The Weapon - Exodus 
By Diana the Valkyrie
You want to discuss the physics of stellar objects, or would you like me to fuck your brains out?


When you're smilin' ... keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin' ... keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through
But when you're cryin' ... you bring on the rain
So stop your frownin' ... be happy again
Cause when you're smilin' ... keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you

Oh damn. Wouldn't you know it? I'm late I'm late I'm late and the bloody
Tangley level crossing barrier comes down in front of me, I guess there's a
train on the way, although when I check up and down the track there's nothing
in sight, which means I might be in for a long wait. And it's two p.m., the
meeting in Chilworth is round about now ... well, who's ever on time for a
bloody meeting? What can't be cured must be endured, but why doesn't this
idiot in front of me with learner-plates get off the track? Hey, lady! This
isn't just a red light, you know, there's a train coming. Honk Honk. HONK!
HONK!!!! Is she asleep or what? And the man leaning into the back of the car,
all he can see is that baby. HONK!!! Hey, I'm not just being impatient here,
you know, you're ...

Oh shit. I can see it, it's coming down the track. HONK!!! Hey, asshole, if
you can't move the car then get the fuck out of there. Oh Jesus, she doesn't
even know what's happening. I read about the last time a train hit a car on
the track, it derailed the locomotive and most of the carriages, half a dozen
carriages concertinaed, and nineteen people got killed.

Damn, that's a Honda, it weighs nothing, I'm in the Volvo, built like a tank.
Mash the pedal to the metal, GO GO GO ... CRASH!!! And now get the fuck out of
this thing before the train comes. Oh god, pain, I can't move, I can't get
out, I think I busted something, a rib or something, it hurts. I hope I was
moving fast enough at the point of impact to get clear of the train ...

The momentum of my car was enough to send me crashing through the flimsy
half-barrier, into the back of her car, and the weight of my car was enough to
send us both clear of the track. I heard the diesel loco thunder by, blasting
on its big horn, da-da, DA-DA, it takes a mile or two to stop those things.

I was lucky. Not as lucky as they were. I had a smashed up car, steam coming
out of the wrecked engine. They had a very crumpled car, but at least they
hadn't been hit by a train doing sixty, which would have left not much more
than strawberry jam of the three occupants. I sat there as the flood of
adrenaline hit me, just too late to actually do any good, but in plenty of
time to make me start shaking uncontrollably. What a stupid thing to do, I
could have gotten, I could have, I could, oh shit. Oh shit. What an absolutely
bloody stupid thing to do.

I saw her get out of her car, and look at the damage. Then she walked round to
the passenger side, and pulled the man out. He seemed ok, sitting up against
the car. She handed the baby out to him, then walked over to my car. I looked
up at her. She was pretty. Funny how you notice silly things like that in the
middle of a catastrophe.

She tugged at the car door; it was stuck. She pulled at the handle; it came
off in her hand. The chassis must have distorted in the smash-up. I pushed at
the door, but another stab of pain changed my mind about that. She looked at
the door, thinking for a moment. Then her fist smashed through the tough
safety glass window, she gripped the door and pulled, and with a lot of
creaking and groaning, it came off the car entirely. That crash must have done
a *lot* of damage. This car was probably a write-off now. She unclipped my
seat belt. I thought, that seat belt was what stopped me from going face-first
through the windscreen. No question about clunk-click every trip from now on.

"Are you OK?" she asked. I nodded. "Never better, full of the joys of life.
Apart from this busted rib, that is." "Come on," she said, "I think you should
get out of there." She looked at me thoughtfully. "You know, we can't actually
be sure that it's just a busted rib. I think I'd better be careful moving you,
just in case. I don't want to make things worse if you do have anything bad.
Not that I think you do, but this car is pretty much scrap anyway, so if I
just break this seat off ..."

She slid one arm behind the back of the seat, the other arm under the seat,
and pulled. I heard the bolts snapping under the tension she was putting on
them, and then the entire seat came out of the car, with me still on it. She
carried me over to sit next to the guy holding the baby. "He's hurt, Duncan.
What should I do?" "Hospital, Wendy. Get him to Royal Surrey accident and
emergency, it's in Guildford, then stay with him till they've checked him out.
I'm OK, just scared to death, I need a stiff drink is all, the baby's fine,
I'll see you back home." She nodded.

She stretched her arms out to the sides, and whirled around. Having seen what
she'd done to my car door and seat, I wasn't entirely surprised what I saw.
She was no longer wearing the sweater and skirt I'd first seen her in. She was
now wearing a skin-tight snow-white tunic and short skirt, black gloves and
high boots. She had a long white cape that swept the ground, and on her ample
chest, I saw a big W in gold, matching the gold of her belt. "You're ...
You're her! I read about you. You're the superwoman, The Weapon!"

She smiled. "Call me Wendy," she said, as she picked up the car seat with me
still in it, "all my friends do." She leaped lightly into the air ... and
didn't fall back down. She flew us through the air until we reached the Royal
Surrey Hospital, landing directly in front of the Accident and Emergency
department, and carried me in. "Car crash," she said to the nurse in charge,
"patient complains of pain in the chest, please check him out."

The NHS might have a poor record at varicose veins, but there was no problem
getting me into X-ray. I suppose being with a tall black-haired superheroine
in a long white cape might have helped some. They transferred me to a
wheelchair, and wheeled me to the radiology department. Wendy came with me all
the way, holding my hand. When they told her to get behind the lead shelter
for the X-ray shot, she just smiled. "You know who I am, don't you?" she
asked. The X-ray technician nodded. "Well, honey, a few X-rays aren't going to
bother me." "Regulations," he insisted. She sighed. "OK, OK. I'm coming."

They took the X-rays, and Wendy came with me to the house doctor, who looked
at them, and confirmed that I had a cracked rib. "What's the treatment for
that, Doc?" I asked. "Leave out the boxing for a few weeks, and try not to
laugh too hard." I laughed. Too hard. "Ow." "Seriously, there's no treatment,
they'll knit themselves. You'll be in some discomfort for a few weeks, just
take it easy. And get out of that wheelchair, there's nothing wrong with you."
Wendy took my hand as I stood up, she looked like she was getting ready to
catch me if I fell. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with me." Then my knees turned
to jelly, and I started to keel over.

She caught me before I'd moved more than a couple of inches, and held me
against her body. The feel of her and the smell of her threatened to finish
the job that my knees had started and I would have hit the floor, but she
moved to one side, her hands went round my back and behind my knees, and she
lifted me in a cradle carry. "I think I'd better take you home with me, you
need looking after." She walked with me through the hospital, ignoring the
stares of staff and patients, pushed through the double doors, ran a couple of
steps forward, leaped into the sky and flew into the night as I clung to her,
my arms round her neck.

The flight through the dark night sky was exhilarating. If you think you've
flown, then you're probably thinking about a passenger jet. Whizzing through
the air while a beautiful stranger hugs you to her bosom is a completely
different experience. And strangely, even though I was hundreds of feet in
mid-air, with apparently nothing between me and a splat on the ground, she
made me feel safe. I was quite sorry when the flight ended, just outside a
rather ordinary-looking house with a small but tidy garden in front. She set
me down, without taking her arm from around my waist, reached behind to her
cape and put a key in the door. She opened the door, and ushered me in.

"Honey, I'm home," she called out. She led me into their lounge, and I met
Duncan again. "Here," he said, "you probably need this." He handed me a
shot-glass with the astringent smell of whiskey. I reached out and took it,
only to discover that my hand was shaking so hard that most of the drink
sloshed onto the carpet. She moved forward, and steadied my hand with hers.
She looked at Duncan, he nodded slightly, and she pulled me into her arms and
just held me, stroking my hair. Then she sat down on the sofa, pulling me down
with her, sitting me on her lap, hugging me close. "It's all right now, honey.
Everything's all right." She made me feel a lot better, her voice made me feel
that the world wasn't such a bad place, after all. I did the obvious, and
buried my head in her shoulder and neck.

"Sorry," I said, "I think I'm still suffering from the reaction." "I'm not
surprised," Duncan said, "you know you could have gotten yourself killed?" "I
know. I guess I just wasn't thinking. Or maybe I was, you remember the big
crash last year, when that train hit a car, derailed, and nineteen people got
killed? That's what I was thinking about." Wendy nodded. "You certainly saved
the lives of Duncan and the baby." "Is the baby OK?" I asked. "Yes, back with
her mother." "She's my niece, we were babysitting." "And even you might not
have stood up to a sixty ton locomotive," I said, turning to Wendy. She
exchanged glances with Duncan. "I would, but that's not the point. Point is,
if it weren't for you, I'd be without, Duncan would be, he'd be ..." She
started crying.

I was aghast. She could rip a car to pieces with her bare hands, she could fly
through the air, and now she was sobbing like a little girl. What do you do
when a goddess by your side starts to weep? I looked up at Duncan, and he
nodded to me. So I put my arms round her and tried to comfort her, what else
can a guy do? "I couldn't bear it if Duncan ... oh oh oh" she cried. "There
there," I said, inadequately. "You see, I'm his Weapon, and I'm supposed to
protect him, and all I did was nearly get him killed, he was teaching me how
to drive and I didn't know about level crossings, and I stalled the car, and I
couldn't get it started again, and if you hadn't, oh, oh, oh." I stroked her
long glossy hair, I thought back to that scene, I remembered seeing that huge
locomotive like a sixty ton bullet coming towards me and the insane decision
to play billiards with my car as the cue. And I thought about what might have
happened. And I started to cry too. Jesus, what a wimp I am sometimes.

We sat there for a long time, holding on to each other and weeping. But
eventually, there's no more tears, and I become more conscious of her strong
arms around me, pulling me to her large firm breasts. "Wendy?" "Yes?" she
sniffled. "Duncan is fine, you know. There's actually nothing to cry about."
"I know, I know, but I was just thinking what might have been, and how I broke
my oath to him." "Is he your father, or what?" I asked. She looked surprised.
"No, no." "Well, the age difference ... " She giggled. "How old do you think I
am?" she asked. "Er. Twenty nine, same as me?" "I was made and delivered a few
weeks ago. The age difference is more than you think." "Made? Delivered?"
"It's a long story, I'll tell you some time. But he's my Wielder, and that's a
very very close relationship." "Oh." "Look, I'll tell you, this is the oath I
swear to him. 'My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will
love you and protect you and obey you. Until the end of time.' And I've just
screwed up one the 'protect' part of it, big time."

I couldn't think what to say. "Wendy," I started. And then I couldn't think
what to say next, because yes, she had blundered, and badly. And then I
realised. "Wendy, you made a very big mistake there." She nodded, and I could
see her eyes tearing up again. "But you've learned from it, haven't you?" She
nodded. "And so it won't happen again." She nodded again, looking down at the
floor. "So, buck up, lass. Nothing bad happened." She took my hand. "Only
because of you. I owe you, I owe you big." Now it was my turn to stare at the
floor. "I'll talk to you more about this later," she said.

"Dinner," called out Duncan. She stood up, and gave me her hand. I needed it,
too. She helped me stand up, and she helped me stay upright until we got to
the dining room. "I hope you like curry," said Duncan. There were plates in
front of him and me and a pot of aromatic curry, and a big bowl of rice. I
turned to look at Wendy, puzzled. "Don't you like curry?" "I, uh, don't eat."
"What, never?" "Well, sometimes, but it's just social, you know. To keep
Duncan company, he says it feels odd if we're sitting there and he's eating
any I'm not." "So, come on, join us now!" She looked at Duncan.

"Son," said Duncan. "Son, I don't know your name, who are you?" "George
Millby" "George, fact is, there's really just enough here for two, which was
going to be me and Wendy, but since she doesn't need it, that's you and me."
"I'm eating your dinner?" She smiled at me. "Really, George, food isn't what
keeps me going." "So what is?"

Over dinner, she told me about her anatomy, the four black holes that made up
a quadrupole, the layers of fields of force on top of that, giving her shape,
her "skin" and her "clothes". "Touch my arm," she said. I did, her skin was
soft as silk. "Now press down, hard." There was a couple of millimeters of
give, then my fingers felt something hard, with no elasticity at all. She
smiled at me. "See?" I saw. "And what about you, Duncan, you're the same?"
"No," he said, sadly, "I'm just an ordinary guy, you know? She's the one that
makes the difference." "But you tell her what to do." "Yes. I tell her what to
do, then she goes ahead and does something completely different." "Women," I
said. "Women," replied Duncan, "except she isn't actually a woman, appearance
to the contrary." "But what about this oath, she told me she swears to obey
you." "Yes, she gives me that every day. Doesn't seem to work, though. You
ever been married, George?" I shook my head. "I was, once. Main difference
was, she promised to obey just the once, after that it was catch as catch
can." Wendy shook her head. "Come on, Duncan, I'm not that bad. I do listen to
you on the big stuff, but you can't expect me to do every little thing your
way." Uh-oh. This sounded like an old debate, and it's always a good idea not
to get between a married couple.

"Are you guys married?" Wendy frowned. "Of course not. How could we be?"
"Well, you know, usual way?" "George, I think you just forgot. I'm not what I
look like, I'm four black holes, it'd be like getting married to your, to your
..." Duncan interrupted. "Mixmaster," he said. Wendy grinned at him. "Yeah,
with the juice squeezer attachment." They smiled at each other. Obviously this
was one of their private jokes.

"So what do you do for a living, George?" "I'm in Marketing, we sell useless
junk to people who can't afford it." "Oh, that's awful!" said Wendy, looking
horrified. "He's joking, love," said Duncan, "George, you've probably already
noticed this, but although she can leap tall bullets with a single locomotive,
she's a bit naive about a lot of things, on account of she hasn't actually
been around for more than a few weeks. Avoid irony, son." "OK," I said, "what
I actually do is explain to people the reasons why they might want to buy
products." "Oh," said Wendy, "that's not so bad." "So what do you do?" I
asked.

"I'm The Weapon, the Defender of the People." "Yes, I know that, but what
exactly do you do?" "Well. Um. A couple of weeks ago, I rescued a kitten from
a tree." "She's being modest," said Duncan, "you remember the uncontrollable
forest fire in Australia? Well, we flew down there, she dumped fifty million
tons of water on it, totally put the fire out, and if someone hadn't upset
her, we'd have flown back the same day." "Upset her?" "It was a woman there,
if we'd got there a day earlier, her son wouldn't have been killed in the
fire, and she was understandably very emotional about it. Wendy got very upset
and flew off to cry." "I spent an hour weeping at the center of the sun" "The
center of the sun?" I asked, just checking what I thought I'd heard. "She's
pretty tough." "She certainly is pretty." Wendy smiled. "George, it's like
this. I don't think there's anything that can seriously damage her in a
permanent way. But when she rescued that kitten, she got a very nasty scratch
on her arm." "The poor little thing was scared," said Wendy. "Duncan, you're
saying she can sit at the center of the sun, but a kitten can scratch her
arm?" "It looks like skin, it feels like skin, it breaks like skin, but it's
actually a field of force that she maintains from her central core, and she
can just replace it any time." "So, in effect, she's invulnerable?"
"Physically, yes. But actually? No. In fact, she's extremely vulnerable. One
unkind remark, she flew to the sun and spent an hour crying." I looked at
Wendy, who was smiling. I've seen her crying, and it's not something you want
to see very often. "She's usually a very upbeat personality, she's got a great
sense of humour, and her laugh makes you think Christmas just came. But
underneath, she's very insecure."

I thought about this. The woman who could leap speeding locomotives with a
single bullet was insecure. She could fly to the middle of the sun and find it
pleasantly peaceful, and what she did when she got there is cry. And my main
feeling about this was that if anyone wanted to hurt her, they'd have to go
through me first, and I could see that Duncan felt the same way.

"What about you, George, what's your line?" "I used to work in an office, but
I left that so I could be Wendy's full-time Wielder." "What's that about?"
"Well, like I said, she's a bit inexperienced, and doesn't always know what to
do. So I tell her what to do. I command, she obeys. At least, that's the
theory. The practice is, I suggest, and she takes my advice if she feels like
it." "That's not fair, Duncan, you know I take a lot of notice of what you
say." "Sure, that's why you dump me in a cold shower each morning even though
I've specifically told you not to." "She does?" Wendy nodded, and grinned. "He
screams like a banshee, but he loves it really. Then I give him a big rub-down
with a warm towel, and a long cuddle." I sat back in the chair. "You know, you
two might not be married, but you sure do act like a married couple." "Yeah,
we fight about sex and money, all the time." "You do?" "No, she doesn't give a
damn about money, and how do you fight with a woman like that about sex?" I
had no answer to that.

Wendy's face went serious, and she frowned slightly. "That's the bond between
the Weapon and her Wielder, it's very powerful." "Yes, and she reinforces it
each day." "Oh, there's some ceremony?" George looked a bit embarrassed. "Not
a ceremony, as such, not exactly." "Some sort of joint prayer or something?"
"Er, no." "Then what?" "She fucks my brains out."

And I don't think he was kidding.

Wendy turned to me while I was still absorbing that. "You'll stay with us
tonight, we've got a spare bedroom. You're in no condition to try to get
home." I could hardly argue with that, the strain of the day had left me as
limp as a dead cod. "I'll go and get the bed ready," said Wendy.

While she was doing the domestic bit, I chatted with Duncan. "So, apart from
kittens and forest fires, what else? You must have some great adventures
together." "Well, you know, son. That's what I thought when she arrived, I
thought it'll be like Batman or something. But it turns out, it just isn't
that simple. She can't just go rushing in like a bull in a china shop every
time there's some problem." "Prime Directive?" "You mean the Star Trek rule
about non-interference?" I nodded. Duncan laughed. "No, son, it's a lot
simpler than that." He tossed a newspaper to me. "Look through that. Some
woman murders her baby. Some man jumps off a bridge. Policitians sex scandals.
Royal scandals. It's mostly stuff that you can't really do very much about.
She can't be everywhere, despite what you're thinking there's a lot she can't
do, and for most of it, you can't even work out who are the good guys and who
are the bad guys." "Surely it's obvious?" "Not to me, son. Not all the time,
not even most of the time. The most we can do is sometimes find a situation
that's not ambiguous, like a kitten stuck in a tree or a forest fire. And then
we can maybe help somehow. Any road, I'm climbing the wooden hill to
Bedfordshire, and I suggest you do the same, it's been a long day, and it's
time to go gentle into that good night."

I went up after him, he pointed to the guest room. Inside it, I found Wendy
just finished making the bed. She straightened up, and turned to face me.
"George, I hope you'll consider me your friend. I can never repay you for what
you did today, but here's a little something on account. Friends?" I nodded,
and held out my hand for her to shake. She moved towards me, ignored the hand,
and kissed me.

I'm not sure if kiss is actually the right word here. She moved up against me,
and simultaneously invaded and surrounded me. She invaded me with her tongue,
surrounded me with her arms and her body was pressed against mine from chest
to knees. Her mouth was over mine, both her legs came up and wrapped around my
hips, and then she started rubbing herself against me, up and down a few
inches at a time. I don't know how long it all lasted; if it had been up to
me, it would have been forever. But after an eternity and a half, she broke
away, and left me in the room, trying to get back the breath that she'd been
keeping from my lungs, and wondering if my erection would ever subside.

With considerable difficulty, I got undressed, and into the bed. I lay there
in the dark, trying to sort out my thoughts. You know how, during the day,
there's things that you don't have the time to properly digest, and you tell
yourself that you'll think about them later? Well, pretty much everything that
had happened today was in that category. I ran through it in my head, starting
from the level crossing. I am *not* a brave person. Spiders make me go
clammy-handed, and I don't read ghost stories. I really could not have
predicted that I'd react the way I did, but I thought that the main lesson to
learn from that, was not to be so bloody stupid in future. OK, that's the easy
part. Now the hard part. Wendy.

