The Atlantean Way

by Ostercy

An "autohagiography" of Jacqueline Natla, dealing with her life in the 20th century and her memories of Atlantis. Complete.

Prologue

November 25th 1996.

Press conference at Natla Technologies HQ, USA.

Natla Tech PR: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you didn't have too much trouble getting here through the storm. There are more seats over here to the right. If I could ask that flash photography could be kept to a minimum until afterwards? I'd like to introduce you to the Head of Security for Natla Technologies who will be taking questions in a minute, but firstly I shall now read a brief statement. In October of this year Jacqueline Natla, founder and CEO of Natla Technologies, went on a fact finding mission to one of our mines situated in the former Soviet Union. The mine, called the Golden Pyramid Mine, is situated here (points to map) on the Black Sea coast, in a disputed region next to Georgia called Abhazia, and produces manganese and various trace metals. At some time during the night of 15th October fighting broke out around the mine complex, presumably between the local sides in the civil war. Approximately two hours later an uncontrollable fire began somewhere in the mine which resulted in a large explosion. Part of the mountain side above the mine workings was destroyed and debris was thrown for several miles. Tremors were felt as far away as the coast of Turkey. At this time Jacqueline Natla is still missing although every effort is being made to establish her whereabouts. Obviously this is a time of great worry and distress for Ms. Natla's immediate family and for the employees of Natla Technologies, but we shall endeavour to continue as usual during this difficult time. Thank you. Are there any questions?

There followed several questions about the search and rescue efforts being made and about the Natla Technologies share price. Then;

Press: One of Ms. Natla's more altruistic activities was an interest in world archaeology, and yet over the past year there have been a number of unfortunate incidents. For example her Head of Archaeology, Dr. Pierre DuPont, was found dead in an archaeological site in Northern Cyprus. Reports suggest that he had been beaten to death using the stone hoof of an equestrian statue.

Head of Security: That is correct.

Press: And one of your own security personal, a Mr. Larson Conway, was recently shot to death at an archaeological site in Peru.

Head of Security: That is correct.

Press: Would it be true to say that the level of security at Natla Technologies is not very high?

Head of Security: There are some very ruthless people out there, and Natla Tech is a worldwide organisation. It's impossible to stop all of the incidents all of the time.

Press: Is it true that Natla Tech had hired Lara Croft, well known international criminal, as part of your archaeology team?

Head of Security: We did hire Dr. Croft as part of our team. She was hired thanks to her experience working in hostile terrains and because she is a graduate of the Cambridge University Archaeology Department. Unfortunately we had to let her go after a valuable artefact went missing. As far as I know she is neither an "international criminal", as you describe her, nor has she anything to do with the incident at the Golden Pyramid Mine.

The press conference was then interrupted by the unscheduled appearance of Jacqueline Natla's twin ten-year-old sons, Nasatya and Dasra, who insisted on facing the press. A couple of questions were asked about how the boys were coping without their mother. Then;

Press: Your mother was known as rather an unusual woman. Is it true that she believed that she had been a Queen of Atlantis in a former life?

Das: My mother isn't dead.

Press: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ...

Das: It's OK.

Nas: Yes, Mama Jackie thought that she was a Queen of Atlantis. Some people get hypnotised and think they're Cleopatra.

Press: What do you think about that?

Nas: If she's right, I guess that makes me a Prince of Atlantis. (General laughter.) I shall do what princes always do. Which is to look after my mother's things. With the advisors and with my brother.

Das: And Amanda.

Nas: UntilMama Jackie returns.

Das: And I'd like to say - it doesn't matter where Mama Jackie is queen of. She's always behaved like a queen and that's all that really matters ...

Natla Tech PR: No more questions.

---

Chapter One: Clouds Are Far Behind Me (1945)

Imagine the scene.

A figure on the slope of an extinct volcano, running first this way and that, stumbling on the rocks under the desert sun. There are two noises - one, a woman's voice swearing and screaming in a foreign tongue, and the other, a harsh metallic bleeping, changing speed as the figure changes direction.

It was Monday July 16th 1945, and I was kinda lucky not to be spotted. I guess the "event" - local MPs were talking of an exploding ammunition dump at Alamogordo that had taken out the window panes for hundreds of miles all around - kept everybody indoors or hanging round the bars gossiping. Nobody to witness me, in my smouldering black suit and helmet, stumbling about wondering who had let me out and where the hell I was. However, it wasn't the explosive blast of Trinity that freed me from stasis - a mere shockwave could not have pierced the time-halted barrier - but the electronic pulse that by some quirk of physics had switched off my prison walls.

The beeping was from my helmet - black and conical, with a reddish brow and a triangular symbol on the forehead - and signified, as far as I could tell, danger. I knew it had saved my brains from frying during my incarceration but I didn't know it had some sort of survival programme built in. If I walked east down the slope of Jornada del Muerto towards Ground Zero it shrieked, but if I headed west around the edge of the caldera, it shrieked less.

I pulled the helmet off in exasperation and found that all my yellow hair came with it, leaving me as bald as an egg. I should have been dismayed, but I was glad I was breathing - hair seemed neither here nor there. I looked for an off switch on the helmet - there was none - and was forced to put it back on lest I got sunburnt. At least my suit - some black slithery Atlantean pseudo-rubber - was keeping me cool and protected from the heat. On my wrists the cuffs that had held me fast, similarly embedded with something bioelectrical. They'd been designed for something else more than mere handcuffs, but for what I had no idea. Time would tell.

I headed back up the slope - where was the Execution Platform and the statues of Qualopec and Tihocan, I wondered? - and tried to find the place I had been ejected from. There was a hole in the lava and my prison, its giant metallic lid thrown far away by some esoteric force as the enclosure popped open, lay buried and surprisingly pristine after so many millennia at the bottom. I cannot explain how my cage became buried by lava - geologists claim that the Jornada del Muerto erupted many millennia before my time. Maybe some un-natural force melted the rocks and my prison sank into it like a static Titanic. I didn't really care.

I poked about and found a bag. They'd thrown my bag in with me. Who had done that? My handbag, let's call it, with a few personal items in it. Not very useful, but very comforting. That and the jewellery I could feel beneath my suit was the sum total of my material worth. Now I had to find civilisation and announce myself returned.

There as nothing else - I'd have been happy to find a flask of drink or some dried fruit - but no. There wasn't even a plaque saying who I was and why I'd been locked up.

I climbed out and headed west until the helmet shut up, and then kept going.

* * * * *

I found the Rio Grande and a bridge and on seeing the bridge, and the highway, and my first cars, I realized that I'd been thrown out of Oz and into Kansas. It was as if the Wicked Witch of the West had been plonked into Depression Era dustbowl country with no magic powers, no flying monkeys and no command of American English, wondering if she'd be able to blend into the local population whilst wearing her black pointy hat.

I hid under the bridge spans by the riverbank, every now and again hearing the rattle of a vehicle above. Everything looked so grey and shabby, even the motorised machines passing by. It was a world of dust and rust.

At least I had water, although the helmet wasn't happy at the quality. It "booped" and flashed a vermilion "eye" if held too close to the river. I expect there were fish, but saw none. I found a quarter pint leather bottle in my handbag and stored a few mouthfuls of liquid for later. A raggedly dog sniffed up at one point, but I wasn't about to eat raw dog. It must have sensed my thoughts, for it ran off without a woof.

Somehow I managed to hide without being picked up by a military patrol or the local Pueblo folks and as darkness fell crossed the river and headed north. I could see lights and trains and a loading yard across the water and a glow on the horizon, but I headed westwards up the bed of an arroyo, trying to climb high enough to get my bearings.

After a few hours of scrapes and bangs and curses I found a small rock cliff and in the face the entrance of a cave. I crawled in - neither smilodon nor snake could pierce my garment, I reassured myself - and fell asleep.

* * * * *

When I awoke I discovered two things. The cave was bigger than I thought - it had two entrances some way apart - and I had spent the night in the company of a dead body.

The body was of a woman of indeterminate age, semi-mummified. For some reason the flies hadn't got at her.

She too had a bag, and a paper slip containing a kind of dry corn bread, which I ate with some relish. There was also a cloudy little glass bottle of alcohol with a coloured label which I couldn't read. I set it aside for later. The most useful thing about her were her clothes and her hair. Using her small pocket knife, I peeled the fragile scalp from her skull so that her black hair came away in one piece. By judicial application of water and alcohol I made myself a wig fitted close to my bald head. It smelt of musty perfume, but there was no infestation of any kind, and it was no worse than donning a fox fur hat.

She herself was very short and so although her dress fit me about the body, the hem was high on my thighs. There were shabby leggings and underwear, none too clean, and sandals that were too small. I had resolved to make an expedition to the river after dark to wash what I could when it started to rain, so I used a bush outside as a clothesline.

She too had a number of objects in her personal holdall. There was a pair of leopard print sunglasses, and some cardboard identity passes, one with a faded black and white photo. I peered at the photo and wondered if I resembled the deceased now that I was wearing her hair. I had the same dark skin colour but everything else was wrong.

I examined her body with professional interest. Some wasting disease - not hunger - had killed her, as far as I could see. It reminded me of death from over- exposure to the Scion, and besides, the helmet didn't like her corpse. I propped her up in a niche, covering her withered nakedness with dried grasses, like a respected ancestor.

* * * * *

My military and hunting skills were transferable.

My haul included denim trousers, boots and various other items of apparel, pies from window sills and apples from stalls, a Zippo lighter which wasn't much use as I couldn't light a fire and best of all - a battery-powered T601 Pilotuner radio. I adored the radio. It had a wooden body with rounded edges, and was worked by two bakelite knobs. By experimentation I soon discovered a local station, KTEB out of Albuquerque. I could listen for the first time, if not understand, to American English and hear the primitive music of this fallen civilisation - "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" sung by Johnny Mercer, "Don't Fence Me In" - Bing Crosby and "Rum and Coca-Cola" by the Andrews Sisters. If I could have only translated them I'd have learned all there was to know about my new New World.

I'd sing along, and got quite good at imitation;

"Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola

Go down Point Koomahnah

Both mother and daughter

Workin' for the Yankee dollar

From Chicachicaree to Mona's Isle

Native girls all dance and smile

Help soldier celebrate his leave

Make every day like New Year's Eve."

I'd try and adapt a courtly dance, padding out the precise footsteps on the sandy cave floor.

So the time passed, with me picking up a few words and pleased to be left alone with the dead women. But then I met the two people who were change my destiny - Mr. Elwood Gato, who gave me my first home and Miss Jacqueline Love, who gave me her name in exchange for my heart.

* * * * *

From the journal of Mr. Elwood Gato, Socorro County 1945

Sept. 10th

"Today I met a most curious woman & although I have met a number of these in my eighty years as lawman & attorney-at-law, this lady made me pause. I surprised her in the act of burgling my house & naturally arrested her, cuffing her wrist to the armchair whilst I decided the best course. My first though was that she was some sort of deranged Anglo, as she is very tall & has the bluest of eyes, but she neither understood English nor Spanish. From her sparse utterances I gathered her name is Natalya & so may be a White Russian of sorts, maybe known at the Orthodox Church. She is unlikely to be as her documents say a Santana Quintero, member of the Mine Mill Union, employee of the Playas Grants Uranium District Mill & housekeeper with a high security pass for the military base out at the old McDonald Ranch.

Snra. Natalya has a most regal & calm air. I offered a cigarillo, which she did not know how to smoke until I showed her & then she smiled & bowed most graciously. Her apparel is a mismatch of styles; a cotton dress worn as a shirt, some men's denim, a rancher's coat & boats. She may be illiterate or an illegal but there is a fierce intelligence & spirit there.

To test my theory that she may be some sort of lost Russian ‚migr‚, I took down my framed cover of Time Magazine with Comrade Stalin named as Man of the Year 1940, & showed it to her, but she seemed to have difficulty with it, as if her eyesight was defective, turning the surface this way & that. However I have seen similar before the Great War with old Pueblo women who cannot recognise their own photograph never having seen one & unable to interpret the flat image. I pointed at Comrade Stalin & tried to indicate my admiration, mimicking tall, & saluting, & such, but she looked confused. She placed the picture against the wall & with a questioning glance bowed down to it, murmuring some prayer or other. I'd have told her that although we in the New Mexican Communist Party revere Brother Stalin & his defeat of fascism, we didn't really see him as a holy saint.

At length I decided that I had no heart to turn her over to the sheriff & put the attempted burglary down to a misunderstanding & loosed her hand. She grabbed up her stuff (and rather cheeky my cigarillos!!) & ran from the house. If I were not so old I'd have been feeling el amor."

Sept. 16th

"For a few days I was in a fix about the documents. Where had the ‚migr‚ obtained them & such. I figured that if I reported it I'd stir up a hornet's nest for Snra. Santana Quintero that she'd not thank me for etc. I have my own reasons not to involve myself with the Anglo Military Police & besides which of these cares about a Mexican housekeeper etc.

Then to my surprise today near evening I heard an eerie warbling at the back door (which looks over scrubs & scrat & such behind the house this providing hidden approach if you're of a mind) & there apparently wearing all her clothes & with a full sack over her shoulder was Snra. Natalya looking as if candy wouldn't melt.

I tried a stern face & said girly what you want? But she bowed most elegantly & bless me if she didn't begin to sing a song, possibly a foreign version of "Don't Fence Me In" with many queer steps & gestures. When she had completed this exhibition she handed me a jewelled bracelet & kneeling down with her forehead on the dirt waited for my reaction.

I worried her by bursting out laughing but drew her up & sitting her at the kitchen table we shared a meal of chilli & tamales + beer which she devoured like a starving dog, her eyes shining & with much appreciation & miming of smacking of lips & rubbing of belly. It seems I may have a new house guest."

* * * * *

Sitting here in my office at the Pajarito Mesa ranch house and reading Elwood's notebooks from forty years ago, I am surrounded by many of his personal effects. I guess he was a father figure to me by the end. I'm amused that a few weeks after the victory over Japan and the dropping of the bomb he doesn't think it worth a mention. Elwood's world view seems to have been stuck before WW2, which is perhaps he managed to tolerate me.

Gradually, slowly, I began to acclimatise. My hair began to grow back and I discovered black henna. My clothes became more inconspicuous, and I was careful to wear flats to minimise my height. Elwood taught me my ABC, and what with the radio and Life magazine and the movies and the arrival in a local hall of our first television, I soon learned several hundred words of American English and American Spanish, although I couldn't at first lose a tendency pronounce "R" as "W". Elwood would introduce me as "Natalya", his long-lost daughter from Albania, the result of a liaison in the 1920's with a beautiful but mysterious Ninotchka from a visiting European trade union delegation, and I kept house for him - luckily for me I had been born in a condition of domestic servitude and knew what to do. Elwood used his status as a lawyer and friend of local law enforcement to procure me documents that allowed me, as Natalya Gato, to live freely (if temporarily) in New Mexico. His status as a local legend - started long ago when as a teen sheriff he had held off a posse of Texan criminals single- handed - was only even enhanced, which made him chuckle greatly.

One cold morning I was huddled against the flakes of snow as I went to try and buy some fresh vegetables - rare as amethyst with the tail end of rationing - when I spotted a figure walking down the main street. She ducked into a bar and so, pulling my head scarf tight around my face, I peeped in through the swing doors.

Several things about her made her stand out. First was her uniform, which was very smart, and topped with a light brown beret. A silver badge glittered on her breast and her long legs ended in sensible highly-polished shoes. Her hair was golden, her eyes were cornflower blue and she was almost as tall as me. She sat on a stool, ordered tequila in a forthright way despite the early hour and lit a cigarette. My heart gave a thump and I grew "weak at the knees" as the euphemism goes.

I plucked up my courage (I had never been in a bar before) and ordered the first drink I could remember - the "Coca-Cola", which I had deduced was made of coca leaves, coffee beans, caramel and beet sugar. How bad could it be, I reasoned?

The Anglo woman - "Anglo" was the name for a class of American usually not local and often with white skin - didn't even see me. She moodily blew smoke rings through her full lips and her eye-lashes drooped in what looked a lot like self pity.

I took off my head scarf and sat at a table well within her potential line of sight, staring hopefully at her. I guess with my naturally tawny skin and dyed-black hair I looked like an "invisible" Pueblo woman (which in most cases was a good thing but in this case was most certainly not).

Eventually she glanced at me and so I gave her my most "Atlantean Royal Family" smile and said "Good evening!"

"Hey sis," said the woman. To my joy she came over and say down. She held out her hand which I fortunately knew not to kiss but to shake. "USWAFP Jacqueline Love. Pleased to meetcha."

"Mi nombwe es Natla Gato," I said confidently.

"Natalie, eh?"

"Natla." I found myself making archaic hand gestures. "Na-tla."

"Like I said, pleased to meet you."

At first I contented myself with gazing full into her face. She was my very own Andrews Sister. Then I realised that I had no idea about the local etiquette and that she was beginning to look amused but faintly embarrassed. So I attempted conversation.

I held out my fingers in as asexual a way as I could manage, and indicated the winged silver badge on her chest. "Que ... what ees this ... jewel?"

"Oh that," said Jacqueline Love, looking down. "My squadron. Strictly civilian but working for Uncle Sam. The Women Auxiliary Ferry Pilots, recently disbanded. Used to fly them big birds from the factory down here to the air base. B52's, you name it, I drove it."

I stroked my long nails a few millimetres from her jacket shoulder, indicating a badge sewn there. For reasons that will become clear I was entranced by the cartoon of a winged woman.

"And theese?"

"That's ole Fifinella, squadron mascot. Designed for us by Mr. Walt Disney himself of Donald Duck fame. She's a gremlin but a lucky girl gremlin, if you know what I mean."

"Es muy guapa - pwetty - jus' like you."

Jacqueline blushed, which thrilled me to my cheap underwear. "Hey thanks a lot," she said. "Glad someone appreciates me - you're a pal. You're quite the looker yourself on the QT."

I almost gasped as I deduced I was being complemented and my mouth because dry. I gulped some of the Coca-Cola and the bubbles made me sneeze. "You bwave solidier with beautiful sweetheart?"

"Never was and now not even a pilot. And no, there's no Mr. Love. Can't say most of the men round here impress me much. Tell you want - lemme buy you a real drink."

"A weal dwink?" I said, looking at the Coca-Cola in confusion.

"How about a shot of rum in that?"

A light bulb went on in my head. "Ah - el wum and coca-cola." I hummed a little of the tune, and she giggled. "Si. Es muy bueno senowita Yackaleena."

To cut a long story short ... reader, I seduced her. I'll spare you the details but I have in front of me an exact list of the clothing that those USWAFP girls wore, straight from the army manual;

Beret ... kiss

Gloves ... kiss

Jacket ... kiss

Black tie ... kiss

Shoes ... kiss

White shirt ... kiss

Skirt ... kiss

Hose ... kiss

Standard issue bra ... kiss

Standard issue underpants ... kiss

* * * * *

Naked, Jacqueline Love shone like a lantern. She didn't comment on the two large scars over my shoulder blades and upper back - in fact, she never asked. I guess she figured I'd say what I had to say when and if I felt like saying it. Although she had never had a "pash" on a girl before, as she put it, she was OK with our "high jinks" provided we kept it a close secret. Elwood was indifferent to us; as far as he could say we were just best friends, holding hands, giggling and chastely pecking each other on the cheek. Jacqueline was permitted for "sleepovers" and "house parties" once Mr. Gato had established that she wasn't a real member of the American military, which would have offended his political and anti-government sensibilities.

"Te quiero," I said to her as we lay in my bed at Mr. Gato's house.

"I love you too," said Jacqueline.

"We mawwied."

"If you like."

"I take your name - es tradicionales en el Estados Unidos?"

"I guess, for man and wife."

"Yackaleena Natla."

"Like the Hungarians. Last name first."

I didn't understand her so I did what I always did, which happened quite frequently - I kissed her all over till she screamed. But the name stuck.

* * * * *

Slowly I felt confident enough to let my hair return to blonde. The local women didn't like it, but they were convinced that I was Elwood's secret lover rather than his "daughter" and so it didn't make much difference.

"Like Jean Harlow," I say, pulling off my headscarf to tease them. "Platinum blonde."

"Puta," they'd say, making the Catholic sign of the cross.

"Welcome to the twentieth century," I'd retort.

Then, one summer night as Jacqueline and I sat "spooning" in the covered enclosure of the swing seat round the back of the house, there was a flash across the sky and a barely audible "thump" from the distant hill.

'My Lord!" she whispered, straightening her clothing. ""What the ... juice was that?"

I was staring intently at the point of impact, my heart racing. "An aeroplane?" I suggested.

"We'd better get up there and take a look. Go get the flashlight. And the shotgun shells from the mantelpiece. Don't wake Mr. Gato!"

The New Mexico night is a fine thing to behold, especially if the stars and moon are out. Tonight it was overcast, and the usual sounds of fauna - muted. As we struggled uphill through the drizzle I reflected that life would be a lot easier if we had horses - Poseidon's own animal, Blessings Be Upon Him.

There was a smell of smouldering rubber as we approached the crash sight, and tiny fires flickering in the undergrowth. As we moved closer and closer, we found the heat from the burning greasewood all around to be intense. I could feel heat through the soles of my shoes; the air was humid from the light rain, and stifling.

Suddenly there was an unearthly shriek, and we grabbed each other's hands.

"Get down!" whispered Jacqueline.

"What is it?" I whispered back. "It sounds like ... some sort of ..."

We peeked over the rise. Below us were wisps of smoke and a long, wide gash in the earth, with what I could best describe in my mind's eye as a "manufactured object" lying cockeyed and partially buried, surrounding by a large field of debris.

"Look!"

I peered at the wreck. Strange looking creatures were moving around inside. They looked under stress and moved fast; in the bad light it seemed as if they were able to will themselves from one position to another in an instant. They were shadowy and expressionless, but definitely living beings.

"Whatever they are, they are definitely non-human," I observed.

Jacqueline's mouth fell open. ""Aliens?" she said, hollowly.

"No," I said, a sudden smile of recognition all over my face. "Monkeys." I gave a her a good long kiss and then started down the slope.

The monkeys - a pair of Rhesus monkeys - were dressed in little flight suits and little flight helmets, and although they were distressed they appeared unhurt. One look at me and they gambolled out of the vehicle and jumped up into my arms.

"Hello my pretties!" I said, and gave them a hug and a nuzzle.

"Careful, Nat. They might have a disease."

"Don't be a goon. They're perfectly cute, aren't you babies? And someone loves them, or they wouldn't be running to me for a cuddle."

The monkeys had stopped making alarmed shrieks and seemed almost to be falling asleep, their arms draped around my neck.

"Shh!" I murmured. "Mummy's here. We'll get you back to the ranch house for an apple and a nice cup of water and a warm blankie soon enough. Auntie Jackie just has to check out your little plane so she can phone in a report to the Air Force."

* * * * *

Mr. Gato seemed kinda keen on the monkeys; I'd thought he'd object to having them in the house, but he loved them. He named them Jesse and Frank and gave them their own room. He taught Jesse to how to smoke cigarillos.

Jacqueline rang the crash in and the Army came in trucks and took it all away. (She'd already signed official secrets act and they already knew her from USWAFP, so they were relieved). We kept the monkeys secret. However it was not long before some local boys - who had been there before us - started an alien rumor. Reading the local paper I wondered, wistfully, if there were any Olympeans still alive and whether, if they knew of the presence on earth of one of their most faithful servants, they come in their knife-prowed ships to rescue me. The Army said the wreck was a meteorological balloon.

As for what it really was - one day I found Jacqueline fiddling with a piece of metal on the kitchen table. The word "C-stoff" could just been seen painted onto the surface, in a Gothic script.

"Some sort of Nazi invention," she explained. "A jet plane. They must have captured a bunch and were testing them over at Holloman AFB."

I put my arms around her. "Why the big secret?"

"I guess they don't want the Russians to know. Plus people don't like anything Nazi."

I nodded. "Because they started the war."

"Not just. They killed cripples and mental defectives and Catholics and Jews. Anyone they didn't like. It's all coming out."

I could see why people might object to killing too many Jews, even if they were enemies of the state, but why object to a cull of genetic aberrations? I guessed I'd figure it all out eventually, but I found it confusing. One thing was for sure - I wasn't in Atlantis any more.

There were two spin offs from the "UFO" incident which had a large effect on my life. One was tuberculosis (for Mr. Gato) and the other was a job offer (for Jacqueline).

"Read this," said Jacqueline one day, handing me a letter. "Those guys from the Air Force put in a word for me. They were pissed that we were just laid off with no citation or anything after doing all that vital war flying."

It was an invitation to fly to Japan and be a reporter for a newspaper.

"I'll come," I said.

"Girlie," said Mr. Gato, stopping to cough up blood. He'd caught the disease from the monkeys and he was determined to die without aid of doctors. "You have not got papers or a passport."

"Then don't go," I said to Jacqueline.

At roughly the same time Mr. Gato drew up the papers to legally adopt me as his daughter.

"When I die this house is yours, gaupa," he wheezed. "Sign here."

"You're not going to die."

"All of us head for Jornada del Muerto in the end. Except you. You headed in entirely another direction."

"How did you know?"

"The Pueblos saw you and your hole in the ground. They got to it before the military dragged the contents away. They saw. They think you may be a reincarnation of an ancient ancestor." I must have turned pale, because he placed a hand on my forearm. "They'll never bother you. They'll just watch after you."

He died two days later and Jacqueline and I found that we were not the only mourners. A regular crowd turned up at the cemetery and there was even a reporter.

"What was Elwood Gato like in real life?" he asked me.

"Just a man," I replied.

"But he was a living legend, a genuine link to the old West."

"It can happen to the best of us."

Jacqueline left soon after, leaving me and the monkeys. She rang from a number of places and then there were telegrams and postcards. I read some of her despatches from Hiroshima and Nakasaki and Tokyo in the newspaper.

Then one day she announced she was going to fly across the Pacific in a small plane. It was a few weeks before people realised that she'd gone missing, disappeared. I wept for a long time.

I hung around for a long while doing nothing. I read a lot of history and archaeology and I realised gradually what I needed to do, a new ambition. If anyone could discover the final fate of my people it would be me, I decided. But how could I get myself into position to do anything about it?

I couldn't very well enrol in the University of Albuquerque; that required a bit too much genuine paperwork and a school record. It seemed an insoluble problem.

Then, however, one Monday I went into town and found myself outside the New Mexico School of Mines.

I was interviewed by a member of the faculty. I reminded him that girls had graduated before, although the very first successful graduate - Irene Ryan - had only been accepted a few years earlier.

"Three things," he said eventually. "First, you'll have to put up with cussing and ripe language. Second, you open doors for yourself. Third, you light your own cigarettes."

"It's a deal," I said, standing up and shaking his hand. "And if I don't measure up throw me out."

* * * * *

One day in spring I went back up to the cave, my first home in the New World, and dug a grave in the floor.

I dressed Santana Quintero in a robe and put my Atlantean jewellery on her corpse.

"Thank you sister," I said as I laid her in the ground.

I spread my arms to the setting sun, and intoned a Hymn of Praise to the Lords of the Sun and of the Sea, and sang an Ode to the Dead in old Atlantean.

"Lord of the Sea," I said, "grant me protection in this new land. It is by your will - it must be by your will - that I am still here, still alive. I vow to make you, my Heavenly Grandfather, proud of me, a Princess of Atlantis. Every day, every year, I will work to rebuild your country and your city and your civilisation. Until the day that I die."

So that's what I did.

---

Chapter Two: Footsteps On The Ocean Bed

To be born as a slave and to die as a queen ought to make a girl thoughtful, but I guess there's something in this old heart that never stops moving, floating on the world like spindrift. My Californian friends suggest to me that keeping a diary would give me some "centre", but my centre disappeared below the waves millennia ago. So I'm going to jot down some notes about my life, a sort of CV with dialog.

My mother Atlanta was a serving wench in the court of the twin kings Atlas and Eumelus. The palace was situated on the central island of the City - known to posterity as Atlantis, named in honour of my mother - but in those days known simply as "the City". It only needed a capital letter in order not to be confused with any other metropolis.

My mother was my father's whore first and my uncle's wife second. I never asked for details but I can only surmise that my father Altas saw my mother's breasts as she bent over to serve him wine, or spotted her ripe little ass as she scrubbed the palace floor and decided to have her. And soon after, nature obeying that genetic quirk that shaped the royal family - and genetics forms a large part of this tale - my mother gave birth to twins, twin babies of a twin father, myself and Qualopec.

Of course she was dismissed from her position like many a pregnant vassal before and since, but it became a cause celebre. Atlas left "to hold up the world", officially, but in actuality to subdue what is now know as Turkey, and after a few years my soppy Uncle Eumelus married my mother and adopted us. My mother gave birth once again to twins by Eumelus, Tihocan and Astarte, and then died, possibly of disappointment. I never knew her except from the cold marble statues dotted around the island whose hard breasts always repulsed my girlish tears.

There was a royal funeral - after all, Atlanta had been queen for a year - and we four uncomprehending royal tots were no doubt bounced along in the wake of our father's chariot like posh luggage. We immediately became the Atlantean equivalent of media darlings. There was a public petition, and nine of the ten kings met and decreed that from now on the City was to be renamed "Atlantis" and that we four children were the heirs apparent to the Empire. Ephemeral beings, those nine kings - childless and effete and uninterested in women to a man - too much alien DNA perhaps. Only Atlas could subdue and destroy like a real man, and the perfumes and intrigues of the City had driven him away to more masculine pastures doubtless dotted with fresher meat.

I'm aware that I've started my tale with a sour tone of voice, but I find it difficult not to be sour about Atlantis. But maybe I shouldn't. Never was there or has there been such a glorious place as Atlantis. The City (as it continued to be called despite the official name change) was made of a central island surrounded by three concentric rings, each separated by ocean. This geography had been dictated by the architects of Poseidon, titular twin god of Atlantis along with his nameless colleague, the Sun. Those early builders had discovered the lips of three concentric craters, remains of three historically distant eruptions from the one volcano, and they laid down their basements of gypsum and concrete and levelled them flat. On the central island they built five palaces surrounding a giant twin temple dedicated to the Lord of the Sea and the Lord of the Sky, the maritime setting sun, ironically, forming the basis of Atlantis' flag. However it should be noted that the wise men of the City pointed out that a setting sun looks much the same as a rising sun, and that circular Atlantis, rolling through prehistory like a wheel of fate, was destined to rise and fall and rise again like the sea tides. And indeed in the middle part of my life I began to call myself the Once and Future Queen, my Atlantean sensibilities tuned to the philosophy that history is a series of wheels within a bigger wheel, and that all things past are destined to reoccur. Artemis, the Goddess of Wisdom, may have invented human memory to try and help mankind to learn from history, but Bacchus, the God of Forgetfulness, cursed the gift by making memory short-lived and forever clouded by physical sensation and raging emotion.

But I digress. I am an old woman, in my second century, and even a continually renewed body cannot banish the mental cobwebs and the tendency to drift away into the warm sea of nostalgia. Not even my finest science has banished the curse of Bacchus.

Poseidon and Artemis and the other Olympeans had arrived on our shores in their shining ships a century or so before, and they had taught us everything. Atlantis was a cross between a University and a Commune, with every citizen versed in some art or technique that placed men into the realms of the founder gods, and many of which are only vaguely glimpsed in the present benighted twentieth century. I watch the President of the United States making some grandiose claim for the nation that he regards as the peak of human achievement, and I cannot help but think that America is little more advanced that one of the smaller towns near the borders of the Atlantean Empire. I came secretly among you with the wealth of Atlantis in my brain and it has been like tricking a room full of small children (although, of course, with no malign intent on my part, but simply the best interests of us all).

And so back to Atlantis and my schooldays. We four children chose an area of specialisation for our studies. I chose Medicine and Alchemy, Tihocan chose Physics and Music, Qualopec chose War and Engineering and Astarte chose Religion and the Arts. We all had our pet projects and sometimes we collaborated, using our twinly psychologies to dispense (almost) with the need for words. Qualopec and I communed over the design of the ultimate Soldier Creature whilst Astarte and Tihocan worked on a unified theory of Mathematics and Magic, with which they hoped to subdue the vagaries of Time.

Can I remember how we seemed to each other? Can I describe our personalities? It all seems so very long ago - it is - and I am straining to remember even snippets of conversation. All of the recording devices that might provide me with a record have been crushed beneath the waves and only exist now as flattened and rusty remains in museums, their true uses misassigned.

However, I remember one day standing near the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Poseidon and hearing the voice of my step-sister Astarte lifted in a religious ode that she had scripted and that Tihocan had set to music, a Hymn to Inanna, perhaps. I approached her, then maybe in her fifteenth year, and watched and listened.

Her face was as white as the Moon that she admired and unlike myself she had black hair and black eyes. Her long hair covered her face and her slender body was clothed in a simple gown woven from fibres of orichalcum; in those days she only possessed the one pair of breasts and her bizarre nature had not caused her to commission from me the clusters that you sometimes see on her surviving statues. (Incidentally, for the modern reader who may not have much personal experience of orichalcum or ancient statues, let me say that Astarte in her youth resembled slightly the Japanese woman who emerges from the television at the end of the movie The Ring. Only with better hair.)

Astarte was singing to the accompaniment of two mechanical birds perched on her outstretched arms and the beams of coloured lights issuing from her jewelery. I should explain that she sang in the lost language of High Atlantean, a sacred language not only written in animated glyphs, but spoken with highlights and emphases of lights and sounds. Imagine if your everyday talk was peppered by outbursts from the apparatus used to communicate with the Greys in the movie Close Encounters, and you'll get the general idea.

"Queen of Queens," warbled Astarte in an archaic soprano voice, "who in accordance with the spirits were greater than your mother the moment you were born, wise and knowing queen of all the lands, mother of men and animals, I sing your praise. I have entered before you in my holy garments, I the princess imperial, Enheduanna, singing as I carried your ritual baskets, High Priestess of the Moon." It loses somewhat in translation.

I applauded. "What fine substance you and our Royal Brother Tihocan weave from the raw material of the arts, My Royal Sister," I said.

Astarte bowed. "I thank you, My Royal Sister," she said. "Your praise is like the seasoning that transforms an simple meal."

"May I ask - who is Enheduanna?"

"Enheduanna?"

"Your hymn mentions a High Priestess of the Moon?"

"Ah," said Astarte, scratching an ear. "A made-up name I fear. Astarte wouldn't scan properly. Maybe it will be my new name should the office of High Priestess of the Moon ever be invented."

I reflected that if Astarte thought I was going to call her Enheduanna she'd have a long wait. "If you do not invent it My Royal Sister," I said, "then I cannot say who will."

We bowed again.

"And what of your inventions, with your retorts and strings of nerve and muscle?" asked Astarte.

"How kind of you to ask. Why this very morning I have hatched a lithophage, a black and terrible creature, whose very saliva allows it to eat through solid rock."

"And is this a toy for our Royal Brother, the martial Qualopec?"

"Maybe," I said, laughing lightly, "although I may place the creature in our Imperial Mines and set a handler to recover its scat, which no doubt will contain valuable minerals and metals."

"An action which should place you in the good graces of our other Royal Brother Tihocan, whose devices and mechanoids no doubt need a constant source of raw material."

"And thus we four Royal siblings co-exist in pleasant harmony for the benefit of Atlantis," I said.

You may be thinking - do people really talk like that? We did, in the Palaces of Atlantis. It made every conversation like a game, a joust, an amusement. I cannot say why we talked like that; it was as it was, right from the moment we said our first words. I'm told my first word was the Atlantean for "spider", emphasised with glints and flashes from my babyish rattle clutched in a chubby fist. Half of me is relieved to have learned English, prosaic as it is.

"Tell me, my Royal Sister," said Astarte, linking her arm with mine as we strolled through the gardens, gardens scattered with tame wolves and lambs lying down together, and lit by the sparkling of waterfalls and silverfish butterflies. "What do you know, if it is not too impertinent a question, of love?"

"Do you mean sex?" I said, holding my right hand in the gesture that means "apology for an intrusive but necessary question."

"Ah ha. Thus speaks the world of the pragmatic scientist."

"I do not deny the presence of strong emotion; the urge to mate is made up of an overwhelming soup of nervous and hormonal activity."

"But what of friendship, affection?" Astarte snipped an orchid bloom with her silver shears and held it first to her nose and then to her ear, no doubt seeking the scent or sound of Grandfather Poseidon.

"It is necessary, since the young of our species are so defenceless, that we be programmed with social and bonding circuitry. However it is only in the most advanced conditions of civilisation that we - the human animal - can afford the luxury of seemingly putting another's survival before our own. We have the safety net of society to make that gamble feasible. In man's primitive past, I doubt whether love and friendship was anything more than the self-preserving urges of pragmatism."

Astarte sighed. "Oh my wise but cold sister," she said. "I wish I had your logic and clarity of vision. You gaze calmly on things that the rest of us run screaming from."

"I am not without emotion," I said, somewhat defensively. I rearranged the pebbles in a stone garden with my slippered toe, the disorder in the pattern seemingly mimicking my inner state. "I just don't seem to be as overwhelmed by my feelings as most."

"And there is your strength and your weakness. One day you will fall in love, and you will have no defense."

"I salute your expertise in such matters, my Royal Sister, and thanks to your warnings I shall attempt to always be on guard against that day."

"The reason I mention love is that I fear that I may be in love."

I held Astarte's arm tighter and gazed into her dark eyes. I could diagnose a mixture of excitement and trepidation in them.

"Who is she?" I asked.

Astarte blushed. "I realise that it is the convention that we members of the Royal Family only take same gender lovers, to prevent any unwanted issue ..."

"Surely not a man?" I said, aghast.

She lowered her eyes and fanned herself rapidly. "He is Captain Attis, the driver of my lion chariot," she whispered.

"Come, my Royal Sister," I said. "Let us retire to the privacy of the water-shielded arboretum where we can discuss these matters further with no fear of evesdroppers."

Later beneath the cool trees with their artificial sky of flowing liquid, I took the amphora that the slaves had brought us and poured a measure of ambrosia into two gold and ivory cups.

"Let us offer a portion to the sea and the sun, my beloved Royal Sister," I said, and Astarte and I spilled a few drops onto the earth.

"My health to you," said Astarte, "and let us pray that I - untypically for the denizens of our City - have not sown the seeds of my own destruction."

"May I ask a few questions of a medical nature?" I enquired, after we had drunk the alcoholic curds down and were dabbing the cheesy cream from our lips with silken serviettes. "I shall observe all the tenets of the Gods of Healing and shall maintain all secrecy whilst - as I am bound to - doing no harm."

"Naturally, my Royal Sister. If sisters cannot converse about such topics, then who may?"

"Have you and this ... Captain Attis ... had sexual intercourse?"

Astarte took another gulp of ambrosia. "He has placed his sexual organ inside of me and we were both pleasured to the point of orgasm."

"And how often has this occurred, my Royal Sister?"

"Just the once."

"And did this man force himself upon you?"

"Naturally not, my Royal Sister. If such an unfortunate event had occurred then I in turn would have had the cook slit his throat and place the body out on the rocks for the crows and vultures to peck at."

I bade her lay back on a couch and raise her shift whilst I examined her. There would never have been a hymen - in the technical sense we Atlantean girls lost the physicality of virginity as soon as our bodies became sexually functional and we were introduced to the mysteries of tampons and sex toys. However, I did see other signs.

"There are bruises, my Royal Sister," I observed, "and contusions."

Astarte blinked rapidly and gave a small smile. "Our congress was vigorous and not unlike that of animals in rut."

"And were you best pleased?"

"More pleased than I could say. I cried out in tongues to the Moon as our passion was consummated."

"How very poetic," I said drily and then added, in order to avoid any offense. "It must have been very beautiful."

"Actually it was rather ugly and primitive with no finer feelings, and as such extremely satisfying. And out of that grunting, sweating excess a strange flower has bloomed in my heart."

I allowed her to rearrange her clothing and poured us more drink.

"Let us hope that the only flowering is in your heart, as you so artistically put it. That is the one organ where we need not fear a flowering."

"Oh, but my Royal Sister, that is where you may be mistaken. I feel a serpent coiling in my loins and lips and breast and spine. It is as if its toothy embryo will any day split open my head and fall in bloody birth coils upon the ground."

I hid a sigh. "Nonetheless, to be blunt, let us hope that you are not pregnant."

Astarte did her blinking thing again. "Would that be a bad thing?" she asked, tentatively.

"Genetically, no," I said. "It's refreshing to think of a child whose parents are not related. But politically ..."

We gazed through the water sheet at the sun over the sea.

"When will I know?"

"Come to my workshops and I will use my arts to find out," I said. "It would be a trivial matter to abort any foetus and to place you on a contraceptive regime should you decide that you wish to accept Captain Attis into yourself again."

"And if I decided to keep the child?"

"In that event I think that we would have to confer with the rest of the Royal Family."

And, of course, she was pregnant. Doubtless I'd hardly have remembered the whole thing otherwise. My machines sipped of her blood and peered into her womb and there was the gilled infant that we'd anticipated, looking for all the world like a living shrimp embedded on a slab of raw steak. The seed that Captain Attis had so enthusiastically thrust into the clutching hand of my sister's moist loins had taken root.

The next day I was conversing with my twin, Qualopec, using the mechanical aetheroscope that my Royal Brother Tihocan had invented. We siblings tended to refer to the aetheroscope "the trumpet", much to its designer's annoyance, since not only was the image of the caller reflected on a shield of bronze, but their voice was relayed through a copper cone.

After we had spend the necessary five minutes referring to each other's titles in a courtly fashion, with many a "My Beloved Royal Brother Whose Virility Causes the Corn to Cob" and "My Radiant Royal Sister Whose Beauty Eclipses The Petals Of The Midnight Blooming Moon Rose" and other such nonsense, I wrestled the trumpet conversation around to the point.

"My Royal Brother," I said. "We four must meet on an urgent matter."

Qualopec was on campaign with his step-father Atlas - the only one of us four who had any contact with Atlas. They were testing out some gargantuan mechanical horses from the hand of Tihocan, monstrous automata of metal and wood with which the Army of Atlantis was tearing down the walls of a rebel city named Ilium.

"I am yours to obey as always," said Qualopec, wiping spilled brains from his face with a cloth. I could hear a hideous tinny whinnying drowning the shrieks of dying Trojans in the background as the giant wooden horses did their pitiless work. I could feel the land trembling under their bloodshod hooves even through the aetheroscope.

Qualopec was a handsome man in those days, straight of limb, strong and shining. His men called him the "Accilles", an archaic word meaning "fleet of foot". Needless to say this was in the days before a near death experience left him hanging in an arachnid-walking, life-supporting exoskeleton, a tale which I shall now doubt relate in due course.

I contacted little Tihocan in his laboratory, but he indicated that he had disabled the speaker of the trumpet. The settings on the brass screen were set so low that he was little more than a silhouette lit by occasional balls of cerulean lightning.

"We are testing the power of light and music," he wrote on a slate. His eyes were covered by thickly smoked gentian goggles and his ears encased in shells of armoured and armatured beeswax. "We may be able to make Time stumble for a second using the correct interference patterns."

"That's utterly fascinating my darling brother but I need you back here at the palace for a conference," I wrote.

Tihocan gave me a gauntleted thumbs-up and smiled his broad pearly smile as the cavern behind him appeared to explode into a veritable donner and blitzen of a son et lumiere show.

And so we four siblings met in the Tertiary Throne Room of the Palace of Mneseus and Autochthon, a little used place with an enchanting view of the curve of the Inner Circular Sea, a calming venue well suited to conversations of an occult nature.

I chaired the meeting, and in as few words as possible outlined Astarte's situation and her wishes in the matter.

There was a moment's silence, with Astarte biting her lips.

Tihocan looked at us in turn and shrugged. "I realize that I am just a rough-handed engineer and may not appreciate the nuances of such a situation, but I fail to see what the problem is in this case. I love my beloved Royal Sister Astarte and her heart's desire in all things is also mine." He kissed his twin on the cheek and wrapped a boyish arm around her white shoulders. Tears appeared in the eyes of Astarte, like stars of gratitude.

I, for my part, was stifling my laughter at Tihocan's description of himself as "rough-handed". He was a beautiful boy with many male lovers, but "rough-handed" he most certainly was not, unless he was referring to some sexual practice that I was unaware of. He wore perfumed oils in the same way that real labourers wore sweat, and his pretty muscles were for play, not toil.

Qualopec stood and unsheathed his sword. He began to thoughtfully wipe the multicoloured blade with the tails of his silken cummerbund.

"We in the Royal Family are creating a New World on an almost daily basis," he reflected in his curious basso, almost as if talking to his sword and not to us. "Almost everything we say and do creates a precedent and will be written into the annals of humankind forever. We are the deities whose manners mere mortals ape in the absence of a true moral sense."

"I think I may glimpse at the profound thoughts that our Royal Brother is trying put into words," I said.

"I don't," said Astarte. "I wish he'd be a bit clearer."

"Darling little Sister," said Qualopec, fondly. "I apologise if by my apparent meddling I am stirring up a mud cloud into the crystalline waters of your opinion. I mean no meanness, only solicitude."

"Of course, My Royal Brother," she said.

