THE QUEEN OF SWORDS!
A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE SECOND DARK AGE OF MAN
By Jerome B. Bigge
Chapter Twenty Five

     
"Lorraine," Gayle breathed, shrinking back against me as we
climbed up there on the docks of Trella, the sun shining down
upon us from a nearly cloudless sky. The awesome Warlady didn't
look all that "delighted" to see her. Or even me or Sharon for
that matter! The look on her face unreadable as Dala Dai nodded
in greeting to us. I recalled the photograph of Lorraine that I
had seen there facing that of Janet Rogers. My "Lorraine" was
much like "hers". I wondered too what Domino had thought of her?
     
"You have turned out to be everything I hoped for!" Lorraine
suddenly laughed, seizing the girl in her arms, Queen Dala Dai of
Talon taking her own daughter in her arms as I hugged Sharon to
myself. My experiences with Tara were now only bad memories. We
were perhaps lucky to be alive. Few have ever escaped Tara. And
now once again I even had a "mother" that I might look up to too!

     
"Interesting," Lorraine said, looking down at the bones, the
few scattered strands of dried hair still yet the color of gold
clinging to her now eye-less dried skull. The golden mesh dress,
the sword yet as "perfect" as the day that she'd worn them! I
had no doubts that in life she had been a truly magnificent wom-
an! The sort of a woman who like me could stand before men tall
and proud, the sunlight glinting off her golden attire. She had
been truly a "Leaderess". The proper and fit ruler of the world!
     
"There is `this'," I said, reaching down among the bones,
giving Lorraine the computer card. "`She' left this for us." I
saw Lorraine nod, smile. Perhaps we might read her last words!!!

     
"Let's see what `she' left us," Lorraine said, loading the
computer card into the 21st Century laptop computer she'd found
in Thistle the year before buried safely beneath the earth for
some five centuries. I wondered what Domino would have to "say"?
     
"Wow! She looks just like Darlanis!" Gayle breathed as the
computer screen lit up with a picture of the long dead Leaderess.
I had noted such years before, and never really thought too much
of it. Given enough time, there will naturally be "duplicates"!
     
"A bit `older', although," Lorraine then noted with a smile.
     
"THERE IS LITTLE LEFT NOW," the woman on the screen spoke,
her voice sounding "tinny" there coming through the laptop's tiny
speaker. "AND ALTHOUGH WE HAVE MOUNTED WHAT DEFENSES WE COULD,
IT MADE LITTLE DIFFERENCE IN THE END. THOSE WHO `BETRAYED' MAN-
KIND HAVE PAID THE `PRICE' OF THEIR TREASON, BUT THE LORR WOULD
NOT `LISTEN', NOR WOULD THEIR SPACECRAFT HALT THEIR BOMBING EVEN
WHEN I OFFERED THEM TOTAL SURRENDER IF ONLY THEY WOULD SPARE US!"
     
"Those damn `ANTS'!" Gayle breathed from beside me. Domino
going on to explain that she had executed those "responsible" for
starting the war with Mars, but that it had made no difference to
the Lorr, who obviously wished to destroy everything they could!!
     
"This was over five hundred years ago," Lorraine spoke, her
dark eyes burning into ours. I understood what she referred to!
Those who had given such orders had been dead now for centuries!
     
Domino went on, giving a history of events that was much as
I had suspected it would be. There was in her voice a note of
"finality". A hint that she had already decided now to take her
own life. She felt that she had "failed" Mankind, and that she
"deserved" to die. Such was part of a culture that I too shared!
     
"A beautiful, `noble' woman," Sela Dai said, her eyes now
like mine moist with tears. Lorraine nodding, wisely just then
keeping her "opinions" to herself about "blondes". It was almost
like seeing myself standing there on that little computer screen.
     
"NOW THAT YOU HAVE FOUND MY `LAST REMAINS', LET ME TELL YOU
THE `TRUTH' ABOUT MYSELF THAT ONLY MY BEST FRIEND JANET EVER
KNEW. AND THAT WAS THAT I WAS NOT BORN HERE IN THIS TIME, BUT IN
ANOTHER, IN A STRANGE CULTURE FAR DIFFERENT FROM THIS ONE. I AM
THE DAUGHTER OF A WOMAN WHO NAME WAS `DARLANIS', A WOMAN WHO WAS
A RULER OF A LAND CALLED SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH `CALIFORNIA'. IT IS
MY BELIEF, JUDGING FROM WHAT MEMORIES I HAVE, THAT I AM FROM THE
FUTURE. PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEYOND THIS TIME, AND THAT I
MADE THE ATTEMPT TO `ALTER' THE PAST, TO PREVENT THIS `WAR' THAT
HAS NOW NEARLY DESTROYED THE EARTH. `HOW' I CAME HERE I DO NOT
KNOW, AND NOT EVEN JANET'S BEST EFFORTS WITH ELECTRONIC HYPNOSIS
HAVE BEEN OF HELP. I REMEMBER MY MOTHER TALL AND GOLDEN HAIRED,
DRESSED IN A GOLDEN COSTUME OF METALLIC MESH, WITH A SWORD ON HER
HIP! FROM WHAT WE KNOW OF MARS I KNOW THAT I COULD NOT HAVE BEEN
BORN THERE. YET I HAVE A CLEAR AND VIVID MENTAL PICTURE OF MY
MOTHER, TALL AND GOLDEN, AND WITH HER IS ANOTHER WOMAN, ONE TALL,
DARK, SLIM, WHO JANET SAYS CAN BE NONE OTHER THAN LORRAINE DUVAL
HERSELF, WHOM WE HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT `DIED' AT SEA IN THE YEAR
1988!" Lorraine's finger stopped the computer at this point as
every eye burned into mine as I stood there in awe! Domino Tre-
maine, a woman of the past, saying that she was my own daughter!
     
