He rose to his fet and picked up themeteorite. Following him, I saw him walk over to the giant abandonedlocomotive sitting on the sand-covered tracks...in front of the station.Running over to the locomotive, I climbed up to the cabin, shattered adirty window, and then climbed in. As I seated myself in the engineer'sseat, Botanicus reached in and put the meteorite in the oil tank andthen closed the hatch before pulling the activation lever. He thensaid:"I'm sorry I couldn't provide much in the. President in her wisdom had appointed a woman as the ambassador was insensitive enough, but to try to push junk food and drink on his country was just too bad."Your Magnificence," she started, "Why have your guards prevented my advisors from coming in to the meeting?" Mr. Ambassador," he said, intending to put her off balance, and watched her wince slightly, "Your advisors are not needed today. Today I will tell you exactly what is going to happen to trade between Kobekistan and the USA, and. I managed to get through the weekend without giving Steph any idea that something was wrong and on Monday, after I'd brought my boss up to speed on the business in Atlanta I told him I needed to take the rest of the day off to take care of some personal business that had come up while I was gone.I left the office and drove to a rental car agency and rented a small compact, just the kind of car that wouldn't be out of place in a college neighborhood. I called Steph and told her that I would be. They were the original builders of many of the stairways on the sides of this extinct volcano. The palace was built in the volcano, and it has been there for all of our recorded history. Almost every week my grandfather led me down the stairs to the city where we would have breakfast in summer or lunch in winter. Then we would climb up again. Neither of us would give in and we climbed up without stopping. When I was a very small child, we used to stop and look at some of the caves. I remember.