'And Hades, what of him. I cannot abandon him and come with you.'

'Your loyalty becomes you, brother, there may be hope for you yet.' Themis had kept her best for last. She dropped her bombsh.e.l.l. 'Know that Hades is already in the halls of Zeus.' She waited for his reaction. It was her turn to grin, but with a much more pleasant effect. 'Come!'

Chronos was amazed. He gazed around, checked anxiously for the presence of Hades in Erebus, scrutinized the whole of the Underworld in an instant. Sadly he then shook his huge, grizzled mane, fixed his skein and shaking his head in stunned disbelief. Very slowly, he came. Was that a tear of anger or of shame that slid from his eye unnoticed by all but Themis - and was it exaltation that made her raise her fine head thus?

Chapter 11.

The tiny island of Ios sat Firm, anch.o.r.ed, motionless riding the ever swelling sea. By the summer of 2012 oceans everywhere had drowned many islands and coastlines of low-lying countries. The waters of the Mediterranean had risen hugely and the remaining islands were now unpopulated, apart from those few stalwarts who would not leave their homes. UNPEX everywhere cleared people to high ground, but wisely forced no one to go who would not. Things were difficult enough for everyone without creating more martyrs. Nevertheless serious mistakes had been made. JNO had seen them coming but was unable to intervene in time. The swamping of the Thames barrier in London, although a catastrophe, actually made less headlines world-wide, than the clearly deliberate ma.s.sacre of flood-refugees at crossing-points in the Mediterranean. For when the London Tube was drowned, JNO personnel had been able to give adequate public warning even though Fourthworld personnel had falsely persuaded the authorities their barrier would work. By comparison Brindisi, Alexandria, and the appalling ma.s.sacre of the innocents at Gibraltar, was a deliberate and visible slaughter shown live on the TV screens of the world. It was something that JNO had been unable to forestall, try as it might.

Aghast, millions of viewers watched thousands of people dying in real time, whose only crime was to have lived at sea-level. They watched as before their very eyes, men, women and children, whole families, were mown down by machine gun fire, killed by their own UNPEX guardians. This was done on their behalf and in their name. Agonisingly and paradoxically, many were glad at one level that these ravening hordes were more or less kept at bay. But in their hearts there was an impossible torment. Was it simply a matter of 'them or us'? Were we not also them? Had right and wrong, preservation and death, become mere choices of the moment? In the minds of all, the semblance of morality or even mere orderliness was inexorably breaking down. It slowly began to dawn that the race was in a mental panic. Was there really nothing to hold on to? No G.o.ds, no G.o.d, no morality, no fixed place, no fixed thing, nothing but themselves? What were they? What fixed point of truth did they have? How was this crisis to be managed?

Lynn Farrell and Frank Colwyn ensured the world saw and knew the facts of the 'mistakes' which repelled by brute force, the poor of the southern nations and of North Africa armed and dangerous, though they were, from invading the European main continent by sheer force of numbers, in thousands of rickety air and sea craft. Swollen by ma.s.ses of migrants from the Far East and the Ganges Basin and other inundated countries of the Eurasian landma.s.s, the ma.s.sed attack by the migrants had no chance against the well organised forces of UNPEX. These were early battles of what promised to be a desperate war. The McMa.n.u.s press rightly showed UNPEX was finally and cynically saving the rich world at the expense of the poor. The battle lines were finally made public. Loins were girded on both sides. It was among the poor that Fourthworld had successfully wrecked JNO's efforts at neutralising the worst effects of exploitation of people and resources. These were countries of few choices and governments were unable to cope once JNO was seriously undermined. Thereafter not even Fourthworld could reverse the downward pitch of despair, which to give Barboncito his due, he tried to offset, by offering solutions in forms as various as religious cults, low-level technological development, restructuring of loans, shifts in monocultures. But there was no time in the face of Gaia's sickness. Despair won the day. He gave in and let things find what level they would and was satisfied that many deaths in this world, swelled the numbers in the Underworld, and that many of the wretched, dying, innocents, would find a more fitting existence in Elysium. Once the Hadean Alliance had ascended to its rightful place, all wrongs of this kind would be righted. By the time he discovered his own betrayal by Hades himself it was too late for a change of strategy. He would have to go it alone or give it up. After not too long a deliberation with himself he usurped the vacant throne of the Underworld and left Hades and Chronos to go where they would.

