And all the slaves stood.
Jonathan pushed down the first button. “New slaves go into the tent and pick up the dead bodies. Bring out the dead bodies.” The eight earthborn slaves moved toward the tent and entered it.
Jonathan looked at two slaves and pushed down the second button. “You two slaves get shovels.” No slaves stirred.
“That didn’t work. Hmm.”
Jonathan placed his hand on the shoulder of the closest slave while the second button remained in the down position and said, “go get five shovels.” The slave moved toward the barracks.
Jonathan went to another slave and repeated the action and that slave went to gather five shovels. The earthborn slaves came out of the tent carrying the three dead slavers and stood still once they had crossed the portal.
“Take the dead slavers, er, new slaves take the dead slavers over there.” The slaves remained standing with their cargo.
“Okay. New slaves take the dead slavers thirty yards to your left.” With that command the earthborn slaves trudged the thirty yards with the dead Peeds. They stood still.
With a sigh, “okay drop the dead slavers.” Which the earthborn slaves did. Two slaves returned carrying five shovels apiece.
“Now, the two slaves carrying shovels take the shovels over to the new slaves.” The two slaves walked over to the new slaves.
Jonathan refined his commands with experimentation and the burial detail began its assigned chore. By the time the slaves were filling in the graves Terry came out of the transport ship telling people to back away. Bob was going to take it for a test spin.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Jonathan how many are in the ship?” asked one of Earthland security men named Tim. Tim was a bit cramped. All in the main cabin were a bit cramped. Jonathan could have had a place saved in the control cabin in the front but he felt he should be in this section if anything should go wrong. Besides he told himself Keoni and Hawk would have taken up space for four or five others. Others being the slaves.
“We only were able to take forty of the slaves and eight of the religious ones,” Jonathan replied. He had wanted to take all of the slaves but couldn’t get everyone in and leave space for Kookli and Dr. Bond and maybe few of the others.
As it was he had to leave twenty slaves in the hands of the rest of his guerilla force. He left seven to guard the slaves and the compound. They bound the twenty slaves just in case any slaver should try to control them.
Bob had found the radio communicator button and played static so the slaves in the transport ship should be unresponsive to any slaver though they didn’t think once in the air that would be possible. But why take chances?
They were flying over what once was Port McNeill heading to Johnstone Strait. The flotilla of boats carrying the Busland residents and Camp Ma people should be heading down the waterway to reach the city of Vancouver.
They were on their way to the small bay near the hamlet of Sayward. They had told Kookli, Tony Schollander and some others that they would try to reach this area by noon. If Jonathan and the others hadn’t arrived at the appointed time to use Keoni’s canoe and try for Vancouver.
The transport ship arrived there before noon. The only craft they saw was Keoni’s boat. As the ramp lowered and Jonathan came out he was greeted with, “can you talk?”
Jonathan looked around and smiled. “Yes. And I can recite poetry. If thou a fortune are bereft/ if thou dost have one sou left…”
“Okay, enough already,” said Beth as she and the others came out of hiding. Kookli was there with a big smile. Tony Schollander, Dr. Bond, Lanni with Pekele and Niko and a few of the Camp Ma residents greeted him warmly with hugs and pats on the back.
“Where’s everyone else?” asked Jonathan as he looked around in vain. Keoni, Hawk, Terry and Bob came down the ramp and they were greeted in like fashion.
“They left. They wouldn’t even stay with us,” said Bill Lorazini with a touch of bitterness.
Jonathan shrugged, “their loss. We’ll fly to Vancouver. Oh, ahm…It’s a little crowded. We have guests.”
>
Fortunately the flight to Vancouver was not long. Under forty five minutes. Jonathan had told Bob a good place to land and Bob had no problem finding the site. Mosquito Creek Park was near to where the people of Vancouver had dug into the mountain. It was near the resurrected city authority and spacious enough for a landing.
The slaves stood in formation as Jonathan commanded. No sense in doing anything more with them at present. Tony with Bill Lorazini went to establish contact with the people who had survived in Vancouver. They would relay all the information they had up to this point. Dr. Bond went with them to find surgeons and medical facilities.
They not only needed to remove the implant from Kookli but all the slaves as well. This would take time and resources.
As the transport ship disgorged its passengers the A Team, Jonathan, Turk, Keoni, Terry, Hawk and Bob prepared for flight. However, the transport ship had been sighted by the populace and excited survivors streamed down to meet them.
“Tim. You and the others do the meeting. And be sure you cover and guard the slaves. Can’t have any problems at this point. See you later today or tomorrow.” Jonathan waved and the ramp slowly shut. Once the ramp was secured Bob lifted off and headed back to Busland. They would pick up supplies. They hoped there’d be survivors who lived through the assault but weren’t too optimistic.
After that the transport would return to the compound at the cove and pick up the rest of the slaves, supplies and the rest of the guerrilla force.
By the time the transport ship returned it was late and nearing dusk. Bob had no trouble in finding the park again. The problem was there were so many people milling about that he had a hard time finding a spot to set the transport ship down.
