After the Changes: Flight of the Maita, #1

By C. D. Moulton

Two books from the Flight of the Maita that were nominated for awards.

After the Old Gods

Kroon (Book two) is experiencing a plague that could destroy the entire population – and they can't contact the empire.
This was not meant as a part of the Flight of the Maita series, but was added by request of several readers.

Critic comment:
I was one who asked Moulton to place this into the Flight of the Maita series. It is a very realistic tale of an AIDS-like plague, and the solution is not beyond belief. It is a good character study – KL  Rating *****

Changes

The son of Net, book five, decides to become a sorcerer. He is a decent person and this is the story of the time he was a young man until his old age.

Critic comment
Superb - KL *****

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Aug 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201033613

Book preview

After the Changes

Two books from the Flight of the Maita series

After the Old Gods

Changes

© 2022 by C. D. Moulton

all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, either electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contents

About the author

Author’s note

After the Old Gods

Foreword

Is God Dead?

A Dinner Meeting

Constructing the Center

The Research Begins

Wavering Hope

A Constitution

The Wrong Person

More Data

Time Too Short?

Heroes

Success!

Back to Mundane

Changes

one   

two

three

four   

five   

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

Interim

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

Epilogue

About the author

CD Moulton has traveled extensively over much of the world both in the music business, where he was a rock guitarist, songwriter and arranger and in an import/export business. He has been everything from a bar owner to auto salvage (junkyard) manager, longshoreman to high steel worker, orchid grower to landscaper, tropical fish farmer to commercial fisherman. He started writing books in 1983 and has published more than 200 books as of January 1, 2014. His most popular books to date are about research with orchids, though much of his science fiction and fantasy work has proven popular. He wrote the CD Grimes, PI series and the Det. Nick Storie series, Clint Faraday series and many other works.

He now resides in Gualaca, Panamá, where he writes  books, plays music with friends, does research with orchids and medicinal plants – and pursues his favorite ways to spend his time: beach bum and roaming the mountain jungles doing his botanical research. He has lately become involved in fighting for the rights of the indigenous people, who are among his closest friends, and in fighting the extreme corruption in the courts and police in Panamá.

He offers the free e-book, Fading Paradise, that explains what he has been through because of the corruption.

CD is involved in research of natural cancer cure at this time. It has proven effective in all cases, so far. It is based on a plant that has been in use for thousands of years, is safe, available, and cheap. He has studied botany, and was cured of a serious lymphoma with use of the plant, Ambrosia peruviana.

Information about this cure is free on the FaceBook page, Ambrosia peruviana for cancer. CD asks only that all who try it please report on its effectiveness on that group.

Author’s note: Both of these books were written in the late eighties. Changes was inspired by things happening at the time in world psychological circumstances, such as the growing greed-based movement into capitalism run amok.

Perhaps I was too subtle for most of my readers. They found the story, mostly fantasy, entertaining and well-received. Critics who were more than MS readers who stated an opinion on that facet greatly enjoyed the work and twoof them placed it in nomination for awards (which I couldn’t care less about). That I did not win the awards was evidenced by no one ever contacting me to say I did.

Critics who read for deeper expression also liked it for the comment upon society’s foibles and misdirection. I was not yet of the opinion that the human race was doomed from evolution to extinction, as I now am. I was sure we would produce a section like my heroes, and move onward and upward.

That is no longer true. I now believe, as stated several times in later works, that the barbarians are not at the gate. They are occupying the cities and have expelled the denizens not of their mind set.

After the Old Gods is SciFi. It was a prediction and warning of what was happening in other parts of society, particularly the medical/health areas. AIDS was much behind the work, and itbwas based on an article I wrote about two years before it was written, Seasons of Extinction. It has also been nominated for awards.

We have runaway virus mutations at the time of this publication. Many of my predictions in the Flight of the Maita series have eventuated.

This publication, I hope, will find readers who will be greatly entertained. Even a few who will be prodded into thinking.

I hope the prediction of the extinction of the race is not fulfilled. Only time will determine that.

After the Old Gods

Flight of the Maita

Book 21

© 1987 & 2020 by C. D. Moulton

Kroon (Book two) is experiencing a plague that could destroy the entire population – and they can’t contact the empire.

