6 BEFORE DAWN Dawn Rose Cross, at least that was how her name translated from the Latin, Queen of the White Man Reservation in Rome in the Eastern Provinces, poured herself a cup of coffee for breakfast--a drink that had been introduced into a Roman Empire that had never fallen when it had been conquered from the west; besides the coffee there was a slab of ham and a bran cake on her plate. It was the early hours of dawn, outside the window, this Queen, this Twin of Sophia Rosencruetz. She had a busy day before her with the dukes and earls; there was much administrative work for a Queen--though she didn't live in a palace; she lived in a trailer court--she was on a Reservation, after all. She sat a long while with her coffee, studying the morning paper. King Hanco Capac was busy with his own land; now would be the time for her people to rise up in rebellion. NWPP, she thought, the Native White People's Party, is strong. We will have machine guns, grenades, even dozens of the precious--and deadly--mind-lasers: the most potent kind, too: circle squared tetrahedrons, the strongest mystical force in numerology. If only we can break away and form our own state....It is so hard to have to live in subjugation for so long. How would the Incas like it if the shoe was on the other foot? "Good morning, honey," Chuck, Dawn's husband, said, stretching his arms groggily and stepping into the kitchen in his pajamas. "I see you're up bright and early this morning. Got the toaster fixed?" "Yeah," Dawn said. "Loose wire is all that it was." Chuck was muscular, well-built for his job as Reservation Policeman. But would he support the rebellion or the Incas when the time came? Dawn wasn't certain whose side he was on; he knew nothing of the planned rebellion. Times were difficult when you couldn't even trust your own husband. But there were times when you couldn't--especially after he'd begun threatening divorce simply because she "wasn't good enough in bed." "You going to read the morning homeopape?" Chuck merely grunted. "Duh gee whiz," the Schwarzenegger look-alike said. "Maybe if for once you'd give up your dyke role and act like a real woman...!" "You mean like that little blond tramp Tina that you hang out with?" Dawn demanded furiously. "Tina's just a friend," Chuck reasserted, then sullenly slipped away, as though feeling guilty. Dawn changed into a business suit, with a little white jacket, black bowtie. Finally fully awake, after having roused himself with coffee Chuck changed into his police uniform. He drove Dawn to the tribal headquarters in the Colosseum in his patrol car, stopped to give her one more kiss, though it was cold and perfunctory. She walked into the Roman Reservation headquarters while Chuck went to meet his partner in the squad car--Tina C. Bender. The C stood for Cindy. Sexy Cindy, she sometimes went by, and though Chuck had to admit that he'd slept with her a couple of times, he wasn't really serious about her--nor did he know if he was totally serious about Dawn; he had a personality disorder; he couldn't really get past a superficial relationship with anyone. Suddenly as Dawn was walking along E corridor, the green corridor that connected with the central complex of a towering Colosseum that had been converted from stone to metal, to a towering office building, a wild-eyed madman came racing at her. "Sophia!" he shouted. "Where am I?" In English. A language she didn't know. "Who are you?" she said in Latin, "And if you don't calm down I'm going to have to call for Security." "He's a sorcerer!" one of the Security officers ejaculated. "He appeared out of nowhere!" "Get a visual holo read-out on this man, now!" Dawn barked the order. "What happened? Am I dead? Is this hell?" the madman asked in Latin. Dawn laughed and said, "No, this is Rome. But it might as well be hell, living on a Reservation." One of the guards approached the frightened man with a mind-probe. He said, after staring at the readouts, "This man has no known identity, on or off the reservation." "Where are you from?" Dawn asked, walking now towards the throne room, as the prisoner was dragged along behind, protesting feebly. Her legs were long and gracious, carrying her toward the throne room like Cleopatra when the Empire had been at the height of its power and had still been an Empire. "Mandan, North Dakota," the stranger replied. "You speak Latin. I wouldn't have known it had I not been a priest." "A priest? Of which god? Zeus? Or the Feathered Serpent? And what is a Mandan? What the hell is this gobble-de-gook?" she asked. "And what is a Dakota, and what is it North of?" "South Dakota, of course," the mysterious stranger said. "I'm an American citizen," Father Vincent protested. "Surely you've heard of America?!" "America? What the hell is that, an island somewhere?" Dawn asked, as the guards held Father Vincent at gunpoint. "It's a whole continent; there's two of them, North and South America--here, I'll show you on the map." He walked over to a wall map, pointed out his home. Dawn looked perplexed. "What you call the Americas is actually the Incan Empire. But what do you do in this place you call America? You said you were a priest? Again, of what god?" "Jesus Christ; I'm from a land where...well...the missionaries conquered the American Indians in the name of Jesus Christ and put them all on reservations and..." Dawn laughed and laughed, "You've got the whole thing backwards! It is the Incas who conquered the white man and put us all on reservations. As Queen, I ought to just turn you over to a mental institution, but how anyone can hack into the master computer network and pull his ID...it's a mystery: You're dangerous; I'm sending you to prison!" The guards carried Father Vincent away, protesting futilely, "But it was the white man who put the red man on