After the Peace, a story

By Chad Wozniak

After the Peace is set far away in space and time, on Armonea, a very Earth-like planet with many parallels to our own world. The story begins in the year 967 T.A. (for Toi xi Amou, "After the Peace" in the planet's language), after a peace settlement which had finally ended thousands of years of uninterrupted conflict on Armonea. The peace has lasted this long, but when previously unacquainted recent high school graduates Mary and John begin their first travels abroad, they will suddenly be thrown together in circumstances they would never have imagined – caught up in revolution and war.
This is a fast-paced story filled with true heroes, ugly villains, suspense, dramatic action, heart-rending tragedy – and tender romance as Mary and John quickly take each other's measure. It is a portrayal in depth of character, courage and love – and their opposites, venality, cowardice and hatred. And it is a truly multi-dimensional love story, not just the two main characters but also their families and the people they meet on a long journey through adversity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chad Wozniak
• Release date: Mar 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310602832

Chad Wozniak

Chad Wozniak was born in Santa Barbara, California, in 1947. He holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Southern California. He has taught history at the university level and has held senior management positions in several companies. He has published articles in historical and business journals. His principal avocation, besides writing, is composing contemporary classical music. He lives with his wife of 23 years, Mabeleen Wozniak, in Florida.

Book preview

Chapter 1

It was a long ways off in space and time. The planet Armonea, companion to the star Morazu, had known peace for nearly a thousand years. But in the year 967 T.A., After the Peace, of the calendar dating from the day when many millennia of conflict finally came to an end, the peoples of Armonea suddenly found themselves once again in turmoil.

Armonea was very similar to Earth – of almost the same size at a diameter of 7,814 miles, and at 95 million miles, just slightly farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. Morazu was a yellow main-sequence star nearly identical in size, temperature and energy output to the Sun. In order going outward from the parent star, Armonea was the third of four terrestrial planets out of a total of ten planets in the Morazu system.

Armonea had one big satellite, Lelina, rather larger than Earth's Moon at 3,148 miles in diameter, and closer to the mother planet – only 180,000 miles away, compared to the Moon's 240,000 miles. There was a second, much smaller moon, Themis, 400 miles across and farther away, at 420,000 miles. Lelina took slightly over nineteen days to circle Armonea, compared to the Moon's twenty-nine days. Themis completed its orbit in about seventy days.

Like Earth, Armonea had continents and salty oceans, but there was somewhat more land in proportion to water than on Earth. Two large continents, the Western and Eastern Continents, accounted for the bulk of the land area. A small Southern Continent surrounded the planet's south pole, and another, still smaller landmass called Heligoland lay to the southeast of the Eastern Continent.

Both the north and south poles of Armonea were on land and were free of permanent ice cover. Unlike Antarctica on Earth, the Southern Continent had only limited areas of glaciation, perhaps two hundred thousand square miles out of a total area of about five million square miles. There was another, lesser icecap in the far north of the Western Continent.

While its outline and dimensions otherwise resembled Earth's North and South America, the width of the Western Continent narrowed only to about two hundred miles at its midsection. Similarly, the Eastern Continent corresponded generally in shape to Eurasia and Africa, but its southwestern quarter was joined to the north and east by a much wider stretch of land than the Sinai Peninsula that links Africa to the Middle East.

However, there was a sizable, nearly landlocked sea, the Middle Sea, rather like Earth's Mediterranean Sea, lying between the northwestern and southwestern regions of the Eastern Continent. While there were a goodly number of large islands lying close to continental shores, Armonea had only a few small, isolated oceanic islands far from any of the continents, unlike the thousands of them on Earth.

Armonea had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and climate much like Earth's, but barometric pressure at sea level there was a little higher at about 1,200 millibars, compared to Earth's 1,014 millibars. It was generally subject to fewer extremes of temperature and weather than on Earth. However, at thirty degrees Armonea's axis of rotation was considerably more inclined to its orbit than Earth's, which made for distinct seasons everywhere on it.

A year on Armonea began on the day of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. As they are on Earth, the seasons were reversed south of the equator. The length of day on Armonea differed from Earth's by only a few minutes, but there were three hundred and eighty-eight days in an Armonea year. There were twenty Lelina-months, each of nineteen or twenty days, to the year, based upon the orbital period of the moon Lelina.

