The cuckoo

Part 17 The last flight

As the gathered policemen looked on in horror the small plane hurtled towards them and then was past them, and through the stopping zone and gathering speed rapidly. "Stop him"  yelled McArthur,  "shoot to kill!".     Two police marksman took careful aim and opened fire on the little aircraft, that even as they were firing on it lifted off and sailed up into the sky heading back Eastwards.    Harry scrambled forward and into the co's chair and May leaned forward, her head between them.    Suddenly she saw an ominous dark stain rapidly spreading across Julian's  shoulder and realised he had been shot, and was bleeding, heavily.   "Jules, go as low as you dare and turn her to North" said Harry.    Julian dropped her down rapidly and banked the Rosy steeply.   "See that mountain in front of us"  said Harry, "well it's a volcano called Snaefels and we need to land on its Southern slope as far up the slope as you can".   Julian flew past the slope so that he could get a feel for the lie of the land and then he circled back.   It was a long fairly shallow slope steepening the higher it climbed.    it was strewn with what looked like little loose rocks and shale, but at least no boulders that he could see.    It definitely wasn't suitable to land on but there was nowhere else and he was beginning to feel very light headed from all of the blood that he was losing.    Harry cupped the back of Julian's neck and said to him  "you can do this Jules, you will get us down, just believe in yourself".  Jules turned the little plane again and the messy slope slew back into view again.    "Hold on"  he screamed and he cut their airspeed dramatically and raised the nose high and then little plane slammed its belly heavily on to the ground.    He practically stood on the brakes cutting the engine dead and shoving the flaps all the way up.  There was a loud cracking rending sound and the sliding plane fell over onto one wing as one of the wheels collapsed, and then they stopped.

"Quickly" said Harry "Help me carry the ropes and torches".    "Lets get going now".  They scuttled away from the crippled little plane and began climbing as fast as they could towards the summit.  They reached the cover of some mountain gorse and hunkered down amongst it.   "What now Harry" said May.     Now I will tell you why we are here said Harry.  All of existence has rules, he told them.  The way that any kind of sentient living organism works is that nothing comes free.   Deep down you already know this rule anyway, everyone does really.   For instance a fire needs fuel.    A plant needs nutrients.   Most life forms need heat and light.    Action and reaction.    You cut yourself and your body will itself stop the bleeding and seal the breach.   A car will need servicing at regular periods, and so on, this is a universal law.   There is also a bigger picture and bigger event cycles happening all of the time.   Stars are born and stars die and the death of a star makes the materials for the birth of new stars.   People see these cycles but don't know how to interpret them and so they name them in religious terms which excuses the need for accurate reasoning.   An event can be glossed over just by saying "god works in mysterious ways" and similar such sayings in all religions.   To be basic the whole system of creation works like this planets eco system.  The Earth heats up and water evaporates and becomes water bearing clouds, which then produces rainfall and then the whole process can start again.

"Now me" said harry, "I and others of my kind before me, and after me come into existence when the whole celestial system, for want of a better description needs servicing, to keep it all functioning correctly.   I must pass through the portal that all traffic which is the essence of life passes through.    Because it is time for that pathway to be purged so that it remains efficient.   sometime in your kinds future another like me will come, and do the same.   There are many portals and my kind when they arrive just really go to the one where they feel their best chance of success lies.   Depending largely of course on where we are when we find ourselves first alive.  And we are always reborn into a person on the point of death and that cannot recover.   Then we will seek to pass through one of these portals.  This then is what I am doing now.   I will pass through the portal that is here, on the rim of the crater of Snaefels and as I pass through all of the great power and energy that is me will dissipate and spread around the entire globe and in essence deep cleaning the whole exchange mechanism, thus resetting the balance of the mechanism of creation.   You can think of me as a global sized pipe cleaner".