“Perfecto,” he pronounces in culinary judgment.
“James Bond,” Zed says abruptly. “I want to trace the footsteps of James Bond from the movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ at Cerro Paranal Mountain in Northern Chile. Check out the ESO (European Southern Observatory) hotel that their computer graphics blew up in that movie. Stop in and take a look through one of the four ‘Very Large Telescopes.’” His fingers click and clack across his laptop keyboard until he finds what he is looking for, and then he rotates his laptop to face Rafa.
“There. That’s the hotel. Pretty cool, huh?”
Rafa pulls the laptop closer, studies the image of a large sleek modern building in a barren desert for a moment and says, “You should just book yourself in there for an overnight. Get the full monty.”
“Can’t. Rooms are reserved for ESO people only. You have to be one of the people working on the VLTs (Very Large Telescopes). No tourists. It’s a two-hour drive from the nearest city so I figure it’s a day jaunt. Drive there, look around, maybe get some lunch there and then drive back. Should be fun.”
“Somehow the word fun just doesn’t seem to be the proper description for visiting anything in the Atacama Desert. Hot, dry and barren,” Rafa says.
“And that’s where its beauty lies. You of all people, being a rider of the ubiquitous motorcycle, should appreciate the Zen of a trip under the warm sun out in the splendor of the picturesque desert.”
“Do you even know what ubiquitous means?” Rafa asks.
“No, but it sounded good.” He slides the laptop over to himself and starts to type in a search of the word.
“It means ‘found everywhere,’” Rafa informs him.
Zed abandons the keyboard and waves the definition off. “Anyway, you know what I mean. Like a drive through Death Valley California; beautiful at the right time of day and the right time of year.” Zed’s living on the primitive rural outskirts of Kinshasa ingrained in him a love of raw nature filled with wild flora and fauna. It was “home” as opposed to urban centers of steel, brick and paved-over paradise.
“And when do you propose to fit this in?”
“Tomorrow? Next day? When we check out the site of the Breakthrough Starshot Laser Array with Twizzle, maybe we could take them all in on the same day?”
Rafa shakes his head. “The Laser Array is scheduled for testing tomorrow. Twizzle said to clear out a full day for it. She wants to be there from start to finish.”
“So? While the two of you and Forbes are romancing the orbiting probes with gigawatt laser thrusts, I can swing over to the hotel, walk around; see the sights.”
“Romancing the probes? Is that a veiled porno reference?”
“Heh, no, but I like your thinking. Anyway, if Sonnet can extract herself from the twin, maybe she and I can nose around there together. Let the twin do her thing by herself. She certainly doesn’t need us to help in her search. Sonnet would probably welcome the break. The twin is not exactly the best company. You’ve spent time with her. Since she arrived in Chile, she’s like some mystic who speaks in proverbs and sound bites that make no sense. In Africa, at least she seemed like Sonnet, but after her arrival here, I can’t talk to her.”
The twin, an avatar made in Sonnet’s image, was never graced by the family with a proper name unless she was passing herself off as Sonnet. Everyone in the family simply referred to her as the twin, which was an understated way of addressing the powerful creatures she was comprised of.
“The twin is preoccupied, Zed. You need to cut her some slack.”
Zed was convinced that it was more than that. Starting out as an avatar of his sister, Sonnet, and then housing the combined Gis (Global Intelligence aliens) (Gi pronounced Zhee) from Africa within herself, the twin was as alien as anything he had ever encountered in his life in the Congo. Looking and sounding like an exact duplicate of Sonnet, she had initially fooled him into thinking she was Sonnet, but as events occurred that had her absorb both Gis, she became a total enigma to him. Now she and Sonnet cruise the terrain of Chile on a quest to find a mysterious Gi residing in Chile.
Rafa’s phone vibrates and rings out aurally. He picks it up, speaks briefly in Spanish and then puts it away. “It’s here. Dealer has yet to uncrate it. Wants one of us to be there when they open the container to verify its safe arrival.”
“Can you blame him? I mean uncrating a million-dollar concept bike for some crazy gringo American?”
“Zed, look in the mirror and you see a gringo. Then look at me. Do I look or sound like a gringo?”
“Oops. Sorry. I just think of you as one of the family.”
“I am one of the family, now that Twizzle and I are married.”
“No. You were one of the family long before that. You know that. I guess growing up in Kinshasa tends to make me a bit color blind.”
“So let’s eat and run. Just thinking about testing that baby rouses my inner rider,” Rafa says.
“Riding around with one million dollars between your legs would give any rider a hard-on,” Zed quips as he forks hot empanada into his mouth.
Chapter 3
Day 1
Santiago, Chile
Driving down the beautiful Av. Padre Hurtado Norte with its wide green tree-stippled median, Zed and Rafa almost miss the small two-story Harley Davidson store on the frontage street paralleling the main street where their package awaits them.
“There,” Zed says as they pass it. “Small. I was expecting something larger.”
“Friend of one of the bike designers knows the owner of the store. Trustworthy.”
Rafa makes a tight “U” turn at the end of the median and drives back towards the store, pulls onto the frontage street, and parks his white truck in front of the cycle store.
“If this thing is ready to be driven off the lot, you can take the truck and follow me,” Rafa says.
“And if not, we lift it into the truck and haul it back to the hotel?”
“We’ll see,” Rafa says, leading the way, not waiting for Zed, his mind completely on the new bike.
Inside the shop, a colorful ancient jukebox is playing old tunes. Rafa leads the way past gleaming motorcycles and packaged merchandise on display, past the carpeted stairs to the second floor, and on to the rear of the shop, where he calls out for the owner. Getting no response, he leads Zed outside to an asphalt paved area behind the store, where a large wooden crate is surrounded by a half dozen people.