The people, animal life and vegetation on Armonea would have looked very much like Earth's – so much so that it would be easy to think of the bipedal, clothes-wearing, super-intelligent dominant species there as human, and many of the other life forms in earthly terms.

The land was mostly fertile, with less desert area than on Earth. Armonea was blessed with abundant natural resources and a rich, diverse biosphere. Economically accessible supplies of fossil fuels had long since been depleted, but not before other technologies had advanced to the point where all nations on the planet could meet their energy needs entirely and cheaply with high-yield biomass crops and hydrogen.

Health conditions on Armonea were nothing short of ideal. Pollution of the atmosphere and waters was almost entirely eliminated. All communicable diseases and infectious microorganisms and parasites had long since been wiped out, by universal immunization or through genetic engineering which rendered the causative microbes harmless. This had been achieved for domestic animals and wildlife as well as people.

There were effective cures for malignancies. Advanced chemotherapy and biotherapy could eliminate tumors entirely and permanently without surgery. Drug and alcohol abuse was virtually unknown, and there was nothing on Armonea that corresponded to tobacco on Earth. Unless afflicted with heart disease, almost anyone could reasonably expect to live for a hundred and fifty years or more.

At the time our story begins, in the year 967 T.A., the land area of Armonea was divided up among some sixty nations: nine on the Western Continent, thirty-six on the Eastern Continent, three on large islands off the shores of the Eastern Continent, seven on the Southern Continent, Heligoland which occupied the whole of its continent, and four oceanic island states. The combined total population of all these countries as of the year 967 was only a little over fifty million – incomparably less than the seven billion people in Earth's more than two hundred nation states – and had increased hardly at all for centuries.

The nation of Kentasland, where our story begins, was situated in the north-central section of the Western Continent, spanning the distance between the Western and Eastern Oceans. It was made up of nineteen provinces and was the most populous country on Armonea, with ten million inhabitants, and also was the most prosperous. While conditions of real poverty and want had been unknown anywhere on Armonea since soon after the Peace, Kentasland's wealth stood out as exceptional. With only a fifth of the planet's population, Kentasland's economy accounted for half of the gross product of Armonea.

Chapter 2

Their names were Minsey and Erracs, but I will call them Mary and John. They were teenagers who lived in the town of Barbarena in the province of Calabree on the west coast of Kentasland. The municipality of Barbarena stretched for twenty miles along the south-central shore of Calabree. It had about two hundred thousand inhabitants in one large and several smaller urban areas. Barbarena was in many ways an idyllic place to grow up, quiet and widely known for the beauty of the city and its surroundings. Life had been good for Mary and John.

Calabree was one of the most scenic provinces of Kentasland, and had the largest population with three million in an area roughly the size of California. Three of the four largest cities of Kentasland were in the province. The biggest city, Hovertos, south of Barbarena, had just over a million residents, while Zama to the north held four hundred thousand and Ecuadoria farther south counted three hundred thousand people. The province had a solid, thriving agricultural and industrial establishment. And as with the west coasts of North America and Europe on Earth, the climate of Calabree was moderated by its proximity to the Western Ocean and was milder than that of the inland provinces to the east.

To the north of Calabree was Kentasland's northwesternmost province of Olumpi, and to the east and northeast were the little enclaves of Pincol and Salo and the larger territories of Azorin, Valda and Wyan. North of Olumpi were the nations of Norhland in the far west, and Camaraland stretching eastward along the northern frontier of Kentasland from the Norhland border to the Eastern Ocean and north to the north polar region. Since Norhland was directly adjacent to Olumpi, Camaraland had no Western Ocean shore.

South of Calabree and Azorin lay the nation of Penkeshaw, and to the east and south of Penkeshaw there was the larger state of Pentaw, which also bordered on Azorin and the next province of Kentasland to the east, Tejas. Pentaw extended southeasterly almost to the equator of Armonea, joining to the next country to the south, Palombia, by the broad strip of land that connected the northern and southern halves of the Western Continent. While there was no narrow isthmus analogous to Panama between the two Americas, an extensive system of canals had been dug across southern Pentaw to connect the Western and Eastern Oceans, substantially shortening the shipping routes between the east and west coasts of Kentasland and of the southern half of the Western Continent. Together, Kentasland, Norhland, Camaraland, Penkeshaw and Pentaw occupied the entire northern half of the Western Continent.

