The original residence of the first settler in that tiny valley was also part of the village. It was set aside a little distance from both Hank and Yolanda's compound and the residential square. This two-story building was destroyed when the Wilizy's battle control center fell to the ground and exploded on top of it in the defining battle of the war. Within a week of that battle, all signs of the wreckage of both the battle command center and the pioneer house had been erased. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and of course, all of my readers will be well aware of that particular event.
H&Y's home compound is still intact, but most of it is underground. Very little can be seen from an extremely high fly-over, and that's all that anyone has been able to do these many years. Similar to the other A.N. patrol log houses, it was one story high above ground. I can tell you that it was large enough to accommodate H&Y's family with the adults and each child having their own self-contained and highly defensible underground bedroom stockade, for the sake of a better word. Some of the underground compound was built into the mountain that protected the rear of their compound. Given Hank's position as the head of the Aboriginal Nation's southeastern border patrol, he had sufficient income to construct anything he wanted for the defense of his family. However, it's highly likely that the A.N. government just gave him construction materials. We know that they went to great lengths to ensure that he and his family could not be found, and if they were discovered, that they would survive an attack from Zzyk's army. We know that Hank was invited to quarterly meetings with B.C. military brass near Surrey. For these meetings, he was picked up by an A.N. military copter and returned in the same fashion. It would have been possible for that copter to transport heavy building materials and explosives from B.C.'s population centers to H&Y's compound.
If the DPS attempted a ground attack on Hank's home, the compound was surrounded by wilderness and it had an underground passage into that wilderness. Hank and his family had access to sufficient arms hidden in the woods to defend themselves at least for a short time. However we know that they had taught their children to flee first. All were trained to live in the wild on their own and could find their way to a central meeting place far from the compound. Caches of food, water, and clothing were hidden along the route to that meeting location.
What follows is my attempt to describe how Hank and Yolanda may have interacted with each other when they were alone. I have no written journals to base their conversation on, so this part of their biography is admittedly fictional. However I do believe that Hank and Yolanda may have talked together something like this when they were alone.
# # # # # # # #
It was a few days after the success of Operation Woodchuck and Hank and Yolanda were in their Friday night, pre-bedtime ritual back at their home compound. Both looked forward to their Friday evenings as a time that they could be together without constantly having to answer to demands for their time or attention. The youngsters were all asleep. Wolf and Yollie were on Wilizy assignments and had not returned to the compound yet.
Hank passed the can of gun oil over to Yolanda, who was motioning him for it, and went back to his own cleaning. Friday night, children in bed, parents all alone inside a lockable room. What better time to . . . clean the family's guns? Frontier living at its best.
Hank and Yolanda tried to restrict their maintenance work on the family's armaments to when they were alone. Seeing all the weaponry together in one room might be overwhelming for the youngsters. Mathias was having nightmares again and they didn't want to make things worse for him. He had handled his guide duties well, but something could be going on in his head that they didn't know about. They'd know better in time. Meanwhile, having this routine in a nice warm room was relaxing.
"Are you going to talk to Yollie about that thing?" Yolanda asked.
"About forgetting to make a wide security sweep when she was on patrol?"
"Yes. What did you think I meant?"
"Talking to her about that technician." Hank replied. "I told you how intently she was staring at him when she was on guard duty. That's why she didn't stay focused on what she should have been doing."
"So are you going to talk to her about either of those things?"
"No. Are you?"
"No. Not me. Why won't you?" Yolanda trotted out what she thought would be the clinching argument. "You're the one who trained her. Inadequately, it would appear."
"I shouldn't talk to her because I might let it slip that I had done the sweeps for her and was hanging around invisibly watching her when she was dreaming about finding a boy friend. Turns out that there wasn't any danger from the para-gliders acting prematurely, so her lapse wasn't fatal. Zzyk would have kept the two operations separate – he's never been one to tell his subordinates more than they needed to know. Still she should have conducted the sweeps. You should talk to her. You're her mother."
"I'm the evil mother, remember? The one who gave her all the genes she says that she's OK with but still dislikes. If I mentioned her lapse, she'd ask me how I knew. It would take her about one second to realize that you had been checking up on her. Then she'd sulk for days. Challenging her on this wouldn't change anything. She wants desperately to have a boy friend that doesn't know about her big curse in life. The technician qualifies. My telling her one more time that her natural beauty will come in a few years isn't going to help."
"Did your mom tell you that?"
"Sure. You never noticed me at all when I was 13, remember? Chubby, walking around like a gooney bird, hostile to everyone and everything. She told me what would happen when I got older but she was the evil mother so I lived in a bowl of antagonism. Two years later, you started to notice me, remember?"
"Vividly. I wondered where the beautiful new girl in school had come from."
"So we agree that you were a blind jerk when you were in school?"
"Guilty as charged. But that must mean that you had bad taste in picking me."
"You were breathing. I was desperate. What can I say?"
