Jarrad scurried sure-footed up the scrubby slope and then climbed nimbly over the rocky lip at the cave entrance. Jenny was seated there, keeping watch over the vast Southern Ocean that stretched off into the hazy distance. The roughest ocean in the world, today it was oddly calm.

"Anything?" Jarrad asked.

Jenny shot him a quick glance, then returned her gaze to the still distance. "A sniffer, way off. Nothing to worry about." She looked at Jarrad again, and he smiled in response. Jenny was proud of her skill, and why not?

"Later, Jen," he said. She gave a nonchalant little wave and went back to her seeing.

Jarrad could hear Tony and Ken arguing inside the cave, agitated voices echoing. “Why look for mystical answers?" Ken was saying. "It's just the product of some latent human capabilities. Simple as that."

Jarrad leant his spear against the cave wall just inside the entrance, and stayed to listen for a moment. "Bullshit," Tony said. Tony and Ken shared a well-honed argumentative style, direct and to the point. "Sure, the ESP stuff can be explained to some degree in those terms, but what about Junie's whale stuff. You gunna tell me that's inherently human? I say it's gotta be something else, and I see nothing better than a planetary consciousness. Gaia."

Ken snorted. "Occam's razor, mate. No need to introduce planetary consciousness - good old human consciousness will do."

Variations of this particular discussion had been going on for over three years, Jarrad recalled with a wry smile. He left it behind as he moved deeper into the huge cave. As the sunlight from outside diminished, the flickering light of the fire that always burned inside the cave made more of an impact. He saw Adie sitting in front of that fire nursing Terry.

"Hey Adie. Hey Terry," he greeted them.

Adie looked up and squinted, then smiled. "Hi, Jarrad. How's the boat going?"

"Nearly finished. What an achievement - a three metre ketch with no modern materials in it at all. Talk about re-enacting history."

"Yeah, but that Thor Heyadal guy beat you to it, ay."

Jarrad pulled a face, then he said, "What's to eat? I'm famished."

"There's some potatoes roasting in the fire. And there's bread, baked a couple of hours ago."

Jarrad went over to the long, crudely made wooden table that sat against one wall of the cave and cut himself some bread with a flint bladed knife. "Want some Adie?" he called back to her, and she shook her long dark hair. He sauntered back over to the fire and used a twig to pull out one of the unpeeled potatoes lying in the embers.

"Know what I miss, Adie? " he said as he broke open the spud, rich steam dissipating into the cool air. "Salt."

He glanced at Adie, and suddenly realised little Terry was staring at him with those big spooky blue eyes. A little fazed, he smiled at the kid, but elicited no visible response. A little edgy, he turned his attention back to the fire, and stared into it as he slowly ate the potato.

It was common to see people in the group just sitting and staring without a word. Remembering was what they were doing. No one could quite believe what had happened, so suddenly, to their lives. Even after all this time. And so everyone took time out to think about it. It was, perhaps, a kind of grieving...

Jarrad, a little over five years ago, had spent his days skipping school and spraying his tag all over the northern suburbs of Sydney . And his nights getting into fights and stealing cigarettes.

And then the invaders came, and casually blasted Jarrad's life into a billion pieces.

No one knew who or what they were, but their intentions were soon clear enough. They wanted the planet, and the current inhabitants were surplus to requirements. In less than a week the bulk of the world's armed forces had been obliterated and then a systematic annihilation of earth's human population begun.

Jarrad, somehow, found himself on board a forty foot trawler called the Pegasus heading out of Eden harbour just as the first reports of the attack on Sydney came over the radio. The little ship was dangerously overloaded with stores and twenty-five human beings. They headed south, and then east, away from populated areas and the invaders. Jarrad, when he thought about that time, remembered wet smells: salt water, diesel and vomit, mainly.

The captain of the Pegasus, a tall, laconic man called Oliver Jones, had previously sailed the waters of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans on various scientific expeditions, including some cartographic surveys. He said there were numerous small islands around, and they could seek shelter on one; wait till things settled down. After fifteen days sailing they arrived at an island too small to have a name, but big enough so they wouldn't all kill each other straight away. Finding out it had a large cave network was a lucky break. Aside from a small stand of gnarled trees, it didn't have much else to recommend it.

The first night on the island, as they all sat around a huge fire in the largest cave trying to keep their spirits up, Jones' wife had a fit. She was part aboriginal, big and raw boned, and Jarrad, for some reason he couldn't quite understand, was wary of her. She suddenly fell down right into the fire, screaming and holding her head and scattering sparks into the cold dark. Jarrad's fast reflexes meant he was the first to grab her and pull her out, and someone reached down to pull her tongue out of her throat.

Jarrad was just thinking, `Oh, great, a fuckin' epileptic,' when she jumped up and started yelling at the top of her voice. It was weird unintelligible stuff.

Just as Jones reached over to quieten her down, she abruptly stopped and stared hard off into the distance. Then she said in this voice that made Jarrad's skin crawl: "The boat, we must get rid of the boat. Send it away. And everything new, everything metal or plastic, or made by man, everything like that has to go on the boat."

Jones, with unusual coolness under the circumstances, peered into his wife's face, and said: "Why? Why must we rid ourselves of these things?"

"Because the invaders can find us through them," Jones' wife said. "They have other ways of finding us as well, but through these things is the easiest for them."

Jones stood back and scratched his head.

"Should we believe her?" Ken Colby, the schoolteacher, asked. “I mean, has she done this kind of thing before? Psychic sort of stuff, I mean."

"Well, yes, she has," Jones said, now scratching under his grey beard. "Once she warned me not to sign on a particular ship, and only days later it sunk with all hands. But..."

"Oh, come on," Tony Spargo said; Tony was a stockbroker. "We'll need Pegasus , and the other stuff we bought... To believe the ravings of a sick woman... No offence, Jones..."

But they did believe her, Jarrad recalled. They knew they were doomed unless there was a miracle, and Karen Jones was the best one they had. Next day, all the objects with pure metal or metal alloys, plastic, ceramic and anything else that was man-made, was loaded aboard the trawler. Jones went aboard, set a course southward, activated the autopilot, started her up, slipped over the side and swam back through the cold ocean. He couldn't even use the dinghy because it was made of fibreglass. Jones stood there sopping wet with his arm around his crazy-looking wife watching his boat sail out to sea, and even Jarrad, who was a tough little shit then, was touched by the cold sadness of it.

That had been just about five years ago, and they'd been on the island - named ‘Atlantis' by Adie - all that time. They had some kept some stores of flour, salt and other staples. As well they planted potatoes, carrots, turnips and a few other things from their stores, and they'd done reasonably well with their garden that didn't look like a garden in case the invaders came by. And they fished, and sometimes caught sea birds or turtles or anything else that arrived on the island. It had been hard, but physically they were in pretty good shape, really.