In consequence of the small total population of Kentasland, spread out over an area larger than that of the continental United States, there were extensive regions with few towns or inhabitants and great distances between settlements, much like outback Australia. And as in Australia, most of the population of Calabree was concentrated in the coastal areas, with only a few towns of any size farther inland.

In their young lives Mary and John had already traveled extensively throughout Kentasland's western provinces. At various times they also had taken trips through the provinces of Zandria, Forlia, Ximenes and Wea, located on the southeastern and east coasts of Kentasland, and to the national capital at Ximeno and the eastern metropolis of Yiork. Their families, like almost every family in Kentasland, were easily able to afford their travel expenses. It was customary for parents to take and send their young people off on journeys of discovery as soon as they were old enough to go.

And now it happened that at the age of eighteen Mary and John were making their first excursions across the Eastern Ocean to the Eastern Continent at almost the same time, at the beginning of the Lelina-month of Diout, the tenth lunar period of the year 967 T.A. They both arrived by ship at the port of Yalbury, in Moraland, the large island nation lying close by the northwest coast of the Eastern Continent, a few days apart. Their plans included almost identical itineraries that would take them all the way across the Eastern Continent to the nation of Shamo, which faced the Western Ocean across from Calabree, and continuing to Cipangu, another island state off the coast there.

Chapter 3

Moraland was the usual first stop for tourists traveling to the Eastern Continent from Kentasland. Its capital city, Donlond, was Armonea's largest metropolis outside Kentasland, with a population of about seven hundred fifty thousand. Only Hovertos and Yiork had more people. The city was distinguished by graceful architecture, much of which dated back to the era before the Peace, even before explorers from Moraland and some of the other countries on the western littoral of the Eastern Continent — Wermland, Esplandian, Andalu and Lusitana — set sail to discover and settle the Western Continent. Sailors from Moraland were the first to arrive on the then-uninhabited shores of the Western Continent, five thousand years before the Peace. It was an epochal part of the history of Armonea in their time.

Moraland was still thought of as the cultural heartland of Armonea. Its language had become the world language, now called Armoniia – a word pronounced with a tone pattern different from that of the name of the planet, but otherwise the same. It was spoken, read and written by everyone on Armonea.

Mary and John each planned to spend a few weeks exploring the city of Donlond and touring Moraland before proceeding on to Wermland and to the other countries on the mainland of the Eastern Continent. There was lots to see in Donlond and in the surrounding smaller cities to the north, east and west of the capital city, most notably at Lindum, the second largest city in Moraland. Situated sixty miles northeast of Donlond, Lindum had been the original capital of Moraland. It was the first town to be settled in the country, by adventurers coming from the interior of the Eastern Continent.

The rural landscape all over Moraland was particularly beautiful, with farm fields neatly marked out by hedges and stone walls. There were any number of ancient country houses to see and visit there, and there were tabernacles and temples and monuments memorializing various episodes in Moraland's past. You could travel from one small town to another in the countryside and stay at a different historic inn every night. Distances were short, unlike in the broad expanses of Kentasland. Roads and railways were in excellent shape, and it was equally easy and inexpensive to go by automobile, bus or train.

Chapter 4

Wermland was a short trip by boat from Yalbury in Moraland, across the shallow Chamin Channel which separated the island country from the mainland. Going eastward from Wermland at the western edge of the Eastern Continent, the next country was Baria, along the southern shore of a long, narrow, sinuous body of water called the Mother of Oceans. Like the Middle Sea, the Mother of Oceans extended a long ways inland with gulfs and bays branching from it. It got its name from very early times, when only the area to the east of it was yet inhabited by people. When it was discovered that it opened out into the vastly larger Eastern Ocean, the people drew an analogy with the womb – as though the Mother of Oceans had given birth to the Eastern Ocean.