"You will have a daughter, and she will travel back through
time to the late 20th Century," Lorraine said to me, looking at
the remains of one who had once lived some five centuries before!
"On a mission to alter all of human history," Lorraine now added.
     
"I cannot bear children," I pointed out, seeing Sharon's
eyes. She too could hardly "believe" what Domino had just said!*

* Considering certain recent events, I believe that Lorraine is
right in her belief that my daughter will attempt to travel back
through time to the 20th Century in an attempt to change history.

     
"Your ovaries are still functioning," Lorraine answered. I
knew that a woman's ovums could be "fertilized" chemically to
produce a perfect "clone daughter". Such had been done since the
first years of the 21st Century. The Priestesses of Lys did it
all the time. Very little was "thought" of such things now too!
The ovum could be implanted in any woman then with a good uterus.
"There are ways of verifying such things, but we will need Auro-
ra's help," Lorraine said to me. I nodded back at her. "If your
genes do actually match hers, then there can be no more doubts."*

*Such tests were made. And Domino Tremaine was my own daughter!

     
"I wish to be alone with `her' and the computer," I said. I
knew how to operate it. I would listen to my daughter's last
words "alone" with her as was "proper". Such would be "fitting",
I felt then. Lorraine nodded, motioned for the others to leave.

     
"You have `questions'," Lorraine said to me as I entered the
room, the Queen of Trelandar standing there looking out the win-
dow at the city below. The sun now low there in the west over
the ocean beyond. Her dark eyes met mine as I nodded back. Her
facial features lost in shadow against the glare of the sunlight.
     
"If only she hadn't been `hurt'," I said, remember what the
last Leaderess of Earth had said about her "memories", about the
"theories" she had formed as to the true nature of "time travel".
She had suffered considerable "brain damage", resulting in a loss
of much of the memories she'd once possessed about our own time.
Otherwise I thought she might have been able to "stop" THE WAR!!!
     
"It wouldn't have made any `difference'," Lorraine answered.
"Mankind would have fought the Lorr regardless of anything Domino
would have been able to do," she smiled, standing there, her hair
highlighted by the sunlight streaming through the window. "You
see, the Lorr aroused in us all the `old terrors', and especially
the fact that they used as `slaves' the very one `type' of woman
most highly valued here on Earth insured that a war would occur."
     
"The Servitors are white skinned, `blonde'," I smiled back.
There is throughout history almost a worship of that racial type.
Not all Servitors were, but a good percent fitted that standard!
     
"And held in `bondage' by `horrid monsters'," she answered,
seeing me nod back thoughtfully. Men of that era would be driven
to "rescue" the beautiful golden haired Servitors from the Lorr!
Their own instinctive drives to "protect" the "ideal woman" would
be enough to insure a deadly war between the Earth and Mars then!
I have used some similar "instincts" to my own advantage, I note.
Lorraine having pointed out such things there in her own books...
     
"And most people of that time also felt that the solar sys-
tem belonged to us," I answered, remembering my own studies here.
The "attack" on the Lorr had been "supported" by most of Mankind
as being "just and proper". That I knew from what my own Scribes
had told me. What had been written on the computer cards my own
Warlady could "read" now with her little computer. Lorraine had
said that The War had been seen as a JIHAD (holy war) against an
alien foe so "EVIL" that anything would be seen as being proper!!
     
"Man's first and no doubt `last' interplanetary war," Lor-
raine smiled, looking out the window, the sun shining into her
face. "Against a `enemy' like something out of a cheap movie..."
     
"And no one could `stop' it," I said, thinking of Domino. I
suspected that she had taken the "name" after she'd entered the
20th Century, as I was certain I'd never name a daughter "that"!
     
"Overpopulation would have finished the World Federation in
another generation," Lorraine answered, again turning to face me.
"According to their own records, the population of the Earth had
reached a figure of eight billion, sixteen times what it is now."
I nodded thoughtfully, wondering what it would be "like" to live
on a world with sixteen times as many people on it as were now...
"Civilization would not have survived the consequences of that.
In the last years of Janet Rogers life, she was being forced to
use `military force' to hold her Federation together against the
teeming starving hordes of Asia, Africa and South America." The
little known "racial wars" just after The War are the "result" of
what Janet had attempted to do, and probably account for the fact
that Blacks are almost unknown now in North America or Mexico...
     
"We were `doomed' in any case then?" I challenged her back.
     
