In the meantime, their prey was taking a tan on the sand and smirking to herself, looking at the unlucky hunters.

      This minor accident in the ocean did her good. Super Queen-Mother threw off her sleepy state, took a glance around the island that had hosted her and… set off for home.

      Chapter 3

      Nobody looked for her at home; everybody was sure she was having a rest in one of the rooms.

      Super Queen-Mother walked about the house and went into the yard. It was small and cosy. She thought that soon she would have to move to another place.

      Super Queen-Mother tried to imagine what her new place of work would be. She had to discuss everything with architects to help them to arrange it as she wanted. That would be a little later, however; now she had to meet the people she would work with.

      Super Queen-Mother took a pencil and a copybook and went up to the terrace. There she dropped into a chaise longue, put on sun-glasses and settled in to write.

      She wanted to write down the structure of governance as she had pictured it to herself, and then to discuss it with the specialists. Then she would cut some links and would add the new ones she had missed.

      It was not a simple task, and Super Queen-Mother sat up at it deep into the night. She could not sleep. She was tossing and turning in her bed, thinking that Earth managing would be a difficult task, though she did not have any enemies here, willing to kill her. The Earth Keepers checked in: she heard the light noise of the breakers, the remote cries of sea gulls, and saw a great number of beautiful, small fish, jumping out of the water and shining in the sun.

      They were falling down into the sea and jumping out up again, playing their games, which nobody else could understand.

      Super Queen-Mother quickly fell asleep, charmed with this shining vision.

      In the morning, after a brief breakfast, she was ready to work.

      The security officer reported to her that everything was ready for the trip to the forthcoming meeting.

      Super Queen-Mother looked back.

      The empty roadway from time to time revived – an emergency vehicle, rushing at great speed, sparkled with signal lights and broke the silence with a wailing siren. Then it became quiet again.

      Super Queen-Mother raised her head. Helicopters were hovering in the sky not far from her, forming a big circle with her house in its center.

      Farther and a bit higher, two military planes were flying, also in circles.

      Super Queen-Mother went up to the roadway and got into a black car. The motorcade took off.

      Fifteen minutes later it stopped in front of the entrance to the stadium, where she had usually held all her meetings.

      Super Queen-Mother got out of the car and looked around. Everything was the same, as if she had never left it.

      Military ships, submarines, missile launchers and planes were at their usual locations.

      Super Queen-Mother went inside the stadium and stopped in the middle of the field.

      The stadium was full. Members of her team and her security were also there. There were not enough vacant seats, so all aisles were also crowded.

      Super Queen-Mother fixed the microphone she had brought with her, greeted the audience and congratulated them on their first working day.

      In her speech she described the work of her department in general terms and defined the location of her main team.

      A big complex of buildings was chosen as a temporary place of work. Each separate building was the headquarters of one continent.

      The offices were located in the alphabetical order – from “A” to “Z”, from the first floor to the top one, the same number of offices for each country.

      Super Queen-Mother read out her appointments order to a position of the heads for departments and their staff. She also determined the primary task of arrangements at the new spot and for setting up information channels of each department with its country.

      The official part was over, and Super Queen-Mother wished everyone good luck in their work.

      She came back home and began to plan her own working and living place. It had to consist of two interconnected zones – an insular one, on the sea, and a mountain zone.

      Super Queen-Mother drew an ellipse on a big ground map. It was two miles long and a mile wide and began about fifty feet from the offshore coastal strip.

      A long concrete dam in the form of a horseshoe protected it from the sometimes raging sea. The dam was a quarter of a mile from it and was laid with stone boulders on two sides, covered with sand on the top.

      Such man-made beaches could be an additional resting place for the islanders.

      She drew a big lagoon inside the ellipse – a marine for pleasure yachts.

      Then she drew a road from the island to the nearest mountain – a future tunnel which had to be a road and a railway tunnel at the same time, for a small archaistic locomotive and almost toy coaches.

      After that Super Queen-Mother proceeded to the mountain part of her project.

      This part of her plan was more detailed.

      At the point of juncture of two mountain rivers, in front of the narrow, long gorge, she drew a high dam.

      Its height allowed raising the water level in the gorge with the right tribute, to make it accessible to small boats and yawls.

      The flooded left tribute would make an arch-like lake, with a curve near the dam, one and a half to two miles long. It would be an excellent area for boating.

      The flooded river-banks had to be embedded in concrete with walking routes along them and a park with numerous fountains, flower beds and small comfortable cafes.

      To the right of the right tribute Super Queen-Mother mapped a small railway station.

      The trains, coming out of the tunnel, would cross the river over the dam and stop at the station.

      Farther on it would cross the river over a metal cobweb bridge. A wonderful view of the beautiful gorge of white limestone opened from its pedestrian part.

      From the bridge, the railway road ran to the mountain slope, to its track built in a half-oval cut out in the rock, above the precipice.

      After that, the railway road went to another bridge, only a stone one, decorated with various granite sculptures and gilded copper statues.

      It joined the two banks of the left river tributary. From it, the railway road went to the tunnel, leading to the island in the sea.

      Super Queen-Mother thought that a two-storied café might be built in the dam body, from the side of the gorge, under the stream of the falling water.

      It would be an assembly point for tourists and the start of the walking route from the left side of the gorge to the spring, spouting from the ground half a mile from it, down the river.

      Right after the gorge, ahead of the spring, she wanted to make a walking site with a café.

      Farther, a sideway would go from the walking site over a bridge, hanging above the river, to the right side of it.

      Then the road would serpentine up the long-lying talus of limestone to the path, trailed during centuries, and lead to an old fortress.

      Behind the fortress the path had to be widened and continued farther to the gorge, thus closing the walking route at the café in the dam.

      Super Queen-Mother, in her