help. I knelt beside the boy and tried to comfort him, but all he could do was stare at my holstered .38 and scream. He was probably afraid of us, but he was definitely afraid of our guns. I quickly removed the gun and holster from my belt and tossed them several yards behind me. He stopped screaming then, but his face still registered hysterical fear, so I reached out and gently touched his cheek to calm him down. I was rewarded with the most bewildered look I can ever remember seeing on anyone. I held his head and stroked his hair while talking calmly to him, and Martin came over to examine him to determine the extent of his injuries. The boy slowly seemed to realise that we meant him no harm, and he began to relax. He took the weight off his arm and settled back to rest his head on my legs.

     After gently poking around a bit, Martin said that although the boy had a lot of bruises and had obviously been hit hard, he didn’t appear to have broken any bones. Martin’s assessment was that the extreme pain was caused by a bunch of pinched nerves and there was nothing he could do but let it heal on its own. Andy began working on a makeshift stretcher while I opened my canteen and offered the boy some water. He drank a bit, and between his tears of pain and residual fear, he finally managed a relaxed look and what I thought was a faint smile.

     Suddenly we heard a sound. Before we could react, we found ourselves surrounded by some twenty riders. It was difficult to gauge their ages because they were all extremely young looking and had the same long hair and beautiful features as the boy. It was also impossible to tell if they were male or female because they were all fully dressed in loose-fitting, soft leather clothing. It was obvious, however, that they took no pleasure in seeing us; we were looking at the business ends of twenty very powerful crossbows. The rest of our group backed away from the boy, but I didn’t move because I was still supporting his head, and the position he was in seemed to be the only one that allowed him to keep his pain under control. As our people moved away, the boy said something to the new arrivals in a beautiful, song-like language. His words were answered by two arrows slamming into the ground near my knees.

     The boy called out again with more force and less melody, and one of the riders finally dismounted and came toward us. The youth picked up Andy’s rifle along the way and inspected it carefully to determine the make and look at the manufacturing label. Andy had always prided himself on owning one of the few remaining K-98’s with an engraved swastika, but the symbol only seemed to cause an outbreak of hatred yet one more time in its sordid life. The rider was visibly livid and held up the gun while shouting words that needed no translation to convey the anger in the young voice. When the youth ignored the boy’s repeated pleas and kept talking to the other riders, the boy finally lost his cool, and his anger joined his pain to create a surprising force in shouting some command to all of them. The commotion stopped, and the riders stared at him with silent, puzzled expressions as he took my hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze. A second rider finally dismounted and came toward us, and I was able to determine from his stride and build that he was male. He was between 13 and 20 years of age, and despite his stern expression, his face was as beautiful as the boy’s. When he knelt beside me and took my place holding the boy’s head so I could get up and join the others of my group, I was surprised to see that his eyes were dark brown instead of the being the same stunning blue as the others’.

     The first rider gestured at each of us with the K-98 in an apparent attempt to determine who owned the weapon. I could tell that this group wasn’t actually afraid of us, but they were very suspicious of our looks, race, and equipment. We knew enough to understand that sometimes nothing more than a symbol is enough to accuse, try, and convict a person in some cultures, and the engraved swastika seemed to be the real reason for the outbreak of hostility. We had dealt with people from many native cultures whose values were much different than our own, however, so Andy wasn’t afraid to point out that the rifle was his, and he stepped forward to identify himself as the owner. The youth seemed to be genuinely surprised by this and looked at me and then back at Andy as though reassessing the situation. After a moment, the teen opened the breech of the gun to remove the ammunition.

      Andy loves accelerator cartridges, which look like a regular cartridge but have a smaller calibre projectile encased in a plastic ring. The native examined them carefully, and I hoped that whoever had caused their beef with K-98’s hadn’t used the same type of ammunition. I was relieved to realise that the teen had evidently never seen this type of cartridge, and the mood dropped from ballistic to about five minutes before ballistic. A few more riders dismounted and began to rig a blanket between two of the horses to carry the boy home. The first native found my .38 and holster, and I immediately identified it as being mine. I saw no value in denying anything at that point; we were at their mercy whether we liked it or not.

     We were directed by gestures and sign language to remove our belts and empty our pockets. I say directed because judging by the cross-bows pressed to the backs of our necks and the manner in which the gestures were made, it was quite obviously not a polite request. Each of us was frisked, and our boots and socks were checked for hidden weapons. After I was searched, I felt a painful tightening in my shoulders as my arms and hands were pulled behind me and tied there with lightning speed. I hated the immobility, but I didn’t think protesting would make any difference to our captors; they not only knew the land, but also saw us as intruders. The best we could hope for was that reason would prevail.

     The natives tied us into a line using interlinking ropes and marched us along a nearby road toward the southeast. The road was surprisingly well kept and was camouflaged so it couldn’t be seen from above. We soon met a group of riders trying calm what I guessed were the cattle that had stampeded by walking their horses in a slow circle around the herd. By now it was high noon, and although it was cool, the march and the sun had begun to take their toll on us. We had already been up for eight hours, and we hadn’t slept much the night before. Since we obviously had to keep up with the horses, we were moving at a faster pace than we were accustomed to, and we were becoming exhausted. There was apparently no rest for the weary though, and we continued to advance uphill into the wooded land.

     We crossed the ridge at about 14:00 local time and began a steep descent into a valley. The road from that point ran along a wild creek that grew steadily wider from the input of a seemingly infinite number of small springs and tributaries. I could see that the valley was cultivated, but not so much that one might associate it with actual agriculture. I saw thin streams of smoke rising from holes in the centres of each of several small mounds at the bottom of the valley, and I guessed that the mounds were the type of living quarters these people used. By the time we finally reached the valley floor, the stream we had been following had become a reasonably broad river that was spanned by a wide, solid stone bridge similar to the typical medieval Roman bridges one finds all over Europe. After we were led across the bridge, I saw more of the mounds, a few small gardens, and large, fenced grazing areas containing cattle and goats, but there were no actual structures. I made a mental note that one would have a very difficult time picking this village out even from a high observation point, much less from the air.

     Presently we came to a sheer rock wall that jutted out into the valley facing the junction of the river we had just crossed with another one of similar size emerging from the hills to the south. The horses finally came to a stop, and the blanket containing the boy was carried toward the rock face, where it seemed to disappear into the wall through a hidden entrance. We sat down on the ground and could hardly move. A few of the riders were stationed as guards over us, but most of them made themselves busy taking care of their horses. They seemed to realise that they didn’t need to watch us too closely; we had walked close to twenty kilometres by that time, and we were all nearing total exhaustive collapse. We discussed our situation quietly and came to the conclusion that our treatment had to be the result of mistaken identity. People began appearing from all over the place while we were talking, and although they didn’t actually stare at us, they certainly made it a point to find some reason to walk close by. The bag containing our belongings was presently carried through the hidden opening in the wall, and we were ordered to move on.

     We were marched south for about another kilometre until we reached an ouDoor prison compound. It was a small open yard surrounded by a squarish mound with guard towers on each corner. The cells were built into the inside walls of the mound, and the barred doors faced the yard in the centre. Each cell was approximately ten feet square and contained a gravity toilet, a pail of drinking water, a hammock, and a sleeping bag. Our hands and arms were untied, and we were ushered unceremoniously into our individual cells. We were instructed to strip completely, and our clothes were exchanged for a pair of simple sandals and something that resembled an oversized T-shirt.

     I quickly discovered that I could talk in a comfortably normal voice only with the people in the cells immediately next to mine. Andy was to my left and Martin was on my right, while Tracie and Jessy were all the way down at the end past Martin. That pissed me off a bit because I would have preferred to have my crew close to me so we could discuss the finer points of the situation, but by that time, I was too exhausted to worry about it much. My feet were blistered, and all I wanted was water. After I had drunk almost half of what was in the pail, I fell into the hammock and began trying to figure out what had happened.

     The gate opened again at about 17:00 local time, and 24 people were marched in. I guessed that they were the crew and passengers of the Victoria Star, and although the girls were fairly quiet, the six counsellors made quite a fuss. The guards left the compound as soon as the new arrivals had been confined to their cells and received their clothes. All was quiet for a few minutes, but then the bastards started singing church hymns! I was already fatigued beyond my limits, and being the militant atheist that I am, this was simply more than I could take. I yelled at them to shut up several times, but they didn’t stop, of course. Fortunately for me, their own exhaustion soon overwhelmed them, and the singing died down.

     At sundown, the guards brought each of us a woven basket containing a raw vegetable, some flat bread, dried meat, and a flask of hot herbal tea. The soldier who handed me my basket was the same brown-eyed rider from the beach who had finally helped the injured boy. I gave him a small smile of thanks as I took the food basket, but he just looked at me without emotion. When I sat down to eat, I found that the bread and meat were absolutely superb, and the vegetable - we quickly took to calling it “potcar” because it tasted like a cross between a potato and a carrot - had a delightful flavour and was quite invigorating. This was top-notch ethnic cuisine, and since prisoners aren’t generally given the best food available, I could only deduce that their standard of living was definitely not that of simple natives. I sat and sipped the tea for a bit after I had finished eating, but the warmth of it made me sleepy. Combined with my already exhausted state, it made me want nothing more than to hibernate for about a week, so I crawled into the hammock. The night was cool, but the sleeping bag was lined with seal pelt and was perfectly suited to the conditions, and I fell asleep almost before I was in it.

     I awoke to sunrise at about 06:00, just in time to receive another food basket and fresh drinking water. The gate opened again at around 08:00, and a group of natives moved slowly into the cell area. They all appeared to be survivors of serious abuse, and many of them were badly scarred or had disfigured limbs. Several guards stood behind them as the group walked around the yard in front of the cells and gazed at each of us with searching looks. They passed our cells and the cells of the girls, and each time before moving on to the next cell, they turned and shook their heads. When they reached the last cell in the third wall, however, a few of them turned to the guards and nodded slowly. Others in the group nodded at the first cell in the fourth wall, but all of them shook their heads again at each of the remaining cells. When they had finished making the round, they all stepped away from the cells and back to the centre of the small yard. The guards opened the two cells the group had indicated and dragged out a woman and a man from the crew of the Victoria Star. The woman immediately began singing some damnable hymn again, and the man started spouting bible passages. Heavy steel shackles were attached to their legs in spite of their resistance, and they were marched off the compound.

     “I guess they're about to get fried,” Andy said.

     “Yes, it looks like they’ve been identified as repeat visitors,” I agreed.

     “Maybe these people just have some axe to grind with intruders who sing church hymns,” Martin quipped. I laughed and commented that the natives did seem to have taken away the ones I had wanted to shut up.

      “The rest of them will probably be a lot quieter now,” Andy said and chuckled softly before turning serious again. “I expect the natives will probably want to find out who we are and if we’re connected with the ones from the boat. What are our options?”

     “Well, I’m thinking there must be some fanatic group that’s giving these people a hard time,” I said. “I mean, they went ballistic about the K-98 and the .38. I think our best choice would be to remain as honest as possible. They did seem to be quite impressed with you for not trying to weasel out of owning the K-98.”