By the beginning of 2012 Barboncito had cracked all GAIANET's codes and HIGO was working for him too. Fourthworld's infiltration in UNPEX was a permanent and unyielding component in the sabotage of JNO's efforts. By the time Hades and Chronos were Firmly in Zeus' camp, Fourthworld's momentum in the Now was unstoppable. Paradoxically once the Hadean authority was in the present, there was no control over Barboncito and his brethren from the Underworld. A circ.u.mstance, although predictable, no one, not even Zeus, Hera or Persephone, had seriously considered. n.o.body had expected Barboncito to go on as he did. Extraordinarily, neither Chronos nor Hades had thought their presence in the Now would affect their continuing direct control over Fourthworld. Every one of 'Them' had a.s.sumed as a matter of course that Barboncito could be constrained by command. Not until Chronos and Hades impotently gave a direct order to Barboncito to cease activities, did any of 'Them' realise what they had unwittingly unleashed and left behind. A puzzled, but restrained almost-panic, occurred in the Pantheon and Penny was severely rattled by a loss of equilibrium and certainty in Lucina. Its main effect was to make Penny even more alone than before, if that were possible.

On his return to JNO on Ios, Alexander initially spent more time with Marina than with his mother. Soon after it was agreed they should search for Barboncito and try to stop him. Penny hardly saw him at all. They had spent only a short time on Ios after their return and de-briefing and were now, no one knew where, scouring the globe and even the Underworld for Barboncito's hide-away as they were in no doubt he searched for theirs. There was so much frantic activity that the experiences of Alexander and Marina were absorbed into it without too much attempt at a.n.a.lysis. The world of 'Them' and that of JNO were now so mixed up that nothing was a surprise any longer. Work to save the populations of the planet was the overarching priority for all on the island. Penny and Ric in particular maintained a kind of continuous ambivalence to the relationship of JNO and 'Them' but agreed to think about it only if they survived. Ric worked intensively with Hep on the mind-reader, they now called Mimix. Miniaturisation turned out to be more difficult than first thought. Penny was kept fully engaged by countering the activities of Fourthworld with no time for anything else. Her hard work however, did not stop her feeling severely battered emotionally. Penny and Barboncito were using the same information. Each knew the other's moves or could guess them well enough to act fast when the opportunity arose. It was like a cosmic game of snooker with equally matched players. Once one player had a run they could out-play the other until someone made a minor fault which let the other in with a chance.

Penny had gains in the Americas and Russia, Barboncito had a good run in the Mediterranean at Gibraltar, and also in Australasia. She kept the Amazon Basin working for JNO thanks to Jose Condamine. Others of the Advisory group fought Fourthworld in their own ways through their networks, using HIGO. Everyone in JNO who knew, hoped Ric and Hep's breakthrough would restore their advantage. Overall the knowledge that Fourthworld was beating them was severely dispiriting. More than once they found people that they thought were on their side had shifted allegiance or were playing a double game. Only Lynn Farrell and SYDCOM seemed to have things working well. Fourthworld never got its hands on the key levers of the media. Alexander put it down to the backward way Fourthworld thought of technology. Despite Barboncito's own undoubted ability with computers, the people he recruited or the shades who came from his Underworld, were generally uninterested or were still learning to manage such gadgets.