"I think the nub of the problem is this; if any mere commoner can sire a Royal Child, then what's to stop them doing it all the time?"

Astarte and I shared a vision of a common crowd of mere commoners wanting to have common sex with us. I blushed.

"We make the Law," continued Qualopec," and maybe the impregnation of a Royal Princess in an unsanctioned act of lust ought to be punished?"

"But poor Captain Attis!" exclaimed Astarte." He is my lover and I love him and he has done me no hurt or harm."

"Attis is a good man, and I have hewn down our enemies shoulder to shoulder with him. As a man, I could think of no finer person to lie with our beloved Astarte and if he was of the Royal Lineage I would welcome him with open arms. But my admiration and Astarte's love is irrelevant to the situation."

Astarte fell onto her throne and Tihocan went to comfort her. "Does he love you?" he asked.

"He said he that did," she said.

There was a moment's silence, an impasse, a deadlock in the discussions.

Then; "Maybe it would be useful to find out," I said. "I have the alchemy."

And so with a click of his fingers Qualopec ordered that the unfortunate Captain Attis be brought before us for an examination.

Attis strode into the Tertiary Throne Room unguarded and with a straight back. He gave Qualopec a straight armed salute and bowed first to Tihocan, then to me and finally to Astarte. His grim business-like grimace was met by her vulnerable face-searching smile.

I had fashioned an electrical device that caused all the pores and channels in a small area of skin to open and to allow any drug free access to the blood stream; I made a tincture of jimson weed and administered it in a truth-telling dose to a stoical Captain Attis.

Looking back, I wish that I hadn't suggested the course of action which we took. I shouldn't have called the meeting. I shouldn't have produced the truth drug. As is so often true in my life a fairly innocent idea took on a life of its own and then went rampaging around my world, smashing and destroying like a meme in a china shop.

It started off OK. Attis answered questions like "Are you Captain Attis of the Lapithae Regiment?" and "What is your favourite colour?" successfully, but it was when we started to ask - or more specifically when Astarte started to ask - about his feelings that the truck began to come off the rails.

I'm not sure that romantic young girls realise the extent to which their lovers regard them as a collection of body parts, and the violence with which their men wish to mate with them. I guess that's why romantic love was invented - to take the edge off. I'm disinclined to write out the crude and mechanical things that Attis was forced to admit, but suffice to say that he was not in love - at least not in love the way that Astarte was in love. He regarded her as just a juicy piece of Royal pussy, one that he had dreamt of plunging himself into from the first time that he noticed her mouth and her body. It sounded like a politer form of rape. I'm not even sure he liked Astarte much. He thought of her as a silly (if very fuckable) young girl.

I watched Astarte's face. At one point I could have sworn that the tears filling her dark eyes froze into salty ice. Her paleness because luminous and her soft body seemed to turn into cold, cold metal. It was if the hammer of Hephaestus was refashioning her into a weapon, a weapon without sanity.

Too late to save her I cried "Stop!" With the benefit of hindsight I now realise that I had destroyed my sister, and although at that moment her newly awaked venom was directed at the Captain, it was as if on that day she started a mental list and mine was one of the names inscribed upon it. Never again did she sing a soppy ode in the garden. If my tears since then could have been used to bathe her broken heart I'd have done so, but one might as well have tried to repair a crushed bird's egg with kind words.

"My Royal Brothers and Sister," said Astarte, coolly. "Give me this man as my personal assistant. I wish to invent a priesthood for him."

Attis swayed where he stood and Tihocan and Qualopec and I looked at our sister aghast, but we did not dare to gainsay her. It did not even occur to us that she still wanted Captain Attis as her paramour. It was plain that she wanted him for something much darker.

"My Royal Sister," said Astarte, with an elaborate bow and a charming smile. "I wonder if I might obtain from you that drug that you so thoughtfully provided, and which has brought such beauty and clarity to Our Thoughts?" She held out an iron hand, and I gave her the tincture of jimson weed without a word.

And so over the following weeks Astarte set herself to invent a new State Religion in which she was the personification on earth of the Olympean Demeter and in which sacrifice was required to ensure the health of the state. She would speak to none of us.

The entire Royal Family - the five kingly twins, including our fathers - and the various branches of the family including ourselves were invited to the newly built temple of Demeter on the shortest day of the year for a new ceremony to invoke the Ascent of Kore from the underworld. The temple was in the form of a ziggurat which rose for twenty three steps to an altar at the summit, an altar with an ominous and gilded tree set in the centre. Astarte, Attis and three women, all wearing vestments and head-dresses of Astarte's design, appeared in a circle of silvery spotlights playing on the stony altar. The populace - or should I say the congregation? - went into a rapture, both religious and celebrity-worshipping.

Attis sang a song in front of Atlantis, his joyful face and strong voice relayed all over the empire via devices of copper and gold. Then he castrated himself with a Holy Knife on a Holy Altar, as a sacrifice to the Goddess and to ensure that the crops would grow in the spring, or at least I think that was what in the script that Astarte had written. Naturally his blood loss was as rapid as if his femoral artery had been sliced open with a spear tip and he fell to the ground in a splash of red droplets. Reverent priestesses ran forward and with exquisite choreography nailed the body of Captain Attis to a Sacred Tree using Holy Nails, finally crowning his drained corpse with a crown of twisted holly and pomegranate branches.

"Behold the man," declaimed Astarte. "He dies that we may have life."

It was a terrific theatrical success.

Tihocan was seated next to me on a gilded throne, his face set in an official mask of equanimity as we listened to the thunderous applause from the citizens of Atlantis.

"They love it," he said.

"Of course they do," I said. "It's cathartic."

"I'm not sure that we have done a wise thing here today. It as if we have given them a dark drug, pleasurable and addictive. But ultimately lethal."

"Sometimes it is difficult to uninvent a thing," I said, bowing and waving for the aetheroscopes. "Astarte's new religious will flourish now even if we ban it by edict."

Tihocan grinned and grinned and I could see the shallow, rapid breaths going in and out of him.

"My twin sister is gone mad and I feel it deep within myself," he said through his teeth. "Suddenly I want to stop the world and get off."

"Sadly we are the drivers of the golden chariot of Atlantis, My Royal Brother," I replied, "it seems that we have strapped ourselves irrevocably into the driving seat, behind teams of horses have become rabid."

"Then shoot the horses," whispered Tihocan.

---

Chapter Three: Munchkinland (1950s)

Approximately ten years passed. Nobody really noticed that I didn't age, living alone in Elwood Gato's house. No further news was received about Jacqueline Love. I studied hard and got my certificate in mining and then a degree. The work was easy - I could do it in my spare time - which gave me more time to investigate the new world I'd been resurrected into.

Mr. Gato had also invested over many years in an Encyclopaedia Britannica and I read it all, at first slowly and then with increasing confidence. Mr. Gato's private library also contained a book entitled A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys by Nathanial Hawthorne, which not only helped me to compile a primitive Atlantean-English dictionary, but introduced me to what the modern world called "Greek Myths". The myths intrigued me, as did the combination of religious texts called The Bible. Those were the days when I still loved and trusted the Olympeans and had not undergone, as the Bible described it, a "Pauline" conversion.

I have in front of me a notebook I wrote at the time - spidery pencil scrawls in vulgar proto-Greek and Atlantean shorthand and pigeon English..

For instance. A so-called World Atlas confused me unutterably. I could not work out where America was and where Atlantis had been. "Is the map a mirror image of reality?" I wrote. "Maybe upside down? Or spun through ninety degrees? Has the earth reversed in its spin?"
.
Another note to myself; "How long I have been imprisoned - is it five thousand years or fifteen thousand or fifty thousand? One timeline dates the creation to a mere six thousand years ago whilst another says millions. Has the sun begun to circle the earth faster than before? Did the Lords of the Sea and of the Sky re-order the laws of nature for their own purposes?"

Obviously the thing that obsessed me the most was the search for clues to the fate of Atlantis. It was an obsession as strong as homesickness. Naturally I particuarly intrigued by all the entries about "lost tribes".

Here's a note from 1952; "Danaan Women - described in a play by a Mycenaean author named Aeschylus. Apparently these Tuatha De Danaan 'refugees' may have built a stone edifice the British Isles named 'Stonehenge'. The more that I study the World Atlas the more I became convinced that Stonehenge marks my own unused Royal Tomb".

Linguistically there seemed to be nothing left of High Atlantean anywhere. Even my own name - 'Natla' - was unwriteable using modern consonants. I went through that library from first to last looking for evidence. A note from 1951 - "I have found one possible relic in an essay written by Mr. Gato about the Cherokee language. I can approximately write my name with the correct emphasis - NA-TLA - using the Cherokee syllable 'tla'. Is this an old memory of the language brought to the Atzlan Confederacy by the Mayan Regiment?" Other things that sparked any recognition were some syllables in Ancient Sumerian and a scattering of words from "the lost Bahraini civilisation of the Dilmun", things like 'na' - human being, or 'ti'- life. I wrote "the most important clue comes from the powerful Mesopotamian concept of 'la', meaning 'abundance, luxury, wealth; youthful freshness, beauty, bliss, happiness, wish, desire'. In other words, this 'la' must be a corruption of the 'tla' contained in the nouns 'A-tla-n-ti-s' and 'Na-tla' ..." The identical meanings had me convinced that I was on to something.

However despite all of my obsessive research I realised eventually, with regret, that the multilayered High Atlantean rendition of "Natla" - whose true meaning that can only be expressed with the correct overtones, facial expression, pitch, gestures and lights, so that the philosophy of "tla" melds gracefully together with the concepts for "water" and "container" and "god" - was lost forever, known only to me.

* * * * *

The end of 1954 and the beginning of 1955 were the happiest days of my life. I dove into the 1950's American culture with glee. I had a group of Platonic girl friends picked up in college and during my nightly perambulations around the seedier parts of New Mexico. It seemed that engaging in sexual activity with girls although not actually illegal was not strictly "the thing". That was fine with me. Sex had been rather unkind to me as far as I could see.

My best bestest girl friends were called Candy and Mary-Lou. We were the queen bees, if it is possible to have more than one, of our small universe. We spent our time, for example, bringing the latest fashions to Los Alamos and Roswell. We were the first girls in our area to wear poodle skirts with actual poodles embroidered onto them, for example. We played every bit of rockabilly that we could find on the jukeboxes and we adored the movies, especially Westerns and Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe.

That girl almost made me fall off the celibacy bandwagon. I'd dream about her, pleasure myself to thoughts of her, and practically cream myself over my reflection in the mirror once I'd adopted a huge cloud of platinum blonde hair myself. Every time a curvy blonde with a squeaky voice came into my orbit, I was sorely tempted. I wanted both to be her and to make love to her. It was a gorgeous bit of narcissism, completely in tune with being a 50's teen.

I remember a talent contest held in an auditorium of the New Mexico School of Mines when I, backed by my best bestest girl friends, performed Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend. I wore a glamorous "miner girl" outfit that I made myself, with a cute punk miner's helmet perched on my blonde mop, and a pink pickaxe and a pink magnifying glass to look at diamonds with. I cut off some tiny dungarees so that my long Atlantean legs were exposed, and wore the top bib without a shirt so that my breasts were barely covered. I'm surprised I wasn't arrested for public indecency, but I discovered that you could do things on a stage you couldn't do walking down the street.

Instead of men in dinner jackets I dressed up Candy and Mary-Lou in black tuxes, bow-ties and pants, and they pretended to be the admirers that I was considering and rejecting, just like Marilyn in the film. These days we'd have been branded a lesbian novelty act, but then it was all just an innocent bit of fun like pajama parties in the girl's dorm or Doris Day shacking up with her "lady friend" in Calamity Jane.

"I've heard of affairs that are strictly platonic," I sang in my vaguely Mexican accent, planting a fresh kiss square on Mary-Lou's lips, before pushing her to the floor and planting one of my pink-painted miner's boots on her chest, "But diamonds are a girl's best friend."
Of course we won. I wonder if, years later, when the girls were married to nice men and had nice families they ever remembered me when they made nice, respectable love?

* * * * *

One day I hired an excellent lawyer/factotum/amanuensis, Oppie, and what he didn't know about commercial law, employment law, state law and federal law wasn't worth knowing.

I'd better mention Oppie as this may be one of the only places in this memoir that he appears. It's ironic that one of the most important people in my new life should be so ... in the background. Maybe that was his strength.

Oliver Philo Farnsworth was born a Mormon and his father had been a sharecropper. He had attended Brigham Young University after having been a science prodigy at High School and first came to my attention when I read a article of his suggesting that ultralow frequencies might be used for communication underground. He lived in Fenton Lake New Mexico with his life partner Buck and worked for me until his mysterious death by defenestration in 1990. Personally I don't think that he killed himself and that one of my enemies arranged for his death. I missed him terribly when he was gone.

I can remember our first meeting. Although I had a company name - the Natla Mining Company - I did not have an office as such and so he'd invited me out to his home.

"Mr. Farnsworth," said Buck, showing me into the study. "Miss Natla to see you."

I looked around with interest - they'd gone for a Usonian style with overtones of All American Male. Oppie was dressed in what looked like a tweed smoking jacket with leather shoulder patches, and he held a lit pipe in one hand.

"Hello Mr. Farnsworth," I said cheerfully, holding out my hand.

Oppie peered at me through his Coke bottle glasses and returned my mannish grip. I had an idea that he was slightly phased by my height and the length of my arm.

"May I offer you a cocktail?" he said, holding out a cigarette box.

"Just water for me," I said, but I accepted the tobacco. I wanted him to be at his ease when I blew his mind.

I reached into my Krizia purse and produced twenty thousand dollars US in cash.

Oppie looked at the bundle I'd handed him with a cagey expression. "What's this?" he said, eventually. "Some kind of bribe?"

I popped one of my patent pep pills into my water and swished the glass to dissolve it.

"I'm paying you for your time as from now." I said, giving him a film star smile. "I want at least ten hours at 1000 dollars an hour."

"Miss Natla. This kind of money buys more than ten hours even of my time. What exactly do you want?"

"I want a lawyer is well versed in paytants ... patents." I had a problem with lapsing into what sounded a bit like faux Mexican accent at times; my English wasn't quite North American Perfect.

Oppie giggled nervously. "That's me."

I handed him a folder full of designs that I'd made. There was amongst other things "In vitro manipulation of deoxyribonucleic acid", "Flame resistant material aromatic nylon" and "Cinnamyl-piperazine derivatives as a treatment for motion sickness." Check them out in the US Patent Directory. I'm still proud of them.

He asked if he could keep them overnight to read them but I demurred. It seemed reasonable to me that for twenty grand I could get his undivided attention.

He gestured for me to put some music on whilst he studied my notes and so I chose Holst's The Planets. The irony of listening to a piece of music about the Olympean "Uranus, The Magician", named for Οvρανός, the Greek word for sky, whilst selling Atlantean "magic" technology to a "Uranian" man amused me. Something I tell myself jokes that only I get.

I tried some of Oppie's "whiskey" - I'd come across bourbon but not this stuff, a "Scotch single malt". I found I adored its taste of smoke. Whiskey was the stuff to drink at the end of the world, both geographically and temporarily, I decided. It tasted of fiery destruction to me. I made a note to order some.

"I don't believe it," said Oppie after a couple of hours. "I can't believe it. You have nine basic patents here. Nine. That's basic patents. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, I think so," I said, with what I hoped was a normal smile.

"Really? I wonder. It means, Miss Natla, that you can take Janssen, Hoffman-La Roche and DuPont for starters."

I went and refilled my glass. "In say, three years, what would this be worth to me?"

Oppie laughed. "I'm a lawyer not an accountant Miss Natla, but I'd say it was something in the area of three thousand million dollars."

I couldn't help myself; I started to sing and dance, linking arms with an embarrassed Oppie and whirling him around his study.

We're in the money,
We're in the money,
We've got a lot of what it takes to get along!
Let's go we're in the money,
Look up the skies are sunny,
Let's lend it, spend it, send it rolling along!

We agreed that Oppie would have complete authority below me for the various projects and that I wouldn't have contact with anybody but him unless I authorized it. I offered him 10% of net profits plus 5% of corporate holdings. Natla Technologies was on its way.

* * * * *

The high spot of my fun with Candy and Mary-Lou came on Valentine's Day 1955 at Roswell North Junior High School where they were staging Hank Show's All Star Jamboree.

Hank Snow was a huge Country and Western star and his "All Star Jamboree" was exactly what it said, provided you weren't too fussy about the definition of the word "Star". There was one act on the bill that none of us really realized the significance of until we got there, and that act was called "Elvis, Scotty and Bill".

There was also a new dance that we'd all been practicing which was rather vaguely called "Swing" or "Lindy Hop" but which we referred to as "The Jitterbug". No one was sure what the name "Jitterbug" meant; Candy said it was a slang word for a guy with DTs whilst Mary-Lou said it was from a song left out of "The Wizard of Oz". Not that it mattered much. If you were going to dance to rockabilly and be seen then you had to master Jitterbugging. We already had a Presley Trio record in our collection - "It's All Right Mama" - which lasted for over a thousand plays before it began to show signs of wear and tear. We practiced our synchronized chasses whilst trying to keep our shoulders level in a manner not entirely unlike a hyperactive version of an Atlantean court dance called the Prylis. Doing the Prylis to Elvis, and the Royal Figure-of-Eight to the King.

We bounced into the hall with a crowd of equally excited fans. I had a flask of whiskey tucked into the stockings I was wearing under my skirt and we took turns swigging that and smoking and giggling like naughty school children.

Elvis was very sexy in a white bread kinda way. I guess I don't need to tell you. He was like some young dumb stud straight off the farm, a dumb stud blessed with hypnotic powers and a hypnotic pelvic thrust.

I'm not sure why I caught his eye. I didn't fill my sweater as well as Candy and Mary-Lou but I did stand taller than everybody else, and I guess my blonde hair and blue eyes were pretty noticable.

We got invited backstage - natch.

To cut a long story short, much to the delighted fury of my friends - Elvis invited me into a back room. At first I just thought he wanted to teach me all about the Bible and try out some healing using the "laying on of hands", which actually interested me more than having sex with him, but it appeared that sex was on the agenda. I didn't object - when in Rome, do the Romans - and I was curious about everything to do with America.

I sat close to him listening to him very intently, with a hopeful expression on my face, and eventually he kissed me. He really was very shy for a boy with so many opportunities, and I wondered briefly if the shyness was something he put on to add spice to his encounters. Not that it mattered much, as he was very beautiful, had the softest lips and was an expressive kisser.

"Are you a virgin?" he asked me, almost coughing with embarrassment.

"Should I be?"

"I guess that means no."

Which apparently was the right answer. I've read a few things since about Elvis, including his remark "I'd never break a virgin - there's enough prostitutes around". Whether this means he saw me as a prostitute I'm not sure. However I didn't ask for money and where I come from prostitutes are priestesses, so I'm entirely unsure.

As we lay there afterwards - he lit two cigarettes and gave me one - there was a knock on the door and Elvis went to whisper to one of his Memphis pals. Apparently his "girlfriend" - a girl called Dixie Locke - was on route, and so it was time for me to leave.

Life was astonishing, I reflected cheerfully. Not only had I had sex with a strange man - it was a definite improvement on sex with my brother - but the man had been the equivalent of American royalty. I was definitely going to fit right in.

* * * * *

Two other notable things happened to me after that that I can recall, in the time before I fell ill.

I was pottering around behind Mr. Gato's house, experimenting with breeding the hottest possible chilies. I wondered why chilies were hot. It seemed unlikely that there was an evolutionary reason.

I stopped digging with my trowel to wipe my brow when I became aware of a small Mexican woman watching me, hovering.

"Hello?" I said. I'd picked up Spanish as well as English. "Can I help you?"

She looked about fifty but I guessed she was in her twenties.

"I'm looking for Miss Jacqueline Natla, the daughter of Mr. Elwood Gato."

I stood up and found I was twice her height.

"That's me," I said, holding out my hand. "Would you like to come into the house for a glass of lemonade?"

"I would wouldn't want to inconvenience you," said the woman, shyly, taking my hand very tentatively. "My name is Rosaura Quintero and I just wanted a quick talk with you."

Quintero?" I said. I remembered the dead woman in the cave whose identity I had borrowed when I first arrived. Maybe Quintero was a very common name and it was just a coincidence, I thought. "Look, please come in. You are welcome to my home."

Even in the kitchen after I sat her down she didn't relax and it was as if she only sipped the cold lemonade out of politeness. I could see her darting furtive curious glances around the room when she thought I wasn't looking.

She laid the facts out as if dealing out a hand of poker. Her husband was the Union Leader at the Natla Zinc Mine in nearby Lunar County. Mr. Gato had been the Union lawyer before he died. The Mexicans were not paid as well as the "Anglo" workers. The mine was dangerous. The Union was on strike. Did I know about it? Would I come and look?

It appeared that it had taken Rosaura most of the day to get to my house, walking and hitching, and so I called one of my drivers. While we waited I managed to get her to accept some food and when that was all done, we drove back to the mine in comfort.

There had been a picket line at first, but then the local police had thrown most of the men into jail, with many a beating. In the meantime other miners ‚ "white Anglo miners", had been bussed in, and the original Mexicans had been sacked.

I sat down with the mine manager, a Mr. Steiger, and tried to fathom out why he should have behaved in such a stupid fashion.

"Why are white miners paid more than non-white?" I enquired.

"Well, Ms. Natla, ma'am ..." said Mr. Steiger. He was a sweaty and flushed man, with a strange collection of fat rolls on the back of his neck where it met his close-cropped skull. He smelt rather strongly of the sort of body odor one gets after a long route march in tight leather armour. "It's the local rates. The Mexican workers - they always get lower pay."

"Why is that?"

"It's traditional, Ma'am."

"Well - that's easily remedied," I said, mildly. "From now on the same work gets the same pay, regardless of background."

Mr. Steiger goggled at me. "But Ma'am. The local whites ... there'll be an uproar."

I couldn't prevent myself from pursing my lips rather severely.

"You're young, perhaps new to the business," continued Mr. Steiger, mopping his lips with an off-colour cloth. "Young girl like yourself ... you don't need get involved in all of this unpleasantness."

"Unpleasantness, Mr. Steiger?" I couldn't help raising one eyebrow.

He leaned in conspiratorially so that I had to start breathing through my mouth. "Listen, Ma'am. I can tell from your looks and your accent that maybe you have Mexican blood in there somewhere. And I understand you want to stick up for your ancestors and all that. Who wouldn't? But there's ways and means of doing these things. On the quiet. If you get my drift."

I walked over to the window and took a deep breath of fresh desert air.

"You are a fallen man, Mr. Steiger," I said, icily.

I had to forcibly remind myself that one wasn't allowed to execute servants in 1950's America. And so, instead of wrenching his fat head from his fat shoulders I merely contented myself with sacking him and all of the "scab" labour that he'd brought in. I suspect that Mr. Steiger may have caught the glint of homicide in my eyes because he ran off without arguing.

I reinstated the Mexicans and paid them the "Anglo" rate plus a raise of 20%, with an annual increase linked to the cost of living. It cost me practically nothing.

"Now I wish inspect the mine," I said to Rosaura's husband, to whom I had given the position previously held by the idiotic Mr. Steiger.

The mine was an over-heated death trap, filled with lung-destroying dust. Peering around I felt a good deal of shame - terrible shame - and wondered if maybe the fleshpots of America had distracted me from my duty. A good Queen protects her subjects, said a small voice in the back of my mind.

I immediately commissioned the building of a new school, a new hospital and a new company shop (selling staples at knockdown prices). I then put the might of Natla Tech into making that the Natla Zinc Mine the safest and healthiest mine on the planet. I ordered that similar arrangements be implemented in all my holdings in whatever country. I instructed that inherently dangerous mines, those beyond saving, should be shut or sold off.

"There's only one condition to all this do-gooding," I said down the telephone to Oppie. "I want the workers to sign a confidentiality agreement and I want there to be no authorised visitors - especially from the press - in any Natla Company Mines. I don't want to be accused of being some kind of Communist by the Committee. No publicity, on pain of being sacked."

"What about government inspectors?"

"Of course. Render unto Caesar as Jesus said."

"I fear that news will get out regardless, Miss Natla."

"Can't we bribe them?"

"You want to bribe government inspectors not to give you too good a report?" said Oppie.

"Exactly," I said. "After all, I don't want to create the threat of a good example."

* * * * *

Being the hero of the local Mexican community (on the QT) was great. I felt a smidge of the old Royal charisma. People say that the flood of babies that were christened "Jacqueline" in the following years were named after Mrs. Kennedy, but I know different.

One sadness occurred, however, despite my intervention. Rosaura's soldier son died, despite the best medical care both from the New Mexico VA and from Natla Tech. He was riven with cancer. It was an unpleasant death and afterwards I attended his funeral.

"I have something for you, Jackie," said Rosaura, outside the church, dropping something into my hand and closing my fingers.

It was a set of dog tags and for a moment I thought she'd given me her son's.

"Oh," I said. "Thank you."

"Look."

I looked, and to my intense shock the tags were inscribed with the name of Jacqueline Love.

"Where ...?" I said, but the words stuck.

"She was your girlfriend, wasn't she?"

"How did you know that?"

Rosaura shrugged. "You are still unmarried," she said, disingenuously.

"But where … where did you find it?"

* * * * *

It was some months later when my chartered ship approached as closely as it was allowed to the Marshall Islands, site of the Bikini Atoll nuclear testing grounds.

I find it hard to describe how much the Pacific Ocean frightened me. Everyday one board ship I woke up with a cold sweat, thinking of all that alien water below me. I say "alien", because I felt an intense "otherness". It was as if I was on a separate planet, a planet in which Atlantis and Olympus had never existed. I felt like an endangered intruder, unknowingly desecrating the graves of a civilisation that viewed the hemisphere of the Atlantic with a malignant and ageless hatred, the hatred of an existing population for an invader. Maybe it was Mu or Lemuria or one of those mythical civilisations listed in Mr. Gato's Encyclopedia Britannica, but every second I felt as if some sort of sea monster would arise from the depths and pull us all under. Why hadn't the nuclear explosions awakened the horrors of the deep, I wondered?

Rosaura's son had been stationed on nearby Eniwetok during Operation Castle, a test that had resulted in the biggest nuclear detonation ever seen. The soldiers had ameliorated the long periods of boredom by building small sailing skiffs, and it was whilst on one rather ill-advised and protracted adventure that Rosaura's son and his mates had discovered an uncharted coral islet to the southwest of Eniwetok called Ralik Island. There, under a palm tree, they had discovered a bleached skeleton in a flight suit, complete with remains of bleached blonde hair fluttering in the sea breeze, and with eyeless sockets fixed on the horizon for a rescuer that never came. Had she been waiting for me?

The captain had managed to clear the paperwork with the Navy by describing our mission of mercy, namely, to take one of "their own" back home. It didn't take our crew long to retrieve the body. Of Jackie's plane there was no sign, nor any indication of how she'd flown so far without setting down for fuel. The whole thing was ... creepy, almost supernatural.

As we hot-tailed it out of there I could almost see the roentgens sparkling on the overly blue water. Jackie shared my cabin on the way back and I tried my best to stroke the remains of her hair without breaking it. I wept to think of Jackie's end, alone in such an awful place. She may as well have expired leaning against some lonely boulder on the surface of the moon.

Back in New Mexico we held a joint funeral. I took the Quintero family to the cave where I'd found the body of Rosaura's mother all those years earlier. They didn't ask any questions or make any comment about it. It seemed that it was a matter of indifference to them that I had dressed Santana Quintero in my regal garments. Now all wrongs had been righted in a Mexican version of karma. Just as Rosaura's son hadn't reported his finding of Jackie's remains, I hadn't reported my discovery of Santana, and as a result we'd all been bereaved.

Afterwards I spent many sunny afternoons sitting by the tombstone, reading or catching some rays.

Then on October 4, 1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year, the first human-made object to orbit the Earth in the twentieth century was launched; Sputnik. The Nuclear Age began to fade, along with the radioactivity in the bones of Jacqueline Love and the confidence in my heart. The nightmare of the Space Age - my private nightmare - was about to begin.

---

Chapter Four: He Gives Birth To Swimming Horses

Let me entertain you with an irony of history, as I have spend many years trying to piece together the history of the world between my days in Atlantis and my days in America. One of the peculiar things about the area now called South America is that in the first millennium of the Christian Era they neither had wheels nor horses. It is even reported that when the Conquistador cavalrymen arrived to rape the remains of the Aztlan Confederacy, the Aztecs mistook the horsemen for half horse, half man.

Where's the irony there? Like the Goddess it is threefold. Firstly, Atlantis had horses and wheels and all manner of things, and the Aztlan Confederacy was born out of the smouldering remnants of the Atlantean Kingdom of the West. Secondly, it was one of the twin deities of Atlantis, the Lord of the Sea himself, Grandfather Poseidon, who created the horse as a land-going version of the hippocampus, and taught his grandchildren the art of managing horses using the bridle, and so in order for a portion of the Atlantean Empire to be horse-free there must have been a campaign of extermination. Lastly it was Qualopec, military genius red in tooth and claw, who commissioned me to engineer new breeds of warriors in my lab beneath the Golden Pyramid of Aea and it was from there that the first true centaurs emerged.

One day I was visiting Astarte. She had eschewed the life palatial and tended to lurk in temple annexes. It was five or six years since she had given birth to and then sacrificed her first born, invoking the histories of Chronos and Saturn. The deceased infant had been braised on a Sacred Brazier and disarticulated with Sacred Artefacts and then Astarte, offering the sacrifice to deities that were only apparent to herself and her secret congregation of acolytes, had placed sliced slivers of baby wafers on the tongues of the faithful, urging them to eat that they might have eternal life. I reflected when I heard of the new rite that cows and sheep and wild boar were rather valuable beasts, whereas unwanted babies were two a penny in the City, and so as a religious design it made economic sense, as well as being strangely dramatic.

My sister was skulking in a monastery garden, inscribing with the help of a dictation device on a multicoloured and literally illuminated scroll the guidelines for one of her new religions.

"And thus spake the Fire God," she was declaiming as a slave acolyte showed me in. "And after an odyssey through the spheres and gateways of the heavens, the Olympian Gods came down to Atlantis and taught us speech and science, war and poetry."

"Greetings my Many-Breasted and Royal Sister, Defender of the Faith and Pioneer of the Atlantean State," I said with a smile. I should mention that with my help Astarte had begun to collect pairs of human breasts - to date, five - one for each of her pairs of dead lovers and dead offspring. It said much for her constitution, not doubt strengthened by her youth, that she could manage a pregnancy and a major operation once a year, regular as the darkness of the moons. The breasts were a bizarre affectation as well as a loving sacrifice to the state - the fertility of our agriculture was never greater and the population of the City rose fruitfully - and if nothing else it meant that Astarte never slouched when she was seated.

"Greetings to my Royal Sister, Her Royal Highness Natla, Ruler, Empress and Goddess of the Western Territories," said Astarte, with a wan greeting and the driest of happy expressions. That momentary twinge of ... what? hatred ? ... that she always displayed towards was a mere hint, soon snuffed out.

"I fear that my new title will soon become eclipsed by the discoveries of my Royal Brothers in the even further West."

"You will always be styled the Ruler of the Western Territories; it has been written in stone and law, sound and faith. The Western Territories will always be so, whatever new worlds are mapped and conquered."

"You are gracious, my Royal Sister," I replied, with a laugh, "although these important titles that have been designated to me cannot disguise that beneath my robes of gold I an ordinary woman."

"As am I," said Astarte, straightening her spine so that her naked breasts, supported (in the latest style) by a blood red leather corset, gazed at me like the eyes of a monstrous fly.

The slaves brought us runny cakes of honey and rose-hued cups of ambrosia as we sat for moment listening to the buzz of the Athena Bees gathering nectar by an ancient vectorial pattern, a figure of eight resembling the outline of an owl's eyes, whose axis - as the polarity of the planet's poles - was a mirror of that used by apiary species today. Oh lost Atlantis; what we now call East we once called West, and maps were once topped by Tinnos and tailed by Polaris! (Forgive my evocative vocative; once a courtier with courtly speech my tongue and pen sometimes fly away.)

"I've brought you a gift," I said, holding up an ornament.

"What is it?"

"It is the smallest species of hippocampus, sacred to Poseidon. A child found the dried body on a rock of the Central Circular sea and so I had the jeweller coat it and encrust it with gold and gems."

Astarte smiled at the bauble on its thin chain of palladium. "What a pretty sea horse," she said, placing it around her neck. "Is it my birthday?"

"Actually, it is," I said. "Did not Tihocan contact you about a joint celebration?"

Astarte started and wrapped a wrap around her shoulders as if chilled.

"Oh," she said after a moment. "No."

"Then you shall come with me to the Ballroom of the Palace of Azaes and Diaprepes where we will dance the Royal Dances and daze our senses with the distillates of wine and opium."

Astarte was still unstill. "I forgot Tihocan's birthday. How can one so fixated on the calendar miss such a date?"

"Lament not, dear Royal Sister," I said. "Both you and my Royal Brother have been submerged, you in your rites and Tihocan in his machines, all for the good of the State. But now the State and your Royal Siblings, myself and the august Qualopec, owe you a discrete soiree, don't you think?"

Astarte brightened. "If the State commands, I obey," she said. "Maybe the State can help me choose a party dress?"

"As Your Highness desires," I said, taking her cold hand.

So we four met the Court and danced the Kouretes and the Prylis and the Telesias and no doubt something that resembled the Hokey Pokey, but as the night drew to day we could not help but turn the conversation that which we felt the most comfortable with - work.

"I wondered," began Tihocan, pushing his latest boyfriend from his lap, "if there was any religious or philosophical aspect to man creating half-man, half-beast hybrids?"

Qualopec laughed, looked at the spurned boy who was wondering off with many a tearful backward glance. "You are unkind, my promiscuous Royal Brother," he said. "The poor lad only wants to make you happy."

"And he does ..."

"But what of his feelings?"

"He is not a Royal Prince," said Tihocan, "and so not even the bricks in the walls care."

"With respect to your interesting question," said Astarte, sipping abstemiously at a glass of water, "the gods appear to have no problem with the hybrids that you mention. Why even the Great Mother Diwija was unashamed to take the form of a horse-headed human."

"But surely that was of her own free will?"

I, of course, was the object of the conversation. "I have nearly completed the genetic hybrids that my Royal Brother Qualopec and I discussed all those years ago," I said, smiling at Tihocan to show that I took no offence. "I have a bull-headed man, and creatures that are half man, half horse, and even a winged ape-man in the hatching chambers as we speak."

I had spent many a noonday hour poring over the wisdom of the Olympeans. I had created machines that had manufactured smaller machines, and the smaller machines had manufactured tiny machines, and so on, until there was produced a nanoscopic race of spider machines, capable of exuding new DNA and RNA and QNA strands like the fibres in a spider web. These arachnobots had been scuttling about in the amniotic atmosphere of the incubator eggs, knitting herbivore with carnivore, and avian protoplasm with mammalian, their tiny mandibles flashing away in the atomic darkness until a few new cells had sprung into life, and gestation as we know it - or at least as the Atlanteans knew it - had begun in earnest, in ovo. The only real decision, the hardest design decision, was to choose the type of brain should be programmed into the new species. I had covered myself and was trying a potpourri of sentient species. The Golden Pyramid of Aea was a swelling womb ready to give birth.

"Of course, it's not too late for abortions," I added, "if that is the consensus of my Royal Siblings."

"Speaking as a man imbued with the male principle as handed down to us from the Olympeans ..." began Qualopec, only to lose his balance and tip backwards off his couch. He has been imbibing rather male amounts of fortified ambrosia and was completely drunk.

We all laughed sympathetically and ran to help him.

"Poor Brother," said Astarte, giggling and patting Qualopec's forehead with a scented kerchief. "He rushes in where fools fear to tread."

"The very definition of bravery," I said. At least I thought it was. I was far from sober myself having smoked some peyote-imbued tobacco.

"My point," said Qualopec, waving an unsteady finger in our faces, "is that if Natla has made the bloody things we may as well try them out. It's not as if we are short of wars to fight."

"All goodness comes from war after all," said Tihocan, as if this provided some sort of philosophical balm to his earlier doubts. "All incentive and invention, all the spurs to the physical excellence of athletes and to the artistic efforts of the muses. War represents the very best use of the talents that have been handed down to us as human beings. I shall begin to fashion a triumphant 'Hymn to the Hybrid' in anticipation, replete with joyous flutes, heavenly voices, marital drums and ... um ... rather loud trumpets." He staggered and took another gulp of wine.

"Amen to that, my Royal Brother," said we all.

And so, I had a go.

I contacted my assistants at the Golden Pyramid; a careful process had to begin whilst I made my return by sea and I was impatient.

"Begin to decant the Amphorae of Thought into the centaur Cyllarus and the centaurides Hylonome. I wish them to be ready to birth in three days," I instructed.

"Very good, Madam," said Magnesian, my technician. "An exciting era commences for the Pyramid of Aea."

"I'll be more excited when I hear them speak," I said, and silenced the aetheroscope.

I had recorded the Amphorae of Thought from the minds of executed criminals and madmen - obviously I hadn't read Mary Shelley's Prometheus - and using the cunning manipulation of magnetic fields and electrical sparks and enriched salts and the excised nerves of octopi - manoeuvred into place by the careful claws of the arachnobots - a net, a schematic, a mental map was constructed that could be imprinted directly onto the empty cerebella of the preneonates, allowing them, we hoped, to be born with language and other skills that usually take a childhoodtime to master.

As I whipped my horse through the shallow valley in the newly conquered Trojan hinterland that would one day become the entrance to a new Black Sea and took ship on a fast square-rigged pentecoster to the Theme of Colchis, I wondered at the differences between a manufactured mind as opposed to a mind shaped by nature. The first was a forced bloom, almost bound not to be as robust as a natural flower. Maybe a better scheme would be to surgically graft the bodies of living adult humans unto the torsos and hindquarters of animals, or to spark the development of wings and horns using the humours that promote and control growth? At length I decided that this was what an experiment was - a leap into the unknown based on the best available data - and that unless I was prepared to try an experiment, I hardly deserved the title "scientist". I could always exterminate and extirpate the brood of breeds if they failed to perform or please.

And so eventually I stood bathed in the emerald green of a giant egg, peering through the membrane at the sleeping features of Hylonome the Centauride, named by me in sylvan sentimentality "browser of the wood". I had an unrealistic vision of happy males and females galloping together in a wooded glade, devoting themselves to love and the lyric arts.

"Will she be happy, will she be swift?" I asked rhetorically.

"We'll have to wait and see," answered clever Magnesian.

"Very well. Instruct Urania to begin the countdown."

"Hatching commencing in thirty seconds," came the voice of Urania over the tannoy. "Twenty-nine, twenty-eight ..."

Have you seen an egg hatch? My eggs did not so much hatch as explode with life. There was a noise like the pop of ignited hydrogen, and fragments of "shell" were thrown about the room. The floor was flooded with fluid and the foetus fell at our feet. I say "foetus" but no foal Hylonome; instead a full grown filly. She staggered on her spindly shanks and brushed the birth bath from her breast.

"My child," I said tentatively, gazing into her purple eyes.

She sneezed like a neigh and formed the word "Mother" and I wept with love over my firstborn get.

And so centaurs entered the world.

My best hopes were realised and my worst fears abated; they spoke - admittedly in the proto-Greek used by soldiers and tradesmen -but they spoke and they understood. There was no side effect to their artificial gestation; they were tall and true and swift and beautiful.

The oldest - Cyllarus and Hylonome - were crowned First Stallion and Mare of the new centaur herd, and I waited with interest to see if they could breed or if they were as barren as mules.

One day as I relaxed at the foot of the Golden Pyramid I heard the clop of approaching hooves and Hylonome cantered up.

"Good morning, Mother," she said, brushing the long mane from her face. "May I join you?"

"Of course, my darling Hylonome. It is always a pleasure to see you."

"Cyllarus is pleased with the progress that we have made. We are become expert in the use of the bow and of the fire arrow."

"That is good. And what of your ... relationship ... with the First Stallion?"

"It goes well," said Hylonome, looking a little sheepish - or at least as sheepish as a centaur can look.

"That is also good, my beloved daughter," I said.

I gave her one of my golden apples and she munched at it with many a flicking of her tail.

"Mother - I have a question."

"Ask away."

"What is the purpose of this war that we have been summoned to fight?"

I repeated to her the words of Tihocan about the nature of man and about the prevention of his stagnation.

"Do we have the right to kill?"

"But of course, my child. The earth is ours to do as we will. Every time I bite into the flesh of a freshly baked fowl I can guarantee that the bird neither died quietly nor acquiesced in its demise. It is the way of things."

"I am a herbivore," answered Hylonome, "but I see your point. However, we are not killing for meat."

"Have you not heard of the stags and the starlings fighting among themselves for territory?"

"But surely man is not short of mates or food?"

"This is true, but our nature remains. Besides it is these territorial fights that strengthen both us and our enemies."

"Our enemies have not attacked us ..." Hylonome stumbled to silence, looking lost.

"The Olympeans have handed down to us civilisation - everything that you see around you. In return for being a chosen people, it is our duty to spread civilisation over all the lands, winning hearts and minds as we go. And our converts, in return, repay the Atlantean State for the expense of being enlightened, and everybody prospers in the long run, as we convert non-profitable kingdoms into protected tax-payers with all the services of the State at their disposal."

"Protection money?"

"Exactly, my fairest of children."

"And those who spurn Atlantis, once having had their country moulded to an Atlantean style, are unable to opt out because they are no longer able to conceive of an existence with the material benefits that Atlantis has thrust upon them?"

"Exactly," I said, pleased that Hylonome was so intelligent. "The best of all possible governments."

Little did I foresee that soon there would be a movement in Atlantis to hand the reins of the state from those trained to reign sanely to a bunch of easily panic-ed Cretans.

"But my dear," I said, suddenly concerned, embracing Hylonome around her waist and laying my head on her breasts. "Why do you weep?"

"The centaurs bridle against this bit that the State and specifically Uncle Qualopec is placing upon us. We are indoctrinated every day in between our preparations for war and yet still some of us throw up our hooves and whisk our tails and snort our scepticism."

I tried to make her smile. "And the chief caviller among these cavalier chevaliers is Cyllarus?" I teased, alliteratively.

Hylonome hung her head. "Yes, Mother," she said, neither amused nor impressed by my wordplay. Looking back, I blush at myself.

"He is a fine male," I said, "and he has the strength of body and brain that Atlantis values in its servants. I am sure that he will soon channel his restlessness against the Theme of Mount Pelion as the Rulers of the Atlantean Realm have decreed. Besides on a more prosaic level, if you centaurs and centaurides do not follow the instructions of the Royal Qualopec at whose instigation you were given breath, doubt not that My Royal Brother will instruct the Lapithae Regiment to chop you into cat food with their sickle-bladed swords."

"Come with us on our campaign," said Hylonome. "View your children in action. Maybe your honeyed words and maternal pride will sway the wilder debate to a more conventional side."

And so I joined Qualopec on campaign on the Pelion peninsula.

A hundred ships with a hundred centaurs and a hundred centaurides joined the fleet containing the massed human soldiers and bore down on the fortunate Mount Pelion flying the flag of the Lords of the Sea and of the Sun.

"An army to shock and awe," said Qualopec from the command desk of his bireme, slapping my shoulders with masculine vim. "Your inventiveness is as bright as your beauty, My Royal Sister."

"I am your servant, My Royal Brother. With my soldiers and the engines of the Royal Tihocan we are invincible, as no doubt Grandfather Poseidon - he who gives birth to swimming horses - intended."

"We will sacrifice a centaur to him and sprinkle the blood on the prow of our proud command."

I started and placed a hand on his armoured forearm. "Not a centaur," I said. "You will alienate them."

"Any one of my human infantry would feel honoured to be sacrificed."

"But the centaurs are too new. They have not lived all their lives under Atlantis."

"What better education and inspiration?" laughed bold Qualopec. "I shall allow them the honour of choosing their gift to the Horse God."

And so the centaurs chose, and Hylonome trotted forward.

"No," I said, aghast.

"Mother," she said, facing me levelly with an unblinking stare. "What better gift than the most prized? Doubled valuable since I am with child."

"With child?" I whispered.

"By the bold First Stallion Cyllarus." Hylonome tossed her head defiantly.

I took Qualopec aside to his curtained alcove, to a background of murmuring and confusion.

"I cannot allow this," I said.

"You expect me to back down in front of my army?"

"She is too valuable. Besides I view her as my firstborn and I love her."

"We must all be prepared to sacrifice our children to the gods, my Royal Sister," said Qualopec, half puzzled, half annoyed.

I fell to my knees and grasped his greaved calves. "I beg you, my merciful brother," I said. "We are blood twins and surely you must feel my distress."

Qualopec patted my golden hair. "Very well, well beloved, but we must think of a way of presenting the decision. One that does not reflect badly on myself, the commander."

"Of course," I said. "Blame me."

"If this comes back on us it will be your responsibility," he said.

"I accept the consequences, my Royal Brother."

"Very well. I will hold you to that, my sentimental Royal Sister."