For Jarrad, it was his making. A strong, well set up boy, the constant but varied hard work built up his muscles even more. The island provided many physical challenges. He climbed precarious cliffs to steal birds' eggs; prowled the beaches for seals, sea lions and elephant seals, all of which died under his spear; and swum in the cold, turbulent ocean to hunt fish, birds, and other animals. On the island all of that restless energy that caused him such trouble in the city was burnt in the endless search for protein.

And over the years, as each person took up one role over all others, Jarrad became the island's champion, ready to meet any physical challenge for his people.

What had been even more incredible, though, and totally unforeseen, was the way some of the refugees developed psychically. It was this that allowed them to escape the attentions of the invaders, because they were still seeking out humans.

Jarrad felt that Karen Jones was the key. She and Adie. It was because of her strength in expressing her strange sense of things, and the quietly determined way Adie backed her up, that all of them came around to accepting that something had changed, and they were no longer quite normal. Adie had been a fast developer, and soon she could sense the presence of invader `sniffers' many kilometres away. She could even `bend' the radar waves of the invader searchers so they couldn't even see the island. Some of the other females began to do it too, and it was these skills that had kept them all safe from the invaders.

And then, six months ago, little Sally had started talking with whales. Sally was ten years old, Ken and Monica's daughter, and she'd proudly announced to the group as they sat around the fire one night that she'd been having a chat with one of the sperm whales that sometimes cruised past the island. She said the whale spoke with images, sometimes pictures of actual things and sometimes patterns, but Sally just spoke normally, concentrated really hard on the whale, and it seemed to understand her. Since then she regularly sat up on the headland conversing with whale passers by.

It was Sally's talent with whales that gave them the idea of sending out an expedition. They had already built a little boat, a simple ketch made up of natural materials only, but it was not feasible to use for ocean going. It would be too dangerous, risking it in the tricky south Atlantic . But a bigger boat with a permanent power source was a different proposition. One towed by a whale, for instance.

They agreed to send one person, and Jarrad volunteered. He was nineteen years old, strong and healthy, and not afraid of anything. Or perhaps more accurately, less afraid than bored. His new status and the tough solidarity that had grown up in the group made him glow with a confidence that not even Ken, the group's professional pessimist, could dent.

Jarrad reached over to snare another spud from the side of the fire, and Terry said something to him. He sat up and looked at the big-eyed kid, and then at Adie.

"Did she...?"

"What?" Adie said finally.

"I thought..." Terry was two years old, but didn't talk at all.

"You heard right," Karen said from behind him. She was the quietest mover Jarrad had ever known.

"So you heard it too?" he said to Karen as she sat down.

Karen nodded, then said, "'Cept she wasn't talking. It was in your head."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. I reckon it's because we're all doing all this stuff, it stimulates her. And I suspect it's actually strongest in babies anyway, but normally gets lost as they grow up because it isn't encouraged, and they learn to vocalise instead."

"Jesus," Jarrad repeated, "what have these aliens let loose?"

There was a kind of party that night to send off Jarrad. Ken and Tony made little speeches and they all, except for Karen and Adie, wept openly. This free show of feeling was something else that had grown up over the years. Sometimes, when Jarrad thought back to life before the invaders, he realised what he'd been missing then. And what he had now. These people were his family, and he was loved. The invaders had taken everything but their humanity, and they'd survived by becoming much more human.

Later, Jarrad lie on his bed looking into the low fire. He wondered if he could do it - seek out other survivors and come back to rescue the people on Atlantis. He had paddled the little ketch around the island, and learned something about boats. But the ocean...

And if he made it, what would he find out there? Maybe everyone else was dead...

There was a sound and Jarrad turned his head to see someone settling down beside him. It was Angelica, Tony Spargo's daughter. She was a lovely, sexy fifteen-year-old girl.

Angelica stuck her lips against Jarrad's ear, and said: "I can't let you go without telling you I love you."

Jarrad turned and stared at her. She looked wonderful in the firelight, full lipped and wide-eyed. "Um, I care about you too, Angelica. And-"

Her mouth was on his, hungry, and she pushed him back down onto the bed. Almost to save himself from falling, his arms went around her. Several minutes later they stopped kissing, and she said, "Let's do it. I want you. I mean, who knows...."

"Angelica, we can't. You might get pregnant."

Angelica gave him a brilliant smile. "Karen taught us how to control our cycles. Adie wanted to have Terry; it was no accident." And she smiled again.

Jarrad looked around the cave, dimly lit by the flickering fire. Sex was common enough among the group, and as open as simple privacy allowed. And it was not as if Tony Spargo had any say in it - Angelica was a fully responsible member of the group, and her own person. Jarrad turned back to Angelica, who was happily shucking off her dress, and when she'd done so, he pulled her down with the urgency of a man who thought he might be doing something really nice for the last time.

Jarrad woke knowing something was wrong. He was still, that was it. He wasn't moving, and that was a very bad thing.

For two days he'd moved along steadily behind his draught whale, watching fifty metres of rope stretch out ahead and disappear around the beast's head and into its mouth. It had swum in this careful way so the wash wouldn't swamp the boat, but still they made good time, or so it seemed to Jarrad.

At first he'd been terrified as the water rushed past and the huge bulk of the whale loomed ahead. Then, after some time and a regularity of movement settled, he felt exhilaration. And then a decent swell had arisen, and he moved along in a steady, cold spray, experiencing both emotions in about equal measure.

There followed two long days and nights, hearing the sea lap past and almost continually drenched in spray. Jones had given Jarrad his best weather gear, but the water got through and drenched him, freezing him at night. He munched dourly on the soggy cakes Karen had given him, the only enduring realities the massive bulk of the whale ahead and the endless expanse of ocean.

And now he was still. He sat up and looked ahead, saw the now frayed rope floating off away like the corpse of some very long and skinny sea serpent. The sea was dead flat and the colour of lead; the sky was equally featureless, with a lighter grey ceiling. The whale was no where to be seen.

Jarrad stood up carefully on weak legs and looked around. Nothing. Had the whale decided, suddenly, `Oh fuck it, why am I carting this thing around on the say so of a little human?' Was it now many kilometres off going where it wanted to go in the first place? He considered his position. The boat was in reasonable shape, and he had a sail. But he had no idea where he was, except somewhere in mid ocean. He had biscuits to last, if he was careful, another six or seven days, but not that much water. Chances were, he was dead.

He crashed down into the boat, almost overturning it. Covering his face with his hands, he felt hot tears brim and flow over his freezing face. Oh shit, oh shit... This was no way to die, alone and cold in a featureless grey hell. It would be a long drawn out, miserable death. He just hoped he would have the courage to slide overboard before he finally lacked the strength to do so...

Angelica, he thought: just as I get someone worthwhile I fuck it up. We could have had a good life on Atlantis. Simple, limited and boring, but real. He felt the touch of her cool lips, and knew then what loss - absolute, irretrievable loss - felt like. With no one to see, he let loose and howled like a baby.