Narrator: This light-hearted banter between Hank and Yolanda was common knowledge among those who knew the family. I won't bother writing in descriptive details like "she said, smilingly" so that you'll know that they aren't arguing. Nor will I tell you that the two were stripping and cleaning weapons at a quick pace. When you live inside an arsenal, you learn to clean and banter at the same time.
"Does Izzy know that Yollie forgot to do the wide area sweeps?" Yolanda asked.
"Probably. I expect that's why she emphasized Zzyk's duplicity so strongly in the debriefing."
"You think the technician is a spy?"
"Yup. 99% certain."
"Why the 1%?"
"Because I wonder why he would carry a bomb so willingly towards what could be his certain death."
"Know the answer?"
"Perhaps. Izzy did a good job on the debriefing, didn't she?"
"She did, and why are you changing the subject?"
"Yollie and Izzy aren't going to get along together, are they?"
"Not for a while and you're still trying to change the subject. Try not to be so obvious."
"Did you have another chance to talk to Izzy about birth control?"
"Still being obvious. I gave her details this time and showed her some things, but she's not interested. She reacts with outrage to the idea of sex outside of marriage and says that she isn't a slut."
"I can't help here, can I?"
"Nope. You're virtually identical to the male dissidents that she lived with when she was growing up. Gun fanatics, wife beaters ... I could go on but you might become enraged and teach me my place."
"You left out suave and mysterious."
"Rub my nose for me, would you?"
Hank did. "You have an itch?"
"Nope. I had a tremendous urge to snort and didn't want to blow gun oil all over the table."
# # # # # # # #
"Saw you nail that soldier that was trying to pull out his pistol.
"
"Little weasel. Thought that we wouldn't shoot!"
"You still have the good eye."
"Automatic reflexes," Hank shrugged.
"You know that Izzy is a pacifist at heart."
"So we protect her until she isn't."
# # # # # # # #
"Why would the technician go willingly to his death?"
"Why don't you slip on your invisibility cloak, stand behind him, and read him. You know where he's stashed."
"From that cloak, it would be like trying to see through a marshmallow."
"Speaking of which, is Winnie's daily marshmallow quota going up from five to six on her birthday."
"I guess. She's good about rationing them. This year, she'll have two in the morning, two in mid afternoon, and two before going to bed, or at least that's what she told me."
"I've never seen anyone who liked marshmallows so much. These things aren't easy to find, you know. We should tell her that marshmallows are unhealthy for children once they turn 6."
"Go ahead, oh lying wife beater."
"Or just hide them."
"So that you could still have yours and she won't know?"
"Worth a try."
"Wouldn't work. I've already been playing Hide and Find with her and I can't hide the marshmallows anywhere that she doesn't find them. Really quickly."
"Betcha I could hide them. Mere women do not have the hiding skills that men do."
"I've hidden what I think about suave men these many years. Besides I have no hiding places left inside the compound that she doesn't already know about."
"Still the outside."
"You're on."
"Usual stakes?"
"Yup. You're going to lose, oh lying wife beater. I think she can smell them."
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 6
From Izzy’s journals: May 12.
Yollie read the technician and reported that he's a decent man. I don't believe it. So we've hidden him in a village in the corner of southeastern A.N. that's within one day's hike into Alberta, Washington, or Idaho. Aboriginals in this area have had smuggling trails through this area forever. It's the safest place any of us could think of.
We're hiding him in the same village where we stashed the four IOF infants that we rescued from Zzyk. The family caring for them are Granny's distant cousins and they reassured us that they would keep a close eye on the technician. The wild mountainous area should also keep him penned in until we know what to do with him.
I made it clear to everyone that only Yollie could visit the technician, and only briefly, and only to take other readings to see if his status changes. I'm hoping that she comes to her senses. The spy already knows about Yollie, Doc, the three guides, me, and of course Will although he has yet to see him. I don't want him to learn about any other members. I made it a big deal that he can't have any other visitors and warned them again that the man was a danger to us.
Hank helped with our captured DPS Commander. Through his work with the border control, Hank has some contacts in the B.C. military. That made it easy for Hank, Wolf, and me to travel to their military complex in Surrey and turn the commander over to them for interrogation and confinement. After all, the Commander had taken his forces well into A.N.'s territory and by treaty, B.C. and A.N. territories are considered one and the same if either is invaded. Hank and Wolf will participate in the interrogation, but Hank had suggested that my time would be better spent meeting with their upper brass instead.
It was quite a meeting. I was introduced to the top three officers in their armed forces. A government official was also present as an observer. We met in their military complex under where the old Guildford Shopping Center used to be. According to my personal tour guide, Surrey had lots of shopping centers before the oil drought. The centers' parking lots and empty condemned stores serve as a good bomb cover in the event of an air attack, so they built bunkers deep under almost all of them.