And so Qualopec made a speech. The Royal Natla had decided that the centaurs were not worthy, he stated. They would only be worthy after they had performed in battle. He explained that His Royal Sister was showing the gentle-heartedness often apparent in my gender. The fair Ruler of the Western Territories was unused to the exigencies thrust upon fighting men in the field, he boomed, more used to the hearth and the home. A human man, a truly fit sacrifice, would be offered to grandfather Poseidon instead. I gritted my teeth and smiled grimly, and reflected that it was worth the price to spare the cunning daughter who had manoeuvred Qualopec and myself into an untenable position. I gazed at Hylonome, hoping for a spark of affection or gratitude, and she gazed back at me no doubt wondering if I understood my hubris and insensitivity. She did not understand what it is to rule and I did not understand what it is to be young.

Atlantis met the Theme of Mount Pelion on a flat plain linking the peninsula to the mainland. Qualopec roared to the Lapithae Regiment to form their shields into a wall and to begin a measured tread towards the enemy ranks. Then mounting his gigantic charger Mitanni he urged forward the ferocious centaur century, urging them to let fly with their spears in order to soften our opponents before the infantry arrived. The Pelion cavalry came up on our right flank slowly, horses led by pages, unable to charge mounted and armoured as they had no stirrups to stabilise them in their saddles. Instead they fired a formation of feather-fletched arrows, which the centaurides deflected with deft flicks of their circular shields. These females of the centaur race were able to gallop up to the terrified Pelions and decapitate or disembowel them before they could even react - no stirrups needed by the fair horsewomen so beautiful in their battle lust. I, watching images transmitted to my aetheroscope, wept with pride and soon any squeamishness that I may have felt was washed away by hot blood and fierce patriotic fervour.

What happened next was confusing at the time and I have had to try and reconstruct the events without the benefit of any other eye-witness or account. One thing that was true - which I had not realised at the time - was that the viral fragments and nucleic vectors left by the arachnobots in the blood of the centaurs was poison to humans. It never accorded to me that the two species would ever exchange fluids.

I saw the First Stallion Cyllarus pull an ivory horn from his bandolier and blow three short blasts. As one, the two hundred horse-people turned on the Lapithae Regiment and began to slaughter them. Atlantis had been betrayed.

I saw Hylonome dipping her arrowheads into the blood from the wound in her flank. Human soldiers shot with the gore-tipped darts slowed, stopped dazed and then fell.

I mounted my horse and rode down to the command post overlooking the battlefield. As I rode up Qualopec turned a face filled with fury onto me.

"Your creations are amok," he yelled. "Vile hybrids, dishonourable mongrels!"

"Let us intervene, My Royal Brother. We can replace the spilled milk with many a ceremony of blame and grief after the spillage has been contained. We are Royal; we must overmaster."

"And your plan, oh wise Royal Sister?"

"Take this experimental weapon from the joint workbenches of myself and the Royal Tihocan. Fasten it to your shield arm and it will obey." I handed him a device that generated, using bacteria, naphtha and luminescence, streams of aim-able fireballs, controlled via cunning nerve connecters by the user's will and eye.

"Why should I trust your sorcery?" spat Qualopec. He raised a hand as if to strike me.

"Trust Tihocan if not your blood twin and bow to the necessity," I spat back. "We are losing and must gamble on an untried stratagem. You can crucify me after the battle if we fail."

"I shall remember your suggestion," he replied, in the deepest of deep voices.

The fire-firers wrapped themselves around our arms and burrowed into our flesh. Riding forward, I thought/flung the fireballs into the edge of a squadron of centaurs. The fire-stuff stuck and there came the horrified whinnying of horses and the smell of cooking horse flesh.

""We wish to parley," I called. "Parley at the summit."

Qualopec flung the burning-ness into a few more of the liminal cavalry and shouted to the Lapithae to regroup and wait for commands. The battle staggered to a stop.

The armies parted, each to their own side, the Lapithae at one edge, the Centaurs at a second and the Mount Pelion troops (very few left and their commanders mostly slain) to a third.

We four - Qualopec, Cyllarus, Hylonome and myself - rode to a raised area in the central. Cyllarus was silent; only Hylonome spoke.

"Greetings to the First Mare of the Centaurides, my beloved daughter Hylonome," I said.

"Note no Royal Daughter I," said Hylonome.

"Noble as the horse-kind are, to be Royal is to be human."

"And we the pack horses to your atrocities."

Qualopec fixed her with a gimlet eye. "What atrocity, soldier? Explain your gross dereliction of duty."

"Atlantis destroys and enslaves. We strike a blow for freedom."

"Freedom?" scoffed Qualopec. "Freedom to live in a prehistoric past, wallowing in filth and darkness?"

"Your artificial light and mechanical noise has blinded and deafened you to the earth. Atlantis will fall and the corrupt house of Atlas will destroy itself in bestial fratricide."

"Ironic that a beast talks of bestiality, a horse-arsed whore who ruts with any male and who carries the illegitimate growth of a hell-bred spawn."

I guess I should have been watching Cyllarus, aghast as I was at this unkind conversation. Before we could react, he had hurled his short spear - no doubt enraged by the insults - and impaled Qualopec through the throat.

There was a roar from the watchers all around, but what sort of roar I could not say. I spurred forward and grabbing Hylonome's arm before she could react pointed my fire-maker at her head.

"Desist," I cried.

Qualopec slowly tipped in his seat and then fell to the ground in a crash of dented metalwork. He feebly raised his armed and armoured forearm, but the hooves of Cyllarus mushed the fire-firer into green soup. The centaur began to crush the torso of his foe with enraged and well-aimed forelegs, stabbing at Qualopec's head with his metal-tipped sword

"Cease or she dies."

Hylonome looked at me. "Let fly, Mother, let fly. I disown you and would be proud to die."

Qualopec - blinded and almost dead - with an inhuman effort unsheathed his bronze sword. With a bubbly cry of "Atlantis!" he plunged the blade into the belly of his attacker, showering himself with centaur blood and centaur gore. Then he lost consciousness.

Cyllarus staggered for moment, leaning for support on his spear, its shaft sinking into the moistened earth under his weight. Then he collapsed, leaving the upright spear as an epitaph.

I dismounted and ran to my brother. He was alive, but only just. The deadly blood had impregnated his wounds and the breath from his crushed ribs was lighter than a sparrow's.

Hylonome bent weeping over the corpse of her lover, and then, snatching up his spear gave a last cry of rebellion before plunging the weapon between her breasts, falling dead across the prone Cyllarus.

The war was over. We left the centaur dead behind - they would not let me take the body of Hylonome, despite my tears. Qualopec was packed in the hold of his warship using ice from the peak of Mount Pelion, and the remnants of the Atlantean Fleet limped to sea.

"Death to Atlantis!" cried the centaurs from the beach as we sailed away, and we sorrowfully returned to the City, our sails flying black

For months I remained in purdah. I will not bore you with my grief, nor my anxiety about the critically ill Qualopec. I offered my help - I could have grown him a body as good as new - but it was shunned. My alien-fashioned DNA had destroyed his spine, left more or less intact in the attack. Instead Tihocan fashioned for his brother a life-support system resembling the exoskeleton and legs of a monstrous crab, whose speech was based on one of his "trumpets" and whose optics replaced the eyeball that the hoof of Cyrralus had burst. To much rejoicing and in my absence, the new Qualopec clacked his way out onto the platform of the central square, and in a brass voice announced that he was recovered and was again fit to return to duty. His unturnable head was screwed directly onto the new device, whilst his useless toes dangled beneath the apparatus like the dugs of an aged cow, but the loyal citizens of Atlantis chose to see the golden and upright hero that he had been.

I redesigned the centaurs, although I doubted that anybody would find a use for them. In place of a human head I placed a horse's head. I built into their physiognomy the fire-firers whose usefulness had been thrown into doubt on the field of Mount Pelion, and defiantly set two of them as guards outside my private house, more for show than utility.

I wrote a letter to the Royal Siblings telling them of my joy at Qualopec's return and reassuring them that there would be no more enemies of the state created in the Golden Pyramid of Aea. Of the new centaurs, galloping and wheeling and neighing mindlessly in my yard I wrote;

"I have distilled the obedience of dogs with the cupboard love of cats, the flocking of birds with the shoaling of fish, the worker thoughts of ants with the hive mind of bees, the hierarchy of lions with the terror of apes, creating a will-less mentality that only lives to obey and die. I have manufactured creatures with the will of sheep and the teeth of wolves, moulding the breakability of horses to the vacant ferocity of bears. These creatures will stand if ordered in a daze for eternity waiting for that one perfect moment when they will carry out your martial will, whether you be there to witness it or not."

And so - eventually - I was received back at court.

---

Chapter Five: Darken Up The Skyway (1960s)

I hardly ever make mistakes, but when I do, it's generally a big one. I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life when in the mid-60's I took some L.S.D. My interest was purely scientific; we had been informed of the C.I.A.'s MKULTRA experiments by an inside source and I was wondering, long before most of the rest of U.S.A. if - like peyote - there was an element of higher consciousness or religiosity to the experience. I wondered, in short, if acid could be used to make people worship me. (Incidentally, the famous recreational use of L.S.D. was a couple of years later, and you'll understand by the end of this chapter of my life why I steered away from the parties of the Merry Pranksters and Dr. Tim Leary, despite the frequent invitations.) I'm not opposed to drugs - the hopeless twentieth century hypocrisy surrounded the classification of mind-altering substances and the total failure to appreciate the needs of the addictive personality just leave me amused and angry.

At any rate. I mixed about one quarter of a milligram of acid into a glass of coke and swigged it down. Would that I had not, because it was either the acid trip from hell or an agony resulting from the direct gaze of God.

I found myself on an identical Earth standing outside an identical Parajito Mesa ranch house, and at first it was as if I was walking out to meet myself. Then - as the doppelganger approached - I began to believe that she looked and sounded a lot like my long lost sister Astarte, her hair dyed blonde to match my own.

"Greetings, Jacqueline Natla."

"Greetings ... stranger."

"I am no stranger. I am your very own harbinger, messenger, white rabbit, Gabriel, call me what you will."

"Well ... white rabbit. What is this place? It seems strangely familiar, like the real world, but ... reflected."

"This is ur-Earth and this is ur-New Mexico and I am ur-Natla, all circling the sun in an orbit directly opposite to that of the real Earth."

I started to giggle and the ur-Natla giggled in unison with me, starting and stopping on a dime. This amused me to start with, but then it began to frighten me. Nothing was right. The sand and the sky were subtly the "wrong" color and the house and the cacti were the "wrong" shape. ur-Natla was beautiful but there was something "incorrect" about her beauty, as if she were secretly a corpse made up to look alive, or secretly a "thing" not made of human flesh.

ur-Natla came very close to me and embraced me. I shrank away, shuddering deep within myself. She laid her cheek against mine, making my skin crawl and the bile enter my mouth. The horizon began to rock like a fairground ride and the sun to blink like a pulsar.

"I have a prophecy to give you," she whispered in my ear. "Previously you were brought down by your kin, your bloodline. This will happen again."

At that, I was plucked up into the sky. I saw the ur-Earth receding below me, and where the real Earth is blue, it was red. The ur-Moon had a malevolent yellow sheen and far off the distance I saw a red planet, getting closer and closer. It was Mars, and standing on the surface staring towards me and towards the real Earth were the Olympeans, silent and watchful.

I guess an old TV program must have been on, because I saw President Kennedy saying "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth."

Suddenly his eye was replaced by an empty socket and the back of his head exploded, splattering brains all over the American flag behind him. Worms began to crawl out of his mouth, and he had become a wizened corpse, cackling mindlessly and humping the podium in front of him like a copulating dog.

At that I started screaming.

"No," I was saying. "They will covert you. They will fuck you and pluck you for their own amusement. Do not invite them back."

Naturally they put me in a straitjacket and kept me medicated and under observation for days and days. I dreamed of clockwork soldiers and pumpkin-headed idiots whilst they gave me electric shock therapy.

I became silent enough for the doctors and lawyers, but I was never the same. When I was returned to real life, everything had changed and for me the world was a paranoiac's nightmare.

For about five years, between about 1965 and about 1970, my businesses were run by my faithful employee and friend Oliver Philo Farnsworth. I have difficulty remembering the exact dates, but hey ... if you remember the 60's you weren't there, right? It was Oppie who had made my fortune for me in the first place and now he maintained it whilst I took a "time out" from reality. The official diagnosis was generalized anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I hardly visited the ranch house at Parajito Mesa at all, but had holed up on the top floor of the Xanadu Princess Hotel, Las Vegas. I had permanently hired the entire floor for my personal use, and - terrified of the sight of the sky and the sea, the things that had always been my friends - drew the curtains and bolted the door.

Let me describe a typical day for you.

There wasn't really a sunrise. I had the lights on all the time - ghastly strip lights - so that my rooms were as bright and sterile as an operating theatre. No doubt what with lapsing in and out of sleep I got approximately eight hours, but there was never a deep satisfying period of sleep and what sleep there was punctuated by nightmares whilst the waking periods were colored by fear.

I'd decide that it was morning - usually dictated by the needs of my bladder - and pee in a chamber pot. I'd taken to storing my urine in glass jars until I was sure that all the living cells sloughed off from my bladder wall were dead and incapable of being grown in culture.

I maintained sterile conditions; I was concerned with so-called "forward contamination" of my personal space by alien bacteria. I walked on sterile wipes and splashed about various bleaches and solutions of hydrogen peroxide. Because of my reluctant to allow a contaminated stranger into my space, my hair began to grow and grow. When I dared to clip my nails, I kept the clippings in a shoebox. No clones if I could help it.

My food was supplied through an airtight hatch. I had hired a firm to produce packages that was bacteriological inert, the earthly equivalent of astronaut meals. My water was sterilized and filtered and maintained at a strict pH.

I then spent the rest of the day glued to the bank of televisions in my room, making scrapbooks of cutting from the newspapers and reading financial and political reports from the various divisions of my companies.

I found it easier to watch the TV's with the volume turned down. The commentary didn't really help. On one screen there'd be some inept war, usually Vietnam. On another there'd be the semi-documentary coverage of the paranoia gripping the land in shows like 'The Fugitive'.

The thing that really freaked me out, however, was a short story by an English writer called Arthur Clarke called 'The Sentinel'. I quote; 'It was only a matter of time before we found the pyramid and forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those whose duty it is will be turning their minds upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are often insanely jealous of the young.' At least they were making a movie of it. People would be warned.

I had gotten hold of the material relating to the "Space Program". The planned landings on the Moon. The probes to Mars.

""We're like mice nibbling at the cheese on a mouse trap," I wrote in my diary. "The Olympeans will return. I must try to halt the space missions, or at very least, prepare for the inevitable invasion."

I had turned my back on my past, on Atlantis, on my megalomania, but ...

My sane mind fought with my madness.

"Forget all of that," said the angel on my shoulder. "Live in the present. Live the American Dream. Leave 'Queen Natla' in the past, dead and buried."

I'd sit on my balcony, trapped in sunglasses and poncho, watching the city below me.

Did I owe these people anything? Atlantis was nothing more than a quaint myth and I'd already given my life once for it. Why bother?

"Put aside your self-importance. You have buried your identity and your past. Your past ... crimes. You have re-invented yourself."

And so I tried to smell the flowers and glory in the sunset over the sea and not to think of destiny, but every night in the clear desert sky I could see the Moon and sometimes Mars.

I would wake from a nightmare in which Zeus himself had come down to earth, burning up the President with a thunderbolt before ravishing his women - Lady Bird, Lynda and Luci. All this whilst disguised as a giant American eagle. Drunkenness, lasciviousness, blood lust and madness swept the world as their embodiments - Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus - set foot again. And finally, my sister - in the guise of Athena - tried me in a public court and ordered me to be magically sealed like Merlin in a crystal cave for eternity for my foolish aged desires.

* * * * *

I only have my notes and diaries and old newspapers to help me reconstruct that period and however I arrange the pieces I cannot achieve a logical chronology. I guess I'm not the only person who lived through that period who has that problem. So I'll give you the pieces instead of a narrative.

It was the 14th July 1965. I was listening to my old friend, the radio.

"Just you and me like the old days in the cave," I said, sitting in a closet with the door closed and the radio on my knee. "They can watch us through the TV but you are still loyal to me."

The program was called 'A Night of Encounter' and was about the latest Mars flyby by Mariner 4. Dick Bertal was interviewing some guy called Richard Haugland.

"We already know what will happen," I said to the radio.

They were discussing trajectories and the Soviets.

"I'm telling you. 1960, Marsnik 1 and Marsnik 2, BOOM on the launch pad. Boom! On the launch pad! Sputnik 22, kerboom! Zond, kerplooey! What more proof do you need? The agents and the harbingers of the gods are walking among us."

The radio didn't reply directly but the men on it talked of their hopes. Photos of the planetary surface. Maybe there'd be canals and pyramids. But what if the gods objected, I thought?

"And then there are the ones that made it out the atmosphere," I rambled to myself. "Mars 1 - 'failed on the way' to Mars. Sputnik 24 - 'failed to leave earth orbit'. Mariner 3 - 'bumped into a solar orbit'. They must have spacecraft. It's the chariots of the fucking gods."

I'd measured the aerial photos of the Nazca Lines. Probably just Indian paintings to attract the attention of the "sky gods" who brought the rains, the archaeologists said. "Sky gods?" Were they kidding? I guess archaeologists and aliens don't mix. I wondered if the Nazca Lines were something to do with the descendants of Atlantis, bastard generations fathered by the Maian Regiment gone native, the half remembered lore of the Atzlan Confederacy? It didn't seem very likely.

My brain buzzed with half theories, half facts, all polished to a glossy paranoid sheen. Ignorance and trauma give rise to conspiracy theories, but just because you're mad doesn't mean that you're automatically wrong.

Good job it was ten years before Mariner sent back the "face" from Cydonia, that constellation of accidentally aligned shadows and craters. That famous "face" that resembled a Cyberman from Doctor Who or Qualopec, depending on your mind-set. If I'd seen that in the 1960's I'd have been bouncing off the walls.

"You're linking too many disparate facts together," said my sane mind. "You've created some sort of monomaniacal monomyth from ill-remembered stories, in which everything is connected. What next? All of the gods are the same? Odin is Zeus? Jesus is Attis? Drivel, not worthy of a scientist."

But I wasn't listening to myself.

I may have phoned into the radio program and blurted out all my theories to Bertal and Hoagland. Or maybe that was just a dream. Or maybe I've blanked it out due to my deep embarrassment, like a lover sneaking away from a drunken night before.

* * * * *

I became aware of strange noises as I lay in my self-prescribed oxygen tent, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling. Sometimes they would be from below me and sometimes - more unsettlingly - they were from above me, from the roof of the Xanadu.

One sound, the most frequently heard, sounded like the rolling of a giant stone doorway. It would cross the ceiling and I would follow it from one side of the suite to the other. Something about it echoed of Atlantis.

Then there were squeaks and giggles and whispers. They reminded me of the spirits of the dead come to drink at a trough of blood.

Then one day - I could have sworn I was dreaming until I realised that I was awake - I could hear the sounds in my rooms. I lay petrified under my bed sheets, waiting for Lords know what manacled apparition to appear before me.

The rumbling sounds crisscrossed my closed bedroom door, sometimes halting, sometimes speeding up. I could see under the door a shadow speeding. At one point a tentative hand tried the handle, but ceased on finding the door locked.

The rumbling stopped and then there was the pattering of what sounded like the paws of a small animal. I heard a thin fairy voice half-humming and half-singing in an unknown tongue.

There was a last rumbling and then silence.

When dawn came, I ventured out, gold-plated ornament in hand as a weapon.

There was little evidence of my visitors, except for what looked like a tiny paw print, and on one place, a muddy smear patterning like the underside of some sort of tendril or tentacle. There was an apple on the floor, with a chunk taken out of it by what I thought was a long incisor or maybe a claw. The suite smelt disconcertingly of rosewater - or was it putrid flesh?

I shuddered and did what I never do, that is, drank a mixture of sour milk and brandy for breakfast.

Eventually I rang reception.

"Hello", I said, tentatively. "Who am I speaking to?"

"Good morning, Ms. Natla. This is Edward Bundy, the night manager."

"Good to hear from you, Mr. Bundy."

"How may I help you Ma,am?"

"Did you ... send anybody up to my suite last night?"

"No, Ma'am. As per your standing instructions."

"I could have sworn I heard ... something. An animal maybe."

"That's strange, Ma'am. I have no note of that at all."

"Very good, Mr. Bundy." I wasn't relieved. If anything I felt a bit foolish. "What I really rang for was a fresh bottle of brandy, to be sent up by the dumb waiter to the air lock. Put it on my account."

"No charge to you, Ms. Natla."

"No charge?"

"Your money is no good here. Orders from the house."

"Orders from the house?"

"I'm the kind of woman who likes to know who's buying their drinks, Mr. Bundy," I said, with a faint smile in my voice.

"It's not a matter that concerns you, Ms. Natla. At least not at this point."

I was too tired to argue. "Anything you say, Mr. Bundy. Anything you say."

* * * * *

According to the history books Stalin's daughter first met Frank Lloyd Wright's widow at Taliesin West in 1970, but according to my faulty memory they met earlier than that and I was there.

I had an idea that if I could arrange a meeting between women of influence from East and West maybe we could use our influence to stop the Space Race.

My first thought was a video conference. I'd had my hotel room and all of the conference rooms at Natla Tech affiliates fitted with a device that we had covertly designed with IBM. (We'd designed a number of things together, including the prototype of a heuristically-programmed algorithmic computer with Chandra and Langley's group at IBM's plant in Urbana, Illinois.)

The videophone device, a pale echo of Tihocan's aetherscope, was called the Imagephone Alpha.

"Hello?" I said loudly into the microphone. "Is that you Mr. Farnsworth? I'm talking to you now on the videophone."

"Good morning Ms. Natla," replied a black and white Oppie, looking not quite straight into the camera.

"I saw the arrival of Svetlana Stalin on the news reels and I wondered if she personally knew Mr. Kosygin?"

"You're breaking up."

"MR. KOSYGIN! REMEMBER HIM AND LBJ IN NEW JERSEY?"

At any rate, that conversation made me realise that if I was going to try and get a meeting together I'd have to be there in person. But how?

I kept abreast of the scientific literature, more for amusement than enlightenment, and an article from the more crackpot fringes of medicine had caught me eye. It might provide me with the perfect cover.

The meeting was arranged in a house near Mount Rushmore, a house built by Oglivanna's former husband Frank Lloyd Wright, which had its own private airfield that I could be flown into.

My "illness", which I'd invented for the occasion, I'd named Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Any exposure to the outside air, I'd let it be known, would throw me into a massive allergic fit. The real truth was that I didn't want any of me leaking out into the environment and providing a scent for the Olympean hunters that I was sure must be on my trail.

So I clumped down the steps of my jet dressed from head to foot in a white environment suit, towing my air supply behind me like a bag lady with a trolley. With the outside microphones switched off, all I could hear within the vaguely-trapezoid helmet was my own breathing.

I felt an air of unreality as I strode up to the house. Inside the part-glassed roof shed a blinding amount of actinic mountain sunlight onto an incongruous scene containing - boxed in by whitewashed walls and white plastic floor tiles - some anachronistic Louis XVI furniture. Whatever Frank Lloyd had originally intended, the new owners had as much sense of harmonious interior decor as a race of aliens. The room was as sterile and overlit as an operating theatre or the bathroom in a futuristic nightclub.

I switched on my helmet speakers, and suddenly every click of a shoe or clink of a coffee cup was magnified and sharpened as in a fever dream. Two women, both dressed in rather severe collarless suits, were murmuring together in what I supposed was Russian or another Slavic language, Mrs. Lloyd Wright having originally come from the Balkans.

They rose to their feet as I entered and the younger woman - a plump pink-cheeked woman with a crooked self-depreciating smile and a bouffant hairstyle - came forward to greet me, hand held out stiffly.

"I am Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina ... but you may call me Svetlana." She giggled slightly. "And this is Oglivanna Frank Lloyd Wright."

"Nee Olga Ivanovna Lazovich," said the older woman, "but you may call me Mrs. Lloyd Wright." She was in her sixties and had white highlights in her hair that reminded me of the Bride of Frankenstein.

I took their hands in my white gauntlet. "And I'm Jacqueline Natla of Natla Technologies," I said, "and you can call me whatever you please."

I appraised them. Both Oglivanna and Svetlana, the latter despite a layer of cheerful humor, had hard eyes. They were like eaglets. I could envision us as a formidable triumvirate against any Olympian plot.

Since it was obvious that I was a nutjob (I assumed), I tried to think of some reasons why we should be careful "out there". I tried to make them see the message, not the messenger.

"What about if we bring back some bacterium or virus from the upper atmosphere that devastates life on earth?" I said. "What about if all these tales of UFOs have some basis in fact? Should we be messing about in outer space? Aren't there better things to spend the money on?"

But it turned out that neither of them had any useful contacts.

"Have you not seen 'Doctor Strangelove'?" said Svetlana. "Both of our empires are run by the military-industrial - how do you say it?"

"The military-industrial complex," said Oglivanna. "Yes. The Space Race has nothing to do with exploration and everything to do with mutually assured destruction."

I gazed at them though my visor. "I ... genuinely thought it was about exploration," I said.

They laughed.

"If the SSSR can send a robot to the Moon," said Svetlana, "then we prove that we have the financial and technological ability to put a nuclear bomb on the White House."

"And you approve of this?" I said to Oglivanna.

"Of course not,"` she snapped. "I'm a theosophist for God's sake. Why do you think I live in a commune?"

"She pretends to be a hippy," observed Svetlana, "but really she's a businesswoman."

"Whilst Svetlana pretends to believe in democracy and the American Way."

"Don't we all?" I said.

I picked up some good business tips - as Svetlana wrote in her book 'The Faraway Music' (written after she had became a "replacement" for Oglivanna's dead daughter, also called Svetlana);

'This hierarchical system was appalling: the widow at the top, then the board of directors (a formality); then her own close inner circle, making all the real decisions ..... Mrs. Wright's word was law. She was a 'spiritual leader' and self-appointed minister, preaching on Sunday mornings on matters of God and man ...'

Svetlana was not keen on this matriarchal system ï¿1⁄2 Russians prefer patriarchies - but it was one that I recognised and valued from my days as a God-King in Atlantis. After a few years, when I regained my senses, I put many of Oglivanna's precepts to work in my own management of Natla Technologies, and I like to think that we provided a template for the future. I consider Mrs. Thatcher, the Premier of England, and I like to think that I see a pale imitation of myself.

But as for stopping the Space Race - it was pointless even to try, at least by political means.

* * * * *

Then, one day - I can't remember the year - 1968, 1970? - the ghost was revealed.

I'd been too scared to leave my room when the noises were going on, and I'd viewed with some trepidation the evidence left by my night visitors.

One evening - it wasn't even dark - I looked up the corridor towards my private elevator and there was a girl. She said nothing, but stood there with a blank expression. She was dressed in a thigh-length cotton dress of indeterminate colour. I remember that the dress had puffy sleeves and the girl had dark eyes. I wasn't good with the ages of American children but I guessed that she was between five and ten years old.

I was frozen to the spot, as was she.

Was I dreaming or hallucinating? My suite was supposed to be airtight.

I stared at her, silhouetted against the gilt and red of the elevator doors. I must have blacked out or been lost in a waking dream because she vanished. In my dream there was a deluge of blood.

Then, the next night, I heard her.

I found her sitting on a window ledge, singing to her doll. The words made no sense to me at first as she not only had a heavy accent, but she appeared not to know the meaning of the words, as if she'd learned them by rote in class, or from the radio. Eventually I was able to decipher them and I realised it was from a current pop song.

She was whispering, in broken English;

'I climbed on the back of a giant albatross

Which flew through a crack in the cloud

To a place where happiness reigned all year round

Where music played ever so loudly.'

She followed this with a bizarre hummed version of 'Hole In My Shoe', with the occasional garbled snatch of lyric thrown in for good measure.

I lost my nerve and backed away before I could speak to her.

Finally on the third night I heard the sound of something being rolled across the floor that I'd heard so many nights before.

I flung open my bedroom door just in time to see the little girl speed past on a tricycle. The rolling sound was the tires and the track marks that I'd thought were tendrils were tire tracks, I watched her busily trundle down the corridor before slowing down for the corner and then trundling off again in a purposeful manner.

She rode into the kitchen and, standing on the saddle, helped herself to an apple. She produced a penknife from her pocket and, cutting a small segment from the apple, popped it into her mouth.

"Hey!" I said, softly. I crouched down. "Those are my apples."

The little girl stopped chewing for a second. Then she smiled cheekily and offered the apple to me.

I took it tentatively. The normal thing would have been to take a bite, but I was wondering who she was and whether she was contagious. I realised that I'd have to risk it if I wanted to find out.

"Yum yum," I said, taking a bite.

The little girl giggled.

"What's your name?"

She looked at me with a dark-eyed stare. She obviously didn't understand.

"My name is Natla."

The girl wrinkled her nose. Then she ran up and embraced me.

"Yes, OK, that's nice," I stammered, trying not to over-balance.

But I returned the hug.

* * * * *

I'd always been interested in the works of Dr. Seuss and I proceeded to formulate a whole theory about ancient Earth and ancient Mars based on his work. I should add that I mean Professor Doctor Eduard Seuss, as well as Alexander du Toit and Alfred Wegener, and their theories about the supercontinents of Gondwana and Pangea.

Why Mars, you ask? Serendipidy, partly. Plus ... there was the Martian feature known as Nix Olympica, the "Snows of Olympus", christened by Schiaparelli in the last century. Christened by him after a vivid dream, according to urban myth. Back then we didn't know Nix Olympica was a mountain, a monsterous extinct volcano, a geological feature so large that it was visible from the Earth. It was only renamed Olympus Mons in 1972 after the Mariner 9 mission. I wondered about Schiaparelli's dreams. Were they dreams or were they something else? Were my strange compulsions and terrors coming from the same source?

I ordered Natla Tech to purchase the most up to date computers and commissioned some backroom boys to produce a model of Earth's continental drift from as ancient time as they could manage, using all the available geological evidence. I also ordered the digitisation of all the Mars maps and photos that I could lay my hands on - my contacts at least proved useful for that.

"Ms. Natla," said Oppie, at one point, seated behind a glass screen in the vestibule of my suite. "This is a vast investment. Are we sure that it's strictly ... useful?"

"Oppie, I may be mad. But it's my money and my companies. I'm afraid you'll have to humor me. Besides, we can probably sell the information afterwards and recoup the costs - even for our mining operation, our data will be potentially useful."

"Even the data about Mars?" said Oppie, pushing his bottle thick glasses back up his nose and passing his hands over his flat, severely parted hair.

"As I said - humor me."

"Of course."

"And ask the computing experts to compare the geography of Mars to ancient Earth. Map one on the other."

Oppie's lower lip trembled and he looked extremely anxious. "Ms. Natla. As your accountant I feel it is my duty to point out that this is completely ..."

"Insane?"

"Speculative. Why on earth should Mars resemble ancient Earth?"

"Why on earth indeed, Oppie. Think of it as therapy if you like."

"I'll send you the forecasts for the cost."

"Good man."

The calculations took ... well, I seem to remember that it was months. Maybe years. Eventually I ordered that the printout of the most promising results be sent to me. The models of Earth ranged from the most recent "50 million years/Cenozoic/Tertiary/Paleogene/Eocene/Lutetian" to the most ancient "510 million/Paleozoic/Ordovician/Canadian/Tremadoc". I spread all of the maps, including those of Mars, on the floor and began to spend many hours looking from one to another.

I know now I was wrong, but I convinced myself.

"Mars is a map of ancient Earth," I'd whisper in the early hours of the morning. "Look - two Mount Olympus's. And the Argyre - it lies between India and Australia. The Argyre - known as Salakawagara known as Java. It all fits!"

I stopped washing and eating and my fingernails grew longer and longer.

One pre-dawn I remember sitting bolt upright in the pile of rubbish and half-eaten food and tightly scribbled notes.

"Where's that encyclopedia? Let's see - Mount Olympus Greece is, oh, 100 million years old. But Mars resembles most Earth 500 million years ago! So ... so?"

I pulled my hair out in clumps and bashed my head on the wall until it bled.

"My God! Not only could they shape the surface of a whole planet as a memorial to ... to what? To them! Something insufferably ancient. But the whole point is ... the point is they must have done it in recent time. Or else why would Mount Olympus be on the map? And if Schiaperelli recognised the map in his dreams ... then they are still here. They influence us! They can shape whole planets! And we're firing stuff at them!"

And I dribbled blood from my mouth where I had bitten myself.

They took me away and despite the Cuckoo's Nest book they shocked me again, and pumped me full of chlorpromazine.

* * * * *

As you know I recovered completely eventually and now, as I dictate this I am completely sane.

Several things changed after the second round of E.S.T.

They cleaned up my floor in the Xanadu Princess, and after my lawyers had been at them, they released me and gave me a part-time "helper" called Critchton (still in my employ as staff many years later).

This time the electricity and the drugs reawaked the growth of my wings, but the doctors could not surgically remove them straight away as I was too weak. This was a very fortunate thing, it turned out, for without my stubby half-grown wings I'd never have rescued Aþkðn and thus Aþkðn would not have rescued me.

I'd taken to sitting on my balcony in the sunshine, wrapped in a shawl and my wings, looking down on the city with my binoculars. There were no more air filters or air locks. I was letting the world see me amd smell me and sense me. After all - my fear of Olympeans and aliens had all been a schizoid delusion, or so they told me.

"I hear you," I said to the psychiatrists, "but even if I'm wrong, I vow to make myself as strong and secure and as powerful as I can manage. I owe it to my fellow man. Just in case."

And we all laughed.

Throuigh the binoculars I could watched the cars and buses and the occasional pedestrian. I noticed that all of the pedestrians looked poor, and were usually not white. I wondered what that meant.

One car caught my attention. It was extremely unusual - some kind of convertible. I would never have identified it, except by chance I saw an article in a motoring magazine. The car was made from a kit, had a chassis mainly made of wood, and was called the M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16. I peered at the registration - 655321 - and got it looked up by my friends in the LVPD. Stolen, thought destroyed, I was told.

I'd see the car in the distance, zooming around the network of backstreets off the Strip. They'd have the top down, and would be joyriding. There were four kids, all wearing masks of the new President and of what looked like Governor Reagan of California. Sometimes they wore bowler hats.

Then, one afternoon in winter as one of those thunderstorms that move in from Mexico approached, I saw them just below me. They had accosted two pedestrians, a mother and daughter. As I watched, they tore at the woman's clothing and throwing her to the ground began to kick her viciously. The child looked up at the hotel, right up at me. Her hands framed her face and she was screaming silently. It was my little night visitor from before.

I grabbed up my gold poker and launched myself from the balcony. I spread my half-grown wings and managed a glide.

I could see the ringleader, a gangly youth wearing a President Nixon mask. He had pulled down his trousers and was strutting back and forth whilst his compadres held the girl, no doubt intending to make her watch. The mother lay inert. She was bleeding whilst Nixon Mask sang a beautiful song.

With a Maniaen shriek I sped from the sky just as the lightning flashed and the downpour started.

I landed on Nixon Mask, knocking him over. While he sprawled, I smacked Reagan Mask around the head with the poker.

The gang ran away in great terror, leaving their leader and the girl standing in the rain. The girl's mouth was a rictus and I could see the whites of her eyes as she looked up at me from under her brows.

I knelt and examined the woman. Whatever they'd done, she was dead. I looked at the girl and the girl looked at me. She staggered.

I did a dance of rage, almost a dance of joy, singing in the rain as I kicked Nixon Mask where he lay. He begged but I dispensed justice. I removed his eyes with my clawnails, and then almost dismembered him. I felt his testicles burst like the grapes under the stamping feet of a Bacchanalian dancer as he died screaming. I spread his blood onto my face and arms and breasts. It reminded me of myself, and I felt his life force flow into me. It reminded me of the good old days.

The girl watched the violence with her thumb in her mouth, and her body wrapped around itself. She didn't run or hide.

Afterwards, I showed the girl her mother. I arranged the mother's body in the car, with the body of her murderer at her feet. I helped the girl place coins on her eyes, but not on his.

"Bye bye," I said softly, with my arm around the child. I took her freezing wet hand in mine and mimed waving with it. She hummed on a single note and then buried herself against me.

I took the girl under my wing as I torched the makeshirt pyre with his Zippo, and did something I hadn't done for years - offered up a quick prayer to the Lords of the Sea and the Sky. We ran for the hotel as the wooden chassis and the gasoline ignited behind us.

"How do you get in?" I asked her. "We need to avoid reception."

Up the fire escape we went, to the sound of fire engines approaching.

Near the top, she montioned me to stop, to wait.

Later, she let me back into my own floor, scrambling through a hole in the air conditioning like a mouse. Her tricycle was in the dumb waiter.

Her name was Aþkðn.

* * * * *

I remember watching Elvis shake hands with Nixon and watching the National Guard under the command of Governor Reagen open fire on the students on the Berkeley Campus. Apollo 13 had failed. The joy born in the 50's that been young in the 60's died in the 70's. It hardened my resolve.

"It is my duty not to turn my back on my duty," I said to Aþkðn. She just watched me without speaking, as her English was rudimentary, as was my Turkish. It turned out she'd come via Germany with her mother in search of opportunity. I was an American citizen, kinda, and I felt that America owed her one. So I became her guardian.

"I have to discover what is left of Atlantis," I said. "Look at the wars and the bombs, and crime and poverty. The human race is destroying itself and the planet. And should the Olympeans return, I must be ready."

It was time to wake up and smell the coffee. OK, sometimes my head still hurt and I had occasional nightmares. But my injured psyche told me that the world need a superpower, and it was neither Washington nor Moscow. I'd suffered my forty days in the hot, hot desert, and now it was time for me to resume my imperial destiny.

---

Chapter Six: Dragged And Washed With Eager Hands

I should warn my readers that the next episode deals rather inevitably with the subject of sex. If you are a virgin, or sworn to abstinence, or if your religious beliefs forbid you to carry out an examination of sexuality, I suggest that you give this part of my tale a miss. To summarise, it deals with the ridiculous episode during which, thanks to a popular front originating in the Theme of Crete, Tihocan and myself were encouraged to produce offspring.

It was some five years since the debacle at Mount Pelion and although there had been no more hostilities, the semi-independent colony of centaurs and men styling itself "Attica" was a continual sore in the heart of Atlantis. Astarte had stopped producing babies to everybody's secret relief, and Qualopec was almost spry in his grey-green crab suit. Tihocan, in addition to producing an entire canon of High Atlantean Court Music, had almost perfected a sound that could kill people at a distance, although his attempts at a time machine were still stillborn. I had been dabbling with flight, inspired by the winged creations that I had hatched in my laboratory. I was on the verge of experimenting on myself - there were certainly no volunteers - and growing on my body a working pair of wings. Working out the details of how to articulate these wings to the human frame, whilst providing enough muscle power and energy to power actual flight was a huge challenge. I had already established that gossamer wings that moved at high speed, like those of a wasp or a fly, were out of the question for a large mammal. I was thinking of something with a high surface area that flapped downwards every second, pushing upwards the body suspended in between the wings. Hardly graceful this awkward bobbing flight, to date the only solution I could manage; however once height was achieved, the ability to glide on an updraft brought its own elegance.

The five set of twin kings, meanwhile, ruled as before, little more than figureheads by their own choice. Each area of the Atlantean State was nominally under the control of a king; Mneseus, for example, was titular ruler of the area containing what is now called Ireland, whilst Eumelus was constitutional monarch of that encompassing Spain. And so on.

It was in an area under the nominal purview of Autochthon that the bizarre popular movement one day to be named "democracy" would spring up - named after a phrase (in the prehistoric language of the area) "Dimos Kretes" - which we were reliably informed meant something along the lines of "The Bunch of Cretans." In those days there existed a plain to the south of the City which encompassed a great rectangular plain extending in one direction about three thousand stadia or four hundred miles, bounded at the south by a mountain range topped by the scared peak of Mount Ida (the mountain being sacred to the Olympeans Zeus and Rhea, the place where these two first set foot on the earth). Nowadays, Mount Ida is merely a small peak on the island of Crete and the plain is now part of the seabed of the Sea of Crete.

The people of this region, either described as Autochthonic, after their king, or Cretan, after the geographical division that they inhabited, had long had a reputation for being backward and stupid and easily excited by the most trivial nonsense.

One year there arose in the Theme of Crete a ... what? Preacher? Rabble-rouser? Politician? I don't know how to describe him and I also have to confess that I cannot recall his real name. I shall name him for the purpose of this memoir after one of the slopes from which he used to regale his disciples with interminable sermons on the mount, a slope that is now a beach; Pelagios.

Naturally we in the Royal Family were oblivious to all of this. There are local politicians and crackpot philosophers standing on the benches in every village square, and this is healthy, as it gives the common people the illusion that somebody cares what they think. In reality the average "common person" can barely be left in charge of bringing up children, yet alone get involved in important decisions affecting thousands of people and requiring large piles of precious metal and gems. May as well put a monkey in charge of the White House, to use a metaphor comprehensible to my modern audience.

Then - Pelagios called a General Strike and organised a March for Civil Rights on the City. Some aspects of the General Strike didn't make any sense - if a slave stops working as a rule the owner executes them and obtains a replacement from the local prisoner-of-war camp. However Atlantis was more than just an army of slaves guided by benevolent overlords. There was a "middle class", citizens who were part of the New State; educated with the wisdom of the Olympeans, mostly in service industries. A life without hair-dressers, musicians, writers, priests, courtiers - well, what would be the point? And those not officially involved in the Strike began to drag their feet. To top it all a large crowd of Cretans assembled on the central island of the City, yelling, singing silly protest songs and waving hand-scrawled banners with inscriptions such as "One Two Three Four Qualopec Is Crap At War" and "Hey Hey Astarte How Many Kids Did You Eat Today?"

I received an aetheroscope call from Uncle Eumelus complaining that the rabble were disturbing his afternoon naps and preventing him from completing his thesis upon "The True Colour Of The Fifth Celestial Sphere And Its Connection With The Dorian Mode of Music."

So we four - my Royal Siblings and I - met in the Palace of Elasippus and Mestor. After the obligatory period of ceremonial greetings Qualopec said; "Should I not awaken my Royal Brother Tihocan's cunningly contrived Wooden Horses out of slumbering storage and smilingly smash the blustering bastards into a carmine carpet of guts and gore?"

It seemed a reasonable solution. We toasted each other's health and good sense with various arcane toasts, clinking our chalices at a worthy battleplan.

There was a moment's silence and then I said; "Will it work?"

Qualopec's voice equipment had been improved over the years. These days he sounded less like an emotionless robot and more like a English robot with a trembling stiff upper lip. "Will what work?" he demanded.

"Smashing the protesters?"

"Well as far as I know, my Royal Sister, dead men don't talk. Or chant. Or wave insulting banners."

"It won't make us very popular, my Royal Brother, and what about if another mob takes the places of the fallen?"

"Popular?" said Qualopec, in a sort of mechanical quack. He began to drum the marble floor with an irritated claw. "Are you high?"

"Maybe," said Tihocan, tentatively, "we could meet this leader, this Pelagios, and see if he has any sensible to say?"

"Maybe we could string him up from the nearest tree. It's the only language these people understand."

"We could still do that. I could compose a stirring Execution Cantata."

"And I could arrange a lovely Execution Ceremony and dedicate it to the gods," chipped in Astarte. They joined hands and skipped in a twinnish sort of way.

"That all sounds tremendous fun, my energetic and esteemed Brother and Sister," I said, "but first will we still talk to the demagogue Pelagios?"

We all looked to Qualopec for his lead. After an incredulous moment, he waved a dismissive crab leg. "Whatever, my Royal Siblings," he boomed. "We are experimenting in forms of government, so we may as well investigate this surreal protest."

"And maybe we should broadcast our talks via the aetheroscope to the mob outside. This will have the dual function of demonstrating the idiocy of Pelagios whilst yet again showing to our people what an excellent pantheon of Princes they have in ourselves."

Astarte cleared her throat. "There are complaints out there specifically directed at my Royal Brother Qualopec and myself. Is it possible that this Cretan rabble are un-nerved by our altered appearances, our transcendence of mere humanity?"

I looked at many-breasted Astarte and many-limbed Qualopec with an Autochthonic eye. "You are wise, my Royal Sister, although it pains me to think that our people do not revere both yourself and my Royal Brother Qualopec for your manifest sacrifices to the Atlantean State. However, if you think it prudent, I am sure that my Royal Brother Tihocan - master of airs and graces - helped wherever possible by my own limited ability, will soon crush this pervenu politician, this rhetorical rabble rouser, this toy of the hoi polloi."

"Let us retire, my Royal Sister Astarte," said Qualopec in a basso of disgust, "and discuss the mechanics of a monstrous mass immolation," and they departed, arm in claw.

"Set up the aetheroscope and attach some brass screens on the outside of the palace wall," ordered Tihocan. "Then send the guard to arrest this self-styled King of the Cretans and bring him before his betters in the full glare of publicity!"