When Jonathan walked off the ramp he was greeted by a deputation from the mayor’s office of Vancouver. Jonathan and the others shook hands with the group which consisted of a representative from the police, a representative of the mayor and one reporter. Jonathan felt comfortable with only one of them but didn’t think he’d have much time to talk with the reporter.
“That’s some ship there. What can it do?” said Thomas Catkins the mayor’s representative. McNeill was commanding the last of the slaves off the transport ship. He really liked doing it and was better at it than Jonathan.
“It can go from here to there.” Jonathan didn’t like the swarmy smile he was looking at.
“It can go to outer space?”
“Well, we’ll be in the process of finding out. We’ll keep you posted.”
Catkins looked up, “you’re not going to go up there?”
“Certainly.”
“But we need…”
“Stop. If you need something different from everyone else on the planet than go ahead and tell me. But if not…”
“But we could…”
“Stop. We’ve brought supplies and the last of the slaves. If you guys can un-slave them then we’d have some allies. We’re going to need allies or haven’t you heard about the slavers?”
“Ah, yes, we had been told. But really…”
“Stop. That’s all you need to know. We’ll let you know more when we know more. Right now I’d like to talk with Tony Schollander. Maybe he can fly one of these ships.”
“TOE NEE,” yelled Keoni.
A responding voice was heard.
“Tony,” Jonathan called out, “could you come over here?” Jonathan didn’t want to leave the proximity of the transport ship. He could see more police on the periphery and he wasn’t going to cede claim to the ship. He had plans.
“Tony,” asked Jonathan when Schollander had arrived. “Do you think you could also fly one of these babies?”
Tony smiled and nodded.
“How would you feel going into space with us?”
“You want me to fly one of these transport ships back here,” said Schollander. Catkins eyes widened a
nd his smile broadened.
“Why that’s a great idea,” said Catkins. Jonathan had to hold his tongue although he wanted to say ‘stop’ one more time. Now the Vancouver VIP’s shouldn’t be bothering him and the guerrilla force.
“It might be dangerous Tony. We don’t really know what we’ll find there.”
“I’m for it”
“You’re a good man, captain. A good man.” Catkins slapped Schollander on the back. Tony grimaced and it wasn’t from pain.
CHAPTER FIVE
“How you guys getting along?” asked Jonathan to Tony, Bob and Terry.
“Pretty good,” McNeill said. “We’ve got the navigational screen down. We think we have figured out how to pressurize the whole ship so we can carry people in the cabin.”
“How about getting into their main space ship?”
“We think we know how to do that as well. We even have a recording if they try to talk to us. It’s on a loop so we think it’s a distress signal. That way we’ll get in and won’t have to talk with anyone.” Jonathan just nodded.
“Jonathan, if we had to…”
“Well, we don’t have to go tonight. Or tomorrow maybe. Better to have a lot of knowledge so we have a very good chance of success.”
“Hmm, with three dead slavers.” Terry said, “maybe we don’t want to wait too long…” the radio communicator of the transport kicked in. They heard some type of language coming over it.
“Shit. That’s them calling I bet,” said Terry. The others nodded. No one was willing to take that bet.
“Well…” Terry and Bob looked to Jonathan.
Jonathan shrugged, “let’s saddle…enough with the military shit. Let’s go up.”
>
There were two teams flying up to the space ship with Tony Schollander in the cockpit to see how Bob was piloting the transport.
The transport contained the A team and the B team. Outside of Keoni, Hawk, Big John and Tony Schollander all were dressed as slaves. They each had one addition. They carried two ray guns.
They had no idea what powered the ray guns and they didn’t want to be using one when it ran out of juice, sort to speak. Tony and the B team were to secure a second transport ship and fly out.
The guerrilla force had discussed the possibility of the B team waiting for the A team as backup but there was no secure way to communicate with each other. Without communication it was deemed to risky for the B team to wait. The B team would leave once Tony Schollander, a captain once again, had the mastered the controls.
Since Tony had sat in during the learning session with Terry and Bob it was thought it would not take Tony long.
Bob flew the transport ship with superb skill. Once up at ten thousand feet he tilted the ship up and engaged the main engines. Everyone was strapped in but the shock of acceleration and the corresponding g force was incredibly intense. Two passed out and someone or two vomited.
It surprised Jonathan how fast they reached the Karman line. The theoretical boundary between earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Once they were seventy five miles above the planet they were effectively in outer space. Most felt a little ill and some were quite ill but by this time they had some sense of the physical effects and were ready for the mission.
Another surprise was the sighting of the larger space ship. Hardly had they gone into outer space when they sighted the space craft. Bob piloted the transport ship towards it. It grew in size as they approached. It got bigger and bigger still.
“Well, Jonathan. It’s not the Enterprise.”
The problem now was to find the entrance into the ship. As they approached the ship, and no way for any of them to distinguish direction, they cruised along the mid-ship area.
The space ship was elongated and looked from the side like a flattened football. They assumed they were seeing it at its side. Bob headed toward what they thought would be the rear of the ship.