Plainly, she was impossible. A mythic figure out of Mount Olympus and DC
Comics, with a chunk of Larry Niven thrown in. Equally plainly, she was there,
I could still remember the sound the car seat bolts had made as she ripped the
seat out, I remembered how it felt when she flew me, and most of all, I could
remember the kiss she'd just devastated me with. Whether she was a black hole
quadrupole or a witch probably didn't really matter. If it looks like a woman,
smells like a woman and feels like a woman, then as far as I'm concerned, it
sure ain't a duck.

I had just drifted off into that halfway point between wakefulness and sleep,
the point at which your brain is just winding down and everything is grey,
when I felt someone getting into the bed with me. Something that smelt good,
felt good and whispered "Is that a tent pole down there or are you glad to see
me?"

I thought about the idea of Wendy in the bed with me, and then I thought about
Duncan in the next room. "Are you crazy?" I whispered. "Get out of here!" She
was silent. I waited, but nothing happened. I turned to look at her, and she
was crying very very quietly, the tears running down her face. "Wendy, don't
cry" I whispered. "You, you don't want, you don't. I was, you don't, what?"
"Wendy, it isn't that I don't want you, of course I do, you can see for
yourself. But Duncan, you can't do this, it's wrong." "Oh, don't worry about
Duncan," she sniffled. "Wendy, you love him, right?" "Right." "Well, suppose
he find out." "He can't" "Wendy, don't be silly, he might wake up and find
you're not there and go looking, and ..." "No, he can't find out. Because he
already knows I'm here," and she gave me her "it's stopped raining" smile.

"He knows?" "Yes, we talked about it before I came. George, don't you want me
to have sex with you, I can see you do, what's the matter?" "Duncan." "But I
already told you, we discussed it, he thinks it's OK for me to, to. You know.
Whatever." I sighed. Was ever a man so tempted? "Wendy," I hissed, although
it's pretty difficult to hiss a name without sibilants. "He's in the next
room, he'll hear, he'll know. Maybe it's fine by him, but it's not fine by
me." Sometimes I say the stupidest things, if she'd taken that one seriously
and left, I'd spend the rest of my life kicking myself. "George, first of all
he's fast asleep, I've, you know. Administered a tranquiliser." "What? You've
drugged him up?" "No, don't be silly. There's ways of tranquilising a man that
don't involve either Valium or soothing music." Suddenly I twigged what she
was hinting at. "Oh. I see." "And secondly he said it's OK, because I do owe
you a big one." "Yes, but I know he's there, and it will, sort of, er, put me
off my stroke, to use a cricketing expression." "Oh."

She paused for a moment. "Well, I know how to handle that. I know a place we
can go, it'll be warm and cozy and soft, soft as a cotton wool cloud."
"Where?" "So it's all systems go?" "As long as we're a couple of miles from
here." "OK, clear for take-off?" "Take-off?" "Magneto on" and she put her arm
round my back. "Contact", and her other hand made contact with my crotch.
"Chocks away," and we floated out through the open window, which made me
realise that this was what she had planned all along. "You sneaky snake," I
said, "where are we going?" "Up, up and away ..." she replied as we soared
into the night sky.

A few minutes later, we broke through the clouds. The moon was full, a
bomber's moon, and with the clouds below us, the sky was brilliant with stars.
And absolutely brass monkeys. "Wendy, I thought you said it would be warm and
cozy." "You'll be warm soon enough when I get the revs up," she promised, "but
for now ..." and she wrapped her long silky cape around my naked body. As she
flew upwards, I began to feel a bit better. "This cape," I said, fingering it,
"that's not actually what it looks like, right? It's part of you, from what
you were saying." "That's right," she whispered into my ear, "I'm all around
you now." I shivered, not out of cold, not out of fear, but from knowing that
I was wrapped up in Wendy, a rather nice feeling.

She drifted to a halt, and we hovered. "How high are we?" "About three miles
up." She rotated until she was horizontal, with me on top. Her legs came up to
surround my hips, her arms were around my body and, not wishing to leave all
the running to her, I found her mouth with mine and since she'd left my arms
free, I got my hands on her breasts.

You can probably imagine what happened next. "Don't try to change position,
George, you'll feel safest like this." I wasn't intending to change position,
this one felt pretty damn good. Then she wiggled, bumped, and pulled, and I
began to understand the Mixmaster joke. "Wendy?" "Mmm?" "Wendy, what's
happening, what's that?" "Me. I'm happening, that's me." "But how are you
pulling me like that?" "George, how many times do I have to tell you, I'm not
actually a woman." "You are in all the more important aspects." "Well, here's
an aspect that's different."

I've had blow jobs before, and I've fucked a few women in my time. And I
thought I knew the difference. Wendy blurred the difference, this was half and
half. It was warm in there, and wet, and tight, and slithery. It was the best
place in the world, and the worst. I could see how a guy could get to like
this, to like this so much that you'd lose interest in conventional
alternatives. And after she'd brought me to a shuddering climax, she said "OK,
that was just to warm up, a bit of foreplay. Now we'll begin." Begin? I was
finished already. "Wendy, please, wait one minute, let me get my breath back."
She held off, but she was impatiently rubbing me to and fro against her body.
Her skin was soft, and there was no hint of the steel that was a short
distance beneath, except that her nipples were hard, digging into my chest,
almost painfully so.

The second round began with her mouth around my penis, her tongue stroking up
and down the underside. I was stiff within seconds, but she held me steady
while she continue the sexual torment. Then she spun me around, and I
discovered that the Mixmaster had a juice squeezer that could squeeze blood
from a stone. And I, in this case, was the stone. But not for long. Despite my
best efforts to refrain from reaching a conclusion, I lasted no more than a
couple of minutes inside her.

"Wendy," I whispered, "you're too much." "Too much is better than not enough,"
she responded, turning me to face away from her. And with some trepidation, I
felt something long and hard pressing between the cheeks of my arse. "What's
that?" I asked, nervously. "A finger, what did you think?" I relaxed. "I'm
never sure with you, I don't really know exactly what you've got there. Or
might have there that you've been hiding." She laughed, and it was a good
sound, a reassuring sound, and a sound I wanted to hear more of. "Wendy,
please," I pleaded, "let me relax for just a few minutes." She turned me back
to face her, and I nestled my head on her breasts. She pulled her cape over me
again, and stroked my hair. "You know, I'd never thought of your cape as being
a sex toy before." "Everything's a sex toy, George." "Especially me," I
suggested. She laughed again.

"Wendy, look at all the stars, there's millions of them." "Six thousand,
actually. That's all the human eye can see unaided." "Oh. Which one is yours?"
"None of them." "I mean, which one did you come from?" "None of them. The
Black Hole Folk don't live near a star, they just cruise around from place to
place; think of nomads, eternal wanderers. They don't need territory, or
light, or heat. A couple of them flew past this solar system, made me and
dropped me off as they went past. I fell into the Earth's gravity well, found
a good man to be my Wielder, and here I am." "How did you choose Duncan? And
why not someone, er, younger, more ... vigorous?"

"Because sex is great, but it's really important to me to have someone with
wisdom and maturity to tell me what to do, because I can't decide important
things for myself, it has to be someone from your species, your race, your
culture. So it can't be some young pup like you, George, it has to be someone
with a few grey hairs, like Duncan." "But why specifically him?" "I don't
actually know, that choice was made for me. I had a short list of guys to
approach, but I was lucky, and my first choice said 'yes'". "Wendy, with the
offer you made, anyone would say 'yes'". "Oh, George, you are sweet. Here ..."
"Oh." "And ... " "Oh. Oh." "This is what Duncan calls my eggbeater." "You can
beat my eggs any time you want. Oh. Oh OOOHHHH!!!!"

...

"Shouldn't you be doing more, I mean getting kittens out of trees will only
get you just so much karma." "Duncan and I talk about that a lot. The problem
is, what should I do?" "Well, you could patrol over London each night, looking
for crime to fight." "What does crime look like, George?" "Well, er." "I'm not
going to put parking tickets on cars. I'm not going to stop people smoking in
non-smoking areas. And I'm not going to kill ten-armed alien space monsters."
"But that's exactly what you should be doing, the monsters, I mean." "Um.
Problem is, sweets, you can go entire weeks without seeing any." "And then
three come at once. What about stopping wars, ending world hunger, doing the
Times crossword puzzle?" "Duncan does that. The puzzle, I mean. How do I stop
wars? Duncan can't see how, and it's no use asking me." "Well, I don't know.
but with all the power you have, it's got to be wrong for you to do nothing
with all the death and pain in the world." "George, I tell you what. In a few
hours from now, just when dawn the rosy fingered lightens the wine-dark sea,
I'll show you why it's not that simple. But until then ..." and I felt a
strong hand, gently in my groin. Stirring the pot. Squeezing the spoon. Firing
up my engine, one cylinder at a time. Then revving me up to speeds that
exceeded my design specification; no man was ever made that could keep up with
The Weapon when she was In The Mood, and wow, she was certainly in the mood
tonight. Although, from what I'd heard so far, she was like this every night?
How did Duncan survive? How did he manage to stand up in the morning? How did
he, how did she, oh, oh, please, stop, don't stop, no, yes, YESSSSS!!!!

...

I think I lost count. I know I lost count. Hell, I wasn't counting. You don't
have to count to know whether it's one, two or three, but once you get past
five, either you're counting, or you don't know. And since I hadn't been
counting, it not having occurred to me that it might be a useful thing to do,
I didn't know. Although I'm not sure what I could do with the information, you
can't exactly boast to your friends about how many times you've been brought
to orgasm by the Defender of the People. Problem is, they just aren't going to
believe you. Plus it somehow wasn't the sort of thing you would brag about.

But I do know that the last one was the best. Or maybe it was just that she
found the level that I couldn't go beyond. The sky was just beginning to lost
the deep black velvet colour as she demonstrated her ability to stroke me
inside of her while gripping me so tightly that I was unable to reach orgasm,
although by that time I wasn't certain that there was any orgasm left inside
of me to have, I was entirely depleted, detumescent and unmanned. Or not - I
discovered that there was indeed quite a lot left when she suddenly released
the tight grip while increasing the friction that spurred me to orgasm for the
last time. I fought and struggled to stop her from pushing me over the edge,
but her strong arms held me as helpless as a kitten as she made my body do
exactly what she wanted it to do. And as the night sky turned from dark to
light, my consciousness turned from light to dark, and her strong arms wrapped
her soft silky cape round me as I feel into a deep sleep.

She woke me soon after. We were much lower in the sky, just a couple of
hundred feet up. The sun had just peeked above the horizon, and I could hear
the dawn chorus as the early birds marked out their territory. She pointed
above us, and high in the sky I could see an airborne predator circling.
"That's a hawk," she said, "she's looking for her prey." Then she pointed
down, where the sparrows were just getting aloft in their search for seeds and
small insects. Suddenly, the hawk folded her wings, and stooped. "The hawk
will now kill one of those birds. The question is, George, should I protect
the birds from the hawk?" I thought about this for about a second, there
obviously wasn't much time. "Yes," I shouted, "quick, quick." Wendy went into
a dive, holding me firmly round the waist, and I clung to her neck. Her cape
flared out behind her like a huge wing as she levelled out, and the hawk,
still plummeting, and with very little control, crashed into the soft and
silky cape. The hawk seemed dazed for a moment, but soon recovered, and
flapped back into the sky. The sparrows had seen the drama, and had scattered
and hidden themselves.

"Now what, George? I can stay here all day, protecting the smaller birds from
the hawk. Or I could catch the hawk and wring its neck. Or I can fly you home
and we can talk about this." "Let's go home, Wendy. I think I see what you
mean."

I was slightly surprised when she took me, not to her home, but to mine.
"Wendy ... how did you know where I live?" "I looked you up in the phone book.
George, I'm not going to explain how I do everything, I'm sure you don't ask
ordinary folks that sort of thing." She took me up to the bedroom. "Because
you didn't get much sleep last night, did you?" she chuckled. "Mmmm. Wendy,
you don't have to leave just yet, do you?" "No, no hurry. Why?" "I wanted to
talk about hawks and sparrows. I've been thinking about what you showed me."

We sat on my bed together. I moved toward her, and she took me into her arms,
With a deep sigh, I tucked my head between her shoulder and her cheek,
breathing through a mouthful of her hair, and she held me in that position,
stroking my hair. "Go on," she said. "Well," I explained, "it's the key
problem of interfering in other people's lives. You can save the life of a
sparrow, but then the hawk goes hungry." "And the hawk's babies." "And the
hawk will hunt again, but you can't spend your whole life defending sparrows
against hawks." "Right. Plus, if I did, I might as well wring the hawk's neck,
it would be kinder than a gradual starvation after watching her babies die."
"So how does this translate to people?" "It's like this. You can see something
bad about to happen, and you can rush in and stop it. But if you don't take
into account all the side effects, you can wind up being totally ineffective,
or even doing more harm than good. The hawk will kill a sparrow, but it'll
just be a different one. The hawk will feed her chicks, the dead sparrow's
chicks will die. The hawk thinks it is good; the sparrow thinks it is evil.
Who is right? Who is wrong? This is not good, nor is it evil. It's just the
way it is."

"Couldn't you fight terrorists and guerrillas?" "Again, George - it isn't
always as simple as you think. Consider the French Resistance, during WW2.
Consider Lawrence of Arabia, in WW1. Consider the original guerrillas, the
Spanish fighting against Napoleon after their government had surrendered. Who
is right? Who is wrong? If you just go in with all guns blazing, you can be
killing the wrong people." "But it isn't always so ambiguous, surely?" "No,
that's right. When 400 square miles of blazing forest is threatening to burn a
city, and fire fighters are losing their lives each day to try to contain it,
then it's probably right to put the fire out." "Probably?" "Forest fires
aren't evil. They're just a natural thing." "But there's no good side to a
forest fire!" "Tell that to the new plants that can grow because the overhead
canopy that was blocking the sun, isn't there any more. Tell that to the fauna
that can now live on that new growth. OK, this is a small plus to put against
the large negative, but you can see that even in such a simple situation ...
it isn't that simple."

"But you must do something! With all your power, you can't just stand by and
watch people suffer!" "George, George, George. You aren't listening. What
about all the situations where, whatever I do, all that happens is that
different people suffer instead? What about the situations where, whatever I
do, I just increase the total suffering?" "But that's just an excuse for doing
nothing!" "No, it's a reason for working out the consequences of your actions
before you act. Which you failed to do when you asked me to save that sparrow.
And that's why I need Duncan, why I need him so much. I can't see these
complex consequences, and he can at least see some of them. "

I was silent for a while. "So what's the answer?" "The answer, George, is that
you had a tough day yesterday, and no sleep last night. You'll go to sleep
now, and I'll be gone when you wake up, several hours from now. And if you
ever need me, if you're in danger, or if your ill, or if you're just lonely
... call me, and I'll come, because I'm your friend. "My friend The Weapon," I
murmured into her neck. She held me until I fell asleep, wrapped safe in her
arms, her warm soft body holding me close, and with the comforting smell of
her in every breath that entered my lungs.

...

I woke up alone. I'm used to waking up alone, but I felt more alone this
morning than usual, and it was obvious why. It wasn't just the sex, she was
fun to be around. Even just sitting quietly with her was good, and that wasn't
something she seemed to do much of. So, I got out of bed, showered, shaved,
slouched downstairs and fried myself a kipper. In butter. Who wants to live
for ever? I felt I deserved a kipper after the events of yesterday. I sorted
out the edible bits from the bones, worked my way through the newspaper, got
ready for work, cursed when I remembered that my car was a wreck, got the bus
in to the City, and made my way carefully to my desk. Carefully, because it
turns out that a couple of cracked ribs may not be life-threatening, but it
sure as hell hurts when you breath, when you walk, when you laugh, when you do
anything except sit very still with your arms resting on something solid.

Felicity was bright and cheerful this morning. I think it's a compulsory
attribute of marketroids, that even when the sky is grey, your car is a
write-off and your ribs aren't what they ought to be, that you smile through
the pain and pretend that everything is tickety-boo. So I did. Hell, it's no
harder to smile than to frown, plus people like the look. "What's up with you,
Grouchy?" she asked. So much for the brave smile. "Oh, I just busted a couple
of ribs, wrecked my car and I think I have a kipper bone stick between my
teeth." "Wow. Wild weekend, huh?" "Yeah. Still, I got laid. How about you?"
She made a face. "No luck. I hung out at the Snails and Spice on Saturday,
but, George, do you think I'd have more luck if I went blonde?" I looked at
her. "Fliss, maybe if you ditched those god-awful Goth clothes, stopped
wearing black lipstick, and took that idiotic nappy-pin out of your ear,
ordinary decent lads wouldn't take one look at you and wonder where to get a
bottle of holy water." She looked down at herself. "What's wrong with black?"
"Well, it's. It's. Fliss, tell you what, pick a day when you're free, dress
like an ordinary human being, meaning not all in black, and I'll take you to a
nightclub, and you can dance round your handbag." She raised one eyebrow, a
trick that I'd been trying to imitate by practising with a mirror, to no avail
so far. "Thursday." "Done."

And thus it was that on Thursday evening, I caught the bus home, changed into
something relatively seemly, and got a taxi round to Fliss's place. I rang the
bell, she let me in, and I got my first sight of her. The good news was, she
wasn't dressed all in black. The bad news was, she was dressed all in white,
and with the scarlet lipstick, carmine fingernails and heavily cascara'ed
eyes, she looked like the Bride of Dracula.

"Uh, Fliss?" "Yes?" "Uh. You look. Uh. Great." "Thank you, she said, "let's
go, I'm going to knock them dead." Yes, probably. I just worried about what
she had planned for the corpses.

In her car on the way to the nightclub, she asked me again about what I'd been
up to to get my ribs busted. I'd been a bit evasive about this; I told her I'd
buggered up my car, and that in doing do, I'd buggered up my ribs, but I
couldn't think of any way to tell anyone about meeting The Weapon without
sounding like a mouthy bastard. It was like saying, "I was in the supermarket
for a loaf of bread, and stone me, there was Princess Mary at the checkout, so
we talked about about the price of apples, and we went back to her place and
she fucked my brains out ..." No. That's followed by "I don't believe you" and
either you look a complete prat by insisting it's true, or else you back down
and say "Only kidding." So it wasn't that I was keeping it secret, it's just
that there's some things a guy doesn't talk about.

I was, however, perfectly serious about her dancing round her handbag.

See, it's like this. When you have a couple of busted ribs, walking is
painful, standing up and moving your arms about a little is just about
possible, but dancing? Forget it. So I sat by the bar, watching the ice in my
drink melt. OK, she wasn't actually dancing round her handbag; she started off
that way, but after a pretty short time, some bloke with no dress sense at all
came along and asked her to dance. I could tell they were dancing together,
because although they were several yards apart, they were actually glancing at
each other from time to time. And then they were only a couple of yards apart.
And then you couldn't put a fag paper between them, they were that close. And
then she came over to the bar and explained that she was going on to a party
together with Keith, and did I mind awfully terribly, and no of course I
didn't, you go ahead and have a great time Fliss and you can tell me about it
if you get lucky, and it was at that point that I realised, Oh fuck, it's her
car, how am I getting home? Because by then it was one in the morning, and all
the cabs had faded away like the dew on the roses in the morning. And the
tubes don't run after midnight, and we all know what happens to buses in
London after midnight, they all turn into pumpkins. Or something.