This was not meant as a part of the Flight of the Maita series, but was added by request of several readers.

Critic comment:

I was one who asked Moulton to place this into the Flight of the Maita series. It is a very realistic tale of an AIDS-like plague, and the solution is not beyond belief. It is a good character study.

– KL  Rating *****

Superb!!!  ***** PA

Foreword

After the Old Gods was an idea that occurred to me after rereading an old short story of mine that was an insensitive treatment of the AIDS question. That old story was written three years ago. I called it Well.... and in it I treated the subject in a comedic manner.

I don't regret the story in its own place, a compendium of things including comedy/horror.

I have since studied this virus and learned there is nothing whatever humorous about it. When certain facets of the problem are extrapolated in a Worst possible case scenario it's enough to scare pure hell out of me. When taken in a lesser case scenario – it still scares hell out of me – and I'm personally not in any of the socalled High risk groups.

The thing that seems to me to be glossed over far too often is the fact that viruses mutate.

There's another point or two that went into this story. One is there are any number of things that could be tried, but probably won't.

Another point is something that happened a few years ago in the area where I make my home.

Young people were dying from an incurable cranial amoebic infection that was contracted while swimming in certain stillwater ponds and lakes. The symptoms were, so far as I could ascertain, identical with what is called Brain fever in parts of Malaysia. Brain fever is also contracted by swimming in warm stillwater ponds. I have seen the affliction cured with some regularity there by having the victim drink a decoction made from the stems, leaves and flowers of an orchid, Dendrobium crumenatum.

Upon reading about the disease I immediately contacted researchers at a nearby university who asked, before anything else, what my degree was in.

Not in a related field. They then ignored me completely. I am not qualified to suggest a possible cure. I am ignored as a Nutcase to this day by those people.

How many people have died of amoebic brain infection since that time?

I don't pretend to claim the treatment would work or that it is even the same disease. I merely believe that, as some similar affliction is cured by the method, someone should at least ask if it is possible the orchid could offer relief – and try it! There’s nothing to lose!

There is another odd thing that suggested part of the solution in this story. It happened to two friends of mine who had severe head colds and were in a certain place at a certain time. Their colds were gone in a couple of hours.

I can't say anymore here or I will give away too much of the story but, suffice it to suggest the reason for the solution in the story is the explanation those two received for the curing of the cold.

Head colds are caused by rhinoviruses of several types. I know better than to suggest conducting research with this method on AIDS and other viruses. I will be totally ignored because I am not qualified to make those kinds of suggestions.

I am a nutcase in certain things. I work at it. There is no better way to get privacy from certain types of people than if they find me opinionated. My only hope is that someone will ask, "Could something like that work?"

The Kroon, the race who is in the grip of this medical crisis, were introduced in book two of the Flight of the Maita series, Settling In, and appear in other of the books. I will undoubtably use them again.

I tend to like some of my characters and to dislike others. I find I have mixed reactions to the Kroon. Perhaps they are too much like the human race in certain ways. Some of them are good and some aren't. Most fall somewhere between.

However: If you like the modern style of writing with a lot of unnecessary vulgarity, with muddled morality, with obscurity or with badly flawed Heroes designed to make the reader feel he isn't so terribly bad after all. If you don't like bigger-than-life heroes such as in Star Wars, then put this book down right now! You're going to hate it!

If you long for a good old-fashioned straight-adventure story with clearly defined rules of action and morality, read on!

C. D. Moulton

Hudson, Florida - 4/15/88

Is God Dead?

Are the gods really dead? Are the Ithians right?

It's a thing which will require study. I'll have to read all I can. and will have to run the television show that brought this mess to a head to see what really transpired. As is usual in this type of thing, there are far too many wild stories and far too many versions of what really happened. There are, as always, as many versions as there are people, but as a historian, I can't allow anything so vague to affect my thinking or my decisions. The best thing I can do is to interview those directly involved with the alien craft and review the television recordings which appear. at this point. to be rather complete.

I never accepted the old gods as they were presented. That I must admit – and further, the Ithians were the only religion that could have attracted me, had I been forced to a choice. There's something automatically repulsive to me about one who would tell me I must accept a belief or I'm damned. Some of them would even directly try to kill those who were of another religion – even a different cult of the branch they supposedly represented.