     Andy sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, “but I hope your boy love is a good thing here.”

     “Meaning what?” I asked a bit defensively.

     “Meaning that the boy was able to defuse a lot of killing urges in those guys out there,” he replied. “We might get off the hook if he explains that we really only wanted to help.”

     I smiled and relaxed again. “Andy, we managed all of the natives in Africa, and we’ve been in some pretty dicey situations,” I said. “I think, and deep down I feel, these people are okay.”

     “Sure, because you had a nice dream about that cutie,” Andy laughed.

     “Don’t tell me you've converted from being an open-minded person to being a damned prude,” I teased him.

     “No, I just hope they see people like you as kindly as your beloved Bonobo, because that's about the only ace we've got,” Andy answered seriously.

     The day dragged on, and the guards came and got one of the girls from one of the cells closest to ours at about 10:00 hours. She wasn’t shackled but was given a simple gesture to indicate that she was to follow them. She was taken inside the mound near the gate, and I guessed that there must be offices and guards’ quarters there. She was returned to her cell just as the lunch baskets were being handed around at noon, and since her cell was next to Andy's, and he asked her what had happened. She explained that inside the mound was something like an office where she had met a few people, one of whom was a female native who spoke English. The woman had asked her where she came from, why she was on the ship, and how the ship had managed to get here.

     As the girl related her experience in the mound, we learned that the crew had actually told the girls that they would never return to Australia because they were going to be pressed into service for some “Army of God”. After telling the girls this, the crew had triggered the SOS to fake an emergency and then sailed the ship straight into this region. They knew the ship wouldn’t be found here, and after several days of searching, the Star would be assumed to have sunk with all of the crew and passengers aboard. The girl mentioned that this was her second trip on the Victoria Star and the crew/counsellor team was entirely different this time than on her first voyage. She recalled being taken care of by truly professional rehabilitation counsellors on her first trip, but this time had been a nightmare of religion and prayer.

     The next girl was asked to go into the mound at 14:00. When she returned at about 16:00, she recounted the same experience as the first girl. Shortly after that, a third girl was taken into the mound for her interrogation.

   That night I became more attuned to the schedule of the camp. I noticed that right after the supper ration was passed out, four or five guards and a pack of what appeared to be tame wolves patrolled the area around the cells. I watched this situation carefully, and I noted the relatively young ages of most of the guards and the people in general. The wolves prowled along the cells and sniffed at us through the doors to establish a scent picture of each person. The girls panicked the moment the wolves came near them, but Andy and I took a keen interest in the animals.

     We sensed that we had stumbled onto a society ruled by basic natural instincts. That suited us just fine, and we chatted away as if nothing bothered us. We again discussed the fact that we seemed to have wandered into some kind of native struggle for liberation and had been mistaken for being on the wrong side. We also concluded that a landmass of this size not being on any maps was just too odd for comfort. Had we crashed on a secret territory of “Skunk Works” proportions, or perhaps some Indian Ocean version of “Area 51”?

     The next morning, the three girls who had been questioned were taken out of their cells and moved from the compound. The two crewmembers had been shackled, but the girls walked out freely with just one guard and his wolf accompanying them. The interrogation process began again, and a girl was taken into the office mound and then returned and exchanged for the next at precise two-hour intervals. These people were obviously not natives in the way we understood the term, as just a kinder word for total idiot. The whole process was methodical and military, like a truly efficient law enforcement procedure. It certainly had no correlation with the endless discussions and arguments one encounters in other cultures; it proceeded like clockwork. Five girls were taken in for questioning over the course of the day, which left ten more of them and four of the crew to go. At the rate they were going, they would get to us in about three or four days.

     We had established by this time that the girls’ interrogations were conducted with utmost civility. Each of them was asked simple questions pertaining to their respective personal histories, the reason they had been on the ship, and the purpose of the journey. Some of the questions did seem to be designed to pick one’s brain concerning religious beliefs, though. According to the girls, they were asked repeatedly about an organization called the “Divine Purification Movement”. They were also shown a Nazi swastika, the burning cross of the Ku Klux Klan, a rosary, and a statue of the Virgin Mary as issued by the prayer community known as “Legion Mary”. It was a strange interrogation to say the least, and I began to wonder about this Divine Purification Movement. My parents had been travelling missionaries and had raised me in a fanatic Christian sect, so I knew a lot about the intricate organizations, structures, and hierarchies of various religions. I also knew about several obscure cults and sinister organizations like “Opus Dei” - a radically conservative sub-sect of the Roman Catholic Church - but I’d never heard of this one.

     In addition to my dinner that evening, my food basket contained my pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and matches. I was also given a lantern with a beeswax candle and of all things, a damned bible! I kept everything else, but I returned the bible with an expression of sheer disgust. I wasn’t just putting on a show to win the trust of the guards, either; I was expressing my sincere rejection of the most hateful piece of literature ever written. The guard looked surprised when I refused the book, and he wandered off in complete amazement after everyone in our group as well as one of the girls rejected the bibles. I sat on my hammock to eat and then lit my pipe to enjoy the calming sensation of it. Andy and I talked until we both fell asleep somewhere near midnight.

     The next day, the five girls who had been questioned were released. I say “released” because they were taken off the compound under very relaxed security measures, just as the first three had been. We had no idea where any of them were taken or what their fate would be, but we were fairly sure they weren’t going to be harmed. We hoped that we would receive the same treatment. We had all agreed that to play the “name, rank, and serial number” game or to insist on some sort of diplomatic solution to this situation would be nothing short of suicide.

     The morning wore on after the release of those five, and the schedule of interrogations continued for the entire day. At around 10:00 hours, several guards accompanied by nine wolves opened our cells and offered us a chance to walk about in the yard for a bit. I noticed that the four crewmembers and all of the remaining girls who had accepted the bibles as reading material were not allowed out of their cells. Andy watched the wolves carefully and told us that the animals were only semi-domesticated. They were all behaving exactly the way a wolf will behave when it has been trained to accept only one master. Each would act according to its nature and would turn into a ferocious package of deadly teeth the moment its master was threatened. He said that the animals would sniff us out to rank us as potential threats and instructed us to play it cool and deal with them using the same caution and respect we would have toward a neighbour’s dog.

      We sat smoking and chatting together in the sun while the wolves came close. They walked between us and sniffed at us, and after about 45 minutes of this game of “wolf sniffs person while person tries desperately not to shit his pants”, we made the first finger-to-fur contact. After another hour and a half, Andy, Jessy, and I each had a wolf that we petted and played with. The guards pretended not to notice. The cells remained unlocked throughout the day, and we were allowed to continue to move about freely. We didn’t stray too far from our individual cells though; because we weren’t sure what latitude we were actually being given.

     That afternoon, we struck up a conversation with the girl who had rejected the bible the night before. She was a potty-mouthed tomboy of sixteen, named Ingrid Togner, or Inge, and she quickly blended in with our group. It wasn’t long before she had her own wolf as well, and she roughhoused with this pack of teeth wrapped in fur like it was her own pet dog while she told us of the horrendous abuse they had endured on the ship. She said that they had not been raped or otherwise sexually abused, but they had been religiously abused and subjected to severe corporal punishments for the slightest infractions. The day passed, night came, and the cells remained unlocked. It seemed the tension was easing a bit.

     The next day, five girls were released again and the remaining five went in for their interrogations. Inge was the last to go. The cells were still unlocked, so we tested the waters to see how far we were allowed to go. We stood in the open cell doors for a while and then slowly moved to sit together in one cell. Andy, Jessy, and I were sitting in front of Andy’s cell when Ingrid finally returned at nightfall looking rather dazed and sombre. She joined us and sat snuggled in her blanket with “her” wolf cuddled close to tell us of her experience. She reported much the same as the other girls had, but she said she’d been humbled by the sincerity of those questioning her. She said that when she had talked about the abuse that she and the other girls had endured on the ship, her interrogators had expressed true anger and a deeply felt sympathy for her. They had asked her what she could expect if she returned to Australia, and she said they seemed to be completely outraged when she gave them the details of her remaining sentence for prostitution, car theft, and drug-pushing.

     We small talked for a bit after she had finished telling us what happened. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure whether I was just getting used to the food or if it was my imagination, but it certainly seemed to me that the quality of the food was improving by the day. The others agreed, and we all chatted about nothing in particular for about an hour. One by one, we went back to our individual cells for sleep as the night drew on.

     Inge was released the next day and left with the other girls. Shortly after they had gone, the first member of the ship’s crew was taken in for questioning. If we had expected the same routine of two hours per person, we would have been completely mistaken. The crewmember was in the office mound until well after lunch, when he was escorted out of the compound in chains. This did not seem to be a good sign, but we were left undisturbed. A lone small figure limped through the gate at about 16:00 just as the second crewmember was also shackled and dragged out kicking, ranting, and screaming bible verses. Andy grinned as he poked his elbow into my ribs and gestured at the arrival.

     “Your li’l love is here,” he.

     “My li’l love?” I echoed.

     “I’m not blind, Günter,” Andy laughed. “You went nuts over him as soon as you laid eyes on him.”

     A guard followed the boy as he came slowly toward us and stopped about ten metres away. The boy looked carefully at each of us. When he fixed his gaze on me, his face lit up with a cheerful, beaming smile, and he lifted his hand a bit and waved his fingers in greeting. I was mesmerized. I must have had an unbelievably huge and goofy smile on my face because Andy cracked up laughing. The boy just stood there and smiled as I got up and walked toward him. He was about five feet tall but was slightly hunched over from the pain of walking and standing. I looked him over and realised that there were no serious injuries except as Martin had said, badly pinched nerves and few more weeks of pain. I reached out to touch his cheek with a gesture I couldn’t control, and he pressed his hand against the back of mine and held it there.

     “Thank - you - for - caring,” he said in halting but well rehearsed English.

     He looked across the yard toward the cells and gave me a questioning look. I pointed to where my cell was, and he motioned for me to go there with him. When we reached my cell, he sat down carefully on the ground outside. He reached into his pouch to produce the small flask of scotch that had been in my personal belongings and handed it to me. I accepted it with a smile of thanks, and he looked into nowhere as if to recall something.

     “You - be not - in fear - you - will be - OK.” He had obviously just learned the words because he said them almost as separate sentences.

     I called Andy over and handed him the flask so he could enjoy a drink, and he took it and shared it with the others before returning it to me. I took a sip and offered the flask to the boy. I didn’t know what his limits were, but I didn’t want to offend him by not sharing. He pressed the flask to his lips to barely wet them and then touched his tongue to the tiny amount that stained them. Judging by the disgusted look on his face, whiskey was not his drink of choice.

     I pointed at myself and said my name. He tried to sound it out, but after several unsuccessful attempts, he finally settled on “Gün” as a short form. I smiled and nodded my approval. He smiled back and pointed at himself while saying the melodic name “Ardos”, barely breathing the “s” at the end. I counted my age on my fingers, and he smiled again and stretched out his hands with all of his fingers extended, clamped them shut, and then held up one finger - he was eleven. He pointed at the sky, made motions with his arms to indicate the waxing and waning of the moon six times, and counted to twelve on his fingers. He would be twelve in six months.