So I set out to walk the nine miles back to my home, which normally would be
no great problem, and I'd probably get back at 4 am, in time for a nice
restful two hour's sleep before the morning wake-up. Except that you do *not*
walk fast with a couple of broken ribs. Like I said, no big deal, not life
threatening, but bugger me they FUCKING HURT. And at my current rate of
stagger, I was looking at getting home after the milkman delivered, which
would leave me just enough time to shave, splash my face, put on some sad rags
and get to work a couple of hours late. Yuck. George, how the hell do you get
yourself into these pickles?

And then I had a class A idea. Phone Wendy! She had said that if I was ever in
trouble, and although this probably wasn't in the same class as 400 square
miles of forest fire, it was surely upscale of getting kittens out of trees?
Yes!

Oh. Wait. The airhead commonly known as George had left Duncan's phone number
at home, and I didn't remember it. I tried directory enquiries, but do you
know how many people there are called D Macrae? And I didn't know the address,
because I was substantially out of it when we'd arrived there, and flying out
through a bedroom window isn't a good way to see street names.

Still, I have a pretty good memory, except for anything actually important,
and I did remember one thing. She hadn't said "phone me", she'd said "call
me". For ordinary people "call me" can only mean "phone me", but, you know,
she was not what you'd call ordinary. And I knew that she didn't actually
sleep. And I wondered if ... maybe ... well, you know, sometimes you wonder
about things, and sometimes you just count the teeth in the goddam horse's
mouth.

And that is how come I was standing next to the Peter Pan statue in Kensington
Gardens, hollering "Wendy" up at the sky, as loud as I could.

This isn't actually illegal.

But neither is it approved decorous behaviour such as is expected from a sober
and upright citizen at one in the morning.

It isn't that it's likely to wake anyone up, being as how it's in the middle
of the park and by the time you get to inhabited parts, the roar of the
traffic down Kensington Gore would drown out the sound of a ten ton bomb going
off. And I wasn't drunk, so "drunk and disorderly" wasn't a possible charge
that could be brought against me. But the on-the-beat copper who was walking
towards me didn't look like he was about to add his voice in chorus with mine,
he looked more like someone who knew that something wicked was happening, but
hadn't quite worked out exactly what devilment I was up to.

And I feel sure that the proximity of the Peter Pan statue didn't help.

"Excuse me sir," he began, "are you calling your dog?". "It's alright," said a
voice behind me. "We had an escape from the Coney Hatch lunatic asylum, but I
have him restrained now, and I'll just take him back with me. Come on, you
..." I closed my eyes, leaned back, and said "Wendy, be careful the ribs." "If
you're sure miss?" "I'm sure," she said, reassuringly, "I can handle it now,
thank you officer." I, very wisely, kept my mouth shut and tried to look
insane but calm. The policeman nodded, and proceeded on his beat.

"George," said Wendy. "Er," I replied, informatively. She put her arms round
me, I turned towards her. "Thank god you came, Wendy." "What happened?" "I
went to a nightclub with Fliss" "Nightclub ..." "And I couldn't dance, because
of my ribs ..." "Dance ..." "And she got off with some guy and she had the car
so I couldn't get home." "Nightclub. Dance." said Wendy. I looked into her
eyes. "What?" "Nightclub," she said. "Dance," she said. "That sounds like
fun," she said, "and Duncan isn't about to take me to something like that."
Well, he isn't exactly a spring chicken, I thought, but I didn't say so out
loud, because I knew that Wendy loved him dearly. I looked at my watch, half
past one, and hey, who needs sleep? And I looked at Wendy, and said, "Wey hey,
they're still open, let's boogie!"

So, Wendy flew me back to the club, and I explained to the bouncer at the door
that I'd already paid once, so please let me in, and when that didn't work,
Wendy explained to the bouncer at the door that he had two choices, of which
the second involved him getting hurt, and would he take a good look at the
costume she was wearing before he made up his mind, and we were inside.

The sound level was, of course, deafening. You communicate by mouthing at each
other; if you can't lip read, don't go clubbing. I explained to Wendy that the
point was to move to the music, and the more vigorously and energetically you
could move, the more it demonstrated your suitability as a sexual partner. She
nodded, and we danced.

I say "we danced". Actually, I jiggled slightly, severely restrained by the
pain in my ribs. Wendy, of course, was under no such constraints. She was in
her full The Weapon outfit, her cape flaring out dramatically behind her as
she hovered twelve inches from the floor and demonstrated what was possible
when gravity wasn't an issue. And as she danced and spun, her short skirt
flared out around her, giving even less coverage than usual, while being a
major attention-getter, as all the guys gathered round to watch a superheroine
dancing to a fast pounding rhythm.

Her feet didn't touch the ground. You say that about Fred Astaire or Ginger
Rogers, and what you mean is that they dance very gracefully. In Wendy's case,
she danced very gracefully, and also her feet didn't touch the ground. At any
moment, I was expecting her to soar off to the ceiling, ot start doing
aerobatics, but she didn't - just as the beauty of the sonnet is in the
restriction to the fourteen lines of iambic pentameters, so also is the beauty
of the dance in the restriction to the horizontal plane and the rhythm of the
beat. And she whirled, spun, leaped and dived, but all in the same way that a
human being would - only more so, and without touching the floor. Before long,
she was the only dancer, all the other people on the floor were gathered
round, laughing and clapping to the beat, audience to a spectacle they would
probably never see again as long as they lived.

Of course, it couldn't last for ever. Suddenly, she stopped. Looked round. Saw
that everyone was watching her. And she grabbed me and we rocketed out of the
dance hall, a blur of white and gold. She flew so fast, the ground was a blur,
and I swear we covered the nine miles to my home in under a minute. She flew
non-stop through an upstairs window that I hadn't realised was open, dropped
me onto my bed and then threw herself down next to me.

And she was crying.

Naturally I put my arms round here and said "There there", but I really
couldn't understand what had gotten into her. "Wendy, lovely Wendy, what's the
matter, why are you crying?" I dabbed at her face with a handkerchief, while
part of me wondered where the water was coming from, and how she made tears
work. But now wasn't the time to ask about that.

I'd seen her cry before, and I still wasn't used to it. Like Duncan told me,
it rips you apart to watch the most powerful female in the world sobbing her
heart out. Why is this? I don't know. Maybe it's the contrast. But I wanted to
make her smile again, so I did the only thing I could think of. I kissed her.
Then I kissed her again. By the third time, she was starting to kiss me back,
and I felt that I was getting somewhere. Within a few minutes, she was
snuffling rather than crying, and she'd calmed down enough for me to ask her
what the matter was. "Oh, George. All those people. Laughing at me. I looked
up, and they were all laughing at me, and I felt so totally humiliated, I'm
never going to try to dance again."

"Never gonna dance?"

She shook her head.

"Wendy, they weren't laughing at you." "No?" "No! They was watching you dance,
you were fantastic, you looked so graceful, so light, so great, they'd never
seen anything like it, and they were clapping, and they were happy, and they
were laughing." "So why were they laughing?" "Because people do laugh when
they're happy." "And they weren't laughing at me?" "No!"

"Oh."

"George, I've been a bit silly, haven't I?" I thought, wow, this is like
walking through a minefield, if I agree witht that she'll start crying again.
"No, love, you haven't been silly. You just don't fully understand people,
which isn't surprising, since you've only been around for a couple of weeks."
"Hmmm."

"Wendy, now that you're here, do you have to rush back?" "No, no hurry." "So,
you want to spend the night here?" "Well, since I'm here ... but I'll have to
leave at dawn, I want to get Duncan out of bed and make his breakfast."
"Humph, the Goddess of the Kitchen." "What?" "Domestic bliss." "George, I
don't know what you're talking about, but how about I just ... " "Oh! Ow!"

She wrung me out limp and dripping, and as I dozed off, she murmured "If you
wake up and I'm not here, don't worry, I'll be back before dawn." "Where are
you going?" "There's some things I want to think about, George, and I'm going
to my Special Place where it's nice and clean and peaceful." "zzzz"

I didn't wake up until after she'd gotten back from the center of the sun. She
woke me at dawn, as promised, and kissed me goodbye. Just before she left, I
asked her "Wendy, I have an idea I'd like to talk over with you some time
soon." She looked at me, full in the face, and I wondered if there was any way
she could tell what I was thinking. Surely not? "Come round this evening, you
can tell Duncan at the same time. I'm making a liver and bacon risotto, you
can join us for dinner."

All that and she could cook, too.

. . .

In the office, Felicity was even brighter and more cheerful than usual.
"Fliss," I said, "about last night ..." She blushed. "Yes," she said, nodding.
"Yes what?" "Yes, I did ... oh. What were you asking about?" "Ah, never mind.
I was about to tell you, don't worry, I got home OK last night, thanks for
asking." She blushed more redly. "Plus," I went on, "I also got laid."
Beetroot, pure beetroot. Still, I was pleased for her.

After work, I caught the bus home, showered, shaved, changed into something
less office-like, and phoned Duncan. "Er, Duncan, you know I don't have a car
right now, and getting to your place on the bus isn't exactly easy, I don't
suppose you could ask Wendy to ..." At that point, my doorbell rang. "Hang on,
there's someone at the door." He hung up. Oh. Oh well. You have to make
allowance for older people. I ran downstairs to see who it was, and, yes, you
guessed it. There she was. "But, but. How. Er." "Stop butting, George, I've
got a pot of rice on the gas and I can't leave it for long, come on."

The risotto was great, too. Savoury with the liver and salty with the bacon,
and followed a sour apple tart with sweet cream. I could really get to like
this.

"So here's my idea," I said. "I was reading in the newspaper about heroin
addiction, and they say that with Afghanistan out of the picture, 75% of the
world's supply is shut down. But production has increased in South East Asia,
specifically the Golden Triangle in Ramanmari, and the 3000 tons of opium per
year lost in Afghanistan is being made up for by increased plantings there."
Duncan nodded. "Supply and demand, son, there's nothing stronger than economic
forces." "But there is, Duncan! And right now, she's in your kitchen doing the
dishes." Duncan frowned. "What's your idea?" "You remember you told me that
she had to remove the salt from sea water before she could use it to put out
the fire, because otherwise the salt would make the land infertile?" "Yes,
and?" "So, we're talking about an area of land that's also about 400 square
miles, total. And if she dumps sea water on that, it fucks up the only supply
of opium left after Afghanistan dropped out of the picture. End of heroin
problem."

Wendy brought us coffee and biscuits, and sat down on the floor by Duncan's
feet. He stroked her hair while we continued to talk. "I think you've got the
beginning of an idea there," he said, "but you're only looking at the
immediate effects. Problem is, the knock-on effects can wind up so much more
than the immediate effects that you wind up having the exact opposite effect
of what you were hoping for. And you make a bad situation worse." "So you're
saying we should do nothing? Wendy, what do you think?" "I don't," she
explained, "that's what Duncan's for."

"No, I'm not saying we do nothing," said Duncan, "I'm saying that before we
sow their fields with salt, we should go and have a look at the situation
there. A reconnaissance. Talk to the Ramanmari government, talk to the
farmers, talk to the local politicians, and then when we have a better
understanding of how it all works, then ..." "Smash it to pieces," said Wendy,
looking angry. We both looked at her. She looked defensive. "I'm allowed an
opinion, aren't I? I've seen what these drugs do to people. Smash it to
pieces. This is a job for ... The Weapon!"

Duncan and I looked at each other. She's been reading comics again. "OK,
sounds like we have a plan," said Duncan. "Wendy scouts out the situation,
let's say a couple of weeks for that, then we meet back here to work out the
next step. Good luck, both of you." Both of us? "Both of us?" I asked. Duncan
frowned. "Wendy can't do this on her own, and I'm a bit too old to go
gallivanting around the world. So you'll go with her." "But," I said. That one
word was intended to include the difficulty of getting a couple of weeks off
my job, the fact that I hadn't a clue how to go about this, and my nervousness
about going into what had to be one of the most hazardous parts of the world.
"But," I repeated, trying to infuse the word with all the above, plus my
inability to speak the local language, plus my total ignorance of the politics
of the region. "You'd be her Wielder while you were there," Duncan added. I
carefully suppressed my 'but' and replaced it with a "Can do!" Wendy winked at
me.

. . .

Next day, I called in to the office. "Fliss, do me a favour, love. I suddenly
need to take two weeks off, tell me you can cover my job while I'm gone? And
fix it up with the boss? No, I can't say where, let's just say I'm saving the
world, hmmm? No, it isn't a wild two week orgy. Yes I probably will. Yes,
probably quite a lot. Yes, but that isn't the main purpose here, Fliss, stop
that, getting laid has obviously lowered your inhibitions a lot, now will you
please please pretty please? OK, thanks. I'll do the same for you sometime."

It was late afternoon before I'd finished cancelling the milk delivery and
newspapers, checking that the house was thoroughly locked up and the
neighbours notified that I'd be away for a couple of weeks, the gas stopcock
firmly off and the house straightened out into a reasonable state for my
return. Wendy turned up as it was getting dark, having said a long goodbye to
Duncan, lucky old sod.

So I packed a small kitbag with a clean pair of socks and other necessaries,
and grabbed my credit card and passport. Wendy tucked my kitbag away under her
cape behind her; it just sort of disappeared like a rabbit in a magicians hat.
Then she stood facing me, her arms outstretched, holding the ends of her cape
in each hand. She brought her hands around me, her cape over my head so that I
was completely wrapped up in it, her arms pulled me into her warm soft body,
and the next thing I knew was that I could feel a force of three G's pressing
me into her body, which is actually a very nice feeling.

After several minutes, the G-force slackened off, and we were in free fall.
"Please note smoking is not permitted in the aisles or toilets," she said,
"are you ready for the in-flight entertainment to begin?" "Yes please," I
said, enthusiastically.

My only complaint was that it didn't last long enough. Phineas Fogg only just
managed to go around the world in eighty days; Wendy could do a complete
near-earth-orbit in eighty minutes. Well, ninety actually, but let's not allow
pedantry to stand in the way of poetry.

Thirty minutes later, I felt the G-force return as she re-entered the
atmosphere, and again I was pressed into her body as we slowed to land. "It's
the only way to fly" I said, as she reached the ground. Daylight was gone now,
it was very dark, with just a quarter moon for visibility, and we'd landed a
long way from any signs of civilisation. "Uh, where are we, by the way?"
"Welcome to Chiang Rotse, please return all stewardesses to an upright
position." "Where's the hotel?" "Hotel? This is just a village, I doubt if
they have a hotel." "So why are we here?" "Duncan picked it out. It's plumb in
the middle of the Golden Triangle, and so it's a good place to scout around."
"So now what?" "I'll ask Duncan, hang on." "What?" "Duncan says, get into the
village and find someone who speaks English." "Hold on, Wendy, hold on. You
just spoke with Duncan?" She nodded. "How, telepathy?" "Don't be silly,
George, you can't use it at that range. I just phoned him."

My head was spinning, that's two things to follow up. "Phoned him how?"
"Satellite, it's just up there," she pointed. "It doesn't care how the radio
waves are generated, so I just make them like a sat phone would and focus them
to where the sat is. And I pick up the signals coming back, it's just like
talking to Duncan on a phone, no big deal." "And over what range can you do
telepathy, Wendy?" "Oh, George, come on, you don't seriously believe in
telepathy, do you? Go go go, lets see what's there." "One more thing, Wendy.
Can you speak their language, whatever it is." "No, sweetie, English is all I
do, maybe a bit of Latin too." Either that was another joke, or else it
wasn't, it didn't seem important. So we held hands as we walked towards the
village. I can recommend holding hands with Wendy.

When I say village, you probably have a mental picture of a bunch of thatched
brick-built cottages, a duck pond, a church and a village inn. Scrub all that,
think mud huts, and plenty of them. One of them had a soft yellow-red glow,
and we headed for that one, maybe there were people there. She pulled me back
before I could go in, whispering "Wait, George, ladies first." "But you're not
a ..." and the rest of the sentence was lost in the roar of gunfire.

I wasn't worried. I mean, not much. Well, maybe a little. She'd explained to
me about her various skins, and how they got more difficult to damage as you
went closer in, and I knew she'd just spent an hour meditating in the middle
of the sun, but you know, when you hear bullets flying and your best girl is
in harm's way, you still worry.

You can't blame them for being a bit quick on the trigger. When people are
expecting five foot nothing orientals, and a six foot woman walks in wearing a
white costume and a long cape, you can see how nervous people might get a bit
quick with the stutter-gun. The gunfire stopped, and I risked a quick peek
around her side. "Give me that," she said, holding out her hand. The guy with
the AK47 was fumbling with it, trying to get a new clip in place so he could
watch another thirty bullets bounce off her; he took no notice of her request.
So she took a few steps forward, and pinched the business end of the gun
between thumb and finger, flattening the muzzle. "Don't try to use it now,
sweetie, or something will break," she advised. Probably he didn't speak
English, possibly he didn't realise what she'd done, or maybe he was
terminally stupid, but he ignored her advice, and pulled the trigger. The
bullets travelled up the barrel, reached the flattened part, and stuck. All
that energy had to go somewhere, and the barrel burst. The guy holding the gun
got the worst of it; he wasn't going to be shooting anyone ever again. When I
heard the explosion, I peeked around her side again, saw the mess, and grabbed
her hand.

"Wendy." She wasn't listening, she was staring in horror at the gory mess in
front of her. I tugged on her hand. "Wendy, listen. That wasn't your fault, he
did it to himself, he killed himself, it wasn't your fault." She turned to
look me in the eyes. "Really?"

I looked into those big blue eyes, and I knew that I couldn't lie to her. And
so I thought for a second, he saw what she did, but he still fired the gun. If
you're that stupid then you can't blame anyone else for your stupidity, so I
looked her right back into her eyes and said "Really." Then I looked down at
her, and realised that she was far from undamaged. Her costume was ripped in
several places, and underneath I could see where her flesh was torn up. She
looked down to see what I was looking at. "Oh. Oh. Close your eyes, George."
So I didn't, and I was very glad I didn't.

First, her clothes vanished, and she was naked. Then her skin disappeared, and
I could see the smooth, light red surface that lay under it. Then her skin
came back, but without the damage, and finally her costume, intact. She looked
at me, and she knew I'd been watching her. "A gentleman would not have peeked
at a naked lady," she said. There's really only two answers to that, and I
cowardly chose the less offensive one. "I'm not a gentleman." She laughed and
reached for me, and we traded hugs.

As my eyes became accustomed to the smoky light which came from a fire in the
middle of the hut, I could see several other people in the hut, looking
terrified, some of them just children. There was silence, apart from a baby
screaming in a basket on the floor.

Everyone was looking at Wendy. "Okayyy ..." I said. Everyone looked at me.
"Wendy, shut that baby up." "Uh. How?" "Pick it up and cuddle it, of course."
Wendy held the baby in her arms, its face to her breast, and it did what
babies instinctively do. "Anyone here speak English?" I asked. One old man
stood up. "Sir, I speak a little," he said. "And you are ...?" "I am Lan Ho."
"and who is in charge here," I asked. He looked around him. "We are a family,"
he said. I am the great-grandfather, the oldest. Sir, may I offer you food and
drink?" He gestured to one of the old women, she dipped a bowl of rice from
the pot in the fire and offered it to me, together with a small bowl of green
tea. Wendy turned to me. "George!" "Yes?" "George, this baby is only six
pounds." "So?" "She should be more like twelve. She's starving." I turned to
Lan Ho. "What's wrong with the baby?" His head drooped, he looked at the
floor. "I am ashamed." "Why?" "We cannot feed our children." I looked at the
children, really looked, and I could see the thin faces, the ribs showing
through the skin. "How can any of us hold up our heads when we cannot protect
and feed our children?" said Lan Ho, sadly.