Who were those strange aliens who had come to Kroon to disrupt the society and to destroy the beliefs of so many? What right did they have to instruct us how to run our world? Hadn't Kroon done quite well without interference? Were the aliens truly a positive thing?

These questions must be answered from the perspective of a historian, and not that of a priest, fanatic. or even one who was directly involved at the time. Personal involvement must suggest emotional response, which is never objective.

That the aliens were real couldn't be denied. They weren't a trick of one or another church. All churches – exclusive of Ith – were as much as destroyed by the fact there were any aliens to come here. Ithianism, by its very nature, simply wouldn't care.

The aliens brought some small being with tentacles who was supposedly from a planet called Menta. It always seemed to be far the most intelligent among them when everything was later considered, if only because it kept its mouth (figuratively. It didn't speak, or I should say, vocalize, directly) shut and merely observed, inserting comments at rare times, and with rare insight.

There was the huge hairy one they called a Vendan, and the one who was almost like a Kroon, except that his skin was one-colored – and that an ordinary pinkish off-white. He was supposed to be from a world called Terra.

That ship! It was enormous, and reportedly was made of pure platinum.

To be quite honest, Kroon wasn’t doing well at all, so I must suppose they had the right to attempt to save us from ourselves. Everyone who was not from a church, plus the Ithians, seemed to like them. That fellow who had been employed by the television station as a cameraman wrote some things far more telling than anything those politicians and priests ever wrote.

Brother! The representatives of the churches didn't like them! Not at all! They’re still crying about it, even though their churches are gone. It seems there are always a few who will cling to an idea, no matter how dead it is.

It's more than the halfyear since they left, and things are still not settled in any way, though the small wars have become much less. As they were mostly fighting among different sects, that was to be expected. Like it or not, the Mentan was right when it said the only thing we ever got from our churches was war, intolerance, and blind hatred.

I've tried to be honest in researching the history of Kroon through the history of its various religions, and find it to be unjustifiable, from any position. It really is a sad and bloody heritage those churches have given us. Enn Far, from the Ithian church, has worked very long and hard to try to straighten the sordid mess out, and will certainly be elected representative to the council. That's foregone. He was the only Kroon who made any sense through the contact,  which was quite an accomplishment, in itself. Almost everyone else involved had been nothing less than an embarrassment to the Kroon race. That their actions and statements were more reprehensible than responsible is another of those undeniable facts.

I'm called Hal Korr, and am a historian. I was in the jungles of Frite with the anthropological team who earlier discovered the ancient ruins of the Kitronchitlan race. Our dig returned less than ten days ago, so I didn't know of any of this mess until I stepped on the ground from our ship. It was my first knowledge anything had happened in my short absence. I seldom listened to the newscasts on shipboard, as there was no reception in the Jeurne Valley, where I spent the past year, so perhaps I can be somewhat more analytical about it, my having lived through the time in rather extreme isolation from the whole thing.

That's the sworn duty of a historian. I must make no judgments in what I record, but must write the facts. That is all!

As I understand, these aliens landed in their spaceship, saying they were merely on vacation from some empire, and had happened on Kroon, so stopped to look around. There were a number of small wars in the desert over those silly scrolls. (Sorry, I'll try not to make judgments. I must not make judgments! Only a moment ago, I said I would stop doing that.) The aliens flew over to demand the wars stop, then flew over all the major cities on the world where the various militaries fired every type of our weapons with no effect on them whatever. They came to ground near the capital where they met with the politicians from the old churches to set up a worldwide television show where that idiot, Gu Verdeen, (Sorry – I did promise not to do that!) and those others made absolute fools of themselves. The priests and religio-politicians were seemingly easily manipulated into making claims that were demonstrably untrue by dint of the fact of the aliens' being here. The Great Vision of Soolinn was shown to be totally false, causing the end-to that ... to one arm of the most powerful church on the world of Kroon.

When the teachings of Soolinn fell, the rest of the branches growing from his worship were dragged along with the Church of the Vision. Gui Veltree was soon manipulated into acting like some kind of idiot – but then she always had acted that way. (Again! I must show no bias! I'm going to have to rewrite this whole thing! Note: re-transcribe this before printing.)