And a couple of minutes later the whale surfaced, gently took the line in its mouth, and set off on its course. Oh well, suppose everyone's got to eat, Jarrad thought, and fumbled for a mushy biscuit himself.

Two days later they hit heavy seas and enormous waves smashed Jarrad back into the boat. He could hardly breathe in the midst of walls of water and constant spray and just hung on to the boat grimly to avoid being washed away. Every now and then the boat would rise to the top of a wave and he'd see the whale ahead, and even that enormous and powerful thing seemed to be making slow headway against the mountainous ranks of grey-green water.

Sometime in the middle of the night Jarrad heard a tearing noise, and with stark, black fear rising in him, he felt something in the boat give way under the fiercesome assault of ocean. He was thrown sideways, just managing to stay aboard. Then, a torrent of water smashed him in the chest and ripped him out of the shredding boat, pitching him into and under freezing black water. And suddenly he was bursting through the surface, just in time to see a wall of water and grey foam crash onto him. Rolling under the water he rose again breached the surface and in a pure mad terror he screamed for help. A wave smashed him down and he felt his lungs ready to break, to burst and send him floating down to the bottom.

And then, below him, he saw the blackest shade he had ever seen, so black it made the night ocean seem pale. Something immense came up under him and pushed him to the surface. He felt the rope coiling around him, and snatching at it, Jarrad pulled himself along it with strength he never knew he had against smashing cascades of foaming ocean until he was laying as still as he could on the whale's giant rolling back.

With the last of his strength, he tied the rope around his waist and clung to the scaly scar tissue on the whale's back - the horny remnants of past injuries was Jarrad's only hope of keeping a purchase on the huge creature's slippery hide. But he knew this couldn't last too long. The cold was eating into him like a thousand tiny sharks, steadily mincing muscle and bone, and even though the waves seemed to be slightly less fierce, his last reserves were being used up just hanging on. And then, glancing up, he saw the sky was clearing and stars were shining through, so bright he could have touched them if he wasn't so very tired. "Oh fuck," he said to no one, or perhaps to the whale, and huddled in closer to the whale's tough, scarred hide.

The next morning the whale swum into a tidy little cove and Jarrad groggily climbed off and slowly swum ashore. He could not even lift himself to watch his whale go, but just fell into a dead sleep on the pebbly beach.

It took Jarrad six days' solid searching before he found anyone. He had headed north and east, keeping close to the eastern coastline, using up the food stored in his knapsack and living off the land where he could. And it was clear nature was already making a big comeback in the absence of humanity. Animal and bird life was present in an abundance he doubted would have been possible in the old days.

He began walking up into a valley system surrounded by steep and rugged hills, forming up into substantial mountains in the distance. He had stopped by a stream to drink when he heard talking. It was low and deliberate speech, but it had an electrifying affect on Jarrad. Back on Atlantis Ken in particular had gone to some lengths to warn him to be careful - the invaders might have deployed human simulacra, or even have `turned' some real people to their purpose, Ken argued. Jarrad's heart beat fast, and the boy in him hoped as hard as he could. The voices were approaching, and Jarrad hid behind some bushes to watch and wait.

The voices' owners took a little while to appear because Jarrad's now well developed sense of hearing had heard them a long way off. They were a girl aged about twelve and a boy somewhat younger: Jarrad could not believe they were anything dangerous, and calmly he showed himself to them. The children were surprised, but not shocked, to see him.

They told him their names were Shona and Jack, and they happily led him back to their home, chatting in their clipped New Zealand accents as they went. Home was an encampment secreted in amongst a stand of huge, spreading trees, and Jarrad couldn't help but think of old Robin Hood films as the children proudly led their find into it.

For some reason, most of the adults in the encampment seemed to be blond haired and blue eyed or dark and brown eyed, but the children were already mixing that up. Shona and Jack led him through a gathering crowd to an old, grey haired and wide-shouldered man Jarrad recognised as Maori who called himself Tom. Tom, in a booming happy voice, welcomed Jarrad on behalf of the camp, called for food and drink, and asked him to explain his near miraculous, it seemed, appearance.

Jarrad told them, being just a little vague about the whereabouts of Atlantis, just in case. It was dark by then, and Jarrad had eaten his fill, munching on some sort of roast bird and freshly-baked bread and something like fried sweet potatoes as he talked. He would have happily fallen asleep, except he was so excited by what Tom and the others told him.

"Well, young but intrepid Jarrad," Tom said, hugely muscled forearm and horny hand resting on a substantial belly, smiling, "things have moved fast in the rest of the world. We are astonished, and very excited by what you have told us of your experiences I can tell you, but now let me tell you what has been happening elsewhere."

As Tom settled himself to relate what was obviously a satisfactory story, Jarrad glanced around at the faces scattered around the fire and saw nothing but determined, intent expressions. These were the faces of participants in some great drama, eager to get on with it.

"It was, as far as we can tell, only a couple of months after the invaders arrived that the changes really started to happen," Tom told him, but loud so all could follow the tale. "By then, by our best estimates (and Jarrad wondered to himself exactly who `our' referred to), some ninety nine per cent of the population was dead."

Jarrad felt something long dormant stir in his gut, something he'd pushed deep down as he watched the Australian coast disappear. The people left behind had died. They had not escaped, unbelievably, as he had. They had died. Jarrad thought of his mother, and sister, and Spider and Lyn...

"Nobody knows why it happened, although many have their theories," Tom was saying, "but almost overnight people were developing special... well, powers. But you know of these, don't you. Mostly, it was along the same lines - remote viewing or some other form of sensing not done with the eyes or ears, and some sort of communication at a distance. Like telepathy. So we could see the aliens' machines, and talk across any distance. As you did, we quickly figured out to get rid of man-made materials, metals, plastic and such stuff, so the invader search machines couldn't find us so easy, but it was the new abilities that really got us through."

"What exactly is this `remote-viewing' you talk about?" Jarrad asked, swirling around in his cup the hot tea and honey drink they'd given him.

"Well, evidently it was known even before the invaders came. The CIA, no less, used it. It's when a person can see something way off in the distance, usually in some kind of trance. We've got nine really good remote viewers in our community, and they tell us when the invaders are around. They give us plenty of warning and we can lay low."

It was what they called back on Atlantis `seeing', Jarrad concluded. "And the long distance communication, does it mean you know what's going on in other places?" he asked.

"Yes, Jarrad. There is a kind of global network now. It covers all the main continents, and a lot else as well."

"So... so how are we going?" Jarrad said, greatly encouraged by the news so far, but still dreading the answer. "Humans I mean. How many are left? And are we fighting back, or what? Or are they..."