     Our communication couldn’t really be called “small talk” since we used mostly gestures and drawings in the fine sand, but we did manage to share the basic stories of our lives with each other. He was amazingly soothing and comforting to me in this uncertain situation. My supper came, and we ate together. We “talked” again for a bit after we had eaten, and he finally gave me a sincere hug and limped slowly back out of the compound. I missed him badly.

     The next day broke with the last two Victoria Star crewmembers being taken in for their interrogations together. At 10:00 hours, they were both taken out in shackles as the other two had been. Ardos came into the compound again when they had gone, but this time he went straight to the mound where the interrogations were being held. I began to feel a certain nervousness about what was to come. I was confident, but uneasy. The guards came for Andy first, and he was in the mound until about 14:00 before being returned and exchanged for Martin. Andy was sombre as he sat down beside me and wiped his hand over his eyes.

     “Damn it!” he exclaimed. “If it hadn’t been for that little guy, they would’ve taken me out of here in chains. Do you still have some whiskey left?”

     “About two mouthfuls, I think. It should be enough for both of us,” I replied and handed him the flask. He took a swig and gave it back to me for the last swallow.

     “What happened, Andy?” I asked.

   He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “As I understand it, this Divine Purification Movement is some fanatic Neo-Nazi Christian sect that’s terrorizing the people here,” he said. “Guess what rifles they use? K-98’s with engraved swastikas! So of course they think I’m one of those bastards because of my fucking original Mauser. Shit, Gün, you know I hate everything the Nazis stood for! The only reason I had that damned gun was because of its superb quality and craftsmanship.” He stopped briefly to calm himself and then shook his head in wonder.

      “That kid pleaded and cried to assure them that we aren’t part of this DPM. Best and cutest advocate anyone could have,” he said with a bemused smile. He was quiet again for a moment and then sighed and continued.

     “I told them about the distress call and that we were looking for the Victoria Star,” he said. “Unfortunately, to them, our looking for the Star apparently meant complicity in its mission. They didn’t seem to understand the concept of international co-operation in marine emergencies. Also, it seems that DPM uses DC-3’s for bombing runs and parachute drops for ground-based terror attacks. So, we’re in the right place and have all the right equipment to be labelled ‘enemies’, and we’re under the gun to prove that we aren’t.”

     “How does DPM terrorize them?” I asked.

     “They use decisive, well-planned raids and massacres,” he replied. “The boy, Ardos, lost his parents last year or a few years ago in a raid on a village on another island. He survived only because he fainted and was left for dead by the raiders. When we found him the other day, he freaked out when I took my gun off my shoulder to get to my pack because that was the same motion the DPM soldiers had used before the raid on his village.” He fell silent again, and I could tell there was more on his mind, but I waited until he was ready. After a few minutes he spoke again.

     “What humbled me, Gün, and what really made me cry inside was that in spite of what this kid has been through, he still fights for fairness,” he said. “He isn’t willing to see an enemy in every stranger. The human decency in this kid puts my whole race, my whole culture, and my whole history to shame.”

     I nodded. “They’re not a dumb people, that much we’ve seen,” I said.

     Andy thought for a moment and then turned to face me with a serious expression. “Gün, according to international law, you’re the authority among our group,” he said. “Would it be a breach of obligations if we took their side in fighting these bastards?” His question took me by surprise because I’d been having similar thoughts. I was pleased to know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but I kept my satisfaction to myself for the moment and chose my words carefully.

     “Well, yes and no,” I said. “It probably would be a breach of obligations, but at the same time, what other choices do we have? First, do we have the means to get away from here and return to where we came from? Second, is this some secret base of an organization or group that would want to make sure no one ever returns from here? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it some more, Andy.” I already knew what I would do, but I hesitated to voice it yet.

     Martin’s interrogation lasted until suppertime. The natives had managed to get through only two sessions with people from our group this day, so we would be here for at least another day or two. Our food baskets were brought out, and both Martin’s and mine contained small jugs of brandy. We ate while listening to Martin tells us about his session, which had centred on explaining what MSF is and what it does.

     The next day neither Andy nor Martin was released, but Joy, Sylvie, and Linda were taken in for their questioning. They were in there until well into the afternoon, and when they returned, they too said they had spent a long time explaining MSF and the nature of our flight. They also mentioned that the natives were apparently well educated in the geography of the world and continents. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and the following morning it was Jessy and Tracie’s turn.

     Their session seemed a bit longer than those of the others, and when they came out of the mound, they reported the mood to be calm but persistent. They had been asked in detail about our MSF missions, our flight operations, and why we had to go to Perth for maintenance if we operated in Africa. They were also asked repeatedly about our equipment, what loads the plane could carry, if it had bombs or guns, and if there were parachutes on board beyond those required for emergency use. Jessy said there was nothing accusatory in the tone of the questions, but they were very thorough. It would be my turn the next day, and I knew that since none of the others had been released, we would all either fry together or leave together.

     Night came again, and I dreamt of Ardos. I awoke in the morning with the last words from him in my dream repeating in my head, “You - will - be - okay”. Suddenly, I wasn’t nervous in the least. In fact, I was calmer than I’d been since our arrival, and I knew, without knowing how I knew, that all would be well.

     I looked pretty rough after a week of confinement, and I smelled probably as bad or worse than I looked. The amount of water we had been provided was only enough for drinking, so I hadn’t been able to shave or keep myself up. I was escorted into the mound and taken to a room that had a striking resemblance to a vault or bunker. The walls were at least two metres thick, and the door was strong and heavy. The room was kept comfortably warm by a large fireplace expending plenty of heat from the centre of the low ring table.

     There were six people seated on floor cushions around the table. An Asian girl was introduced as an interpreter, but I couldn’t begin to guess how old she was. Asian peoples age so slowly that she could have been anywhere from fourteen to thirty. Her name was Kim, and she was a Cambodian who had escaped the clutches of the sect. The other woman was introduced as Reha, and she was apparently the commander of the local forces. She was a slim and somewhat flat-chested woman, but she carried herself with an impressive air of authority that left no question that she commanded the highest respect. I was told that the four men were advisors and assistants who compiled evidence and kept records, and then Reha indicated that I should sit down. A door opened from a side room after I was seated, and Ardos’ small figure emerged and sat down on the cushion next to mine. He tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a quick hug before carefully settling in beside me.

     Reha opened the session in clear, concise English with hardly a trace of an accent, or more accurately, a sort of international accent. She began with questions about the flight, the company, and the aircraft. She initially concentrated on what the plane’s capabilities were and what we were carrying, but her questions then turned to focus on international law, marine law, radio communications, distress signals, and SAR procedures. Shortly before noon, Reha seemed to be satisfied with everything up to the crash. Someone brought in plates of snacks, and we took a short break for lunch.

     When we had finished eating, Reha restarted the session by asking why we had been moving away from the plane. I told her that at the time, we were mainly concerned with survival and wanted to find safe drinking water. I also explained that we had wanted to make a general assessment of where we were and determine what our chances of returning might be. I expected her to continue in a chronological fashion and ask about the incident with Ardos next, but instead she shifted her attention to the girls and crew from the Victoria Star. The questions were surprisingly gentle and non-threatening. She asked if I was aware of the abuses that had gone on aboard the ship and enquired as to what we had talked about in the camp. I was also asked about my views on religion, my personal history, my beliefs, and the depth and strength of my conviction to stand up for and if necessary fight for what I believed in.

     It was nearly 14:00 before the questions finally turned to the incident with Ardos. She was extremely curious about why we had tried to help instead of jumping for our guns to fight. I explained that I believed in avoiding unnecessary confrontations and thought it foolish to fight when one doesn’t know what one is up against.

     “Besides, we were caring for an injured boy,” I added. “Why would we have tried to fight and risk hurting him further when he so obviously needed help instead?” She continued to press me on the issue, and I finally blurted out my real reason.

     “If your people have such beautiful boys as Ardos, who has such clear eyes with no malice in them, how could I consider you to be enemies?” I asked.

     Reha’s lips twitched visibly, but she managed to suppress her smile. “Do you not mind the wolves?” she asked. “Are you not afraid of such mean creatures?”

     I shrugged. “Wolves aren’t mean,” I said. “They act according to their nature, and according to their nature, we’re no threat to them.”

     Then came the question that seemed crucial to Reha. If we were released, would we try to get back, and if so, how would we do it? I was silent for a while, and Andy’s question came to my mind. My feelings for Ardos and a growing hatred of the sect swirled in my mind and I had trouble putting two thoughts together coherently. I finally just babbled on about how we feared that the world wouldn’t want us to come back and tell anyone that this place existed.

     “We’re lost anyhow, and we’ve surely been written off as dead. Maybe it would be better for us to stay and co-operate. If we combine our cultures and knowledge, we might be able to eliminate the threat from DPM,” I concluded.

     “Why do you think that you and your group have not yet been released?” she asked.

     I was a bit puzzled by the question, but I answered as honestly as I could. “I really don’t know,” I said, “but I’m sure that for you and your people, we seemed to be the most complex and difficult group for you to categorize. When Andy was neither released nor chained after his interrogation, I naturally assumed that we would either suffer together or be released together.”

     That seemed to be the end of the questions. Ardos’ was leaning his small head on my arm, and I stroked his hair and leaned down to kiss his scalp lightly. Reha suddenly asked me what I thought of Ardos. My words tumbled out before my mind had a chance to check them.

     “I love him.”

     There was a moment of silence in the room, and Reha rubbed her eyes and seemed exhausted from the long questioning. She passed around a small box, and everyone present besides myself dropped something into it. When it came back to her, she opened the lid and looked in, and her face relaxed as she closed the lid again. She sat back heavily onto her cushion, and her eyes lost the fire of command and became more human. She looked at me for a long moment and then spoke.

     “Forgive us,” she said in a gentle, almost pleading voice. “Forgive us for the fear and uncertainty we have caused you, but please understand that our people have suffered so much from others of your race that we have difficulty seeing the humanity in a white person. We so often fail in this. The reason the sect is here is because the land is full of gold. Not gold dust as in other places, but gold that is like gravel in the rivers, gold that blinds compassion and fosters fear, greed, and hatred. Not many of those who come here are our friends. Kim is a friend, and so are a few others.

     “This box now contains balls placed there by each of us present. Wooden balls represent trust, and stone ones are for mistrust. The girls from the ship we trust, but the crew is now in a prison work camp to repay with the strength of their bodies the abuses that they and their people have committed against others and us. There are 56 balls in this box, one from each of us concerning each of you. Not one of the balls is of stone. I feel ashamed that in my age and experience, I have mistaken you for enemies when in truth you are friends. We thought Andy was one of them because of the gun. We thought you were one of them because of the aircraft. Yet in all of this, the voice of a child and the trust of wolves have shown us to be wrong in our thoughts.