After Baria, continuing east along the Mother of Oceans, the traveler came through the lands of Pomora and Ponoma, and then to Yuhall. Yuhall was much the largest in area of all the nations of Armonea. It extended all the way east and northeastward to the borders of Shamo and Monclova, the easternmost and northeasternmost lands of the continent. North of the Mother of Oceans there was Elvland, which had the largest territory of the nations to the west of Yuhall on the northwestern corner of the Eastern Continent. And to the northeast, above Ponoma and along an inlet of the Mother of Oceans across from Elvland and west of Yuhall, was the smaller state of Lettia.

Like Moraland, Wermland had a delightful and beautiful capital city, Lutia. Lutia was known for its art museums and historic architecture, different from that in Donlond but equally magnificent. Mary would be especially taken with the musicians who played outdoors daily in the city's grand central plaza, the Elisaio. For his part John was relishing the fabulous cuisine which you found everywhere in Wermland and especially in Lutia. The weather was fine almost all the time they were in Wermland, which added to the pleasure of their stays there.

But then, after three happy weeks based in Lutia, from where they were easily able to explore a good deal of the Wermland countryside on side trips, Mary and John – still not yet having met – coincidentally boarded the same train for Qvedlin, the capital of Baria.

Baria was a much more austere and subdued place than Moraland or Wermland, but it did have things of interest to see and do. The country was famous for the number of ancient castles situated atop high rock outcroppings in various parts of the land. Heavily wooded over most of its territory, Baria was known for making household furniture, wooden utensils, children's toys and paper products. But the traveler would notice immediately on arriving in Baria that while there were no signs of poverty, the standard of living there was distinctly lower than in Moraland or Wermland, and lower still in comparison with Kentasland. Life in Baria was definitely less lively than in the lands to the west.

Baria had been the last of the aggressor states to be finally overcome and defeated in the series of wars that preceded the Peace from which Armonea's calendar was dated. Almost a thousand years had passed since that time, but memories were long on both sides of the great battles, and people in Wermland and Moraland particularly were yet mistrustful of Baria. For their part the people of Baria still seemed to suffer from an inferiority complex, although there had never been a repetition of the internal political missteps that had led Baria to attack its neighbors, and Baria's people were widely regarded as the best educated of all the inhabitants of Armonea.

Chapter 5

The anxiety gripping the city of Ximeno, capital of Kentasland, was unprecedented – entirely unknown since anyone could remember. But it was very much for real. The news coming in as to the political situation in Yuhall was as disturbing as it could be.

Having experienced no warfare since the Peace, none of the nations of Armonea had maintained regular standing armed forces for centuries. The only armed agencies that national and local governments had were the police, and their numbers had been declining steadily because of the longtime negligible crime rate anywhere on Armonea.

In Kentasland, the police forces in all nineteen provinces together amounted to fewer than two thousand officers – less than one for every five thousand inhabitants. They spent very little time fighting crime. Most of their work consisted of responding to accidents, directing traffic at events, helping people in difficulties. A similar situation obtained for the other nations of Armonea. None of them had any armed force larger in proportion to their populations than Kentasland's police. But lately in Yuhall, there were indications that this could be about to change.

There had been agitation in Yuhall for some time over the fact that its economy was not functioning as smoothly and efficiently as was the case in the countries to the west, even Baria, Pomora and Ponoma, all of which were much less affluent than the lands farther west. It seemed that Yuhall's manufacturing and agriculture were falling behind in competition with products offered by other nations. At a number of Yuhall's biggest business enterprises employees were having to take pay cuts and unpaid time off work, and there was concern that actual layoffs might be unavoidable. Unemployment had been a seldom thing anywhere on Armonea since the Peace, but it was increasingly in prospect now in Yuhall.

Until now the complaining had been limited to some angry correspondence between the government and some of the leaders among the complainers. While the opposition forces loudly paraded their jealousy of the wealth and prosperity of countries like Moraland, Wermland and Kentasland, they had as yet made no overt threats to act on their grievances.