"It's a stalemate, really. They're still in control, of course. They're still carrying out their plan. They have a base in equatorial Brazil that even our remote viewers can't penetrate. From there they send out their sensing and killing machines-"

"Sniffers, we called 'em," Jarrad said. "The ones that seem to home in on specific chemical traces."

"Yes. Well, after them, if they find anything, come the killers..."

Several in the group seated around the fire frowned or turned away to speak in murmurs. "And of course they're carrying out a program of destroying all traces of human civilisation. They have substances - super solvents or bacteria or nanomachines or something that actually break down metal and plastic and concrete back to constituent molecules. It's like they are trying to remove all trace of us."

Later that night Jarrad lay on a reed pallet in a tiny thatched hut and knew he should sleep, but he felt too excited even for his deep body-weariness to overtake him. Outside the fire still flickered lazily and bodies lay around haphazardly, reflecting the general feel of the camp. Like the Atlanteans, they had realised that the sniffers looked for straight lines and regularity to give away humans.

Suddenly Jarrad was aware of a shape settling down beside him, and for a crazy second he thought it was Angelica. But then she turned her face to him, and Jarrad saw the lined, brown features of a woman who'd been sitting behind Tom earlier in the night. In another flicker of firelight, Jarrad saw she was naked.

"Jarrad," this naked woman said as she reached a hand toward him, "you are a true hero. I want to celebrate your heroism, and feel it in myself." Jarrad went to pull away. He didn't know her (not that that had bothered him in the old days), and she looked old enough to be his mother. Grandmother even.

And then a hard nipple was in his mouth and her warm, muscular body rolled over him. It was the smell that got through to him, a hot, musty scent that made him instantly hard. His arms went around her and they came together in almost spasmic thrusts. It was sex so direct and simple and so primal it was almost like some pagan act of worship. A sensual bonding of ancient human drives beyond the mind's control.

Angelica's face appeared to him a couple of times, but she was smiling.

"Here, that's where Captain Jones told me Atlantis is."

"Okay," Isaiah said. He turned to two young Maori women, the community's best remote viewers. "You saw. Try a sweep."

Jarrad watched fascinated as the two women frowned and stared off into space. It looked silly, like some hokey TV show, and Jarrad was beginning to have second thoughts. But then he thought about the new skills of the Atlanteans...

After some time, the younger one, name of Sara, suddenly gave a little shout: "Yes, yes I see them!" Others came running to hear what she said, and Jarrad edged closer.

Then, "Something's wrong!" she wailed, her face ugly with worry. "They look sad, some are weeping, and... and... they're burying some bodies!"

Later that night the community's best remote communicator, an old woman with long braided hair named Elsa, managed to follow the trail of the remote viewers and make contact with Karen Jones. Karen was amazingly calm about it, hearing this strange voice in her head. Elsa said she could pick up a feeling of great, almost unbearable sadness from Karen, but also a sense of relief when Elsa told her Jarrad was alive, safe, and with them. And quickly Karen `told' Elsa what had happened on Atlantis since Jarrad's departure.

Captain Jones, Adie and the Spargo couple were dead. The day after Jarrad left, what Karen could only describe as a dragon dropped out of the sky and killed them. Later the others put together how it occurred, and the amazing way the rest of them had escaped the same fate.

Angelica was on watch, but she confessed she was worried about Jarrad, and had not been fully concentrating. In only minutes the dragon had appeared, and done its work on the beach. And it would have no doubt killed all or most of them, unprepared as they were, if ...

Ken, who was working a little way away in one of their dispersed gardens, saw what happened. The dragon dropped almost vertically, and as silently as such a large thing could. Jones and Tony Spargo were fishing from the beach, and in one long breath of hot flame, it incinerated them. Annette Spargo, who was just a little way away from the two men, it killed with a blow of one huge claw as it landed. Then it went after Adie, who, with Terry in her arms, was running frantically down the beach.

Adie was fit and strong and could run, even with little Terry in her arms, but the dragon was so big it covered metres in one ugly hop. Adie must of heard it gaining and glanced back, saw the dragon right behind her, and with a huge lunge that threw her right off stride, threw the baby as hard as she could into the surf. She then turned, stooped and picked up a piece of driftwood, gave a kind of whooping yell and ran straight at the dragon, swinging the length of wood wildly. The dragon picked her up, held her in front of its face as if it was taking a close look, and Adie, screaming with the last of her strength, smashed the driftwood into its reptilian face.

Ken was hurtling down the beach intending to attack the dragon with his wood and bone fishing spear, still too far away to help but yelling and screaming to try to attract the dragon's attention. He knew it was hopeless...

And then something extraordinary happened. He said he saw little Terry dead still, standing in the water, small waves lapping around her waist. She was staring at this thing that was killing her mother, and Ken swore he saw something flash from Terry's eyes and hit the dragon. The dragon just sagged, collapsing like a huge, deflated balloon.

Ken ran forward and pulled Adie's body out from under, but she was dead. Then he turned around to Terry who was floating face down in the surf, drifting slowly out. He waded in, pulled Terry out and started mouth to mouth resuscitation. Just as some of the others arrived, Terry started breathing again.

Next morning Jarrad sat gnawing on the leg of some small animal and watched fascinated as the community's remote talkers participated in a global link up. It seemed everyone was immensely excited by the news about Terry killing the dragon. Isaiah had explained to Jarrad that there was something like a `hundredth monkey principle', or as other's put it, a morphic field response, at work, and when one person developed new powers, others soon followed. So far the new psychic powers had allowed them to survive, but powers like Terry's would allow humans to actually fight back against the invaders. It was agreed that an expedition should be mounted to rescue the Atlanteans, and bring Terry back to the larger community so her power could be studied, and hopefully, replicated.

Jarrad had managed to communicate to Angelica through Tigan, the other remote talker. Elsa had collapsed of exhaustion after her effort, and was still resting. Angelica was totally crushed by a weight of despair and self-recrimination; Tigan grimaced with the pain of it. Jarrad tried to soothe her hurt, and told her (through Tigan) that it was just bad luck. There was always the danger of discovery, he told her, and Jarrad had once even found Karen herself asleep on watch. But Angelica was inconsolable. She only brightened up a little when Jarrad told her they were coming to rescue the Atlanteans, and he would see her very soon.

The Firefall was an eighteen-metre sloop with no man-made materials in it, painted blue-grey for camouflage with a paint mainly made up of guano. It had been constructed in a large cave dug out of a cliff overlooking a beach, and each night the cave entrance had been re-covered with rock, branches and sand. Centuries of skill had been dredged up to build the boat, and she was seaworthy all right. Jarrad, two remote viewers and the remote talker called Tigan joined a crew of five for the voyage back to Atlantis.

A small boat in a huge expanse of sea, they'd be unlucky to be seen, and they gave off no chemical clues. But it was a tense trip, only made easier by good weather and favourable winds. The remote viewers kept watch for invaders, and Tigan talked to all kinds of people all over the world, especially the Atlanteans. Koto, the Firefall' s skipper, sometimes seemed a little miffed at all the long distance advice, well intentioned though it was. All in all, they were hugely relieved to spot Atlantis at last.