They were pretty confident that the space ship had no weapons. Unlike the sci-fi genre whether in print or on the screen which portrayed space as a haven for multitudinous beings the reality was there was little chance for many life forms mastering space travel.
One thing that got Jonathan in trouble was his contention that our species, sentient Homo Sapiens, are in one way very unique. It took most of earth’s history of its billions of years to create through cause and affect our human race. The cause was a series of global catastrophes to finally produce man.
Had any catastrophe been of a different magnitude or in a different order the result would probably not be Homo Sapiens. Some other bi-ped perhaps but not us, man, Homo Sapien. In the billions of years in the life of our planet man emerged only a couple hundred thousand years ago.
What got Jonathan into further trouble was he could no longer accept Darwinian evolution. It just wasn’t science. He knew science could not actually validate the theory. Only the gradualists supported it which is not the same thing and this smacked of ideology to Dr. Prezlee.
Biologists had failed for nearly one hundred fifty years to validate Darwinian evolution. The only chance geneticists had, the human genome project, was also a failure for science to validate Darwinian evolution and creationism was an ideology and in no way scientific. Prezlee wondered if perhaps mutations, selective mutations, were the result from global catastrophes which bombarded our planet with types of radiation. It was possible all mutations which created the different species and differing DNA occurred through the agency of global catastrophes.
In fact, the completion of the human genome project ended what hopes the gradualists had to show science could and did confirm Darwinian evolution as scientifically valid. The genome project ended long before schedule. They assumed the human genome had to contain three hundred thousand genes to validate Darwinian evolution. they only found less than one tenth, twenty-eight thousand genes and change, which confirmed the project as a way for science to validate Darwinian evolution was a failure..
Yet for some odd reason, at least odd to Jonathan, people showed incredible willingness to accept whatever a ‘scientist’ proclaimed. He understood why scientists accepted gradualism but not non-scientists.
When Jonathan had been forced to a gag order while no discussion or even scientific examination of his observations of El Capitan in Yosemite occurred he had developed a strong understanding why s those with degrees had to accept the company line.
If the students in graduate programs did not accept blindly and with faith the ideologies of Darwinian evolution or gradualism they would never be allowed to finish their degree.
It was as simple as that. Conform and be a part of the team, question and you’re gone.
It was Jonathan’s opinion that man cannot truly know what reality is. Two hundred years ago man knew more than those three hundred years ago. One hundred years ago man knew more than those two hundred years ago and we know yet more today. Isn’t it possible that man will know more than us in one hundred years? In two hundred years? So why would anyone think there could any theory developed by man that would be one hundred percent correct? Or even mostly correct.
And as for gradualism, the theory was proposed by a lawyer, Charles Lyell, in the early 1830s. Not only wasn’t he a scientist, but science didn’t really exist then. Not as it is understood today. There was no sense of scientific ethics for instance nor was examination and thought based on the scientific method as has been formulated.
Therefore, Jonathan never assumed any theory could be considered a truism especially if it did not explain the phenomena of nature, reality. Scientific evidence did not support gradualism no matter how much those with degrees believed in it and taught it in their bully pulpits. And that was a crux of the matter. Gradualism was a belief system, an ideology.
But his detractors had asserted scientists supported it so it must be scientific. Jonathan pointed out that scientists had also supported phrenology, the master race and other egregious theories. There had scientists who supported racial distin
ctions and placed certain peoples in ‘sub’ categories. German scientists had once thought ‘racial’ Germans were a master race. Jonathan knew it wasn’t just illogic. Preconceived biases gain ascendancy in academia as well as anywhere else.
What are student to do? They are on class at an early age to absorb and not to question. Students must accept and remember what has been taught or they will not pass the tests. If you do not pass the tests you cannot get into graduate school. If you don’t get an advanced degree one cannot work in the field.
Students are human and few will go against the majority. Even if they had begun their education with an open mind the schooling each receives forces the student to conform. It is in the most part subtle. Most students just want to do well and graduate so they can get the job suitable to their interests.
There is conformity in the curriculum. There is conformity to listen to the professor to get good grades. There is conformity in what the professor teaches and no professor can teach anything other than gradualism. They wouldn’t be allowed a teaching position or would lose one if they even mentioned other possible theories. There’s a certain kind of tacit peer pressure to conform and no job awaits those who do not conform. There is also the overall acculturation which makes non-scientists and would-be scientists conform to the prevailing belief.
Even worse, if someone does question gradualism people with degrees in science will become surprisingly angry and contentious, incredibly defensive and accusatory. Many will lash out and attack the debunker with a harshness only reserved for the most heinous enemies.
Once Jonathan achieved his degree and a position in Mexico for Pemex to survey possible sites for exploration of oil deposits he wrote articles. He just wanted to establish discussions. Prezlee never thought he was infallible and he could be wrong. So he wrote about the two major holes in the theory of gradualism. Mountain building and the frozen mammoths. (*A short essay regarding the frozen mammoths of which Charles Darwin himself was made to comment on can be read at the end of the novel.)
Although there were peers who were interested in his articles he could not get widely published nor placed in any of the major journals.