     “We can let you go and take you to a small islet with trees where you can build a raft and go your way, but we sincerely ask that you stay and join us. I do not know how to explain any further, and I do not know how we can ever expect you to trust us after what we have put you through, but we do need help to fight the sect. We need people with knowledge of modern ways who are willing to share that knowledge with us, not for gold or other rewards, but because of human compassion and love. We so desperately need to work together. We need to bridge this gorge of hatred and mistrust between our races. If you could help us, we would be grateful. Can we begin anew? Please?”

     She paused for a moment and then asked me to speak to the others and let her know what our decision was. There was no question in my mind as to what I would do, and I assured her that no matter what the others might decide, I would stay. Reha glanced briefly at Ardos and then turned back to me.

   “Then I shall make a request of you,” she said. “If, as you say, you at least will stay, will you consider that this boy, who no longer has family, may be your friend? Will you teach him the secrets of your world and allow him to teach you the secrets of ours? I know it is much to ask, but since you already care for him and he for you, the first cords to bridge our cultures have been placed there. Will you accept him as your own?”

     My heart soared, and I felt like I was floating on clouds! I could barely contain my joy, and I know my smile went from ear to ear. “I’ll gladly take him, if he’ll have me,” I said as I grinned and looked at Ardos. Two small arms wrapped around me and squeezed the air out of me in answer.

     A discernable smile finally broke across Reha’s stern face. “Please go to your people and tell them what has been asked,” she said. “We wish to hear your answer before supper. No matter what your decision may be, we wish to dine with you after you have had an opportunity to bathe and are once again clothed as free people. We are sorry.”

     “There’s no need to be sorry, Reha,” I smiled. “For a people that has endured so much suffering, the fact that you even gave us a chance to explain ourselves is a strength not often found among many who claim to be superior to you. You have humbled us.”

     “So have you,” she replied. She took a plate and emptied the box onto it. Fifty-six small wooden balls rolled out, and she tossed them into the fire.

     Ardos and I got up to leave, and his small hand found mine as we went out together. He was still limping a bit, but he was walking much better. We met my group, and I explained that we had the choice of either working with these people or trying to make it on our own. There wasn’t even a question asked; in less than thirty seconds, we decided unanimously that we would stay and help. It was clear to us by now that we had stumbled onto a web of intrigue so secret that any attempt to return home would likely end with our own murders. Reha came out to hear our decision, and when we told her what we had chosen to do, she called out a command to the guards. They hurried to empty our cells of the few belongings we had with us as the gates were flung open and several carriages drove in. There would be no more walking; this time we would ride back to the rock.

     When we arrived, we entered a subterranean world of unbelievable size and beauty. It was not a cold world of damp caves, but a warm one of finely furnished quarters, fireplaces, and wood panelling. We were led directly to the bathhouse, and the delicious aromas of scented bath oils and herbal lotions caressed our nostrils. We soaked in huge tubs of warm water that soothed our skins while attendants washed us, lathered and shaved the faces of me and the other men, and gave each of us a long massage. After we were dried, various creams and oils were applied, and my skin tingled with refreshed delight.

     Ardos approached me with a bundle in his arms that contained soft woollen socks, soft underwear, kidskin pants, a linen shirt, a leather vest, and a small pouch that held my pipe and fresh tobacco. After I was dressed, he took me along the corridors to a room that he indicated would be ours. A huge hammock with sealskin blankets and pillows hung from four large posts, and a fireplace crackled quietly in the middle of the central ring table. Ardos opened the three trunks next to the hammock to show me the contents. The first held my meagre personal belongings, the second was almost overflowing with my new wardrobe, and the third contained his things. He then led me to a glass-paned window overlooking the valley to show me the beauty of the setting sun accenting the peaceful scene below. He turned to face me, and his eyes showed a wet glimmer as he kissed me full on the lips.

     “Me - loves you - Gün - thank you - for - be friend,” he whispered.

     I held him tightly to me and felt a love burning inside me that I hadn’t experienced for what seemed like ages. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before that feeling was reduced to more mundane hunger pangs, and the noise from my stomach reminded both of us that I hadn’t eaten for most of the day. Ardos giggled and took me by the hand, and we walked to a place where he said we would eat.

     It was a long low room that appeared to be a sort of communal restaurant or cantina. The fires danced merrily in the fireplaces, and the general mood in the room was one of sincere joy. The girls from the Victoria Star were sitting at one of the tables, and each of them was with a single native to whom they appeared to be teaching English. Ardos sat me down and disappeared for a short time, only to return with plates piled high with all sorts of food. My guess about the standard of living proved to be correct; the food was better than any I’d ever had, even in some of the best restaurants in the world.

     The events of the last week, the food, the warm room, and the bath and massage soon began to conspire against my stamina, and I rapidly grew tired. I made my apologies to Reha for leaving so early and explained that I wanted to empty the plane of as much of the remaining equipment as soon as possible. She promised to have a few wagons ready in the morning, and Ardos and I left for our room around 21:00. The temperature was perfect, and after I had watched this beautiful boy strip and crawl quickly under the blankets, I followed my usual habit of sleeping nude. The brandy and wine I’d had with dinner made me fall asleep quickly, but I still remember the feeling of Ardos’ head resting on my chest as he cuddled up next to me and fell asleep in my arms that first night.

     I awoke in the morning with feelings of tenderness and belonging. I had been completely accepted and was loved by this boy who had been a total stranger barely a week before. My arms were still around him when he stirred from his sleep, and he greeted me good morning with a kiss on my cheek and his amazing smile. After we had cleaned up, we went to the cantina again for breakfast before going back to our room to dress for outside. When we were ready, we went out and found a column of wagons waiting for us.

     As soon as I saw them, I was again struck by the engineering capabilities of these people. The wagons were similar to a truck bed with five rows of three seats each. The seats themselves were not crude wooden benches but were made of netting suspended between posts anchored in the floor of the bed. The drive was smooth and pleasant, and I was happy to be able to look at the scenery. My senses had been pretty well suspended during the march and had blocked out much of what I had passed, so I’d missed a lot. The horses weren’t restrained to keep pace with anyone walking this time either, so the ride to the plane took only two hours.

     When we reached the lowlands on the other side of the ridge, we drove through a wide grassy plain where there was an almost plantation-sized collection of strange-looking evergreen plants. We passed very close to several of them, and I noticed that a leaf on one of them had been stepped on by grazing cattle. I say leaf, but it wasn’t like any leaf I’d ever seen. This “leaf” was about the size of a toilet cover and between five and eight centimetres thick. Grey sap oozed out where the skin had been broken by a hoof, and the stench of ether hung in the air. Sylvie was the first to notice the odour and asked Kim where it was coming from.

     “The smell comes from that plant, which is called the lightning plant or fire plant,” Kim answered. “If you burn this bush, it will explode like a bomb and kill everything within about 100 paces. It throws little plastic pebbles that are sharp like razors all over. They cut straight through to your bones and you die a painful death.”

     “What’s it used for?” Sylvie asked.

     “Nothing, really,” Kim said with a shrug. “It is just a weed. We do use part of the sap for some oils and things, but other than that, it’s useless.”

     “Not to me, it isn’t!” Sylvie exclaimed.

     “What do you mean?” Reha asked with a quizzical look.

     “Energy, of course,” Sylvie said in surprise. “If it explodes like a bomb, it has energy. We could make fuel for engines, explosives for war, and oil for lamps.”

     Reha gave Sylvie a small half-smile. “The power is more than any human shall control,” she said.

     “Shall control, or can control?” Sylvie challenged.

     “Both,” Reha said flatly.

    The scientist in Sylvie was not deterred. “Maybe,” she said, “but from what Kim said, the same power your enemies use to shoot, bomb, and kill your people is hidden in this plant. I want to examine it to see if I can find a way to extract that power.” Joy agreed, but we didn’t stop at the time because Sylvie’s private field chemistry set was in the plane.

     When we arrived at the plane, we put the chemistry set-aside before beginning to load everything we could fit into the carts for the return trip. All of the natives were naturally curious to look inside the plane, and Reha saw first-hand that the plane was in medivac and cargo configuration. Even though she had never seen medivac equipment, she could easily see that there were no killing devices on board.

     While the cargo was being loaded onto the wagons, Ardos pulled me into the cockpit and gestured inquisitively at many of the switches and controls. Kim patiently translated my explanations of each of them, and Ardos’ eyes sparkled with delight as he gazed through the window and flew the plane in his dreams. He snuggled into my arms for a few minutes to let me feel his joy and then kissed me passionately before we left the cockpit. Soon everything we could take was in the wagons, and we locked and secured the plane once again before heading back to “Pao”, as their village was known. Reha had told me that Pao counted nearly 2,000 residents in its population and was a fairly large city by their standards.

     Sylvie and Joy got off their wagon when we reached the plants on our return trip, and Reha and Kim stayed with them with an empty wagon. The rest of us continued on to Pao, where we took everyone’s private possessions into their respective owners’ quarters and put the rest of the cargo into a storage mound. We ate lunch, and afterwards Ardos took me to select a horse. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but since it was the only mode of transportation on the islands, I didn’t have much choice. Ardos stood looking at the horses for a few minutes before giving a low whistle. A small black and white horse limp-trotted over to him. It was obviously his horse, and it was a joy to watch them reunited. It had apparently fallen as well, and its right upper foreleg was badly bruised. After checking out the injury, Ardos turned to the task of finding me a mount. He selected a very tame reddish-brown pony for me and watched in amusement as I tried it out. I am by no account a good horseman, but I got the basic idea pretty quickly. While I was working with my horse, Ardos carefully mounted his own to walk it around for a bit of exercise.

     I finally managed to get a sense of control over my horse, or at least the horse and I came to an understanding about how I could get him to go in the direction I wanted to go. Once I was past that stage, Ardos and I rode the short distance to the confluence of the rivers. He watched again while I went through several different mount/dismount procedures to get my horse used to my weight and movements. After about an hour of this, we went for a short ride, and Ardos showed me that the horses had been trained to stay put when they were hobbled or tied to a place. After another hour, my arse was beginning to hurt, so we rode back to the corral and unsaddled the horses.

     Ardos took me on a tour of the town and showed me what was in each of the earthen mounds. The variety and quality of the merchandise offered in the many shops impressed me. These people were artisans with superb knowledge of their crafts, and the care and workmanship in each of their products was obvious in every shop we visited. We finally headed back toward the rock, and as we approached, I saw Joy and Sylvie returning from their excursion. They waved and shouted to me that we needed to discuss what they had found as soon as possible.

     Less than thirty minutes later, all eight of our group plus Reha and Ardos sat on an open-air terrace enjoying brandy and the best coffee I’d ever tasted. Sylvie placed seven solid disks numbered one to seven on the table, each of which was the diameter of a standard culture dish and less than a millimetre thick. She then placed six liquids in glass vials numbered one to six next to the disks. She explained that she had taken a sample of the sap and separated it with a low-temperature distilling process. She said the temperature of her hand was enough to begin the separation process, and the sample had separated quite readily into the solids and liquids in front of us. She mentioned that there was also a gaseous element, but it had escaped because she had no way to contain it. She apologised for not having larger samples of the products but said she had only been able to collect a small amount of the sap. She then spent the next several minutes explaining the properties of each of the samples.