I have to study those tapes. I've been told all the aliens did was to point out how ridiculous the ideas were when the priesthood contradicted themselves so completely and so often.

I'm assuming manipulation through rhetoric. These churches have had more than a thousand years to learn how to slip out from under tight spots by themselves manipulating language. That was only poetic justice.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I'll gladly admit that, if it's true. Now the Ithians are in power, but they had, by advice from the aliens, made a world council bid. They set up a form of government to be run by council, not by the churches, so the religions are denied any voice in the government. I suppose that will last but awhile. Kroon doesn't have a history of keeping a thing that's good – not for very long. Some new religion will arise to take power, and we'll be as bad off as ever. It won't be the Ithians, as that kind of religion has no base for power. They believe there may or may not be a god or gods, but if there are gods, it's irrelevant. These gods, should they even exist, certainly don't care what we do.

If one studies history one tenth as much as I have he can't fail to see their point. There are no strongly religious members in the historical studies guild. The results of earlier points about what heritage we have from the churches ensures this will persevere. I am, however, somewhat less than pleased with the demands being made upon my time, as these people insist I make speeches. I'm a recording historian, not an orator. I'm able enough when it comes to that. I simply feel it an imposition on time better spent elsewhere. I am primarily a teacher. I would personally much prefer that I be left alone to pursue my studies. I'm not certain this society's worth the trouble, or that it'll last. As I say, we have a history of doing the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. History is not going to treat kindly what we had, and it isn't at all likely it'll be any more kindly disposed to what's replacing it.

One thing Enn Far did that will be a positive point in history is his disarmament pact. This is the first time in our existence we haven't been armed to our ears and in some kind of war with, as the Mentan is supposed to have said, our own kind. It seems we would be better disposed to get along with aliens than with others of the Kroon race.

Is that true elsewhere? If so, how would I research it? I think I would very greatly have enjoyed conversation with the Mentan. Like all the aliens, it was bluntly truthful to us about ourselves. Its statement, including the above, is reported as, You have the effrontery to ask us to allow you congress with the Maitan Empire? There are several thousands of worlds already a part of the empire who are vastly different from you, and even from any of us on this ship. They get along very well with one another, as you can see from this little group. No two of us even slightly resemble one another. You seem unable to get along with your own kind. To think of you co-existing among the peoples of the empire is ludicrous!

I'm ashamed to have to admit I fully agree with that painful but true assessment. We can’t get along with our own kind. We have never gotten along with others on Kroon and, if history is truly the best prophet, we never will.

The fall of the old churches is also a good thing, in another perspective: They had become purely political organizations vying for power among themselves. There was no tiny freedom or choice left to the people. Ithianism will end that, for a time.

When I think of it, I'm not too surprised these three aliens and their intelligent machine were able to topple the old church system. The priesthoods had become so deeply ingrained in their sniping at one another all the aliens had to do was give them powder enough and they would blow themselves into the hell they so very loudly and long decried.

I was contemplating many such random things, audiblizing them into my portable recorder as I unlocked and entered my office at the University of Zeneye, the Capital City of Klarstenland of Kroon. I threw my records and notes onto the desk, read my mail, checked over my incoming assignment sheets, and called records for copies of all they had on the aliens. I would have to spend a few hours on it to be able to deduce what had really happened, and what was rumor or direct untruth from the dispossessed.

Damn it all! I needed this time to correlate my work of the past year and to write my book about it! We've made some major advances in the digs in Jeurne Valley Rift about the ancient Fricke civilization of the Kitronchitlan race. It shouldn't have to wait, just because I was asked to make speeches about the effects on our sad history of contact with the aliens! We wouldn't know the effects for a minimum period of hundreds of years! It will probably mean the later leaders will perhaps be a slight bit more clever and careful in their scheming, but nothing else will change.

Why me, damn it?!

No sense in getting upset. If I want to be a professor I'll have to act like the bureaucrats think a professor should act, but damn!

I picked up the printed-out transcription of that worldwide television broadcast, but it wasn't good enough in written transcript, though this Z character, the Terran, seemed very sharp, to me. It needed intonation and facial expressions, I decided, then decided that intonation may be important, but facial expressions may mean nothing in a being from a different society. There are even vast regional differences in the area where I was recently working that are almost directly opposite to those of this area.