It seemed important to us the emphasize the vast gulf in status between ourselves and Pelagios, and so we received him in the Primary Throne Room, flanked by flunkies and functionaries, observed by serfs, servants and slaves and guarded by swordsmen, archers and axe-men, all wearing their most formal and emblazoned uniforms. Our two thrones were backed by an enormous representation of the setting maritime sun, half tapestry, half projection. To each side an arrayed panoply of lights and speakers allowed us to address our visitor in the highest and most ornate of High Atlantean, with all of the bells and whistles. I was dressed in my most regal "Ruler of the Western Territories" robes, and on my head was my radiate crown, framed by noble metal lightning flashes arranged like the rays of the sun.

Two of our tallest and ferocious praetorians marched Pelagios before us and came to a halt with much clicking of boots and snapping of salutes. Pelagios looked disdainful. He was wearing a plain white robe and a long white beard, neither particularly clean looking. "A true man of the people" was what his outfit was designed to say.

Tihocan made the smallest of gestures which was amplified into a thunderclap and a burst of red light, and added; "Throw him to the ground. Throw him to the ground very roughly."

I raised gentle fingers - to the cooing of electronic doves and the palest of pink wave patterns - and said; "Hold hard, my Royal Brother, although naturally I crave your indulgence for my interruption."

"I welcome your intervention, most merciful and most beloved Royal Sister," said Tihocan with a smile, and a burst of loving emerald.

"And I bathe in your forgiveness, my solicitous Royal Brother. May I suggest that we bring chairs and beverage and delicious cake," I instructed the slaves. "If this self-appointed leader fails to please we can always recover the comestibles from his intestines."

Tihocan inclined his head to a ripple of bass harps. "I bow to your wisdom, oh most beautiful of Sisters, and to your obvious love for the Atlantean people," he said.

But we were stopped in our couplets by an unexpected sound, an "Oi!"

It was Pelagios, hands cupped around his mouth. "Excuse me? Could we possible cut through the bullshit pageantry and have a sensible conversation?"

The praetorians to each side of him drew their swords, but I gestured to them to desist. I gazed down impassively and implacably at Pelagios for nearly a minute. Nobody moved and there was a deadening silence. I held Pelagios' brown eye with my own glowing blue, unblinking, daring him to speak again, willing him to understand that with one eyebrow I could destroy him, his mob and the entire Cretan race. He held my gaze but he also held his tongue.

Finally Tihocan and I exchanged slow glances, and I moved a languid orichalcum-sheathed finger to indicate that he might as well proceed.

"Very well, little man," said Tihocan. "Speak."

Pelagios cleared his throat and stood a little taller.

"You rule by divine right, or so you claim ..." I kept my face impassive "... and that's all well and good. But what do you royal types know of the lot of the - as you so pompously put it - "little man"? Your experiences are so removed from the majority of your so-called subjects that I doubt your competence to rule. Astarte creates psychotic religious ceremonies in which the innocent die and Qualopec rampages around the world chopping people to bits. You, Tihocan, are a blithering idiot who spends his time inventing pointless machines to tuneless music, whilst you, Natla, are an ethic-free egotist filling your pyramid with perversions of nature that run off and declare war on the state!"

There was a roar of anger from the assembled courtiers, and Tihocan gripped the arms of his throne whitely. I remained un-moved, or at least that was the impression that I hope I gave, and raised my hand again for silence.

"Do you deny the authority of the Olympeans and the five twin sons of Poseidon who have been set over the Realm of Atlantis?" I enquired in a mild voice.

"I ...," Pelagios began to say something and then dropped his eyes and his voice. "No, of course not. I recognize and revere the Lord of the Sun and the Lord of the Sea and the ten sons that helm the Themes of our country."

"That is most generous of you, you irreligious and irreverent worm," said Tihocan, aridly. He took a moment to swallow his anger. "And so, most impolite and impolitic of men, what would you have your rulers and betters do? What precisely do you demand, oh paragon of parvenus?"

Pelagios mopped his brow with a hemp rag. "I wish there to be an assembly, a parliament of the people to dictate the running of the state, at least at the level of authority of your royal selves, a popular government topped by the constitutional rule of the sons of Poseidon."

"You mean - an assembly of advisors," I said.

"No. I mean an assembly of rulers. The people ruled by the will of the people."

Tihocan concealed his mouth with his golden fan whilst I lowered my kohl-rimmed eyes and depressed my lower lip with the tip of my jeweled flywhisk. The courtiers, however, were less restrained and there was a huge gale of laughter.

"To be clear," I said. "You want us to hand over the Atlantean State to a mob?"

"That would be both a dereliction of our duty, and a waste of our talents," said Tihocan. "In fact, it would be perverse, perhaps even evil."

There was a noise of general agreement from the court.

Pelagios was nonplussed. "But what happens should you die?" he said. "Qualopec himself was nearly killed in battle. There is no mechanism for a succession, and not even the grandchildren of an Olympean can live forever. The present state is fragile. It is this anxiety that forms the background to and justification for our proposal for a people's government - after all, there will always be the people."

Tihocan and I sat back in our seats. The Cretan had a fair point. The five pairs of twin kings were unlikely to breed, and the current climate was set against an heir grown in my laboratories.

"You could at least give us a royal wedding," persisted Pelagios, "and agree to communicate better with your subjects, especially with those who are more loyal than myself." He permitted himself a smile at this last phrase; none more foolhardy than he.

I drew myself up, and composed my painted features into that of a fond parent. "For an ill-educated man you are a promising rhetorician, Pelagios of the Theme of Autochthon. You have - despite yourself, no doubt - given the Royal Tihocan and myself an amusing topic to mull over, and we will announce if we have been inspired to any action. We will not execute you, nor destroy the crowd of followers that you have placed in harm's way. Instead we will allow you and your fellow Cretans to return to the fair slopes of Mount Ida and we thank you for the diversion that you have provided."

Tihocan and I stood, ornaments tinkling, and the sensory barrage of the Atlantean Imperial Anthem began to fill the Throne Room. I paraphrase, but the words went something like;

The Sun o'er Atlantis is summery warm.

He smiles on the Lord of the Sea.

All singing together to greet the storm -

'Tomorrow belongs to me'.

Pelagios was marched from our presence and the Cretans were sent home, escorted by the Wooden Horses and the Lapithae Regiment and glowering Qualopec, who obviously rued the lack of an opportunity to cremate the lot of them.

A year passed, a year of peace. Qualopec enshipped his armies and flew over the wide water to his newly discovered kingdom of Aztlan in the extreme West. Astarte traveled in the opposite direction, converting the Mesolithic mammoth hunters of the mountainous plains beyond Mount Nimrod to her Goddess-based religion. As for Tihocan, he for his ingenuity was commissioned by his Royal Father Eumelus to improve the defenses against the all-encircling Ocean, defenses spanning what is now known as the Strait of Gibraltar; as the persistent rise in sea level since the Ice Age constantly threatened to turn fertile farmlands between the Theme of Gades and the City into salty swamp. As for myself, I laboured in the Pyramid of Aea to produce human flight, and fell in love with two of my own creations, the fair winged maidens Ma'at and Nike, whose leathery crimson dactyls stroked and lulled me either to sleep or to ecstasy in our communal bed. But still the succession stood unsettled.

One day I went to visit Tihocan in his engineering works. I looked through a heavily darkened glass porthole where Tihocan and his assistants, dressed in suits fashioned of lead with armoured limbs powered by gears and waldos and motors, were pouring a molten blue material into moulds of stone. I could see the very air around them trembling with heat or sound or some other energy, and the rocks in the walls of the cave sparkled and glittered with some kind of un-natural light. Dimly I could hear a continual klaxon sounding. A wooden table to one side burst into flames and was quickly smothered with grey fibres.

"Greetings, my Royal Brother," I said when Tihocan emerged some time later. His hair was wet and his skin looked as if it had been scrubbed with a brush. ""You have bathed rather too vigorously." I stroked the hair from his forehead and laid the back of my hand on his burning face.

"We work with the most poisonous of elements, my Royal Sister," he replied. "I think it may be lore that the most potent substances in the world are also the most deadly."

"And what potency do you hope to harness?"

"I wish to trap the power of the sun into the smallest of objects. I shall fashion an ornament with which all of the machines and weapons of Atlantis may be controlled. With such an object within a mechanized land, we four may rule even more securely."

"Oh most ingenious of engineers and yet an ingénue," I said. "We cannot mechanize love."

We moved to lounge on silken couches near sparkling fountains and refreshment was brought to us.

""You have a train of thought in motion," said Tihocan with a smile.

I sighed. "It has become clear to me - in fact logic has overwhelmed me - that the only member of the Royal Family capable of producing an heir is myself. There are only two imperial females, myself and my beloved sister, and she for her duties as High Priestess is not ... appropriate."

"You refer to the demands of that pond scum Pelagios."

"Pond scum he, as you say truly, but one who merely provided the thought. We do not have any heirs."

"You and I work daily to prolong our lifespan."

"But we do not possess the elixir of eternity."

Tihocan nodded in thought.

"Having identified myself as a potential mother, the next question is to whom is suitable as a father. There are no other states in the world whose Royal Family can provide a prince as a husband; we are alone. I could mate with a commoner, but after the business of Astarte and Captain Attis this would seem hypocritical. Qualopec is too injured to father a child and it seems unlikely that any of our Royal Uncles would agree to impregnate me, leaving aside the damage that this might do to their divine dignity. I cannot generate a child artificially in the Golden Pyramid of Aea as nobody, not even my own kin, would find this acceptable after the business of Mount Pelion. The paternity is a pretty puzzle, taxing and tiresome."

"It is insoluble, my Royal Sister," said Tihocan. "Maybe you should cease to worry and allow the future to fix for itself."

"However there is one Royal person who is male, fit, beautiful and young - the very epitome of a potential Royal Groom."

Tihocan looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"We could have a gorgeous Royal Wedding," I said.

He finally got it. "Surely you jest?" he said, his face glowing with discomfort.

I rose from my couch. "Think on what I have said, my Royal Brother. You once described us as the drivers of the chariot of Atlantis. We can grasp the reins and attempt to dictate the route or we can be carried pell-mell to who knows where. Uncomfortable power or comfortable powerlessness. It is a pellucid predicament."

It was a huge production.

It was also a "first" in several ways. Marriage as such hadn't really been invented, yet alone the ceremony for a "Royal Marriage", and to top it all this was the first Royal Marriage ever to be broadcast to a nation.

My dress was based on the paneled gown a version of which you can see today in the Archaeological Museum at Herakleion on the statue called "the Goddess of the Snakes" (- a statue misnamed as it was in fact supposed to be a portrayal of myself weaving together two strands of DNA). The gown was ankle length and of many colours, and left my breasts - gilded and rouged - exposed to the open air. On my head I had a golden wreath of ivy leaves, artfully perched on what one might describe in modern terms as "tall hair". In one hand I held a pomegranate and in the other a dish containing a freshly-excised goat's womb. Tihocan was bare-chested, and sported a golden phallus of prodigious length, his train being held by two of his lovers - Ganymede of Phrygia and Sisene of Nubia - white-skinned and blacked-skinned respectively, both dressed as erotes.

Qualopec lined up the Lapithae Regiment in full battle order, and to the blare of trumpets and the rattle of drums one hundred and four captives were beheaded as we processed past, their blood lifting the petals under our feet. Astarte too had prepared the ground and for a week the new Temple of the Goddess of Love had been host to one hundred and four sacred prostitutes all vowed to have intercourse with whichever man should approach them, all in aid of producing a blessing of fertility on our union.

Of the ceremony itself I remember little, although I recall Astarte referring to Tihocan as "my Lord Baal-Peor, the maiden's hymen opener" and to myself as "honey-haired, pure, violet-eyed Natla", and I can still recite two of the vows that Tihocan and I exchanged;

Tihocan -

"Peer of the gods, the happiest man I seem

Sitting before thee, rapt at thy sight, hearing

Thy soft laughter and thy voice most gentle,

Speaking so sweetly."

Natla -

"Then in my bosom my heart wildly flutters,

And, when on thee I gaze never so little,

Bereft am I of all power of utterance,

My tongue is useless."

It was all a great success and the hoi polloi lapped it up with much adulation. Indeed, the bare breasted wedding dress and the large golden phallus were still thought fashionable for years afterwards.

We were led by the court to the Wedding Chamber and onto the Bridal Bed, an enormous edifice with porphyry pillars and deerskin cushions, and the heavy curtains drawn about us. The ladies of the bedchamber sang an archaic chant replete with overtones wishing us pleasure and fertility from our union, and then we were alone.

Tihocan unfolded his crossed arms from his chest and put down the ceremonial flail and the ceremonial wheatsheaf. He threw back the curtains - we were alone in the room, an unusual state for a Royal - and went to a sideboard for some wine.

"Thank the Lord of the Sea and the Lord of the Sun that it is completed," he laughed. "You make a beautiful bride my Royal Sister."

"And you make a handsome and virile husband, my beautiful Royal Brother."

"I suppose we must spend time together for form's sake, but I feel as if any disturbance in our reign has been effectively quashed by today's performance."

"We will only be truly safe when we produce an heir."

Tihocan sat on the edge of the bed.

"That may be tricky," he said, choosing an informal style of language. "I have never had congress with a woman."

"As never I have with man. We are effectively virgins on our wedding night."

"You represent all that is fair in the feminine, my Royal Sister. As the poet says - 'thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins and thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies'."

I reached out and touched his manhood. I must confess I was curious although not aroused. Tihocan did not flinch but my fingers produced no reaction.

"Maybe if I blindfold you?" I said. "If I begin with my mouth you could pretend that I was the lustful Ganymede. Then I could lie with my face in the pillow and you could ride me as if I was bold Sisene."

"And maybe if I blindfold you, you could imagine that my kisses and caresses on your nipples and between your thighs were those of your handmaidens?"

"I shall be Athena to your Hephaestus, my womb your forge."

However. To cut a story short and to spare my blushes, neither of us could achieve enough arousal to effect penetration, yet alone to spur either of us to orgasm. Neither of us were hurt and both of us were amused, but our natures were not such that ordinary heterosexual congress was possible. May as well try to mate fish with fowl. We lay in each others' arms until rosy-fingered dawn tiptoed on her gold sandals towards us, but we were both aware that another solution would need to be engineered.

Looking back I realize that this was one of those moments where one is trapped by the concept of duty. I was effectively the ruler of the world after all, and something in me would not let things drift. I realized that nothing - not me, nor Tihocan, nor our friendship - mattered more than the question of the succession. I could have taken advice from the family, from Qualopec, from Uncle Eumelus, even from my father, but I sensed that it would only postpone the decision. I ask with an agony of hindsight - what would you have done in my place?

After a few months of non-consummation, I invited Tihocan to the Golden Pyramid of Aea under some pretext that I cannot recall. I had prepared my body with infusions of drugs and extracts to go into a state of hyper-ovulation; a multiple of paired ovi nestled within my womb waiting to be woken.

I had created a love potion with a plethora of parts; bark from the Madder and Yohimbine trees, fungus from the corpses of silkworms, juice from the testicles of bulls, extract of Sativa buds, a quintessence of coca and cocoa, belladonna and blue lotus, an esoteric entheogen to engender the ego and erection of an energetic elephant.

I could see Tihocan's pupils dilate at the same moment that he realized that he had been drugged.

"My Royal Sister," he said, staggering to his feet. "What is this?"

I took him by the arm. "Why, my Royal Brother, merely an aphrodisiac, a love potion, to help us with our conjugal duty."

"I feel the enchantment but the remains of my mind rebels at this loss of free will."

"It is a small pleasurable loss in the service of the state."

"No human deserves such servitude," he mumbled, smiling in spite of himself.

I led him to the bedroom where my lovers - my handmaidens as Tihocan had named them - were waiting. Naturally he and no other had set eyes on Ma'at and Nike before.

Tihocan jerked with surprise when he saw them. "What are these beings, these vermillion harpies, these winged nightmares?" he exclaimed.

Nike and Ma'at, being speechless, made no reply to this unkind assessment. Their red skins and the red lighting made it impossible to tell if they blushed. They stood one at the head and the other at the foot of the bed, their leathery pinions forming a crimson umbrella.

"They are my lovers," I said.

Tihocan, if he had been sober, might have been horrified but he giggled insanely. His hands were at his groin, trying to suppress the tumescence that had arisen against his will and his temperament.

"Surely there are human women enough? This is ... perversion."

"One person's perversion is another's delight, my Royal Brother."

Tihocan gave one more try. "I beg you my Royal Sister, my beloved sibling - Natla, please! Do not do this to me!"

We took him to the bed and Nike and Ma'at aroused me. I impaled myself on my brother and began to move like a milk maid milking a cow. Tihocan groaned and writhed as if from pleasure. I took a thin porphyry phallus and inserted it into him, making him ejaculate within me. After I had dismounted he rolled into a foetal position, weeping.

There were eight fertilized eggs. I caused seven to be removed and placed in storage within incubators. The eighth I brought to term, and nine months later my daughter Chloe, the "green shoot" of Achaea, was born.

I held up the infant before a cheering crowd of my subjects whilst standing on the steps of the Temple of Demeter. My Royal Brothers and Sisters had all found reasons to be elsewhere.

My duty done, I decided to confront the demons that were threatening to split the state. Ever since the first centaur - my firstborn, my beloved Hylonome - had touched delicate hoof to cruel earth, we had in our hands a potential that once invented would never cease to be, or at least that is how it seemed to me. Our failure at Mount Pelios had been caused by our refusal to accept and welcome the new, and the farce of the Royal Heir had arisen solely because of a prejudice against in vitro methods. I had sacrificed enough to the status quo, I decided. I would embrace the new world with open arms and let the chips fall where they may.

Magnesian and Urania and all my other assistants were brought to a high peak of productivity in the Golden Pyramid, every red crevice and cave, orifice and recess pulsing with the blood of industry. The green eggs swelled with life and new creations were dragged forth from the amnion and washed with eager hands. Observe - a herd of bull-headed men and a gathering of goat-footed satyrs, fast running soldiers with weaponed foreheads. Admire - skeletal guards with the flattened heads of turtles and the semicircular jaws of rending canines. Praise my aqueous mer-folk with piscean tails, clever as dolphins. Commend my scarlet-skinned avians with leathery bodies carved for war. An army, a new monstrous Regiment, was thus created in the halls of Aea.

I myself underwent the knife and the graft. New bones grew from my scapulae, new long muscles formed around my frame. My body was lengthened and lightened, and new nerve endings intruded into my brain. My view of the world was forever subtly altered, having more of the impulses of a raptor than a simian.

At last I stood from my sickbed and thought deep on the various limbs of my body. Thus, my right arm was raised and thus, my left. I could roll one shoulder and then another. I concentrated in turn on every part of my upper torso. And then, when I was not expecting it, my wings unfurled. Six feet on each side, skeletal as a bat or a pteranodon, the skin a semi-transparent ruby red. More magnificent than any cuirass or crown, more commanding than any uniform or robe of state; finer than any imperial cloak blown in the wind, than the many-eyed fan of Juno's peacock. I gasped at my own alien beauty and the blood rushed into my face.

"By the Sea and the Sun," I exclaimed to Magnesian. "Such a brilliant image, burning bright, reborn imperial, virgin vermillion. How can my people fail to worship me?"

"Indeed, your Majesty," replied Magnesian, his head bowed. "Your transformation from a petite blonde to a towering scarlet bird-woman should make your subjects take pause."

Over the next weeks Nike and Ma'at, with patience and kind hands, taught me the waking orgasm that is flight.

At length huge convoy of carts and carriages and juggernauts was constructed at my command, and I and my new army started out on the road south to Mount Ida. On each side the citizens of Atlantis fell to their faces in abject terror, but I reassured them with showers of obols and roses, honeyed words and pleasant smiles. I perched on my mobile throne borne by a battalion of crimson creations, regally waving the false claws on my fingers and smiling a hawkish smile, my skin striped with lines and patterns, half feathered, half scaled, more owl than girl.

We arrived in the Theme of Autochthon and I ordered Pelagios brought to me, strapping the fire-firers onto my forearms.

We took to the air before the populus, Pelagios carried screaming between two harpies. They lifted him high and then let him fall, and in flight I destroyed him with a ferocious fusillade of flame. I and my squadron of red devils, with Nike at my left and Ma'at at my left, over-flew the capital of the Cretans in a display of elegance and raw power. I put in place a new human governor, Minos, guarded by the bull-man known as the Minotaur.

"I may have once had the body of a weak and feeble woman, but now I have the imperial wine-red wings of a Queen, and a Queen of Atlantis at that," I declaimed, and all of the Cretan race acknowledged my suzerainity.

And thus it was that I lost my former self and my former family but in the process saved Atlantis from democracy.

---

Chapter Seven: Lions And Tigers And Bears, Oh My! (1979)

"Rauf!" I said into the phone. "How lovely to hear from you again."

I had been put through to the leader of the "Turkish Federated State of Cyprus", a polite name for the occupation of a third of the island by the Turkish military. I grinned at my girlfriend, giving her a thumbs-up. The call had taken quite an effort to arrange. Aþkðn - her name was Aþkðn Tanrıça - blew me a red kiss.

"Jacqueline!" came back Rauf Denktas's rather fruity voice. The man sounded suggestive even when he was talking business. "How are the beautiful United States of America?"

"Same old same old. A nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania nearly blew us all to kingdom come and the Government is in a froth about the overthrow of the Shah. Our ambassador to Afghanistan has been shot."

Rauf laughed. "And you?"

"Strength to strength. The company is doing well. We're what they call a multinational."

"We are still very grateful for all that the Natla Mining Company has done for Zonguldak."

"Coal isn't usually our thing," I admitted, "but I have a personal interest in the Black Sea region."

"Even doing business with the damn Russians I hear."

"We're strictly a-political Rauf, as you know."

"Thanks be to God."

I had to break off and put my hand over the phone. I hissed at Aþkðn, who had mischievously started kissing my toes in an attempt to distract me.

"Rauf - I have a proposal for you."

I put it to him that in exchange for exerting my influence in getting my old friend Spyros Kyprianou (whom I didn't remind him was the UN-recognised leader of Cyprus, unlike Rauf, who was black-listed) to the negotiating table that my company be allowed to carry out some test drilling in the Kyrenia Mountains.

"Where exactly? It is still a militarised zone and we are on the constant guard against terrorists."

"The hills around the Castle and the St. Francis Monastery."

"That is very near a large Army camp, highly sensitive. Plus there are a number of heavily defended enclaves."

I laughed. "That's why I thought I'd better ring you, Rauf," I said. "Besides, think what a good find could do for the economy of the North."

There was a pause and then he chuckled. "I shall put it to my political and army colleagues and reply as soon as I can."

"Thank you very much Mr. President."

Afterwards;

"Yippee!" I cried, jumping about in glee. Aþkðn giggled, looking at me through her white curls, and fiddling with her lower lip in a coquettish way. So I pushed her down on the floor to celebrate.

* * * * *

The first yacht that I owned named Secret Life was about 150 feet long and had 5 staterooms. She was white, had a rakish prow like a minesweeper and could manage a top speed of about 15 knots. I adored her. My companies paid for a home berth for her at St. Tropez and the feeling that I got when living aboard her was the closest experience that I could recreate to that of living in an open-air palace next to the Inner Circular Sea of the City. I could stand alone on the sun deck at dawn and say my prayers to Poseidon and the Lord of the Sky.

I was checking over some of the new patents from Natla Technologies and composing marketing handouts, for things like ...

"Natcillin, the first antibiotic that can kill penicillin-resistant staphylococcus."

"The Na-Tl-As device, new technology for cooling fast-breeder nuclear reactors."

"nat-La proton bombardment, a novel process for making radioactive cerium from lanthanum."

"The discovery of the Nat-LA N-acetyltransferase enzyme derivative, a cure for jet-lag."

... when there was a polite knock on my stateroom door and Crichton, my cabin steward, appeared.

"Doctor DuPont would like a word," he said.

"Fine," I said putting the cap back on my fountain pen. "It's time to do the kefir anyway. He can watch."

"Very good."

Pierre was at that time in his late twenties and a lecturer at the Musee des Beaux-Arts at Nantes, France. He was only just beginning to go bald.

"Mademoiselle," he said, interrupting me putting on my rubber gloves by kissing my hand. "Enchanté."

"Gee, Pierre," I said. "Why is it that all you French guys come over as creeps?"

"It is simply old world etiquette."

"Well I guess you know more about the old world than me."

I held out the leather bag to him.

"Give the kefir a tap for good luck," I said.

"This is the fermented milk, n'est ce pas?" he said, fastidiously poking the bag with a fingertip.

"Wanna try some?" I sieved some into a glass, stirred in some Greek honey, a drop of Mexican lime juice and some crushed ice. "It's the very drink of the gods."

Pierre sipped at my modern version of ambrosia and stifled a wince. "She is very ... tart," he said.

I inoculated tomorrow's bag of milk and placed it in my cold box.

"Cheers," I said, knocking back two large glasses.

"Bon sante."

"One day cooled fermented milk containing live bacteria and yeast will be a health craze sweeping the planet. I'll have to think of a name. Maybe Nat-Biotic. What do you think?"

"If it is all the same I shall stick to my morning diet of café and croissants, Mademoiselle."

"Oh and please remind me to get more kefir grains when we get to Kyrenia. They bring live colonies over from Izmir on a boat I've been told."

"But of course."

We went out onto the sun deck where Aþkðn, naked, was applying her first coat of suntan lotion.

"Darling," I said, kissing her. "Pierre and I will just be having a small chat and then we can take the lighter out for some skiing."

Pierre and I moved to the aft rail and watched the sparkling wake of the Secret Life. The lighter bobbed behind us on a long tether like a breathless baby duck.

"So, Pierre. What are your immediate plans when we arrive?"

"My team have rooms at the Dome Hotel. There we will meet Monsieur Mutlu and Brigadier-General Suleymanolu to arrange our itinerary. And tonight if there is any time I will visit the Dome Casino and try my luck at le chemin de fer."

"I may join you. Could you arrange for me to meet this Brigadier-General of yours? Is he U.N?"

"Turkish Army. Pourquoi?"

"No matter. I wish to arrange a visit to Famagusta. The closed part."

"For what possible purpose, Madame? It is ... degoutant. Comme une ... dirty, dusty building site."

I smiled. "It's a long story," I said, sipping my kefir. I turned and waved my fingers. "Crichton? Do we have any gambas? The large brown ones."

"Yes, Madam."

"With garlic butter and basil." Pronouced "baysil". Most un-Greek. "Tell chef no wine or Anatolian spices. Perhaps some black olives."

"Yes, Madam."

I returned to the sparkling sea. "My interest in Famagusta is a hotel room, in the Oceanic Hotel to be precise," I said. "Back home in New York City there is a Greek archaeologist who - in 1974 - fled from the advance of the Turkish army, leaving his notes and photographs on top of a wardrobe. Since he cannot return to Northern Cyprus, I am his agent. In return for his findings."

"Fascinating," said Pierre, his eyes all avidity. "If Mademoiselle will permit me to ask, what are these ... findings?"

I smiled. "He claims to have found astonishing information about ..." and here I made a ghostly "whoo" sound and waggled my long fingers, "... the lost city of Atlantis."

Pierre snorted but then saw my expression. "But surely it is just a silly legend?" he protested.

"Who knows?" I said, blithely. "Time will tell."

* * * * *

The Kyrenia that I had known was probably full fathom five or more below the keel of the Secret Life; modern Kyrenia looked like the pretty picture on the lid of a lokum box, and its harbour was too small for us. Hard to believe, remarked Pierre, that only five years earlier this area had been like Juno Beach, with the Turkish Army motoring ashore in antiquated landing craft. My crew anchored the yacht offshore from the harbour breakwater, and got the lighter alongside the rail. I ordered a couple of Zodiac inflatables unshipped.

Pierre, the captain and all set off for the harbour master's office and their various appointments, whilst Aþkðn and I soaked up a few more rays and dined on strawberries and champagne.

When we got bored of that we put "our" song on the stereo - "Make Me Smile" - and danced the quickstep as we sang.

I sang; "You've done it all, you've broken every code and pulled the rebel to the floor You spoilt the game, no matter what you say for only metal - what a bore! Blue eyes, blue eyes, how come you tell so many lies?"

Aþkðn sang "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba" and "Oo-oo la lala" in her bizarre accent.

Two naked goddesses glad to be alive under a Mediterranean sun.

Then, as the recording died away, we heard something strange carried on the breeze.

"Did you hear that?" I said.

Aþkðn nodded and, holding back her hair, gazed at the horizon.

"Let's take the binoculars up on the bridge roof. And better put some clothes on baby, or you'll have all the sailors throwing themselves overboard for frustrated love of you."

She giggled and went to get our bikinis and wraps.

At the top of the ship I scanned the sea and the shore. I looked up into the steep hills behind the town.

Then - again ... a noise.

"That sounded a bit like ... a roar?"

Aþkðn pointed along the coast and I focused the glasses. There was what looked like a small freighter due west of us. The strange noises were drifting over the wave tops, infrequent but clear. There was another roar and what sounded like some sort of ape.

"Fancy an adventure?" I said. "Get our shore clothes and meet me at the motorboat."

We sped along the coast in the inflatable, skipping over the waves like dragonflies. The wind in my face and the salt air made me indescribably happy. I kissed Aþkðn and told her of my bliss and how much I loved her.

We drew alongside the freighter - she was called the Vera X and she was flying a Lebanese flag - and I shouted up.

"Permission to come aboard," I shouted in English.

A head wearing a scruffy peaked cap appeared.

"Who are you?"

"I am Jacqueline Natla, Managing Director of Natla Technologies," I improvised. "I may have a business proposal for you."

There were some shout and a rope ladder was let down. I tied off the Zodiac and we climbed up the rusty side.

"Captain Maron," said the peaked cap, shaking my hand. His accent was French Arabic and he looked exhausted. His crew stood about like stunned cattle.

I, however, was gawping over his shoulder at the deck. Lined up were a row of giant animal cages.

"Good Lord," I said, walking forward.

Looking back at me was a mournful gorilla, starved and mangy. I could see the dull despair in her eyes. Behind her on the floor was her dead baby.

"Hello sister," I said, reaching out to her.

The gorilla leant her forehead into the palm of my hand. She sighed and I could see a tear leaking from her closed eyelids.

"Don't cry," I whispered. "I'm here to save you."

* * * * *

It was another day. Pierre was about to give us a talk on his preliminary research in the stateroom of the Secret Life. Aþkðn was fidgety - she genuinely wasn't interested in archaeology - but I persuaded her to stay by sitting her on my lap.

"Better make it brief," I said.

"Mais naturellement," said Pierre, with a smile.

The first slide showed a building on the top of a cliff on the edge of the grounds of what had once been a mansion, a mansion built by a retired British ambassador to Cyprus. It had the appearance of a Greek Orthodox Church.

"This is the so-called St. Francis Folly," said Pierre, pointing at the screen. "Built on the ruins of a Franciscan monastery by an eccentric English nobleman. It is at present being used by the locals as winter quarters for farm animals. Inside are the remains of formal gardens, fruit orchards, ornamental ponds."

"Who owns it now?"

"It's unclear. We have a lawyer on to it. The original owners have left long ago and the British have no jurisdiction under the present occupation."

"Buy it. I have a use for it," I said.

"Yes, Mademoiselle. To continue." Pierre clicked forward through his slides. "At the base of the same cliff we have an ancient ruin, known locally as the Colosseum."

"Wow," I said. "Is it an amphitheatre?"

"No, Mademoiselle. An amphitheatre would have circular seating. This seating is rectilinear."

"So what is it? Another folly?"

"Mais non. It is most interesting. Originally built, we think, in the pre-Christian era as a running track and field for Olympead sporting events. The original shape would have been long and straight with round ends."

"Ah." I smiled. "I always loved competing with the bow and arrow and the javelin. At college in New Mexico," I added, at their quizzical looks.

"Then, during one of the frequent local earthquakes, the hill came down and buried one half of it, leaving only this roughly rectangular area. You can see that the fourth century Romans built the covered balcony seating up on the one side for the judges or for the local magistrates."

"What was it used for in Roman times?"

"Ah - this is the most interesting thing, Mademoiselle," said Pierre with a twinkle of excitement. "The whole of the floor had been dug out to a depth of approximately three metres and covered with water-proof clay. It is what we archaeologists call a 'Kolymbetra', although there is some debate as to whether such a thing ever existed in history."

"A swimming pool?"

"A floodable arena for naval spectacle or swimming events."

Aþkðn and I exchanged indifferent glances.

"This is a rather arid area, Pierre," I observed. ""Where did they get all of the water?"

Pierre clapped his hands like a magician finishing a trick.

"You are as acute as always," he exclaimed, "and I have the solution!" He brought up a new slide showing what looked like an underground, pillared vault, half filled with water. "C'est un cistern byzantine! Not unlike the Giant Cistern underneath the streets of Constantinople. This cistern, plus a branch from the local aqueduct, would have provided all the water they needed. The whole area, the castle, the monasteries, all needed to withstand sieges. This was the solution. The Kolymbetra was a fun ... how you say ... spin off?"

I applauded. "Very good, Pierre," I said. "You must write it up at once. And begin the thorough survey and dig some of your trenches and whatever else."

"At once."

"Just put up the Colosseum again. The name has given me an idea."

I gazed at the giant pit with its sheer sides.

I nibbled Aþkðn's ear. "Just the place to keep some lions," I whispered.

* * * * *

Aþkðn and I had our first expedition up into the hills, under the watchful eye of our Turkish Army friends, a few days later. I wanted to see for myself the area that I planned to acquire. Normally one cannot "buy" the land that an ancient monument is on, but the lack of International Law plus the indifference of the Turks to non-Islamic monuments meant that my money spoke louder than any protests from the Greek government at the U.N. Both Pierre and I reckoned that if we didn't step in, nobody would, and how was that a win situation? Besides Pierre was busy loading up the Secret Life with all the coins and artefacts and statues and jewellery and icons that his men could find. His theory that such precious objects should not be left in the hands of "savages" - all very French colonial - and besides I could tell that he hoped to rake in the francs in private antiquity auctions.

In the meantime the animals that had been rescued from Beirut Zoo - they had literally been wheeled out under a rain of falling shells - had been brought ashore form the Vera X and were being attended to by vets and keepers in an old warehouse in the Kyrenia industrial dock area.

Aþkðn and I dressed in our best flowery dresses and flowery hats drove up to the landward side of the bizarre building that was the St. Francis Folly. The guard guarding the building saluted us - I could see them secretly checking us both out - and handed me the keys.

Now I was here, I could see that the Folly was only one of a number of buildings (or ruins of buildings) scattered over the rocky hilltop. Up a sloping lawn made of imported soil planted with now withered grasses and bushes, there was the remains of the "British Mansion", its roof fallen in.

"Une folly de grandeur indeed," I remarked.

We walked around to the cliffside of the Folly and I unlocked a coupe of giant brass bound doors, the lock recently oiled and freed by Pierre's men.

Inside was dark and damp and empty. Much of the interior was a ruin, although to my untrained eye some of the stumps of stone columns looked as if they'd been built "broken", making the whole place a sort of whimsical Disneyland of antiquity.

Aþkðn was running around like an excited greyhound, peering up through the holes in the roof to the sky, poking her nose into alcoves and dead-end tunnels and doorways with no other function than decoration. I was surprised, given her apathy towards history, but I guess she saw it as a kind of adventure playground.

As we explored, we came across a large pool with a mosaic floor, still filled with reasonably clean emerald water and further back, a series of totally enclosed gardens with fake stone porticos and fake proscenium colonnades. There were bushes with brown apples and trees with tiny oranges, all kept alive by some invisible water source and roofed over with greenhouse glass where the temple roof should have been.

Looking around I could see no obvious escape routes to the island outside. It seemed we had a potential ape house all ready made.

One room, however, was different to all of the rest. Its floor was made of uneven earth, and it looked like only the top fraction of a room. I thought that I could see bats nestling in the eves. It was as if someone had filled in an enormous lift shaft, leaving only the upper part empty. Squinting through gaps next to the various carved stones and rocks I could see down into what looked like crevasses and fissures, their bottom hidden in the darkness.

"Better get out of here, baby," I said to Aþkðn. "It all looks quite unstable ... we'll get Pierre to block off the entrance whilst they structurally assess it." It looked as if there was more to this place than a mere architectural affectation, built on the ruins of a medieval monastery. All would become clear, no doubt.

We were taking one last turn around the site - it was time to return to the ship - when Aþkðn squeaked with excitement. She had found a deep, thin, horizontal gap in the wall and thought she could see a large space beyond. She began to drag me by the hand.

"We're hardly equipped," I half-protested. "We have neither caving helmets nor torches. Besides there could be a rock fall." She started to pout like an adorable child. "I suppose we could have a quick look and come back again another day."

We scrambled through - I scuffed my knees and my elbows - but it was all very exciting. It was just like being a spelunker, a caver crawling through the entrance to a cave, but an entrance formed from carved rock blocks. I wondered briefly if we should be worried about snakes and scorpions in the darkness.

On the other side, it opened right up. There was no light coming in from the roof, and the mysterious emptiness smelt strongly of ozone.

I took a cigarette lighter from my bag and flicked it, and we both shouted in shock.

Positioned on a plinth directly ahead of us were the legs and feet of what had been once a giant seated statue. I stumbled forward, looking for dangerous holes in the ground and trying not to burn my fingers on the lighter flame.

The front of the plinth was embossed with large Latinate lettering.

"M I D A S - Midas!" I read out, scanning the flame from side to side. "Midas?"

I realised that we were in another antiquarian fancy, another part of the Folly long since abandoned. The statue didn't even look as if it had ever been a whole statue, and a severed stone hand, out of proportion to the rest of the body, lay theatrically on the ground in front of the plinth.

Despite my remonstration, Aþkðn insisted on clambering up onto the statue base, and tickling the giant stone toes. I could see the flash of her teeth as she grinned in the gloom, and I smiled too, despite my unease.

Arms stretched out like those of a tightrope walker, Aþkðn clownishly teetered along the edge of the plinth, and then, after taking a step back, jumped onto the palm of the giant stone hand.

"Oh," she said, looking at her feet.

I thought she had stepped into some mud or dung, but the skin of her feet within her sandals had begun to glitter. "Electricity," was all I could think, but I was as frozen as she. The golden lights spread up her legs and disappeared under the hem of her dress. She put down a hand to touch her lower belly , but that too froze. She didn't cry out or seem to be in any discomfort. Her other hand hardened as it covered her hardening breast, and then with a rush her face became golden. I could see the glint from the featureless eyeballs in her wide shocked eyes. There was a wave of heat and her clothing and footwear flamed and dissolved into a white ash.

She had become a naked, golden statue.

* * * * *

If this tale didn't have a happy ending I probably wouldn't be dictating it. Needless to say the next few hours and days were hell.

They got the statue - I couldn't bring myself it call it Aþkðn - out of the cave and the building and into a crate before the soldiers saw it. Needless to say a lot of bribe money changed hands. We got her down to the harbour, out to the ship and into my cabins with nobody being any the wiser.

There seemed little point in calling a coroner. Death by gold, like Jill Masterton in "Goldfinger"? I didn't think so. It seemed more likely that we'd be detained for stealing priceless relics. I was damned if I was going to leave the remains of my darling behind.

I seem to have forgotten a lot of that bad time. I remember standing up the statue in my room, and draping it with Aþkðn's silk paisley dressing down. The metal was warm and, if not malleable, soft to the touch like a hard muscle.

I got out the encyclopedia and looked up Midas. His curse, the touch that turned everything to gold, had - according to myth - been inflicted upon him by an Olympean, Dionysus. That made sense to me, or the fact that the transmutation was beyond my powers of explanation, made sense. I was a mere child when it came to understanding Olympean science; most of what they had been capable of was like a magic trick. We had as much chance of grasping their conceptions as a dog had of recognising photograph of itself.

Why Aþkðn and why now, I wondered? Was it possible that the Olympeans were sill in existence after all these centuries, and still paying attention to humans? Or had poor Aþkðn simply stumbled into an old mechanism that someone had forgotten to decommission long ago, like the ruins of a nuclear reactor abandoned and forgotten during a war?

If the Olympeans still existed, there was hope for her. I prayed more in faith than belief. I resolved to conclude my business in Cyprus as soon as possible and take Aþkðn home.

* * * * *

When I visited Varosha, the deserted tourist part of Famagusta now trapped and abandoned in no-mans-land between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot areas, I didn't realise that I was suffering from what some people have termed post-traumatic stress disorder. I had all the symptoms - the thousand yard stare, the gas tank running on air, heart empty except for an aching, mind empty except for Aþkðn, all perceptions of the external distorted, speech toneless and uninflected, smile like a flowerbed neglected, lights on but everyone defected.

My mind drew parallels between the sunny ruins of the mountains and these dull remains. Varosha had been deserted for five years, and I gazed at the empty swimming pools and empty vistas of concrete through my protective sunglasses, at the deserted and damaged skyscraper hotels leaning towards each other above my head and almost hiding the leaden sky. The magic of the Folly contrasted with the prosaic nature of this emptiness. Construction cranes sat waiting forever in their negligees of rust, whilst shop windows and petrol forecourts lay coated with sandy dust like out-dated textbooks forgotten on a top shelf.

Everything was grey - the grey soldiers driving between the grey buildings in their grey vehicles grasping their grey machine-guns, the grey feral dogs and grey juvenile sea-gulls, the grey shrouded cars in the abandoned showroom, their tyres disintegrating to grey bread-crumbs.

So much energy putting the place up and now so much energy to keep it empty. It was a monument to stupidity, waste and hate. I reflected on the Golden Record that had been included on the Voyager spacecraft a couple of years earlier, purporting to show aliens what we humans were all about. Send them a cine film of Varosha instead, I thought gloomily. It speaks so much clearly.

"Modern life is crap," I said under my breath, "and history is bunk."

I wondered if I should kill myself.

"We are here, Ms. Natla," said Brigadier-General Suleymanolu with a cheerful smile. "The Olympic Hotel. I have been assured that the stairs are safe."

"I shan't be a minute," I said. "I'll find my brother's old hotel room and take a quick look to see if he left a diary or a letter. I shan't be long."

"My men can escort you."

"Could I possibly be alone? I feel my brother's death very strongly today, and I ... ."

I found myself halting in mid-sentence. The lie was close enough to the truth to make me choke on the words.

The Brigadier-General looked suitably concerned and placed a sympathetic hand on my arm. "But of course, Madam. Just call if you need any help."

"Thank you."

I went up to the room - it looked as if it had never been locked - and fished around on the top of the wardrobe. The notebook was there, bound with a decayed rubber-band. I sat on the window ledge and opened it.

I smiled at some of the entries, all written with a fountain pen in spidery Greek.

Not to bore you, but there was some notes on the "Antikythera Device", an old piece of junk found on the sea bed in about 1900. Theorists described it as some sort of ancient Greek astrolabe, whilst ignoring the fact that the sponge divers who were supposed to have found the Device couldn't dived that deep, that something made of copper would not have survived for two millennia at the bottom of the sea, and that the word "sterigmos" inscribed inside instead of meaning "steadfast" in reference to a planetary body was the name of a ship engineer in Rhodes. Someone had made a clockwork replica of this "ancient wonder" not realising that it probably a pressure gauge that had fallen off a steamship engine. Then there were the so-called "Baghdad Batteries", supposed to be ancient batteries made up of a copper tube separated from an iron core by grape juice or urine or some damn thing, but which were, in fact simply storage containers for delicate papyrus rolls. May as well find an old teddy bear skin and deduce the existence of a new race of mini-bears.

However it wasn't all dross. The man had found remains of the City on the lip of the Santorini volcano - obvious to you and I, but a novelty for 20th century mankind. He had noted the underwater remains of a dam across the Straits of Gibraltar. He recorded the evidence for advanced civilisation in Sudan.

I skipped through, looking for comments about Cyprus, and found his notes on the St. Francis complex. He agreed with some of Pierre's conclusions but he seemed to be hinting at the presence of deeper structures.

As far as I can remember, and from the notes that I made soon afterwards, it read;

"Galen the Roman visited the mines of Soli (Skouriotissa) in 162 AD and noted "vast spaces under the mountain". Below Kyrenia (we were told by an ex-miner) there used to be two shafts, one of which "bottomless" according to local legend. Following an earthquake, there were fears that the shafts would collapse so they were capped and operations changed to open pit working. This miner (Demetrios Saknussemm) lives in Kinousa and is willing to show people around the minehead. Thought to be alternate entrance from as yet unidentified sea cave on North Coast associated with ancient cave church of Maronite sect; no evidence for this as yet. More than two billions tons of what is described as "ancient copper slag" have been found in the Skouriotissa area. Speed of sound waves through mass from dynamite suggests wide range of densities."

Was it possible that something survived, I wondered?

I covered my face with my hands and wept.

After a while I came down and handed my find to the Brigadier-General.

"You can keep the original and give me a microfiche if you, prefer," I said to the Brigadier, somewhat sadly.

A crowd of dogs stood a little way off in the ruined forecourt of a cafИ, and I waved at them. I noticed a huddle of mangy cats and kittens watching us from the shadows, and I clucked my teeth in a friendly fashion.