     Solid #1 was white, and it bent and behaved almost like paper. It could be cut, but only with a   very good knife.

     Solid #2 was grey and behaved somewhat like sheet metal. It would bend, but only under a great deal of force. In spite of being very thin, this one was even more difficult to cut.

     Solid #3 was a greenish colour. It could be formed into any shape and would retain that shape without support. It was a quite a bit stronger than its pliability suggested. It could be cut, but only with a lot of effort and again, a very sharp knife.

     Solid #4 was almost royal blue and had the consistency of soft rubber. It stretched easily but quickly returned to its original shape. It was flexible and bounced lightly on the table when dropped from a small height. It couldn’t be cut.

     Solid #5 was red and spring-like. It could be bent, but it was unwilling to remain that way, and it immediately returned to its previous state with surprising force. This one couldn’t be cut, either.

     Solid #6 was black, and although it was as thin as the others, it couldn’t be bent or cut, even using a set of pliers or shears. It didn’t yield to any force applied to it.

     Solid #7 was just as inflexible, but it was also as clear as optical glass. When held in front of one’s eye, it enabled one to see day-clear into the dimly lit tunnels of the cavern system as long as there was even the smallest amount of available light.

     Liquid #1 was clear and watery, had a soapy consistency, and was soothing to the skin. This was one of the two products of this plant that the natives used in any quantity. It was used for bathing, skin conditioning, and general cleaning.

     Liquid #2 was yellowish, watery, and had an oily feel. It was not to be mistaken for a lubricant, however, because it was an amazing heat conductor.

     Liquid #3 was greenish-yellow, very acidic, and readily absorbed surprising quantities of water. It was also naturally electrolytic, and both this liquid and Solid #3 caused a hand-held compass to spin wildly when held over them.

     Liquid #4 was dark brown and had the same consistency and properties as real oil.

     Liquid #5 was greyish-black and had an almost solid, greasy texture.

     Liquid #6 was clear, and Sylvie said that it was the most volatile liquid she had ever seen, short of nitro-glycerine. The natives used this liquid as well, but only in very small quantities. When it was added to their animal fat and hemp oil lamps in proportions of drops to a pint, it removed the soot problem and the lamps gave off a clearer, steadier light.

   After describing the properties of each of the products, Sylvie explained that by separating the sap into these thirteen substances, we could replace all known materials in any manufacturing process. They could be used to make everything from soap to rocket fuel. Anything that now required hundreds or thousands of different raw materials could be copied using different combinations of the separated sap products. She said that after distilling off the liquids and separating the solids, a small induction charge was enough to render the solids to total hardness within minutes. This meant that all that would be necessary to get a finished product would be to mould the materials in a form or cast and apply the induction charge. There would be no need for machining, milling, welding, or other complicated processing. Sylvie concluded that if we began using these substances now, we could theoretically have our own space shuttle in ten years or less. She also said she had spoken to several natives about the materials and had learned that the materials don’t decay. The pebbles they had found had apparently been there for hundreds if not thousands of years. I sat there with my head spinning as Sylvie continued to try to ram home to us the incredible nature of this resource. In that one moment, I realised why these islands weren’t on any map. Lying on the table in front of me was a group of materials that had a striking resemblance to Henry Ford’s 1930's experiments with hemp!

     The world of manufacturing is full of the cutthroat machinations of one company against another. In most industrialized nations, it’s a world of high-stakes espionage and corporate “do unto others before they can do unto you” mentalities. The goal, of course, has always been to rake in as many consumer dollars as possible. Every product begins with raw materials at the manufacturing level, and the cost of these materials is obviously a factor in the selling price of the end product. The true value of a product, however, is rarely limited to the value of the materials used or expended. Whether something is inexpensive or costly depends more on the complexity of the manufacturing process and the number of man-hours required to complete the final product than it does on the actual value of the materials it’s made from. It is the process of turning raw materials into usable products that adds value to those products. As strange as it might seem to us as consumers, good products or solutions to problems are often not used or brought to market because they’re simple to process or make and therefore aren’t profitable. Henry Ford’s hemp experiments are an excellent example.

     Most people associate hemp only with ropes, canvas, and other durable materials, but it has been one of the most useful natural materials in the history of mankind. It was even more important to human progress than iron. Hemp is a renewable resource that can be grown by anyone, and it has been used in an incredibly broad spectrum of products ranging from medicines to paper. It’s an agricultural crop, and like wheat or corn, hemp requires little specialized equipment to grow or harvest. If hemp were widely grown, farmers could simply take it to a collection centre just as farmers from any region bring their other crops to a central granary. It could be transported to these centres in bags on the back of a donkey or by horse and wagon just as easily as it could be moved by truck. From there it could be shipped to a larger facility to be exported or distributed to mills as needed. Special factories are required to refine hemp and derive all of the unique materials it can produce, but they could easily be located near the larger distribution centres, just as cereal factories are built close to flour mills.

     Hemp has another side benefit that grains don’t have in that almost anyone can work it into a more or less desirable end product. If a farmer didn’t like the price that a hemp processing company was willing to pay him for his crop, he would have several other options. He could choose to sell his crop directly to a company in a specific industry, such as a pharmaceutical, textile, or chemical manufacturer. He could also keep it himself and turn his farm into a small textile manufacturing facility, or he could create his own cottage industry by producing a certain quality fibre and associated products. Hemp is also quite beneficial for reviving over-cultivated fields, so in a worst-case scenario, the farmer could simply plough it under and use it as fertilizer for something else.

     Hemp is a product that allows a farmer to retaliate against monopolies. If a greedy corporation tried to monopolize the collection and processing of it, the farmer could simply boil his crop into paper and ink to print his dissent and protest. If he became outraged that a certain brand of low quality jeans was selling for a ridiculously high price, he could simply design his own less expensive and better jeans and produce them with fibres from his own crop. Hemp remains a personal crop, much like grain or cattle. If the farmer doesn't like the price he’s offered for it, he can still live off his own efforts. Unlike oil, the producer controls hemp, not a monopolized industry.

     Regrettably, hemp had run into a manufacturing dead end by the turn of the century. Chemists were sure that hemp had many more uses than they had discovered, but they were stumped as to how to process it beyond a few medicinal derivates and fibres for textiles or paper. At around this same time, the oil industry began to take off. Oil was used only for lamp fuel and lubricants at first, and depending on how much it was refined, it was still limited to use as lubricant or fuel even into the late 1920’s.

     Nothing much happened in either field until about 1930, when someone finally had a breakthrough and managed to distil fuel from hemp. Unlike petroleum-based fuels, the hemp fuel burned cleanly and caused no pollution when used in a combustion engine. It was also discovered that hemp could yield another material: plastics. So it was that in 1941, no less a personage than Mr. Henry Ford built a car from this hemp-derived plastic and powered it with hemp fuel. He tested it rigorously by hitting it with an axe and other steel implements, and even went so far as to perform a “crash test” at a time when such a thing was unheard of. The car was run without a driver into a brick wall at nearly 65 Km/h. To the amazement of everyone present at the test, the wall collapsed, but the car didn’t. The structural integrity of the plastic car was 10 times greater than that of a similar steel car.

     Unfortunately for Mr. Ford, the petrochemical potential of oil was discovered by both Dupont and IGA Farben at about the same time he built his hemp-plastic car. This meant that they could derive materials from oil far beyond the obvious uses - namely, plastics. Now came the challenge. Henry Ford and his team had developed a method for extracting a wide range of materials from a plant that anyone from lifelong farmers to dim-witted illiterates could grow in any backyard anywhere on earth, and opposing him was an industrial conglomerate of powerhouse companies with teams of experts who had come up with the same materials derived from oil.

     Unlike hemp, oil doesn’t grow in one’s backyard. It pools as far down as a kilometre or more below the surface of the earth or ocean and only in specific regions. Drilling rights and land claims are therefore part and parcel of the oil business. Oil production also depends on a core of highly trained people and a huge array of supporting industries and corporate spin-offs. Exploration for oil deposits requires a great deal of extremely specialized drilling equipment, which must be manufactured by highly skilled people in niche industries. Transporting oil relies on a vast network of pipelines and tankers on land and at sea and again requires specialized training and equipment. Growing hemp, on the other hand, requires only a plot of land and the co-operation of nature.

     Oil is an ideal product for huge speculative investments because that next large underground lake of oil may not be where one thinks it is. Because of this, the oil industry lends itself to generating immense power structures. Hemp farming doesn’t. Logically then, the Ford experiments were a challenge to the power of the oil companies, which was an obvious and definite “no-no”, but how could the oil magnates fight a man with a reputation and power equal to their own?

     The oil barons put their best people on the job to do some snooping around. These “researchers” discovered that hemp is also called “marijuana” and is used in some places as a narcotic drug by smoking the dried leaves in pipes to get a relaxed feeling. That was all they needed to hear. Based on this information alone, the oil tycoons began supporting the spread of horror stories about the evils of using marijuana. They called it a “gateway drug” and used biased research and questionable testimonials to prove their case, and the public bought the story. After funding this publicity campaign, it was a simple matter to apply gentle but firm pressure to a few representatives in the U.S. Congress to have the most important and valuable plant in mankind’s history declared an illegal drug, thus protecting oil company profits in the name of public health.

     Today, we all know that marijuana is a drug, but one would be hard pressed to find too many people who know that marijuana is nothing more than common hemp. We’re rarely taught that hemp was one of the materials that brought us down from the trees and onto the open plains on our march toward technological progress, and there is precious little documentation of Mr. Ford’s great achievement. Except for the few who grow their own hemp and experiment in their basements, hardly a soul knows about the vast wealth of pollution free products this one simple plant could provide.

     In the same way, here on these islands we had a single plant that could give us every raw material we needed to make anything we chose. If such a plant were to become widely known, it would - like hemp - generate a lot of inquiries into its use, and some person or group would eventually find some reason to make it illegal or otherwise control it in order to protect their interests. This was only the first reason that I was stunned by what Sylvie had discovered about this “exploding” plant, however. The other reason came from a manufacturing perspective.

     Steel and other alloys are obviously not found in nature. They’re created from elemental substances like iron, which must first be mined. Unfortunately, iron isn’t generally found in pure form, and a lot of useless sand and gravel will be collected along with the ore. These and other impurities must be separated out by smelting them off, and the smelting process alone takes at least a day, if not longer. The raw iron is then run through the smelter again to be further refined, and other elements or alloys obtained from similar mining and smelting processes are added. By the time one gets the first piece of actual steel that can be cut or machined into a desired product, one has already invested a minimum of two to four weeks just to get the “raw material”, and one still has to shape it into a finished product by some method.

     Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining centres can do in only a few minutes the same amount of work that a skilled machinist needs an hour to complete. We obviously didn’t have CNC machines, so machining gun barrels, for instance, would take us hours. Precision casting gives a much better result than machining, but again, the process takes hours rather than minutes. Time was crucial, and we didn’t have much of it. Even if we had the time, we didn’t have the skills, the people, or the modern machinery necessary to do any of the things I’ve described. We were eight regular people, each with knowledge in a specific area, and we had to move fast. We needed to come up with contemporary military equipment within months, a year at the most, in order to have a chance against the sect.

