Chapter 4

The narrator of a story enjoys many privileges unknown to the actors in the drama she sets forth. One of these is the existence of currents that shape the fate of her protagonists.

One of these currents was forming in a palace underneath a mountain on the far side of Earth's Moon. If and when the men and women of Earth reached their moon, they would find a fantastic world that would pose more questions than it answered. For in Man's Infancy, when he first left the Garden, the moon was a wondrous place, populated by a people who could be both beautiful and terrible. If ancient man had been able to gaze upon the surface of the moon, he would have found it covered it was magnificent purple seas and forests of myriad colors. The cities our ancestors would have seen would have been wondrous and magnificent in their glory, making the Wonders of the Ancient World seem like the crude constructions of a child on the beach. But in the seventeenth century, when Man first gazed upon the surface of the Moon with his telescope, he found a dead world. And so it was. Even on the far side of the moon, it would appear as a dead world. The remaining descendants of the race that had once made the Moon a world of beauty and delight lived underground in what the participants of the Edison Moon Project would consider marvelous structures, but which the original builders would have considered simple storage and work spaces to hold the tools they used for their true creations.

Not that these tools did their descendants any good. The tools were easy to weld by their ancestors, but for their descendants, they had become idols for veneration or dread, not to be approached lightly. Indeed, there were a few machines that continued running, providing an atmosphere for the few remaining underground 'palaces' and a very thin, barely breathable atmosphere for the moon as a whole, but these machines were slowly dying. In another three hundred years, if Man had not reached his own moon yet, he would only find the ruins of a once great civilization, and would be left to ponder where the inhabitants of the Moon had come from, and where had they gone.

In one of these palaces was a young princess (princess being the closest thing to her title that we would have in our language). She was quite tall for her race, standing a good 36 Metuans (or, as James Davidson would measure her, five foot two), which allowed her to look any warrior in the eye. She was a bit bosomy for the tastes of the males of her race, though she was otherwise quite fit. Her skin was a light emerald green, which was considered quite fitting for a cohort coming from her station, and she kept her pinkish green hair long, which was also considered fitting for a mate arriving from her class. And our Princess was known to channel an Ancestor.

Before we continue, perhaps it would be best to say something about our Princess and her people. Their word for themselves is 'human', the same as we call ourselves, but in their language, the word 'human' sounds like Toranth, so let us call them that. Although the Toranth once lived in grand cities across our Moon, the remaining few (numbering in the mere tens of thousands) now live underneath the far side of the moon. Though certain rituals will take them up to the surface of the moon, its barely breathable atmosphere (equivalent of living in the Andes) and the now unregulated rising and cooling of the surface make going to the surface unpalatable at best. Instead, the remaining Toranth live in enclaves beneath the moon, each enclave separated by forests which were once relaxing gardens but are now dangerous jungles. The Toranth are remarkable similar to humans, save their skin coloration range in hues from blue to green, depending on their enclave and their station (the remaining Toranth exist in a highly rigid caste society) and they are shorter in stature. And then there is the channeling of the Ancestor.

Although most of the machines of their ancestors are unusable by the Toranth, in each generation a few Toranth are born with the ability to mentally manipulate one or more of these machines. Of course, the Toranth don't know they are manipulating a machine. They believe they are channeling a spirit of an Ancestor that allows them this gift. Often, the channeling was something very trivial, such as being able to turn on or off a particular light from a distance. But once in a while, a great gift was bestowed. Such as with our Princess.

Our Princess (whose name is Ilanya, so we can cease referring to her simply as 'Our Princess') possessed the gift to warp space, though this is not how the Toranth understood or described it. She could 'shrink' herself to a mere 3 Metuans and move across distances very quickly. When she shrank herself, she also shrank her mass, a fact that she would have not found unusual, but would have befuddled the physicists on Earth. Of course, she was young, being only a mere 239 Luons (roughly 18 Earth Years), so what other skills she might develop one could only imagine.

And what offspring she could produce with another Ancestor Channeller was also a topic for much speculation. Especially by her father.

Ilanya's enclave was close enough to another enclave that travel between the two was not too hazardous. And the eldest son of that Enclave's ruler was also as gifted as Ilanya, but in a different manner. He was also something of a pig. But the marriage was arranged, and there was nothing that Ilanya could do to prevent it.

Well, there was one thing. By tradition of the Taranth, before a wedding, the bride went up on the surface an hour before the groom. If she could remained hidden from the groom for the equivalent of an Earth day, the groom would be considered unworthy, and the wedding would be called off. Of course, most of the time, the bride made it ridiculously easy for the groom to find her, and besides, no one really wanted to remain on the surface. And even though Ilanya wanted to escape her groom to be, she knew she had little chance of succeeding. For besides being a pig, her future husband's gift made him the greatest hunter the Taranth had seen in generations.

