Chronicles of the Flying Dolphin

It was not the rainy season, but a fierce storm had begun to unleash it's fury. Her highness and her lover would have looked like nothing more than sheets of rain amid the sheets of rain had anyone been around to see them. They explored an hammock in search of delicacies. Kristal wanted Fractal to smoke her a "tailgator," and he had promised her Terran mangoes.

Odd how the seemingly pregnant fruit could defy gravity on it's tiny stem while the far smaller raindrops were speeding beyond terminal velocity. Kristal stuffed ripe mangoes into the cargo pockets of her steel grey BDU's until she appeared to have more than a dozen breasts.

Fractal commented on this, squeezing the fruit through her jacket and inquiring,

"Which ones are mangoes and which ones are you, Goddess?"

Back inside the ship, dried and naked, they watched as though hypnotized as the meaty alligator tail roasted in the fireplace along with the boar they had speared that morning.

After polishing and putting away Trauma and Terror, Fractal peeled and sliced mangoes and fed them to Kristal from the tip of a dagger. In turn she poured the half and half mixture of Perrier Juliet and fresh squeezed orange juice between the swash-buckling spaceman's thirsty lips.

As they feasted and fondled a disturbing "beep" issued from the media link. Then another. Then more in rapid succession. A smuggler? This area was a favorite for guns, drugs and political refugees. Or perhaps a Natural Park zep skirting the storm? I.N.S.? D.E.A.? K.G.B.? Whoever it was, they were in real danger of being blasted out of this reality if they popped within visual range; Fractal and Kristal could not risk detection - even though they had nothing to hide. The beeps grew farther apart, though, as whoever it was had taken a tangent course to the pirettes' position.

Their attention having been diverted from the foods, the Privateer slipped in a C.D. of Jimi Hendrix' Electric Ladyland and crumbled an Home grown bud of gold and purple pipe weed from a tin labeled, "T. H. Ceedless."

They were to lay low for a while. It was three days before summer's solstice - when Xero and the Lillies were to arrive from the Sector. The life-long friends waited well together; they feasted on yucca, roasted pig, alligator tail, largemouth bass, mangoes, oranges, and such a wide variety of wild foods that it was difficult to imagine that people on this planet were forced by their governments and religions to quite literally die of starvation.

They played chess. They fenced with each other in the sawgrass. They polished their weapons. And they made love repeatedly under the magnificent starscapes and cloud formations of the ancient everglades.

When the storm broke it's aid in their concealment went with it. And the customary stifling heat returned. So did the insects. For the remainder of their stay at this pre-arranged rendezvous spot they would have to make love inside the ship.

They were not merely on an holiday, though. There was serious business at hand.

An hundred kilometers to the east lay the sprawling Miami-Hollyweird-Fort Liquordale megalopolis with all of it's inherent vices. But here in the Natural Park there was no indication at all of the rape civilization had perpetrated on this planet. If all went according to plan, this entire world would soon be well on the way to recovery from the assault it had suffered at the hands of human societies.

States and nations had long since politically devolved into bureaucratic theocracies. From the most liberal republics to the most fundamental rightists, they were one and all alike in the firm grasp of the one true god. Or Goddess. Whatever.

Ideologic superstition ruled the day. Popular opinion was the divine will of Allah, Buddha, Charlie, God, Jah, Jesus, or le diety du jour. Shaman ran unopposed for life terms. And Fractal read aloud to Kristal from Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough.

It might take a few centuries to bring the necessary changes about, but the Privateer was in no hurry. Anyway, they had already succeeded in scheduling the first Great Conference.

The League of Islamic States had refused to attend, as they were back at the old jihad with new fervor... and new chemical weapons sent by Allah. But the European Protestant Alliance was well represented, as were the Israeli Coalition and the Holy Roman Empire. There was a fair contingent from the Zen Empire, and almost as many delegates from the Hindu-Sikh Accord. Circulating freely among the North American Council of Agnostic Nomads were several High Priests and Priestesses from the Rasta-Caribbean Caucus. I mean, really High.

As you might expect, the International Fundamentalist Evangelical Believers and Doers of the Will of the One True God, Inc. were represented by several thousands of their heirerarchy, spilling far over the allotted seating and occupying more than a third of the enormous hall. Outside, more of their ordained congregation crowded the streets, praying quite loudly in unknown tongues against all the other "false" faiths.

Never in modern times had such an assemblage of political power taken place. The assembly hall of the Undivided Planet Headquarters - unused for more than two centuries, now - was more resplendent than a drunken god's own imagination with the great diversity of robes and headdresses and armor.

Atlantis, Australia, Borneo, California, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Florida, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Sicily, Sri Lanka and Switzerland - i.e. the twelve neutralities - were each represented by three scientists. Serene in their robes of rare cotton, these sixteen men and twenty women had governed the entire planet's use of sciences after having ended the genocide the theocracies had waged against the world's android and clone populations.

During those black years of the Genetic Wars, even natural children which had been conceived en vitro had been forced into hard labor at the many "camps" that had proliferated.

Since then, it had been made planetary policy that the worship and speculation of the "heavens" would be the realm of the political powers, but the actual use of the heavens - or, as the scientists still called it, "Space" - would fall exclusively into the hands of the neutralities.