It seemed like all the Atlanteans were waiting on the beach, along with a few of their personal belongings. Karen stood like a dark rock, cradling Terry in hard arms, while the others hopped around in their excitement. Koto sailed the Firefall as close as he could, and they unloaded the boat so some of them could go ashore. Jarrad leaped over the side and swam energetically in. Angelica splashed out and met him in waist deep surf, hugging him fiercely and laughing and weeping at once. They waded to shore and Jarrad was greeted with hugs and kisses by all the Atlanteans, except for Karen of course. And little Terry who maintained a grim-faced silence.

"Okay," Jarrad yelled, releasing Angelica, "let's get the fuck outta here-"

And just then Julie Martin screamed.

Jarrad looked up, afraid to see what he had been so scared of all through the voyage. They came almost straight down, quiet, half a dozen of them, huge and gleaming bright talons outstretched. They were dragons all right, Jarrad saw, but not your exotic Asian beasts or fairy tale serpents, more the product of some over eager special effects team keen on teeth and claws.

A couple of the men had their bows out and loosed shots, but shooting almost dead upwards they were ineffective. Jarrad reached into the boat, pulled out a three metre teak spear and turned to the battle. The lead dragon was only about five metres overhead, a massive weight of pure, irresistible death -

- when it exploded!

It made a horrible crunching noise, and bloody matter rained in gobs and spray down over the beach. Then the next blew up, and Jarrad saw the cause. Karen stood absolutely still, arms held up straight, and in them she held the tiny, stony faced, blood-drenched form of Terry. In only seconds, one after another, the dragons disintegrated and fell out of the sky.

Jarrad stared up into a suddenly empty sky, and then up and down the beach. Everyone seemed okay, although a couple of the women were weeping loudly from shock, or relief, or both. The beach and the people on it were covered in pieces of steaming, bloody flesh, and a sweetish reek was beginning to settle. In ones and twos, stunned, still looking up, they waded into the water to frantically wash themselves, and then climb into the boat.

"A trap," Koto said at Jarrad's shoulder, grim. "They were hoping to get the lot of us. Waiting very high. Things are going to get interesting now."

Three boat trips later they were all aboard the Firefall and the skipper was getting under way. The Atlanteans, swathed in heavy rugs to get warm, stood watching as their home for five years disappeared over the horizon.

As harrowing as the battle on the beach had been, the voyage back was worse. Every few hours seemed to bring new attacks by dragons. But they soon worked out an effective warning system, and Terry was able to destroy them all, glaring up into the sky with those chilling blue eyes. But they were worried about how long she could keep it up. And she'd have to sleep sometime.

Late that afternoon as a misty rain came in from the east, they encountered a pod of humpback whales, and little Junie started talking to them. Jarrad was on edge as the huge creatures splashed and blew around the boat, but their presence turned out to be wonderful luck. Junie persuaded the whales, on Koto's suggestion, to stay with the boat.

The next morning, in the pre-dawn dark, the remote viewer on duty suddenly screamed out. "Below us! Below us! There's something below us!"

Jarrad was jolted awake, and scrambling out of the crowded cabin, he saw the remote viewer jumping up and down as if she was trying to get off the deck. He snatched up his spear and ran to the side to peer overboard.

Instantly he rocked back as an explosion of spray burst from the water and a monstrous form surged up into the air only metres from the boat. Jarrad could sea enormous tentacles and teeth and flukes...

And then he realised it was actually two creatures, locked in a titanic battle. There was what looked like a huge squid, but with unbelievable teeth, and the other tossing beast was a large humpback. Momentarily suspended in a gravity defying death embrace, the two leviathans ripped and tore at each other, then smashed down into the black seas and almost instantly surged back to the surface in a sustained explosion of water and spray. Pitifully tiny onlookers, Jarrad and the others screamed support for their champion when the antagonists appeared above the surface, and searched anxiously when the combatants sounded.

Then, quite quickly the battle was decided when another whale appeared and joined in, and between them they tore the squid-creature in two, the sound of it like a mainsail ripping in a storm, the spray from the flailing tentacles pluming many metres into the barely lightening sky.

"Kraken," Karen said matter-of-factly behind Jarrad as blood spread in the water. He spun around and saw the calm, hard woman standing with Terry asleep in her arms. "Dragons and Kraken. This is bullshit," she concluded, walking away.

Whatever they were, while the whales were with them, the Firefall would be well protected. Junie reported next day that the whales were disappointed to find they couldn't eat the things.

If the Kraken threat was under control, the dragons were another matter. Although warned by the remote viewers, when Terry was asleep the boat was vulnerable, and the dragons had to be fought off by muscle and courage. Fortunately, the dragons never attacked in great numbers (which was interesting in itself: the invaders' resources were not limitless), and the humans learned from each attack. The dragons liked to drop straight down, but could not effectively use their flames when doing so. If they hovered, or came in at an angle, the humans' arrows could hit them, although it took a few hits to do noticeable damage. During attacks they got the whales to swim alongside and splash the boat with water where necessary to minimise the danger from fire. Jarrad even saw one dragon smashed out of the air by a massive tail in the midst of a battle.

So mainly the dragons relied on their sabre-like talons and armoured tails, and they had to be fought with bone and wood and leather. The humans developed some important defensive manoeuvres, with coordinated feints and counter attacks, but eventually the attacks usually degenerated into bloody brawls in which personal courage was decisive. The children sat hunched at the bottom of the boat, reloading bows or passing weapons if they could, while the others fought. Each fighter saved the other's life many times over, and some, like Jarrad and the massive Tongan called Jonah, gained reputations as fierce fighters. Reputations broadcast to the world each night by exhausted remote talkers.

The final morning of their voyage dawned cold and ominous, with a medium-sized swell tossing the Firefall about some, but a good following breeze moving them through it at speed. Jarrad stood at the rudder, trying not to rest on it too much. Every muscle in his body ached, and some of his wounds were really starting to bite, salt water seeping in to sting just a little more. Jarrad thought about sleep. Maybe, at last, the dragons were gone...

"They come!" screamed one of the remote viewers. "Two, three... Oh God! Four... five. Five!"

Jarrad hurriedly lashed the rudder down, and reached for his lance. Suddenly the reassuring bulk of Jonah was beside him. He had his huge flint axe resting at his feet, massive hands crossed on the haft.

"Five," the Tongan said in a voice like rocks being crushed. "Where did they come from?"

"They gotta be running low," Jarrad said, searching the sky and hoisting his lance a little higher. He hoped he sounded a little less desperate than he felt.

"There!" came the shout, and the two surviving archers began shooting at a high angle.