"Of course not," he said, flipping through the notebook. "There is nothing of military or political significance here."

I smiled and tucked the diary into my bag. I wasn't about to disagree with him. I wish I'd looked at that diary a bit more - the next time I looked, it had been replaced by a handful of flesh-coloured Triton seashells - but with hindsight, I now know that in the long run this "theft" didn't make that much difference. I'd been told what I wanted to know, and the reward for its loss was beyond pearls.

I took a deep breath, and was about to get into the car, when I caught a faint sound on the wind.

"What's that noise?" I said. "It sounds like seabirds mewling."

"It is children, Madam," he said. "The soldiers bring their families to the closed off beach. Would you like to see?"

I looked at the gulls coasting on the updrafts at the end of the street, and got out my sunglasses.

"Yes, please. Watching some happy kids next to the sea are just what I need. Before we return"

The soldiers were kids themselves, conscripts from villages in Anatolia and Kars, doing their compulsory National Service. Their wives looked like teenagers, seeming barely able to have had time to mother the infants and toddlers pottering around the sandcastles that littered the bizarrely isolated seafront. The beach was separated from the rest of the island by fences, a beach out-of-bounds to ordinary life and stuck in a time warp, with no fast food or ice-cream sellers, a beach that may as well have been on the moon. Good place for an unearthly visitation, if one wanted to stay out of the news.

I was seated on the stone steps leading to the sand, sipping a bottle of water and feeling calmer, when I noticed the dolphins. There was a group of them just off the beach, leaping and calling, and the children pointed and shouted. I could hear Instamatic and Polaroid camera shutters all around.

Then to each side of me the various dogs and cats of the deserted streets began to file own onto the beach, ignoring the humans. One of my guard laughed and made a comment to his comrades, aiming a futile kick at a bed-draggled mutt.

"What is going on?" I asked the Brigadier-General.

""I have no idea," he replied, but these animals had better stay away from the children or they will be shot at."

"They say that animals behave oddly before an earthquake."

"Not one of those, Allah willing."

Then there was a small scream from the water's edge and one of the tiny children ran crying to her mother.

I shielded my eyes. To my astonishment, a crowd of tiny crabs were coming ashore, and even more surprising, the seagulls were ignoring the free meal. Similarly the dogs were ignoring the cats and the cats were ignoring the birds. Was it my imagination, I thought, or were all of the animals forming patterns and ranks, with the dolphins performing geometric arabesques in the surf?

"Maybe you should clear the beach ...?" I began, but the Brigadier-General was interrupted by a soldier running up with a field radio pack.

"It's is for you," he said, handing me the receiver and indicating the controls.

"Madame!" came Pierre's voice, faintly.

"Pierre? What is it?"

"The Secret Life, she is damaged. The captain had to run her aground to prevent her from sinking."

"My Lord. What happened?"

"We are not sure. Maybe an old sea-mine. There is a hole in the hull reaching to your cabin."

"Is everybody safe?"

"Yes, thank God. And we are using boats to offload the cargo. However we have lost the statue, if you know to what I refer."

"She's gone?"

"I have a diver searching the seabed."

I rubbed my eyes. "I shall see you later," I said, and handed back the field telephone.

In the meantime, the beach had cleared itself. The families had run up onto the concrete water front and were embarking on various military vehicles, despite the protests of their children, who obviously wanted to stay.

I looked at the sea, to a point that seemed to be the epicentre of the arrangement of animals, the vague centre of a circle. The water was foaming and bubbling as if some vast underwater beast was exhaling.

Then, as if a miniature sun was rising from the water, a golden sphere appeared. My eyes resolved it into a head, the head of the gold statue. It was Aþkðn, still naked, and still holding one hand before her loins and the other before her breasts. She was standing on a giant half shell. The animals cried out a hymn of welcome.

The Brigadier-General choked, putting his hand over his mouth. "Aphrodite," he gurgled, his eyes showing white. "She has come to reclaim her island."

He draw his revolver but then dropped it in terror. All of my escort began to flee, screeching off in their jeeps or running into the city, leaving me standing alone.

The golden statue spoke, in a voice so beautiful and clear that I shuddered with pleasure. My nipples hardened from fear and arousal.

"Natla of Atlantis!" it crooned like a siren. "Natla of Atlantis!"

I recognised the voice, and the language was High Atlantean.

"Astarte?" I whispered, collapsing to my knees.

"Come forward!" called the statue and smiled, opening its incandescent arms.

I scrabbled for the pistol and levelled it at the head. I tried to fire, but a pain pierced my chest. Tears flowed from my eyes - I found that I could not shoot the One whom I loved so deeply. My love for Aþkðn, plus an abstract but irresistible Love, had fused together into one imperial impulse. I was enthralled by the Goddess and under the command of Olympean Dionysus.

I found myself walking forward, throwing off my clothing. The animals as I passed seemed to be surrounded by shadows of their primitive selves, a veritable horoscope; the cats became regal lions and tigers, the dogs seemed as bears and wolves. The seagulls were enshrouded by extinct crocodiles and terror birds, whilst the crabs resembled giant prehistoric scorpions and ammonites. Offshore, the dolphins gambolled as mermaids and mermen, sea horses and sea serpents, or so it seemed to my Goddess-dazzled eyes.

As I approached I could feel the heat from her body and could see the deep colour of the celestial spheres in her eyes. Her expression was that of a pleasant tyrant, a kindly dominatrix, totally in control, but intending only pleasure and kindliness.

I walked into her arms and nearly expired with a divine ecstasy.

"Who are you?" I murmured, burying my face in her stiffened hair. "Are you Astarte?"

"I am merely a messenger from the gods, fair sister."

I found my hot tears falling onto her glowing flesh. "Much as I would delay hearing it, for I could stand like this in your arms forever, what is your message?"

"It is this," whispered the golden statue, caressing my back with her hard, warm hands. "I am instructed to tell you that you are forbidden to set foot in three places. You may not enter the Tomb under the Copper Hills of the Island of Aphrodite. You may not enter the Tomb under the City of the Sacred Valley. You may not enter the Sanctuary Tomb of the City of the Living Sun God. So it is decreed."

I absorbed this information for a moment, a million thoughts racing by, despite my love-addled state. "And if I should disobey?" I asked, carefully.

"You will suffer," said the statue, kissing me on the lips, "and Fate will send a harbinger to destroy you."

I shuddered. "I will accede to your wish if you will grant me but one request, a boon that I know in advance that you will approve."

The eyes of the statue glowed and her smile became fierce. "You attempt to bargain with the gods?"

"But I am kin to a god, a grand-daughter of the Lord of the Sea. The gods and I are family."

The statue stared at me, with an archaic expression playing about her lips. "And what precisely would this price be, oh impertinent and wily one?"

"I beg that you give me back my love, my innocent Aþkðn, who has offended none and deserves mercy."

The statue laughed, perhaps with a hint of relief. "How could I refuse such a request, the plea of a lover?" she said, and her smile made me faint clean away.

* * * * *

When I awoke, all other living beings, all of the animals had gone, and the sun was setting over the sea.

I looked up at the golden statue, now immobile; it was holding in its hand a small glass vial of liquid on which was written in Atlantean script "Oil me".

I placed a drop on my finger tip and rubbed it on the metal eyelids. They flicked open and human eyes started out. I oiled the hinge of the jaw, and the lips and the tongue.

"Oh!" said the statue in the voice of Aþkðn, letting out a long sighing breath

I freed her shoulders, her elbows, her knees and her fingers, lingering over the exquisite curves of her hips, spreading the perfume liquid over her breasts and thighs and back.

We fell together into the warm sea-foam, washing the last gold colour from her brown skin and soft hair.

"Never leave me," I whispered.

"Never forget," she answered.

---

Chapter Eight: Angels Come To Kill Your Sons

Greeks and archaeologists divide time into ages. They both agree that there's an Iron Age, preceded by a Bronze Age. At this point archaeologists have a "New Stone Age" or Neolithic, preceded by an "Old Stone Age" or Palaeolithic, whilst the Greeks have a "Silver Age", preceded by a "Golden Age". What this all means I cannot say for sure, but if the Palaeolithic corresponds to the Golden Age, then my personal estimation of the date of Atlantis - that is, around eleven or twelve thousand years ago - makes perfect Platonic sense. Of course I was unconscious between then and now, and most of the dating techniques used today - based on dodgy geology and unreliable radio-isotopes - may be incorrect by millennia for all I know. Modern Christians believe that the world began in about 4000B.C. and that all the animals that are here on earth today were there then, and that seems to me at least as coherent as the beliefs of the Scientific Philosophies. Furthermore one should point out that attempts to date the human race using mitochondrial DNA misses the obvious points that not only did I mess with the genetic heritage in big way, but also that we have in our genes both alien DNA and the substrata of DNA known as QNA, substances unknown to twentieth century science. May as well predict the canals on Mars when all you have to view the planet with is a seventeenth century eyeglass. If you believe that only the things that you can actually observe in the universe are true, then you must be very confident of your powers of observation.

But I digress. My peroration was simply to introduce the concept of the "Golden Age", which was the age that Atlantis now entered, nominally under the rule of the five twin sons of Poseidon, but in reality under the fluctuating triumvirate of Qualopec, Tihocan and myself. My Royal Sister Astarte had begun to distance herself from what she termed "temporal power", although Qualopec had been known to remark that if one added together her fanatical followers then she had more legions than the rest of us put together. So in effect it was still the four of us that helmed the state.

Tihocan had perfected what he regarded as a fool-proof way of controlling the power of Atlantis; a three part "key" not unlike those that unlock the trigger of a nuclear missile. He, I and Qualopec had one "third" each, although the objects looked nothing like keys. Tihocan called the combined object "The Key" whilst Qualopec referred to it as "The Royal Source" which made some sense, unlike Astarte's suggestion - "The Scion" - a word whose meaning was obscure, but perhaps meant "progeny". Only Astarte knew. Not that I was much better - I referred to it as "Tihocan's Thingy" until I decided that Astarte's name was funnier and came round to her lunatic nomenclature of "The Scion." For years the common response from visitors being shown around the Sanctuary of the Scion was to ask "Sanctuary of the what?"

Not that we could take our pieces away. The Scion remained permanently in place, powering the lights and boilers and vehicles of Atlantis. The only power that it gave us was that we could shut down the power. I didn't mind if it kept Tihocan happy, but like many of his inventions it seemed faintly pointless. Each Scion Third itself was very pretty though, and I regarded it as a useful trapping of Royalty, like an hereditary crown to be passed down to the next generation.

Speaking of the next generation, my father Atlas surprised us all by becoming a father again. His latest conquest, an Oceanid nymph from Arcadia called Pleione, gave birth to septuplets, seven girls. So it seemed as if Chloe and her seven potential sisters need not reign in Atlantis if they chose not to. Though Tihocan had refused to acknowledge paternity of Chloe in the same way that my father Atlas had refused to acknowledge paternity of me, Chloe was still the acknowledged daughter of a Queen of Atlantis if not of a King.

One day we four were meeting at the Palace of Ampheres and Evaemon, a palace well known for being built of red marble, surrounded by lawns of red sage. The herb-tasting air clean and refreshing, one's nerves were invariably soothed. We had assembled in the Audience Hall of Perpetual Tranquility, with its decor of obsidian turtle shells mimicking the ancestry of the Theme of Mount Aegina, a Theme with its origin in the furthest East, where a cult of the Invisible Goddess had spawned a separate race rooted deep in prehistory. Naturally Astarte felt at home in the Palace of Ampheres and Evaemon.

In these days it was customary for us to bring attendants, something we never used to do. I had two of my harpies, Qualopec had two sergeants, Astarte two priestesses and Tihocan two engineers, all subtly armed in one way or another.

"Greetings, Most Glorious and Beloved Brothers and Sisters, whose excellence illuminates the halls of time and whose obvious virtue provides an example for all of mankind. True carriers of the flame of Olympus, heroes all, wise helmsmen through the Zodiacal Sea, every feature and lineament proclaiming your imperial divinity," I said, with suitable gestures and symbols generated by the light of illuminated jewels, "oh fortunate Atlantis, know you not that you are the most blesséd of countries?"

"Most Glorious Royal Sister, whose Imperial Wings provide shelter to her children from the midnight wind and the midday sun and whose mastery of nature puts the ants and the bees to shame, we can only hope that you are both happy and healthy, for your continued well-being is the very life pulse that fuels the lives of your Royal Siblings," replied Qualopec in a convincing approximation of a human voice, his mechanically propelled fingers forming the gesture for 'favourable disposition'.

And so on.

There were a number of items of business. We noted the continued health of the septuplets, our new Seven Sisters. Tihocan described the newly finished Dam, bounded at both ends by mountains named as the Pillars of Hercules, a sixty stadia span, five stadia high, designed to prevent the tidal surge from the rising Ocean swamping the Central Lake. I recently read of the remains of Tihocan's Dam - an undersea bank named the Camarinal Sill - but more of the future in a later chapter. Qualopec reported on the first trials of what we had been calling the Atlantean War Machine, a semi-sentient contraption contrived by Tihocan and myself, and armed with mighty horns whose voice could move rocks, and whose military efficiency had been tested in combat against a rebel city named the City of the Moon Goddess (or "Jericho" in the local tongue) whose tall mud walls had crumbled before the mechanical blare, entombing the dissolving defenders in a deadly liquefied slurry of earth and blood. Finally I described the re-cloning and re-animation of beasts found in the melting ice of glaciers including my personal favourite, the Basilisk known today as the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"And so now," said Astarte, "the Royal Qualopec my twin and myself wish to bring to the attention of the Family the situation of the Cities of the Plain."

The Cities of the Plain were what was known as a Pentopolis, that is, five semi-independent cities - a mere muddle of mud huts before the advent of Atlantean architecture - who cooperated in economy, defense and culture. They had always liked to pretend that they were not under the sway of Tihocan and that his was merely a technical over-lordship. Proud Cities of the Plain whose hubris my scholarship has led me to believe eventually gave rise to legends both Aramaeic and Attic.

"I regret to say that when given the opportunity to raise a temple ziggurat to the Cult of Demeter they foolishly threw my ambassadors out of the city, claiming allegiance to the worship of a bovine deity, a mere golden statue, imported from the far East," said Astarte.

"And I also must report that when given the opportunity to pay a tithe toward the upkeep of the Lapithae Regiment the city elders retorted that they had soldiers enough in their flourishing brotherhood and that they wished to decide for themselves how to spend their own riches. My ambassadors too were thrown roughly from the gate," clacked Qualopec.

"I grieve to learn of such ignorance and insolence, my Royal Brother and Royal Sister," I replied, with a quizzical gesture. "The Pentopolis are fortunate that you have not already razed them to the ground and sown salt in their fields."

"To add to the puzzlement of the Royal Astarte my twin and myself," continued Qualopec, "our beloved brother Tihocan has at his disposal the means to erase any if the offending metropoli with the pull of a lever, as he has tapped into the furnaces deep under the earth using divers pipes and valves of indestructible matter."

Astarte, Qualopec and I all looked at Tihocan expectantly.

"I can see your confusion," he said, with rueful laughter, "but I find my urge for justice against my insolent subjects softened by a prayer from one that loved me once and who loves me still." He produced an object from his sleeves, a primitive roll of papyrus marked with a childlike script. "So touching that one of my subjects, barely literate, should attempt to pen an epistle."

The rest of us joined in his delight and began to see why his interest in the Pentopolis had been piqued.

"I quote," began Tihocan, unrolling the scroll. "Dread Lord of Lord, God of Gods, Most Mighty Jihovan ..."

"Jihovan?"

"It is an attempt to transliterate my name into their barbarous tongue - they have difficulty with Atlantean vowels and thus 'T' becomes 'J' and 'C', 'V'."

"How quaint."

"Mighty Jihovan, Your humble servant as instructed searched for a group of fifty Righteous Men who will acknowledge You as their One True Lord, and turn from the Paths of Iniquity, and failing fifty, twenty, and failing twenty, ten. I regret to inform Your Lordship that I have failed in even that and I thrown myself on Your Divine Mercy. I am mindful of Your Threat to destroy the city and most humbly grateful for Your Suggestion that I and my family escape before You rain down Just Divine Retribution upon us. Not wishing to incur Your Wrath I hesitate again to ask for Your Forgiveness and for Your Mercy for my fellow citizens. If only you could see for yourself the promise hidden within our City, as a lamp under a basket. However I await Your Reply and final leave for our exodus. Your Most Humble and Devout Servant ... I find it impossible to pronounce his ethnic name."

"And this man was an intimate of yours?" I said.

"Indeed. Sad to ignore such a pretty plea from such a generously endowed boy, not untypical of his race."

Qualopec leaned back, creaking in harness. "However heartfelt his plea I am in harmony with honey-haired Natla and ask what stay is necessary when you can whisk your pleasing paramour to safety?"

"As always my elder Royal Brother I bow to your wisdom. I simply wondered if it might be worth prevaricating for one more week whilst we send spies among them. Such spirit may be better tamed than destroyed. Atlantis needs sinew and strength as well as, perhaps, such a prime supply of priapic pleasurers."

"Maybe I should try one of these Princes of the Pentopolis, Paragons of the Plain, for myself," said Astarte, laughing.

"If you have need of a man both harsh and vigorous, with a mouth like hard ripe fruit and salty skin like dark leather," replied Tihocan, "the Pentopolis will provide."

"Oh my!" Astarte fanned herself rapidly, and clasping a hand to each of her many breasts in turn exclaimed "I faint!"

"I have an idea that may amuse," I said. "Maybe I and a handmaiden should travel incognito to this homeland of male beauty?"

"How could you possibly disguise yourself, my Royal Sister?"

"I shall dye my skin and my wings white, and cover myself with a cloak of white feathers. A stranger from a strange land I will be, not the Royal Natla any more, but - to borrow the word "natla" from the local language - newly named "She-Who-Is-A-Vessel-For-Washing-Hands", a pleasant irony considering my role in the cleansing of sin from the Cities of the Plain. Traveling with me will be another of my winged species, my servant Adrasteia."

"And if you are unsatisfied?"

"Then unleash the fire and the brimstone, my Royal Siblings."

And so it came to pass.

We were suitably disguised as ambassadors from the fictional feathery fiefdom, I forearmed with fire-firers, and bejeweled with a broach whose beryllium button when touched unleashed the lava dammed and contained by Tihocan.

We were approaching the first city of the Pentopolis across a wheaten plain filled with orchards and wine-yards when we were made of aware of the type of circus that the population demanded with their daily bread, so fallen were they in their depravity.

The atrocity exhibited on that particular dark day was as follows. Two girls, both found guilty of a crime that we would discover anon, were to be publicly tortured and executed. The method was ingenious and entertaining, if unwarranted cruel even by the standards of Atlantis. The first girl, stripped naked and smeared with lamp-oil was tied to a stake surrounded by dry match wood. Between her and the city wall was a row of bee-huts, swarming with Athena's sacred insect. On the palisade wall itself, her pale flesh smeared with bee's honey hung the second girl. Their youth and nakedness provided for many a ribald comment from the men of the Pentopolis, the unguents that the youngsters were smeared with giving their nubile bodies the illusion of the sweat of love-making and adding to the overall thrill of the entertainment.

At a sign from the magistrate flames were applied to the matchwood, the first girl died yelling and arching in a pillar of smoke. The bees from the bee-huts were driven from their homes, enraged by the fumes, and fell upon the second girl, she the honey-coated one. Her screams shook the very stones as stung beyond endurance she succumbed finally to shock. The audience called and clapped, and ate their sweetmeats, hoisting their children up for better views and saluting the titillating theatre as an excellent entertainment. Revived by pots of water thrown down from the battlements the bee-embattled victim lasted for a number of hours, many bets being placed on the length of her endurance.

Adrasteia and I sat some way off on our horses, watching the spectacle without comment and then, as the crowd began to disperse for their evening meals, we wheeled our horses to the gated street on which the house of Tihocan's lover -named Lut of Ur in the local argot - lay.

As we turned into the street many comments were directed to us by the women of that place - I fain repeat the exact phrases - to the effect that they wished to lie with us, commenting on what they hoped to do should they overcome us naked, in what position and with what implements. I, Royal Princess of Atlantis, used as I am to all of the gamut of girl-on-girl gallivanting, was shocked not by the suggested sexual escapades, but rather by the sense of contempt and threat in the tone, as if I was little more than a sex slave, my body an object, my feminine beauty merely a commodity to be bought or stolen by these common harridans. Bullies they with no more beauty than the boils on a bubonic beggar.

As I dismounted one of these butch beasts attempted to place her lips on mine, her rough fingers bruising my breast beneath my tunic. Adrasteia stepped forward, bronze sword raised, but fortunately at that moment the door of Lut's town villa cracked open and we were hustled out of harm's way by cudgel-wielding household servants.

"Is it surprising that the men of this region prefer their own gender?" I remarked to nobody in particular as my clock was taken and a cup of fresh ambrosia pressed into my hand.

Lut of Ur himself appeared and flung himself headlong at our feet.

"Oh my abject shame that my neighbours should use the messengers of the Lord so!" he wailed. "Alack and alas! I rend my outer garment and pour ashes from the hearth on my head!"

"Arise oh pretty playmate of my Royal Brother Tihocan," I replied, taking his hand. "Atlantis is not so corrupted that a man should be punished for the crimes of another."

"Your Highness is an angel of mercy sent down from heaven itself," he replied, "heaven" and "angel" words from his strange tongue, components no doubt - to use a modern analogy - of the cargo cult worship of Tihocan. Our winged whiteness no doubt gave to the concept of angel a solid appearance, a personification to what until that moment had only been some nebulous spirit of the air.

I am no connoisseur of male beauty but I could see what Tihocan saw, for Lut was a beautiful man. From his clear brow to his shapely legs he was a veritable statue-maker's paragon, even to the marble smooth veneer of his tawny skin and the delineated muscles of his arms and torso - truly, his eye dark as amorous midnight, his deadlocks like roots of blooming and bushy desire, his teeth made to make the biter long to be bit, his black mouth like a long drink of growing excitement.

Three women, one wife and two daughters, shared his house, ebony beauties all. Blessed lucky Lut, unlucky only in his location.

We supped in the dining room on the upper floor, the far end of the long room having a balcony opening over the street. A constant racket could be heard in the distance and this grew in volume until tiles and clods were being thrown up from below.

"I am here to learn," I said, eventually. "Let us see what we see."

I led Lut to the balcony and looked down on the melee beneath. My appearance was greeted with rude solicitations and whistles.

"Sisters," said Lut. "These are visitors in my home, under my protection."

"Send her down that we may sport with her," yelled a female ruffian. "We have a taste for her pale flesh."

It appeared that my blonde hair and white face had aroused equal desire and aggression, acquisitiveness and jealousy in the dark maidens of the Pentopolis, they no doubt equating my look with the riches and sophistication of the distant City. It seems a lore of nature that pale skins lust after dark and vice versa, as if some sort of unspoken genetic taboo adds to the frisson.

"Maybe my daughters would wish to come party with you?" suggested Lut, helplessly. "Are you not some of their school fellows?"

"Old stock. We crave new meat," the ring-leaders laughed.

I spoke. "I am called She-Who-Is-A-Vessel-For-Washing-Hands," I said in the poshest of posh Atlantean accents. "Your invitation is an interesting one. However today I weary from many months of travel. Tomorrow I may be refreshed enough to join lustily in your fiesta."

There was a good natured cheer and the tension was diffused. We bade them goodnight and closed the shutters on the scene.

The conversation turned to the girls I had witnessed earlier on the pyre and on the palisade.

"Their initial crime was to give some bread to a poor man who had entered the city," said Lut. "Incitement to vagrancy and beggary is punished severely. The burgers of the city resent their wealth being used to support the non-productive. These girls were violent in their own defence, scorning the authorities, scorning what the city holds dear, resisting arrest, pouring scorn on the thing that the city calls sacred. The judge spurred by local politicians and opinion makers who had fabricated crimes amounting to treason sentenced the accused to death, the method of execution discovered by popular poll."

"This is not justice," I replied, unable to keep a spark of anger from my eye.

In another incident a servant of Qualopec had got in a dispute with a citizen of the Pentopolis over another beggar, and in the ensuing fracas the citizen was hit in the forehead with a stone, making him bleed. The citizen had demanded that Qualopec's man pay him for the service of "bloodletting", and a Pentopolis judge sided with the rogue over this spurious medical cost. The servant of Qualopec, well armed and fleet, and trained in the Lapithae Regiment had retaliated by striking the injudicious judge on the forehead with his own gavel and then demanding that the judge to pay the resulting fee from the second "bloodletting" to the complainant in his stead, making all square. His wit unappreciated the servant of Qualopec has left that place at high speed pursued (but not caught) by a posse of local lawman.

"The law has gone mad," I observed. "This is little better than anarchy."

"And yet all but a few approve and call it freedom," said Lut.

"Such a rule brings into disrepute the philosophies of the founding fathers of Atlantis. It is a farce fuelled by greed and enforced by morons."

"And yet the peoples of the Pentopolis regard their arrangements as the very pinnacle of civilisation and in their arrogance and pride refuse all advice or censure. Merely calling into question the competence of the system of city governance is thought to be the work of a traitor."

"Only Atlantis may rule," I replied, "by divine right."

"I and my family are subjects loyal and true, but I fear that none other in this benighted place can be swayed back to the path of righteousness."

"Very well," I said. I had decided. "One of the five cities must be destroyed to educate the remaining four. The very symbols of their pride, the towering buildings in which they conduct their daily business, will be brought down in flames,"

Lut and his family grasped each others' hands in dismay, demanding to know which of the five.

"Only Lord 'Jihovan' knows that," I replied with more confidence than I felt. "We must leave in case this burgh is the one chosen. Pack up your belongings and your slaves. We will leave in caravan by the Western Gate and take shelter in the nearby hills."

And so as chill dawn was breaking whitely we were en route, the Pentopolitans casting many a backward glance with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. When I thought we had gone away from that place a sufficient distance I sent the signal for the slaughter to commence. In the distance I could hear the clang of metal stalls being the erected in the markets and the shouts of children on their way to early lessons, all trying to evade the heat of the midday sun but all unaware of the fiery furnace in which they were soon to be smelted.

"We shall shelter in a cave over the rise," I said. "Do not look upon the destruction directly lest you be blinded by the light or cremated by the heat."

We waited in the dark, the outside world shrunk to nothing more than our own shadows cast by the light from the cave's mouth. And then it was as if we were bugs on a blanket that was twitched beneath us. The very floor seemed to twitch to one side and then the other in a fashion that awaked a very primordial nightmare. I cannot describe the sense of wrongness that this engendered in our senses. There can to our ears a growling and a trumpeting, as if the very roots of the mountains had let loose a pack of titans, stony bears and flint-toothed wolves, all howling simultaneously in a basso cacophony. The cave mouth darkened and reddened as if covered by a gargantuan incandescent hand, and the smell of brimstone stuffed itself into our mouths, causing our nostrils to rebel and our eyes to swim, so that the lungs in our chests were squeezed as if by the paws of the Behemoth itself.

We huddled together like kittens in a sack but then "My wife," cried Lut, "our mother," wailed the daughters. For that good woman was no longer with us.

"Wait here," I instructed. "I will risk a glance outside."

My powers of description rather fail at this point. I stumbled outside, face masked in scarves, to be confronted by a red motionless sea, stretching from horizon to horizon. I say motionless, but the very air above it simmered, and the whole landscape made me wonder if I was in some dazed lotus state. The plateau looked like the top of edge of a piece of burning charcoal, featureless and bizarre. The heat from it blushed my cheeks and scorched my clothing.

The five cities - their rivers and fields, hills and woods, towers and plazas - were gone. Not a trace remained. Indeed later survey teams sent in the weeks that followed found nothing but a glass-like surface made of acid minerals. For years after the area was referred to as the Forge of God; nothing grew, nothing living could survive. It was if the very sea-salt in the blood of the citizens of the Pentopolis was all that was left. It seemed that Tihocan had rather under-estimated the might of his new weapon.

Nearby I espied what resembled a new outcrop, facing the inferno. It was the white remains of a human form, recognisable only due to a couple of surviving teeth, deeply desiccated and covered in a thin layer of what looked like potash. It was Lut's wife, reduced to a quintessence of sparkling dust, still upright only because of the rock-spur she had staggered against.

I took the family with me back to the City and installed them in housing with a pension at my own expense.

"We are the only representatives now living of the once proud race of the Cities of the Plain," said Lut's daughter as I was taking my leave, her face full of sadness.

"Yet you have two females - you and your sister - and one male - your father. Surely the race may be seeded again?" I said.

So she went back into the house with a smile, vowing to ply the patriarch of the postulated new tribe with wine and to show him the fecundity of his loving daughters.

Some time later I met with Tihocan for a postmortem on the holocaust.

"What unholy force did you unleash?" I asked, laughing. "Verily you smote the Pentopolis and its people into non-existence."

"I tapped the fire at the center of the earth, the very force that you see in the volcano, that very thing that once gave shape to the circular islands of the City, and which even now slumbers deep beneath us," replied Tihocan.

"And how was such energy contained, cunning god of all engineers?"

"As to that, I will show you a new device in my workshop."

We stood before a large object, not unlike the portico of a circular temple, with glittering pillars on the periphery suspending a disc of gold, chased with obscure patterns not unlike an abstract map

"As you know I had hopes of a time machine," said Tihocan, gesturing at the device, "but rather than manipulating the descriptors of matter to allow me to travel in that dimension, all that I achieved was a method for stopping all movement."

"That sounds the opposite of your desire, although I am not sure that I understand."

"I shall demonstrate."

Tihocan took a bowl of naphtha and, placing in on the floor in the centre of the device, ignited it with a fiery torch.

"Observe," he said, pulling down a lever on a nearby control panel.

There was a clunking from beneath our feet, and it was as if a blue glassy wall interposed itself between us and the flaming basin, its surface patterned like a giant honeycomb. There a crackling and a crunching as if of water freezing, and deep within the device the burning naphtha ceased to move, the very flames suddenly immobile, like a burning bush that fails to consume itself.

I stepped forward and held a hand near to the bluish exterior.

"It feels neither hot nor icy," I said in some wonder.

"It is not conventionally cold," replied Tihocan. "It is just that the very particles of the objects within are stationary, as if they were at the lowest possible temperature."

I clapped my hands in awed applause. "And so, my brilliant and clever Royal Brother, how did you use such a thing to direct the howling depths of the earth?"

"I merely created a pipe whose material was immobile in time and which therefore unbreakable and unmeltable. One end I caused to be placed in the furnaces below and the other fed to the Plain of the Pentopolis."

He reversed the controls and the icy wall fell away. The bowl of naphtha burned as before, untouched.

"Could a human being survive such a stasis?" I asked.

"As yet not," replied he, "but I am working on a suitable armour and helmet that might preserve intact such an experimenter. In effect although I have not conquered time, I have opened the passage for a traveler into our future."

"It would make an ideal prison."

Tihocan laughed. "A bizarre whimsy, my beloved Royal Sister," he said. "After all what sort of miscreant would one wish to preserve alive when one could merely dispose of them with a swiftly falling axe?"

"I am indeed foolish," I agreed, and we went away to toast each others' health, temporary united in fraternal love.

It was a year later that the faintest of tremors, a side effect perhaps of Tihocan's exercise in nemesis, fluttered the paving stones of the City and set the sea a-quiver.

---

Chapter Nine: The Ocean's Near The Shore

It doesn't seem possible for Natla Technologies for to have been responsible for two famous disasters simultaneously on different sides of the planet but on August 31st, 1986 … but I leap forward with my story.

I now had labs and mining operations worldwide, plus a personal fortune from the patents I had written. I had contracts with the military on both sides of the Iron Curtain, contacts with both Christians and Muslims, and co-conspirators in both government and Hollywood. I was beginning to feel more like myself. For the first time in millennia the world was in safe hands – namely mine. Or at least we were very nearly there.

The one thing that I did not have – what does one give the girl who has everything? – were my beloved wings. A mere tweak of my body and they would grow again; in fact, occasionally, I had to have the infant wing nubs removed by my personal Natla Tech-approved plastic surgeon. I knew that there was no chance that the 20th century world would accept them. They could barely accept a harelip or a vestigial tail.

For a while I was stumped. (No pun intended.) I tried adapting para-gliders and parachutes, but it was about as useful as replacing a real tongue with a wooden one. If only, I thought, I had removable wings.

Naturally thanks to our biowarfare and weaponised divisions I had top secret labs and proving grounds where I would do whatever I liked, and it was whilst I was marvelling at a caterpillar being eaten alive by wasp larvae that I conceived a solution.

A parasite, albeit totally under my control, that would latch into the old wing connections – the old nerves and tendons - in my back. One that could be removed and stored whenever inconvenient.

Of course there was no "modern" technology that could do this – people were just getting to grips with the plasmid – but with my in depth knowledge of what would one day be called developmental science, I started work.

I took the nervous system of the placenta and crossed it with octopus tentacles to create a thing that could burrow into special cloacae near my shoulder blades, as easier inserted and withdrawn as a penis. I implanted the genes for the bat wing into the back of a pig and surgically grew the resulting explants in beds of blood agar and nutrients until I achieved the required wingspan. Soon I had a semi-autonomous "foetus" that could be maintained in a special tube, one that could transport by jet and keep several copies of at various locations. I would hoist the "foetus" onto my shoulders like a real baby, where it would wrap two prehensile limbs around my shoulders and burrow into my flesh like an eager lover. I had ensured what my back sockets registered pleasure and not pain, and each "winging" was an intense, gasping pleasure for me. Each time I unfurled my wings in a glorious stretching motion and flapped them so that I was on tiptoe, it was easy to see why sexual beings dream of flight.

In the predawn light at the Mesa Parajito, my New Mexican range, I would leap from the roof and practice my gliding. Soon I had regained all of my previous flying skills.

As for the Tombs – Pierre was still digging out and renovating the Saint Francis Folly. There was a series of rather louche "trap" rooms on each side of the major shaft that he had discovered, and I'd instructed that wherever possible they be rebuilt and rearmed. Who knows, I thought, maybe we can combine the zoo and the ruins into some sort of Cypriot theme park on the day that Northern Cyprus was brought in from beyond the pale?

The Tomb of Qualopec - one that I myself had entered whilst he was still alive - was proving slightly more elusive. I knew it was somewhere in the extreme north of Peru, and I had some papers from an English archaeologist concerning a "Lost City of Vilcabamba" but the Spanish genocide and the encroachment of jungle everywhere had made it nearly impossible to locate. Similarly the Tomb of Chloe, otherwise known as the Sanctuary Tomb, was located somewhere inland from the former site of Tihocan's workshop, somewhere in Tihocan's post-deluge empire but it was entirely unclear where. Millennia of climate change, shifting sands, and the rise and fall of petty empires had buried it somewhere. There was talk of a site somewhere in modern Sudan near only of the upper tributaries of the Nile in the old kingdoms of Kush and Nubia, but as yet we hadn't located it.

I wasn't worried. I had all the time in the world.

There was one place which, like the wings, had obsessed my thoughts. What had become of my old home, the Golden Pyramid of Aea? It was curious to me that the Olympeans - or whomever had sent the statue with the voice of Astarte to warn me off – had not mentioned it. What did that mean, I wondered? Was it destroyed? It seemed unlikely that it had been simply overlooked.

The former site was presumably in a very well guarded part of the Black Sea - somewhere near Georgia - in the sub-tropical microclimate that was favoured by the upper reaches of the Soviet Government as a holiday resort. There were no readily available satellite photos and besides, I somewhat doubted that a large golden pyramid was just sitting there out in the open. Age, presumably, had disguised it.

Again, I formulated a plan. I had permission to sail the Secret Life II around the Black Sea, for the simple reason that Natla Technologies was on good terms with all of the governments (and local strong men) around the shore. Provided that I didn't favour one side or another, or spark a diplomatic incident, and provided I let everybody know where I was, I could sail to the north east of the Sea with impunity. Landing might be a problem, but my scheme didn't require me to land.

It occurred to me that if there was one place where there was a remaining working aetheroscope – the ancient communication device invented by Tihocan – it was in the Golden Pyramid. I'd designed the place to look after itself to a certain extent – it was semi-sentient - and I was sure that the descendents of Magnesian and Urania and the generations of servants working for Tihocan (who had inherited it after my "fall") would have left it in the best condition that they could have. The place might be buried, but it might not be completely dead. If I could triangulate on an aetheroscope signal I'd have the coordinates. Maybe somewhere deep under a foreign field there was still a place that was forever Atlantis.

* * * * *

Aþkðn, meanwhile, was pregnant with what the modern world regarded as the first test-tube twins. Common place today and in Atlantis, in those days it was still a controversial novelty and it was only four years since the doctor that had produced India's first IVF baby - Subhash Mukhopadhyay - had been hounded to suicide. I guess the world would have been even more censorious of Aþkðn and myself if they had known that not only was Aþkðn's "husband" a mere "Saint Joseph", but that the "male" gene component injected into Aþkðn's eggs had been engineered from myself.

We had anchored for the night off the Golden Horn and were listening to the Call to Prayer as I massaged oil onto Aþkðn's swollen belly. She was worried about stretch marks despite the fact that I had assured her that it was unnecessary for to come to term if she didn't want to and that even if she did, I'd fix any blemishes as quick as boiled asparagus.

"This is going to be a natural birth," she insisted.

"Isn't it already a bit late for that, sweetheart?"

"You know what I mean."

Crichton came up.

"There's a fisherman alongside with some freshly grilled fish, Madam," he said.

"Oh goodie," I said, leaping to my feet.

I peered over the rail at the long rowing boat with its central charcoal brazier. "What's that?" I said, pointing at a fish.

"Levrek," said the Turk. "Sea bass, bayan."

"Is it fresh?"

The fisherman gave me a look of mock outrage.

"And the bread?"

"But of course, bayan."

"I'll have four," I held up my fingers. "Is that boiled corn cob in that pan?"

He lifted the lid, enveloping us in steam.

"Two of those," I said. "Plus whatever any of the crew want. Crichton here will pay you. In US dollars if you prefer."

He grinned conspiratorially, and threw up my orders wrapped in newspaper.

"Lord, I do love Constantinople," I said to nobody in particular. "What's your name?"

"Mehmet,"

"Jacqueline. Allaha ısmalardık, Mehmet."

"Gule gule."

I took a big mouthful of fish sandwich and admired the silhouettes of the Church of the Holy Wisdom and the Blue Mosque. Life was good.

Aþkðn came to join me on the sundeck.

"Eat this," I said.

"Is it clean?" she said, signaling for a servant, and ordering cutlery and some olive oil.

"Ridiculous, darling. It's good for the brain."

"Yes, Jackie, but is it full of sewage?"

"The current is far too swift."

"O.K."

"Good?" I said.

"Is good," she said, mouth full. "I need a glass of alma chai."

* * * * *

I say that I didn't have a satellite photograph, but the truth is that at great expense and risk I had obtained a really bad one from a spy in the US security services. It had been taken on a very rainy day, and the sea right up to the coastline showed nothing but clouds. The shoreline itself showed the wooded hills at the end of the Greater Caucasus mountain range and that was it. Useless. Money may be able to buy you love, but it can't apparently buy you everything.

As a result I OK'ed the financing of a spy satellite – I won't bore you with the details, but we took money from both sides. This was possible due to a bizarre form of orbit known as the Molniya trajectory. This is a high elliptical form of orbit in which the satellite (with an inclination of 63.4 degrees and a period of 12 hours, for the geeks amongst you) spends most of its time over designated areas of the earth during what is known as an "apogee dwell". The areas we chose were approximately 50oE 60oN (we sold photos of the Volga-Don region to the Americans) and 130oW 60oN (we sold photos of British Columbia to the Russians) and although the official names for the satellite were "Jumpseat 23" or "Molniya 69" depending on whom one was talking to, we referred to it by the codename "Lynceus". Naturally part of the "flight path" was very convenient for the eastern edge of the Black Sea …

As well as the conventional imaging and communication hardware on the Lynceus Satellite, I included devices for both transmitting and detecting ultra-low frequencies. One section of Tihocan's aetherscope network had functioned by using earth-conducted waves in the 30-600 Hz range, and however deeply the remains of the Golden Pyramid of Aea were buried, my system would be able to communicate with it. Ground control was run by my techies from a Natla Tech laboratory in Cerritos, LA, linked to a Natla Tech antenna array near Gakona, Alaska. I was in continual contact. I had installed similar ULF equipment was on board the Secret Life and now all we need to do was to get on with it.

* * * * *

Like the Argo of old, we cruised along the north coast of Turkey – I stopped off at our mine in Zonguldak to cheer the "troops" and then, after sailing past the beautiful ebony beaches of Trabizond, we turned towards the north-east region of the Black Sea, heading towards the ancient kingdom of Colchis and our own particular Golden Fleece. There had been some talk of granting this part of the U.S.S.R. the title of "semi-autonomous region" or some such, with the ancient name of Abkhazia – the local Abkhaz people hated the Georgians – and the resulting vicious civil war (sparked by perestroika and glasnost six years afterwards) although bad for them was good for me, as I shall relate later. Right now the local resorts and beaches were teeming with August tourists and the hotels of Sokhumi were fully booked. Our yacht – obviously built for pleasure cruising - fitted right in, hidden in plain sight.

"It's humid," said Aþkðn, her hands in the small of her back and her belly trust out, "and it smells".

"It rains a lot – the highest rainfall in the U.S.S.R.," I replied, massaging her shoulders, "and that smell is vegetation."

"Or sewage. I think I'll stay out of the sea for the moment."

I looked at the white buildings sprawled up and down the coast.

"I wonder if they have real blinis?"

A local police boat, packed with various dignitaries and local "businessmen", came out to meet us and I paid a large array of local "taxes" using crisp new US dollars packed into a suitcase.

"I'd like to look into setting up a division of Natla Mining here eventually," I said to the mayor of Gagra. "Apparently this region is rich in manganese."

"Maybe a Natla Technical University?" he beamed, fiddling with the worn gold watch-chain strung across his waistcoat.

"It would be my honour to show our support and friendship for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." We all shook hands and we all had our photo taken, with the agreement that it wouldn't turn up on the front page of Pravda.

I reflected how much more of a boost to the local economy it would be when I had re-staffed the Golden Pyramid with slaves and converted the currency to New Atlantean Obols. One day place might be become the "I." to a new worldwide "Reich".

Later, I contacted Ground Control in California.

"Are you ready to blanket the region with ULF?" I asked.

"We have a grid programmed in and a range of frequencies."

"As soon Lynceus clears the horizon, begin. We'll be ready to triangulate from here if you generate any reaction."

And so, since there was little else to do but wait, Aþkðn and I sunbathed.

* * * * *

Two incidents from 31st August; I'm quoting from the newspapers.

"At approximately 11:46 AM Air New Mexico Flight 823 began its descent into Los Angeles with 69 passengers and 23 crew members aboard. Minutes earlier, a private aircraft, a Cessna 150E had departed Torrance. At 11:52 AM (18.52 GMT), the Cessna's engine collided with the left horizontal stabilizer of the DC-9; this sheared off the top of the Cessna's cockpit, killing the pilot and two passengers. The DC-9 inverted and fell to the earth in a residential neighborhood at Tesla Avenue and Phaëton Place in Cerritos, killing 23 on the ground and all 92 passengers and crew. The impact and fire destroyed a number of houses. A fire sparked by the crash contributed significantly to the damage. The heavily damaged Cessna fell into Cerritos Elementary School's playground."

Then, about twenty minutes later;

"At 11:12 p.m. (19.12 GMT), the cruise liner Admiral Nasatya was struck by the freighter Pyotr Dasra twenty three miles from the port at Novorossiysk (on the Black Sea) and two miles from the shore. The Admiral Nasatya continued forward with the freighter's bow in its side, ripping a 900 square foot hole in the hull between the engine and boiler rooms. The Admiral Nasatya immediately took on a list on her starboard side, and her lights went out upon impact. People below decks found themselves lost in the dark and rapidly canting hallways. There was no time to launch the lifeboats. Hundreds of people dove into the oily water, clinging to lifejackets, barrels and pieces of debris. The Admiral Nasatya sank in only seven minutes. Sixty-nine rescue ships and 23 helicopters rushed to the scene, and 836 people were pulled from the water. Some people were so slick with fuel oil that they could not keep hold of the hands of their rescuers. Passengers and crew had had little time to escape, and 423 of the 1,234 on board perished."

And lastly, from a conspiracy theorist;

"Many Novorossiisk citizens say that they saw the unnaturally red sky in the evening of August 31. The majority of supporters of the electromagnetic version state that the too high data explained not with solar activity but with some electromagnetic impact exerted upon communication facilities of vessels with a view to cause strong interference on the screens of their radars."

The following is what happened, from the point of view of the Secret Life.

We were asleep and so didn't notice the loss of power to the entire ship. There was a respectful knock on our cabin door and Creighton appeared bearing a hurricane lamp.

Up on the bridge everything was shrouded in blackness. I looked out over the sea. There were no lights, nothing from the shore and northing on the horizon. We were adrift with no landmarks and no navigation.

"What happened?" I asked.

"There was flash from the north and then everything died," said the captain.