Wendy took off her tunic and started to breast-feed the baby. I ate a few
grains of rice, and returned the bowl, thanking Lan Ho for his hospitality,
and explaining that I had already eaten so fully that I could not manage more
than that. He nodded, and invited me to sit by the fire.

Wendy hovered, nursing the baby while I sat by the fire, listening to Lan Ho.
"We do not have enough food because we are forced to cultivate this evil weed,
the opium poppy. We have to do what they tell us, or they take our children
and sell them in the big cities. But they take many of our children anyway. We
cannot stop them. I am ashamed, we cannot stop them from taking our children,
we are helpless. The children cry because they are hungry, and we cannot feed
them; you cannot know the pain that you feel when you see your child crying
for food, it is beyond your imagination. You have never known hunger, not real
hunger, when the lack of food makes you slow and stupid, and your thoughts
only extend as far as the next meal. The adults are even more hungry, because
the parents give to their children the food that they need to eat to be able
to work." He put his hands over his face, and bowed as if a great weight was
on his back. "Can't you just refuse?" I suggested, "this opium is killing our
children, there's twenty thousand dying each year." "Sir, to me the choice is
difficult. Your children will die or our children will die. What would you
recommend? Which would you choose?" I nodded,seeing the impossible dilemma.
"And now," he said, "three hundred of us will die." "What? Why?" He pointed to
the dead gunman. "The penalty for what your Ghost Woman did is that one in ten
of us will die. I shall be one of them, I hope."

I began to understand more about the hawk and the sparrows. As soon as you
make a change, there are unintended effects. Wendy hadn't intended that the
gunman should die, just that he should stop firing his weapon. I hadn't
intended to get involved in this situation, we were supposed to be just
looking at how things were. But now we were slap bang in the middle of an
oncoming massacre. Wendy was still feeding the baby, she didn't seem to be
taking any notice of all this. Watching her, suspended in mid air, dressed in
white and gold, I could understand why Lan Ho called her Ghost Woman.

"Wendy, tell Duncan about this situation." "I already did." "What did he say?"
"He told me to tell you 'Kurosawa', but I don't know what he meant, shall I
ask him?" "No," I said, "I understand what we must do. Lan Ho, you must resist
these bandits." "We cannot." "You must, or they will kill 300 of you." "We
have no weapons, if we resist they will kill us all. Better 300 should die
than all of us" He looked expressionless. "Sir, you must not be here when they
arrive. They will send a squad, a dozen men, to see what has happened to this
one. This is what they do when he gets drunk and fails to report back, this is
what they will do tomorrow. You and your Ghost Woman must leave at dawn, to be
as far away from here as you can be when they arrive."

"Lan Ho, you cannot accept this. You do have weapons, and we have my, er,
Ghost Woman, you saw what she can do. We must defend the village against the
bandits." "We?" "Yes, we. All of us. Your young men, armed with the axes and
mattocks, bill-hooks and hoes that you use to till the soil, and we have that
man's gun, the Ghost Woman will repair it, and we have the Ghost Woman
herself, she will fight by our side. How many young men are there in the
village?" "Strong enough to work in the fields, some five hundred." "So it
will be five hundred against twelve, we'll ambush them, they won't know what
hit them." "Not five hundred." "No?" "No. Two thousand. Sir, you are talking
war. But this is not your Western war, with rules, and prisoners. This is real
war. Everyone over the age of ten, who is able to stand, will fight. Because
the penalty for losing is death for all, there are no non-combatants. I have
fought before ..."

I looked up at Wendy. She was talking to the baby, and playing some game with
her finger and the baby's hands. A woman was standing next to her, smiling up
at the baby; I guessed that was the mother.

"Will your people fight?" "Yes," he said, "with your Ghost Woman we stand a
chance at least against the squad. But after that? I don't know. They will
send more, and wipe us out. Unless your Ghost Woman can stop them." "Wendy," I
called to her. She looked down at me, and shook her head slightly. "The hawk
and the sparrow," she said. She meant, we could stop this attack, maybe. But
would we then spend the rest of our lives defending these sparrows from the
hawk? I thought about Duncan's idea, I thought about Lan Ho and three hundred
people walking tamely to be murdered, and I said to Wendy, "Bring Duncan up to
date on this, does he say the same?" "Kurosawa". I nodded. We fight.

"Lan Ho, get your people together, get them out of their huts, we have to get
ready now. We have to arm, we have to dig. Tell them what's happening, tell
them we're going to kill the bandits, tell them about the Ghost Woman. Wendy,
while Lan Ho stirs things up, I need to talk with you." She handed the baby to
her mother, and I stepped into her arms. She flew us straight up through the
hole in the roof that the smoke went through, and we hovered way up in the
air, out of earshot.

"Wendy, are you up for this?" She'd nearly broken when the gunman had died, I
didn't want her flaking out on me when things got hot. "What's going to
happen, George. We're going to kill those twelve bandits?" "Yes, and more.
Because it won't stop there. After those twelve, they'll send an attack in
force, and much blood will flow before this business is done. I need to know
if you have the stomach for this." "George, I don't have a stomach, or a
heart, but if this is what you need to do to protect these people, then I'll
help you do it." "And the hawk and the sparrow?" "I never did tell you how
that is resolved, did I?" I shook my head. "George, you decide who your
friends are, and then you help them against their enemies. And they help you
against your enemies."

"Yes. Tell me, what were you feeding that baby on? Surely you don't have ..."
"Distilled water and lactose sugar. It's not as good as her mother's milk, but
it's calories and better than nothing. Give me a while and I could probably
come up with a better formula, but really, you might as well buy baby feed and
give her that. Her name's Kippy, she's such a lovely baby, I'd like to take
her home with me." "Wendy ..." "Oh, I know I can't, but I'm just saying. Such
a lovely baby. And so hungry." "OK, Ghost Woman, let's get ready to rumble."
And we kissed, long and hard, out of sight of the villagers.

Back on the ground, in the square in the middle of the village, Lan Ho had
finished telling the other villagers what was happening, and they were
shouting and arguing excitedly. I could guess what the two sides of the
argument were - to fight or to submit. Of course, most of them hadn't seen the
scene with Wendy and the gunman, and had no idea of her power. Even the ones
that had seen what happened, probably had only a slight understanding. We need
a dramatic gesture, something that would convince them that they stood a
chance. I asked Lan Ho where the bandits would come from; he pointed to the
north. "Wendy," I said, "I want a pit trap there, dig a big hole."

She flew a hundred yards north, then high into the air. Then she turned, and
plunged sharply downwards. The impact with the ground made the earth shake,
and left a huge crater, several feet deep. She came back out of the crater,
and flew back to my side. "This is the Ghost Woman who will fight by our side,
with her protection we cannot lose" I said. Lan Ho translated, and the
villagers cheered. I wondered how many of them believed that.

I told Lan Ho to arm as many villagers as he could with agricultural
implements. Those who were unarmed, were set to squaring up the pit trap,
setting sharp stakes on the floor of the pit, to stab the bandits that fell
in. Then we covered the trap with sticks, leaves and a layer of earth. It
looked very obvious to me, but the bandits wouldn't be expecting any
resistance. The other ace in the hole, was our AK47. Wendy squeezed it back
into shape, and there were a couple of spare magazines for it. I looked at it,
wondering how it worked, until Lan Ho put me out of my misery. "I used one of
those, a long time ago," he said. "Used it much?" "It was my best friend," he
said. I decided not to ask what war this was in, you take good luck wherever
you can find it. I gave it to him to use, warning him not to shoot until the
ambush was sprung. He gave me a withering look, as if to say what sort of
amateur do you take me for?

I told Lan Ho where to place our troops; the leading elements of the bandits
would, I hoped, fall into out pit trap, but that would leave several further
back in the column, and we had to close in with them as soon as the trap was
sprung. They had guns, capable of killing out to some hundreds of yards. We
had sticks and stones, and not much more, and needed to be close in to do any
damage. And that meant that the villagers had to be hidden close to where the
bandits would be. We dug more holes, digging was something they understood
very well. And then, with a villager in the shallow hole and covered with a
layer of earth, he would be invisible until he rose up and attacked. Or at
least, that was my plan.

That night, I slept warm and secure in Wendy's arms, hovering half a mile
above the ground. The villagers were cold and scared. But there's only one
Wendy, and rank hath its privileges; I was her Wielder, she was my Weapon. We
didn't make love that night, somehow it wasn't right the day before a battle.
But we kissed a lot, and she gave me her oath again. "My strength is your
strength. My power is your power. I will love you and protect you and obey
you." And although I knew that this was only temporary, it comforted me a lot.

We were ready by the morning. We had to be, that was all the time there was.
The plan was simple; again, by necessity. These people were not a disciplined
army of men, they were a rabble armed with stone age weapons. The plan was
this. As soon as the bandits fall into the pit, everyone rushes in and hits
them with whatever they've got. I knew we'd take casualties, but I reckoned
that they wouldn't have time to reload, that the 30 bullets from each AK47
would kill or wound a few of our people, we'd lose maybe fifty casualties, and
this was a lot better that the 300 we'd take if we did nothing. Of course,
that wasn't taking the longer term into consideration, but I had some ideas
there, too. But I hadn't told Lan Ho about those, first we had to get through
this ambush.

I sent Wendy off to the north to be our flying eye; I asked her to stay up out
of sight, but to spot the oncoming squad of bandits and come and tell us how
many there were, and where they were approaching from. Good intel is the key
to good battle planning.

Wendy got back with good news. "There's eleven of them, and they're coming
straight here, they look like they're strolling through the park, weapons
slung on their backs, smoking and chatting." "Great. Wendy, go back out and
keep an eye on them, keep me in touch."

Wendy flew out and back a couple more times, keeping me in touch with their
progress. Either these guys were astonishingly astute and good at pretending
to be casual, or else they were about to fall into the worst ambush of their
lives. As they got to within a mile, Wendy refused to fly any more, and took
up a position in front of me. She insisted that she had to be there to make
sure I didn't get hurt, but she was blocking most of my view, and there wasn't
anything I could say that would shift her. Lan Ho came to me as we waited.
"Whatever happens today," he said, "I must thank you on behalf of everyone.
After today, I might perhaps be dead, but I will no longer be so ashamed."

Soon, we could see the bandits swaggering down the trail, looking like they
owned the world. Everyone kept very quiet, and I held my breath. The pitfall
worked well; the first five bandits were over the pit when the branches gave
way and they plunged in, and then all hell broke loose. People screamed and
rushed at the remaining bandits, who were initially stunned, then struggled to
bring their guns into readiness. But we hit them before they could open fire,
and they went down under the hammering of spades and hoes, sticks and stones.
The bandits in the pit were in a bad way, dazed and broken by the fall, and
impaled on our sharpened stakes. I told Lan Ho to salvage their guns and any
other military equipment, and then Wendy and I flew out to have a look at the
bandit's lair, which turned out to be a stoutly-built wooden barracks. By the
time we got back, the screams from the pit fall had stopped.

I talked with Lan Ho. "Now they'll send out a big force," he said, "but we
have guns." "Yes, twelve of them," I replied, "and not a great deal of ammo,
either. I reckon there's eighty or a hundred men at that barracks." The light
went out of Lan Ho's eyes. "We better start digging defences," he said. "No,"
I replied. We're outnumbered too badly for that." "We can't surrender, they'll
kill every one of us." "No. We can't defend, and we can't surrender. So we
attack!" "What?" "We attack, very soon. We attack their barracks, while they
aren't expecting it, they won't know what's hitting them." "Sir, have you seen
that barracks? It's a fort. Heavy timber walls, slit windows - it's made for
defence. We'd be slaughtered before we even got close." "We won't get close,"
I replied, "we hit them with artillery, and we just keep on hitting them until
they give up." "We don't have any artillery," he replied. "Yes we do," I
answered, "we've got her."

She looked at me, and said softly, "George, can we have a little strategy
meeting here?" "Sure, Wendy, what's the matter." "Uh," she said, put her arms
round me and flew me up out of earshot. "George, I really don't like the idea
of being artillery."

Oh no! "Wendy, I asked you before if you were up for this, and you said you
were." "I know." "Well?" "Can't a girl change her mind?" "You aren't a girl,"
I said, brutally, "you're a weapon, you're The Weapon, and you aren't supposed
to have opinions about where you get used, I command, you obey, remember the
oath?" "George, you want me to drop rocks and stuff on these people, it'll
kill them." "That's what weapons do, Wendy." She looked at me for a while.
"Wendy?" She sighed. "George, I know." "So what, is the oath just words, or
does it mean what it says." She sighed again. "It isn't just words," she
whispered. "So you'll do it?" I pressed her for a commitment. "I'll do it,"
she whispered. Then she deployed one of her most powerful weapons on me, and I
watched it trickle down her cheek.

Then I watched another tear form and trickle down her other cheek, and, like
any other good weapon, it was hurting me, hurting badly. And I couldn't see
any way out, so I surrendered. "OK, Wendy, you win. I won't command you to be
our artillery. But in return for that, I'll want you to be our bulldozer." She
stopped crying. "Bulldozers 'r' us," she said, brightly. "Show me what you
want dozed, and I'll bull it." God save Ireland, I thought. "And our
blacksmith," I added, "and our lumberjack." Because I'd just thought up an
alternative plan. We still needed artillery, and if Wendy wasn't it, then I'd
have to make something to do the job.

When you're going to attack a force that outnumbers you and is forted up, the
only sensible strategy is to dig in near their fort, and persuade them to come
out into the open and attack you. To do that, you have to make their fort
untenable, and that's why I needed artillery.

First, I told Wendy about the timber requirements. I needed a major piece of
tree, eighty feet long, one foot diameter at the small end. Plus a whole bunch
more lumber, for the frame. I told her to get the details from Duncan, he'd
know the exact plans. "What do I tell him we're making?" "Artillery, Wendy.
Tell him we're making a Warwolf." I also explained about the ironmongery I
needed, and she flew off to find a good hardwood tree.

Next, I needed to explain the plan to Lan Ho, because it would take
significant manpower, and we'd need people to shoot the AK47s. That meant he'd
have to show them how to use them, at least well enough for one battle. I was
hoping we wouldn't actually have to fire them, but it's best to be prepared.

As I drew a battle plan in the dirt, Lan Ho started to smile. "You know, sir,
for the first time since I met you, I'm starting to think that we might
actually survive this thing." I didn't mention the thoughts I was having about
what we'd need after winning this battle, things were quite desperate enough
already. I explained - earth berms here and here, trenches here, Wendy would
do the main earthmoving and digging, they'd tidy up and refine what she dug.
Because my plan was to arrive in position just after sunset, spend the night
getting dug in and ready, and launch the attack at dawn. That gave us no more
than a few hours to get ready, but it gave the bandits no time at all, we'd be
on them before they even realised that the squad they'd sent out wasn't coming
back. And although strategically, we were on the attack, my tactics were to
fight a defensive battle and cut them down as they came to us.

Lan Ho said "We'll put the guns on single shot, make every bullet count. We've
got enough ammo to wipe them out if they're out in the open and we're dug in."
I agreed.

Within a few hours, Wendy came back with the timber I'd asked her for, all cut
and shaped to size. She'd also made the trigger and the pivot pin. The light
was beginning to fade, so I told Lan Ho to start marching for the barracks,
I'd meet him a mile south of there. Wendy picked up the huge timbers and flew
with them to the site I'd picked, then returned and took me there. I showed
her where to pile up the earth to create defensive barriers, where to dig the
trenches to protect the infantry, and then she helped with the heavy lifting
as we started to assemble our artillery. When we were nearly ready, I sent her
out to gather 400 pound boulders for us to use.

When the sun came up the next day, we were all ready. The pile of timber was
now assembled together into a mighty trebuchet, the most powerful type of
medieval catapult, capable of hurling 400 pound missiles for over a mile. We
used a fixed design; wheels would have complicated matters. For a
counterweight, we used a large basket of sand, and to cock the arm and get it
ready to fire, we had our female flying bulldozer. The earth berms would
protect the trebuchet from flat-trajectory missiles fired from the barracks,
while the trebuchet hurled its missiles high into the air, to land on the roof
of the barracks. "I'm impressed," said Wendy. "Hit the soft parts with your
fist, hit the hard parts with a hammer," I replied, "and this is my hammer."

At first, we fired 400 pound rocks, in order to get the range and break the
roof of the building. They fired back at us, using armour-piercing RPGs and
recoilless rifles. But their missiles just plunged into our earth berm without
making the slightest difference, and exploded inside the huge ridge of earth
that Wendy had thrown up.

Once we were getting consistent hits, we changed the payload to the 45 gallon
gasoline drum which I'd spotted on the previous reconnaissance, that they had
helpfully (and with safety in mind) left a few hundred yards from the
barracks. We dropped that on top of the barracks, and then I sent Wendy in to
negotiate. I fully expected that they would surrender, since they were in a
hopeless situation. All it needed was a firepot to land on the barracks, set
fire to all that gasoline sloshing around, and the bandits goose would be
cooked.

I was glad I hadn't gone myself. Wendy stopped fifty yards from the barracks,
and called out to them to surrender, throw down their weapons and they'd be
well treated. But I guess there was at least one person there stupid enough to
run for Prime Minister, because he took a shot at Wendy. The bullets rattled
out; most of them missed her, and the ones that hit didn't do any significant
damage. But the muzzle flash ignited the gasoline vapour, and the whole
barracks exploded in a huge fireball. Whoof! Some people are just too dumb to
know when to be scared.

After the flames died down, our people went in with their sticks and stones.
Any bandit who wasn't roasted, was killed. To these people, war was not a
game, there were no rules. Prisoners? Tell that to people who've been watching
their children slowly die of starvation.

In the buildings near the barracks, we found supplies. Guns, ammunition. And
food. The food was the most important thing, for the villagers. This would
help them get through the coming winter. But the guns and ammo might be
important.

I checked through what was there, Lan Ho beside me. Wendy was helping to carry
the food back to the village. And Lan Ho talked to me. "Sir," he said, "this
is a very great victory, and I am, at last, no longer ashamed. We have fought
back, we no longer bend the knee to the oppressors. I thank you greatly for
this." "It isn't over yet," I said, grimly, "that was just the second round."
Lan Ho nodded, sadly. "There are other bandits," he said, "and it won't be so
easy next time, without the Ghost Woman." "Lan Ho, you must visit the other
villages in the area, one stick is easily broken but if ten are bound together
..." "I know this, sir. We farmers must unite against the predators, we will
need to create an army, we will need to fight for our children. It will be a
long hard struggle, a struggle without an end, but we will win, we must win.
We won before against great odds, we can win again." "Before?" "A long long
time ago," said Lan Ho.

"Yes," I said. I could see a way out of this mess, but I didn't know if it
would work, and I wanted Lan Ho to prepare for more fighting, if need be.
"Prepare for war, hope for peace," I said to him. "I shall pray to your Ghost
Woman that she may bring peace." I had roughly the same idea that my Ghost
Woman might be able to bring something off, except that I had something a bit
more practical in mind than prayer.

That afternoon, we said goodbye to Lan Ho, and to the villagers. Wendy gave
baby Kippy one last cuddle and kissed the mother goodbye. She wrapped her cape
around me, held me in her arms, and we rose slowly into the air, waving
goodbye to the people on the ground, who stared up at us and cheered.