I located the cubes of the broadcast, placed them into the player on the television monitor, and sat back with the controls. I could then stop, rewind, slow, speed up – whatever. Might as well enjoy the show – and from what I've heard, it was really a show! After a full halfyear, it's still all the people talk about!

Erl Flann, that insipid wimpish newsman from the old Vision Church, was introducing the people. He said this one was the Terran, Z, who would answer all the questions.

I studied the Terran very carefully on action stop. He was but a few centimeters shorter than Flann, had brownish hair on his head, an unusual trait, but was otherwise very much like us. He was an even light whitish/tan color, where we have many patterns of color, but was bipedal, had ten fingers, as we do, had brownish eyes where ours tend more to greens, reds, and blues – very close, really. He seemed confident rather than arrogant as the priests later claimed, and not at all like what the priests said previous to the show, if the papers I read were accurate.

I ran it on. Next was the Vendan, Ape. He was large – possibly two and a half meters, had pointed ears, was covered in a brownish-red fur that seemed quite thick, had ten toes and fingers, each of which ended in very sharp and strong-appearing claws. Flann explained Ape didn't speak, directly, but there was a way provided so we would know what he wanted.

The Mentan drew my attention. It was less than a meter, sort of a squarish globe with four tentacles and eyes that were on short stalks atop the globe. Flann explained it and Ape wouldn't take part in the debate, but would observe.

I ran it forward until there was a sudden voice from nowhere. Flann jumped, and asked what it was.

It was the machine that keeps the records and reports for the aliens. I immediately saw how the churches were made .to appear as ridiculous as they, in reality, are. The machine stated that/ as all had agreed to hold a debate. the rules should be reviewed before they began their discussion or questionings. Flann became rather flustered and stuttered about, then asked the machine to state the rules. I decided right there was the point where the churches lost the debate. One thing I know about debates is that one concedes any point starting into the arguments. That is defeat before the battle is joined. I saw right then how this broadcast was designed to be a debacle for the churches. I would think those priests would have better sense. They had many centuries of practice in those same tactics.

I ran the tape on. Everyone could ask and answer questions, including the alien, Z, and Erl Flann. Each must wait his natural turn, and no personal attacks were to be permitted. The broadcast was to run without interruption until they were through. Not bad. I expected a clever trick in the rules, but it hadn't materialized. My respect for these aliens grew.

Flann introduced the people from the churches, Gu Verdeen, from the Church of the Great and True Vision, Gu Needja (Idiot!), of the Church of the Fundamental Truth, Gui Veltree (I've heard of her punishment when she spitefully brought charges against others and was shown to have maliciously lied), of the old Church of the True Believers, Gu Ipth represented the Foes of Grumm and Gui Imtree represented the Church of the Sciencers.

This was designed to be a fiasco! Before we went one word into it I was ready to say nothing would happen, except that each of the leaders of the basic churches of the land would spit and claw at one another, and the aliens would be ignored. All Kroons would appear to be stupid. Now I could see the cleverness of the aliens in stating those rules before the debate began.

I was happy to see such tactics in fact would not be allowed. Needja started a tirade, and the alien's machine called for a point of order, stating this was a questioning session, and was neither the time nor place for cheap theatrical personal attacks. I literally applauded! Again, my respect increased. For the first time, I wished I'd been there to see the original broadcast!

Flann cut Needja off then, and went on to Veltree, who thoroughly enjoyed Needja's great discomfort, but was having trouble restraining herself from doing the same. She called the alien Gu Z, but he said he wasn't a priest so Z would do.

Ipth asked about Grumm, whereupon the alien replied that, on his home world, they called the adversary of the principle god Satan.

Imtree asked about lightspeed, to which Z replied the ship doesn't actually exceed lightspeed, though it could. It wasn't necessary! (?)

Flann then again went to Needja, whereupon Z interrupted to say he was permitted questions, too. Flann stuttered a bit, then told the alien he could proceed. Z asked Gui Imtree how she correlated our science with the worship of Soolinn, then really destroyed the bunch of them when Imtree answered that she didn't understand the question. I'll quote exactly what transpired for this record.

Z: "Soolinn said we, my friends and I, do not exist. Your science told you, even before we appeared, that we do exist – and we are now here! How do you correlate the facts with the belief?"