     I considered our options and decided that the only way we could accomplish our objective within an acceptable time frame would be to use some form of injection moulding. Injection moulding is a process in which a substance, usually a plastic, is melted and injected into a form or mould. The mould is then cooled, and the finished product is ejected minutes later. The materials we could get from the sap were ideal for this method of manufacturing. We could collect the sap in jars or tanks, separate it into its various components in a matter of minutes or at the most hours, shape the resulting materials into any form we desired, and then cure them within several more minutes to a permanently hard state. This meant that we could conceivably arrive at a finished, usable product within four hours of collecting the sap. Four hours with these materials vs. four weeks or more with steel or other metals!

     Research and development require the most time in manufacturing, and part of the research and development for injection moulding is creating the forms or moulds for the products. Creating these forms is an odd mix of art and science. It takes a lot of skill and time to make them, but once they’re finished, they can reproduce the same products repeatedly, whether ten times or ten million times. If we had an indestructible plastic as Sylvie claimed, we might “waste” a few hours creating moulds, but once we had them, we could turn out dozens of gun barrels within a few days.

     By using L6 and the abundance of hemp in the region, we could also avoid becoming dependent on the time-consuming and labour-intensive processes of finding and refining fossil fuels. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that someone out there must know about this plant and wanted it kept secret. I couldn’t begin to imagine the economic upheaval and wars that would be caused by dismantling the oil industry practically overnight. With that in mind, I realised that it was no wonder a fanatic sect had been allowed free rein to terrorize these people without any interference from the international community. I mentioned before that none of us believed that we would have been allowed to live had we tried to return, but it was only now that I realised why.

     Reha said she had explained to Sylvie that everyone else who had tried to harness the power of the plants had failed; their refineries and laboratories had exploded and killed them by the dozens. Only the natives’ method of letting the sap separate slowly over time had been deemed safe enough to work. She admitted that even after Sylvie had assured her that this information would be taken into account when coming up with a way to safely speed up the process, she had still been extremely nervous while Sylvie was distilling the sap. After the stunning success of Sylvie’s methods and upon hearing her findings, Reha had begun to understand how vital this plant was to our success. She asked for our help in harvesting and distilling the sap in large quantities.

     “I might gladly help you, Reha,” Martin spoke up quietly, “but before I do, I have several concerns I’d like you to address.” Every head at the table snapped around to face him at the sound of his voice.

     Martin is a unique person and personality. He’s quiet but observant, and he doesn’t miss much. When I first met him, he looked directly into my eyes with such intensity that I felt as though I’d just been inspected from the inside out. He might not say much, but that doesn’t mean his mind isn’t active. On the contrary, I sat with him many evenings in Africa and listened to his views on dozens of subjects, and I was impressed with both his insights and his character. Since he’s an avid supporter of human rights, we simply assumed he would go along with the idea. He was probably the last person we would have expected to have any problem with helping these people. We all looked at him in surprise when he spoke because we knew Martin didn’t usually open his mouth unless he had something to say. We had also learned long ago that when he did speak, we’d damn well better listen. His passions smouldered quietly behind those dark brown eyes, but on the rare occasions when they did flare up, those who thought they knew him sometimes got a shock. I could tell from the expression on his face that this was going to be one of those times.

     “What concerns would those be, Dr. Martin?” Reha asked. She always called him Dr. Martin, even though she knew as well as we did that he hadn’t finished his final medical training yet. It didn’t seem to matter that he hadn’t completed his residency, though. As bright, caring, and gentle as he was, he was already a doctor in everyone’s eyes. He lit his pipe and took a long sip from his glass before speaking.

     “Reha, I care deeply for all human beings,” he began. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many peoples and cultures do absolutely brutal things for no other reason than tradition or blind obedience to a cause.” He paused to draw on his pipe, and Reha looked puzzled and concerned.

     “I’ve been caring for the sick and wounded in the war zones of Africa for the last year,” Martin continued. “I removed bullets from the bodies of people and healed their wounds only to see those same people back in my hospital a few weeks later with more bullets in them. I’m sick and tired of healing people and caring for them until they’re well just so they can go out and abuse others all over again. My tour with MSF was most likely a one-time experience. I don’t think I will ever again go to help a people who are so entrenched in their hatred for each other that as a doctor, I can do nothing more than patch up the wounded so they can go out and kill some more.” Martin reached for his glass of brandy again. He emptied it in one gulp and held it out to have it refilled. I could tell he was fighting to control his emotions. He didn’t want to let his frustration and rage at the injustice and abuses he’d witnessed get the better of him, but he also desperately needed to have his say.

     “Reha, I have no idea how much you know about the world outside your country,” he went on. “I don’t know if you know how many variations of all of the different religions there are. Each of them claims to have the only divine truth, and they all harbour murderous hatred against anyone who might disagree with them. I don’t know if you’re aware of the abusive practices of some tribes and governments or the pain and hurt they dish out to their own people and call it their ‘culture’. I can tell you, however, that some six billion people inhabit this planet, and many of them are starving. Thousands upon thousands of people die needlessly from starvation every day, not because there is no food, but because they are the wrong colour or caste, or because their leaders care only for wealth, power, and control and are willing to destroy their own people to get it. Tens of millions of people are also imprisoned or killed every year because their beliefs differ from the beliefs of their society.”

     Someone had refilled Martin's glass and he drank again. Reha’s eyes were fixed on him. She could tell he was trying to say something important.

     “We talk about human rights in our world,” he continued, “but it seems to me that most societies care less for that than for their ‘right’ to have their own culture. The world often defends very abusive cultures and allows them to do as they please to their own people, regardless of how brutal they may be. In many societies, it’s normal to cut a boy’s foreskin at some point between birth and puberty, but it’s always done while he’s still young. It isn’t done for medical reasons, but for ‘cultural’ reasons, like the incredibly stupid belief that he isn’t a ‘real’ man until it’s done. In other places, it’s normal to take a girl of ten and cut off her clitoris either because they mistakenly think that it’s no worse than male circumcision or because it’s thought to make her more docile and a better wife. Most of the time, the reasons are also based on some equally ridiculous religious code.

     “In many cultures, women are non-persons and are often viewed as little more than property or breeding stock. Some of these societies require that a girl be given in marriage to a man she’s never seen or doesn’t love in order to seal an agreement or treaty, to gain money, or to improve her family’s status by joining with a more powerful family. The girl has no choice in the matter; she’s married to the man by the agreement of her parents. Girls as young as eight or ten are forced into marrying men of 40 or older in this way. Many cultures don’t allow women to vote or to make their own decisions. In these societies, wives are subject to their husbands’ whims, and a man can heap any cruelty he chooses upon his wife. He can even throw her out at any time for the most trivial reasons, and she has no chance to fight back or tell her side.

     “There are also many places where one can’t love or even care about the person in the next house because he or she follows a different religion. One is required to hate people one might want to love just because it’s ‘tradition’ or because some religious leader says their ‘god’ has decreed it.”

     Martin paused for another long drink and took a deep breath before speaking again. I was beginning to wonder if he might pass out under the table before he made his point.

     “You see, Reha,” he went on, “in some isolated parts of the world, there are still races or tribes like yours that have lived for millennia with no contact with the rest of the world. What happens when we discover them? Should we engage in cultural exchange? Some would say that we should just ignore them and leave them be. Others think we should protect them as they are. Still others would argue that we should assimilate them into modern society. I can only say that it’s probably a good thing no one has ever asked me what to do.”

     He drank again. His hand was rock steady, but his facial muscles twitched under the strain of keeping his emotions in check.

   “To those who claim that we shouldn’t destroy a culture directly or wipe it out by assimilation,” he continued, “I would ask this: what would be lost if this newfound culture was wiped out or gained if it were not? What if we discovered that this culture had an abhorrent or abusive ritual practice? What if, for example, every third-born child was sacrificed and eaten at age five in some rite of tribal culture? Is that ritual worth protecting? I realise it’s an extreme example, but it raises a valid point. What can we learn from a barbaric society? If we can learn little, why should we protect it? The rest of the world may well have plenty of its own horrid examples of barbarism, but when we find points where two cultures clash, I propose that we should let the lesser of the evils win.

     “Look at the Aztecs, who displayed amazing ingenuity and incredible engineering skill in building their magnificent stepped temples. Look at the intricate artistry of the designs carved into them, and for what? So that at a particular ceremony, people could be dragged up those stairs to have their hearts cut out and sacrificed to a god that no one had ever seen! I don’t particularly like what the Spaniards did in the new world by destroying ancient knowledge and skills, but did it truly harm mankind that these people were destroyed? I see no evidence that it did. Others have rediscovered most if not all of what the Aztecs knew, so what was lost? One evil simply replaced another.

     “I also consider man to be a part of nature, not above it. We humans build our houses just as birds build their nests, but unlike birds, we alter nature to fit what we want it to be rather than adjusting to the world as it is. Birds don’t build so many nests that all of the trees are devoid of foliage and remain only to support the weight of the nests. Birds don’t kill the trees because they know that their lives depend on them, yet we humans pave the land, poison the rivers, and change the world into an arid desert that can barely support us and no one can enjoy.

     “In the few days that I’ve been here, both as a prisoner and as a free man, I’ve seen that your people are intelligent and have a wisdom far beyond what many elsewhere can claim. I also remember, however, that a guest is usually shown only his host's best side. This plant and the materials we can get from it are unique and powerful, and whoever controls them will ultimately control the world. It might not happen right away, but ten years from now, it will. I don’t want that power in the hands of the sect, of course, but do I want it in your hands? You asked me questions in your prison. You asked me who I am and what I believe in. Now you ask for our help and plead with us to help you fight the sect, so now it’s my turn to ask you the same questions you asked me.

     “What in your culture and society is better than this sect? From what I’ve seen of the sect so far, I can assure you that I don’t love it or even like it, if only because of how their people treated the girls on the ship, but are you better? Are your boys and girls mutilated by circumcision against their will because it’s ‘tradition’? You’re a woman of power, Reha, that much I know, but what status do other women have here? Are you a rare princess with power while the rest of your country’s women are slaves to their husbands?”

     He held up his hand to indicate that he was not finished speaking while he took another drink.

     “You command this town and maybe even this entire island, but there are many other islands here,” he continued. “The island northwest of here is much larger than this one, for example. Who rules there? Do you answer to them? If you live by laws, who sets those laws? Are your prisoners of whatever crimes treated with respect and given a chance to rehabilitate? Where were the leaders of the ship taken, for example? How are you treating them? Do you give them twenty lashes with a whip each time they disobey? Do you starve them to death? Do you use them for medical experiments? Do you use them for live target practice for your soldiers? What rules determine whether someone lives or dies?