Penny had sectioned off the now crowded island into different spheres of activity. Farrell, Colwyn, Morii and Terekowa worked from a well equipped studio high on the blind side of the sea facing inland. Condamine, Krajowa, Mo and Ulybin, worked on international commerce and lived in several of the white houses on the seaward side, and had the best views. Kanapi, Khumalo, Etchart, Botham and Petersohnn worked on UNPEX people-movement and control from a newly built complex in Psathi on the other side of the island. Ric, Hep and Karl Khan had a workshop hidden in the centre between two rocky hills, where they worked day and night on Mimix. All were linked by underground and communicated physically by a series of little electric rail-cars. They met at the beginning and end of every day in a specially made subterranean chamber at the point where the rail-cars met. No rail-car journey lasted longer than five minutes. Each group had its support staff occupying the various white houses and windmills. From the sea or air nothing different was visible. It ran on well tried Markham lines, invisible but highly active.

Hera, Zeus, Mnemosyne, Themis, Athena, Prometheus, Chronos and Hades and sundry others, spent nearly all their time in the New York Penthouse. Zeus as usual, preferred to be at a material as well as spiritual distance from JNO's activities on Ios, especially in view of the difficulties he was having with his newly returned relatives. The Advisory and the Pantheic groups maintained contact through Penny's links with Lucina; who came as usual at her personal whim, to some of the morning or evening meetings in the underground chamber. She said nothing directly about her problems in the Pantheon but her defences were sufficiently low for the now attuned group members to detect changes in her demeanour. 'They' were in trouble and everyone in the group knew it. By contrast the work among mortals had begun to pick up since the metamorphosis of Chronos, and the kidnapping of Hades.

It was a while before the realisation dawned that without the direct involvement of the Chrono/Hadean alliance Barboncito, although out of control, had lost the main power source of his driving energy - a fortunate by-product for the Pantheon. Using his numerical superiority, he continued to sabotage JNO plans through Fourthworld Networks. However, gradually on Ios there began a feeling they were beginning to make some gains and that the tide might be turning. Lyle Etchart's group observed the shift first. It was Doris Botham's keenness of observation which made her point out the first real alteration in the pattern of events in the early autumn of 2012.

HIGO had divided the globe into spheres of human ma.s.s movement since the unusual weather patterns began. Doris' group now daily checked on resettlement activity and the interventions made by local, regional and global authorities. They knew of course Fourthworld had the same information. The critical factor was the strength and resourcefulness of their own different networks - until now Barboncito's people had wielded the greatest influence through the exercise of hard persuasion. In the aftermath of the Mediterranean ma.s.sacres, some fifty thousand would-be immigrants with JNO's help had scrabbled ash.o.r.e to be put into camps all along the coast by UNPEX Peace Forces in what had been high-rise tourist hotels. Doris, among her other duties, had been closely monitoring UNPEX activity using her own networks to influence possible outcomes in this critical zone. In October 2012, shortly after the freeing of Chronos, she found her efforts at resettlement were beginning to root, having initially been obstructed. Rioting in the hotel blocks slowed, and UNPEX reprisals for disobedience faded as she was able to replace Fourth-world's personnel in UNPEX with her own. For some time the UNPEX world had seemed overrun with people influenced by Fourthworld's ideology and methods. In the evening discussion on the 18th September 2012 Doris explained her discovery. They were all very tired and it showed. Doris had lost some of her famous calm, and was little p.r.o.ne to agitation.

'I was doing what I always do, and had been doing hopelessly for the last G.o.d knows how long - getting Fourthworld types sacked or otherwise eliminated by fair means or foul and replacing them with JNO trained or influenced people. Suddenly it was working. I traced through the recruitment files and found the head of the Eurasia Branch had changed allegiance, supposedly shocked by the Gibraltar slaughter. I got a couple of my people in the UN to investigate and found one of Etchart's people had spent a week officially checking their finances, after which everything changed. What's cooking Lyle? I thought we were on the same team lovely boy!'