We got back home less than an hour later, home meaning Duncan's house. We'd
been away for twenty four hours; it was hard to believe that we'd fought two
battles and transformed the political and economic situation over several
square miles in such a short time. On the other hand, my stomach thought my
throat had been cut, and while I brought Duncan up to date on what had
happened, Wendy bustled round the kitchen, clattering pots and pans. He was
especially delighted at the success of the trebuchet I'd built. "You know they
were using those seven hundred years ago?" he said. I told him that if his
Weapon had done the job she was supposed to do, it wouldn't have been
necessary to build a medieval siege engine. She could have just dropped rocks
and oil drums on them. He nodded. "Yes, it's a bit worrying, isn't it. It's
like, you pick up your hammer to knock in a nail, and the hammer refuses
because it doesn't want to hurt the wood. Evidently, wielding this particular
Weapon isn't as simple as point-and-shoot. I guess that's one of the
advantages of 700 year old technology, it doesn't have a mind of it's own."
"She would have done it, Duncan, if I'd insisted, I really think she would.
But when you see her crying ..." "I know son. Believe me, I know."

"So what's next?" asked Duncan.

"Well. You know, when you're up to your ears in alligators, it's easy to
forget that the reason you're there is to drain the swamp. The whole point of
this was to cut off the supply of opium and heroin from this region, and we've
really made no progress at all on that." "I disagree, son. We now understand
the situation on the ground, which is more than most people do. So we can take
the necessary steps. And I hear Washington is quite tolerable at this time of
year. This is a job for ... The Weapon!"

Wendy came out with the food; omelettes, with fresh bread and salad. "I was
hoping for roast beef tonight, love?" said Duncan. She looked up at him. She
said nothing. Duncan looked at me. "I don't think either of us wants to smell
roast meat for a long time, old chap." "Oh. Yes, I see. Question - who's going
to Washington? There's a school of thought that says an old codger like me
would be better at that sort of thing than a young whippersnapper like you,
George." "Actually, she's going to be the main player on the next part," I
said, "but I've started this, I mean, I'm kind of emotionally involved, you
know? So I'd like to see it through." He bit a chunk off his bread and nodded.
"Tell you what, though. This time, take a hands-free cellphone, so I can talk
to you without Wendy having to relay everything." "Good idea. What else will I
need?" "A decent shirt and tie," interrupted Wendy, "and a suit that doesn't
make you look like a snake-oil salesman." Duncan nodded. "Appearance and dress
code is going to be dead important where you're going, son, she's right."

"But what's our game plan, Duncan. Taking on a bunch of bandits is one thing,
but this?" "Play to our strength, son. One thing I've found out about our
Weapon here, is that where you might think she's a great flying combination
bulldozer and tank, actually what she's very good at is getting people to shut
up and listen to what she says. And if what she says really does make sense,
she's good at getting them to actually do the right thing." "But she doesn't
have the experience and knowledge to know what the right thing is, that's
supposed to be you." "Yeah, and you, but we don't tell them that. It sounds
like it's coming from her, so they take it a zillion times more seriously than
if the exact same idea is coming from an old fart like me or a young scallywag
like you. Show him what I mean, Wendy."

Immediately, she stood up, six feet of white-and-gold fury hovering with her
head almost touching the ceiling; she faced me, her hands curled up into
fists, and shouted "No! That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and you're
a fool for suggesting it." She stood with her hands on her hips, scowling at
me. "But, but what ...," I faltered, "but ..." Then she smiled, threw herself
into my lap, pulled my head to hers and kissed me. "He's still shaking,
Duncan." Duncan laughed. "First time she did that to me I nearly wet myself.
See what I mean?" "Gordon Bennett, Wendy," I gasped, "don't ever do that
again!" "She got your attention though, didn't she?" "One hundred percent. I
was trying to think what I'd just said that was so stupid." Wendy chuckled and
kissed me again. Then she dumped herself on Duncan's lap and kissed him.

"Intimidation, that's the thing," said Duncan. "People do actually take notice
when someone gets violent. The trick is to not be so violent that you trigger
a rejection. So the violence has to be in the voice - shouting. Or in violence
against nearby objects; banging the table, for example. And in the stance;
hands-on-hips is good, but George, you stand up, and Wendy, show him the other
one we talked about." I stood; Wendy faced me, her eyes narrowed, a frown on
her face. One hand was curled tightly into a fist, and was cocked ready to
strike. The other was held out towards me, fingers clawed. "Gordon Bennett,
she looks scary like that," I admitted, "If I didn't know ... " She moved
towards me; I backed away. She moved closer, I found myself up against the
wall. She moved in for the coup de grace ... "Duncan, what about the Code?" I
asked. "You have me confused with someone else," she said, menacingly. And
then she threw herself at me.

Her lips covered mine, and her tongue raped my mouth. Her body was pressed
against mine, which robbed me of any will to resist. It was at least a minute
before she let me breathe again, and when she did let me go, she had to help
me back to the chair, because my knees seemed to be out of my control.

"Time is of the essence here," said Duncan, "there's three thousand of Lan
Ho's people out there, and although they're OK for now, sooner or later
they're going to get hit, and this time they won't have surprise on their
side." "Or the great General George," added Wendy. "OK," said Duncan, "let's
aim to get you launched by noon, and you'll be in Washington an hour later at
8am, just in time for the start of the day." "Sounds fine to me," I replied,
"uh, could I borrow the Weapon tonight?" I felt like I was asking my dad to
borrow the car. "Well, you know son, it's been a while since ..." "Yes, but we
weren't exactly in a conducive ..." "I had plans for her to ..." "Yes, but
after what she just did to me ..." "Honestly, you two," said Wendy. "What?" "I
don't suppose it occurred to either of you to ask me, huh?"

"Oh."

"Oh."

"So, how about I fly George home, then he can get cleaned up, pack a bag and
suchlike, I'll put him to bed, I'll have him fast asleep within an hour, then
I can come back here and deal with Duncan, and then, and then, well, there's
my place I like to go to when things get pear-shaped, and I'm going to spend
the rest of the night there, because there's a bunch of stuff I want to think
about."

"Oh."

"Oh."

She's smashing when she gets into her take-charge mood.

...

"Morning, Duncan." "Uh." Kiss kiss. "Wake up, honey." Kiss kiss. "Duncan, wake
up." "Unnhhh." "OK, sod this for a game of soldiers, come on Dunc." She pulled
him out of bed, and flew him into the shower, which she put full on, cold."
"Aaaaargghh!" "Is that better?" "Aaaaargghh!"

After a few minutes, she stood between him and the torrent of freezing water,
rubbing him over with a soapy flannel. "Aaaahhhhh. That's more like it." Then
a rinse in more cold water "Noooooo!", then out for a rub down with a warm
towel. "I just wanted to say goodbye, Duncan. I don't think we'll be gone
long. Just wanted to leave you with a nice memory." "Sadist." "Yes, and don't
you love it?"

"Uh. Well. Uh."

She opened the bathroom window, said "Bye, Dunc" and dived out. A minute or so
later, she was diving into my bed, and burrowing under the duvet. "Morning,
George." "Uh." Kiss kiss. "Wake up, honey." Kiss kiss.

Five minutes later, I was shivering under my cold shower, and begging her to
stop. "Wendy, please?" She laughed, and wrapped me up in a big fluffy bath
towel. "Are you ready for the trip?" "Ready as I'll ever be, I've packed some
good rags to make the right impression, suit-and-tie, somber socks, all that
sort of rig. How about you, you ready? How did your meditation go?" "Pretty
good, actually, and there's stuff I want to tell you about on that. You ready
to go?" "Uh, yes." She picked me up, her arms round my waist. I put my arms
round her neck, her voluminous cape wrapped itself around me, and I felt the
pull of three gravities as we headed up into near earth orbit.

I can imagine why astronauts hate it, you're pressed at three g's into a cold
hard acceleration couch in a fragile aluminium can while a controlled
explosion of rocket fuel and liquid oxygen takes place a few yards away, and
you spend your time thinking about O-rings and how the lowest bid gets the
contract. They should try it this way, pressed at three g's into a lovely,
warm and deliciously soft Wendy, wrapped up in her cape and feeling
considerable safer than you do on the M25 at 60 mph on a wet night.

After a few minutes of this, we reached orbital velocity, and it was free fall
from now until re-entry. "You'll never guess what I found when I went to the
middle of the sun last night."

Don't you just hate it when people play this guessing game? Was I supposed to
guess, given my extensive experience of conditions at the center of a star, or
was I supposed to say do tell? "Do tell." "A hole!" "There's a hole in the
sun? Like a doughnut?" "Yes, I mean no, I mean there's a black hole!" "Is that
bad?" I asked, warily. "Don't those things swallow up entire planets and
stuff?" "Only the big ones. This one's a tiny little baby one. Not a hazard.
It's just quietly orbiting down near the middle. I bet you didn't even know it
was there!" "Well, knock me down with a feather, what a surprise. You're
right, I hadn't known that. How riveting. Got any more useful facts for me,
Wendy?" "Oh you. There's no romance in your soul." "Yeah, well, at least I got
a soul, not like you. You're just ..."

"Yes," she said softly, "I'm just what, exactly?" "Uh. Four black holes. Yes,
I can see why you're interested in them." "Fine, but right now, we've got half
an hour of zero gravity. You want to discuss the physics of stellar objects,
or would you like me to fuck your brains out?" she asked. Hmm, difficult
choice.

...

"Wake up George, re-entry time." Re-entry is as much fun as lift-off.
Astronauts use aero-braking, and watch as the heat shield ablates. Ablates is
a comforting word that means "gets red hot and bits break off". Bits are
supposed to break off, that's how it's supposed to work. But I doubt if that's
much comfort for the astros as they pray that it works the way it's supposed
to, with bits breaking off at the right rate, with the angle of re-entry
computed just right so they don't plunge through the atmosphere too fast, but
neither to they bounce off the top later like a skimming stone on water and
fly back out into the void. Wendy's cape kept the heat off me, and there was
no parachute for me to pray over. I'd say, those guys are worth whatever they
pay them, you couldn't get me up in one of those things, no way. This is the
only way to fly.

We landed just outside Washington, and got a bus into town. People stared at
the six foot long-haired brunette hovering several inches off the ground, with
the white-and-gold costume and the long cape, but, well, that's what the
dramatic togs are there for. If she turned up wearing t-shirts and jeans, and
strolled along on the ground no-one would think she was special. It wasn't
difficult to find the White House, Washington is geared up to the tourist
trade. No, the problem we had wasn't in finding the President. The problem was
to A) get to talk to him, and B) get him to listen. But hey, when you're
toting The Weapon, things like that stop being a problem.

Duncan and I had discussed this beforehand. You always have two possible
approaches to any social problem. You can either ask nicely and wait in line,
or you can blast in and pre-empt all queues. Since Lan Ho and his village were
now living on borrowed time, we'd decided to take the bull by the horns. But
the Secret Service are, quite rightly, a bit twitchy about the safety of the
POTUS, and we weren't sure what their reaction would be to a superheroine
barging in. Wendy wasn't too worried about them jumping on her or taking
pot-shots, but we decided that it would be a lot safer if, for now, we let her
go in alone. Duncan and I had cell phones, and Wendy could be the equivalent
of a cell phone when she wanted to, so we still had comms.

So, I sat in the Smithsonian cafeteria, having a late breakfast, my cellphone
earpiece in place and my ears twitching and listening while Wendy went to open
up negotiations. The first thing I heard, was a crash and tinkle of broken
glass. She'd gone in through a window. Well, I suppose that beats going in
through a wall, and is faster than going in through a series of receptionists
whose main job function is to keep people out.

Then there was silence for a few seconds. Then there was gunfire. Well, that
didn't worry me too much, Wendy wasn't going to get her panties in a bunch
over that. But it meant that she wasn't exactly getting a warm welcome. Or
maybe the welcome was a bit too warm. "OK," I heard her say, "I'm going to
stand here in the doorway, and you can shoot me all you like; nobody is
leaving the room. And in case you fuckwits haven't noticed, the only damage
that's being done is by you. If I wanted to kill your precious POTUS he'd be a
grease spot on the carpet by now. That's not what I'm here for." "So what are
you here for?" someone asked. "I have the solution to your heroin problem, and
if you calm down and get these trigger-happy rednecks out of here, we can all
sit down nice and quiet and I'll explain it to you." "We've been fighting the
war on drugs since Prohibition in 1920, why do you think you can do any
better?" "You know who I am?" she asked. I heard a few people say "Sure", "The
Weapon" and so on. "Well, that's why."

Things calmed down a lot after that. "So what do you want?" someone asked.
"Drop what you're doing for the rest of the day, and call a meeting so I can
explain it properly." There was a gabble of voices, some saying "waste of
time", one saying "But it's HER", one saying "At least we can listen to her
idea." And then one saying "Quiet please, everyone. I've decided. John, get
the head of the DEA here, and the Surgeon General, also the Senate Minority
Leader. Sort out a room, contact all members of the Cabinet. The meeting
starts an hour from now. You Secret Service men, get the hell out of here, you
couldn't protect me from her if she was hostile, which she obviously isn't,
and I'm willing to bet she'd do a damn site better job protecting me than the
lot of you put together, if she had to. Now move it. And you, young lady,
there's a few things I want to ask you before this meeting starts." And that,
obviously, was the President speaking.

Wow! She'd done it! She'd gotten to him, and she'd gotten him to listen. That
has to be half the battle won right there. "Mr President, it's our sworn duty
to be with you at all times and protect ..." "Listen up, punk," said Wendy in
one of her best tough-girl voices, "I squash pukes like you on my day off from
kicking ass. Do like the Potus said, and scram." I heard the door close behind
him.

"Do you have to float there in mid-air? You're welcome to sit down, you know."
"Thanks, but I prefer to hover." "Why?" "It reminds you who you're talking
to."

"So, what do I call you, you're The Weapon, right?" "Yes, but my friends call
me Wendy" "And you can call me Bill. Wendy, you really think you have the
answer to the heroin problem? We're spending forty billion dollars each year
on this, not to mention the cost in human health and happiness." "Yes, Bill,
I'm pretty sure we have an answer. It won't solve the drugs problem, though."
"I thought you said ... " "I said heroin." "Oh. Well, that's certainly a good
start." "And I need a colleague of mine to attend this meeting." "Oh? Who?"
"George Millby, he's on his way over here now, be about 30 minutes, right
George?" "Right," I said into my phone. I got up from the table, and started
towards the White House. "Bill, tell your staff to meet him at the Northwest
gate." "How will they know ... " "George Millby, I'll do a positive ID on him
when he gets here, don't worry Bill, I'm not going to let you get hurt."

I got to the White House gate, and told them who I was. They searched me for
weapons, which I thought was kind of ironic, seeing as how the most
destructive weapon in the world was hovering right next to the POTUS. They
whisked me inside and along several corridors, and we arrived at a meeting
room, several people, all Grey Men, sitting round a big polished mahogany
table, looking as important as they could. No-one asked me who I was. Which, I
suppose, was as it should be. This was her show now. All I could do would be
to help her out as subtly as possible if she got thrown any curve balls. Plus,
of course, I was there to keep up her morale. But don't tell them that, they
think she's a goddess.

So I was sitting at the table, and I couldn't help thinking that Lan Ho had
offered me food and drink despite not having enough for his own children, and
these guys aren't even offering me a coffee. Not that I needed one, having
stoked up at the Smithsonian, but there's an important principle here. And
then there was a bash-crash noise outside the door, the door was flung open,
and a marine stamped in, crash-bash, and announced "Ladies and gentlemen - The
President, of, the United, States". Like we were expecting the President of
the Snohomish Sewing Circle? And everyone stood up, so I thought I'd better
stand too. Blimey, I thought, this is worse than royalty. Come on, Wendy, you
can top this. Can't you?

I think he was expecting her to come in a few paces behind him, in his shadow,
as it were. But she didn't. She waited till he was in and settled, then she
made her own entrance. By then, we were all sitting down again, and POTUS was
looking around confused. Wondering where she was, I expect. I tried a joke.
"Women!" I said, "she'd be late for her own funeral." That earned me several
frowns, and a muttered "inappropriate". I was just wondering whether it was
inappropriate because it was joking about women, or because it was joking
about death, or whether it was just not done to crack jokes, when Wendy made
her entrance.

Oh, Wendy. Oh wow. This is either going to work or it isn't. She just smashed
straight through the wooden door with no warning. I guess she must have known
there wasn't anyone to get hurt on the other side, but there were bits of door
spraying out in all directions. There was a stunned silence as she moved
majestically towards the table, her cape streaming out behind as if in a
strong wind, until she was hovering, several inches from the floor, next to
the table. As we'd agreed, she chose a position at 90 degrees from the POTUS,
because this rotated the whole meeting, putting her in command, and the POTUS
on the side. I was on the opposite side of the table from her; symmetry urged
me to do an introduction for her, so I stood up. All the heads swung from
facing her, to facing me. "Ladies and Gentlemen - you know who she is." And I
sat down. I heard one of them whispering to another one. "But who is she?"
"Jim, she ain't the Tooth Fairy."

"Thank you," she said, not giving anyone else a chance to butt in. "We're here
to examine a radical proposal for winning the War against Heroin. Here's the
plan." We'd agreed that we'd keep this simple, these guys were politicians,
not geniuses. "Afghanistan is already taken care of by you guys. That's what
makes this all possible. That leaves the Golden Triangle, in South-East Asia
as the only place of production. I can dump fifty million tons of salt water
on that, and turn it into a desert. End of heroin problem."

She folded her arms, and waited for questions. "How will you transport that
much water?" "Same way I did when I put out the forest fire in Melbourne."
"What about the local governments?" "That's your job," she said, "you square
them with whatever it takes. They already committed to closing down opium
production, just twist their arms a bit, and grease whoever needs greasing."
"What if Afghanistan starts up production again?" "That's your job again, just
make sure they don't," she replied. "What if some other country starts growing
opium?" "Twist arms and grease palms, shut it down."

Then the President spoke up. "Gentlemen - and Wendy - seems to me, this is a
win-win situation. We get one of the most dangerous drugs off our streets, and
we can put the resources freed up into building homes and roads and good stuff
like that. So, are we agreed? Wendy, you have my permission ..." "Hold on a
moment," she said, "there's more. Once I salt those 400 square miles, nothing
will grow there. It isn't just going to stop opium poppies. It'll be a desert.
And I can salt it again every few years, it can stay a desert" "Good," said
one of the men round the table, "because if they can, they'll just go back to
growing opium." "Not good," said Wendy, "there's a hundred thousand people who
will have nothing to eat. But I have a solution for that, too."

This was the difficult bit. Politics is all about give and take. So far, we'd
given, and they'd taken. Now we wanted them to give. Wendy stood up straight,
and put her hands on her hips, and looked very commanding. "You don't want
farmers who are used to growing opium, to get scattered all over South East
Asia. That's a great way to spread the know-how of growing opium all though
the region." "So where can they go?" "Here. They immigrate to the USA."

Immediately, there was a hubbub, with voices getting louder and louder. "No
way" "We already have too many ..." "They don't even speak English..."
"Foreign culture..." "Enough already ..." "Mexican problem ..." "Wetbacks ..."
We were losing them. This wasn't going to fly, the way it was heading. I put
up my hand, and nodded slightly at Wendy. "Quiet," she said. They ignored her.
"Don't need that sort of person ..." "Dumb peasants ..." "Can't read or write
..."

"QUIET!" Wendy shouted, and smashed her fist down on the table. The beautiful
mahogany wood table cracked from side to side with the impact of her fist; it
quivered, but held in place, the great zig-zag crack running right across. She
stood up straight, holding her fist out, waiting to see if anyone would meet
her challenge. I looked around, every pair of eyes was focussed on that fist,
every brain was wondering whether it really was as harder than a twenty eight
pound steel sledgehammer. There was instant silence. "George, you had
something to say?" "Uh, just TANSTAFFL". Wendy looked slightly distant for a
moment, I guessed she'd just phoned Duncan. "There Ain't No Such Thing As A
Free Lunch," she said, "you can't get something for nothing. If you want your
children to be free of the evil of heroin, the cost is a better future for the
people who used to grow it. A future free from oppression and starvation. A
future in America." That had to be pure Duncan, I tried not to start humming
"God Bless America", they wouldn't have laughed. She tried again. "Twenty
thousand of your children die each year from this stuff. You can end that,
plus you gain 100,000 new Americans."