Jarrad saw something in the corner of his eye and turned just in time to whip his lance up and into the side of a dragon wheeling in to take an archer. Oily blood erupting from the wound, the creature screamed and cartwheeled into the water like a World War Two fighter plane, spray exploding in gouts of white. A huge form came up from under the dragon's thrashing body, grabbed it and pulled it down into the depths.

Jarrad saw Jonah standing on the cabin amidships, his massive axe smashing at the claws of a dragon churning the air with its mighty wings, trying to get at the human. The dragon got in a good slash, and Jonah's shoulder opened up, bright blood gushing over his arm. The Tongan screamed, but in rage, not pain, and he actually seemed to smash at the dragon with even more intensity.

But that wound would tell. Jarrad leapt across to the cabin and, ducking beating wings, thrust his lance up and under into the dragon's exposed neck. It shrieked, an almost metallic sound, and wings now flapping madly, reeled back from the two men. Just then a perfectly aimed arrow thudded into its yellow eye, and the dragon gave a huge shudder and began to shake itself as if it was trying to shake out the arrow, Jonah diving away from under the massive bulk.

There was a sudden lull. Jarrad glanced behind him, saw Angelica tying a bandage around Jonah's shoulder, trying to staunch the blood. Isaiah was kneeling nearby, reloading for another shot at the wounded dragon, beating erratically near the stern of the boat. "Keep working on that one," Jarrad yelled to Isaiah, who raised the bow and fired by way of answer. But this arrow hit hard scale and bounced off into the sea. Isaiah reached for another shaft.

There was a body lying over the prow, and someone else was being taken below with injuries. The whole boat was slick with blood. Then Jarrad glanced upwards and saw the other three dragons coming in.

"Above!" Jarrad yelled, and he saw Jonah push Angelica away and step over to stand beside him.

"This is my last battle," the Tongan said calmly, and then he roared some kind of war cry at the dragons descending on them that made the hair on the back of Jarrad's head stand on end.

And then it was teeth and talons and blood and a brutal cacophony of screaming and yelling. Jarrad put his lance right through the reaching talon of one dragon, but the roaring beast wrenched it away and took the lance with it. He ducked as the wounded dragon came back at him, and saw Jonah's axe smash through the remaining talon, sending the dragon arcing upwards. Jonah turned to face another dragon, and Jarrad, snatching up a blood soaked spear, saw the last dragon descend on Jonah, clutching him around the neck with both talons, blood spurting from a severed jugular. Jarrad threw the spear and saw it go into the mouth and up through the exposed palate and stick out through the snout on the other side. The dragon screamed, wings beating a fierce tattoo, then closed its mouth and snapped the spear shaft off.

Jarrad turned to find another weapon, but his foot slipped in a pool of blood, is knee buckled and he fell onto his back. Staring up he saw the dragon carrying a spasming Jonah lifting off the deck and next to it the other one coming at him, angry talons reaching for him.

And then the on-rushing dragon flew apart, flesh and blood smacking into Jarrad and the deck. He saw the other one, with Jonah amongst the mess, crash into the water.

Whirling around he saw Karen standing near the cabin doorway, little Terry held forward like a talisman. A little distance off, he heard the crash as the remains of the last of the dragons plummeted into the water.

"You'll never know how tired she was," Karen said, lowering the child, who was already asleep again.

"And you'll never know how close that was," Jarrad grimaced, pulling himself up to a standing position.

"But it's clear now," he said, surveying the carnage. "Tell the others they can get up." Leaning on a spear, he hobbled over to where a man lay covered in blood and moaning, and bent down to help.

Jarrad stood at the rail of the Firefall as they approached their destination, a bandaged arm around Angelica. And he needed her there too - his left leg had a neat fracture below the knee and she held him up. Jarrad also had a bad gash across his right shoulder, at least two cracked ribs, a missing toe and a broken nose. Angelica had escaped with a broken wrist, plus cuts and bruises. Very few were unscathed, aside from the children, and too many were dead.

Somewhere in Brazil, concealed under a canopy of impossibly green, broad leaved shrubs and vines, Jarrad sat on a hillside next to a grizzled, iron-haired man with the face of an octogenarian and the scary eyes of a new born. Below them was an incredible structure, too big and too pristine, especially here in the chaotic jungle. It was circular and shallow-domed, about the size of an Olympic sports stadium, and pearl coloured. It was surrounded by an expanse of grass, and beyond that was dense jungle. And in that jungle, Jarrad knew, were a couple of thousand human beings ready to move against the invaders' base as soon as the slightest chance presented itself.

"Jesus, do you think anything'll ever happen," Jarrad asked the man next to him.

"Patience, dude," he said, then chuckled and reached into his rucksack for, Jarrad knew, the makings of a foul smelling smoke.

The smoker was called Rico dos Passos, actually aged, according to Jarrad's best estimation, about sixty. He looked like a man who had spent all his life fighting against bad odds, which was just about the size of it.

The night before, lying next to a flickering camp fire and feeling slightly disjointed due to the heat and humidity, Jarrad had listened to dos Passos tell his side of things.

Born in a beautiful little town in Baja California, dos Passos, to hear him tell it, had not had such a beautiful childhood. Sure, he was conscious of the sensational surroundings, but he was more conscious of the beatings unleashed on him by his druggie mother's boy friends. Soon as he could he skipped town and some piddly juvenile charges, and joined the US Navy. There he became expert in every known vice, and a mean son-of-a-bitch. Thrown out of the Navy along with bis best friend, they headed for Atlanta and some supposed work. Turned out to be nothing, and dos Passos and his friend competed for the lead in a blind rush to the bottom. Nine months later, he woke to find he'd killed his best friend in a knife fight, and couldn't even remember it. Time for a change.

When the invaders hit, he'd been living in northern Alaska for over two decades, making a living as a general handyman. And in those two decades he'd read more than he talked, and he'd got himself an education. Not formal, just real.

"You know its funny," Jarrad said, tossing a twig onto the fire, "you, me, seems most folks who made it were either misfits like us, or living in out of the way communities."

"Know what you mean," dos Passos nodded. "Not too many business executives, or college professors..."

"We had a stockbroker on Atlantis," Jarrad said. And thought about Angelica, and for the first time he could think of, he wasn't afraid for her.

In the time since Jarrad had landed with the Firefall dozens of monster killers had arisen, and while the powers of the teles were still constrained by distance, over the last months they had cleared the skies of dragons and the seas of Kraken. That was why they could sit here in front of this open fire, confident that if there were any monsters left, they would be immediately detected and snuffed out before they could hurt anyone.

"What will happen now, compadre," - Jarrad was stuck for a name to call this man: dos Passos would not answer to Rico, and dos Passos seemed too formal - "do you think?" Jarrad asked.

dos Passos just smoked a while, then uttered a long, low laugh.