Etchart squirmed a little, and apologised in his slightly absent minded way for his failure to communicate, which irritated the little lady most particularly.

'Sorry! Ah! Umm - that's real interesting - Doris. See here, er, soon as I heard Alexander and Marina had gone after Fourthworld I thought I'd, er, try an experiment. I didn't say anything, thought I'd wait till - you know - I got a result. You know we've had a hard time getting into the higher reaches of UNPEX lately, well one way in was via the inspection role of the World Bank. My little team invited the head Eurasia man to dinner and well, suggested he had been finagling the..er..books and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Ha!'

'You might have said,' Doris gave him one of her deadly-sweet smiles. He blushed, embarra.s.sed.

'Sorry Doris, it was a long shot, didn't expect such results so soon!'

'It's about time we got some. If things don't shift very fast we'll soon be on the wrong side of the deadline!'

Kanapi spoke to no one in particular. He voiced what they were always thinking. Here they were in mid September, three months to go and... There was a long silence.

'Jeez! - Come on you guys!' chipped in Condamine. 'What Doris says is great news! So what if Lyle was a bit slow in letting on. We've all been busking it a bit lately. This is a change in the pattern, however it happened. Penny you see more of Lucina then we do, is this the real breakthrough we've been waiting for or just a one off?' All eyes fell on Penny.

'Look,' she responded. 'You've all seen Lucina for yourselves. Things are going hard with her and we've got our own problems here. I think we'd best leave the two things separated. Let's find any corroborating influences elsewhere on the networks for indications for or against a breakthrough.'

'Okay, good, good', said Petershonn. 'I too have been experimenting. Sorry Doris, I know, same team eh! But we talk now isn't it? Better now than not. Maybe after this we get going good again eh?

'Okay, okay!' Doris sighed heavily. 'Sorry, I'm tired and ratty, it's been a hard road for all of us. I say truce, so spill it Johann!'

'Well, I too have good success on the student front. In the last ten year's or so, graduates from JNO supported universities and colleges in many third-world countries have been getting jobs in UNPEX and other UN bodies. Many regional administrations have our graduates in post and they help each other. Remember we have been going longer than Fourthworld. What we sowed we are now reaping. We have better networks I think than they. Is good, eh?

'It's excellent!' exclaimed Penny. 'The whole idea is brilliant. This means the best young people of this generation are in our networks by now and it's great news to hear it's feeding through.'

'We had ten years on Fourthworld, thank G.o.d,' said Chieko Terekowa. 'I think it's the most crucial thing. GRADE aid in grants, endowments, fees and the rest is paying off. I always knew it would. It just seemed that what with the weather changes and the rest of it we allowed our eye to stray off that particular ball to watch the things of the moment and forgot this more subtle and deeper influence.

'You think it was Johann's work which had affected the personnel changes in the Eurasia thing then?' Asked Doris.

'That and your and Lyle's work too,' replied Chieko. 'We always forget the power of the networks. They have a life of their own and operate without us doing anything directly. It's different for Fourthworld, Barboncito has to have control over everything, the authority chains are pretty weak by the time they get to him. Sheer force is not enough to get obedience in a truly consistent way. I know it's hard to stick with that belief when sheer power seems to get things done faster. But in Fourthworld the content of what they do is different. It is qualitatively less effective than our slower, more authentically human approach.'

'You mean it's a tortoise and hare thing?' asked Myanthi.

'In a way, but I wouldn't use that metaphor. It's more than a matter of cunning or speed alone. It's about something more, well I used the word 'authentic'. To me it means more true to our species as individual to individual.'

'Sorry love, don't follow,' said Doris.

'I'm not being very clear, I know. I'm just thinking it out for myself actually, so don't expect me to get it right straight away. Ric, anyone, help me out if I get stuck with the right words. It's like, you know, things as an individual which you feel are right and true, but which a lot of the time seem really stupid when you say them out loud...'