"Easy for you to say, you're a Limey, I don't see you guys offering to take
them," said one of the men round the table. Well, that got my goat, I can tell
you. "Yes!" I said. "I'm British, so what? Look, mate, there's sixty million
of us on an island that's slightly smaller than Oregon. We just don't have the
Big Country, the wide open spaces that you have here." "But where do you get
off telling us what we have to do?" he replied. "First of all," I replied, "I
..." "Shut up, George," said Wendy. She was right, getting into a slanging
match wouldn't help. "First of all," she said, "I'm not British, I'm not
American, I'm not actually from anywhere on this planet, I thought you already
knew that. I'm not even one of your race, I'm not a human being. Is that a
problem for you? Secondly, what matters isn't the birthplace or race of the
person presenting the plan, what matters is the plan itself, and whether you
want to put a stop to the twenty thousand children killed each year by
heroin."

There was a pause while they thought about that. "Where would they go?" asked
one of the Grey Men.

Shit, we hadn't thought about that. Wendy looked at me, I looked blank. She
looked blank for a moment, then said "You spend forty billion dollars each
year on the drugs war, and you aren't winning. Not only that, you're losing
twenty thousand children each year. There's a win here against the heroin
enemy, spend a quarter of one year's drug war budget on land in Kansas, that's
ten billion dollars, you'll get twenty million acres, divide that between
100,000 people that's 200 acres per person. A family of four would get 800
acres, and they'd be raising soybeans and wheat, not opium." I could detect
the fine hand of Duncan behind that calculation.

Some of the Grey Men were starting to nod.

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore," she said, and I closed my eyes in
pain as she raised one arm, as if holding a lamp. Wendy my love, I thought,
you're over-egging the pudding. "She's right, you know," said POTUS. Hmm,
maybe this pudding could take more eggs than I'd thought. "Ten billion is
cheap if it buys us out of the heroin problem" he continued. More of the Grey
Men were nodding. "OK, let's do it!" he said. "The USAAF can airlift then out,
General Marston get that organised. James, start diverting the anti-drugs
budget to land purchase. Jeff, get working on the press angle, we have to sell
this to the media, it's anti-drugs and humanitarian, shouldn't be difficult.
Simon, I want you to work the Senate, this'll come up for a vote, because
we're busting the immigration quotas wide open, we'll need the House signed
up. Congress too. Education, we'll need crash courses in English, literacy,
citizenship. Medical, we'll need to give them health checks as they arrive,
and shots against flu and stuff."

He continued rattling off a stream of orders. I hadn't realised this had so
many complications, but that was why he was POTUS and I was just Wendy's
temporary Wielder, and smiling at her across the table, and seeing her smile
back at me, I wouldn't trade jobs with him, not nohow. And then he said, "OK,
people. Meeting closed, go do what has to be done. Wendy and, er, you come
with me, I've got some questions." "Wait!" said Wendy. "One more thing." She
reached behind her, under her cape, and brought out a silvery metal statue,
made in burnished aluminium, which she put carefully on the table. It was a
statue of a woman in flight, horizontal, one arm holding a baby close to her
breast, the other arm outstretched, holding a sword which was pointed
aggressively forward. The statue hovered, attached to a base of the same metal
by a fine, almost invisible hair. "Gentlemen, this is from me to the People of
the United States of America, a gift in recognition of the generosity of
spirit that you have shown today." The President walked around the table to
look closely at the base, and he read out the inscription, "Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness". He looked up, and around at the assembled cabinet.
"On behalf of us all, I thank you for the gift, and I swear that we will
uphold these principles."

We followed the POTUS into his office. Not the big formal Oval Office; he took
us to the small room where he actually worked. "I would like a few answers,"
he said, mildly, "please. Do sit down, both of you." I sat, Wendy continued to
hover, standing on several inches of air. "Would you like a coffee?" "I'll say
I would, I'm gasping," I said. "And Wendy?" she smiled, and nodded, "thank
you." While we were waiting for the coffee, he asked "How do you get that
statue to float in the air?" "Uh, Bill" said Wendy, smiling, "promise you
won't tell?" "Solemnly swear," he replied hopefully, "but we sure could use an
antigravity thing." "There's a magnet in the statue, and another one in the
base. Like poles repel, the statue floats. The hair that tethers it is one of
mine, but you could use a cotton thread." "Oh," he said, disappointed. I
chuckled. "Serves you right for asking. Just enjoy the show, don't look under
the magic hat." "It sure is a pretty statue, though. Are you a sculptor,
Wendy?" "Sort of," she replied, "sometimes there's something that I just have
to create." "The baby is "Life", you are "Liberty" and the flight is the
"pursuit of Happiness", is how I see that statue," said the President. "Spot
on," said Wendy, "I protect the baby while fighting for justice". The coffee
arrived. "Truth, Justice and the American Way," said Bill. "Not quite," I
said. He looked at me. "Truth, Justice and the British Way," I explained,
"although it turns out that you folks have pretty much the same thoughts no
that as we do, which isn't surprising, because your culture and legal system
is inherited from ours."

"So," said Bill once we'd gotten the cups and saucers sorted out, "what was
all that stuff really all about?"

I looked at Wendy. Wendy looked at me. I shrugged slightly. She nodded a
fraction. I folded my arms. She pointed at me, and folded hers, looking
stubborn. "OK, OK," I said, "it's like this. But first you're just going to
have to take a lot of this on trust, because we can't prove a thing, and
second, you got to swear this goes no further than your ears." "I'm the
president of the USA, and I will decide who I tell things to and who I don't."
"OK, fine," I said, and leaned back in the chair. There was a silence for a
while, and then he said "Well?" "Like you just said, sir, you'll decide who
you tell things to and who you won't, I have no problem with that, none
whatsoever." "Dammit." I waited some more. "OK, OK. My ears only. I promise."

So I told him about the war out there, and the two sides, and the
impossibility of choosing the right one, and the desirability of staying
neutral, and how that could only be accomplished if we had the weapons to back
it up. "And she's our Weapon, sir." "Then she should be under government
control," he said. "No," said Wendy, quietly. "What?" he asked. "She said
'No', sir, I'm sure you heard her. Forget that," I said, "she isn't a tank or
a gun." "I had to try," he grinned, "So what does heroin have to do with the
War of the Worlds?" "We're still learning what she's capable of, finding out
what she can and can't do. You could look on it as a military exercise, except
we try to find worthwhile targets, like the Melbourne forest fire." "Yes, we
all read about that," he said. "And the kitten," said Wendy. He looked up.
"She gets cats out of trees," I explained. "Yeah," he said, "I bet she does. I
like the costume, though, where'd you get it?" "It's, uh. I made it myself,"
she prevaricated.

Wendy looked at me, and the hand by her side made a fist, her thumb and small
finger outstretched. The "telephone" gesture. I nodded. "Bill, I'm going to
give you a phone number. If you need her, call. She might help, or she might
not, so don't rely on this. There's a lot that she can't do, a lot that she
won't do, and a lot that we'll tell her not to do. Like when I wanted her to
be the artillery in a battle we had to fight in Ramanmari against a bunch of
bandits, but she refused, and we had to build a trebuchet instead." "A what?"
"Uh, like a catapult, not important, point is, she refused, there's stuff
she'll do and stuff she won't, and we're still finding out what's what." "And
when does the War of the Worlds arrive?" "I don't know." He looked at Wendy,
and she shrugged. "So how do I know you haven't just fed me a bunch of
baloney?" "You don't. Not my problem, mate," I explained, "and furthermore,
Wendy and I have things to do a fair distance from here. You mind if I open
this window?"

He stood up courteously to say good bye. Wendy went up to him and gave him a
small kiss on the cheek, but I could see she was pressing her whole body
against him as she did it. He was tall, but Wendy, hovering several inches
above the floor, was quite a lot taller, and she lifted him up to meet her
kiss, her hands under his armpits. I saw him shaking as she put him down again
I knew from experience what that kind of kiss felt like. "Mmm," she said.
"Could I have your direct phone number?" she asked. He wrote it down for her;
she glanced at the paper, but didn't pick it up. Then she scooped me up on her
way out of the window, and we shot up into the sky. "Uh, Wendy?" "Mmm?" "You
know what you just did?" "Can't hurt to have the Potus on our side, George."
"Made me jealous, though." "Oh, you want some?" "Yes please."

If you hover five miles above the White House and try to snog, a USAAF F15
rudely comes up to stick its sharp little snout into what you're doing. It'll
follow you up, too, but with its service ceiling of 70,000 feet, you can leave
it behind quite quickly. Wendy took us up to 100 miles, wanting to be out of
range of any anti-aircraft missiles before she stopped, wrapping me up in her
handy pressurised airtight all-purpose white-and-gold cape as we rose. Some
people might find that a bit claustrophobic, but it's like having Wendy all
around you, and I like it. Smells good, too. And I bet not many people can say
they've been thoroughly kissed, hugged, stroked and screwed 100 miles above
the White House. And it's not like we were likely to drop anything on them
down there. Nothing solid, anyway.

. . .

Back in dear old Blighty, I related events to Duncan. Of course, she'd been in
touch with him by phone the whole time, so there wasn't much he didn't already
know. The impulsive kiss and hug of the Potus turned out to be a premeditated
plot thought up by Duncan, and the dramatic door-shattering entrance had been
his idea too. But Wendy had mostly improvised, and deserved most of the
credit. More like all of the credit, really, since you can't really do what
we'd been doing without a front like Wendy. But she insisted that she couldn't
have done it without us, so I guess you have to see it as a team effort.

Over a lamb ragout (with brown rice) that Duncan had made, we discussed the
endgame. Things were going quite well so far, but, as Duncan said, "It ain't
over till the fat lady sings." "I'm not fat," said Wendy. Duncan explained to
her about Wagner, while I made a list of outstanding actions; when you're a
marketroid, committee work is your bread and butter. Duncan reckoned that we
could give ourselves a day off before pressing on with the next stage, and he
looked at Wendy. Which I guess was fair enough, I'd been getting quite heavily
Wendied in the last few days, and he'd been on short rations. So after supper,
while Duncan cleared up, Wendy flew me home, helped me have a hot shower (you
aren't using your shower properly until you've been showered by Wendy) and put
me to bed. And made sure I'd sleep well, by giving me a twenty-minute dose of
Wendy's Patent Tranquiliser And Sleep Inducer. I was out like a light.

Next day, I went out shopping for the list of stuff that we'd prepared, stuff
that we reckoned we'd need in Ramanmari. The main thing we needed was
explosives, and of course it's completely illegal in most countries to buy
anything that makes a big bang. With one important exception. Gasoline.
Wonderful stuff. You can put it in your car and powers you up the motorway, or
you can pour it on a barbecue and burn off your eyebrows and hair when it goes
"WHOOSH", or you can make the most appalling bomb out of it, and it's sadly
obvious how you do it. I had Molotov Cocktails in mind. So, I rented a truck,
bought a bunch of 45 gallon oil drums, and made the owners of a bunch of
motorway service stations very very happy. Heaving the empty drums into the
truck was easy; of course, I couldn't budge the full drums. But I knew a
flying bulldozer who would be able to do that for me.

The other stuff I bought was going to be a lot nastier. A drum of chlorination
powder, a drum of ethyl alcohol and a drum of sulphuric acid. There is
something very nasty that you can make from these ingredients; I was hoping
that it wouldn't be necessary, but you know what they say - Be Prepared, speak
softly and carry a big stick. This was going to be my big stick, since Wendy
didn't seem to be a reliable Weapon.

She rolled up in the late afternoon. "How's Duncan?" I asked. She grinned.
"He's sleeping it off," she replied, "he'll be fine in a few days, he's
suffering from too much sex, there's probably a medical term for it, like
hypershag or something." Unnhh. I wish you wouldn't say things like that,
Wendy. "Well, I'm ready too," I said, and I showed her the fruits of my
labours. "That'll burn well," she remarked, "you want me to lug all this
halfway across the world?" "Well, yes, that is the general idea, Wendy, you're
a heavy transport helicopter, yes?" "Well sure, but why not do it the easy
way?" "Easy way?" She sighed. "Men. OK, I'll do it, the truck and the drums,
right?" I thought; I hadn't actually planned on taking the truck. Besides, it
was rented, and I was pretty sure the truck rental people wouldn't allow it to
be taken out of the country. "Just the drums, love." "And how do you suggest I
carry them?" "Er. Can't you just, like, pick them up?" "Yeah, right. One arm
holding you, one arm holding an oil drum, and then what?" "Oh."

If you saw a two ton truck sailing through the air that day, now you know why.
We couldn't go sub-orbital, because the gasoline would have boiled away in the
vacuum and we would have arrived with a bunch of embarrassingly empty drums.
So the whole trip had to be done at not much above sea level. I drove. I mean,
I sat behind the steering wheel. Where would you suggest I sit? She lifted up
the front end, got underneath and flew the whole contraption up into the sky.
I didn't even have to steer, all I did was make the "vroom vroom" noise. We
went out to the Atlantic, then after we were several miles clear of land, she
took us supersonic. The wing mirrors blew off, then the windshield wipers, but
apart from those few bits, the truck held together. I hoped that no-one,
hearing a sonic boom, would look up. And I hoped that if they did, they'd
assume that our Ford truck was actually some kind of airplane. Maybe. Hah. Who
cares what they assume. Like, you're going to tell someone official "I just
saw a Ford truck fly past" and not get locked up?

It was the worse flight I've ever made, including trips in commercial
airliners. You just try having a conversation with someone the other side of a
truck chassis, while travelling faster than sound, which means her answers
mostly get blown away. It was only when I stopped being stupid and got out my
mobile phone that I was able to talk with her. I yelled out to her, "phone
me", and she did. I powered my phone off the truck battery, and at least I
wasn't all alone up there any more. But still, a twenty two hour flight is
purgatory. No, it's hell. Ugh. Still, at least we didn't have to pay for the
call, she did a direct connect.

She landed us in the middle of nowhere, which is a good place to be when you
don't know where you want to be, and I didn't want people boosting my truck,
because the rental people would have been all over me like white on snow. By
that time, I was in dire straits, having not had a stretch for almost a day.
So I made up for that, and while I was trying to work the kinks out of parts
of me that seemed permanently kinked, she hit me while I wasn't looking. Wham,
she came from behind, and I was toppling over helplessly when she grabbed me
round the waist and we soared up over the treetops, then dived back down again
nearly to ground level. I guess she hadn't much like being a truck-transporter
either, because in the next few minutes, she made up for the long boring trip
with a short and very exciting trip. I doubt if we were doing much more that
100 knots, but since we were only feet from the ground in a thick forest, she
was taking evasive action all the time, to avoid trees and large bushes, while
following the nap of the ground. Sure, she was showing off, but it was an
exhilarating ride, and I was almost sorry when she ended the performance with
a zoom up to above cloud level. I say almost sorry, because just above the
fluffy clouds, we made love again. This wasn't like the last time, which was
just a friendly quickie aimed at calming me down and sending me off to deep
sleep. This was the real thing.

They call it "making love", because it is an act of love. You do it primarily
for the other half of the team, although it doesn't hurt that the things one
half likes to get are often the things that the other half likes to give. In
Wendy's case, that was even more so, because she got her jollies by tapping in
to what I was feeling. The result of that is a positive feedback loop, and if
you don't know what happens when you create a positive feedback loop, try
putting a microphone near the loudspeaker that it's feeding. Each tremor on
the input is amplified and fed back to the output, which feeds back into the
input, until the clamour grows and grows; the only limit is the capability of
the apparatus to transmit the energy. In this case, I was the conduit; Wendy
was the amplifier. But she didn't allow it to explode immediately out of
control as it does in the mike/speaker situation, she was monitoring my
amplitude levels and only allowing them to build slowly. After a few minutes,
the sensation reached and exceeded my capability for feeling pleasure. I was
able to hear just fine, but most of what I heard was "Wendy, no, please"
which, when translated, means "Wendy, more please". Until the point when it
actually does mean no, of course. Which she continues to interpret as "more".
Wendy once asked me, why do I say "No" when I mean yes? Difficult one. Dunno.

Anyway, she took me past the "yes-meaning-yes" into the "no-meaning-yes" zone,
held me there for a while, maybe a thousand years or so, and then tipped me
over the edge into the incoherent scream zone, and just before I got to the
"No-I-really-mean-it" point she just held me close to her body as I shook and
shuddered and eventually started crying on her. Don't ask me why I cried at a
time like that. That just seems to be one of the effects she has on me
sometimes.

When she woke me up, we were high in a tree, and dawn the rosy fingered was
stealing o'er hill and vale. Breakfast was oatmeal biscuits and cream, and now
that we were both recovered from the horrible flight here, it was time to seek
out Lan Ho and give him the good news.

He wasn't in the village, but I soon ferreted him out, by the simple expedient
of asking someone in the Village. "Lan Ho?" and they pointed out into the
fields. We flew in that direction, and soon spotted him, hoeing a row of
plants. We landed several yards away, and walked towards him. He stopped work
when he saw us coming, and slowly straightened his back. "Lan Ho, greetings"
He bowed "May every blessing be on you and on the Ghost Woman. See, this field
is growing nicely, the harvest will be in a few weeks, and thanks to you, sir,
and to the Ghost Woman, our children are eating fully again. And the bandits
are afraid to come to our land."

Well, that sounded good, but it wasn't a stable situation. Power abhors a
vacuum, and if it wasn't one lot of bandits, it would be another, perhaps even
calling themselves a "government". If left where they were, Lan Ho and his
people would soon be imprisoned back into the same situation. The terrible
strength of economic forces is not obvious, but it is inexorable. The profits
of the opium trade are huge, and at the start of the pipeline, someone has to
grow the stuff, either willingly or by compulsion.

We sat at the edge of the field, watching the wind ruffle the green crops as I
explained to Lan Ho that it was as true now as it had been before the victory
against the bandits, the only long term answer was to poison the land so that
nothing could grow. "And what of us?" he asked, "once the food supplies we
captured from the bandits are all gone, we can only rely on our crops. If the
Ghost Woman poisons the land, then we're in a worse position than before you
came."

"Lan Ho, have you heard of America?"

"Yes, of course. But we cannot ask for many, many years of charity." "You
don't need to. The Ghost Woman and myself were there already, speaking with
the Great White Chief" "Their president?" "Yes, and his cabinet. And we
convinced them that what they want to do, is invite you to live in their
country, and farm the land in Kansas. They will give you each a plot of land,
an opportunity to make a new life in a new land." "But why would they do that?
What must we give them in return?" "Nothing. It is worth the cost of doing
this, to lift the evil of opium-derived drugs from their country, to save the
lives of 20,000 of their children each year. All you have to do, is farm the
land, raise the crops."

He looked at Wendy, not at me. "Ghost Woman," he said, "should we do this
thing? Should we leave the place we know and love, leave the land of our
ancestors, to go to a strange country? Where the customs are different, the
laws are strange and they don't even speak our language. Should the fish leave
the water and walk on the land? Should the buffalo learn to dance?"