"One thing fo' sure,” a woman's voice said, “we ain't goin' back to that male-dominant shit. We winnin' this war cos'a women's powers, and we ain't sittin' back and handin'it all back to you men once it's over." This was Emma Kyle speaking, a tough black woman from Florida, and a brilliant remote viewer. A number of heads turned to listen.

"Absolutely," agreed dos Passos. "This whole business gives us a chance to start again. One thing's gotta go is the sex-war. Fuck man, if ever anything proved males and females are complementary, and not in opposition-

"Fuck that heterosexist crap," some female voice said behind them.

"Na, I mean male and female principles, you know," dos Passos said, “Yeah, it was this war with the invaders. We won because we had both good old tough courage, and the new powers. The best of the male and female principles." There was a general nodding of heads around the fire.

"Where do you think they came from?" Jarrad asked. Around them the main talk still revolved around the new gender politics, but Jarrad and dos Passos ran their own conversation.

"I dunno, but I got a feeling they're from much closer than we think."

"The Dog Star," someone said. The gender problem seemed to have been solved.

"Mars. They bin' livin' underground," Emma's deep voice opined.

Jarrad stared up through the canopy to the irregular slice of starry night sky, and marvelled that they were here, on the brink of victory over the vicious force that had almost done for humans.

Then someone shouted as something swirled in the pearly surface of the invaders' citadel, and a hole opened up near the ground.

"Shit," Jarrad yelled as he reached for his spear, "Something's happening!"

Jumping up and grabbing weapons, the activity suddenly froze as they watched figures come skulking out of the hole and deploy on the grass. They were the size of very large humans, but sickly grey, and although bipedal and having arms, they sported massive necks and heads that looked, quite simply, like those of sharks. And more specifically, white pointers.

"Landsharks!" dos Passos hissed.

"What? What are they?" Jarrad asked, hefting the comforting weight of his spear.

"We've seen them before," dos Passos said in a tired voice. "Vicious brutes, and they have some nasty tricks..."

As they watched a barrage of spears, arrows and rocks rained down on the landsharks as they fanned out from the hole. A couple fell from sustained or lucky hits, but the others took open-legged poses, and energy beams and projectiles burst forth from ugly lumps on the creatures bodies. Yells and screams came up from the jungle where the human forces were deployed.

"Shit!" Jarrad yelled. "Can't the monster killers get'em."

"Evidently they're part animal," dos Passos responded. "Shark brains or something. We're gonna have to beat 'em fair and square."

"All right," Jarrad growled, and turned and sprinted over to where a group of telekinetics were standing.

"Just focus on nullifying their beams and projectiles!" he yelled at them. "Try to let us get in close." The older ones nodded, talked to the younger for a little while, and then they all took on that trance look Jarrad knew meant they were doing their stuff. Leaving them to it he ran back to dos Passos, grabbed his arm and yelled, "Come on! Let's get down there!" and took off in a mad scramble down the slope.

He never slackened pace, and by the time he was down the hill and approaching the grass outside the invader's base, it was clear something was wrong with the landsharks. They milled around, shaking their arms and trying to get their weapons to work. And the intervention of the telekinetics was just in time: Jarrad ran past dead and wounded bodies sprawled in the scrub.

He just kept running, and yelling, and running towards the landsharks who were now trying to get back into the base in an uncoordinated retreat. As Jarrad ran men and women rose up beside him, screaming unintelligible war cries, firing arrows and hurling spears and axes at the invader monsters.

And then they were amongst them. Jarrad thrust his longspear right into the gaping maw of a landshark already bristling with arrow-shafts. The damn thing actually bit down on Jarrad's spear, breaking it, but it was going down. Jarrad, turning to see a man collapse nearby with a landshark on his back, leant and snatched up a throwing axe, and heaved it at the creature's head. Rushing over, he pulled an obsidian knife out of his belt and plunged it into its flat, black eye. Blood the colour of old sap welled out over his fist, and it released the man and jerked spasmically, but made no sound. Pulling the axe out the deep wound in its neck, Jarrad hacked at the landshark. Someone ran up to help but Jarrad yelled for her to help the blood covered man under the landshark.

When the thing was finally dead, Jarrad stood up and surveyed the battle raging around him. The landsharks had lost their main weapons and had only their limbs and jaws to fight with, and they were going down under weight of numbers. Their bulky forms lay scattered on the ground, bristling with arrows, spears, axes and knives, pale grey hides drowned in the dark red of blood. About a dozen still fought on, but they gradually subsided at the centre of howling circles of bloodied humans.

Jarrad saw dos Passos heading for the now unprotected opening. He had a large gash down his left shoulder, but he was grinning like a madman. Jarrad took off after him, and went through the hole seconds later. "Rico, Rico wait," he yelled, and dos Passos looked back in surprise.

"Jarrad!" he yelled, exalted. "We've won the day my Atlantean hero. Now let's find those bastards before they get away." There wasn't much chance of that, Jarrad figured: the monster killers on the hill would stop any machine or biomechanical that came out of the base. But dos Passos had the bit between his teeth and he sprinted towards the large structure at the centre of the base. Jarrad ran after him.

There were about a hundred of them, sitting patiently in large, comfortable-looking chairs in neat rows around the inside of the large circular building. It looked like the opera, perhaps, and they were waiting for the first act.

Instead, taking centre stage were two torn and bloodied humans who stared up at them with a stunned look that was a mixture of revulsion and surprise.

"People! The aliens look just like people!" Jarrad said.

"No, I don't think so," dos Santos said matter-of-factly.

Jarrad started to turn around to look at is friend, but was distracted as one of the invaders shifted forward in her chair, a small movement but stark against the passivity of the rest.

It was a young woman, and the most beautiful creature Jarrad had ever seen. She had perfect creamy skin, the most even features, and large blue on blue eyes: a superb face set off by long, honey coloured hair. She was tall and slim and wore a long, flowing off-white dress and white slippers. Past her, Jarrad saw that the others seemed to be twin brothers or sisters, although not quite identical.

"Who're you?" Jarrad asked, shifting the grip on his axe.

"My name is Zeka. We welcome you to our city." She could not have been more calm. There was an underlying burr in her accent, suggesting something German maybe, but otherwise she could have been testing for an up market US soapie the voice was so ordinary.

"Welcome us?" Jarrad started, but dos Passos interrupted.

"What planet are you from?" he asked.

"Earth."

Dos Passos turned back to Jarrad. "I suspected as much. The future. They're from the future."

"Our future?" Jarrad said. "But..."

"2667 AD," Zeka said. "And to answer your next question, we had to. The climate on earth was becoming too volatile, and since we'd not succeeded in terraforming the planets, we had nowhere else to go. This was as far back as we could get, but even here the climate is beginning to become unstable. We hoped that through eradicating the destabilising elements-"

"Human civilisation, you mean," Jarrad growled.