     “Explain to me why I should help you. Exchanging a cruel master for a kind one doesn’t change the existence of slavery. I don’t care about cruel slave masters or kind ones; I abhor the idea of slavery. Before I’ll say yes or no, Reha, you must explain to me why I should dedicate my knowledge to your cause. I won’t fight one evil to let a worse one win. Show me that what I shall defend is worth defending. Plead for the existence of your culture as I have been forced to plead for my existence as a person. Explain why you’re worth fighting for.”

     Everyone at the table was totally shocked by Martin’s bluntness, and we sat there in uncomfortable silence for several seconds. I looked at Reha, who had been caught completely off guard by his speech, and I wondered how she would react.

    “I suppose I deserved that, Dr. Martin,” she finally said, and we all breathed silent sighs of relief. “You are right. There is no reason you should trust us without proof any more than we trusted you. Very well, I will plead our case as you have suggested.

     “To begin with, our society is from a 35,000 year-old culture that was at one time an almost perfect dictatorship. There were those who fought against the dictatorship and rebelled against the laws of this society, but they did not have much success until the meteors came.

     “A meteor shower rained down on our islands some thirteen thousand years ago. Our people were nearly destroyed, but many small groups of rebels had managed to carve out hidden and protected shelters in the rocks of these islands. These groups had food and supplies in underground shelters, so they were able to survive both the meteors and the resulting fires and long winters. There were few people left by the time it was finally safe to live outside again, and none of the small groups that had survived knew if there were any others still alive. This new plant was discovered to be growing all over the islands, and each of the small groups discovered the parts of the sap they could get from the plant and used them to fuel their fires and lamps.

     “Within 50 years of the meteor shower, many of the groups had found each other and began to group into a working society. It was the chance the rebels had dreamed of to create a world of harmony, and the ‘leaders’ were determined never again to allow a dictatorship to grow. They realised that in order to continue to survive, they would need to follow natural laws and principles and never allow any person or group to believe that they were better than anyone else. Everyone was encouraged to seek their own greatest skill and do it to the best of their ability, and this is the basis of our society as it is now. Our people are peaceful and will fight only to defend themselves when attacked. I could give you example after example of this from our written records, but I am sure you would not be able to corroborate them in any of your history books. Your histories were written by people who did not know or were not told that we existed, so I can only tell you it is true and hope you will believe me.

     “Our people do not engage in any kind of intentional violence among themselves, especially ritual mutilation. There has not been a murder among our people for hundreds of years, and other acts of violence are even more rare. No one is forced to do anything that he or she does not wish to do, including staying with an abusive person. Even young children have the right to choose where they will live because we do not believe there is any reason to restrict our children’s freedom except to protect them from harm. Everyone here has equal value as a person, whether man or woman, boy or girl, and each must be treated with respect and care. We only ask that everyone must give back at least as much as they take. Each person must give something to our society in the form of labour, skill, or knowledge. If someone does not give something back, that person will not starve, but neither will he or she get the best of what is available. To receive the best goods or services, one must first give one’s own, and they must be good quality.

     “In order for crime to exist in a society, there must first be laws. We have laws, yes, but there are only twelve of them, and they show our views that we should respect all life, no matter how humble or even annoying it may be. Those who violate the laws in our society are not usually imprisoned. They are instead given a chance to change, and repay in some measure the person or people against whom they committed the crime. As for the crew of the ship, the crimes that they and their people have done against our people can never be repaid. We will use them to do work for us because at least then they are doing something that will give to our society rather than destroying it. They will be held in chains and prison cells, not to punish them, but to protect our people. We do not let them run free because they would surely try to kill us again. They will not be starved, but they will receive only rations of water and the vegetable you call potcar. It is enough to keep them alive, and it making a person calmer and not to be violent after a time. They will not be whipped if they do not work; they will simply not receive food unless they do work. They will certainly not be used for medical experiments or for target practice because regardless of how we may feel about them, to do either of those things would be against our principle of respecting all life.

     “It may seem to you that by asking you to provide us with a way to destroy the sect, we are violating that principle or at the very least demonstrating that we have a double standard when it comes to them. On the contrary, we are asking you to help us defend what is ours and take back from them what they have stolen from us. We know that we can never get back the lives of the hundreds of thousands of our people they have killed or repair the minds, hearts, and bodies they have broken, but we can try to prevent them from causing any further harm. The sect is dangerous to everyone, not just to my people. If they are allowed to destroy us, who will be the next victim? Remember that they attacked us; we have only defended ourselves as best we could.

     “The people of this sect have tried constantly over the years to convert my people to their way of thinking by any means necessary, but we have never submitted to their ways, and we never will. We do not care whether the universe was created or simply came into being. We care only that it exists, and we are a part of it as much as everything else. We do not generally accept the existence of a ‘god’ or ‘gods’, unless that is how one refers to nature or the universe. Most cultures have a god of some kind, but to say that one culture’s god is better or more powerful than that of another is wrong. Legends and myths of the works of such gods cannot be proven except by using the writings of the religion that reveres or worships that same god. Such writings are necessarily one-sided and are therefore false. They only believe, and they demand that everyone else should believe as they do. To us, however, believing in anything that cannot be proven with our senses is insanity.

     “We do have a government over all of the islands, but it is hidden for now to protect it from the sect. Our laws do not allow the government to come in-between the lives of its people. It cannot decree how anyone should behave except to uphold the laws of nature by which we live. It does not decide who shall live or die. A tribunal council judges all disputes, but it does not demand that either party in a dispute must give up everything to the other. It works with everyone concerned to reach a compromise that is acceptable to all.

    “You spoke of human rights, but there are no human rights; there are only natural rights. We have a duty to live with and in nature, to be part of it, and never to take more from it than is needed. We are to care for it as though our survival depends on it because just as in your example of the birds, it does depend on it. Nature provides us with stone, wood, leather, and natural fibres. Our lamps burn hemp oil and animal fats, and even our medicines come from nature. We have never needed anything else. When something has reached the end of its useful life, we recycle it to make something else. Any food that we do not eat or that goes bad and any plants or parts of animals that we cannot use are planted with our crops as fertilizer. We waste little here. My world exists in what you might call the ‘Stone Age’, but it is only that way because we do not have or use modern materials. We do have a metal here, but since it is rare and difficult to work, we use it only where nothing else will do.

     “In spite of these things though, we are not primitive. We know how the elements work and how the laws of physics are applied. We use the forces of nature to our benefit. Our people have built their cities underground for all of our recorded history and even earlier. They tunnelled into the rocks using nothing more than small drills and wooden wedges that they soaked with water to expand and crack the rocks. The rock that conceals the entrance to our city is huge, yet a small child can easily operate the mechanism that opens it. We tap into the energy of the earth to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Our land is powered by wind and water. We use windmills or waterwheels to grind our grain. We are sitting on the ninth floor in this huge rock, and we rode a lift to get here. The lift is constructed of wood, leather, and strong natural fibres, and it is powered by water from the river. It is really nothing more than a long belt that moves continuously in one direction, and it is slow, but it works. We have a wooden rail system on which a single horse can pull four wagons at once instead of only one. As you have seen, our roads are built to last and require few repairs. You will find that everything here is made with the utmost care and craftsmanship and is designed to last as long as possible.

     “For thousands of years, my people lived in harmony with each other and the world around them. Our world was perfect, and we were happy. The only weapons we needed for hunting or defence were crossbows. Some of those who came here over the last few centuries tried to convince us to use guns for hunting, but we did not see the need. No animal is safe from a skilled hunter with a crossbow, and an arrow is silent and will not frighten the prey if you miss. Why risk missing with a gun and not have another chance because the animal runs away from the noise? As for your other technologies, we have seen many airplanes. We could not have built one, but even if we could have done, why would we? We could easily travel between the islands on the water, and we had no reason to go anywhere else. We have built some large kites to use the wind to help us lift heavy objects, and some of our people have built gliding kites for the pure enjoyment of flight, but what use would an airplane have been to us?

    “Then the sect came and brought their insanity.” Bitterness crept into Reha’s voice as she continued. “They work us to death as slaves in their mining camps. They rape, and murder our people. They kill us by the thousands. Their planes drop bombs on us and destroy what we have built. It is difficult for us to defend against their attacks because their guns reach many times farther than our strongest crossbows. Our world was made for peace; we do not have the equipment for war. We need guns to protect ourselves and planes to see their ships while they are still at sea so that we can be ready for them when they come. We have never needed such things before, but now we do.

     “I am asking for your help and your knowledge because I know that you will be able to help us. When Sylvie and Joy were able to separate the materials in the sap without endangering any of us, I realised that the knowledge and skills that you and your group have brought with you are exactly what we need. I cannot make you believe anything I have told you. I can only tell you the truth and hope that what I have said will convince you. You have what we need, but I cannot force you to give it to us. You have so far proven to me that you can be trusted. I hope I have done the same.”

     “This is a new world!” Joy exclaimed in amazement.

     “No, Joy,” Jessy responded, “it’s a very old world peopled by a race with incredible wisdom. This was how most small native cultures lived until the Christians came along. They were the ones whose vanity introduced the idea that mankind was God’s ‘supreme creation’ and was given the earth and everything in it to use or abuse as he saw fit.”

     Martin was silent during this exchange and sat there smoking his pipe thoughtfully while he considered what Reha had said. He looked up at her suddenly, and his eyes flashed with a deep fire.

     “Because of what I’ve seen so far,” he said, “I will accept that what you’ve told me is true. I am a man of few words, Reha, and I won’t say what I don’t mean. This race knows the truth of life, and I will not stand idly by and permit such a people to be wiped from the planet. I am a man of medicine, and I will use every ounce of knowledge and every skill I have to heal the bodies of those who are abused by the sect. Your people are now my people. I cannot and will not allow the sect to cause permanent harm to another of them.”

   Reha sat silently for a moment until Martin’s statement sank in. When she realised what he’d said, she practically leapt over the table to hug him.

      It was nearly time for dinner, but we didn’t want to break up the discussion to go and get food. Reha called to a passing guard and said something in her language, and he nodded and went off in the direction of the cantina. Several minutes later, six children brought out plates piled high with the best the cantina had to offer.

     We talked while we ate and then on into the night until the fire burned low in the fireplace. Sylvie planned to go to the local glassworker in the morning to order a reliable still and huge glass jugs to store the harvested sap in quantity. She would also request storage tanks for the separated sap products since they would not all be used at the same rate. Tracie and Jessy had worked with me on a home-built airplane project, and Andy and I had plenty of machine shop experience, so once the still and storage jars were finished, the four of us would re-invent the wheel. We would begin copying every tool, every machine, and every production process and then rework and modify them to work with these materials. Reha assured us that we would have an army of some 300 skilled artisans from blacksmiths to carpenters at our disposal. We would have the expertise, the know-how, and the manpower to take this land from its advanced Stone Age into the Space Age.

     Ardos sat there with us the entire time, and I took comfort and strength from his presence. I know he didn’t comprehend what was being said, but his expression and body language told me that he somehow understood the significance of our meeting. Near the end of the discussion, we learned the reason for Reha’s desire to move quickly. There was a small islet south of the one we were on that would be visited around mid-November by pirates/sect members coming to mine gold. Reha wanted to have a well-armed contingent of skilled soldiers ready to oppose this ruthless army and begin to end the sect’s reign of terror. At around 23:00, we all went to our respective quarters resolved to do whatever was necessary to complete this mission. I was too wired up to sleep immediately, so I began to make a list of the things we would need to copy or invent in order to have the army that Reha wanted. I finally fell into the hammock at midnight.

