The Innocents of Eden
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.
The Mussolini Machine
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.
Paris Gun
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.
Zion
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.