Wendy got that slightly glazed look that she put on to let me know she was on
the phone to Duncan. "You don't really have a choice, Lan Ho," she explained,
"the die was cast when we arrived. I certainly didn't intend that the bandit
should die, but that's what happened. And everything after that is just the
flower unfolding from the bud." "But, our land ..." "Quiet, Lan Ho. You asked
me a question, and you WILL listen to the answer." He fell silent. "One death
led to a dozen, a dozen led to a hundred. Each time we throw the dice, the
stakes are greater. Now the bandits are calling themselves an 'emergency
government' and intend to put down a 'terrorist insurrection'. That's you.
They have tanks, and artillery; you have a few captured cars and the
trebuchet. They have airplanes and bombs, you have wind chimes and holes in
the ground. They have a thousand trained military men, you have a crowd of
farmers. They will come here, with their tanks and guns and planes and bombs
and kill you all, and then they will say they've ended the terrorist threat.
Your bones will fertilise these fields, and your children will be sold like
animals. Or else, little Buffalo, let the Ghost Woman teach you to dance."

Lan Ho nodded. "This is the choice that is no choice." Wendy put her hand on
his cheek. "You will not understand the ways of the Americans, most of your
people will never learn their language. Their hearts will break in this
strange country with its strange people. But your children will bend, not
break. And your children's children, they will be as one with their new
country. They will be American. a tu lai'khe. ba le?" He looked up, startled.
"da' aun thin pei: nain mala? You speak our language? Yes, I will come with
you, Ghost Woman, hla phyu ne schwei ama. This old buffalo will learn to
dance."

As we walked back to the village, the first steps along the road that led to
Kansas, I asked Wendy what he'd called her. "Hla phyu ne schwei ama, it means
beautiful white and gold woman. George, how are we going to do this
evacuation?" "I have a plan, Wendy." Well, sort of. I mean, I was planning to
play it by ear, mostly, but I had a sort of outline plan. "Get everyone
together, Lan Ho, you'll have to explain it to them and get them on board."
"On board what, a ship?" "It's an American expression." "But you aren't
American." "No, but it's never too soon to start learning the lingo. Anyhow,
we'll be flying you out." He looked at Wendy. "Ghost Woman?" "Fraid not, Lan
Ho, you'll be going on a boring old jet plane." "Huh."

Lan Ho called a village meeting that evening, and the reaction of the
villagers was what you'd expect. People don't like change, and they couldn't
see a need for it. So Wendy stood up, and spoke for five minutes. And then
there was a long silence, and a few people started crying. "What did you say?"
I asked her. "Same pep talk I gave Lan Ho," she replied, "it's the usual
"consultant" thing, they know him, so they don't listen to what he says, but
when I speak people shut up and listen." "Yeah, well, you're Ghost Woman." She
nudged me. "Take that silly grin off your face, George, these people are
facing the worst thing that ever happened to them."

There was lots of talk, and of course I couldn't follow a word. Wendy mostly
kept silent, except when someone asked her a question, then she stood up, the
usual twelve inches above the ground, and spoke rapidly and forcefully.
"Wendy, when did you learn this language?" I whispered. "I didn't," she
replied, "I'm using a translation program." "Really? Where did you get that?"
"I made it." "Oh."

After a while, I got a bit bored with this; when you can't understand a
discussion, it's a bit tedious. I'd had a very tiring day. "Wendy, I want to
sleep now." "OK, sleep then." "Wendy, the ground is kinda hard." I looked up
at her, she gazed down at me. "Oh, all right then, come here."

. . .

I woke up next morning, up in a tree. I mean, I looked down, and there was
foliage, I looked up and there was foliage, I rolled over and if Wendy hadn't
held on to me, I'd have been a crumpled heap on the ground. So much for monkey
instincts. "Wendy, why a tree?" "It's safer than on the ground, and I thought
you might like to wake up in a leafy suburb." "So how did it go last night?"
"As you'd expect," she replied, "they talked it backwards and forwards but
they have the choice that is no choice." "Hobson's" I said, "what's for
breakfast?" "Hobson's choice, rice or rice," she replied. "Ugh. Cold rice.
Yuck." "Yes, or you can have hot rice." "Hot." She held out her hand, full of
steaming rice. "That's got to sting," I said. "No, why should it? The point of
pain is to alert you to the fact that you're suffering damage. This isn't
damaging me, so there's no pain." "Huh. Got a spoon?"

After I'd eaten, we flew back to the village. I sat and talked some more with
Lan Ho, and I told my flying bulldozer to start levelling and tamping down
hard, a large area to use as the primary evacuation airfield. While she did
that, I broke some more bad news to Lan Ho. "We're going to have to do a hot
evacuation. When the 'emergency government' hears we're leaving, they're going
to get very mad, because they see the main source of their income flying off.
So they'll be down here sharpish, and we have to get ready to mount a defence.
"Couldn't we pre-empt an attack like we did before?" asked Lan Ho. "I don't
think so. Last time they were all bunched up in one building. That's not the
case here, they're all over the place, and they'll converge on here." "How can
we hold off an army while we're boarding airplanes?" he asked, "it's
hopeless." "Nothing's hopeless," I replied, "I have a plan. Contact all the
opium processors, the people who do the chemical process of converting it to
heroin. Tell them to bring their boilers and stills, and also as much of the
drug as they can. And the other thing I want you to do, is get the carpenters
making kites. Big kites. Kites big enough to carry a man."

When Wendy came back from stamping flat a large chunk of the landscape, I told
her it was time to crank up the liason with the USAAF, so we took the
sub-orbital shortcut, and we were in California by evening, where I took the
opportunity to have a nice hot dinner, a nice hot bath, and a very nice very
hot Wendy. And in the morning, we paid a visit to General Marston at Edwards
AFB, a place I've always wanted to visit, on account of the Shuttle, but
without any security clearance, you don't really get to see the good stuff.

She could have flown straight in and landed on one of their airstrips. But I
decided that would just freak them out, these Californians are so straight,
anything unusual sends them pear-shaped. So we walked up to the main gate, and
Wendy did her "You know who I am?" bit, and the guard at the gate, who
obviously had all the initiative trained out of him, said "No, who are you?"
"I'm Batman," she replied, and he started writing that down. "Uh, wait a
minute ... " I said. I got that disentangled, and then we ran head on into the
rule that said all weapons have to be checked in at the gate. So I looked at
Wendy, and Wendy looked at me, and I said "Don't say it." And she didn't,
otherwise there would have been no way to disentangle that one.

They decided that we were both aliens, me because I'm British, and her because
she was, well, they weren't sure, but she sure wasn't from Kansas. I kept
mentioning General Marston until eventually one of them had the bright idea of
contacting the general. "Uh, sir, there's these two aliens at the gate," he
said. "Uh, yessir, the female is, uh, is, uh, her feet aren't, uh. Uh.
Yessir."

So we were taken to see the general. He was an important man, a busy man and a
man that clearly had no time for us. But we did seem to have the ear of the
Potus, so he managed to find us a few minutes in his busy schedule. "It's all
under control," he said. "Uh, what airfield will you be using," I asked. "The
first wave will be a team of Cee-Bees, airdropped to construct an airfield."
"And how long will that take?" "We should have it operational within a month,"
he replied. Wendy and I exchanged glances. "Two things, general. First, within
a month, the people we're trying to rescue will be at least decimated,
possibly incarcerated, conceivably wiped out. Secondly, we've already made
your airfield."

He shook his head. "You have no idea," he said. "It isn't just a matter of
chopping down a few trees. We need an area flattened, and then concreted over.
These planes are heavy, their wheels would just sink into grass or earth."
Wendy frowned. "Is it OK to tarmac over the concrete?" she asked. "No time for
that, young lady," he said, "we'll make do without the tarmac." She smiled.
"Oh, you had me worried for a moment, I thought I might have to strip the
tarmac off the concrete." Concrete? She's poured concrete? And tarmac? All I
said was, make an airfield. Well, I suppose she must have asked Duncan what
was needed. "Tell him what we have, Wendy." I couldn't do that myself, because
I hadn't a clue what she'd done. "Area one mile by one mile, all trees felled,
topsoil removed back to limestone underneath, twelve inches of crushed rock,
then twelve of concrete, then two inches of tarmac." I wondered where she'd
found that much concrete.

The general shook his head. "Can't be, there's nothing out there anything like
that." "No," she said, "that's why I had to make it." I chipped in with "It'll
save a month, and that will save a lot of lives." General Marston looked
startled. "You made it?" Wendy nodded. "Without heavy construction equipment?"
"General, she IS heavy construction equipment, think of her as a flying
bulldozer." He thought for a moment. "Maybe I can use it, I'll have to send a
team out there to check it. You made it flat, really flat, bumps are bad news
when a plane is rolling down the runway at 150 knots?" "Really flat," she
said, "I used a backhoe, a grader and a very heavy roller." My Wendy, the
flying bulldozer, also does imitations of other heavy construction plant. "No
problem," I said, cheerfully, "now tell me, what's your biggest problem that
will delay this project?" "Flying 100,000 people a distance of several
thousand miles. The biggest problem is fuel. The planes will need to refuel
after they land. I can't get the fuel out by ship, there's no port nearby. So
I'll either have to ship it and build a pipeline to the airfield, which will
take months, or else I'll have to fly the fuel in." "How much fuel will you
need there," I asked. "I'm looking for twenty five million pounds." "Twelve
thousand tons", I said, and I looked at Wendy. "Sure," she said, "no problem."
Put a tank there, show me the tank here, and I'll do the rest."

Silence. "You what?" asked Marson. "I'll transport your fuel." "How?" Wendy
looked at me. He probably wasn't going to believe the truth, so I came up with
a sanitised version. "You read about the Melbourne fire she put out?" "Yes"
"She transported fifty million tons of water to do that. She'll do this the
same way." "Yes, but how." "Need to know, Marston. You aren't cleared for
this." "What will she transport it in?" "Internal resources," I said, vaguely.
I mean, this is a Californian, for heaven sake. If I tell him she'll drink it
here and piss it out there, he'll have a cow.

"But if she can do that, why can't she just carry the passengers out in the
first place? What do you need us for?"

Knock me down with a feather. Why didn't I think of that? My personal
experience was that Wendy made a great people-carrier. I looked at her. "I
can't," she said. "Why not?" said Marston. "How would I do it?" she asked. "I
don't know," said Marston, "but if you can transport 50 million tons of water,
why can't you transport 50 thousand tons of human beings?" Very good question.
I was beginning to wonder how I'd missed that. And how Wendy had missed it.
Not to mention our pocket genius back home.

"Because people aren't freight. You can't carry people like you can carry
goods. And water is especially easy, you can just compress it, scrunch it up,
and when you unscrunch it, you still have water. If you do that with people,
then when you unscrunch them, you have hamburger." "OK, but could you put them
in a ship, maybe a big cruise liner, and carry the ship?" "No. We did think of
that, but the problem is that if I pick up a ship, it breaks. They're designed
to be supported all along the hull; if you try to support a ship at just one
point, then it breaks its back."

"What about a building, then? Put them in a building and fly that?" asked the
general. "No, that's even worse. Buildings are designed to rest on a
foundation. Pick one up by a corner, and it'll fall apart. Just about the only
think I could lift by supporting just one point, without it breaking, is an
airplane, because they're designed to be supported on the wing spar. But you
won't get more than a few hundred people in an airplane, and I can't fly it
much faster than the design speed, or it'll break up. So any of your pilots
would do as well as I could there." "Surely there's something you could use?"
"Not that we can think of, and we have thought about this. You see, what I'm
really good at, is breaking things. Breaking, smashing, destroying and
demolition. I'm not really designed as a transportation system."

I guessed Duncan had given this a lot of thought, without success. "If you can
think of something that I could lift via one point of support without it
breaking apart, then let me know. But I can transport your aviation kerosene,
I can scrunch it up and carry it inside me, like I did the water." "Inside
you?" She nodded. "How?" "General, you don't need the technical explanation
for this. Just show me where to get the kerosene, and set up a tank to receive
it." "That'll take a couple of days." "Fine, she said, "let me know when
you're ready, here's my phone number." "I phone you?" "Either that, or switch
on the bat-signal." I closed my eyes, and thought, Wendy, stop it, not
everyone has a sense of humour.

"So, thanks for your hospitality, General Marston, but we really do have to
fly now, things to do, you know?" He stood up and snapped off a salute. I was
a bit non-plussed, I don't know how to do those, marketroids do run things up
the flagpole to see who salutes them, but no-one ever does. But Wendy knew
what to do. She just waltzed up to him as he was saluting, and kissed him on
the cheek, another one of those full-body-contact kisses that is more about
what she does with her body against his than with her lips. So then the
general was saluting double, and I was struggling to keep a straight face, and
Wendy said "Come and watch us take off", which made me nervous because it
meant that she had something spectacular in mind, and I had no idea what.

So the General escorted us outside the building, and then asked "Where's your
aircraft?" which I thought was a pretty silly question, so I answered it with
"Our aircraft just kissed you." She put her arm round my waist, yelled "Up, up
and away", threw me forward and before I knew it, we were in the air. I had
hoped she'd just rise up and head west. Oh no. First, she buzzed the General,
then the Officer's Club, and then we headed straight for the control tower at
a couple of hundred knots, breaking aside at the last minute to pass it so
close I could almost smell the wet trousers of the terrified air traffic
controllers, one loop around it, and only then did she zoom straight up until
we were above the atmosphere, and then set course westwards. "Wendy?" "Mmm?"
"You shouldn't have done that." "I know. Aren't I wicked?" "Yeah, but." "Were
you scared?" "Me? Scared? Nah." Actually, I'd quite surprised myself, I'd have
thought I'd be terrified, but you know, it turns out that as long as Wendy has
her arm round me, it's really difficult to be scared of anything. And I told
her that, and she was even more affectionate than usual on the long suborbital
over the Pacific. "Where did get all that concrete, Wendy?" "I made it. It's
just gravel, sand, cement and water." "So where did you get the cement?"
"Silica, lime and a few other bits, it isn't exactly difficult to make this
stuff, George, the Romans used cement." "I suppose so. I usually buy it in
small sacks at my local hardware shop," I explained. "Yes, you'd want about a
million of those," she said, "never buy retail if you can go wholesale."

Back at the village, we joined Lan Ho for supper. "It's all coming together,"
I told him, "we should be able to get all you folks out to America within two
weeks." Wendy was cuddling baby Kippy, and looked up, adding "If all goes
well." Lan Ho looked sad, and sighed. "I'll be staying here," he said. I
looked at him. "You mustn't, you'll get killed. What's the point of staying
anyway, everyone else will have left. Your attachment is to the family, not to
this piece of ground." "It isn't that," he said sadly, "I cannot go to
America." "Why not? It's all set, they've agreed to take 100,000 people!"
"It's a long story," said Lan Ho.

Lan Ho refilled his tea cup, and sat back on his heels. "When I was a lot
younger, there was a big war. A world war. The Germans invaded France, France
was unable to defend the French colonies against the Japanese, and there was
much change. Much change, and many deaths, because we fought the Japanese
invaders. But then the Germans were defeated, and the Japanese surrendered. We
declared independence, but then the French returned to reclaim their colonies.
But the land was not theirs, it was ours. We didn't want to be a French
Colony, and so we went to war against the French. The French were still weak
after the world war, and we were able to defeat them, and then there was a
great battle at which we defeated and humiliated their best men, at Dien Bien
Phu. And the French had other problems, nearer to France, so they decided to
pull out of our country. But then the Americans came. And we had to fight them
too. Many deaths, very many, our people and also theirs."

"Vietnam" I whispered.

He nodded. "Yes. I was one of the Viet Minh. And I became part of the army of
North Vietnam, and we fought America, and won. And that's why I cannot go to
America. They would not welcome the killer of their children."

"Damn," I said.

Wendy moved slightly; I looked at her, and she was feeding the baby. There's
something about a woman feeding a baby that touches you deep inside. "He's
wrong," she said. We both looked at her. "They won't see you as the killer of
their children, they'll see you as an old soldier who fought for what he
thought was right, fought for independence, and won. That all happened twenty
five years ago, and passions no longer run high. People forgive and forget,
especially as you did nothing wrong, nothing dishonourable." Lan Ho regarded
her for a while. "I shall think upon your advice, Ghost Woman."

Next day, I sent Wendy out to have a look at what the enemy were up to; were
they en route for us, and if so, in what size of force. Meanwhile, I met with
the chemists, the people who converted raw poppy into opium, the start of the
process that eventually leads to heroin. I had a job for them; I told them
where to find my drums of sodium hypochlorate, ethyl alcohol and sulphuric
acid. I explained to them the fairly simple but very dangerous process of
converting ethyl alcohol into ethylene, the more complex process whereby
sodium hypochlorate is treated with sulphuric acid and reacts to give
disulphur dichloride, S2Cl2, a corrosive, golden-yellow liquid, and then the
especially dangerous reaction of disulphur dichloride and ethylene to give
Bis(2-chloroethyl) sulphide. Which is more commonly known as "Mustard Gas".
And I told them how to make Molotov Cocktails out of the gasoline I'd brought;
glass bottles filled with gasoline, a rag stuffed in the neck. Not as good as
a grenade, but still pretty effective.

Most people say that it's wrong to use stuff like Mustard Gas. Most people say
it's wrong to kill people at all, and one of the Ten Commandments agrees with
that, and doesn't have any exceptions like "except when you're at war". I
think most people are correct; now explain this to Kippy's mother just after
some bastard shoots Kippy, and just before the same bastard shoots the mother.
Speak softly and carry a big stick. My biggest stick wasn't reliable; she'd
demonstrated that last time we were here, and I had to build a trebuchet to
make up for her refusal to act. I didn't think I could rely on her now,
either.

One interesting and important property of Mustard Gas is that it isn't
actually a gas. It's a liquid. You spray it like an aerosol, and it lingers
for a while, where a gas would get blown away. When it touches the skin, you
get painful blisters, and if you get it in your mouth, throat and lungs, it
can kill. And it contaminates the vegetation, so that far a long time
afterwards, touching leaves and plants that are coated with Mustard Gas is
very painful. So you can use it like a minefield, you could spray it over an
area that you want to keep the enemy out of.

. . .

Over the next few days, things were fairly quiet. A helicopter brought a team
of engineers out to look at the flat hard-standing that Wendy had made, and
they decided that it would bear the weight of their C130 transports. Wendy
brought a big rubberised tank, and once she had it in place, she dumped thirty
million pounds of kerosene into it. Lan Ho had organised the evacuation of the
area, and we were getting an increasing number of civilians turning up at the
village, and being sent on to the airfield to wait for Operation Magic Carpet,
as the USAAF was calling it. More engineers arrived, and aircraft mechanics,
and tools and spare parts for planes; prefabricated buildings started to
appear on the site, some for the airfield staff, some for the workshops. The
locals were mostly sleeping under canvas, and feeding them was beginning to be
a strain. But since this was only going to be necessary for a short while, we
dipped into the village's winter food stock, captured from the bandits last
week.

My chemists had completed their work; my mustard was ready, and we loaded it
into a dozen large hand-pumped garden sprayers. The kites were ready, and I
sent Wendy out each day to maintain my surveillance over the area, but the
first warning of a problem came from an unexpected source.

It was late at night, so late that dawn the rosy-fingered was just beginning
to turn pitch black night into glorious day, Wendy and I were asleep a mile or
so above the ground, because Wendy thought it was safest for me that way, and
I'd gotten used to leaving that sort of things in her hands. Actually, I was
asleep, but Wendy doesn't do sleep. She can fake it, of course, but she also
fakes breathing and heartbeat, because it feels so peculiar to me if she
doesn't. Her arms around me tightened slightly, and the body I was laying on
wriggled a bit, and she licked my ear. "Wha? Whassup?" I mumbled. "It's
General Marston, he says there's a problem. There's a column of trucks and
jeeps moving towards the village, it's just fifty miles away."

