Chapter 69

I went in and showered and crawled into bed among my many naked women. Barb was still awake as she also heard my conversation with Kilnary, and Fred had connected her to our conversation too. She wanted to ask the secret question and told her honestly I didn’t know. “I just did it, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I thought it would let him know that I may have powers above his. I think that I scare him, here I am a lowly level 5 telepath, and a level 2 everything else and then he sees me do something like that. He was really flustered; one for being awakened in the middle of the night by me, of all people, and then secondly by the ghost images. Well I think he decided he was in over his head even if I was not a trained adept. Honey, I really need to rest, my headache is not getting any better. I need to shut down for a while, G’nite Baby.”

I put my shield up and was gone. Ambat woke me up by shaking me awake. “Bob, Barbara, and Fred need you in the office.” I looked at the clock and it was 10:32. I thought, ‘it can’t be night, because I went to bed at 11:00, it must be morning. I slept for almost 12 hours. Well I got up and quickly threw some clothes on and headed into the office. I saw four ghosts, Kilnary and three others. One was one of the species number 2 and two others I didn’t know. One of them was an insectoid type of humanoid and the other one looked like one of the Trwennkleihjof. “Kilnary I see you are here and you brought some friends, would you please introduce them? I am sure you have met my wife, Barbara.”

“Of course Bob, This is jksnsywe^((@^... } he is of the Lzadmne+(U^#@)) species.” [The insectoid one; species number 1.]

“How do you do,” I said as I bowed to him. “I cannot begin to pronounce your name, may I call you Jenkswe?”

“It would be alright, I guess, until this unpleasantness is over. But I don’t like it.” I could see Kilnary and the Trwennkleihjof trying to get his attention to shut up.

“I am so sorry that my mouth cannot pronounce the characters and sounds of your name. Maybe I should just remove myself from this mission and let you find another. Excuse me gentlemen you can all leave now.” I took Barbara’s hand and we started to the door.

Kilnary said something in a language I did not understand and then the insectoid said something back and then disappeared. Kilnary asked, pleadingly, “Bob, please excuse jksnsywe^((@^... }, he is no longer one of our group. His thinks that because he is a level 10 adept that he is better than the rest of us. We do not need his insolence, may we please continue.” I nodded. “Bob this is Trewegin of the Trwennkleihjof. I believe you have met some of his species before, yes?”

“Yes Kilnary, I have met Captain Snart and his family, in fact we ate a meal together in my cave just a few days ago. Trewegin, it is an honor to meet you.”

“You are the crazy Bob that Snart has been talking about?”

“Yes sir, I am; I take it he has been laughing and telling everyone about my craziness.”

“No Bob, he has nothing but praise for you. Not only did you come up with a solution to a seemingly unfixable problem, but you got Snart and Carmaletta together again and she has changed greatly. They no longer call her the bitch of space. I want to thank you. Your wives advice to her has changed a great number of men’s lives. She has been singing your praise all over the galaxy. Forgive me I take up too much time.”

Kilnary said, “Bob, this is Fortmers, he is of the KJIK... , ops HJSDD + species.” [The Killjops species, or species 2, remember. BR]

“Welcome to my office Fortmers, I hope we can solve your problem.”

“Bob, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. I am deeply sorry for taking you during your sleep, but you now know why we felt we must.”

“Yes Fortmers, I do understand now, but let us get to the matter at hand. I will need to visit your world at least once to determine if I can do what I was trained to do. I will need to have access to the areas around the house of your tyrant, also around this building he holds office in. I will also need to see the route he takes to see his mistresses.”

All three ghosts looked even paler than they were. Kilnary stammered, “But Bob how did you find out that much information already?”

“Kilnary, I have my ways and I have my secrets about what I know and how I know things. But is it possible to have access to those areas? I will have my exposed skin stained to mimic your skin tone Fortmers. I will even have a new nose. Can your group give me the access? If not then I will have to look at this again to see how I can infiltrate your world and stay hidden. If I cannot, then I’m afraid this mission is a loss.”

“Bob, you had mentioned an alternative plan last night, but you would need much more information for it to be possible. Is there anything we can do to help to get you that information?”

“No Kilnary that information will have to come from a different source. I do not believe you could help me with this matter. Why don’t you go back and discuss this with your group and see if you can get me the access. I have two things left we need to discuss. First, what has been the response to my suggestion about the triarchy and representative government and second about the list of candidates for the offices of the three rulers?”

Fortmers said, “Bob your suggestions sound very good. We are working on this list and I really think that the government run by three rulers would be very good. How would we divide up the country for the representatives?”

“That is simple Fortmers. Just find out where people live and how many live in a specific area, like a city or rural area. Then for every say 5 percent of the total population you would have a representative elected from the area. The representative would have to live in the area he was elected from. Therefore you would have 20 representatives elected. Now if the population is too much, say over 10 billion people, then you would be better off if you divided up the land mass into separate countries. Then each division would have its own government. Do you even have a guess as to how many people are on the major land mass?”

“Yes Bob, we just finished a count. We have a land mass of just over, just a moment, it would be an equivalent of about 65 million square miles and our population on that land is just over 548 million people.”

“That is just about 8.5 people per square mile, so you would need 105 representatives to represent that many people. So that would have each representative come from a population of about 5.2 million people. That’s not too bad; that should be workable. You really need to have about 4 million per representative, or 137 elected officials, but you can see how that works.” I could see that Kilnary and Trewegin were kind of looking weary, so I thought we should cut this short. “How about we try to get together about this time every other day? Would that kind of schedule work for your group?”

Kilnary said that would seem reasonable and it would allow them to have time to get some answers to my questions today. They left and I mentioned to Fred and Barb how I thought that it was straining them too much to maintain a ghost image here with us. “I projected a ghost image of Barbara and myself to them the whole time and it didn’t strain me one bit. I may be getting stronger.”

Fred said, “I think you are right Bob, you seem to thrive on this challenge and you are right, their mental signature seemed to be wavering towards the end there. By the time this is over, you may not have to be trained. You may already have figured it out on your own.”

“I doubt that very much, Fred. I may be more powerful than they are, but being untrained, I can probably hurt someone without meaning to, like I did Barb and your people with my broadcast. I have been told by martial arts teachers that I know just enough martial arts to be very dangerous because I know how to hurt, maim, and kill, but I didn’t learn the discipline along with the teachings. By that they meant that I could use a move to hurt, or stop a move, but because I haven’t trained properly, I may use too little force and be in trouble or use too much and maim or kill when I was not trying to do that much damage.”

“Yes Bob, I think I can see how that would be very dangerous. But you may surprise yourself. I have seen you teaching Harlou and the others. When you train Harlou, you are gentler and you explain more. He is becoming very much like you, he could become very dangerous just like you. But your teaching is showing him a gentler way, and you explain the consequences of too much force or not enough. I think that both of you are learning the discipline that the teachers said you did not have before. I think your mental talents will probably be the same. As you learn more of what you can do, you will learn the discipline along with it. That broadcast scared you because of the results you got. I would think that one occurrence would temper your responses in the future.”

“I do believe you may very well be right Fred. I know I think a little more before I act, rather than react like I did then. We’ll talk more a bit later, Fred; I think now I need to show my face to my people today.”