As princess Iliyana attempted to steel herself for what she perceived would be a futile chase and tortuous nuptials, preparations were being made on a small island on the blue and white globe around which the home of the Taranth orbited. Specifically, preparations were being made in two households on the island of St. Lucia. Both sets of preparations had many similarities, that is, they were both centered around a young woman, and her potential encounter with the head of the island's ethernaut training. But there their similarity ended.

In the household of Kido Aritomo, the Emperor's representative watched with a stern face as the English seamstress made the gown worn by his daughter, Kumiko, more modest. Not that the dress was unseemly, especially by western standards. Still, Aritomo felt a certain ... protectiveness toward his daughter, especially at a celebration with so many ethernauts and western journalists in attendance, two breeds who seemed to take pride in their voracious sexual appetites. Aritomo did not care to have his daughter to become the conquest of one of these Westerners.

Aritomo dismissed the seamstress, satisfied that a modicum of modesty had been preserved in his daughter's attire. Walking around his daughter with a stern eye, he said, "So you understand that you are to stay within my sight at all times, Kumiko?"

"Yes, father," Kumiko replied, her eyes cast down.

Aritomo relented slightly, as he added, "And if you feel your skills sufficient, I will arrange a dance for you with the head of the ethernaut corps, James Davidson."

Kumiko looked up, a smile appearing on her face, before she quickly composed herself. Aritomo's face remained stern, but inside he could not help but mentally chuckle. It was something of a joke among the various embassies that James Davidson could cut a swath among the younger women across the island, if he chose to. But the American had a rough sense of honor that various fathers and older brothers were relieved about. Davidson was one of the few Westerners who did not have to be instructed to refer to Aritomo as Ambassador Kido, not Ambassador Aritomo. A word with the chief ethernaut would also ensure that Davidson's male cohorts would understand that Kumiko was not to become a target for their amorous adventures.

Aritomo gave his final nod of approval and sent Kumiko to her quarters until it was time to leave for the celebration. Aritomo went to his office, removing an envelope from the inner pocket of his Western style jacket. Aritomo had read the dispatch as soon as it had arrived this morning, but he wanted to read it once more before destroying it. Not that he needed to read it again. Aritomo had already committed the gist of the dispatch to memory, but Aritomo was nothing if not thorough. He read the dispatch once more before destroying it. Aritomo then considered the box that had come with the dispatch. Once Aritomo knew the contents of the box, he almost smiled in public. Almost. He knew exactly the proper time and place to present it. Having it wrapped it in garishly colored paper that was seemingly favored by the Westerners in their celebrations, Aritomo considered it a Divine sign that the package had arrived at such an auspicious moment. Aritomo would deliver it as a birthday present to Davidson, and the interests of the Emperor would be served.

Not too far from the Kido household, preparations of a different sort were being made. Madam Dubois was adjusting the gown of her charge herself, but her aims were different than those of Ambassador Kido. Madame Dubois was trying to decide how much of her young charge's skin could be exposed without completely offending German and English sensibilities and having Madame Dubois and her young charge thrown out of the celebration.

The young charge in question, Marie Olivier, was not helping. Whenever Madame Dubois' attention was distracted, Marie would lower a hemline or make her décolletage less revealing. The girl's modest instincts could be maddening at times, and were upsetting Madame Dubois' ultimate goal, that is, gathering enough intelligence to insure herself a prestigious position in whatever government finally took form in France. It was not a game for the meek of heart, Madame Dubois chuckled to herself. Navigating different factions was difficult enough; doing so from thousands of miles away took all of her skills.

Marie would have been shocked to learn that Madame Dubois had only protected her virtue because it served her long-term goals. But the usefulness of Marie's virtue was quickly coming to a close. Tonight seemed the perfect opportunity to secure the services of one Mssr. James Davidson. The man affected a bourgeois morality that Madame Dubois could tell was merely a façade. Given the chance of sampling a beauty like Marie Olivier, Madame Dubois was positive the man would allow his manhood to do his thinking for him. And once Madame Dubois had that manhood in her clutches (via her surrogate Marie Olivier), it would be no problem leading the man around by it.

Marie pulled up her bodice again, only to have her hand slapped by Madame Dubois.

"Leave it there, girl. I know what I'm about," Madame Dubois told Marie, as Marie nursed her hand. "We want our Mr. Davidson to have a good view when he's looking down our front as the two of you dance. And remember, you pull this thread..." Madame Dubois lightly tugged on a seemingly errant threat at the waist of the dress "when you get Mr. Davidson alone. I'm quite sure he'll appreciate the ... wardrobe malfunction." Wardrobe malfunction, Madame Dubois chuckled to herself. A nice turn of phrase, that.

"Madame Dubois, I cann -- Ayyyyeeeee!"

The scream of pain had occurred when Madame Dubois had taken the pinky of Marie in her grasp, curling it and squeezing it.

"You will do as you are told. I have not taken care of you all these years just to see you ruin such a grand opportunity as this. It is too important to m -- to us. So you will do what you are told. Do you understand?"

Marie nodded, tears streaming silently down her face as she nursed her injured finger.