Gil and Jenny are scheduled to survey a known fault line in the Death Valley area. Accompanied by a Park Service employee, the set up camp and then go to visit the Lost Burro Mine. Gil, who in familiar with the area, has a surprise for his wife. Nature has bigger surprise for them both.
In His Authority, Nissim survives the Battle of the Teuteborg Forest, the massacre of three Roman legions he plotted to bring about. Despite his hatred of Rome, he is a friend to the General Gemanicus, who has him guide him through the same forest unaware of his place in the scheme of things.
The first story in I Lay a Stone in Zion is this retelling of the Garden of Eden told by storyteller. M’ba Kouma is based on a real man, but, although he could tell great stories, I wrote this one.
Herr Rafale and Fraulein Kerstin have come to the town of Davos Platz where, in an old military facility is a device perfected, in theory, by Herr Wildgrube to provide unlimited electrical power. Rafale is a respected witness of the odd and unusual, and, it turns out, he has been looking for this very machine but not for its promise of endless energy.
This is the story of s badly injured American soldier and his encounter with a nurse in the Paris of 1918, a city being attacked by the German’s Paris Gun. He is guided in part of his voyage in the city by the poet Apollinaire who’s death would come, not this day, but just as the war ends. Here, the deadliest shell is fired and the poet hears the voice of Mlle Blanche.
An exercise in sci-fi á la the stories of Heinlein. On Tommaso, a seemingly dying planet, yet one being mined for unique gems, Advisor Sagnonpélé meets Pastor János and a tall, multilimbed native given the name Esau. The Church Universal has succeeded in what it believes to be conversion of the natives to Christianity. But there is a deeper influence at work.
If you ever have the opportunity to take a ride on a “taxi brousse” in West Africa, it’s quite a different way of traveling. A lot of people squeeze into a Peugeot 404 pickup and go bucketing down the red laterite roads. If you can keep from worrying too much about hitting people and things as you roar through the villages, you might note the behavior of the local animals.
Nissim ben Aramiah, a speaker of many languages, including Latin, is a Judean member of Herod the Great’s inner circle where he is, among other duties, his spymaster. When he failed to find the Christ Child in Bethlehem where he had accompanied the Magi for that express purpose, he is ordered to lead the raid that became known as the slaughter of the innocents. Although accustomed to Herod’s deadly violence, he is mysteriously stricken when the Roman commander tells him “The child is dead.”