As for Selena, Mark, Jim and the rest of that merry band of mass murderers we left them out in the forest. Pigs have to eat, don't they? My shoulder mended but took a hell of a time to do it and meanwhile Mike exercised formidable brain power and taught himself to fly that daunting orbital lander, egged on by Mary. She wanted to get away from here, from me and he wanted to take the thing back to Montana where he was convinced the Americans had stored all sorts of goodies we were going to need. We certainly could do with more twenty third century technology because Melanee had come up with the plan to save the children. Even Mary was taken aback at the idea, a brain wave that made Mike regard Melanee with renewed astonishment. Me? I just carried out orders and slept every night close to Melanee. If she ever left me, I knew madness would descend within minutes. Every night I saw faces, faces of those I had killed and only Melanee could take them away.
But the children? We bring back all those intelligent ladies from Winchester and sundry other places in Europe, plus their menfolk and children and we build a town, a city. We have to have a community big enough to cope with an influx of babies who would need more care than usual. Mad? I think it’s an insane idea but we're going to do it, in fact we've started already.
Mike spent hours in that machine, his book of words from the all-seeing ships computer telling him how to pilot a complex military space hopper weighing twenty tons at least. He had to plonk it down in Winchester and all those other places where the tiny population had put down roots. They must have been scared witless but they came and the women understood. All over Europe, they came here, and we have a small town already with shady roads and clean streams.
Melanee organises it all and they treat her like a Goddess and I'm beginning to think they're right. She has the answers, she smiles and they listen, they learn about technology. She takes them down in batches to see their children to be and they stand in silent wonder, gazing at the lines of frozen children, tots of the future. Melanee has targeted five hundred at a time and she wants to get Mary and Mike to try and establish some kind of conversation with the groups in America. There must be another Melanee there, she thinks, and we need her.
It all sounds so far-fetched but I'm starting to believe it myself. Mike departed eventually in a thunderous roar and began the task of repopulating this part of France. I'm slightly surprised that he didn't crash head first into the nearest mountain but he's clever and so is Mary, I keep forgetting. It's starting to feel almost crowded in our quiet forest. The pigs have retired to a respectful distance and as for bears, they, true to type, have taken to appearing at odd times, sniffing around for a free meal. Without Marie and her plant expertise we had the hell of a time finding out how to collect the right sort of seeds and grow them, but crops and food we have to have. Melanee's master plan allows for a settlement near the big river where we can add fish to the menu. How she keeps all those vast chunks of knowledge floating around her head without turning it all into a kind of mental porridge, I have no idea, but soon she will have to rest because the child is due. That woman from Winchester is a natural born matron, ordering me about while her acolytes prepare for the big day. She tells me when to appear and disappear, but she doesn't converse, none of them do. They don't talk to me, only Melanee does.
They know what I did. I don't know how but they do. No, they don't worry about the execution of Selena and her demented followers, they never met them. It's what happened ten millennia ago they know about and they all look at me as if they would like me to turn to stone. It's no good telling them I didn't know, didn't realise, they wouldn't understand and in any case it's true.
It seems that females are going to rule the new world. All the men, despite initial homicidal tendencies, are, well, not retarded but limited, bereft of initiative, of originality, of ambition. That damned pill, I suppose, but that leaves me and Mike the only remaining examples of Homo superior around. Maybe the new generation will turn out like the old but who can tell?
We're going to call our son Adam. What else? Melanee tells me she can teach enough of the women to work the sophisticated incubation process to make them independent of her in time, and she wants us, her and me, to take our son and go back to the country I came from all those years ago. She says they treat her like a deity, but they know she is not one of them and never will be. They want to be left to run things, they want to grow the new world and she wants us, the different ones, to go away and raise our own children in a quiet place with greenery and memories. Mary and Mike will join us, she is sure, but I wonder, remembering their horror.
So, we've decided to leave this record for anyone interested enough to want to know how it all began. It's our testament, a gift of heritage if you like. It's not a bad story and we are not bad people, just fallible ones who knew too much. We hope one day Adam will be able to read this and remember Linda, Elizabeth, Bradley, Hilary, Marie and Jules, who came down with us and paid the price for our victory. How will it all end? We will never know, but we have done our best, or our worst, according to taste. We were part of a civilisation that went to the stars. Maybe, in time, the new people will learn about the ship still silently circling over us. If they are clever enough, then they too can go to the stars. We hope that when they come back, they will find a world with people, the new world, the one we gave them. Not the one we explored, but new none-the-less. If Marie is right, we'll see how they get on after we have gone.
Goodbye.
Acknowledgements
My thanks and gratitude are due to my wife for her unstinting support, my daughter, Juliet for all her efforts on my behalf to interest publishers and agents, my granddaughter Katie for arranging this publication, designing the cover and general enthusiasm. Writing this has been a long effort and the backing and support of the family made a difference.
About the Author
George Erlynne was born in Whitstable, Kent, his roots in Kent going back centuries. Aged 81 now, living in Folkestone, Kent, married over fifty years to a long-suffering wife and enjoying children and grandchildren. He is an active sportsman, getting slower now, a compulsive reader, fascinated by Sci-Fi, and interested in history, military matters and cosmology.
After a career in insurance following army service he is retired but still an avid Sci-Fi enthusiast. This is his first book.
Cover designed by Katie Turney
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