'Like what?' smiled Piotre Ulybin, interrupting, and as someone who had survived the Great Russian experiment thought he knew only too well.

'Like when as a small child you can't understand why people are starving when you have enough food, and when adults say - That's how it is - and even when you know how it is later, and you know how hard it is to change the realities. That childish truth stays just as strong. So the child-like innocence about the truth of things kind of stays with you despite the fact you can explain it away and the explanations are deemed satisfactory or immutable in the scheme of things.

'So?' questioned Doris.

'So, it niggles subliminally. Sticks in the throat of the intelligence so to speak, it's a lie that can only be exposed between individuals. I mean when people round a dinner table get on to politics they often agree with the authentic voices in themselves, but the practicalities of changing things and their own powerlessness gets in the way of any possible action and so they go along sometimes positively or often merely pa.s.sively, with things they know somewhere inside them they cannot, should not, possibly agree to.'

'Sometimes people do act on what they know,' said Ric.'Why else are we here?'

'But see how few we are,' said Karl Kahn.

'Not so,' intervened Myanthi. 'Chieko spoke of the networks. We are many. Our problem is both simple and impossible at the same time. What I mean is we do communicate in what Chieko calls is our authentic voice, through teaching JNO values. What we cannot do, what is both necessary and important in the time-scale left is the critical need to communicate personally, directly with everyone and develop the critical ma.s.s of informed understanding about the state of the world and the way we must, change human behaviour from its dominant compet.i.tive, and exploitative culture to a co-operative inter-dependent one in the three months we have left! It's already taken over ten years for us to begin to achieve the critical ma.s.s Johann talked about - if Doris is right about the tide turning - and I think she is. In the time that's needed to change a culture, that's fast work. But in time for the deadline well.....I don't know. I don't see how we can do it.'

'We have one chance,' said Ric quietly. 'One real chance and also one hope. Our one chance is the Mimix machine, and our hope is the slowing of Barboncito to give the machine its greatest chance.'

'I think it would be best if you spelled out what you mean in some detail,' said Penny. 'There's two or three different ideas being discussed here, some are simply practical and others are more abstract and will take some getting to grips with.'

'Right!' Doris chipped in. 'It seems to me sometimes that each of us is in different places in our heads at the same time. We give the appearance of being together, we act in partnership on the surface, but that doesn't always mean we are in the same place exactly - in our minds I mean. For example I really knew that Lyle was doing his own thing as I and all of you have been doing theirs, but I kind of forgot. There's no time to spend ages communicating when we have to things to do. Of course we need to have meetings like this to co-ordinate, but often we only talk about 'things' that are happening and rarely about what we really feel or mean by the things we say and paradoxically, the things we do as well. We a.s.sume a kind of rapport which I'm not always sure really exists if we all laid our private thoughts down for examination.'

'I think you will find it's a problem of the use of language,' said Mo Chu in his pedantic way. 'You may know of course, the reason we Chinese decided on the use of characters rather than letters as a mode of ecriture is so people can communicate in writing without the need for translation. By way of ill.u.s.tration, the character for a dog is the same in Mandarin and Cantonese, while the sound is quite different. I ill.u.s.trate thus to show the vehicular nature of language and its symbolism. Symbols are useful short-hand vehicles and can of course be employed in very complex communications but, and I emphasise the 'but', they are only a part of the whole communication. Not only do we translate the symbols individually, and therefore we each have slightly different interpretations, but we understand the symbols differently also. So to maintain the dog ill.u.s.tration, when one says dog; a Chinese may think of a delicacy to eat with noodles, while a Westerner may think of a cuddly companion to walk in the park, or as a defecating nuisance to be done away with. I of course exaggerate to make my point. I am certainly fond of dogs.'

'Sure, sure Chu, but where's all this leading?' asked Condamine. 'Penny you got us all goin' on this.'

'I suppose I did, and given the tone of the conversation I'd better try and explain what I mean.'