But all at once, during the last few days of Diopenut, the twelfth Lelina-month of 967 T.A., intelligence had come to the Kentasland authorities in Ximeno and to Kentasland's embassies abroad of conspiracies by opposition leaders in Yuhall to raise an armed force and take control of the country. Since this might mean that Yuhall would have the only effective military on Armonea, and given the attitude evidenced by the dissenters, every other nation on the planet could well be in mortal danger. It was all too clear that the plotters were counting on the lack of any effective means of stopping them from seizing power in Yuhall, or from embarking on a campaign of conquest against Ponoma and Lettia – and likely other neighboring states as well.

The news from Yuhall was an ominous reminder of how it had been in the centuries before the Peace, of the fear and paranoia and despair that had befallen Armonea during those bad times. No one in countries like Kentasland wanted to see those circumstances return. What the Yuhall dissenters were apparently preparing to do could undo all the accomplishments and prosperity and mutual goodwill among nations that had been building so successfully for so long.

Chapter 6

On the nineteenth and last day of Diopenut, Lelina-month twelve – also the day that the worst news to date of events in Yuhall was received at home in Kentasland – Mary and John again departed by the same train from the city of Qvedlin, capital of Baria, bound for Pomora. After a three-day stop in Pomora's small capital city of Toruñ, they both continued on to Ponoma, the next land on their way east.

Taking the same train a third time, and still not yet having met, Mary and John were expecting to stay in Praga, Ponoma's capital, for a few weeks to catch a little respite from the fast pace of their travels thus far on the Eastern Continent, and they were planning to make the city their base for touring Ponoma's scenic locales – the country had many places of historical interest and much natural beauty to see. Having heard nothing of the troubling situation that was unfolding in Yuhall, which bordered on Ponoma immediately to the east, neither Mary nor John was apprehensive about coming to Ponoma. But that would not be the case for long.

The first warning came when their train suddenly stopped in the middle of the night, shortly after crossing the frontier from Pomora into Ponoma. The train stayed stopped for several hours, and the conductors in each car warned the passengers not to leave their compartments. Instructions to get dressed came over the train's public address system. Then, for the first time Mary and John would see police on their travels, a squad of Ponoma policemen made their way through the sleeping car, knocking on compartment doors. Mary's roomette was kitty-corner across the aisle from John's, and now they saw each other for the first time as the officers summoned them to open their doors.

The policemen were asking the passengers to identify themselves and tell them their nationalities. They particularly wanted to know which passengers were from Kentasland and Moraland. This came as a great surprise to every traveler on the train. Never in anyone's experience had they been asked to do this. In a peaceful world without restrictions on travel or immigration, it simply had never been necessary to keep tabs on the movements of citizens of any of Armonea's nations.

Chapter 7

As Mary's and John's eyes met after the doors to their compartments were opened, John said, Isn't this weird? What do you make of it?

Mary said, I suppose there could be some kind of difficulty ahead on the railway, but I've never seen the police doing this sort of thing, and they certainly didn't do this on the trains I was on from Wermland to Baria and Pomora when they had to stop a few times.

John said, No, you're right about that – they didn't. From what you say, I'm guessing we might have been on the same trains from Lutia to Qvedlin and Qvedlin to Toruñ, because the trains I was on did stop a couple of times for something on the tracks. Do you suppose there's been some news we haven't been getting? I haven't heard anything about any kind of trouble. But I also can't imagine that they would be doing this if it was merely some problem with the railway or the train. Something else must be going on, and I don't like the look of this somehow. By the way, I'm John.

Mary said, Glad to meet you, John. My name's Mary. I'm from Barbarena, in Calabree. My dad made all my travel arrangements ahead of time, and I came on the ship to Moraland and then over to Lutia from there. I've been going just by myself. How about you? Is anyone with you on the trip?

John replied, No, I'm by myself, too. What a coincidence! I'm from Barbarena myself. How is it that we never ran into each other before this? I gather you've also just graduated — where did you go to high school?

Mary said, Turnpike — did you go to Milpas? I never got to know many kids who went to Milpas High, on the other side of town and all.

John answered, Yes, I did go to Milpas, but I thought I knew quite a few guys and girls from Turnpike High. Well, this is a nice surprise – it's really nice meeting you, someone from my own home town so far away from home. As John spoke, he was noticing more and more how attractive and pretty Mary was. For her part Mary was finding John appealing as well. He was so good-looking, and had such a pleasant, unaffected manner about him.

