A warrior returns from Cone Man's past ...

The Cousin Gathering in the Land of the Cantabrians was a great success, albeit Cone Man did not succeed greatly in defeating the temptation to eat too much. The success of the occasion owed much to the tireless efforts of Cone Man's cousin, Deborah the Domestic Goddess. Cousin Jennifer, who had attained the tender age of sixty, had been suitably "sixtied", and they could all move on.

Cone Man had indeed moved on. His flight had left the Land of the Cantabrians at 3.35pm, two days and five hours earlier, and so in cosmic terms he had travelled at least 111.3 million kilometres since the afternoon of the last Day of the Sun. Seven to eight billion people had also made the same dizzying journey through the cosmos, so Cone Man had to admit that his achievement was not exceptional, but it was fun to reflect on.

Cone Man's pattern of movement around the Land of the Hurricanes was certainly unusual. Everybody else left the Land of the Huttites each day and rode the rail canoe south to Wellesley's Town to trade their time for money. Cone Man instead road the rail canoe to the far north of the Land of the Huttites to trade his time to learn from the company of Wizards in the Tower of Power. In a few weeks Cone Man hoped to master the spells and incantations by which he could draw money from the clouds. The prospect of this cloudy currency possessed his mind as surely as the prospect of gold.

Cone Man cared not that he could find himself a laughingstock in a few weeks. He had nothing to lose, and gold had made fools of many a man before him. 19th century writers and later historians remarked at the "Gold Rushes" that caused men to descend on parts of the Land of the All Black Tribe, dig for months, and then the leave the country, having spent all they had to obtain nothing but memories of the Long White Cloud over their heads as they laboured.

Gold had even used to "back up" paper currency, until politicians realised that this policy was deflationary and reduced the amount of money in circulation. At the other extreme, many had believed that stockmarket shares were worth more than gold, and had mortgaged their man caves to purchase shares in the months leading up to the Great Crash of 1987. Cone Man may been crazy, but if judged by the low bar set by his contemporaries, he could be said to moderately sane.

Even if Cone Man could not conjure money from the clouds, others seemed to have faith in him. One true believer was his old friend, Kelvin the Hunter, who lived in the Land of the Cantabrians. When Kelvin was not slaughtering every edible creature that came within range of his mighty Fire Stick, he earned his living spraying the man caves of others with his mighty Paint Stick, and he wondered if Cone Man could assist him in finding customers for his colourful talent. "Alright" sighed Cone Man, "I'll inform the native tribesmen of the Land of the Cantabrians that you can be found at 0225864321 if they need a painter, but after that, be it on your head if you are besieged by desperate building contractors!"