The crew manning the radar and the UHF devices were brought to me. Their instruments had overloaded simultaneously, but they concurred that something had registered up the coast well past Gagra.

"How close were we to the shore?" I asked the captain.

"About five miles."

"And which way are we drifting?"

"I shall station crew with plumb lines to find out, but judging from the way that the lighter is pulling, I'd guess we were drifting northeastwards."

I looked at the sky but it was obscured with low red-black clouds. The air was close and electric.

"We need aerial reconnaissance," I said. "Do we have any night-sight goggles or the sight from a rifle?"

"But … we have no aircraft," said the confused captain to my retreating back.

Down in my cabin I unpacked my new wings.

"Surely you are not going out like that?" said Aþkðn. She winced.

"What is it, sweetie?" I said, kneeling by her.

"Nothing. Indigestion."

I kissed her. "I'll get the doc in here. As for the crew … if they don't like it I'll 'chastise' them. I have to go up to check that we – that includes you three babies – are safe. We're near to a rocky coast at the mercy of the currents and I want to make sure we come aground on a beach if I can."

I slipped into my new wings, gasping as I did so. Aþkðn kissed me and stroked me as I did so. It was an erotic and loving moment, heightened by the anxiety. I still save the memory like a tiny jewel.

I dressed in a specially adapted flying suit and stepped out of the cabin.

"Get the doctor to my cabin," I said to nobody in particular, strapping on a flight helmet. "And somebody find out if we have any oars or poles, or if the motor on the runabout or on the inflatables can be made to start."

Nobody was listening. There were gasps and a few people crossed themselves, but I stood tall and unfurled my blood red wings majestically. It was a crunch moment.

"These are not magic," I said. "They are just an invention of Natla Technologies, a product of science. They are not evil, or from the Devil, or anything like that. They were simply grown and constructed in a lab. If I can get above the ship I can assess our situation."

The crew looked unconvinced, but at least I had given them a theory they could live with.

The captain handled me infrared goggles and a walkie-talkie.

"Have a pleasant flight," he said.

* * * * *

I could manage about two minutes at a time before dropping back down to rest. From a height it was possible to do what it was nearly impossible to do from the top of the superstructure – see the shore. The land glowed with stored heat, but also with something else that I could not identify. Some phenomenon was producing a bizarre ultraviolet aura which showed up at the periphery of vision in what was otherwise a green and white picture.

As I stood on the deck I noticed the beginning of lightning in the distance. It was coming up to half an hour since the black out had begun and we had drifted parallel to the coast for some fair distance. A current or maybe the tide had us in its grip.

"We have one Zodiac working," said the captain.

"Can it pull the ship?"

"Of course not, Madame."

"Could it turn the bow a few degrees if necessary?"

He shrugged. I instructed that potential "tow ropes" be fastened at the bow and at the stern. Maybe hitting the rocks at the correct angle could be the difference between life and death, although we seemed to be drifting no closer.

Creighton ambled up. "Madam. The doctor instructs me to inform you that your wife has started her contractions, but that everything is going smoothly, if somewhat rapidly."

I grabbed his arm and was at a loss for words for a good few seconds. I was going to be a mummy. Again. It was definitely a day for firsts.

"Good Lord," I said, eventually. "I'll be in there after I've had one last look."

Creighton eyed the thunderheads above us. "Will Madam be safe?"

"Needs must," I said, and took to the air.

I flapped as high as I could and this time did a three hundred and sixty degree turn, holding the goggles close to my eyes. I had almost satisfied myself that everything was shipshape and that the chances of us grounding had diminished when I saw something that almost made me stall and fall.

At first I thought I was looking at shadows or islands or some low fog banks, but as I changed my point of view and flew a little higher, I realized that I was looking at two ships. They were heading towards us at an unreasonably high speed.

"How is that possible?" I said to myself. "They are showing no lights and yet they are under full power." I had a bad feeling. Something supernatural appeared to be happening, and that, plus the blackout, plus the threatening sky … was something directing it all. If we were near the Golden Pyramid and we'd "poked" it in the wrong way, was it fighting back?

I took one last look at the three ships, gasping for breath. The Secret Life was about 45 degrees to each course of the other two vessels. If I estimated it correctly, one ship – one as big as a cruise liner - would hit her on the port side near the bow, whilst the other – some sort of freighter – would hit her on the same side near her stern. The Secret Life would be smashed into matchsticks as surely as if she'd been caught between two clashing icebergs.

I fell back to the deck, breathless and bruised.

My brain was working overtime – I have a head for vectors; I'm particularly good at the game of pool, of example. In my mind's eye I plotted the intersection of the three vessels. The cruise ship would probably arrive a second or two before the freighter, I thought. If we could just turn the Secret Life through a few degrees …

"Captain," I stuttered. "Zodiac pulls the stern, I pull the bow, turn us to face true north instead of north east. Ships on collision course."

They gaped at me for a few seconds and then everything was action.

"Chocolate, sugar, amphetamines, anything. I need energy."

In the end Creighton, with admirable alacrity, produced a rum and Coca-Cola laced with Kahlua and Benzedrine. Gulping it down as I ran, I took up the bow tow rope and tied it roughly round my midriff.

The ships were within sight now and terror began to grip us all, especially me. Aþkðn, I thought.

I launched myself at ninety degrees to the bow, almost flying a course between our nemeses, like a dove trying to find a way through a narrowing ravine.

"Turn damn you!" I could see the Zodiac inflatable behind me, valiantly trying to move the stern of the Secret Life. We were making no effect that I could see.

Then, just before the cruise ship hit, there was an enormous noise and a flash. I had been struck by a lightning bolt hurled from the heavens. I don't remember hitting the water.

* * * * *

The headquarters of Natla Tech in Los Angeles had, at roughly the same time, been having a torrid time of it.

They were monitoring the downlink from the Lynceus Satellite and at a particular frequency and location of UHF "poking", all hell was let loose.

Firstly an enormous burst of … what? EM? … flew up from the Black Sea and destroyed all communication.

Then ground based radar (we discovered afterwards) registered the loss of the Lynceus Satellite from orbit. One second – there, the next – gone. Needless to say they were opening up nuclear bunkers and scrambling B52s all over the central states of the USA within minutes and had gone to the equivalent of Def-Con Apocalypse.

Next what can only be described as two "UFOs" zoomed into down town L.A. One caused a small plane to veer off course and crash into a civil airliner. Then the two flying objects – witnessed by many but denied afterwards as mass hysteria in the wake of the passenger air-crash – swooped around and around the Natla Tech building like harpies tormenting a blind man. The "visitors" caused every hard drive and tape in the building to be wiped clean. Several of the staff suffered epileptic fits, a couple went mad and the rest had permanent amnesia forever afterwards.

(It was only through a note scribbled on a pad that I got the information we sought - the location of the Golden Pyramid of Aea.)

I guess we were lucky that the "UFOs" didn't decide to blast the Natla Tech building to pieces, or else it entirely possible that nobody would be around to read this memoir. Instead they soared straight up through the stratosphere and out of the range of human detection.

* * * * *

And what of those in peril on the sea?

Well, unlike nearly everybody else in this story we had a happy ending.

The bow of the Secret Life turned just enough that we were swept down the port side of the cruise liner and cleared the stern just as the freighter slammed into the starboard side. The Secret Life drifted gently north and went harmlessly aground on a Russian tourist beach.

I was dragged out of the sea unconscious and still attached to my rope; luckily I'd sunk so deep that the ships passed over my head without snagging me. That particular set of wings died – they had taken the brunt of the lightning bolt and perished with honor – and I recovered.

Aþkðn gave birth to two healthy boys, Nasatya and Dasra, and mother and babies did just fine.

As for me, I had a new enemy. The thing - or being, or mechanism – that was left alive in the Golden Pyramid had to die.

I'm not usually a hateful person, but to put it in perspective, we're still paying out medical as we speak. I've poured money into the Abkhazia region, trying to make amends for events that weren't really my fault, and - both there and in the States - I pay regular visits to many, many families.

And therefore it won't surprise you to hear - the Golden Pyramid was now on my shit list and I promised the world that there would be blood.

---

Chapter Ten: A Glass Hand Cuts Through The Water

"Come daughter mine, most beauteous Princess of the Great Atlantis, come and whisper thoughts into the triple heads of the Atlantean War Machine, dread guardian of our gates," I said.

I handed seventeen-year-old Chloe of Achaea, Chloe of the Golden Hair, up onto the gantry that shrouded the War Machine, known across the Empire, known by various names depending on the dialect - the Ketos, the Kebus, the Kelun, the Kraken, the Leviathan.

"What shall I whisper, Mama?" said Chloe, brushing the summer hair from her sun-kissed face.

"Here - use this cornet device. Speak with respect, for three of our finest warriors gave their brains to be enclosed in gold and pierced with silver needles, to direct the dreaded dreadnought that is the War Machine."

Chloe took the speaker.

"Hail brave warriors," she said. "I hail you, I, the Royal Princess Chloe, Chloe of Achaea, Chloe of the Sabines. I raise my hand in salute at your bravery and steadfastness, and thank you for the years of service that you have given in defence of the state."

I should explain that the Sabines, originally supporters of Chloe's chariot team in the Hippodrome of the City, were now her own cadre of supporters, a political party, a trend, a fashion, a way of adjusting and accessorising of clothing, a celebratory club with the Princess of Achaea as their celebrity icon. I was glad, for one day she would need advocates (aside from her unpopular mother) to press her suit as a Ruler of Atlantis.

"Invincible you stride the land, from the bed of the Middle Sea to the steppes of the farthest lands, your claws rending, your feet stamping, your voice demolishing and your fire-nostrils consuming our enemies. Receive the blessing of a great-grandchild of the Olympean God Poseidon, blessed be his name."

Beneath us the War Machine shifted in its dry dock, and gave a soft hoot in acknowledgement.

I leaned over the gantry and spoke to Qualopec and Tihocan far below. "The Royal Chloe and myself have spoken to the Machine, and all seems to be well."

"Then all is good, most Royal of Sisters," called Tihocan, "we shall proceed with the repairs. I thank young Chloe for her solicitude."

We retired to a room of the Palace of Tihocan, sited above the dry dock.

Chloe laughed thoughtfully. "Still the Royal Tihocan refuses the word daughter to me," she said.

"It is but a word," I replied, placing an arm about her.

"He loves me still."

We stood at an archway looking out at the pouring rain.

"Will it never cease, Mama?"

"It is the longest downpour," I said. "We have been buttressing riverbanks and raising bridges. Where the crops have been swamped we have provided, thanks to you."

Chloe had the power of dreams. At the age of seven she had warned of seven fat years and then seven lean years, and had persuaded us to build seven giant granaries so that the fat would feed the lean.

"I have had other dreams since," she said, clasping my hands in hers.

"More phrases than dreams, daughter mine."

"Do not anger Great-Grandfather," she said, her cerulean gaze distant, "and prepare to be preserved for an eternity until you rule again."

"Daily the ten twin kings in their dotage gather in the newly themed Temple of Poseidon, formerly of Demeter, and try to contact their father and beg for his pleasure at your behest. And for two years now I, your father and your uncle have laboured to create great tombs where we may rest secured for a millennia until duty calls again."

"I fear that Great-Grandfather does not hear," replied Chloe of the Sabines, wiping a drop of rain from her ivory cheekbone.

I had built my future tomb in the farthest reach of the Territory of the West on an icy plain set on a peninsular, the whole topped at ground level by a giant circle of stone pillars joined to each other by equally massive stone lintels. Qualopec had carved out a mountain in his new country across the Ocean, its gate guarded by water, whilst Tihocan had chosen as his putative final resting place the caves under Mount Kyrenia. The whole of Atlantis took the Royal Princess and her dreams with great seriousness. The one non-believer, the august Astarte, regarded our foolishness from her eyrie at Mount Nemesis with benign amusement, ostensively neither helping nor hindering. So detached was she now from Atlantis that its future fate barely seemed to concern her, but we were still in her prayers, or so she said.

Chloe stepped out into the rain, her white arms raised and her tunic clinging, and addressed herself to the sea.

"I sing to Great-Grandfather Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep. O shaker of the earth, tamer of horses and saviour of ships! Hail Poseidon holder of the earth, dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in the vessel of Atlantis!"

I draped a cloak about her shivering shoulders and led her in.

"May your hymn be heard, devout daughter," I said.

It was a year later - forgive the jerkiness of my tale, heaving with grief in it's telling - and still it rained. Our finest engineering arts kept the Empire dry, but the Ocean beyond the Camarinal Dam was rising, rising out of the unnatural warmth of the world.

(Modern scholars must identify this era themselves by the rings of trees and the deposition of sea-shells, for I cannot tell if it was four or fourteen millennia ago)

There being no more wars to fight - peace had been achieved, illness conquered, education spread and a clean glass of water made available to all - we, the Atlantean Royal Siblings, flanking Chloe the Royal Heir and Maia of the Seven Sisters stood on a balcony on the Royal Enclosure of the City and watched as the Lapithae, the Amazonian, the Aean and the Maian Regiments processed in step with the Atlantean War Machine, to the roars and applause of our loyal subjects. We had all gotten used to the constant rain - all were sheathed and covered and umbrella-ed against the downpour - and the troops in their water-proof hoods and stout knee length boots showed no concern at the wetness.

The War Machine had halted before us, its three heads orchestrating a threnody, a trio of triumph, trumpeting and tumultuous. I waved to my own dear Aean Regiment, the force assembled from creatures born in the Gold Pyramid of Aea, - centaurs and minotaurs, griffons and harpies - and they roared back. The Maian Regiment, the soldiery of the Seven Sisters, cheered until crimson at the sight of young Maia, whilst Qualopec acknowledged the manly hails of the old-established Lapithae Regiment with a gubernatorial gauntlet. Astarte's Dionysian dancers tiptoed a ribboned gavotte though the puddles to the flutes and fifes of an Ode to Joy composed by Tihocan. The whole of Atlantis cheered and was cheered and the sound of our pride rose up to the heavens and over the seas. Only the armed women of the Monstrous Regiment of Amazons, Chloe's personal militia, financed by her party the Sabines, seemed subtly subdued.

"Mother," said Chloe, her face all at once pale, her arm entwined urgently through mine, "come away."

"Beloved niece?" said cool Maia, placing a small calming hand in the small of Chloe's back.

"What ails, fair offspring?" I said, standing my ground, smiling and waving for the mob. "What sudden anxiety darkens your regal luminescence? It is important that we shine for our people."

"Ever united," echoed Qualopec in a mechanical boom. "The spawn of Atlantis leading onwards to even greater heights."

"The chosen of the gods," said Astarte, having deigned to return to the City for the ceremony, "pleasant both to the fates and to the spirits of the air and of the underworld."

"The eternally loyal servants of the Lord of the Sea and the Lord of the Sun," said Tihocan.

"I fear," replied Chloe. "Hubris comes before a drowning, the vengeance of the gods a-calling."

As she spoke as if prearranged there was a great cracking of the sky and it was as though a giant hand had taken the lid form a box in which we all were standing. A javelin of light - maybe electricity, maybe a flaming rock flung from the sky - arched down and smote the War Machine. There was a burst of flames and sparks, and crestfallen cries from the crowd. The Machine reared, bucked and neighed, causing us all to cover our ears. Then, regardless of the Regiments and the crowds beneath its metal feet, it turned towards the setting sun, and both oblivious and filled with a new motivation of its own, began to plough through building and flesh alike. Coming soon to the Inner Circular Sea it plunged undaunted into the waves and continued in a straight line, its wake lit by bubbles and the stirring of mud.

The sudden silence gave way to weeping and wailing, and we, the Royals, hurried inside to muster our response. How to stop an unstoppable juggernaut, and how to fathom the thoughts of a deranged giant? This was the challenge.

The First Plan

No longer the old original ruling quadrumvirate, we six met in the place now permanently fixed for our deliberations, the Primary Throne Room of the newly aggrandised Palace of Atlas and Eumelus, adjacent to the rooms jointly shared by Chloe and her half-aunts, the seven daughters of Pleione.

"The scouts follow at a distance," said Qulaopec. "It moves at little more than walking speed towards the environs of the foothills of Mount Ida. If it aims for the Middle Sea we have less than two days to prevent it before it sinks below the waves and out of our reach."

"Can the mechanism survive submerged?" asked Maia, emollient of voice and soothing of expression.

"Sea water is as air to it Royal Step-Sister," said Tihocan. "Its heart and lungs take power from a fragment of the substance sustaining the Scion, buried deep within its carapace lest the malign influence of the fuel taint the surroundings."

"And who dared attack our Royal Procession?" I ask. "In whose blue did this bolt begin?

Astarte and Chloe came forward.

"We fear that this is a manifestation of the same malignity than has bathed our empire with rain and raised the level of the Ocean," said Astarte. Finally she seemed to taking Chloe seriously.

"The Lords of the Sun and of the Sea are displeased," said Chloe.

Qulaopec gave a metallic snort and I was unable to keep the scepticism from my expression. Tihocan wrung his hands, however, whilst serene Maia, mere schoolgirl, observed us with steady sea-green stare,

"We bow to the knowledge of the Royal Leader of the State Religion and the Royal State Seer whose gifts are many and manifest," said Qualopec, diplomatically trying to smooth over his own scepticism. "What do you suggest?"

"Naturally the Ten Twin Sons of Poseidon will continue to contact their father, whilst I shall procure sacrifices and prayers to the Lord of the Sun, the Zeus-Ammon newly named by the far-sight of the saintly Chloe."

"So - enough of this eldritch deliberation," said Qualopec, "Let us all ride united, every troop together and attempt to defeat our own mechanical genius of war on the plain below Mount Ida."

"Our Maian Regiment stands ready to fight," said Maia of the unfurrowed brow.

"As does the Aean, carmine in craw and claw," I said.

"Then let us sally out, strong sisters of sword and spear, to save Atlantean pride and Olympean heritage."

Of the first battle against the Atlantean War Machine I remember but fragments. I remember riding over a low rise on the following day and seeing, far in the valley below, the Machine crawling over the surface of the land like an obscene golden spider, howling and gesticulating. Behind us the cloud-clotted sky merely brightened with the rising sun, whilst far ahead through the curtains of falling rain sulked the shores of the Middle Sea.

"Delay the Leviathan!" I recall calling to my wing-ed squadrons. "Vex it with volleys of forearm fire until the cavalry and the infantry can engage."

I have an image of brave Qualopec attempting to climb the beast, only to be thrown aside. I have an image of Tihocan attempting to turn sonic cannon onto the marauder, only to be out-boomed and out-howled. The swift Amazons and Maians fronted by their fleet-footed commanders, attempted to ensnare the Machine with ropes, to trip it, to immobilise it, but the Machine, scornful, snapped the web and swept aside its tormenters. The stalwart Lapithae, veteran of many a battle, stood hard behind their shield wall casting their javelins before retreating to cast again, until the Machine resembled a porcupine - all to little avail.

And so the battle continued for several hours, the first and last time that all the armies of Atlantis stood and fought together, shoulder to shoulder. However at length, all a-flame and a-griméd but with barely a dent or a scratch, the Machine stomped down the shingle beach and into the brine, a midden of massacre in its wake. O weep, dear reader, at our failed deployment!

Back in the City the broken and beaten armies were met with tears and salves and many a query for a missing son or daughter. And I saw for the first time a doubt in the faces of the citizens, a doubt that I shared. Why, they and I silently wondered, had the Olympean Gods abandoned us?

The Second Plan

The six of us met again, a doleful meeting. Tihocan attended with his engineers to the dented Qualopec, whilst I directed my medics to the wounded Tihocan, and Chloe and Maia, uninjured, nursed my injuries. Never such a bruised Royal Family, miraculously all still living, was ever seen, and therefore holy Astarte declaimed a prayer of thanks for our deliverance.

Remember that the six of us represented the brightest and cleverest and most informed committee that the human race has produced to date, and so, of course we developed a second cunning plan to halt our nemesis.

"Observe the map, my beloved Royal Relatives," said Qualopec, pointing to the mosaic pavement under our feet. "The Machine has few choices if it intends to pursue the setting sun, even fewer if we have convinced it by today's bravery to crawl along the seabed wherever possible to avoid attack."

"The far end of the Middle Sea is bounded by the mountain ranges separating that body of water from the Tyrrhenian Sea and its flanking marshland," I said. "To continue on a path to Ocean it must divert pass the flank of the Aetna, the volcano, since for all it's abilities it cannot climb."

"I with my craft can cap the Aetna and engineer a devastating explosion, not unlike that which levelled the Pentopolis," said Tihocan.

"Then that is our second plan," said Qualopec. "I will send riders to the Middle Sea to ensure that the beast does not come ashore and we will ambush it at the Aetna."

Overlooking the plain below the Aetna were two mountains named Ogygia and Gozo, in a region known to the local inhabitants as the Land of Honey, and on the peak of Mount Gozo was the First Temple build by Man, a pre-Olympian structure known as the Ggantija. Nearly five days after the debacle at Mount Ida, Astarte and her acolytes set about cleansing and sanctifying the ancient altars, whilst I set my slaves to build a lookout from where through an aetheroscopic spyglass I could observe the army of Qualopec luring the Machine into Tihocan's volcanic trap.

"It seems we women wait whilst the men manage," observed Maia of the Seven Sisters, sipping at resin wine cooled with snow. "Quaint and curious."

"Queer to be corralled by our current quandary," agreed Chloe of the Achaea.

"I see the engineers around the Aetna crater, and the machines to tap the liquid rock," I said, peering through the eyeglass, "and I see the stalwart runners - swiftest of the regiments - drilling in anticipation of their roles as hares to the Machine's hound."

"Join me in a prayer," said many-breasted Astarte. "I have report that scouts observe the renegade rising from the waves."

We four Royals, in sweet harmony, with clever twinkles from our jewellery, raised our voices in humble threnody, Chloe and Maia the soprani, Astarte and I the contralti.

Then, in ghastly coda, we heard the trumpeting of the galumphing Leviathan and saw the sparks and fireworks that heralded the approach of the maddened mechanism.

"To the air my three hundred harpies," I ordered, "and prepare to lift the bait away from the pre-positioned prey."

As the runners were lifted to safety, there was a rumble.

"Duck below the parapet and view the scene only through candle-smoked glass," I instructed my female confederates. "The trap is sprung - the Aetna awakes."

O gentle reader, what can I say? If the trap had worked would I be dictating this manuscript?

Huge boulders crashed into the brine, and tidal waves scoured the shore and beyond for many a mile. The plain below was crack'd from side to side, and fiery rivers of earth's boiling blood spilled forth. The sky turned black and the rain turned white. But the Machine, nimble as a flea, outsped the pyroclastic blast and skated over the bed of falling ash, and in a matter of hours had made a beeline for the last obstacle before the Dam, the Balearic Sea.

The Last Plan

"Judging from its previous antics, the Machine will take six or seven days to reach the Camarinal Dam," said Tihocan. "Then, regarding the Dam as an obstacle, the Machine may - will -bring it down."

"Let us plan for the worst," said Qualopec. "Let us call upon Admirals Noe and Atrahasis, Utnapishtim and Ogyges to construct a fleet of giant cargo vessels, caulked with bitumen and roofed with reeds, to evacuate the populations threatened with flood, both chattels and animals, flocks and herds."

"I shall take my Amazons to the edge of the last Sea and report should the Machine emerge," suggested Chloe of the Golden Hair.

"Whilst I and sister Astarte will remain in the City and attempt a water-borne evacuation," chorused Maia the Elder.

There was some quiet thought.

Then Maia of the Seven Sisters, serene servitor of the State, spoke. "What of the three brains, the three ex-worthies of Atlantis?" she said.

"Captains Esus, Toutatis and Taranis?" replied Qualopec. "Good men once, but now maybe little more eggs poached in their own juice."

"But apparently enough intact for the whole mechanism to function, my esteemed Royal Step-Brother?" said Maia. "Maybe we should aim for the ghosts at the heart of the Machine?"

They all turned to look at me - as if the Machine was my creation - and I smiled ruefully. There was an unspoken thought in the room - unjustly - that the present emergency was mostly my responsibility. So many years of service to the State and still a scapegoat, I thought.

"I shall detour to the Golden Pyramid of Aea," I replied. "I shall take up a sword of my own devising - impregnated and implanted with arachnobots - that may allow me to defeat the Machine."

"But Mother - how will you approach without being destroyed?" said good Chloe, her hand to my forearm.

The noble Tihocan spoke up. "I have a shield whose patterns and reflections will confuse the sensors on the Machine, fresh from my workshop. Hopefully it will render my Royal Sister almost invisible."

"If only the Lapithae had been armed so," observed Qualopec with a deep sigh, the sigh of a dead man.

"If only I'd known of this emergency, I have caused more than one to be constructed. It is merely a prototype."

"And how, dear sister, will you catch up with the destroyer?"

"My winged horse - my pegasus - can out-gallop it on land and fly over any sea it plunges beneath. If I hurry first to the Pyramid and then to the Workshop I may be in time."

"It is the last best hope, hope the betrayer, upon which no sound plan should be built," muttered Qualopec, his head hanging low in its crustacean support.

I took chariot and trireme to the Golden Pyramid of Aea, a two day journey.

"Keep the Pyramid safe," I instructed Magnesian, as I strapped on my armour and led a pegasus from the stable.

"My last seconds on earth will be devoted to putting the welfare of your test-tubes before myself," said Magnesian. "For whom but the most human can measure the treasures of knowledge as worth less than the life of just one paterfamilias?"

"Good fellow. And keep the aetheroscope near."

"Nearer than my own inflatable life-belt, my Queen."

"And make sure that Urania keeps a close eye on the hatchlings."

"I am sure that Urania would rather watch over your hybrids than make her way to higher ground, Your Majesty."

"Very good, oh loyal Magnesian."

"And Your Worshipfulness?"

"What, my true servant?"

"Preserve your own life before that of the unicorn, that's what my old father used to say."

"Very gnomic, Magnesian, but I shall endeavour to follow his advice."

Over sea and under sky I rode, and within a few days - in time, to my surprise - arrived between the shore of the Sea and the foot of Dam. And what bizarre sight awaited me? My own daughter, Chloe of the Golden Hair, chained to a post on the beach in the predicted path of the Leviathan. Forgive me if I plunge on breathless with the bones of my tale - more of this riddle later.

"Fair one," I said, attempting to loosen her bonds, "who has mistreated you so?"

"The locals, my own Amazons, even Ethiops from the Regiments," wept the child. "They conceived a plan to sacrifice me, to attempt to placate the Machine."

"Their heads are forfeit," I raged. "No mere mortal treats a grand-daughter of Poseidon with such disdain. I shall free you in a moment."

"But mother," said Chloe, "I fear you are too late. Look! The monster approaches!"

Before us the Machine bounded from the briny main, watery and weed-clad, gigantic and grotesque, and roared what turned out to be an antediluvian roar.

Yelling an arcane Atlantean battle roughly translatable as "Come and get me!" and "Bring it on!", I mounted my winged steed. I could see the treacherous soldiery and citizens hidden about, and so I yelled for their edification. "I - the blood-daughter of the Ocean and the beloved of the Lord of the Sky, a veritable Perseis - will slay and destroy this catastrophic chimaera!"

And so I galloped upwards, skipping above the fiery breath and flailing claws of the leviathan, the pegasus vaulting the volumes of the air like a hunter over hedges, our wake like that of a glass hand cutting through the water.

The shield of Tihocan, with its kaleidoscope of confusion, its sub-conscious code of delusion, allowed me to approach the Ketos from the rear. I could see it peering down at Chloe - sacrificial victim - momentarily halted by words that she was shouting. All around the evil cowards cowered behind rocks and mounds, observing the results of their futile and brutal sacrilege.

Raising my sword arm I leapt from the pegasus into the back of the kraken, near that very place were mere weeks before Chloe and I had whispered sweet endearments into its bronzed ears as it lay in dry-dock. With a mighty blow I smashed the sword tip into the dome covering one of the triple brains. I could not see but I could imagine the miniature arachnids swarming over the surface.

Then before I could be swatted aside I took wing and glided away from the monster, landing on the beach near my immobilised offspring.

The Machine seemed to have been distracted momentarily by my efforts, but now it resumed its implacable course. Embracing each other Chloe and I watched as the Machine stumbled away, obviously intent on crossing the last league to the base of the Dam.

As we stood frozen Tihocan and Qualopec and their cavalry cantered up to us, and each Family member greeted the other with some relief. Qualopec threw aside the last of Chloe's chains with a crustacean claw. But the relief was short-lived for soon all eyes turned to the Damoclean disaster that was poised to descend upon us.

"It seemed that we are doomed," said Qualopec, quietly enough so that none but us could hear.

"If the Dam is breached then the Ocean will fly in here like a stampede and drown us all," whispered Tihocan.

I suddenly had a vision of being trapped in an epic tale, whose telling and retelling down the ages, distorted and exaggerated, would feed many a poet.

"Quickly dear Royals let us plan our retreat,"

I said sotto voce, suddenly fleet,

undoing the reins of the horse from its cleat.

"Chloe let the pegasus act as your bearer

And fly to a suitable place with ... my brother."

On the tip of my tongue there had been the word "father".

"But what of you, and the Royal Qualopec?"

I stroked my daughter's hair.

"I have my wings and my flight, self-taught,

Whilst Uncle has armour and life support.

Thus we shall follow directly, in short."

"And what of the people and the soldiers?"

"Darling," I murmured, my face set grim,

"In the trial of life not all can win.

Let us just pray that most can swim."

(Actually, on reflection it's probably better that I didn't attempt to write this tale in the style of an heroic poem.)

The Machine approached the flat towering face of the Camarinal Dam and raising its stubborn, deranged heads hooted, hooting that sound that had liquefied the very mud walls of Jericho.

All around, including us, clapped hands over ears as we fell to our knees.

The Dam stood unmoved, maybe a few pebbles skittering down its face.

The Machine howled a second time, and the surface of the Dam shimmered, with surface fractures like that in the glazing on a china plate, but still it held firm.

The Machine, scratching at itself like a dog with mange, staggering like an infected metal stallion, managed one last mighty bellow. A single crack sneaked down from the high lip, a crack weeping with sea water. Still the Dam held, and the Machine - defeated - fell to its face in the dirt, forty days and forty nights after it had begun.

A tremendous cheer when up, and all were whirled around in a Dionysian dance for joy.

"Thank the Olympean Gods!" cried my Royal Brothers. "The most august and excellent Natla has saved us all!"

"Oh, Mother," cried Chloe, flinging herself my arms. "Who would have thought such a thing released would bring us so close to annihilation?"

Tihocan watched us, his face enigmatic, and Chloe saw that he watched.

She stepped forward one light step, and held out a pale hand in his direction.

"Father?" she said tentatively. "Surely this is a time for new beginnings?"

Tihocan quivered like a trapped butterfly, a rainbow of emotions crossing his face like speeding clouds.

Then; "Daughter," he said, and they enfolded each other in their arms whilst all around wept.

At that moment, of course ... I beg for you, dear listener, to allow me a breath.

Of course, then ... calamity.

Throughout the Empire volcanoes began to erupt; every sea was covered in ash or bombarded with boulders. The sky darkened and the barometer dropped in an ear-popping surge. Lightning and hailstones crashed all around us, and fiery pillars spouted up to heaven. Before we knew it a disastrous earthquake had seized hold of us so that we barely knew up from down, and even horses seemed to hover in midair, legs flailing.

Under the onslaught the levee broke and a tsunami, a super-tsunami perhaps, crashed through the ruins of the Camarinal Dam as fast as fate itself and wiped everything from the face of the earth.

A Mere Skeleton

For many days I flew towards the rising sun.

Occasionally I would alight in the ruins.

I still dream of shorelines cluttered with rubble and trees, clothing and bodies.

The only sounds were the buzzing of flies and the lapping of stagnant water.

I saw drowned babes still clasped in the arms of their drowned mothers.

I saw grotesque scarecrows rotting in the tops of trees.

I saw a cat using her half-chewed mistress a raft.

Every now and then there would be a clot of survivors, huddled on a roof or wandering as if in a dream.

"Lady," they would call to me, "what has happened?"

"Have faith," I would reply. "Help is on its way."

I would bless them and they would thank me and I would go away choked with futility.

After some time I reached the site of the City. From a distance I could still see the outline of the Circular Seas and of the buildings, and hope soared. But it was a tomb, a relic, a mere bloated corpse.

I alighted on the roof of a gazebo next to the Tree of Knowledge, the place where infant Astarte had confided to my infant self of her sacrilegious love for Captain Attis.

I sat for a number of hours, twiddling an olive spring in my fingers. I had no more ideas. There was no other destination.

Then as the whispering wind changed direction,

I heard ancient voices chanting oration,

And raising my eyes spied the Temple Poseidon.

Maybe it was all a fever dream, but I seem to remember entering through the portico and there, seated in a circle, where the ten twin sons of the Lord of the Sea - Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, Azaes and Diaprepes, Eumelus and Atlas. They were chanting but seemed merely living dead, their eyes sunken, their flesh hanging. They begged Poseidon for mercy, but it was little more convincing than a child quoting by rote, slurred words devoid of sentience.

I took the metalled gauntlet of Atlas, sitting shrunken in his armour like the brain of a mummy.

"My Lord," I whispered. "My holy and most beloved Lord. This place is not safe, not fit. You will die or starve or fall prey to a contagion."

His eyes looked at me but did not see me. There was no recognition of me either as a colleague or a relative.

"Father," I cried. "They used to say that you could support the very earth on your shoulders. Come away with me, your secret but most devoted of daughters."

He blinked slowly, like a sleepy brown bear.

At length - I have no idea of the real time period - I seem to recall that the earth began to shake once again and the temple to fall down. In modern terms ... the magma dome under the city, remnant of the triple volcano upon which the City had been founded, emptied of molten rock, collapsed in upon itself. It was as if the mere act of me landing upon it had been the final straw.

I have a vision of myself desperately hoisting Atlas into the air, hanging into that cold, painful, metal hand, flapping awkwardly like an injured bird.

The waters flowed in as the City sank, and the lava beneath the waves set the liquid a-steaming. I could hold on for only a moment.

"Goodbye, my child," said Atlas.

He fell away from me forever, boiled alive like a lobster in its shell.

Altas and the City of Atlanta were gone.

The Ark

Finally, one evening, as I was riding the thermals above the deluge, I saw a giant boat beached on a newly exposed sandbank at the foot of Mount Aðrý.

I alighted, exhausted, and was handed down to the deck by Admiral Noe. It was one of the rescue flotilla, packed with people and livestock.

"Well met, Admiral," I said, handing him the sprig of olive. "As you can see, the waters have begun to subside somewhat."

"What of the City, Your Highness?"

"It is lost," I said, and there was much lamenting.

"What of my sister, the Royal Astarte, and the Seven Daughters of Atlas?"

Noe told me of the moment that the tidal wave had approached, and of how he had desperately hauled the bow around to meet it. The ship had almost floundered, flipped bow to stern, and when the crew had recovered their senses, they saw that the rest of fleet had been scattered to the four winds.

"After a short sleep I will go and find them," I said wearily.

Noe drew me to one side.

"Your Highness?"

"Yes Admiral?"

"Why has this happened to us?"

"If you want a scientific explanation," I said, "then the two plates of the earth - one under the Territory of the North and the other under the Territory of the South - ground against each other, and we were caught in the grinder. Almost as if the stones themselves reflected the tensions above them."

Tears came to my eyes, and my subjects, seeing them, joined me. I recalled the words of my daughter.

"Alternatively it is possible that my grandfather, Poseidon, the Lord of the Sea, Shaker of the Earth, growing dissatisfied with his own creation and seeing man's wickedness which had become abundant in the earth, was saddened, and decided to send a great deluge to destroy proud Atlantis ..."

To end this chapter, I leave you with the description of the aftermath from Plato's Critias.

"The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left."

---

Chapter Eleven: Gone Where The Goblins Go (1993)

It was a lovely sunny afternoon at the Mesa Parajito and we'd just had a birthday bull show for the kids in my private arena. New Mexico law prevented us from actually killing the heifers, but we tended to stick to the Basque style anyway, and the rodeo clowns were armed with little more than balls on sticks and sucker tipped arrows. We had at least one expert tumbler, who could roll along the back of a charging bullock, and a clown picador with a cardboard horse's body attacked to his waist.

Nas and Das – it was their seventh birthday – screamed and laughed and jumped up and down. Aþkðn and I looked at their ecstatic little faces as they turned to us for a reaction or to demonstrate what fun they were having, and smiled ourselves.

"You're not planning to do that stupid stunt with the bull again this year?" she said as she squeezed my hand, although she knew the answer – she asked it every year.

"It's my duty," I replied. "If the gods judge me unworthy I'll be gored."

"Aren't you getting a bit old?"

"I'm extremely well preserved, darling. I've had the best age retardants money could buy."

"Being stuck in a cage in the desert?"

I kissed her.

"Could you at least wear some clothes?" said Aþkðn.

"I will be wearing clothes."

"But ... the bare breasts. In front of the boys."

"They've seen their Mama Jackie's breasts before. Besides this is a religious thing to me."

Aþkðn shrugged, her duty as a concerned spouse fulfilled.

I'd had a skirt in the Cretan style made for me, with a diagonal hem.

"Bring out El Toro," I commanded, stepping out of my wrap.

"Hee hee hee," said Das and Nas. "Mama Jackie's gonna dance with the bull. Mama Ash – watch, watch!"

In fact, the only thing that faintly embarrassed me wasn't my naked breasts, which were in fine shape, but the openings in my back. I bared them each year anyway as a good medicine for the soul, and to remind me who I was.

I and El Toro were old friends. He was an honourable beast – I knew he'd give it his best shot to impale me. I waved two red silk ribbons to annoy him and did a stylised dance, turning my back on him. I could hear him snorting and pawing, and feel the ground rumbling as he charged.

I dropped the ribbons at precisely the correct moment – years of practice – and somersaulted backwards. My hands closed on the tip of his horns, and my feet slapped onto his broad warm back. He bucked like a pony and shook his head from side to side like an angry old man. I waited for him to realise that he couldn't dislodge me and to become confused. Then, for a moment, he'd stand still. The moment came and so I did the classic handstand, a horn tip grasped in each hand, and held the pose for a second or two.

"Praise be to you, Lords of the Sea and the Sun," I murmured.

I back flipped away from El Toro and then over and over across the sand, hands over feet and feet over hands, until my feet contacted a box that had been strategically placed for the purpose, and vaulted over the wooden wall of the area and into my chair.

"Ole!" I said and there was a round of applause. As I regally acknowledged the salutations I privately thanked the stars for my lightweight bird bones.

The kids were scampering round my knees, yelling and pulling, and Aþkðn - despite muttering "Stupid old woman" - was glowing with excitement and admiration.

"Happy Birthday my darlings," I said, gathering up Das and Nas, "and may we all have a blessÈd and healthy year."

"You give them their present now," said Aþkðn.

We'd bought two tiny ponies for them. I cannot describe the hysteria that ensued.

Life was very good.

* * * * *

Some people have a nickname for thee o'clock in the morning. The dark before the dawn. The witching hour.

I stood on the porch of the ranch house looking up at the stars. I could see the baleful spot of Mars near the horizon and the bright sparkle of the Pleiades. I wondered if there really had even been a girl called Maia of the Serene Countenance, or if somehow my mind had created a false memory. Maybe when I had woken up in the desert at Jornada del Muerto I had merely recovered consciousness after banging my head. Had I really been a Queen of Atlantis, or was I like one of those people who under hypnosis discovered that they had been Cleopatra in a previous life?

I had spent the previous hours in my study, brewing coffee on my wood stove, and poring over reports from around the globe

The site of the Golden Pyramid of Aea had turned out to be a strangely pyramid-shaped hill on the shore of the Black Sea. At first glance it merely seemed like a shoulder of the Caucasus Mountains where they came down to the shore at a peninsula called Mys Chaertia, but the results from cautious ultrasound scans and preliminary boreholes had revealed that the oddly shaped hill was not part of the mountain range. Remarkably, someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to shift many tons of earth and rocks so that the original gap between the mountain range and the pyramid had been filled in. The original tidal channel between the island and the coast had been disguised by a man-made construction on the colossal scale of the Roman siege ramp at Masada.

Natla Mining - having paid all the local "taxes" and taken on the relatives of local Georgian bigwigs as "emeritus management" and pulled the necessary strings with either Zviad Gamsakhurdia or Eduard Shevardnadze, whichever was in power – had began to sink mineshafts all around Mys Chaertia. Fortunately there were manganese and copper seams, so we had a ready made justification. However at the same time my mining engineers were quietly clearing away the artificial landfills.

I was nervous. Only the year before, over 230 miners had been killed in our mines at Zonguldak – "Turkey's worst mining disaster" – in a mysterious accident, and only thirteen days later an earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter scale had killed over 690 in the east of the country. Something was stirring, and I wasn't convinced that it was nothing to do with us.

If the EM pulse of 1986 hadn't already convinced me we'd found the Golden Pyramid of Aea, then the discovery in the deepest shafts next to the hill of pools filled with rare, runny, copper-tainted mud lava did. I instructed that any lava shafts should be sealed and than digging anywhere near the main body of the buried pyramid was forbidden.

"Something intelligent is in there," I said to the planet Mars. "They must be disarmed before they declare a war born out of time against the wrong enemy." I wondered what form the intelligence would take. Had the pyramid itself been upgraded from semi-sentient to sentient, or was there a separate entity organising the defence?

I had to know, but there was an overwhelming problem.

"It is a dangerous place," Aþkðn had said. "If a monster should come out of the mountain, then what would you do?" And she had taken me by the hand and forbidden me to return. I'd have liked to pay no attention to her words. "After all," I said to myself, "girls like me aren't afraid of monsters." But nonetheless I let her take me home to Mesa Parajito and lock the gate behind us.

I expect you think it ridiculous that a Queen of Atlantis could be swayed by a mere lover, and not even one of Royal Blood at that, but not only was I anxious about what my meddling might unleash, but there was still an open wound in my heart concerning Chloe of the Golden Hair. Maybe, I thought, if I had stayed at home with Chloe and thought less of duty I'd have been a better parent? I prayed to the Lords of the Sea and of the Sky that I would never find myself executing one of my own offspring again.

I was sitting in my office browsing the latest news from Reuters when Aþkðn found me. She put her arms around me.

"You should sleep," she said.

"I couldn't, so I'm catching up with world affairs."

"Anything good?"

"Well … let's see. There's been a new expedition to the deepest caves in the world."

"Where's that?"

"Georgia."

Aþkðn sighed. "I'm thinking that this isn't Georgia, U.S.A?"

"No," I said humbly.

"And what else is happening in Georgia?"

"Um … well there's a civil war."

"I remember. You are arming the Abkhazian terrorists in exchange for them keeping Guadauta Airbase open."

I frowned. "I am simply protecting the interests of Natla Mining by making contributions to the local economy."

Aþkðn gave me a sardonic kiss. "I'm not the press, Jackie," she said.

"It's is right next to the Pyramid," I protested. "Lord knows what will happen when they start driving tanks around it and letting off explosives. One or two well placed mortar strikes …"

"But it isn't your problem."

"Actually …"

"I know," said Aþkðn, placing a soothing hand on my shoulder. "I'll get you some cinnamon milk and then you're coming to bed."

* * * * *

Of course it was only a matter of time, and Aþkðn accidently gave me an opportunity. Aþkðn was a Commagene from a small town in Southern Turkey called Samsat, not far from Adıyaman and, ironically for me, Mount Nimrod. It was whilst she was abroad with me that her hometown had disappeared beneath the new lake formed by the Ataturk Dam, and the inhabitants had been moved to a "new" Samsat specially built nearby. Aþkðn had a whim to visit the area, and to show the lake to Das and Nas.

"Maybe we could get permission to dive," she said, "and we could locate the ruins of my old house."

"I'm not sure that I can afford the time off, my dear," I said.

"What have you got to do that is more important?"

"I'm running a multinational business!"

"Pah. You tell them what to do and they do it."

"Please, Mama Jackie," shouted the children, jumping on top of me.

"We want to go on holiday," said Nas.

"To the sea side," said Das.

"Mama Ash isn't suggesting the seaside."

"And have ice-creams."

"And go on boats."

"I guess that might be possible. Do they have ice-creams and boats on the Ataturk Reservoir, Mama Ash?"

"Stop exciting the children. It's nearly time for their bath," said Aþkðn.

* * * * *

My wife was cunning.

I found myself in the second half of September in one of the Presidential Suites of the Hotel Metropole in charge of Nas and Das.

We'd endured a transatlantic flight, in first class natch, but endured was the word.

Das slept well, his lucky toy duck pressed to his face, with nothing more than the odd quack or mutter. The duck was a bizarre leftover from when he was little; I'd have to wean him from it eventually, but for now it served as his security blanket. He reminded me of the man in Brideshead Revisited obsessed with a teddy bear.

In contrast Nas - my other little prince - was as hyperactive as a bee in a burning beehive.

Still, they'd sent a lovely old Zil limousine to pick us up at the airport, and the boys had pressed their noses excitedly again the window as the sights of Moscow in summertime presently themselves.

How come, I hear you ask?