By this time the Ponoma police had left the car, and suddenly, without any announcement or warning, the train began moving jerkily forward. Not for long. After another mile or so, the train halted again, and a few minutes later the policemen came back into Mary and John's car.

One of the officers said to them, Are you the kids from Kentasland? Come with me. We'll have your baggage taken off the train and brought with you.

Mary and John looked at each other, and John said, Well, I guess we have to do as they're telling us. I don't think we want any trouble. John turned to the policeman and said, Can we have a few minutes to get our things together and get a few things to bring with us now?

The officer was courteous but definite in his manner. He said, All right, but don't take too long. We have to take you by bus to a hotel in Praga where everybody from Kentasland and Moraland will be staying for the time being.

John asked, Why? What's the trouble? Did we do something wrong?

The policeman answered, No – you didn't do anything, it's nothing like that. It's for your safety. I'm not at liberty to talk about it.

Chapter 8

On the evening of the eighteenth day of Diopenut, the day before Mary and John boarded their train in Baria for Pomora, the two ringleaders of the opposition in Yuhall, Nenil and Nilast, were sitting in the kitchen of Nenil's tiny apartment in a suburb on the outskirts of Beloozero, the capital of Yuhall. They were poring over a map of the city, spread out on the kitchen table.

On the map were highlighted in yellow the locations of Beloozero's most important buildings — the parliament house, the government administrative offices, the city hall, the police station, the telephone exchange, the city's two television and three radio broadcasting stations, the computer center, and the central control facilities for the city's water, electric and hydrogen fuel utilities. All of these buildings were located along two major streets which intersected at a square in the center of Beloozero called the Kraznoy Circus, within two city blocks of the square. A short distance farther from the Kraznoy Circus were the bus depot, the railway station and the airport shuttle service terminal — also marked in yellow on Nenil's map.

Nenil said, Look here, we're going to have to cover these points at least, as he pointed to the yellowed places on the map for the police and railway stations, the telephone exchange and the broadcast center. If we can take those over and knock out the city police first, it will be impossible for the government to call for help to the populace and to bring other police in from out in the country to fight us. Nenil was describing the same strategy that was used by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution on Earth in 1917 — with frightening efficiency — to seize control of Petrograd, the Russian capital, and overthrow the regime of Alexander Kerensky.

Nenil went on, We shouldn't need more than about fifty men to overrun the police station. There are only about twenty police on duty there at any given time, and we will be better armed than they are. He pointed to the yellow markings on the map for the railway station and broadcast center, and said, We'll only need a handful of people to occupy these other places, and then once we have them in our grasp it will be easy to grab the other government buildings and the utility control center. He grinned maliciously at Nilast and asked him, How many guys have you got lined up and trained and armed now?

Nilast said, I've already got four hundred and fifty, which should be more than enough for us to control both Beloozero and the other towns of any size in the west of the country. That's almost twice as many as there are police in the entire western half of the country. We should also have plenty of soldiers to make our moves against Ponoma and Lettia very soon. Neither of those countries has anywhere near enough armed people to be able to hold us off as of right now, and I'm expecting to enlist at least another several hundred troops within the next few days.

Nenil asked, How about our agents in Ponoma and Lettia? What is Flado doing? Has he been able to get anybody signed on in Ponoma? Flado was a fifth columnist in Ponoma, a citizen of that country yet now a traitor in the service of enemies of his country. He had been unsuccessful at recruiting accomplices within Ponoma, but he had planted several men from Yuhall in Praga who were preparing to commit acts of sabotage against the infrastructure in Ponoma. Unfortunately, because everybody in both countries spoke the same Armoniia language with no noticeable difference in their accents from place to place, it was easy to pass yourself off as being from Ponoma even though you were actually from Yuhall.

Flado is ready to go, Nilast said. He has the things ready to disrupt rail service into and out of Praga, and he has his people there to cut off the city's water and fuel supplies. He's also getting some men to go into the electric power plant and take it out.