"We are incapable of `self government'," Lorraine smiled.
     
"And you `believe' in `democracy'!" I laughed back at her!
     
"As long as we have the Priestesses of Lys," she answered.
     
"Who like the Lorr must be obeyed," I noted, seeing her nod.
     
"And who stand `above' the political system," Lorraine said,
her dark eyes burning into mine as she moved away from the window
to regard a golden ankh mounted there upon the wall much I knew
as people used to have the Christian Cross there centuries ago...

*****************************************************************

     
I smoothed the dirt over the last remains of a daughter who
had not yet even been born, but yet had died over five hundred
years ago! I had kept the dress, the sword. Such was a "part"
of one who would someday stand at my side, look up at me, and re-
member over all those years my "looks", and my own lovely name!!!
     
"This is a part of my estates that few ever visit," Lorraine
said to me, the hump of the "earth home" that had once belonged
to friends of hers back in the 20th Century yet a reminder of
another time, another era. It was fitting that Domino's last re-
mains be buried here. Here too laid the scattered bones of a
Garth that Sa-she-ra had killed the year before. Where Sa-she-ra
had crossed blades with the infamous Princess Tara, who had later
on killed the Nevada woman with the bullet meant for Lorraine!
     
"Sword salute!" I snapped, drawing the blade Domino had once
carried at her hip. The blade made of a metal unknown to those
of my own time. The metal that Lorraine had called "titanium".

     
"Well, we really don't know any `more' than we did before,"
Lorraine said to me as we sat around the dinner table that night.
Aurora had not returned to Trella as I had hoped that she might.
There were "things" I wanted to say to her. Things that only a
mother and her daughter share. I remembered the "gunfight" there
in Tara's palace. I had no doubts about my mother's "bravery"!*

* I seem to be of a "line of revolutionaries". Aurora's on Mars,
Domino's actions with Janet Rogers in the early 21st Century, and
my own activities here with Lorraine in this time. (Darlanis)

     
"I do think that perhaps you could attempt to extend your
`revolution' to Baja once you have your child," I said to Sanda.
     
"That has been in my thoughts," she smiled back at me then.
I had let it be public knowledge that I was Aurora's daughter. I
had, however, kept as a secret the fantastic tale of Domino Tre-
maine and how she had traveled from my own era back to the past!*

* Aurora has a "theory" (how true it is I don't know) that Domino
will use the now experimental starship "Valkyrie" for the trip.

     
"The Swiftstar is still out there pestering us, but I think
once we get one of my schooners in the water we'll see the end of
that `annoyance'," Lorraine said to me as we looked out over the
city there in the darkness, the stars gleaming down upon us both.
There still was a sense of "unreality" about everything after my
learning the "true identity" of Earth's last World Leaderess. It
gives one a "strange feeling" to know what the future will bring!
Especially since there is apparently no way I can alter it now!!!
     
"Couldn't you find it with Black Lady?" I suggested. It was
possible to destroy a ship from the air by means of fire bombs.
Sharon had already told her what Aurora had said about the use of
"nitro". Apparently there was a "limit" to what could be "over-
looked" even by the lovely ambassador to Trelandar. I felt it
was just as well. It made me "nervous" seeing Lorraine violate
the EDICT as she was and "get away" with it. I knew of her work
with other weapons yet, such as cannons. She even had drawn up
plans for a "battle-frigate" of 54 guns! Another "Constitution"!
     
"I'm concerned about how long the engine will last," she an-
swered, "And without An'na there is no source of spare parts." I
knew that any repairs of more than a minor nature were well be-
yond the technology available to us. "The entire resources of
the Empire of California couldn't even make one sparkplug!" Lor-
raine has often teased me. It is true, but there is nothing I
can do about it. Then it would take years to "redevelop" the
necessary technology even if we could, which I sometimes "doubt".
     
"Do you think that Tara will carry out her threat against
Talon?" I ventured. That had been a topic of discussion earlier.
     
"The Nevadas right now have `troubles' of their own," the
black clad Queen of Trelandar smiled back. "There was a `clash'
between their forces and those of Mexico, and they lost heavily."
     
"You have `sources of information'?" I smiled, suspecting my
mother's hand here. No doubt she had "cultivated" Lorraine too!
She had tried to "win" my "understanding" through Sharon too, as
I have already mentioned. Perhaps Lorraine had made a "deal". I
supposed my Warlady had little "objection" to such things either!
     
"I found it `useful' to be `friendly' to Aurora," she then
admitted. "She is after all still your mother despite every-
thing." I nodded, smiled, thought of one dead, but not yet born.
     
"I wish to take Black Lady to Vegas," I said then to her.
     
"A `decision' has been `made', hasn't it?" she smiled.
     
"I am a woman with `needs' and `desires'," I told her.
     
"He will make you a good husband," Lorraine agreed. I had
"responsibilities" now towards my own future, and Earth's "past".
     
"I will fly Sharon back to Sarn first," I smiled back. I
did not wish to spoil Sharon's idealistic "views" of me just yet.
     
"That probably would be a wise decision," Lorraine smiled.
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