I'd suggested, rather cunningly I thought, that I could join my family in Turkey after a business trip to Moscow to meet an old friend of mine in the government. If I had time for a quick detour to Georgia en route to take a peek at how things were going at the Golden Pyramid of Aea, I said to myself, so be it.

As I say, Aþkðn was cunning and saw right through me.

"Takes the boys to Moscow with you," she'd instructed. "It will be cultural. I want time alone in my hometown."

I could have argued but A˛kn was looking a little gimlet-eyed and the boys were screaming about going on a trip with Mama Jackie … and so here we were.

"Is this Turkey?" enquired Nas.

"No, my pet," I said. "This is Moscow, capital city of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, stretching from Finland to China."

"I want a Coke," said Das, squeezing his duck and holding its beak up to the window in a slightly affected fashion.

"Do they have Coke?" I said to the Russian valet.

"But of course, Mademoiselle."

"Do they have McDonalds?" said Nas, with a cheeky hands-on-hips stance.

"We have the biggest McDonalds in the world, young sir," said the valet.

"Really?" I said. "Where's that then?"

"Pushkinskaya ploshchad, Mademoiselle."

I picked up the phone and dialled reception for an outside line. "Get me Colonel Viacheslav Obolenski," I said. "He can come and have a Big Mac with us."

Although said McDonald's Restaurant had been open a couple of years – apparently it had taken over a decade of negotiation to get permission to open it – there were still queues. Everybody under thirty who was anybody thought it was the place to be.

Needless to say when our government Zil and Colonel Obolenski's government Zil drew up in front, all thoughts of Soviet egalitarianism went by the board. Communism was a good idea for the peasants – it made them feel more modern being Soviet serfs instead of medieval serfs - but it was hardly appropriate for the couriers of the new Tsar.

The Canadian manager came out to greet us.

"Ms. Jacqueline Natla," he gushed, taking my hand in a clammy handshake. "Gosh – what an honour."

The queue of Muscovites applauded as if I was a minor film starlet, and I and Colonel Obolenski and the kids swept regally into Roy Kroc's palace of Americana.

"Who are those crew cut individuals in Hawaiian shirts dotted about the place?" I said as we perused the menu under the watchful gaze of a Ham Burglar mural.

"My private bodyguards," said the Colonel. He clicked his fingers and one of the gaily-attired thugs came over. "Meet Sergeant Conway."

"Pleased to meet you, Ma'am," said the man, with a broad Texan twang.

"You're from the States," I observed. "Ex Army?"

"Ex Corps, Ma'am," he said, expressionlessly.

I had to restrain Nas, who was showing every sign of wanting to run up and head-butt Sergeant Conway in the groin.

"Give her your card, Larson," said Colonel Obolensky.

I tried to read it as Das - who had found the English part of the menu - was tugging at my sleeve, asking me what a "cabbage pie" was and whether it was in the Happy Meal.

"Mauro Nero Security," said the card.

What an odd name, I remember thinking. "Mauro nero" – Greek, meaning "black water".

"You should not travel without security," said the Colonel. "Your children could be in danger. Kidnappers. Terrorists."

"Nobody would dare touch my kids," I said. "I'd have them skinned alive." But I tucked the card in my purse anyway.

As far as Nas and Das were concerned McDonalds was the highlight of Moscow, although we tried the circus, the puppet show, the fair and the swimming pool.

Still they were in a high good humour and slept when they were supposed to sleep, whilst their Mama Jackie rather enjoyed being a mummy (in between negotiating mining and new technology rights, buying weapons and getting the people back home to look into the possibility of hiring Mauro Nero Security to guard the site surrounding the Golden Pyramid).

This latter had been prompted because Colonel Obolensky had taken me aside and told me in no uncertain terms that I was to cease arming the Abkhazian separatists simply to defend my Black Sea mines. He pointed out that I was lucky to be being treated as an honoured guest and not dragged off to prison as a traitor. If anybody was going arm the Abkhazians against Georgia it was Moscow, not Natla Mining.

"Do not mess with the giant bear," he'd said, with a hint of humour.

And so, after a riotous couple of days, it was time to leave and join Aþkðn. There was a direct Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Adıyaman, and we all collapsed in a semi-comatose state, Nas sitting in his very own seat like a small king (he wouldn't share), and Das curled up under a blanket on my lap.

"I love you, Mama," said Das, half asleep, "because you look after us and we love Mama Ash and Mama Ash loves us and we have a nice house and nice ponies and we go on adventures and have sweets and have nice food and drink yummy Pepsi and have presents on our birthdays and you always look after us."

"I love you too, baby. And I'll always look after you."

* * * * *

I swear I had no hand in what happened next. Maybe some Russian deity overheard my bragging and decided to teach me a lesson for my hubris. As a series of events, I find it scarcely believable even as I sit here dictating it.

First we knew we had been told to strap ourselves into our seats and warned that we were approaching some stormy weather. Was it my imagination, I wondered, but did the plane sound different?

I bribed a stewardess with American dollars – we had engine trouble, but keep it to yourself, she said. She looked very young and pale and I believed her.

Then an announcement – we were being forced to make an unscheduled stop.

"We will be putting down at the nearest airport; Sukhumi in Georgia," said the pilot in an expressionless Russian monotone and at this, business class practically erupted into a flood of anxiety.

"What's happening?" said Nas, bright-eyed and unperturbed.

"We are going to take longer to get there," I said.

I left out the bit about us setting down in the middle of a civil war. Besides, I thought, we were Americans. It was nothing to do with us.

As it happened the landing was utterly without incident and the airport was swarming with Georgian military. We were led to the terminal building, which although slightly battered and deserted, was secure.

A tiny old lady tottered out to the Aeroflot passengers with a samovar on a trolley, and I introduced the twins to the concept of sweet black tea.

"This is what they drink instead of Coke in Mama Ash's home, " I explained.

Eventually our pilot came up and made an announcement.

"The Army have found us a Tupolev civilian airliner belonging to Transair Georgia," he said. "We will have you aboard and out of here as soon as possible."

There was cheering. It was 23rd September 1993; you can look it up for yourselves in the newspaper archives.

As we were straggling across the tarmac to our new plane – our luggage was being pulled alongside us on a farm cart by an ancient tractor – there was a whistling sound from above us.

I recognized it – I'd sold enough of the things. It was the sound of a mortar attack. I pulled the children to the ground as the Tupolev airliner in front of us took a direct hit and exploded into a cloud of flame and shrapnel. The Abkhazian rebels – my Abkhazian rebels – were attacking.

Immediately the airfield had become a battlefield. A Soviet tank rumbled into action and suddenly there was the sound of rifle and sub-machine gun fire from all around us.

"Come on children," I said, getting to my feet, and grabbing our cases from the trailer. "Put on your rucksacks. We're leaving." I carefully put the plastic tube containing my folded wings across my back, wondering if it resembled any sort of weapon and hoping sincerely that it did not.

"Where are we going?" said Nas, unruffled by the gunfire. Das was sucking his knuckles, his eyes wide so preoccupied by the noise and activity that Nas had to help him with his rucksack straps.

"To find a car," I said. "I'm sick of flying. We'll drive."

"Me too," said Nas. "I'm sicking of flying!"

"Mmm mmm," said Das, squeaking his toy in agreement. "Mm mmm mm mmm-mm!"

Camp as Christmas, I thought, smiling fondly at him despite myself.

I stood up cautiously. There were various vehicles parked on the tarmac but one in particular caught my eye.

"Good Lord," I said. "What on earth is that doing there? It's just what we need."

Sneaking away from the distracted passengers and soldiers at a crouching run, I led the children to a large white vehicle. It was a Land Rover Defender, painted with the livery and lettering of the United Nations.

The doors were unlocked and the keys in the ignition, as if someone had left it for us. I bundled the kids inside, bidding them to lie down in the back, and started the engine cautiously.

I could see tracer fire and the trail of RPG's all around us in the middle distance. My first choice – drive south along the coast to Turkey - was impracticable. Not only was a lot of terra incognito as far as I was concerned, but it involved crossing the "front line" between Abkhazia and Georgia.

I drove the Defender through a hole in the runway fence and along the link road to the main coast road. When we got there, a strange sight greeted us – tailgate traffic, made up of a collection of different Soviet cars mixed with horses and farm vehicles. A long line of what I could only suppose was refugees appeared to be fleeing southeast from Sukhumi.

"Children," I announced, "the traffic is terrible, so we're going in the opposite direction. We're going to try and get to Mummy's mines at Mys Chaertia."

"Hurrah!" said the twins.

As we headed northwest along the E97, the refugees presented a sorry sight.

"Are they going on holiday?" asked Nas.

"Sort of."

"Why has that family got their fridge on their cart?"

"Maybe they're going on a picnic."

"But it wouldn't work without a plug."

"Silly them," I said, neutrally.

Das was amusing himself by waving at the various doleful little children that we drove past.

"Be careful, Das my darling," I said, looking at him in the rear view mirror. "Don't wave at too many strangers."

"But they're only kids."

"We don't know their parents. And we don't want to be stopped by the police."

"Have we done something wrong?" asked Nas, hopefully.

"I don't know, my little prince. This is abroad. Just keep down and stop sticking your head out of the window."

"But I like sticking my head out of the window."

"I know, darling, but it might get banged on something. Just be patient until we are out of this traffic."

"Are we nearly there yet?" said Das some time later, pecking my ear with the beak of his duck.

I brought the car to a halt.

Ahead of us lay the city of Sukhumi. Much of it was smouldering. Helicopters were buzzing around the tower blocks, and a Soviet gun boat was shelling the waterfront from the bay.

"Lords of the Sea and of the Sky," I murmured under my breath, somewhat aghast. "I beg you to intercede and protect us in our hour of need."

At that moment a Georgian man, his face streaked with tears and soot, banged on the driver's window.

"Go!" he croaked in English. "It is not safe. There is fighting in the streets."

I opened the window a crack.

"Where can we go?" I asked. "I have my children here."

"We all have our children here," he said. "If the damned Russians hadn't armed the terrorists we'd all be at the beach eating ice-cream."

No disrespect, I thought wryly, but your children are hardly potential Royal Princes of Atlantis. But I sympathised with him. One day no doubt, I said to myself, he'd be one of my subjects, and it would my Royal duty to care for and protect all of my subjects. However insignificant.

I wound down the window and offered him a drink from my water bottle.

At the sound of the "ice-cream" word the twins started bouncing up and down. I ordered them to be quiet. Nas smirked, but Das pouted and began to look tearful.

"I'm sorry," I said to the Georgian. "We're as swept up in this as you are."

"But you are U.N."

"Um … yes. But I'm off duty."

The man snorted derisively.

"So … do you have any suggestions?"

He shrugged. "You can't go through Sukhumi and you've already come from the south. The only other way is inland over the mountains."

* * * * *

If you are going to play hide and seek in the Caucasus then you can do worse than use a Land Rover Defender. I've looked at the map recently, trying to work out which route we went exactly, but nothing much rings a bell. All the signs were in Cyrillic, the villages were the same as each other and one river valley looks like another. I'm pretty sure we approached the holiday resort of Lake Ritsa at one point – the word "Рица" seems familiar to me – and I kind of have a feeling that we were in the gorge of the River Bzyb for a while. The mountain scenery was lovely and if it hadn't been for the fact that we were like the Family Von Trapp trying to escape from the Nazis, it would have been divine. Every vehicle or settlement or plume of smoke, or the slightest sound of rifle fire, made my stomach tie itself into knots.

Only once did I dare stop to buy a couple of loaves of bread and a bottle of wine from an old woman who patted the UN lettering on the side of the Defender and cackled happily.

"Is she a looney?" said Nas, who was fascinated.

"Don't be rude about the common people," I replied.

I also risked raiding an orchard of beautiful apples, expecting to receive a bullet to the head at any second. I relaxed when I found the body of what I assumed had been the owner. He had been attacked with some kind of farming implement. I offered a prayer of thanks to him and covered his face, and hurried back to the car before Nas and Das discovered him.

The dashboard of the Defender had attached to it a little floating compass held in a gimbal, a little compass that probably saved our lives. I figured that if we headed north, then west and finally south as best we could, we'd not only skirt the fighting around Sukhuki but we'd also probably find a minor road or track that would lead us back to the coast and to the environs of Gagra.

We must have been only a few miles or maybe less from safety when it began to get dark. I was using all of the off-road terrain ability of the Defender to negotiate what was little better than a deer track when we came across a mesh gateway.

"Gosh," I said quietly, as the headlights lit up a sign that read in faded non-Cyrillic letters "Morea Mine".

"What?" murmured Nas, who was sleepy from being fed apple sandwiches and diluted wine.

"Nothing, baby. Go back to sleep."

I'd recognised the name of a Georgian-Turkish firm – the Tamsaş Mining Company. I knew that they still had huge opencast coal mines far to the east of us at Tkvarcheli, but I had no idea they ever show any interest so close to the coast.

The gate was off its hinges, there were no lights and the sign was practically illegible from rust. I deduced that whenever Tamsaş had been here, they had left long ago.

"I think we have a place to stop for the night," I said.

There were no buildings as such, but rather a long, overgrown scar in the earth that led deeper and deeper until eventually it became a cave entrance, an excavated seam at the base of a chalk cliff face set in the side of a quarry. The road disappeared underground, and there were remains of trolley tracks and the ancient tread-prints of giant tyres.

I drove the Defender inside just far enough so that the entrance was small semicircle behind us. The ceiling was held up by a combination of stout wood and metal and concrete.

We had found our very own bunker.

I locked the door, dowsed the lights and curled up with the boys in the back of the car.

* * * * *

The tap of metal on window glass, especially at night, is a terrifying sound. Try it in your own car. Even when you yourself are doing it, the sound has an un-nerving, sharp, ear-piercing timbre. Maybe we are programmed to expect glass to shatter. It seems indecent to tap anything as hard as metal against it.

I sat bolt upright, with Das still in my arms.

I torch shone in upon us and again was that insistent tapping, made, I could see, by the end of a rifle.

"Nas - look after Das," I said, "and keep down, whatever you hear. Mummy will talk to these men and I want you two to be a quiet as lambkins."

I clambered into the front seat, placing my feet on the pedals and checking that the ignition keys were still in place.

"Hello?" I said to the unseen man behind the torch beam.

A hand tried to open the passenger door but it was locked from the inside.

A voice said something in Russian and there was that tapping on the glass again. The owner of the torch turned it somewhat so that I could see his face and those of his companions. They were dressed like soldiers but they looked like rapists.

"Do you speak English?"

A hand tried to reach in the window but I slapped at it imperiously. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror showed me that the tunnel entrance was blocked by other vehicles.

"Do you own this mine?" I started to say, but in mid-sentence started the engine.

There was a yell, and a rifle butt hammered on the door, but I pressed the accelerator.

We obviously caught them by surprise; they could hardly have expecting that I would try to choose to drive deeper into the mine.

"Hang on, my princelings," I said over my shoulder. "There's no need to cry. Just hang on and stay down. We're going for a ride."

I heard the crack of rifles and the thud of bullets into the metal bodywork, but it was ineffectual. All they had to aim at was our retreating silhouette as outlined by our headlights.

I squinted at the mine road sloping ahead of us; it continued sedately downwards at a slight angle, more or less straight. Once it had conducted trolleys full of coal to the surface, possibly pulled by pit ponies. Now it was just what we needed.

I dared not slow down; even assuming that they didn't drive after us, they may have been jogging after us on foot, and I had no idea how far we'd have to go before we'd have to abandon the Defender and start running ourselves.

Then, as the road continued, the left wall dropped away, and a gully, or cutting - filled with fast flowing water - begin to run alongside us, a foot or two lower than the road surface. I could smell the water and feel the drop in temperature, and a thin spray or cloud of water vapour made it necessary for me to turn the windscreen wipers on.

"It's a river," said Nas, pressing his nose and his brother to the window.

"Ooh," said Das.

I kept glancing in the rear view mirror - I couldn't see any sign of pursuit - and it was while I was doing that that I drove the Defender straight into some decayed wooden buffers. The car bounced sideways, skidded on the edge of the road suddenly I found myself driving through water, with sprays arching to each side and splashing off the walls like a ride at a funfair.

"Tee hee hee," said Das, and quacked his duck.

I applied the brakes, but either the cutting bed was too slippery or the current was too powerful, for we carried on a roughly the same speed. The road we had been on disappeared, and we were left speeding down a water-filled tunnel. Instead of an inflatable tire or a boat sculpted like a swan, we had a very heavy Land Rover.

"Whee!" said Nas.

"This is ridiculous," I said, taking my hands off the steering wheel in exasperation. "Children - this is the last time we fly Aeroflot."

Then, as a grand finale, we sped over an underground waterfall and fell through a giant hole in the floor.

* * * * *

I think I must have bumped my head, because the next I thing knew Nas was shaking me and Das was pressing his nose against mine.

"What happened?" I said, pressing a hand to my forehead.

"We-ell," said Nas, "we went over a waterfall, and then we were underwater, so we drove along the bottom and then the car came out of the water and up onto this beach and then we stopped."

"We drove underwater?"

Das nodded solemnly.

"Well … I suppose that's possible." Maybe my foot had been jammed on the accelerator. Maybe the Land Rover had one of those exhaust pipes that stuck up above the roof. "Are you both OK?"

"We're not even wet," said Nas. A watertight Land Rover seemed a bit unlikely but he was right – we weren't wet and there was no water inside the car.

Das touched my forehead anxiously.

"I'm fine, little prince."

"We'll kiss it better," he said, and accidentally poked me in the eye with his toy.

As my vision cleared I got my first chance to look out of the windscreen, and at the sight, the bottom of my stomach dropped out. Despite the kids, I could not but help put my hand to my mouth and I felt that coldness on my skin that told me that my body was flooding with epinephrine.

The Land Rover was park on a crumbly beach in a bay off the main stream of the underground river. Around us was a large underground cavern, obvious carved out of the soft karst rock over the millennium. However all that was good – a bit awkward to escape from – but all good.

What wasn't good was what had also been exposed at the far end of the cave, glistening with a familiar infrared luminescence.

I took a deep breathe. "O.K. children," I think this is a good place for a pit stop."

"Can we play by the pond?"

"If you put your gumboots and promise not to go into the river or to wander away from the car."

"What are you going to do Mummy?"

I reached into the back.

"Mama Jackie's going to put her wings on ..."

Das and Nas started jumping up and down and screaming with excitement but I shushed them sternly.

"… I going to put my wings on and have a look around for a telephone or an elevator."

The irony was that perhaps within a hundred yards, there was the equivalent of a telephone or an elevator, only made in Atlantis. The thing that I'd seen that had caused my heart to falter, was a giant arch, and beyond that a corridor. The arch was a mixture of cusped and ogee elements topped by a trapezium and decorated around the rim with abstracts designs in gold of stylised scarabs and palm trees and other Atlantean symbols. The corridor had a transparent floor, patterned with veins and splotches of red. We were at the edge of the underground complex whose centre was beneath the Golden Pyramid of Aea.

* * * * *

I made a thorough inventory. The Defender had a toolbox, and at a pinch I could dismantle the roof rack and the small ladders attached to it to make … something. A weapon? A cradle? I wasn't sure. There were certainly enough tyres on the vehicle to manufacture a raft - if that seemed like a good idea. At the front of the Land Rover was a large winch, with a length of cable culminating in a clip-hook. I unreeled the cable using the built-in motor; to my surprise there was about 100 foot of metallic cable which, according to a manual in the dashboard, was capable of bearing a load of about 9000 pounds. I found a small hand axe in the back, as well as stand for a theodolite or a camera which had three extendible spikes legs; I dismantled the latter. After examining the bar grids over the front head lights for a while, I unscrewed them and strapped cut-off seatbelts across their inside curve. Then I called the boys over.

"Now then," I said. "It's time to play soldiers. I don't know if those gross men are still following us or whether there are any naughty dogs in these caves, but we are going to be prepared."

I handed them a headlight grid each and showed them how to hold them. "These are your shields," I said. "If anybody throws anything at you, you can hold them up to stop it."

They accepted the shields and practiced waving them about.

"Nas, you're the axeman of the unit," I said handing him the small wood chopper. "Be careful not to hit the wrong things, especially your brother."

"Das, you're the spear chucker. These are your three spears, so you get three goes each time." I gave him the pointed legs of the theodolite stand, fully extended. "If anything you don't like comes along, give it a good poking."
They looked excited as they fingered their new weapons - if a tad nervous - and I gave them my warmest of smiles. I'd been a commander long before the modern world had been born.

"Here's a torch each so you can signal each other, or dazzle your enemies, or see in dark places. If you can't fight, run and hide. Hide in the car or on the car. Hide behind rocks. If you're desperate, look over there. You can see some stone stairs which go up over the archway. You can run up there, but only when you've run out of other ideas."

"Can we throw rocks?"

"Yes, but not at each other."

"Can we swim in the water?"

"It's a bit cold."

"Can we run down that tunnel?" asked Nas, pointing at the Atlantean archway.

"Stay away from there if you can," I said, keeping my voice level and my expression bright. "Try not to step on anything, or touch anything, that isn't the cave floor or the cave walls. Stick to the rocks."

They nodded vigorously.

"And now I bestow upon you as your Queen new titles to go with your new jobs as soldiers in my army. You are Captain Nas and you are Captain Das. Now I, your commanding officer, will don my wings and we shall see what we shall see."

* * * * *

I was practically doubled up with anxiety as I started to explore. I recalled the warning of the Golden Statue on Cyprus. I recalled the mayhem when I had attempted to probe the Golden Pyramid with ULF sound waves. I was entering the lair of a wolf unarmed and unprepared.

Try and see it from my point of view.

My sons and I were the last of the Royal Bloodline of Atlantis, and if we died, the line was extinct. The remains of Atlantis would have exterminated the last of Atlantis, and I didn't appreciate the dark humour of it. I couldn't shake the feeling that once again my hubris had brought us all to the brink of destruction.

"We have to survive this," I said fiercely to myself, "for the good of the world. Bind up your breast and put on your war face, girl."

I flapped about the roof of the cavern, searching with a torch, but as I feared there were only two ways out. We'd either have to dive underwater into the dark river, or we'd have to go through the Atlantean corridor.

The stairs that led up and around the Atlantean archway appeared to of little actual use; either they were decorative, or whatever they had led to had disappeared when the underground river formed the cavern. However they did present a defensible refuge, and furthermore they gave me a small idea, a small backup plan. I gingerly parked the Defender a little closer and unreeled the metal cable, fashioning a lasso using the hook. Then I flew up and attached the lasso to a rock outcrop at the top of the stone stairs, above the entrance to the Atlantean corridor. Maybe we could climb up it, or climb down it, or use it to capture something. Maybe I could pull the roof down using the Land Rover. Who knew? Time would tell.

I stocked the little refuge with water bottle and blankets and matches and the last of the food. I took up the roof rack so that we could try and block off the stairs. I took up the Land Rover's little fire extinguisher, just in case.

"Right, Captains of Atlantis," I said to the boys. "You stay here guarding the car. I'll scout out the land ahead."

"Yes, sir, Mummy," they said, saluting.

I took off and steadied myself. I had a hunch about the Atlantean corridor and I was determined not to activate the Pyramid defences. Slowly, flapping whenever necessary, I hovered through the arch. I was determined not to touch the walls.

Below me I could see through the red veined floor to something hot and smouldering. I realised that we were so far below ground we were at the level of the lava-heated mud. It was a miracle that river and lava were separated by a rock dam, or else we'd have been steamed alive.

I was almost at the next arch – I could see three or four arches ahead of me and then an open space – when a scorching updraft through me off-course. I crashed into the wall and slip to the floor.

My breath stuck in my throat and I looked down at my hand splayed on the transparent surface. There was movement – tiny red veins were spreading away from where my skin had touched. With a shuddering underfoot, like a sclerotic heartbeat, the entire red pattern in the corridor shifted and pulsed. There was a thud from ahead of me and then the pattern pulsed again, with a flash of crimson.

Then there was the blast of a warning trumpet from deep in the complex and a bang, followed by the hurling down the corridor of fragments of what looked like green egg shell, skittering and spinning on the floor. My nostrils twitched at a sudden fetid breeze and I heard the sound of wet flesh and wet organs hitting the ground, like some monstrous birth. There was a grunting and a coughing and a spluttering, and then a distant roar. I could see a gargantuan shadow moving in the open space beyond the end of the corridor.

The floor trembled and the dust fell from the ceiling. There was first one heavy foot fall, followed by another, and then another, getting nearer.

I turned and ran for my life.

The giant thing that squeezed itself down the corridor after me didn't really fit there very well. I'm sue that if it had a clear run it would have bounded straight at us all and gobbled us straight up – snap, snap, snap.

To describe it – it had the shortened face of a panda, the neck of a horse, the arms and shoulders of a massive ape, the front claws of an anteater and short rear legs to support its massive bulk. I'm not sure what it started out as – it reminded of some sort of prehistoric megafauna such as a chalicothere or an indricothere – maybe a deformed Indricotherium transsouralicum. It certainly wasn't one of my designs, and either it had been hatched early, or else it had decayed after being in the womb for too long. At any rate it began to shed bits of itself almost immediately, scraping skin and muscle away against the wall of the corridor and stinking like genocide. At the loss of each gobbet of flesh it howled and bayed like a dog. I'll give it the name that Nas subsequently gave it – the Wolf.

I shot out of the end of the corridor, rolling like a bowling bowl.

"Boys! Hide!" I gasped, as one of those giant anteater claws slammed down beside me. Nas and Das ran behind the Land Rover and I flapped up to above the archway.

I saw first one claw and then the other hook itself over the lip of the door, and then the head appeared. The Wolf, maybe by design or maybe by decay, pivoted its head through one hundred and eighty degrees and looked up at me. It roared at me and a fine mist of pus sprayed onto me face and hands, leaving me staggering backwards.

"Raaaar!" came a voice from below. It was Nas, holding his makeshift shield and his little axe. "Hey, Wolf! Hey! Raaar!"

"Nas. Get back!" I spluttered.

The Wolf turned its head around to gaze blankly at the mini threat. It leaned downwards so that it was eye to eye with my son, and snuffled in what sounded like disbelief.

Nas took the best advantage of this unexpected opportunity and buried his axe in the face of the beast. He managed to split its decaying lower jaw, a jaw lined with massive rotten molars like that of an ancient cow, each bigger than Nas himself. The Wolf gasped, smashing the axe away and removing most of its face in the process.

With one swipe it knocked Nas through the air. He fell with a splash into the river.

I dove from the door lintel as if from an Olympic high board and swooping over the water, grabbed him under the arms just as he was about to be swallowed by the whirlpool. Flapping with all my might and deliberately not looking at the Wolf, I deposited us both above the archway.

As I shrank back against the wall, I realised that I had to stop it emerging from the tunnel or we'd all be doomed. With more desperation than skill I flung the towrope lasso over its head, and began to heave it over the rock output until it began to tighten.

Then the cable was jerked from my fingers and I heard an unexpected sound. I swear – even to this day – that I heard a thunderous chuckle from below us.

We peeked over the edge.

The Wolf had turned its head and was looking straight up at us. The removal of the lower part of its face had given it an almost comical look. It still had a tuft of greasy blonde hair shaped like a carrot top, and its snout-less skull was now almost round. When healthy no doubt this species possessed massive muscles going from the base of the skull to the shoulders, but most of these had fallen off, and it was pivoting its head clockwise and then anticlockwise like an obscene giant owl, gazing at use with its yellow pus-filled eyes and grunting like a man penetrating a pig.

Even through the pus I could see the look of triumph as it daintily unhooked the cable from around its neck and threw it away with massive contempt.

"He's clever," whispered Nas.

The Wolf pulled itself out of the corridor with a squelch and a pop and stood to its full height before sitting back on its haunches. It could easily reach us, it could smash the Land Rover to matchwood and it could beat us with one hand tied behind its back. There was a moment's silence broken only by the sound of me hyperventilating and the Wolf thoughtfully scraping its knuckles against the rock floor.

Suddenly I heard a flaring sound next to me and before I knew what was happening, Nas had lit the entire box of matches and flung it at the Wolf. The flaming ball landed on the Wolf's wet chest before being extinguished, and the Wolf leapt backwards in alarm.

Then at that moment - with a rather strangled battle squeak - Das ran from cover and flung his makeshift spear at the Wolf. The "spear" stuck in its rump, and Nas cheered.

Das ran up and stabbed his second spear into the Wolf's elbow, but before he could deploy the third an inconceivable thing happened.

The Wolf reared up and roared, whilst Das gazed upwards, aghast. Then, unhinging what was left if its jaw like a boa constrictor, the Wolf lunged downwards and with one gulp swallowed whole Das, his spear, his shield and his toy duck.

"No!!!" I screamed, suddenly in a fury.

I launched myself at the Wolf and landing one kick after another on its throat.

"Spit him out," I shouted. "I command you to spit him out! It is forbidden to eat the Royal Princes of Atlantis!"

The Wolf picked me up by one leg and dangled me upside down in front of its hideous face, a quizzical and amused expression behind its rotten eyeballs. Then it raised me high and was, no doubt, about to dash my brains out on the floor like a captured pigeon, when a well aimed stone hit it on the back of the head. It must have been a particularly effective shot – a David versus Goliath shot – for I heard the crack of bones.

The Wolf dropped me and clapped its claws to its skull. It appeared bemused

"Fly, Mummy!" I heard Nas calling. "Fly up here!"

I leapt and flew and landed beside him, but I collapsed in a flood of tears, wailing and covering my face with my wings like a red hood.

"My darling Das!"

"Mummy – shh!"

"Don't you shh me, you impertinent … squit! Your brother has been gobbled up!"

"Das is fine," said Nas, cheerfully. "If you'd just shh and listen."

I looked at him in disbelief for a moment

"Just listen!"

He made me lean over the archway lintel, ears straining. In the distance, from the direction of the bemused Wolf, who was looking at its stomach like a mother being kicked by an unborn baby, I heard a very faint but distinct "quack!"

"He always does that when you switch the light off at night," said Nas, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"Oh Lords of the Sea and the Sky," I whispered. "Please let him be alive. But how is this possible?"

"Das is brave," explained Nas, "And now we can help him. And I have a plan."

At that, the Wolf suddenly shrieked, and covered its stomach with its claws. I saw a faint glinting and then, to my astonishment, the tip of Das' third "spear" briefly appeared and then disappeared from the side of the monster. Das was alive inside the belly of the Wolf.

"Take this," said Nas, tossing me the fire extinguisher, " and fly about the head of the Wolf, distracting it. While you do that, I will run down and grab the end of the rope. Only take care that he doesn't catch you."

A great wave of pride swept over me and I blushed with hot emotion, tears of maternal love flooding into my eyes. These two boys – I thought – these last two Princes. They had the blood of warriors and of gods flowing in their veins.

I stood to attention, and saluted my son.

"Yes, Captain Nasatya of Atlantis." I said, gravely and formally. "I will obey your orders, and together we will fight even unto death to rescue your Royal Brother Dasra of the Territories of the West."

"Good," said Nas, with a wink and a clapping of his hands. "Off you go, Mama Jackie, and annoy the Wolf for me."

* * * * *

I flapped and bobbed and sprayed the extinguisher at the Wolf, almost touching its head with my wings but however much it snapped angrily at me, this side and that, I was too clever and it could do nothing about it.

In the background, I could see that Nas had run with the cable back up the stairs, and having refashioned the lasso from hook, and carefully letting it down and down and down from his high perch. The Wolf was so distracted by my antics and by the stabbing pains it was getting from inside, that Nas was able to manoeuvre the lasso so that it rested on the floor in a rough oblong, with the tail of the cable still looped over the sturdy rock outcrop above.

"Mummy, when I say, use the car to pull …," he started to shout.

The Wolf howled at him, furious and frightened, and flung one of its ape arms against the door lintel. There was a crash as its claws smashed at the rock and the floor fell from beneath Nas' feet. He fell into the mouth of the corridor in a shower of karst rubble.

I hammered the fire extinguisher at the base of the Wolf's skull – its head was beginning to look a bit semi-detached – and sprayed that last of the foam into its eyes.

Nas, entirely unaffected by his fall, brushed himself off and started to yell and wave his arms.

The Wolf lunged for him and in doing so stumbled into the noose. I pulled at the cable with all of my might so that it began to tight around the Wolf's back legs. The I glided back to the electric winch on the front of the Land Rover and it began to reel in, with all of its 9000 pounds of pull.

I got behind the wheel of the Defender and turned the ignition.

The Wolf, head deep inside the corridor - where no doubt it was trying to grab my son - gave a grunt of surprise as the cable tightened about its knees. It hooked its anteater claws under the wire, perhaps intending to snap the cable or to lift the lasso over its head, but only managed to wriggle the noose as far as its hips, like a large man attempting to squeeze into small jeans.

Furious, it turned its hideous owl face towards me, and began to drag itself along by its arms, grunting loudly.

It was the moment I'd been waiting for. I stamped on the accelerator and skidding the Land Rover in a tight U-turn just as a giant fist crashed down nearby, reversed at top speed down the Atlantean corridor.

The Wolf was torn across the rough cavern floor and was at last left hanging onto the doorframe, screaming with agony – almost pleading – until the cable finally ripped its rotten body into two halves.

I saw a small figure drop from its innards, and then one twin rush in to scoop the other to safety.

I pushed the remains of Wolf's legs and pelvis out of the corridor and was all ready to finish the Wolf off with a fatal collision when the boys got there first.

As the Wolf feebly covered its face and wailed, Nas and Das – using the small axe to sever and the spear to lever – decapitated it.

* * * * *

"You're not even wet," I said, gathering Das up in my arms.

"It was dry," said Das, matter-of -factly.

I reflected that maybe – like zombies – mummies may have functional teeth but they don't necessary have a functional stomach. The Wolf had been as empty as Pinnocchio's whale.

"Look," whispered Das, suddenly.

To my alarm, three figures were approaching us along the corridor. Two were Atlantean warrior beasts, whilst the third – as far as I could see in the shadows - was human.

I passed a very weary hand over my eyes and sighed. No more, please, I thought.

"Don't shoot!," called out Nas. "Mummy and Das and I have already caught the Wolf."

I shushed him and – positioning a twin at each side of me - rose to my fullest height and adopted my iciest and most regal expression, one hand clenched at my breast as if holding a sceptre and the other pointing to the sky, my scarlet wings held at an arrogantly imperial angle.

"Greetings," I declaimed in ancient Atlantean, raising my arms and making the ritual hand gestures. "My name is Natla of Atlantis, grand-daughter of the Lord of the Sea, original builder of the Golden Pyramid of Aea, Sister to the Royal Tihocan, to the Royal Qualopec and to the Royal Astarte, former ruler of the Territory of the West, mother to Chloe of the Achaeans, and mother to the two Royal Princes - the Royal Heirs to Atlantis that you see before you - the Princes Nasatya and Dasra. I order you to obey and make obeisance for I am returned, ready to return Atlantis to its rightful order in the order of things."

There was a moment's silence and then the three figures bowed down, getting down on their knees and pressing their foreheads to the floor.

I silently thanked the Lords of the Sea and of the Sky, for we were in no position to fight another battle.

The human got rather shakily back to its feet and approached us. It was very, very old, almost mummified, and so at first I did not recognise it.

"Welcome back, Your Magnificence," said a wry and croaky voice. "I kept myself hidden and preserved for all these centuries in the event you might return. What joy that my feelings of somnolent futility are replaced by those of terrified utility."

I could feel a mixture of awe, amusement and love struggling for control of my face.

"Mama Jackie," said Nas. "Who is the silly man?"

The human looked downwards at my little prince and chuckled with a sound like popcorn in a tub.

"Greetings your Royal Highness," it said in English. "I am so glad that being forced to endure hours of modern televisual entertainment has allowed me to master your tongue sufficiently to hear you call me silly. My name is Magnesian, your Royal Mother's ancient and no doubt foolish servant."

I stepped forward and gingerly embraced him.

And so ends this particular chapter of my life.

---

Chapter Twelve: Those Lips Conspire In Treachery

You've all seen the movie.

First Qualopec says something like "We condemn you, Natla of Atlantis, for your crimes and for the flagrant misuse of your powers. We condemn you for breaking the free bond of consent that our people are ruled and secured under, and for invading Tihocan and myself with our own army. Our warriors were emptied from the pyramid so that you could use the pyramid - its powers of creation - for your own mindless destruction."

Then Tihocan says something like "You used the sacramental place as a source for your individual pleasure, as some sort of freak factory. A slaughter heap now. We're going to lock you in limbo. Make your veins, heart, feet, and that diseased brain stick solid with frozen blood. Greet your eternal rest, Natla."

And then they freeze me.

How, I hear you ask, could things have come to such a pass? How could such a loving Royal Family turned against one of its own in such a fashion? Of course there is nobody left to gainsay me, and so I may be an unreliable narrator, but what follows is my version of events. Judge it as you will.

For a coup d'etat to occur there has to be a vacuum of power. The City and the Ten Kings had disappeared beneath the waves and therefore ... imagine a United States of America in which Washington is a radioactive wasteland and in which the President and Senate are dead, leaving, perhaps, only the House of Representatives alive. Imagine all this against the background of a crumbling infrastructure and of armed revolts across the continent, where previously subject tribes begin to assert their independence and to demand compensation, and where slaves - previously secure in their place at the base of the pecking order - began to demand the rights of citizenship.

In the immediate aftermath of the Deluge, there was a diaspora of Atlanteans. Qualopec, his mechanical body having crawled to safety across the sea bed whilst he himself was unconscious, had taken the remnants of the Maian Regiment across the Ocean to the Aztlan Confederacy. The Seven Sisters might have been prepared to complain at the loss of the Maian had not Chloe of Achaea put the Amazons (and by extension, the Sabines) at their disposal. The Lapithae Regiment had more or less ceased to exist, whilst the Aean Regiment - being made of artificial beings - were not very welcome on the new continent, even assuming that I had been prepared to release them.

Meanwhile Tihocan, finding himself in possession of the deserts in the Territory of the East, had discovered that whole regions had been rendered fertile by the change in the water table, and so was busy rebuilding and replanting, styling himself "Pharaoh of the Upper Nile." Similarly Astarte, having survived the Deluge on the ship of Admiral Utnapishtim, was making the region around Mount Nemesis a haven for survivors and a repository for the religious texts and tenets of the disappeared City. The Family communicated using the temperamental remnants of the aetheroscope network, a relic of empire, but still functioning.

That left myself, Chloe, the Seven Sisters and the fractious mobs based on the new islands and peninsulas formed out of what had been Mount Pelion and Mount Ida competing for control of the remains of the Territory of the West. The Mount Ida community was now known as the Kingdom of Crete and the Mount Pelion community as the Kingdom of Attica. (Of the City itself there was little left but the lip of a crater, arid and unliveable.)

Some time after the Flood a strange tale came to my ears. One of the Lapithae Regiment, present with us on the edge of the Balearic Sea as the Dam collapsed, had an unlikely escape. Captain Aorion, surviving his immediate immersion in the Deluge, had bobbed to the surface relatively unscathed. There he would have drowned from exhaustion had not a dolphin taken pity on him, and led him to shore. Now Aorion, retired from the military, had become a famous poet and songster. He was renowned for the invention of the Dithyramb, a wild hymn to Dionysus, and his ode "Beautiful" was sung by many a love-struck maiden to her latest girlfriend. However; there were rumours of a dark secret; maybe an occult alliance with criminals, maybe an outré sexual nature. Of course all of this only added to Aorion's allure for the immature at heart, but I admit that even I was curious.

One day Magnesian and I were inspecting the basement of the Golden Pyramid of Aea. My workshops had survived the catastrophe, but now the Pyramid was a tidal island linked to the shore by a mere spit of land. Worse than that the basement levels had been flooded with molten lava, and to add to our difficulties the sealed and time-halted incubators of my seven unborn daughters, clones of Chloe of the Sabines, had sunk beneath the white-hot surface. No doubt they were still safe - not even melted rock could pierce the shield of Tihocan's stasis - but they were, for the moment, inaccessible.

"Thanks the heavens that we still have the Princess Chloe, Most August One" remarked Magnesian. "Imagine her multiplied by eight. The world would choke on such an abundance of personality."

"You are kind, loyal Magnesian," I replied. "But blessed as we are by Chloe of the Golden Hair, we must recover my other offspring."

"Nothing is more important to our tottering civilisation, Your Most Highness. We would rather starve than lose the Royal Princesses. Why allow serfs to safely till the soil, when instead they can be dredging through hundreds of tons of molten lava?"

"Again I bathe in the warmth of your solicitude, oh good and faithful servant."

We were diverted from our chatting by the arrival of a liveried messenger, who through a wax-sealed paper into my hands.

"What's this?" I said. "Why use this method when the aetheroscope would suffice?"

I slit the seal with my elongated fingernails and read.

"To the Most Royal and Blessed Natla of Atlantis from her most humble servant Aorion, formerly Captain of the Lapithae, greetings. For many months the recollection of an occurrence has weighed heavily on my mind, and now - sleepless with the burden of memory - I have decided to confide in Your Majesty. I can only hope that I, the bearer of this information, will not seal my own fate by arousing Your Majesty's indignation. On the day of the Deluge I was fulfilling my duty as a forward scout for the Lapithae, and thus I arrived at the site of your battle with the Ketos before the mass of the Army under the command of your Royal Brothers. I observed your heroic fight, but I also overheard some of the words that your Royal Daughter, Chloe of the Achaeans, addressed to the War Machine of Atlantis. I clearly heard her call out "This is not as we planned. This is not what the Lord of the Daylight Sky intended." I hesitate to offer any interpretation of these phrases but merely bring it to Your Majesty's attention. I salute you. Your most loyal subject. Aorion."

I must confess that initially I was more concerned that an ex-Captain of the Lapithae, a mere commoner, should address a letter directly to myself, rather than by any bizarre accusations that the letter might contain. It seemed that there was a new philosophy abroad in which any non-entity could take advantage of the sacred art of writing and thus enabled, felt free to address directly persons of far superior rank with no concern for the proprieties, I muttered to myself. What was this - another cretinous demonstration of "Demos Kretes"?

I took a horse along the new shore of the Hospitable Sea - now renamed by wags the "Inhospitable" due to its new size and new weather systems - to Astarte's realm near Mount Nemesis. The roads that had once allowed a fast chariot to pass had been broken and buried, whilst the enlarged sea was now too rough for a swift trireme, and so the journey was tedious and long.

"Greetings Astarte, Holy and August Ruler of Atlantis, High Priestess and Defender of the Faith, valued Royal Grand-Daughter of the Lord of the Sea in whose beneficence we all bathe," I said, embracing Astarte and trying not to crush too many of her breasts against me in the process.

"Greetings Natla of Atlantis, Ruler of the Territory of the East, Commander of the Regiment of Aea, Guardian of the Golden Pyramid of Aea and Beloved Royal Sister whom the Lord of the Sky smiles down upon in continual love," replied Astarte embracing me in return whilst trying not to get tangled in my wings.

We sat in a garden outside the Palace of Mount Nemesis shivering in the mountain air and sipping from hot mugs of mulled wine.

I handed her Captain Aorion's letter.

"Read that ... impertinence," I said.

Astarte smiled and began to read, but then her face became ashen. The scroll spilled from her fingers and her hands masked her features. I, anxious, placed an arm around her shoulders.

"Oh sister," whispered Astarte. "I have a deep secret and I wonder if this news is implicated in my silence."

"You can tell me anything," I said.

"That was not so in the case of Captain Attis."

"Attis? ... You still dwell on that? It was so many years ago."

"Yes, I still 'dwell' as you put it, with much bitterness."

"I am sorry to hear that."

"And thus my reluctance after that painful episode to share similar (if more dread) news with my logical but cold-hearted sister."

I felt a pang as if she had slapped me. "I regret it if that is how I am," I said, "although I fear you under-estimate my capacity for feeling."

"It is no matter. You inspire love in spite of it."

"So ... what is your mystery? I shall not attempt any action on admittance to it that you do not approve, and - if still a secret from all - I will remain lastingly lip-sealed."

Sometime ago, it transpired, Astarte had been asleep in her rooms when an apparition had appeared in her room. When she reached for the light, the visitor had asked her to leave the room in darkness.

"I felt as if I was entranced and so I obeyed, and it was in the same bewitched frame of mind that I allowed him, with great pleasure, to ravish me."

The occult lover had visited her a number of times until curiosity had gotten the better of her and she uncloaked a hidden lamp whilst he slept.

"As I gazed on his face I felt as if I recognised him. At first I thought him one of the ten twin kings, for he resembled my father, and then, laughing at my own fancy and infatuation, I thought how his beautiful face matched that of a god. Many a woman has fancied this of her bed-mate I expect."

The man had awakened, and was startled and then angry. Astarte, placing a calming hand on him, had smilingly, chidingly, asked for explanation.

"The answer I received shocked me to my toes," said Astarte, her eyes wide with recollection. "The man was none other than the Lord of the Sky, the Olympean."

I burst out laughing. "Oh gullible sister," I said. "Surely this is just the guile of a young rake trying to trick his way between your thighs?"

"No, Natla," she replied, and I was stilled by her use of my name, unadorned. "He said that his name was Diwo, Lord of the Daylight Sky, and that he had come down from the heavens to be with me, having espied my beauty from afar and been inflamed by the sight of my straight limbs and dark gaze."