What Nenil, Nilast and Flado surely didn't know was that their conspiring had been overheard all along by technicians and agents in Kentasland, using the new spy satellite technology that could pick up spoken conversations anywhere down on the surface of Armonea. The people who were monitoring the satellites didn't have to intercept transmissions by telephone or radiophone, but could listen directly to the voices of those talking even if they were indoors.

The satellites had been designed some years before as a search and rescue tool to enable prompt responses to accidents on the highways or other medical emergencies in remote areas of Kentasland, but they were now coming in very handy as eavesdropping devices in a situation like this. The increasing forewarnings of trouble in Yuhall had prompted the authorities in Kentasland to recognize this potential of the satellites and use them for that purpose.

And what Nenil didn't know, but the eavesdroppers in Kentasland and Moraland already knew, was that Nilast and Flado were planning to kill him. It was generally recognized that Nilast was the nastier of the two of them, Nenil and himself, so this was not a good prospect. If anything, Nenil had been trying to go slower about their plotting than Nilast was happy with.

But Nilast's and Flado's plans were soon overtaken by other events. On the third day of Diodrout, the thirteenth Lelina-month of the year 967 T.A., the same day that Mary and John boarded their eastbound train to Praga in Toruñ, Nenil died suddenly of heart failure — one of the few maladies still occurring on Armonea that medical science there had not yet been able to prevent or cure entirely. He was only fifty-four Armonea years old, which was very young to die there.

On hearing of Nenil's fatal moment, Nilast sneered, Well, I won't have to deal with that weakling any more. He's taken care of himself so I don't have to. Nilast used the feminine gender of the Armoniia verb to refer to Nenil – a highly insulting way to speak to or of someone, effectively calling a male a female.

Nilast lost no time after Nenil's death. That very night one of Flado's henchmen from Yuhall planted a powerful bomb on the railway tracks west of Praga. The bomb exploded shortly after midnight, cutting the rail line and taking down the overhead power cable and forcing the train carrying Mary and John to stop.

Chapter 9

On learning of the railway bombing in Ponoma, the authorities in Kentasland immediately called for a conference of the Western Continent and Southern Continent nations. Representatives of all of the other nations of the northern half of the Western Continent – Camaraland, Norhland, Penkeshaw and Pentaw – and from the southern part, Palombia, Brasa, Ushia and Viñadel – were expected to arrive in Ximeno at any moment.

The ambassadors from the seven Southern Continent countries were already holding a conference in Ximeno to work out details of airline service and trade matters with the Kentasland government. The legation from Oawland, which was the current chair of the Southern Continent Association of Nations, took the lead in summoning and assembling the diplomats from the other six Southern Continent lands – Weddeland, Hortenseland, Samland, Wilkesland, Rossland and Marieland, in order going east around the continent from Oawland.

More envoys from Moraland and Wermland were also already on airplanes en route to Kentasland and Ximeno from their countries. These people would be brought up to speed on developments in Yuhall and Ponoma as soon as they arrived.

The news from Ponoma plus the arrivals of all the foreign dignitaries in Ximeno were stirring up quite a burst of excitement in the Kentasland capital. The people visiting Ximeno from the Southern Continent nations were especially worried because many members of their families, like the citizens of Kentasland and Moraland, routinely did a great deal of traveling everywhere around Armonea. Everyone from these countries who was there in Ximeno wanted to know how many of their people might be caught up in the crises developing in Yuhall and Ponoma.

The first order of business at this gathering was to try to make contact by radiophone with the authorities in both Ponoma and Yuhall to find out what information those officials had concerning the goings-on in their countries. Some general cautionary messages about the conspiracies had been sent to the police in Praga and Beloozero by the foreign ministries in Kentasland and Moraland a few days earlier, but there had been no overt acts to report until news of the bomb on the railway outside Praga came in.

And now, as the diplomats were starting to assemble in the auditorium of the parliament house in Ximeno in preparation for the call to the authorities in Ponoma and Yuhall, a police officer came in with the most shocking news yet: there was heavy street fighting in Beloozero as the conspirators were launching their coup d'état. Nilast and his troops were encountering more determined resistance than they expected, but they were beginning to gain the upper hand over the city police and those residents of Beloozero who had come