I came fully awake. "Get Duncan in on this, and tell me what Marston says."
"Apparently, their satellite pictures are showing vehicles and men, coming
this way." "Get the exact lat and long, Wendy, and we'll go take a look-see."
"OK. Duncan's answered, and I'm giving him a sitrep." Then Wendy accelerated
and started to descend, and a few minutes later, I could see the convoy. I
took one look, estimated twenty trucks and a dozen jeeps, and told Wendy to
get to the village, as fast as possible.

I pulled out my cell phone and told Wendy to connect me to Marston. "Can you
slow them down?" I asked. "No can do," he replied, "we don't have an ROE, and
even if we did, I've got no assets local." "Shit", I replied. "But you don't
need anything, do you? You've got her," said Marston. Yeah, I thought. My
flying bedstead. "When can you start evacuating?" I asked him. "About a week
from now." Oh great. Here comes the nasties, probably about two hours away,
and I need a week. Doesn't fit. Twenty trucks means about a thousand troops,
armed with modern weapons, plus mortars, the jeeps have heavy machine guns
mounted, we are in dead lumber.

We reached the village, and I got Lan Ho on the job at once. "They're on the
way, the bad guys. Get everyone who isn't armed out, down to the airfield. Get
the kites up in the air, but unarmed for now. Get the militia into the
trenches. Wendy, go back to the convoy and destroy every truck and jeep they
have."

She looked at me. She stood on the ground facing me, her arms folded, and
shook her head. "You know how I feel about that, George. Please don't ask me
to kill a thousand men." "Wendy, my love, my sweetheart, my weapon," I said,
wanting to remind her of her oath, "I'm not actually asking you to kill
anyone, just wreck their trucks and jeeps. They can walk home. And make sure
that they see you doing it, I want them to know what they're up against." She
nodded and shot up into the air. That would slow them down some. Plus the
sight of the Ghost Woman that they'll have heard about, would contradict any
idea they might have that she was just a rumour. They wouldn't come rushing in
like the Seventh Cavalry, they'd be a bit cautious in their advance, in case
the Ghost Woman came back to spank them some more.

Well, that would help. Wrecking the vehicles would eliminate the heavy
weapons, and they wouldn't be able to shoot down my kites or mortar the
trenches. Even better, it would slow them down. I reckoned a few hours to sort
out the shambles that Wendy would create, and then maybe another 24 hours for
them to get here on foot.

Meanwhile, I was on the phone to Marston. "I need that evacuation like NOW!" I
pleaded. "Can't be done, son. We don't have the refuelling pumps in place, or
the technicians ..." I hung up on him and called George. I explained the
situation. "What'll we do, George?" Wendy arrived back, looking pleased with
herself. "Oh, that was fun! Want anything else broken?" she asked. If there's
one thing Wendy is really good at, it's breaking things. And sex, of course.
"Hang on, George. Wendy, can you get Potus on the phone?" "Sure," she said,
"I'll call his direct line." And a half a minute later, she said "Here you
are."

"Hello, Bill?" "Who is this?" "George." "Who is George and how did you get my
number?" "Uh, you remember Wendy?" "Oh. Yes. Ah. What's up?" "We're about to
get a visit from the hostiles, within the next 24 hours, we need an evac like
now, but your General is dragging his heels." "I'm on it," said Bill, and hung
up. Well, it was nice to have the Potus pulling on the ropes, but if there
really were insuperable practical problems in moving the evac forward a week,
then it looked like I'd just have to try to buy us a week. "Wendy?" "Mmm?"
"Get back to the convoy, see what they're doing. I'd guess they'll be hoofing
it down the road. If they are, then plough up the road and wreck any bridges
they'll be using. I want them slowed down as much as possible" "Yum yum,
mindless destruction," she said, and flew off.

Then Duncan phoned. "Can you slow them down some?" he asked. "Good idea,
Mycroft, that's exactly what I'm doing right now." "Oh." "Current situation
is, they don't have any vehicles any more, they got Wendified. And she's off
digging up the road and wrecking infrastructure. Duncan, call me back if you
get any more brilliant ideas, OK?"

There was a "whoosh", and Wendy appeared by my side, stood up straight and
saluted. "Mission accomplished" she said. "I wanted you to plough up the road
too." "I did." "Oh. OK, then what else can we do to slow them down some?" "I
could do a striptease, get them to stand and watch." "Be serious, Wendy." "I
am serious." "Dammit. Really?" "Sure. Maybe they'll stand and watch me. But
even if they don't, what's the worst that can happen?" "They could open fire
on you." "Stopping to open fire on me would be as good as stopping to watch me
strip." "Yeah, but. I love you, Wendy. Listen, make sure they can see that
bullets don't have any effect on you, I want them as intimidated as hell."
"Love you too, honey, don't worry, they can't do any real damage" and she flew
off again. Yes, I know that, but there's something about sending the one you
love off to get shot at that doesn't sit well in my mind.

I saw Lan Ho, and trotted over to talk with him. "How's it going?" "The
evacuation to the airfield has started, there's about eighty thousand people
there now, and everyone else will be there within a couple of days. But ... "
"But what?" "Sir, are you sure about this? It's like putting all our rice in
one bowl. If the hostiles break through to the airfield, blood will flow like
water." "I know, Lan Ho, but we have to concentrate everyone in order to get
them away, we don't have any choice. Make sure the people in the first line of
defence trenches understand what's at stake, and keep those kites in the air,
rotate the airmen so they don't have more than three hours aloft at a time. If
they sight the hostiles, get them down, arms them with the sprayers and
Molotovs and send them up again." Lan Ho saluted, and ran back to his command
center. What's with all this saluting?

The Potus phoned me next. "Sorry, George. We might be able to move the evac up
by a day or two, but that's the most we can get." "Hellfire. Thanks anyway,
even a day might make the difference. We're aiming to slow them down as much
as we can, and if we have to fight, we will. I just hope it doesn't come to
that." "With her on your side, you can't lose" Yeah, everyone thinks that.
Trouble is, they can't see the difference between what she can do and what she
will do. On the other hand, I thought ... Hmmm. The hostiles can't see that
either.

Wendy got back late that evening, as Lan Ho and I were sitting around the
fire, talking about the plans for the next day. There was the usual "whoosh",
and suddenly she was sitting next to me. I leaned towards her, and she put an
arm round me. That felt so good after the rather awful day I'd had, you can't
imagine. I leaned into her, and put my head on her shoulder. "So, did it
work?" I asked.

"I found them struggling down a very messed up road, and I landed in front of
them. I just stripped naked, and started an erotic dance. Lots of hands
sliding down hips, lots of shimmying. I don't know how good I was, I've never
done this before, and it isn't in my basic training, so I just made it up as I
went along. I imagined it was Duncan out there watching me, and I pretended I
was dancing for him." Tact is not one of Wendy's superpowers. You'd think
she'd at least lie and say it was me she had in mind. Still. On the other
hand. Duncan was several thousand miles away, and Wendy was right next to me,
her hair tickling my face and her scent in my nose. "So then their officers
caught up, and there was lots of yelling, and then they started shooting at
me." "What did you do?" "Nothing, I just carried on dancing. They could see
that the bullets were hitting me, but I just kept fixing the damage; as fast
as they made holes in me, I fixed them." "What did you do with the bullets?"

She reached behind her to her cape. I knew that gesture, it meant that she was
storing something inside herself, and was getting it out without people seeing
a sight that would have looked very peculiar. She pulled it out, and put it on
the ground, and by the flickering firelight I could see she'd made a statue
out of the lead bullets. It was a jeep, but the front of the jeep was badly
smashed in. The cause of the damage was clear, because she'd also modelled
herself in the act of smashing the vehicle. She was flying at the jeep, diving
slightly, her arms out in front of her, both buried in the body of the jeep,
with her head and shoulders caving in the front. "Lan Ho, this is for you,"
she said. He reached for it, and tried to pick it up. "Oh, I forgot to
mention, it's rather heavy. There's about fifty pounds of lead there." "They
fired that much at you?" "Yes, the officers seemed to think that if one
hundred bullets didn't work, then ten thousand would. So they just kept firing
at me until eventually they realised that it wasn't working, and they left me
and moved on. I think I must have delayed them by a few hours, George, no more
than that." "Don't worry, that's worth while. We just need to keep them off
for six days now, and I'd say that even if they came here at full speed, it
would take them two or three days. Tomorrow morning, first light, you and I
are going to have a look-see, find out where they are and what speed they're
making. But there's not much we can do now, and I'm cream crackered; time for
bed, I think." Wendy put her arms round me and we shot up into the sky,
hovering about a mile above ground, the height that Wendy had decided was a
good place to sleep.

You can imagine, I was pretty worried about the situation. It was a race
against time. The hostiles were due to arrive a day or two from now, and the
evacuation would start a couple of days after that. Since I couldn't speed up
the evac, the thing was to slow down the arrival of the force heading towards
us. Wendy had helped a lot there, but we were still a couple of days short.
Wendy knew I was worrying so much that I wasn't getting to sleep, trying to
think of a way out of this hole, and she whispered to me "George, you're going
to be a mess tomorrow unless you get some shut-eye." "I know, love, but I keep
running my brain round and round in little circles." "That's not helping. You
need a good night's sleep, and then in the morning you'll have loads of
ideas." "Yeah, but I'm not feeling sleepy." "I can fix that," she said. "I
know, but really, Wendy, I'm not in the mood ..." "I bet I could get you in
the mood." "Uh." "Oh yes I can." "Mmm." "Oh yes I can." "Unh." "See? I told
you I could."

She looks pretty damn human, but she isn't, there's just no two ways about it.
She does a good imitation of the way a woman looks, and the way a woman moves,
speaks and thinks, but every now and then, you get into a direct collision
with the essential non-humanness of her. Sex was usually one of these. It
wasn't that she had three breasts, or anything obvious like that. It was that
she seemed to have muscles in places that women don't, and she was capable of
gripping pretty hard with them. Come to think about it, she could probably
castrate a man quite easily. Not that she would, of course. This is what
Duncan called her "Mixmaster", the "juice squeezer", and various other similar
expressions. Not to mince words, she had a grip like a vice, and although she
used it very gently, she also used it very insistently. Plus, her feel for the
state of mind of her sexual partner meant that she could get you in exactly
the state she wanted, and then keep you there until she was ready to let you
explode. And it was the fallout from that explosion that left me so relaxed
and boneless that sleep was a state that was about a millimeter away.

. . .

She was right. I woke up the next morning full of ideas. "Wendy, fly to Yokata
Air Force Base, that's near Tokyo, and pick up all the vodka they can provide
you with, I'll get Marston to pay for it. Then leave bottles of booze all
along the bandits' marching route." She flew off, I phoned Marston and got him
to contact the Tokyo PX. "Get it all on a pallet, plastic-wrapped and sealed,
I'm sending my flying fork-lift truck over to pick it up." I wanted at least a
thousand bottles of vodka for those guys. Aren't I a nice guy? Free booze.
Because if there's anything that screws up an attack, it's soldiers getting
their hands on booze and getting plastered on it. Sure, it wouldn't stop them,
but it would certainly slow them down, and it would cause at least some
casualties. Because for my purposes, I was just as happy for them to be drunk
and passed out, as I was for them to be real casualties. Even happier,
actually, because it meant that I could use Wendy to make this happen.

I left it an hour, then I phoned him again. "I want you to round up ten tons
of lead. It doesn't matter the form; lead pipe, lead sheet, anything." "Why?"
"Those hostiles are about to do a whole lot of goldbricking," I explained.

Wendy came back from her barmaid job; she reported that they seemed to be
quite keen on the bottles she'd left out for them. The officers were trying to
keep control, but a lot of the men had swapped the water in their canteens for
vodka. And that was great, because vodka not only makes you drunk, it gives
you a raging thirst.

The lead wasn't ready yet, so I sent her off to do one of the other big things
that delays an army. Mud. Mud, mud, glorious mud, there's nothing quite like
it for cooling the blood and slowing the march. I told her to simply do what
she did at Melbourne; dump six inches of rain all along the area they were
travelling through. That much rain in such a short time would cause swollen
rivers, flooding, and mud, mud, mud.

By the time she came back from dumping water, the lead was ready, so I sent
her back to Tokyo to pick that up. I told her to mold it into one kilogram
bricks, and put a very thin later of the gold she'd gotten from the sea water
over the lead. Then stamp it with "99.99% fine" and "US Treasury" and a
hallmark, and put small piles of the bricks in place where the advancing
column could find them. Even if they only picked up a third of it, I reckoned
that humping three tons of lead along with them would slow them down nicely,
plus they'd probably start dumping part of their military load in order to
make way for the "gold" bricks.

That evening, as dusk fell, I got Wendy to fly me out to see how they were
doing. We'd certainly delayed them, but not as much as I hoped. It looked like
they were about 24 hours from our first line of defence, and we were at least
three days from the start of the evacuation. This was going to be tight.

When we got back to the village, I shared a bowl of rice with Lan Ho, and told
him the bad news. "Soon they will have to leave the main road and take to the
paths. Then we can start a guerrilla harassment. I'm familiar with this style
of warfare, from ... a while ago," he said. Lan Ho would set up ambushes along
their path; the object was not so much to kill them, it was more to make them
advance more slowly and carefully. Delay delay delay. We also dusted the
foliage in front of our main defensive line with heroin powder; I reckoned
that if the hostiles snorted in some of that, they might be less interested in
reality for a while.

Next day, Lan Ho's guerrillas set out to go into battle, and I sent Wendy out
to tell them where to expect the enemy to appear. When she'd done that, I sent
her over to the airfield, for two reasons. Firstly to reassure our refugees,
who had now been waiting patiently for some days, and were probably picking up
rumours about the oncoming forces. And secondly, I wanted her to dig a trench
around the perimeter of the airfield, to give us a defensive position in case
we had to mount a last-ditch battle.

When she'd done that, I sent her out again to spot where the enemy had gotten
to; I felt that we were very lucky to have our armoured flying bulldozer. She
came back and reported that they were getting close to our main defensive
lines, so I got Lan Ho to send the kites up. But this time we put up all our
manned kites, and the pilots were carrying the Molotovs and the sprayers.

"What's in those garden sprayers?" asked Wendy.

I'd been hoping that she wouldn't notice, or at least that she wouldn't ask
about the contents. But I wasn't about to start lying to her. "Mustard Gas," I
told her. She turned and faced me, frowning. Then she grabbed me and we
rocketed a mile into the air to where we couldn't be overheard. "What the hell
do you think you're playing at?" she yelled, "do you have any idea how
dangerous that stuff is?" You do not want to be facing Wendy when she's angry,
take my word for it. "That's the whole idea, Wendy, we aren't playing
hop-scotch here. It's lethal, as lethal as a bullet." "It's illegal." "You
mean gas warfare isn't allowed according to the Geneva Conventions?" "Or any
other rules of warfare." "But this isn't war. If those guys get through, it's
genocide." "Mustard is illegal." "Whose laws? I didn't agree to them, neither
did Lan Ho. You want to explain to Kippy's mother why we aren't protecting her
baby, on account of some guys in Switzerland signed some agreement?" She was
silent. "Anyway, we're not trying to kill them, not yet. The main effect of
the Mustard Gas will be to raise blisters on their skin, it's more
incapacitating than killing. Less damage than a bullet in the head, for sure.
And when they get past the barrier made by the Mustard, it will be bullets
flying for sure, and that's certainly going to mean a lot of casualties." She
was still silent. "Wendy, I'm not asking you to kill anyone. But you have to
let the villagers fight as best they can, it's the hawk and the sparrow again.
And you remember what you told me? You decide who your friends are, and then
you help them against their enemies. You've wimped out on helping, but at
least don't obstruct our friends."

I looked up at her face; she was crying. "I'm not wimping out, I've been
flying my wings off for you for the last week." "You don't have wings." "You
know what I mean. I've been doing the best I can for you, and now you go
behind my back and you do this!" "It wasn't behind your back" "It bloody well
was, you didn't tell me about this, you knew how I'd feel." "How would I know
you'd take it like this?" "Yes you bloody well did, that's why you didn't tell
me about it. You lied to me!" "I didn't lie!" "You fucking did! The essence of
the lie is the intent to deceive, and you meant for me not to know about this,
you should have told me, the lie was that you didn't."

I didn't really have an answer to this. She was right, I'd lied to her. "And
those drums of stuff that I carried here in the truck, that was what you made
it from, am I right?" "Yes," I whispered. I didn't think she'd take the
defence that only a few of the drums were that. "Some of it was the chemicals
to make Mustard, some of it is gasoline, to use as firebombs, Molotov
Cocktails" I admitted, "oh Wendy, I'm sorry, you're right, I should have told
you what you were carrying, I thought that if you didn't know it would, oh, I
don't know. But I'm really desperate here, there's a thousand men with machine
guns marching as fast as they can go towards our people, and it'll be a
massacre." I could hear the sound of gunfire from below; I looked down and I
could see that a firefight had started between our fortifications and the
attackers. "Wendy, our guys won't be able to hold out for long, All we've got
is those Molotovs and a few guns without much ammo." "And the Mustard Gas,"
she said, accusingly. "Oh, Wendy. Please? Wendy, I'm sorry I didn't tell you,
I should have. Forgive me? Please?"

She stared at me for several very long seconds, then she hugged me, and kissed
me, and said "George, don't worry, everything is going to be fine." For a
moment I believed her, and then I realised that she meant that I was going to
be OK. "Wendy, I know you're going to protect me, it's the other folks I'm
worried about, they're all going to die today." "No," she said, "today is not
a good day to die. You're right. I can't refuse to take sides, because that is
actually taking sides. I know who my friends are; it's time to help them. And
it isn't jusy Kippy, it's all of them, they don't deserve this." I looked up
at her. She had a determined expression. "Kick ass, Wendy!"

We swooped down to our defence lines. "Back to the airfield," yelled Wendy,
and without looking to see if her order was being obeyed, she zoomed to the
airfield, and landed. She went to the kerosene storage tank, and broke it
open, so that the flammable liquid started to pour into the trench around the
airfield. Then she set fire to it, I don't know how. There was a "Whoof" as
the flame surrounded the airfield, and we were surrounded by a wall of flame.
Fine, I thought, that'll buy us a few minutes, but what happens when the
kerosene burns out?

Then she spread her cape on the ground. She spread it out, and out, and out
... and it changed texture and colour. To start with, it was just her cape,
silky and plain white, and then it grew and changed until it looked like a
Persian carpet, except it was longer and wider than any carpet I've ever seen.
It spread further and further, and then when it was about a thousand yards
square, it stopped spreading, and Wendy yelled "Everyone, get on the Magic
Carpet!", and then something in their language, and people started getting on
to the carpet; slowly and carefully at first, but when they saw it was just a
carpet, they took heart and pretty soon everyone was on. "Now everyone sit
down," shouted Wendy. And they did, but then nothing happened - I looked at
Wendy, but she didn't seem to be doing anything, just waiting. Then I saw our
militia running towards the flame-filled trench, and Wendy took a deep breath
in, then blew ... and blew ... and blew. The blast of cold nitrogen from her
exhalation quenched the fire over several yards, giving a channel across the
river of fire, a path across the red sea of flame, and the militia hurried
through, the bandits only a hundred yards behind. As soon as our militia were
on our side of the trench, she stopped blowing, and the flame filled the
trench again, leaving the hostiles on the wrong side. And then she started to
move forward.

The Magic Carpet moved behind her. She tilted it up so that her forward
acceleration wouldn't lead to people sliding off the back, and then she grew
the edges upwards, making a wall around the people. She was still holding me
in her arms as we rose into the sky, trailed by the biggest magic carpet in
the world. We cleared the river of fire at an altitude of a couple of hundred
feet; any bullets fired upwards by the hostiles just bounced off the underside
of the carpet.

"Next stop, Melbourne," she said.