All Imtree could think of to say was she hadn't thought about it, quite frankly. That showed how much science was utilized by the Sciencer sect.

It passed for a few moments, but as the alien obviously had read the Vision of Soolinn, the debate was over. The churches were dead. The questioning passed around for awhile longer, then everyone passed time to Needja, making it obvious to the stupidest watcher the priests had agreed before the debate to make plans to work together to defeat this alien. That just added to the victory of the otherworlders, though getting that stupid bunch to do anything together was an unusually difficult task, for which I again applauded the aliens.

Needja was stupid enough to say the aliens were a trick, and weren't really there, that they had hypnotized the Gus. I laughed when Z stated that it was possible he had hypnotized them all, but no one could hypnotize a television camera, so people would be calling by the thousands to tell them they were sitting in midair, asking questions of no one, besides which, if he wasn't really there, who or what hypnotized them?

Z made them suggest the vision of Soolinn had been misinterpreted when it declared there were no other intelligences. He threw in their faces the fact the words were clear and explicit, stating within themselves they weren't subject to other interpretations. No intelligences meant no intelligences, period, yet there were three very different ones right there, staring at them, and they were staring back.

Verdeen had been overlooked until that time. Flann suddenly apologized, and suggested the Gu could then ask several questions. His questions buried the churches of Soolinn and Pinneestees forever. He tried to be clever, and to suggest the aliens had twisted his words. Z replied it was permitted in the stated rules that any statement that was twisted could be straightened again by any of them. Verdeen shut up, and glared, then Flann minced about and said no harm had been done, because transmission was stopped right at the first. The aliens' machine replied it had carried the whole thing, having burned out the jamming equipment the churches tried to use. The alien told the people they had seen exactly what the churches and the Gus were, and wished everyone good fortune.

I find myself liking these aliens! Now I must determine what I am to say about this, but there really isn't much to say. It's really rather obvious. All they did was point out the obvious to us. Anything we don't see immediately is due to the fact we don't wish to see.

Chapter one

* Enn Far

"Verily I say unto you, suffer not the infidels to live for I, Soolinn, have so decreed. Let those who would follow Grumm know of his defeat. Yea, he is defeated.

"I say unto you now, there are no others. You alone exist in all the universe for all the worlds, and I say unto you there are many worlds, for I have prepared these places for you. They are as rooms in my palaces. Verily I say unto you I have prepared these rooms for my beloved Kroon alone. The Kroon are my perfect act of creation. I have made no others. There are those plants and those animals I have created for the delight of the Kroon. They are only as the furniture in those rooms I have prepared for you, and are patiently awaiting the true believers' occupation. There are no others who would be masters of these rooms, for I have come before you to prepare this place. The Kroon alone have the free mind and reason in all of creation, for I, Soolinn, have created all things and all places, and this is my word. What I speak is truth. Only Soolinn speaks only truth.

I give then unto you this warning: Do not suffer the infidels to live! I, Soolinn, will not permit that infidels and followers of Grumm enter into my kingdom! Destroy the unbelievers and their evil!

From The Words of the Vision

I was in my den, studying the Words of the Great and True Vision of the Followers of Soolinn, and was comparing them with the words and the television transmissions of the aliens.

This was the first time the words seemed so silly and childish to me, though they had never taken my attention before, so that was as good an explanation as any. When a child is raised hearing nothing else, it is as much as imprinted and remembered as rote.

The alien, Z, had been so right. All the religions on Kroon, except the Ithians, were proved to be false by the existence of those very aliens. The words were plain, and were unmistakable.

The Kroon alone, in all of creation, have the free minds and reason... was not a thing open to interpretation, nor were the words of the vision for I have created no other open to any other interpretation. The Vision of Soolinn, witnessed by more than four thousand trusting people, was proved to be a fraud and a trickery. It was done by some fakery to give the priests more power. There was simply no other reasonable explanation.

Those scrolls, supposedly written by Soolinn to be read and presented at the Great Vision by Soolinn, were equally a fraud and a trick.

Soolinn was a trick!

I am a leader and student of these things and can see easily how it was done, but that isn't important here. Our society is falling apart, and chaos reigns. The council of a hundred are trying to pull things together, and the Ithians are, at least, not saying I told you so, regardless of the opportunity. They certainly have been given the right on a crystal tray!