Before she could continue, Ric stood up and waved her to be silent.

'Everyone is right. Human communication is always a cacophony of misunderstandings masquerading as communication. It's is one of the main reasons we are in the mess we are, and I mean us here and now as well as the world in general. If there's one thing we have in common as a species it's the fact that each one of us is ultimately alone in our own private world. Whereas in the public world we are usually afraid to admit of the loneliness, uncertainty and basic vulnerability we each feel at the bottom of ourselves. While in private we can weep for ourselves and the things we do to each other and the world; in public this would be seen as weakness, folly, or insanity. In public most people hold back their inner thoughts, mostly out of fear of being misunderstood or from an inability to say what they mean. That's why Barboncito's 'isms are so popular, they give us the answers we need and speak these things for us without each of us having to be publicly responsible for anything. The bizarre thing is how much we really have in common as a feeling, thinking species. The great mistake is that although we have recognised our vulnerability and weakness as a species, we have placed this outside ourselves. Not however in a public place where it can be seen and managed, but in a private one. Essentially each person does one of two things. They give up their vulnerable selves into the hands of a divine to keep on their behalf. Or, alternatively, they deny this vulnerability and refute the divine. Both ways are ultimately unsatisfactory, for in Chieko's term they are not authentic. The only authentic reality in communication is the immediate and totally empathetic understanding of ourselves, one to another without the need to interpret symbols of language, religious explanations of human nature, or any other more 'scientifically' defined behaviours.'

'He stopped for a moment to let his words sink in. Since no one interjected he continued.

'There is a reason for this sermon for which I apologise, but which I hope more than anything will be made clear to you in a few moments. Firstly I want you to remain silent and consider the experience you all had of Lucina that time at the Advisory Group meeting. Then, I think you will realise there was no doubt in any mind about the meaning of the communication she made with each of you. You will also recall that her communication was different in slight ways for each person. There was no extraneous material whatever to interfere with the connections. What happened then was what I have since come to know as a mind-mix. That's right, Mimix is the name of our new machine and only myself Karl and Penny, and of course Hep, knows what it means to experience such a thing. Before we go any further I want them to describe a Mimix experience to you. Penny Please?'

'Does this mean you are...?'

'Just tell them Penny, the rest will be made clear soon.

'Ric, I think it's probably one of those things it's harder to describe than to experience. It's like nothing else I ever went through other than that encounter with Lucina you just mentioned'. She thought for a moment and continued 'Well, and please chip in Karl if I get it wrong, it's a bit like you were minding your own business, and suddenly you become aware of another person in your mind. Like you knew absolutely for certain you were alone in your house and someone else had somehow got in and was with you.'

Karl Kahn broke in. 'That's a good comparison, it's as if the person who was in there with you knows all about you, your house, your family everything, and somehow you don't mind because you know the same about them. If they were to lie, you'd know, and vice-versa. There's no hiding place, and no need for one. The main thing you know is that both of you are equally open to the other and therefore equally vulnerable.'

'That right,' said Penny. 'The equality comes from the vulnerability itself. Your mutual nakedness or weakness becomes the thing that strengthens the relationship you can't avoid having. It's the greatest of all human paradoxes, the fact that our individual vulnerability is our greatest strength and it's the very thing we are most afraid of!'

'So,' said Ric. 'What happens in the mutual vulnerability of the mind-mix?'

'Your fears,' Karl replied. 'Are cancelled out. The need for personal s.p.a.ce to hide disappears and a kind of wonderful species commonality takes over. It's like being born again, free of the personal barrier, free in public like free in private.'

'Private thoughts made public?' queried Chu.

'It makes them real for the first time. It was Hannah Arendt, who said private thoughts spoken publicly make them real,' said Penny 'In the Mimix they're so liberating you feel somehow helplessly imprisoned in yourself when you come out of it.'