The military brass had heard of the Wilizy and was very curious about us. After they stopped trying to wriggle information out of me about our forces, armaments, and capabilities, we got along. I told them that we had severely weakened Zzyk's capability to attack B.C. and itemized exactly what we had destroyed and what we thought remained. They were happy to hear that we controlled the woods and mountains on their eastern border since Zzyk's forces would have to travel through or over those areas to invade British Columbia. I offered to warn them if we saw signs of any military build-ups that might warrant their attention. Depending on what we had available at the time, I also offered to help the B.C. military defend themselves if Zzyk became ambitious again. That got me the names and contact information for some very important military people scattered throughout their command structure.
They weren't surprised to hear that I was expecting some services from B.C. in return. They were quite happy to make sure the DPS commander would never see the light of day again but they would spare his life as I had requested. They also agreed to roll-up Zzyk's spy network that had captured Will and me at the dance. They had identified them all long ago, but were reluctant to antagonize Zzyk when he could invade the province any time he felt like it. "You won't have to worry about spies when you visit B.C. again, which we hope will be often," the officer with the most gold braid said. I thought that was very gracious of him. I didn't ask if that meant that the spies would be imprisoned or killed; thought about it on the way home and discovered, to my surprise, that I didn't care.
Unhappy that they weren't providing us much in return for putting Zzyk's attack plans on hold, the military men kept offering me more help. Mostly weapons, of course. Gold if I wanted it. Medical supplies. Access to specialized military personnel. I turned them all down, but just for the time being. Then I stared at the silent government official who had been sitting in the shadows in the windowless meeting room. I don't think that I'd like to work all day long in an underground bunker; it would be too dark and a little bit stinky and depressing.
The gray-suited man had the military men saluting him and groveling out the door quickly. "Do you have something else in mind?" he asked me in a gravelly voice.
"I do," I replied and gave him some papers listing some of our goals and how B.C. could help us achieve them.
"We will try to do all of this for you," he announced without hesitation after scanning it quickly.
Who was this man?
"We might be able to complete it by the deadlines indicated but I will have to talk to the people who will be doing the work before making a commitment."
I had given generous time lines, so was pleased to hear it all might be possible.
"We need to talk about money," he rasped.
"Later," I said. "After we know for sure that you have the personnel and equipment."
"Fair enough. Will we be seeing you in your white and emerald green any time soon?"
"Yes, I do believe you will."
# # # # # # # #
From Will's journals: May 13.
Izzy was all enthused when she returned from B.C. and wanted to fly to New York right away and bring back their library. So we left after filling some backpacks with food and water. At one point, we had talked about taking the Wilizy to New York because it had enough room in its hold to store everything we wanted to bring back. But the trip there and back would have been very slow and I had lots of projects on the go. Izzy had said that I should come up with a different way to transport the library, so I did.
We arrived over New York after dark, and Izzy insisted that we sleep in our slings high over the city until we had had a chance to assess the threat levels. The last time we were here, underwater swimmers were planting bombs in buildings and blowing them up.
Sunrise revealed the New York skyline now had fewer tall buildings. Izzy started preparing the library while I flew back to the lab where I had manufactured masses of my filament on our last trip. I used up all the remaining raw materials t
hat I had stored in the lab and brought the finished filaments to the library. In the future, if I need new filaments, I will manufacture them in Stanford University's physics lab.
Izzy left a note on the circulation desk to say that we had signed out the library's collection to keep it safe and would return it to the New York library whenever they wanted it back. Then we started an assembly line. I would build a storage pallet out of carpets wrapped inside filaments, insert the power and navigation equipment, prepare a lid, and then I'd float it over to wherever Izzy was working. She'd stack books and other materials inside the pallet, label the contents, install the lid to complete the invisibility circuit, and fire up the pinky computer that would provide the power and navigation instructions. When we had everything on that floor ready to go, we broke one of the large picture windows and sent the weightless and invisible containers on their way. After we finished with one floor, we repeated the process for the other floors. It took about 18 hours of steady work. Once we started, we didn't want to stop. Both of us had the feeling that the library's building would not be standing much longer.
The navigation commands would take each pallet at a slow speed and a safe altitude to the nearest Wilizy communication hub that existed to its westward side and, from there, to the next westward hub, and so on. In a week or so, we'd have a queue of floating pallets full of educational materials lined up in the A.N. skies for unloading. Izzy didn't know where she was going to store the materials yet, but they'd be easy enough to transport when the time came.
We slung back home to the moored Wilizy without any difficulty. Izzy suggested that since we had the Wilizy to ourselves, we could take a day to rest and perhaps work out in the sun and sunbathe together. I was keen to work on my ideas for the long-range sensors that she had requested, so I told her that I couldn't. She looked a little miffed, but Wolf wanted some spying tools that I thought could be spun off from the long range sensors. The idea of making tools multi-functional like what I had done with the communication network and the pallet delivery system was way more interesting than sunbathing.