I personally never believed in the Vision. The race has been bogged down in silly wars for all of its recorded history. These priests have always preached love and understanding, mercy, and true forgiveness in one paragraph, followed by hate and murder in the next. That fact was pointed out by the Mentan, too.

Strange how blind even such a scholar as I could have been all this time. It was there to see, but I, as others, would not see it! Looking back even from a perspective of only a halfyear, I can't understand how or why anyone ever fell into the trap of those things. For thousands of years – four thousand since the Vision – poor people have been tithing twelve percent of all they earn to support the priests, increasing the luxury of those socalled leaders and the wealth of the churches.

The priests grabbed political power to fight their wars among the various cults to further their own wealth and power, and the world had known no real peace since. To even read speeches made by those priests and politicians now it becomes obvious it has always been a fraud perpetrated upon the people of Kroon by a sordid greedy priesthood for personal power. I know shame that such was seen and known by our visitors.

Now they were gone, after exposing the falsity of the Vision. The council has a truly impossible task ahead, or some new and equally ridiculous religion will come along, and nothing here will change, even for a small time. I greatly fear that nothing will ever change here, and we will very deservedly be excluded from congress, as the Mentan said, with the other members of the empire. If there was truth in what they said – and I believe that to be shown – there are thousands of races living together in harmony.

The Kroon can't even live with the Kroon!

I have to come up with some kind of speech to try to change something here. It really is my duty to do what I can to change this society for the better. I am a teacher, thus I have a duty to all people. It comes with the job.

Such a muddle to come at such a time.

Well, onward with it! A project never started is a job never completed! I do have the reputation of finishing anything I start, and will have to try to retain that, at least!

How did I ever let myself get pulled into this morass? What strange and malicious turn of fate made me the one?

I met and liked the aliens, as anyone with any sense whatever would have – and sense is in very short supply these days. They did expose those phony religions to be what they are. They did show me where the right thing should be, and they did rightfully say it must be a Kroon who did these things, but why me? Why did I have to agree to set up this governing council?

The great Enn Far! The one who will lead us from the dark ages!

I am not qualified, and I know it, but, as the Mentan, Thing, said to me, No one is qualified, but at least you aren't so directly influenced by the fall of the false gods. You have said all along that the system was wrong, and the churches were merely oppressing the people. You aren't held in thrall by those old ideas.

I'm not? Ithianism is as old as any of them!

Now everyone's jumping on the Ithian platform, and I am the nominal leader of the cult. I am the one who's looked to for guidance and council. I am considered the expert.

I can be proud of one thing! I was able to force Clah Meen to disarm. The threat of that is no longer hanging over the head of every Kroon alive. I may have had help from the aliens, but they used my ideas and the words of our enemies against themselves. This is the first time in the entire history of Kroon no major power has been armed against its neighbors, and that's the one thing I intend to see stays as it is. If I can leave that as my legacy, existence is worthwhile. Very few can ever say that!

A halfyear until the open elections, and I just know they'll elect me president of the council! I have to do something to stop it, but I don't want to discredit myself or to disgrace my name. It may be true that no one else is qualified for the position, but I'm not either. This is the wrong time!

That historian teacher, Hal Korr, is quite the outspoken sort of person. I've managed to finagle him into a position where he'll have to become the orator for the council's positions. He is very good, so maybe I can make him the logical choice for the leader. I can possibly switch my own popularity to him, and leave through the side door when all eyes are upon him. I'll certainly have to try! I want out! I'm not even vaguely prepared for this kind of responsibility. I can't stand up to the pressure of always having to be right when I don't know what I'm doing! I'm blundering around in the dark, and am bound to stumble over something.

This is the time when Kroon needs leadership more than at any other time in history. Failure of all of this will be disastrous for years, or even centuries. I don't want that on my head.

Thank whatever gods may be for the good people on this world! They have – so far – kept their pledges, and are truly working for the good of the entire race. After the elections, that pressure will be gone from me, at the very least. I selected the whole council, so I am responsible if any of them act in a manner that's not proper or honest. After the coming election, it's the peoples' choice, not mine. I will again finally be able to sleep and wake up rested, I hope. I can still dream!

This constitution thing the Terran suggested seems