He had known a few psychotic people in the old days, drug-fucked kids who were so gone they sold their own bodies regardless of the risks, and thought everyone else was fair game too. But this ice maiden was genuinely spooky.

Zeka just stared blankly at him.

"When was time travel invented?" dos Passos asked.

"In 2662 AD it became feasible. The principle had been known for over a century, and a recording device was sent back a few hours in that year by detonating a multimegaton device in deep space."

"It requires a lot of energy, then?" dos Passos asked.

"Yes, a lot of energy."

"So how much to send you and your gear back here?"

"All we had. We went back as far as we could - available energy was the limiting factor."

"The earth?" dos Passos asked. Jarrad whirled around to stare at him, then turned back to Zeka as she answered.

"Rather more than that."

"How much?": dos Passos.

"I'm no technic, but I heard talk of all the mass within 0.7 of a light year."

"You blew up the whole fuckin' solar system just to come back here and wipe out civilisation!" Jarrad yelled. "You are the dumbest fuckers I ever heard of!"

Zeka just stared at him, blankly, as if he were a fish.

"What happens from now in your history? I mean, if you hadn't intervened," dos Passos asked calmly, ending the tension.

"Climate gets worse, cheap energy ends, society becomes increasingly divided between rich and poor. All the trends you could see five years ago just keep on increasing. By the 2450s there are no more children being born, but those who can afford the treatments are virtually immortal. The population decreases even faster than it increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

"And you are the elite of your time," dos Passos said.

"Yes," Zeka said.

"But you've failed to wipe out the problem," dos Passos said, airily gesturing at Jarrad and himself. "Why?"

"We had modelled what we needed factoring in the mass limits. So many weapons to destroy essential social structures - cities, roads, and the rest. The estimates were then that a few bio-mechs could eliminate or otherwise control any remnant population. They are essentially everlasting, self-repairing."

"And you were hoping to maximise their effect by spreading terror, hence the dragon and Kraken shapes."

"Yes. We estimated such cultural archetypes would be effective in terrorising a cowed, isolated population in the process of reverting to barbarism."

"But why not just use an engineered disease? Much simpler and a whole lot less mass to convey," dos Passos said, as if he were engaged in some interesting scientific debate.

Jarrad thought he almost detected the slightest sign of contempt in her perfect mouth. "As you would have found out had we not arrived, such things are not so easily controlled. We not only wanted to survive ourselves, we wished to transform earth back to its most natural form. Letting lethal diseases free, no matter how well tailored they seem to be, is hardly conducive to achieving such a goal."

Then she said, "And to complete the answer to your question: we had no understanding of the latent powers in human beings which our intervention obviously stimulated. It is clear that the enormous development of technology, especially after the middle ages, pushed human development away from such things, but they were still there. Faced with the ultimate challenge, evolution jumped up a level. It's called directed evolution. The theory was known, I think, even in your time."

"What about the possibility that there is a world mind - Gaia - and that this entity took action?" dos Passos suggested.

"Fantasy," Zeka said. "Pure fantasy."

Just then Jarrad heard someone come in behind him, several sets of running feet. "Is this them? Is this the bastards?" someone yelled, and Jarrad turned to speak to them. Something flew past his eyes, and he jerked back to see the young man next to Zeka lurch back in his chair, clutching at the bloody spear shaft protruding from his sternum. Jarrad turned back, holding his arms aloft, and heard dos Passos yelling for quiet. Behind him the speared invader was making a weird keening noise, and as Jarrad glanced back again at the invaders he saw rows of horrified faces, and Zeka frantically scurrying away from the jerking form of the speared man. No one moved to help him.

But this was no dragon or Kraken or landshark, this was a rather angelic-looking young man in a kind of white nightshirt with a spear shaft sticking out of his chest and blood pouring from his mouth and down his front, making the material stick to his slim torso like cherry red enamel.

He died in front of them, messily, and everyone saw it, heard it, smelled it. The invaders, now pathetic victims, sat in stunned silence. The old humans, subdued, muttering quietly, traipsed out of that room.

Jarrad walked beside dos Passos, thinking, and heard Consuela come up behind them. "I mean, I have met some fucked people..." she said as she drew abreast.

"Yeah," Jarrad agreed. "What are we going to do with them?"

"Well," dos Passos said, spreading his hands and stopping. "We have three choices really, just like the victors in any total war always do. We can kill them." Jarrad and Consuela both leant back a little. "Or we can treat 'em just like everyone else. Or we can let 'em, live but treat 'em bad and maybe get started on the reasons for the next war."

"Shit," Consuela said, disgusted.

"'Fraid so, comrade," dos Passos said. "We can either go back to the old ways - and look where that was headed - or we try `live and let live'."

The three humans exchanged long looks, and then moved off as if all was decided.

Jarrad hiked little Maria up into a more comfortable position on his hip and at last spotted Zeka in the middle of a stand of corn. She was bent low, checking for pests. "There she is, Maria," he said to the girl he was carrying, who nodded and squirmed to say she wanted him to put her down. He called out to Zeka who waved and started over towards them.

"Zekie!" Maria cried and leapt into her arms when she got close.

"Hey, Maria! Hey, Jarrad. What's up?"

"Got some bad news. dos Passos died."

"Oh." Zeka frowned. "I know he'd lived a full life, Jarrad, but I'll miss him." One ripe tear fell from her eye and skidded down her sun-tanned cheek.

"'S okay, Zeek. Just 'cause we're trying to be more real about death, doesn't mean you can't grieve."

Zeka smiled shyly at him, wiping at the tear.

"Uncle dos is dead," Maria told Zeka gravely. Zeka gave her a teary hug.

"You know," Zeka said, as Maria saw something interesting and climbed down out of Zeka's arms to investigate, "I can't believe it's only been five years since... "

"Or ten years since the invasion," Jarrad said.

Jarrad stared at the woman from the future: she was showing some small lines around the mouth now she was off the treatments, but muscled and tanned from outdoor work.

There were only seventeen of the invaders still alive, one killed at the beginning and the rest suicides.

They had let the invaders from the future join them as equals. And only seventeen of them had been able to recast their minds, live with the new realities. They'd left the nanomachines doing their work, transforming artificial materials back to constituent chemicals and imprisoning radioactive substances in capsules of inert matter. They could have used tele-powers to stop them, but they'd decided, in the first global plebiscite, held everywhere at once, to continue their low technology life. They could readily manage population growth now, and they could do it.

"Those days," Zeka said after a while, frowning, eyes unfocused, "I mean before... back in the future... they seem like a nightmare. I mean, what were we doing? What did we want?"

Jarrad glanced over to Maria, his and Angelica's daughter, and watched her carefully stalking a lizard. Angelica was away on the top of Mount Kilamanjaro with Kiki, her new lover, but she would already know about dos Passos.

"I know what I want," he said, leaning forward and taking Zeka's hand. "I want to continue our experiment in cross generational sex."

End