     Sylvie used the next few days to oversee the production of her glass still. I poked my head in to watch a few times, and I was amazed once again by the skills displayed as well as by the quality of the finished products. The master glass blower produced the components of the still while others in the shop worked on the storage jars, containers, and other odds and ends we would need. Sylvie also ordered tonnes of paper since we had serious communication problems and would need drawings and visual representations of what we needed. Crude descriptions of some things can be acceptable at times, such as when one calls something a “table” regardless of whether it is used for dining or drawing. A workbench is also a table of sorts, but it isn’t just a table; it’s a specialized piece of equipment. Since only Reha and Kim spoke any English, we would obviously need to be as accurate as possible in describing what we needed.

     Reha had an excellent command of the language because she was taught by an old white man who had been shipwrecked on the islands. He was useless for the most part and hadn’t lived long, but he was a genius in languages, so Reha was able to become fluent. She was far too busy handling matters of security and running the city to hang around doing translations, though. Even if she could have done, the version of English she spoke was a much more archaic form of the language than we were used to, and it lacked any modern terminology. Kim was also relatively fluent, but like many interpreters, she didn’t have the technical knowledge to fully describe what we needed. The instructions one gets with some products that have to be assembled before use are a perfect example of this. They’re printed in ten different languages, and although the translations are word-correct, they do anything but communicate how to put the thing together. This is no reflection on Kim whatsoever. She wasn’t a professional translator; she was simply an uneducated 17-year-old Cambodian girl who was able to speak English and “Heikoee”, as the natives’ language was known.

     Andy, Tracie, and I spent some time learning about “Tri-Ferum”, the local version of steel. “Tri”, as in “three”, is a fitting name for it, since it weighs about three times as much as regular steel and is at least three times as difficult to work. It is stainless, brittle in its own way, and requires more filing than cutting. Shaping it in heat is manageable but still labour-intensive. Ardos had a knife made from this metal that he said his father had given to him when he was eight years old. It had a small, 12-centimetre blade similar to a fixed-blade pocketknife and was the standard among the children here. He told me that it was over 4,000 years old and the blade had originally been approximately thirty centimetres long, but it had been worked down and resharpened over the ages to its present size. I was surprised by his claim, and I inspected it closely. Although the handle was new, the blade certainly seemed ancient, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it was really that old. After watching the blacksmith work to sharpen and polish a single twenty-one-centimetre blade, however, I began to be convinced. One of our modern production facilities could easily have turned out a hundred similar knives in an hour or two, but the smith said he had spent nearly nine hours on his creation to get it to the final stages. Needless to say, with a metal that was so hard to work, it was no wonder that it was used only for items where other materials could not be substituted. It was no stretch for me to believe that objects made of this stainless metal would be handed down over thousands of years or recycled to different uses.

     An empty storage vault was cleaned up and refitted with basic machine shop equipment including workbenches, anvils, vices, presses, and water-powered, belt-driven lathes. The natives’ preparation and foresight was mind-blowing. They thought of details and “what-if” scenarios with a mental discipline that equalled the best modern professionals. Water sources were rerouted, and we were shown how to operate the surprisingly modern sprinkler system. Walls and mounds of earth were set up to contain large spills or fires, and buckets of fine sand were set around the room at intervals for quick access to contain smaller ones. This work was done by the crew of the Victoria Star, who by now had become mellow and phlegmatic about their situation. They were already exhausted and brain dead, and they toiled away without a word of resistance. While that was shaping up, Andy, Tracie, and I began to work on getting used to the many different types, sizes, and shapes of the tools that these people used.

    A local craftsman presented us with a set of squares and absolutely straight edges along with a layout surface made from a single piece of highly polished granite. They had been made and polished to perfection by hand and had taken years to create, and we were made to understand that these precision instruments were only on loan to us. I was impressed by the technology, and I gave my word that they would be handled with utmost care. I noticed upon closer inspection that the measurements marked onto the squares were very close to our metric system. I couldn’t be absolutely certain because I had no means to check the exact calibration, but I could tell they were very close. I mentioned this to the man who had loaned us the items, and he proceeded to give me a history of the measurements used by the Heikos. Their entire history was written down, and from it, they knew when each measurement came into existence in chronological order.

    They based their time lines on a 365-day year derived from the astronomical calculations their people had made several millennia before Egyptian scholars looked into the skies. From this, it was simply a matter of working with round numbers to get to a 24 hour day and give each hour 60 minutes: the average healthy heart rate of 60 beats per minute multiplied by itself. The day was also divided into 4 equal parts of six hours each, which was their standard work unit.

    The average adult human being measures between one yard and one metre from fingertip to shoulder. This was - and still is - a quick and easy way to estimate continuous lengths. It has been a non-calibrated but accepted measurement for thousands of years, and textile merchants measuring lengths of cloth still use it today in our own world. This length is also roughly equal to that of an average person’s stride, or “pace”, which the Heiko used as a distance measurement. These and all other measurements were calibrated in multiples of ten, the normal number of fingers that humans have.

    Weight was established based on both experience and practicality. The average person needs a minimum of approximately two litres of water per day for his body to function at its best and survive comfortably. The Heikos had arrived at this quantity by other means than modern science did, but they had come up with the same amount. Hunters had to carry most of the water they needed for the day along with them, but placing the entire amount in one pouch designed to be carried on a belt made it difficult for the hunter to maintain his balance. For this reason, the water was split between two smaller pouches attached on opposite sides. This division meant that each pouch held approximately one litre of water and weighed an equal amount, which preserved the hunter’s balance. After accounting for the weight of the pouch, they were able to come up with a standard weight measurement that was very close to the original kilogram: the weight of one litre volume of water. For items that weighed less, they used the decimal system to split their “kilogram” into smaller divisions.

     For temperature, they had simply noted the freezing and boiling points of water and used the decimal system to create 100 equal divisions between them, so we were already familiar with that. The only area of concern for me was the calculation of the number of degrees in a circle. We use 360 degrees, but the Heikos simply divided a circle decimally into 100 equal parts. It wasn’t difficult to convert their degree measurements since we only had to multiply them by a factor of 3.6, but it did initially cause some problems in translation. Overall, however, with such similar measurements, we could easily begin to make our calculations using any fixed tables of engineering data that were available to us. Andy, Tracie, and I were ready to begin working on our new version of the wheel.

     The first load of sap arrived a few days later. By the time it was delivered, Sylvie had discovered through experimentation that she could create a basic galvanic element - a simple battery - with a combination of Solid #3 (S3) and Liquid #3 (L3). When she explained what she had found, we decided that our first production task would be to make a simple refillable battery and a few insulated wires so we could have a priming and curing device to use on the sap products. After completing the battery, we tested it on some of the solids and discovered that by using direct current, we were able to cure them to complete hardness in just ten seconds instead of the 20 minutes required by the induction method. We did several more experiments and determined that when the materials were cured for less than six seconds by using a simple “21, 22, 23...” count, they hardened only to the point that they could still be machined if necessary. They could then be cured to complete hardness after any required finishing processes.

     We began to refer to the sap and its products simply as “the Material”, which we quickly shortened to just “M”. We coated a few hammers and other commonly used tools with one of the solids to make them permanently “M-converted”, but the only new product we managed to make that first day was a single reliable battery.

     Sylvie conducted two more experiments before leaving the shop that night. The first was to mix S3 and S7 to find that after curing, it emitted a brilliant, greenish-white light when a current was applied. Reha had never seen an artificial light source and stood looking at it in amazement. The second experiment was to mix S1 and S3, which somehow gave us a hotplate. I’m still not sure how that worked, but Sylvie said she’d just had a “hunch” about it. Seeing the results of her hunches being demonstrated to work exactly as she had guessed was an exhilarating experience. We went to bed that night feeling like little kids on Christmas morning.

     The next day we worked on the battery again to further refine it by sealing it while still making sure it was refillable. It had to be safe to carry anywhere, so it had to have sealed, protected terminals and insulated wires and connectors. We were satisfied with it by the end of the day, and we were able to begin mass production. The production model included two metre-long cables with insulated alligator clips. We also produced several reliable light bars for the shop so we would have adequate lighting to work on the more complex “basics”.

     Inge had kind of hitched up with us and decided to stay and help out. She asked me to show her how to work the lathes, and she was soon responsible for turning out the wooden moulds that were the beginning of any product. The positive and negative forms were all carved from a rare but extremely hard wood that could be polished to a mirror-smooth surface, which allowed us to turn out precision products. Inge seemed to have a natural hand for the work. She had an amazing eye for proportion and an unusual capacity for visualization. She could almost see what we wanted without needing extensive explanations. When I sketched a part for her, she delivered exactly what I needed every time. If she turned a piece and found a small bump on it that wasn’t quite right, she would take a file and hold it down for precisely the right amount of time to remove the imperfection and arrive at the correct specification. She amazed me on a daily basis.

     Ardos stood around in the shop for the first few days just watching how things took shape, but once he began to understand the importance of what was happening, it didn’t take long for him to jump right in and begin to help out. He was just a gofer at first, but he quickly progressed to actual manufacturing. He was given the moulds, poured the materials, and then cured the products to either machineable or permanent state depending on what we were making. I don’t think he really understood the reasons behind what he and we were doing, but he did seem to appreciate the urgency of it. His charm and happiness lit up the shop, and his English vocabulary increased day by day.

    After we had completed most of the basic items we would need, we still faced a huge problem: we needed ball and roller bearings. We nearly boiled our brains on the problem, but Inge and Tracie finally came up with a workable design. We greased it up with L5, and the bearing spun freely without any vibration or other undesirable behaviours. It was a relatively large piece with outer and inner diameters of five and 2.5 centimetres respectively, but it worked, and it demonstrated that the principle was sound. We could easily modify it to create the sizes we would need for other applications. With October approaching, we could now begin to work on the truly complex items.

     A final note from the beginnings of our shop: while we were working on the hardware, Sylvie was finally able to capture the missing 14th gaseous element. We began to collect it voraciously because it gave M another amazing quality. If one of the solids was exposed to the gas prior to curing, the solid foamed to nearly 30 times its original volume but retained twice the strength of steel.

The end of Chapter One.

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TINY EDEN BOOKS

A powerful story of adventure, love, & courage of one boy to one man

By Günter Konrad Heyes

"Just a little voice telling me, you are my best friend..."

Copyright © 1999-2008 Günter K. Heyes

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October 1994

TINY EDEN BOOKS

A powerful story of adventure, love, & courage of one boy to one man

By Günter Konrad Heyes "Just a little voice telling me, you are my best friend..."

Copyright © 1999-2008 Günter K. Heyes

GET YOUR COPY TODAY

October 1994

By Günter Konrad Heyes

"Just a little voice telling me, you are my best friend..."