I put my knuckles to my mouth. Atlanteans freely referred to the Lord of the Sky, but the phrase "Daylight Sky " ... that was one I had only seen once before, in Aorion's epistle.

"Furthermore he explained that the secrecy surrounding our love play was to protect me from the vengeance of his heavenly consort, Diwija of the Cow-like Eyes. Naturally I banned him from my bed on the instant and he, perhaps too readily, agreed."

I wrapped myself around with my red wings, totally enclosed so that the only light was that seeping through the membrane.

What is this? I said to myself. What is the implication? My mind flitted back and forth rapidly, making and unmaking connections, turning the pieces of information this way and that.

There was a tapping on the outside and I admitted my sister to my cocoon, and we sat, arms around each other, rocking.

"What did you tell him of us?"

"Everything. Of the ten kings, of us four, of your daughter and of the daughters of Atlas. I was spent with love and the pillow talk seemed harmless. I had no idea that he was the brother of Poseidon."

I held her tightly. "Remind me, learned sister, of the traditional weapon of the Lord of the Sky."

"A thunderbolt, such as that which struck the Atlantean War Machine."

"And the weapon of the Lord of the Sea?"

"Earthquake and tidal wave."

"Surely the fall of the City could not have been planned?"

We huddled together for a long time, even after the sun had gone down, the last time in that life that we embraced.

"His seed is within me still," said Astarte at one point. "It is within me and yet I am not pregnant." Her voice was hollow with horror.

There seemed only one destination for me after that and so, leaving Astarte safe with her community at Mount Nemesis, I set off in search of my daughter.

The Territory of the West, not only sundered geographically into islet and peninsula by the Deluge, had also begun - unofficially - to split into smaller units. Not unlike the Pentopolis of days gone by, every city and mountain if not in actual revolt maintained its own militia and was suspicious of strangers.

The Seven Sisters maintained a number of halls and fortifications in the region, but the one they frequented the most often - once on a hilltop but now on an island - was the Palace of Mount Sphacteria. I and my horse boarded a ferry from the new mainland and I soon stood in the main throne-room. O disorientating times!

After a longish wait - I amused myself with a glass of ambrosia, some delicious cakes and some archery practice on the lawn - Maia of the Serene Countenance appeared, dressed from head to foot in an uncharacteristic robe.

"Well met, Royal Sister," I said embracing her.

"It is an honour to welcome you to our halls, Natla of Atlantis," replied Maia.

"This dull concealing raiment you wear - it is the new fashion in these regions?"

"It is the fashion for a young girl in my condition," she smiled.

I gave her a long look.

"You are with child?"

"Indeed, beloved sister."

"Begat by who? A Royal Personage, I hope?"

Maia led me to a chair and sat down near me. "It is a bizarre tale," she said. Turning to an alcove she called; "Sisters, you may enter!"

Two of the other Daughters emerged rather sheepishly, dressed in an identical fashion.

I stood.

"Greetings, fair Alcyone."

"Actually, Your Highness, I am Taygete."

"And greetings, sweet Sterope."

"I fear, Royal Natla, that I am called Electra."

"I apologise," I laughed. "You were all bred from the same egg and are most alike to one another. Let us all sit together and discuss your ... situations."

Maia took a deep breath and smoothed her forehead with cool fingers.

"This will be hard to credit, but we were visited by an Olympean ..."

"Dragon's teeth!" I exploded. "Please do not tell me that it was the Lord of the Sky? I've just had your sister Astarte recounting an amorous escapade with the Most Sacred Diwo, Blessings Be Upon Him."

The girls exchanged glances anxious glances.

"Why yes," said calm Maia. "For me, a pleasant experience; for my sisters, not."

"How so?"

"I - the Great God seduced with gentle words and scented flowers. These two - he ambushed and took, despite their pleas for mercy."

I frowned. An Olympean was an Olympean, but my natural deference was being put to the test.

"One cannot say no to a god," said Electra, or possibly Taygete, looking in equal parts shame-faced and defiant.

"And where was my Most Illustrious Royal Daughter, Chloe of the Achaeans, Commander of the Amazons and Chosen of the Sabines, when this unexpected but divine pillaging and ploughing was taking place? I thought she was supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on you lot."

"We did not involve her," said Taygete, or possibly Electra. "After all, she is not her sisters' keeper."

"And where precisely is the beloved fruit of my loins at this precise moment in time?"

"She is at the Court of Uncle Tihocan on the Nile, the Royal Tihocan having recently been acknowledged as her father," they told me.

Making them promise to take plenty of exercise, little ambrosia and five types of fruit and vegetables a day, I made my way back to land. I would see them and their fecund bellies later, I thought to myself. At least they had lain with Royalty, so all was not lost. The Royal Family could only have strength in numbers now that the central authority of the City had been drowned beneath the waves. I was disturbed, however, at the hidden adventures of Diwo of the Daylight Sky, and could still see a possible plot in which my beloved Atlantis had been sacrificed.

Generally the First Dynasty of Egypt is thought to begin with someone called Narmer. What is sometimes - always - overlooked is that the period between the Deluge and the reign of this semi-mythical Pharaoh - the so-called Predynastic Period - has had all evidence of its story submerged beneath generations of Nile mud. If anybody deserves to be called the First Pharaoh, it was Tihocan. For example, he built the first Egyptian pyramid - admittedly of sun-baked mud-bricks faced with gold - whilst his underground Tomb Complex made that of Tukankhamen look like a mere annex. The famous Library of Alexandria - "repository of all learning" - was a mere vestige, a mere record room, compared to Tihocan's Workshop, which stood in roughly the same region. When did the Library ever produce a Telos or a Scion?

I admit that I was somewhat impressed by the "new Atlantis" that he had caused to rise from the desert as I rode through his developing demesne.

Tihocan himself, however, was a lesser man, a golden statue with feet of clay, secretly wobbling and quaking, and hiding his attenuation behind a dark metal mask, and high gold epaulettes fashioned in the style of lightning bolts. His hair, once dark, had turned grey, a fact which he sought to conceal with saffron and turmeric dye, giving him an artificially yellow mane and beard.

Meantime the beautiful Chloe of the Golden Hair, she who inspired my journey, I discovered sitting at the foot of Tihocan's throne. She, dutiful daughter of her Pharaoh father, situated herself on a humble wooden stool wearing a humble cotton shift looking as if - as the saying goes - "butter wouldn't melt" in her nectar flavoured mouth.

After the usual bowings and scrapings and title-calling and formulaic solicitudes, all before a new Court, I contented myself merely with handing the letter of Captain Aorion to my Royal Brother.

"What is it, my Royal Father?" said Chloe. Her manner was mouse-like and miniature, mincing and murmuring. I knew at that moment that she was guilty. A murderous, Medean mood began to bloom in my breast.

I gave them the strange news about the three Pleiades and their impregnation, my voice as calm as a judge, betraying no hint of the turmoil within me.

"This Aorion," said Tihocan at length, passing down the scroll with golden-leaved fingers, "you know that he has already been linked in rumour and gossip with the Seven Daughters of Atlas? He plays his lyre, and the ladies frolic in a drunken pastiche of a religious ceremony, allegedly dedicated to youth and the grape. "

"That I did not," I replied levelly, watching my daughter as she read.

"It seems as if this sacrilegious story of the Lord of the Sky may conceal a more earthy endeavour."

I turned my coldest blue gaze upon them. "Your sister Astarte claims the same lover, Diwo. Speak to her by aetheroscope if you wish confirmation."

Tihocan laughed hollowly. "Again, my Royal Sibling Astarte has a history of dalliance with the lower order. Fortunate, is it not, that this mythical paramour provides concealment? That, or else she is reliving the sordid past."

"What of the thunderbolt that struck the Machine at our Royal Procession? Is it not possible that the Lord of the Daylight Sky flung it down?"

That gave Tihocan pause, and elicited a faint gasp from Chloe. I saw that I had surprised them. "I saw no lightning strike, but a flaming meteor. It was chance, not design, a mere meteorological rock, maybe dropped by a hurricane of the upper air. You are an intelligent woman and yet you speak like a fool."

"And what of the earthquake that levelled the Dam? If not the handiwork of the Lord of the Sea, then what?"

Chloe, her face pale, looked up from the paper to her father. I had said something of significance and she awaited the reaction.

Tihocan clasped his breast tight, as if his heart was hurting him. "You seek madly for a conspiracy," he muttered eventually, "and in doing so you rake open the wounds within me. Loathe as I am to admit it ... it seems that the earth-shaking events that brought us to our present pretty pass ... may be due to my miscalculation." He let loose a sudden howl. "The everlasting guilt ... digests me."

I, disgusted by this camp and ostentatious display of self-pity, stood straight and addressed myself to my daughter.

"Admit your guilt," I said, "and I may yet forgive your part in the loss of the City. Admit that you wished to bring down the established order so that you and your clique might wrest control. Admit that you were dazzled by the promises of two Olympean Gods."

Chloe spread her hands. "Mother," she replied, "you accuse me unjustly.

It was as if I could see in her sea-blue eyes - my eyes - the floating, drowned babies in the wake of the tsunami, and my father, her grandfather, slipping from my hand and falling to his hideous death. The pearl, the centre, the navel of the world - the City - had been destroyed, whether by design or accident, by a silly little girl with delusions of grandeur who felt no regret and who admitted no responsibility. It was a great crime, a capital offence, effectively genocide. And this war criminal, this child, with no concept of duty and pity, stood to inherit the remains of Atlantis. Millions of people would become her playthings. My maternal feelings, such as they were, withered on the vine in the hot blast of my fury.

I stepped up to one of Tihocan's guards, and taking the spear from his hand, flung it at my daughter. Chloe of the Golden Hair, scarcely having time to react, was pierced through from sternum to spine, and fell dead upon the floor.

The Court roared with horror, and Tihocan, cradling his dead child and with tears flowing, cried "Arrest Natla of Atlantis! Arrest the accursed filicide!"

I stood tall and arranged my features and limbs in a pose of haughty implacability. "'Let no one think of me as humble or weak or passive," I said to his soldiers and his court, who were closing in to arrest me, the lights from my jewels flashing blood-red on the ring of faces and rebounding from the tasteless walls. "Let them understand I am of a different kind, dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. All here must now bear witness! Justice has been done, by a Queen of Atlantis!"

After letting loose a blinding flash of golden flame, I took to my wings. Before they could detain me I was airborne and gone.

There is little else to say of that day. I flew off from that place, my heart empty. I took ship across the Ocean and left the Old World behind.

* * * * *

I loved the new continent from the moment I set foot upon it, and I've never changed my opinion.

Qualopec was sanguine about my presence in the Aztlan Confederacy. I was, after all, a retired member of the Royal Family with reputation and no power, and no supporters. The Aean Regiment had been left behind, and now divided their time between defending the centaurs of Mount Pelion and defending their hatcheries in the Golden Pyramid of Aea, nominally still loyal to me, but in effect their own master. I was yesterday's Queen.

The years began to pass.

Through the aetheroscope I kept in touch with the Old World. Astarte - ever since her interlude with the Lord of the Daylight Sky - had produced clutches of children one after the other, despite having had no other lover in the interim, and I would often find myself speaking to her whilst she dangled two handfuls of infants from the many breasts.

As for the Seven Sisters, not only the three mentioned earlier had produced offspring. Alcyone and Celaeno claimed to have been brought to motherhood by the Lord of the Sea, Poseidon himself, although to what extent this was a convenient myth engendered by sibling rivalry nobody was entirely sure. Merope, the youngest, had taken to hanging around with Aorion the Poet and was often seen on his arm at the most fashionable dinner parties. The last of the Seven, Sterope, had made the trip to the Aztlan Confederacy ostensively to maintain diplomatic links with the Maian Regiment, but in fact to take up a position as Qualopec's secret mistress. I wished them all well and was secretly glad that I was not responsible for picking the bones out of the smelly fish chowder that the Royal Succession was becoming.

One mystery became, if not clearer, more notorious as time passed. There was a rumour that an inspection of the remains of the Atlantean War Machine showed that only two of the three brains had been damaged by the lightning strike; according to an ingenious conspiracy theory, the brain of Captain Esus was left intact. Apparently Chloe had argued revolution with the three heads, but had been unable to convince any but Esus, whom she had known whilst he was still in his young man's body. If their original plan had been for Esus to defeat the armies of Atlantis in battle allowing Chloe and the Sabines to take charge with the Amazon Regiment (which wags said had deliberately hung back from the fight), nobody knew. Similarly none of the gossip-mongers could explain why Esus had redirected his efforts toward the Dam. It was a conundrum never to be solved - a campfire story for succeeding generations.

Back in the New World I had been given a general's house in the Headquarters of the Maian Regiment, stocked with sufficient slaves and horses to my needs, and with ample billeting for my immediate household. There had been a little local difficulty about the presence of Nike and Ma'at in my rooms - the Aztlan Confederacy was a more or less mutant-free zone - but I was given diplomatic privilege. I spent my days inspecting the Regiment, dictating letters and, best of all, exploring the new lands.

One place - the hilly region around the Tepuyes Mountains - was a particular favourite. There, by some quirk of geography, lived the last remnants of some ancient and unique animal races, obviously bred for a much colder climate but still able to survive in the cool uplands. There was a giant elephant - the mammoth - as well several species of giant ground sloth. Also - of certain interest to a scientist like myself - there flourished there a veritable cornucopia of unusual plants, ferns and lichens.

However best of all, ferocious in battle, but as shy as debutants, there existed a prehistoric species of large cat. These killers, white-furred and with over-extended scimitar teeth, were known generally by the nomenclature "smilodonti". My sport involved the hunting of these beasts accompanied, on horseback, by favoured officers from the cavalry. We rarely brought one down as we allowed ourselves only the most primitive of weapons, this last in order to honour the pride and majesty of these toothy predators. This limitation meant that many a weak or stupid soldier was weeded out from the Maian Regiment, usually with both of her carotids slashed open in one ivory bite. I had the head of an especially terrifying male smilodon that I had slain with a single arrow mounted on a plaque above the desk in my reception room, a reminder to all my visitors that I was not going soft.

And thus I might have happily lived out the rest of my life on the New Continent except for one thing - my Esteemed Royal Brother, the Pharaoh of the Upper Nile and self-proclaimed God of the Annual Irrigation, Tihocan.

Tihocan had always been weak, weak of will and weak of mind. His only talents had been for engineering and music, and for the mastering of beautiful young boys, and now that his subconscious guilt had driven him mad, he relieved his nightmares by blaming the fall of the City entirely on me. Throughout the former Territories of the West and of the East he caused every inscription, stele, mural and painting, every book, letter, statue and aetheroscope recording that concerned either me or my acts to be defaced, erased and expunged. He toppled a particular tall stone statue of me, and used the pieces of my face to create that of a giant sphinx, positioned to guard one of the entrances to a Tomb Complex between its gargantuan paws. In a sealed room below the belly of the same sphinx, encased in gold and preserved using natrum desiccation, and with her pickled heart and lungs and brains stored in canopic jars, he placed the remains of our daughter, Chloe of Achaea. If any one act should have telegraphed his burgeoning insanity, this last one was it.

Every now and again Tihocan would demand that Qualopec bring me to justice, to which Qualopec would shrug tiredly and explain that even if he felt he had the authority to try a descendent of the Lord of the Sea - which he didn't - that I had been perfectly within my rights as a materfamilias to kill my own daughter for whatever reason I saw fit. When Tihocan protested that I had robbed Egypt of a heir, Qualopec would curtly instruct him to either choose one of his many sisters, nieces or nephews to succeed after him, or else to harness up a nubile new wife and plunge his seed into her like a man.

* * * * *

Then, a few days before my one hundredth birthday, Qualopec summoned me for a meeting.

I was shown into an annex of his Tomb, where he was seated slumped on a large stone throne, in a room cared out of the living rock deep far beneath the mountain top. All around was the murmurs of underground breezes and the dripping of long hidden waters. I kept looking around at the noise as pebbles and rocks settled in the dark distance.

The servants led me, holding aloft flaming torches, to this gloomy place.

Qualopec was immobile and apparently unconscious, flanked by two fierce-some warriors. The servant approached as if on tiptoe and coughed.

There was a whirring sound and some illumination from my Royal Brother's carapace, and Qualopec slowly raised his head.

"Greetings my Royal Sister Natla, Ruler of the Territory of the West," he wheezed.

I rushed forward and placed a concerned hand on his human arm.

"Qualopec! What has happened? Why are you down here in the dark as if already in your sepulchre?"

"I am dying. I can only manage an hour or two of activity at a time, and I knew not when my injured organs will finally fail. I come down here and switch off all my systems away from the prying eyes of my subjects, hoping to recover."

"But ... surely there is medical aid?"

Qualopec looked me in the eye, and there was a hint of the old warrior there. "I will not be seen to be weak," he whispered. "I will die in harness, as befits a Grandson of the Lord of the Sea."

"I am sorry," I said, starting to weep in spite of myself. "If it had not been for me, we would not be here."

"Nonsense, beloved sister. The hoofs of a centaur or the thrust of a spear - what does it matter to a seasoned campaigner? You have paid more than enough for any alleged crime. Sadly ... not everybody is of my opinion."

He gestured, and an aetheroscope was wheeled out.

The recording, in style much like a modern newsreel, showed the most recent events from the Old World.

First there was a scene showing the centaur commanders of the Aean Regiment shaking hands with a grimly grinning Tihocan. Apparently he had managed to win them over using the tale of Mount Pelion, and my part in the slaying of my own dear Hylonome the Centauride. History had been rewritten so that I, instead of being the creator and champion of the created creature, was now their persecutor.

The Golden Pyramid of Aea was now Tihocan's and he was using it to churn out many clones of human soldiers, creating an enormous Army of Retribution. Every harbour on the shores of the new Middle sea was building ships for an Armada to carry the troops across the Ocean.

"Tihocan your Pharaoh demands that the renegade Natla of Atlantis be brought to trial for the crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. A new age is dawning in which none is above the law, and the execution of the evil Natla will ring in that age. Hand her over for trial or face military intervention."

As the presentation ended Qualopec snorted.

"He can indeed invade the New World, kill many people and cause chaos to my fledgling society, but it is only a will o' the wisp, burning bright in the swamp, soon gone. It is a fool's errand, a house build on quicksand. He could not hope to control both the Old and New under a global rule. The moment he leaves the remains of Atlantis, rebellions will spring up and he will be forced to return."

I smoothed the lapels of my robes and folded my wings neatly behind me.

"This is madness and unjust, but I cannot allow any more people to die on my behalf. It is, as you say, without point. I will submit to a show trial if it will maintain the civilisation of Atlantis, however thinly spread. It is my duty as a Ruler."

Qualopec smiled, one of the old smiles, the sort he had smiled when he was a fine, beautiful young man.

"Naturally," he said. "I expected nothing else. But think on; I have not lost my head for the planning of a covert campaign, however destroyed my body."

"I will stand trial," I insisted.

"Yes, you will, but Tihocan is an idiot. I have a scheme whereby we satisfy him whilst appealing to his vanity. The stratagem will leave you alive to rule another day. He can only mount this expedition once and when he is gone, you will be returned to your present position."

And so in due course the place for trial and execution had been constructed, well away from the centres of civilisation and especially well away from the disgruntled Maian Regiment who would have fought to the death to protect me if asked. The Execution Platform was placed in the area now known as New Mexico, at the very edge of the Atzlan Confederacy.

As the proceedings came to a close - I cannot recall the exact details nor the speeches nor the cross-examinations - I looked up at the giant idealised statues of Qualopec and Tihocan that had been constructed to overlook the theatre of justice. I reflected that where there were two, there once would have been four. So passes the glory of the world.

In the centre of the Execution Platform Tihocan's engineers had constructed one of his inventions, namely, a large cylindrical statis chamber. Qualopec (by flattery) had persuaded Tihocan that this was a fit end for a traitor and reminded him that neither he, Qualopec, nor even Tihocan, had the authority to murder a Grand-Daughter of an Olympean, however judiciously.

"We would be accused of fratricide in the same way as Natla is guilty of filicide," said cunning Qualopec.

I have already recorded some of the script that was written for us - both accused and court - to act out for the aetheroscopic recording devices. The broadcast was world-wide.

Then, finally, the hour for me to die had arrived.

Two mutants guards - Tihocan had insisted on these symbols of his dominance over the wishes of Qualopec - dragged me forward and pushed me to my knees.

"As part of your punishment I will strip out of the signs of your most evil of deeds," said Tihocan, producing a white-hot sabre.

He struck the red wings from my shoulders, instantly cauterising the wounds. I was filled with so much agony I could barely remain conscious, but instead of screaming I merely bowed my head.

I was in a dream when they dressed me in a suit and helmet of Tihocan's devising, designed to protect my body and brain from the temporal freezing process.

I found myself thinking of the children in the courtyards of the cities of the Pentopolis, playing with their wooden training swords. We had killed them all.

"Wasters," I said, as they placed my arms in two clamps, leaving me hanging in a T-shaped crucifixion.

Then Tihocan cried out for all to hear "Let's just finish it," or words to that effect.

He gestured to his mutant soldiers and they threw two levers built into the columns flanking the device.

I waited for something to happen.

And waited.

And waited some more.

---

Chapter Thirteen: The Wicked Witch Of The West (1995)

I lay with my cheeks on the taut white sheet and my tears dampened the cotton shrouding Aþkðn Tanrıça's shrunken thighs. Her frail hand stroked my hair. She was only 35 but she looked ancient. The ironic opposite of me, the grotesque image to my ideal. I choked back my rage.

"Darling," I whispered in her ear.

Aþkðn was already showing periods of Cheynes-Stokes breathing. The cancer – uterine cancer – had come on six months ago. She had tried - very briefly - some chemo, but it was pointless and cruel. Now she had fixed to die in her own bedroom at Parajito Mesa.

"Darling," I repeated.

"Jackie."

"This could all be over," I said.

""I shall die naturally in my time."

"But think of it. A whole new you. A whole new body. I have it ready. We could live together forever."

"I love you," she gasped, trying to clear the saliva from her throat and failing. Her finger stabbed at the morphine dispenser. "But it would be wrong."

"This is wrong!" I wept. "At least let me freeze you."

"My thoughts would be frozen too. When I awoke I'd feel the same way." She collapsed, exhausted, unable to muster any more words.

"Maybe I'll do it anyway, you stupid woman."

Aþkðn opened her eyes wide and looked at me. I could see the reflection of a golden young girl on a beach, naked in the sunshine. She smiled faintly.

"Send the boys in," she whispered. "Bossy boots."

* * * * *

We waited and waited and waited and still Aþkðn lived on, comatose and pointless. Eventually I was at cracking point and even Das and Nas were steering clear of me. I rode the boundaries of my ranch, shooting at anything that even resembled vermin. I wore out my stallions, Luno and Bartleby, and they were very nearly ill.

I was rather guiltily feeding some warm oat mash to poor, sulky Bartleby when the long longed-for distraction came along, something I couldn't really ignore.

Magnesian refused to use the modern phone – he had some theory about it being monitored by "them" – but he had sent me a film made on digital video. He was almost as cranky as me.

"Greetings, your Imperious Beneficence" he said, not quite looking into the lens. "I am sending you this communication in the form of a recording as I deduced that your Mightiness might need to see what we have found for yourself."

The camera pointed first at the ground, then at the rock ceiling, went black for a few seconds and finally we found ourselves in a lava cave deep in the base of the Golden Pyramid of Atlantis.

We had not been able to enter every place within the Pyramid for fear of booby traps or other snares left by Royal Brother Tihocan during his tenure. I tended only to go to rooms and corridors that I recognised. Magnesian, who somehow had evaded Tihocan's purges, was under no such inhibition. However even he was pleased to avoid the more obvious laboratories and foundries left by the engineers and scientists of my sibling, for fear of being poisoned or blown to pieces.

One of my mining geologists took up the commentary. "As you can see this cavern is the reservoir for the lava mud that spews from the vent in the centre of the floor. For much of the time the lava fills the chambers to the roof, but now and again the level falls, exposing the lower part of the cavern. I have determined from the lava rings this is the seventh time that this chamber has emptied. We date the earliest and least complete emptying to circa three thousand B.C."

The camera was walked across the rocky floor, lit by the baleful russet light cast by the laval mud.

"However the most remarkable thing is the artefact," said the geologist. The film showed a platform containing what looked like seven coffins. The platform had been tilted through ninety degrees to the horizontal so that the open mouths of the coffins pointed at the room. I say "open mouths". I was shocked to the core of my being to see that although six of the coffins were open …

One was still sealed.

"My Lord," I said under my breath. "The seven Chloes."

And so within the hour my private jet had whisked me away from New Mexico, and soon I was aboard Concorde and speeding across the Atlantic.

* * * * *

Less than a day later I was entering said cavern, clad in a hard hat and proceeding rather gingerly.

"I'm kinda hoping that I'm not going to be attacked by some giant antediluvian mummy beast," I said to Magnesian.

"Impossible," he replied. "They would bow down before you like the lion and the lamb, Your Divinity."

"Well if they show as much respect for me as you do, old friend, I'm not entirely reassured."

We walked across the cave floor, skirting the dry ominous heat of the lava pool.

"Do the geologists know when the cavern is due to refill?"

"I believe they predict that it will coincide with the next tectonic activity, Your Majesty."

"And when will that be?"

"They don't know."

"We'd better be quick then." I halted in front of the coffins. I found myself awestruck. I had fashioned the coffins with my own hands and put in my spare daughters myself, but those ancient events had seemed a little like a dream until this moment. "Who would have thought it, after all these millennia?" I remarked.

"Very much my own thoughts when I rise from my bed in the morning and begin another day in your service, Your Majesty.

"I am the archaeologist of my own life."

"And I am one of your dusty relics, Your Highness."

"So. What have you discovered? And what of the unopened capsule?"

The first time – Magnesian had a clip board – only one coffin, the highest one had been exposed. The second time, in about 760B.C. according to geologists, the laval mud had sunk a little more and the second coffin had been temporarily exposed. And so on. The third, in about 10 A.D., the fourth, in 540, the fifth, in about 1230 and the sixth in about 1770.

It seemed that there had been Chloes born throughout human history.

"Each of your Royal Daughters was educated in utero by the mind of the Golden Pyramid. The Pyramid in turn gathered suitable facts by monitoring the civilisation around it, as best as it was able. Each Princess was born as a fully integrated twenty year old girl, speaking the local language and able immediately to bled in," said Magnesian, handing me an Atlantean animated script tablet. "Each chose her own name, Your Majesty. None chose the name Natla, somewhat surprisingly".

I scanned the list of names – Neithhotep, Tatia of Cures, Ioanna of Magdela, Chloe of Macedonia, Shajar al-Dur and Miranda Denman.

My voice was choked with my emotion. "Did … did any of them manage to find their appropriate level … to become Royal?"

"Most of them managed to integrate themselves with the ruling class of their period in one way or another."

"Remarkable."

"And now we have one last daughter, ready to hatch at the press of a lever, if my readings are correct."

And so we arranged the birthing chamber with as much care as the arrangers of the Porphyry Room no doubt had prepared for the birth to the purple of an Byzantine Princess. Lighting and heating were brought in, and furniture, and food and drink, and a wardrobe of clothing.

At length, I seated myself on a chair and taking a large swig of particularly alcoholic Atlantean ambrosia indicated that the Royal Induction should proceed.

As the mechanism was activated there was a fanfare from deep within the Pyramid. The stasis field that had surrounded the newborn like an indestructible green eggshell began to shimmer and fade. I could heard the thudding of a giant heartbeat and blood appeared to flow capillaries embedded in the rock beneath our feet. This continued for a few minutes, the last coffin itself giving off a shimmer of warmth. I smelt yeast and milk and the metallic whiff of haemoglobin.

Finally there was a moment's silence. Magnesian and the other Atlanteans bowed their foreheads to the ground and I stood up from my chair, dressed as a Royal Queen of Atlantis, and a smile as enigmatic as the Buddha's fixed on my face.

Metallic claws reached forward as the lid of the seventh coffin was wound open with a sound of clockwork gears. A naked form was deposited on her feet only to stumble onto one knee, her fringe of blonde hair covering her face.

"Daughter?" I said, gently, taking one step forward.

A pale hand pulled aside the hair, and I found myself gazing into a pair of extremely intense blue eyes, their intensity increased by the blackness of the sockets surrounding them. The eyes narrowed and a slightly twisted smile played for a second over the full lips. She was the spitting image of Chloe, my first daughter, only more gaunt and more … ? I found it hard to think of the right word. Gothic?

"Mother," she said, evenly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

I took her hand and helped her to her feet, gesturing to my servants to enrobe her.

"I am Natla of Atlantis, formerly Ruler of the Territories of the West of the Empire of Atlantis," I said, is as calm and kind a voice as I could manage. I wanted to embrace her, but I held back. "And you are?"

The girl looked at me, still smiling faintly, but searching my face with those hard eyes of hers.

"Amanda," she said, after a moment. "My name is Amanda Evert."

"Welcome to life, my beautiful daughter," I said and then, finally, we embraced.

* * * * *

For someone who was supposed to be born readymade to blend into the background, Amanda took a bit of house training. She had a tendency to act as if the ranch was under siege and all my servants were potential assassins. She snarled at Nas and Das; Nas laughed and Das cried. When I introduced her to the comatose Aþkðn she asked why I didn't switch off the life support. I guess the Pyramid's view of life was still dictated by a more brutal world view.

After a few weeks I had taught her to smile and to inflect her voice with a softer modulation.

""Watch the T.V., and practice being an American teen if you want to survive," I advised her. "You will only survive if you hide your strength."

"You want me to learn to simper and develop and interest in shopping?"

"My darling daughter, it's entirely up to you."

"You don't simper."

"I used to when I first arrived. But now I am one of the premier citizens of this society and no longer have to. Compared to me, you are a nobody. Even your brothers have an advantage due to their gender."

"But I am your daughter!" blazed Amanda, kicking over some furniture.

"It means nothing, my sweet," I said. "If you want to take your true rank amongst the rulers of the planet you will have to insinuate yourself there, like your seven sisters before you."

So Amanda developed two wardrobes. For public consumption she dressed and behaved a little like Princess Diana Spencer. Privately she dressed in leather, wore long studded frock coats and Goth-ed herself up with kohl, piercings and tattoos. She'd stride about our private land in long black boots shooting at random wildlife with a ebony handled revolver.

"I want to fuck you like an animal!" she'd say to herself in the mirror when she thought I wasn't watching.

She was ever so cute.

For polite society she have a fluffy bouffant cloud of blonde hair and lip gloss and a Cherryade smile, and generally looked as if she was a Homecoming Queen. Off duty she'd crash about the ranch trying to master a motorbike or a convertible, blasting out White Zombie or Nine Inch Nails whilst yelling and screaming at the top of her voice. She was the classic dichotomous Young American, sugared-coated venom, hypocrisy in designer gear.

She was very easy to love.

I wondered at her sisters and their blood line. Was there this nihilistic rage present in all of their gene-pool? I set Magnesian to research the biographies of the other "Chloes" and to report to me as soon as possible.

One day I sat the family down "for a talk".

"After a good deal of thought I've decided which parts of the planet you shall each help to govern when I take over."

Amanda snorted, Nas jumped about and Das became pensive. Looking at them I could help but reflect how similar they were to Tihocan, Qualopec and myself.

"Amanda – I want you to be in charge of the Southern Hemisphere. South America, Africa, Australasia and Antarctica."

"In other words the crap bits," said Amanda.

I ignored this. 'That includes the Atzlan Confederacy, Tiwanaku and the City of Tinnos - which are all very important. Any economic disadvantage that the Southern Hemisphere suffers from under the present regime will soon disappear. You are being given a plum posting, my dear."

"Whatever."

"Nas, you take China and Japan, and Das, you take India and Russia. I shall remain in charge of my old region, the Territory of the West - a responsibility given to me by the Gods themselves, I might remind you - and which will consist mainly of Europe and North America."

"In other words the best bits," said Amanda. I gave her a long imperial look. "But that's cool. I get it."

"I am flooded with relief," I said, unblinking.

"It's like a real life game of 'Risk'," exclaimed Nas. "I shall learn Chinese and martial arts at once."

"Is Australia in 'Risk'?" said Amanda, fiddling with her hair.

"I shall be in charge of the region that our lost aunt Astarte used to inhabit," said Das, thoughtfully.

"And if you find her I expect you to be nice to her," I said. God forbid, I thought.

"What if you should ever die, Mama Jackie? What if you were to be assassinated?

Das was looking at me with a very anxious face, and I felt a strange sensation crawling up and down my spine. I went and put my arms around him.

"Then I expect you to avenge me," I whispered. I straightened up. "Now who's for some popcorn and watching a movie?"

* * * * *

Text of my speech given early in 1996 to selected employees of Natla Technologies;

"Ladies and gentlemen, members of the newly formed Natla Zeitgeist Initiative, I'd like to welcome you all to my fiftieth anniversary and to take the opportunity to lay out my own personal philosophy for the management of the planet and of the human race.

As you all know, fifty years ago today I was free from my imprisonment by the fortuitous detonation of the Trinity nuclear device in New Mexico. Who knows? – may the Gods decreed that I remain in stasis until humanity once again had the capability to create such a weapon, so that my imperial experience could once more be put at your service. At any rate, thanks to the success of Natla Technologies and to the various networks of powerful friends that I have made in this new world, we are now in a position to put into motion the recovery of human civilisation and its return to the Golden Age of Atlantis.

Most of you have been given a portfolio – law and order, the environment, eugenics – and I hope you have been stimulated by the challenge of adapting the various fragmentary approaches and styles of the multifarious world governments to the proposed worldwide theocracy, with myself as the Head of State.

Let me give you a few examples of how things will improve under my Directorship.

The entire planet will be run on logical and scientific lines. Resources will be managed. Pollution will be managed. Population growth will be managed. It will be impossible for one region to be obese whilst another starves. All citizens will be equal unless allotted a new role by the Atlantean State. The only family tree that will count will be my Royal Family. All property and wealth will belong to the State. Citizens will be able to vote for local representatives, who will represent them at the Atlantean Court and who will be ritually punished in cases of insurrection by their constituents. Representatives will be assigned annually by density of population within a given area, and therefore the more over-populated areas will have more of a say. The status of previously important areas, such as the United States or of the Middle East will be adjusted accordingly. We will have the equivalent of a Year Zero for the Pax Atlantica, and all past hatreds, claims, land grabs, histories, ownerships, wars, religions and rights to control the means of production will become irrelevant.

What of religion? Much of the warfare on the planet is caused by the members of the various Judeo-Christian sects, whether they be Muslim, Catholic or Jewish. It seems incomprehensible to me that the worshipers of the same God should spend so much time killing each other, both incomprehensible and a considerable waste of resources. It's not that I despise their religion – either there really was some sort of early Arameaic deity whose popularity has extended to present times, or else these people are worshipping a folk memory of the events in Atlantis all those millennia ago. Whatever the origins, it doesn't matter. Under my rule people will be able worship whomever they like, provided they render unto Caesar, Caesar in this case being myself. Let me be plain - I will not have intracommunal bickering. Holy war will be met by divine vengeance, my divine vengeance, the divine vengeance of the state. Nothing will be allowed to disturb the Pax Atlantica.

What of science? Science will be restrained only by the cost in resources and by the logic of experts. No dubious moral philosophy, ancient superstition or hallowed religion will stand in science's way. Reproduction and genetics will be controlled by the state. Diseases and the causes of disease – sloth, poverty, inappropriate life-styles – will be ruthlessly eliminated. Genetic control of one's own body - within the parameters set by the State - will be available and free to all. If you are an 80-year-old transgender lesbian, you will have as much right to breed as anybody else, provided that your genetic resources are suitable. The interchangeability of sexuality, gender, racial characteristics, intelligence, beauty and athleticism offered by my scientists will abolish envy, jealousy and fear of the unknown. Wars will only arise out of boredom or due to mental illness.

Now … I'm human. I know that it will be hard to unite the planet without the planet attempting to commit suicide in the process. Let me assure you – everything I have ever done, from when I was a small child – has been dictated by my love for my fellow humans and by my sense of duty. I love the world. I love you all. I want only the best of all possible worlds. Surely if I have the means to achieve this – the desire of the human race throughout the ages – it would be remiss of me not to act?

I know my rule will seem harsh at first. Why so authoritarian, I hear you protest? Put simply, the human race is incapable of regulating itself. The human race cannot even tell the truth about itself. The human race redefines basic thoughts and concepts to avoid self-assessment. Selfishness is renamed freedom. Oligarchy is renamed democracy. War is renamed peace. The novel "1984" is not a satire – it's a documentary. I, as a loving mother to the human race, will set the boundaries and mop up the tears. I will teach us all to be our best. As one hand spanks, the other will stroke, both with affection. Mine will be the ultimate nanny state. Matriarchy – the secret government of the world – will be brought out into the light of the sun once and for all, for all of us to see.

The greatest empires – Rome, Russia, Germany – have needed a ruler, a strong ruler. People want to be ruled, to told what to do and how to behave. The only people who do not want to be ruled are aspiring rulers, sheltered academics and the insane. I will rule. I was born to rule. It is my destiny to rule.

Previous attempts to unite the planet have failed, either due to a lack of will, a lack of power, or a lack of resources. I have the will. I have the power. I have the resources.

This is a beautiful life in a beautiful place. One only has to watch the sun setting over a warm sea to become ecstatic. Join me in that ecstasy. Join me in that dream. Join me in utopia."

* * * * *

Then, on a beautiful spring day, the terrible and long-awaited tragedy occurred. Aþkðn, despite having been an empty husk and hanging on for many months longer that she ought to have done, died.

I sat alone with her in her shuttered room, staring at her. Her skin had turned to hard black leather and her features had shrunken onto the bone. She looked like an unwrapped mummy long lost - a Hapsetshut or a Nefertiti - and for me she was every inch the Royal Queen.

I sang for her all of our favourite songs.

"High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man

And the love train rides from coast to coast

DJ's the man we love the most

Could you be, could you be squeaky clean

And smash any hope of democracy ?

As the headline says you're free to choose

There's egg on your face and mud on your shoes

One of these days they're gonna call it the blues

And anything is possible when you're sowing the seeds of love."

I'd loved her. We'd sown the seeds of love. Sometimes I wondered if the infants that I had artificially sown in her womb had lead indirectly to her cancer. It w s too late for questions, and Nas and Das had been the pride and joy of her life. If I'd killed her she'd helped to hold the knife, for love of me.

We had a very tiny funeral – even Amanda wept – and soon there was a small cedar plaque planted under an imported olive tree.

Something in me died with her. She had been my governor, the governor of my conscience. She had saved me from madness and paranoia, and grounded me, grounded my lightning, channelling away my anger and alienation into the cool earth.

Now my life was colder and clearer.

"When I was a child …" I said to myself "… but now I am a Queen."

And so, to master my loneliness and my grief, and to maintain perspective, I hired a private secretary and began to dictate my autobiography.

* * * * *

Pierre Dupont had finished restoring the Saint Francis Folly; it as ready to be opened to the public. Only one door - deep in the bowels of the complex and sealed with sliding, studded copper bars - offered access to the real reason for the re-development. He awaited my command.

Amanda had been poking about in Bolivia and Peru. The archaeologists in my employ had identified the possible site for Qualopec's tomb, a lost Peruvian site called Vilcabamba. Now all I needed was some foolhardy champion to go inside and test the defences.

In the Golden Pyramid of Aea, a vast army had been implanted and grown – centaurs and harpies, smilodonta and chalicotheria – all waiting for me to power up their hatcheries and enbirth a new model Aean Regiment.

Finally, deep in Sudan on a fast flowing tributary of the Nile - the Tekezé River, which forged between high rock cliffs, and which was situated not far from the Red Sea and the ancient kingdoms of Kush and Nubia - there was an indication that the tomb of Chloe had been identified. No doubt - deep underground – there squatted the giant Sphinx that Tihocan had built over her grave, guarded by who knew what.

The world had come full circle and the Age of the Seventh "Chloe" was upon us.

One mystery remained, one which surfaced in the files that Magnesian had supplied me with, the mystery of the sixth "Chloe", Miranda Denman.

Most of the "Chloes" had been successes in Atlantean terms. Five had been lovers of royalty; Neithhotep with the Pharaoh Narmer, Titia with the King of the Sabines, Joanna with the King of the Jews, Chloe of Macedonia with the Empress Theodora of Byzantium and Shajar with the Sultan as-Salih Ayyub.

But then there was Miranda. In the 1790's she had married a non-entity from the British East India Company named "Sir Richard Croft, 6th Baronet." He seemed a worthy enough man from a worthy enough family, but … quite honestly I was baffled. For example, according to Magnesian's notes; "The immediate ancestor of the late Baronet Bernard de Croft is recorded in Domesday book as having held the estate of Croft (afterwards Croft Castle in Hertfordshire) from the hands of the Conquerer. His descendant Sir Hugh de Croft was created a Knight of the Bath by Edward I and represented the county of Hertford in Parliament in 1315." At least those Crofts had actually known Kings. Sir Richard Croft had known nobody. He was a nobody.

"Maybe it was a love match," I said to myself. It didn't seem likely, though, not for someone from my family. Perhaps out of all the "Chloes", I reasoned, Miranda had been a genetic aberration. Maybe for some reason she had actually walked away from power and privilege? Weird, but just about possible.

I looked to see if there were any "Crofts" extant. I had an idea that maybe I could get a blood sample from the bloodline, to check the genes. Maybe I'd even grow myself a Croft clone for experimentation, I thought.

It was whilst I was thumbing through the ancestry that I not only realised that we once had a "Hensingley Croft" on the Natla Tech payroll, but – more importantly – I first became aware of Lara.

She had a degree in archaeology from Cambridge, so at least she wasn't some sort of moron. However she'd thrown all that aside to be the archaeological equivalent of a rock star. She hung out with mercenaries. She drove fast cars. She bedded the glitterati. She stole stuff. She'd even shot a Yeti. The tabloids predicted her demise daily whilst hanging on her every deed.

My God, I thought, looked at a press photo of her flicking a V-sign. She's … she's …

And my heart began to thud.

As the days went by, a sort of obsession began to take hold of me. She was related to me, I thought. Maybe … maybe …

I was looking for a new mate, a queen.

And she was fearless. She'd go anywhere, do anything. Except be bored.

I wondered if there was a method of killing two birds with one stone. Perhaps … perhaps …

I could hire her to go into Qualopec's tomb. If she succeeded, then who worthier to rule by my side, joint rulers of the new order?

She had the beauty and the ruthlessness and the unconventionality, I thought. I gazed at her photos, at her clear cold features, at her womanly curves and her masculine muscles. I began to have erotic dreams. Erotic dreams in which I was her slave, obeying every order, every demand, every gentle humiliation.

I contacted Mauro Nero and gave them two instructions; find her so that I could speak to her and get a blood sample in anyway they could, even if it meant provoking a fist fight.

* * * * *

Last Dictaphone recording made by Jacqueline Natla, CEO Natla Tech, 1996;

"So it happened at last. Sergeant Conway managed to get me in contact with Lara Croft. She was apparently hanging out in some dive in Calcutta, recovering from some mis-adventure in Afghanistan.

God, she was magnificent. She more or less told me to go fuck myself. I threw some money at her and she sneered. It was only when I mentioned Peru that I had her full attention.

Her face – so battered. She looked as if her life had been some sort of boxing match. I can see the Atlantean genes. She has the look of my brother Qualopec after a battle.

I must have this woman as my consort.

Only a few days to go now, and I hope to recover a piece of or all of the Scion. I shall power up the Golden Pyramid and the new Age will being.

Life is so good. All of my struggles over all of these years – and I have nearly clawed my way back from nothing to my rightful god-given position as Queen of the World.

Soon it will be an everlasting Golden Age with myself, my children and – dare I hope it – my new wife, all installed on the thrones of the planet Earth.

May the Lords of the Sea and the Sky look after my people. Now I must sleep."

The End

---

Epilogue

From the Wikipedia article on "Tomb Raider", April 2009;

Lara escapes and follows their trail to a remote island, where mining operations of Natla Technologies have partially exposed the Great Pyramid of Atlantis. After making her way through the mines dispatching Natla's goons, Lara reaches the heart of the pyramid chamber, where the three Scions are fused together as a source of power. In a flashback, it is revealed that Natla was the third ruler of Atlantis, and that she betrayed her co-rulers by abusing the power of the Scion amulet for genetic experimentation. As punishment, she was locked into a stasis cell by Qualopec and Tihocan, and buried beneath the ground. The power released by the pyramid and the Scion caused a major cataclysm destroying the once powerful and advanced civilization. As a result (similar to Easter Island) the survivors lost all their knowledge and power, and had to slowly rebuild from the ground up. Centuries later Natla awoke when the cell was exposed by an atomic bomb testing in Los Alamos during the 1940s. With her cunning and knowledge she quickly became incredibly rich and powerful around the world. Having regained the power of the artefacts, Natla attempts to restore her former power with an army of genetic mutants. However, Lara manages to destroy the Scion and defeats Natla. The pyramid is destroyed along with the mutants, and the remains of the Atlantean civilization.