reservations!" Dawn was still laughing when Court resumed that morning. She paid attention to all the petty Reservation business, wishing that the crazy man's story might be true, then carefully slipped away to what was her real concern: the NWPP meeting. She walked down a narrow, cobble-stone lined street making sure that no one observed her with a proximity-detector, a refinement on mind-laser technology. The crystal pyramid glinted blue whenever someone was observing her; it was equipped with a computerized Knowbot, in which case she would take another route or duck into an alley until the crystal was white again. She made her way to a warehouse, knocked three times. "In--quickly. You aren't bugged?" Joe Yankovick, her lieutenant in the conspiracy, asked, apprehensively. "The magic crystal would reveal it if I was," Dawn replied. "And who was doing it. Unless the Incas have some top secret psionic machines which we don't know about, I'm sure they haven't penetrated the spell of invisibility which I put up around this warehouse with my witchcraft and alchemy. How's the weapons situation holding up?" Joe said, "We have all these machine guns," indicating pile upon pile of boxes, "Grenades. Bazookas. Rifles, pistols, freeze-rays. But the one thing we really need--the mind-lasers are coming in this afternoo..." There were three knocks on the door. "That's probably them now." Joe went to the door, opened it cautiously. Outside stood a man carrying a crate with a psionic proximity detector affixed to his belt. He also had a pyramid that kept psionic radar from detecting him, a cruder version of the device Dawn carried, hers had both proximity detector and alchemical cloaker all in one. But when you were dealing with an enemy as sophisticated as the Inca, you couldn't always get your hands on the latest magical technology. The man, whose name was Bill Wimsatt, said, "Highly hot, highly illegal for a white man to possess--but definitely necessary if our rebellion is to succeed. Where do you want them?" "Over by the machine guns," Dawn said, taking charge. She had an electrifying presence about her-- She brooded while the truck was being unloaded. Should she go through with the divorce or should she just wait things out and see if Chuck--her darling Chucky; how she remembered her honeymoon--would come back to her or if he'd follow the stereotyped set of symptoms the psychologist had outlined to her at their marital counseling and turn this into just one more of a string of short but intense relationships? She didn't know. She did not have the answers. When the mind-lasers had all been brought in she attacked the first crate with a crowbar, careful not to chip a fingernail that she had done up in silver polish to reveal the contents within. Cupping the psionic device in her hands, she concentrated mental energy through it. Suddenly her target, an empty crate by the sliding steel doors, exploded. There was a terrible noise like thunder or an earthquake; "Hurrah!" the revolutionaries shouted, clapping each other on the back, but she gritted her teeth and said, "Shit! I hope no one heard that explosion. The alchemical cloak doesn't protect against noise." She went to a divining crystal, punched a code into the computer which operated it. The Knowbot programmed into the ROM scanned the neighborhood for signs of any telepathic signals of arousal or suspicion, suddenly focused on a woman: Cindy Bender. But without Chuck. In plain clothes. "Quickly!" Dawn commanded me. "Get me the Mist of Darkness." A man ran up carrying an aerosol spray can. Dawn stepped out into the alleyway. Tina C. Bender exclaimed on seeing her, "Dawn! What the hell was that explosion? I'm going to have to radio this in to my partner; if you're involved in this you'll be dragged before..." Dawn, who'd been holding the aerosol can behind her back, whipped it out and sprayed T. C. Bender with the Mist of Darkness. The hypnotic drug worked quickly as Dawn told her, "Forget. Leave this place at once and don't tell anyone what you saw or heard here!" Then Dawn returned to the warehouse as Sexy Cindy walked on down the alley in her miniskirt waddle. What could Chuck see in her that he didn't see in Dawn? Dawn thought of that as the crates were unloaded, of many things, including of how office work would be just drudgery after the terror of nearly being caught. But the revolutionaries had planned well. The Revolution would come soon. Dawn would be ready. The afternoon seemed to just flit away, the affairs of state not nearly so important as what she was undertaking: liberation for the White Man. And Woman. After her mostly titular job as Queen was finished--it was the Incas who really ruled here; white men weren't even considered citizens of the Empire--she flew her aircar home; deluxe and delightful, one of the few luxuries afforded her by her administrative post amid the rampant poverty and drug abuse of the Reservation. Chuck was waiting for her at the door when she got home. Even as they made love in bed, animal love, she thought, You hypocrite! But can I blame you? You suffer from a mental disorder, as loyal wife shouldn't I just put up with the symptoms? I guess but I just don't know. She played both virgin and whore to his primal lusts. "Charlie--you're such an animal," she said, teasing him and tousling his hair. He tousled her hair back while laying on top of her, sweating and heaving his ass as he thrust deeply into her plush velvet. She knew he was an animal, and she loved that in bed. But the White Man--and woman--must become the savages the Incas thought they were if they were to win the war; they must become animals-- But whose side was this animal she was in bed on? She decided to wait for the Day of Reckoning to find out, then relaxed and enjoyed her Orgasm. And her Death. #