'That's right,' said Karl. 'You feel bereft, alone, like you've lost the truest of friends or a lover.

'Thanks,' said Ric. 'I am now going to try an experiment which has to work if we are to use the chance I spoke of just now.'

He brought out from under the table a medium sized cardboard box which he placed in front of him. He drew from it what appeared to be an oversized wrist-watch. A small, curved oval, it was about three centimetres wide, four long, and about three millimetres thick. It had elasticised metal straps at each end with which it appeared to fit pretty comfortably on the lower forearm.

'Voila...,Mimix!' exclaimed Ric, not without a degree of satisfaction.

'It's ready?' asked Penny with emphasis.

'Yes, it works well enough and we have finally made it small enough to be easily portable.'

'How's it powered?' asked Lyle Etchart.

'Ah! That's possibly a slight problem.To avoid the need for bulky batteries, we've powered it by light. It doesn't need much to make it go but it won't work for very long in pitch-blackness.

'It's got a small back up cell,' Karl Khan added. 'But it only stores enough energy for a maximum of five minutes in the dark. It'll work in street-lights for example, or near a candle, any light source actually - just, but it wouldn't work, say, down a mine.'

'Ah! So we'd better not spend a lot of time in an unlit mine should we?' Doris quipped. She was unconvinced by gadgetry, preferring the strength of her mind to achieve her will.

'No Doris we'd better not,' said Ric. 'But what we are saying is it's not infallible. There are circ.u.mstances when you might want to use it, in a dark room for example, where you want to communicate silently with someone without being observed. Just remember it won't work in the dark for long that's all.'

'Okay, okay, dish 'em out, Ric, we're all dying to give it a go.' Jose Condamine held out his wrist.

'Alright, but there's a couple of other points you should know about. Penny, Karl and I, and of course Hep, have tried it. The effects are immediate but more importantly, and I can't stress this enough - they are permanent. It's like the apple of the tree of knowledge, once bitten into there's no going back. The minute you're switched on you're in a different world altogether and there's no going back - not ever.' He looked at Doris as he spoke. 'It's not compulsory, We've talked it over, and we've decided to give you the option of refusing to use it.'

'Count me out,' said Doris. 'The last thing I want to do is get close to the thoughts of anyone else, and I certainly don't want anyone getting close to any of mine. I want my privacy thank you. I get where I do precisely because no one can read my thoughts.'

'That's what I mean,' said Ric. 'But the other and converse point I want to emphasise, is that without using Mimix you are also excluded. It doesn't matter now, while there are so few. The whole point is to proliferate them as far and wide as possible. We reckon more people will want them than don't. If we can get them disseminated fast enough, and you should know Hep has got factories in all the decent weather pattern spheres churning them out as we speak. We have from now until October at the latest to get about three billion out. Fortunately Hep's found a way of making them quickly and cheaply.'

'Hang on a bit Ric,' it was all going a bit fast for Bill Kanapi. 'Just let me check out I've got all this right - Mimix is not just something for us in JNO to use, as a way of getting advantage over Fourthworld. You actually want everyone to have it?'

'Absolutely!'

'I get it,' said Doris. 'Very clever. Penny you tell us, you've used it?'

Penny smiled, there was no putting anything over on this lady.

'Like I already said,' she responded. 'Mimix is like nothing else. It's the main chance JNO has got to reach our goal in time. We have to flood the world with these things as soon as possible. I doubt that even you Doris, will be able to hold out against having one once they are universal. Sure some people will refuse, Doris is quite at liberty to do so if she wishes, but she will find herself in a minority and becoming more and more excluded. The point is, and I'm sure you're all ahead of me already like Doris here, the point is we have to do what Chieko said and make authentic contact with each other, everyone, all the time and soon. This gizmo will do it if we can get it out fast enough. It will answer Myanthi's question about changing the culture and getting to a critical ma.s.s at the same time and in the time scale - just about.'

'So? - let's get at it, like now!' Condamine almost shouted in his eagerness.

'Wait,' said Lynne Farrell. 'n.o.body should get linked up until we are all totally sure of what we are doing. I haven't used the thing, but I think I have an inkling what Penny and Karl mean. If its effects are so radical, we must be on top of the thing before we go into it. Eh Jose?'

'Okay, okay, sure thing Lynne, but we are goin' to use it ain't we, so what's the point of hanging around? Can't see the point of waiting.'

'We must know ourselves first, I am in agreement with Lynne,' said Chu. 'I want all the story told in detail as far as it can be before I choose to change the nature of my relationship with the rest of the world, even if it only begins with you good people whom I trust.'

Ric nodded and said. 'I think it would be best if first Karl and I explain the details of the machine and how it works, then Lynne and her media group can get to grips with it. Thereafter we are literally in the lap of the G.o.ds.'

It was another three days before they all agreed to be strapped up with a Mimix set and another week by the time they were used to handling it. Doris overcame her objections after a short observation of the effect on the others and as predicted, was unable to stand being the odd one out.

Chapter 12.

While the mortal subsidiary of JNO was getting its act together on Ios, the senior partners at Olympic-HQ in the hidden New York penthouse suite were engaged in a scene of a different kind. The Twelve, enlarged by two, found that becoming the 'Fourteen' had turned out to be something that had been seriously ill considered by everyone. They had worked hard at doing the thing but were poorly prepared for the aftermath. There had been a grave failure of antic.i.p.ation. Firstly, none of the children of Chronos would have anything to do with their father. Though infuriating, this had been predictable and it was realised too late that someone should have handled it better in advance. Revulsion ran deep and flowed full laden. Whatever Chronos said or did. Whatever he might say or do. He could not, as Demeter said with feeling - do anything right for being wrong. Whether the loathing derived entirely from direct experience of spending time in so abhorrent a stomach or equally, or even more probably, from an revulsion of the nature of the deed itself. Had he not nearly succeeded in cutting them off from their potential and maintaining his Earth in a Chaos of monsters and other ill-refined beings? Mortals in their beauty and even now, in their foolishness - still offered better possibilities for the future than he. Even in the current crisis, they had not messed up Creation as much as he had done before them. Were it not for the importance of having the skein of time inexorably fixed by him as part of the New Trinity, he would have instantly been re-banished.

They also realised too late, that of course the Pantheon was out of the habit of communication with Hades. The whole of their organisational structure and their operating methods were based on his being in the Underworld. Added to which, for Hades himself, the aeons of distance combined with his manner of coming thence, left the King of the Underworld out of his element. He was also somewhat less than happy being the kidnapper, kidnapped. Also Barboncito was alone and free to come and go in Hades' abandoned realm, and also in Zeus'. Not to mention Hecate, and that reprobate Pan. Others may be roaming wherever, without his control. To cap it all, his ears still rang with the cry of the betrayed from Alexander's hordes. Oh yes, he certainly resented that youth and his handsome black woman. He had had Alexander by the short hairs, had neatly turned him and would have turned all of JNO until Marina came into Hades - or was it the Harpies who were on the wrong side - they who brooked no authority from anyone, but who listened to Hecate and heeded to her advice - often; once too often!

Thus he thought and sulked and smarted.

Zeus forced to keep control of this unhappy brother made sure Themis did the same for Chronos. One to each was fair. Only their extraordinary strength prevented a very serious family rumpus which might all too easily have scuppered Zeus' main plan.

Zeus was very put-out with himself and thus with everyone else. Hera too, was at her wit's end. She rounded on her husband whom she still felt saw the whole thing as a game, a play, an amus.e.m.e.nt - and who, as usual left her to do all the work with 'her mortals' as he called them. Hephaestos, fortunately kept his faith with his mother. Prometheus of course maintained his constancy, and watched over Alexander and Marina in their quest for Barboncito.