“Matías,” Rafa calls out.
A grey-bearded heavyset man, almost as tall as Rafa, turns and his face lights up when he sees Rafa.
“Mr. Rafa Mundoz,” he declares heartily in Spanish. They greet each other and then Matías says in Spanish to two of his employees, “Tear it down, men.”
In a matter of minutes, the content of the wood crate is revealed to a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” from the surrounding group. Sitting on the remainder of the wood crate is the most modern piece of machinery they have ever seen. Starting at an enormous back wheel, a graphite black body engages the rear wheel with a large round extrusion. It then angles up to the handlebars, where it changes direction and juts down to embrace an equally enormous front wheel that is a mirror of the back wheel. Starting also at the rear wheel, a chrome complex structure overlaps the black graphite body and continues forward under the black body to end under the handlebars.
“Okay, Rafa,” Zed says. “Tell us what we’re looking at.”
“First let’s see if it’s operational.” He walks to the bike, feels around under the handlebars and comes up with the electronic key. He straddles the bike and presses the starter, which lights up the console. With another press, the engine starts, exuding a very subtle low hum as unseen small gyros spin in place. He checks other aspects of the bike and then begins, first in English and then in Spanish.
“Stands upright on its own. Wheels are completely self-balancing,” he brags in English then lifts his feet off the ground to demonstrate its self-balancing ability.
The all-electric quietly running bike does not fall over, but remains upright. He repeats in Spanish and the men around him smile. Matias fishes for his pack of cigarettes, lights one, draws on the tobacco, savoring the burn, and admires the bike.
“Frame is carbon fiber,” he adds. “Bends as the bike is steered, eliminating the need for joints.” When he repeats in Spanish, the men nod in admiration.
He points to the tires and says, “Variable tire tread adjusts to different road conditions. And there are no traditional shock absorbers. The tires smooth the ride all by themselves.” On hearing the Spanish version, Matías just shakes his head and blows a plume of smoke skyward.
“Electric,” Rafa says. “A single charge is good for a thousand kilometers. Battery utilizes new packaging concept that eliminates fifty percent of the contact and housing space. Comes with a mobile charger with adapters for 110 or 240 volt.”
Zed nods his approval. “No sidecar for Twizzle?” he asks jokingly.
Rafa laughs. “She wouldn’t be caught dead in a sidecar. She’s got her own bike. Nothing as fancy as this, but if and when mine breaks down, hers’ll get us through. She gets a gleaming new Kawasaki 650 Dual Sport Motorcycle with neon green accents over gunmetal grey base. 6.1-gallon tank and gets over 50 miles per gallon.”
“What happens when your machine gets stolen? That’s a lot of bike to lose.”
“Onboard GPS buried inside the bike acts as a homing device. Once I link it to my cell phone, I can track it anywhere down to a few feet. It’s already linked to a computer in the states. There’s no secrecy about where this bike is. Everything is tracked and analyzed. All its functions are logged and studied. It’s a test machine. And as to someone being able to start it with the key, it uses fingerprint recognition. If the finger pressing the button isn’t recognized, it doesn’t start. They can steal it and tear it apart, but they can never run it. And, you’ll love this. It has a self-destruct mechanism that the home office can initiate that will fry the insides of the bike, making it just so much high tech junk.”
“No side mount Batman machine guns or cannons?” Zed asks facetiously.
Rafa laughs again. “Maybe on the next model, but nothing like that for this.”
“So you just drive it off the lot?”
“That depends on my man, Matías, whether he’s got all the papers for me.” He questions Matías, who throws down his cigarette, grinds it out with his boot and gives back answers in the affirmative.
“Looks like we rock and roll out of here on two vehicles,” Rafa says.
Zed approaches the bike and runs his hand over the sleek chassis. “Beautiful.” Then a thought comes to him. “Let me hear the horn. I want to know if it sounds like all those other tinny buzzy ones.”
Rafa smiles a big dung-eating smile. “This is where they customized the bike especially for me.” He presses the button for the horn and startles everyone with three sharp, loud diesel truck horn blasts. Two of the men watching yell, “Bravo!” in response, and another applauds.
“Now that, my friends, is a horn,” Rafa says softly.
Before Zed can ask another question, a buzzing, like a bee nest disturbed and swarming, begins as if from the bottom of a well. As it quickly grows in volume, Zed frowns in irritation and Rafa tilts his head in question. The buzzing escalates to a keening high pitch and suddenly a fear-laden terrible scream blots out all sound around him and Rafa, enveloping them in its panic, making every nerve in their bodies tingle as if an electric current were shivering through them. Rafa’s head snaps towards Zed, who is looking back at him in extreme surprise.
The experience is mutual. Both men, linked to each other as part of the psychically linked Bangala Elongó of the Congo, know that what they are experiencing is felt only between the two of them. Only the Bangala Elongó would be aware of a scream of this kind; a psychic scream generated on a level outside normal human perception.
And what a scream it is! Like an animal screaming in pain, high edged and thin.
Then it’s over, almost as suddenly as it started, but the event is disturbing.
Rafa, being only recently part of the Bangala Elongó, is unsure what just happened, but Zed, being the source from birth of the linked people, is sure of the scream’s nature.
“Wasn’t one of us,” he says in English, reassuring Rafa. “Not Sonnet, Forbes, or Twizzle. Could have been the twin, but I don’t think so.”
Rafa pulls his cell phone out and calls Twizzle. Zed follows his lead and puts out a call to Sonnet. In short order, it’s clear that all of them experienced the scream as well, but none was the source.
Chapter 4
Day 1
Santiago, Chile
Watching his rowdy friends chase after poor little Isabel, Pablo hangs back with Carlos, who has as little enthusiasm for the initiation as he does. After everyone disappears into the abandoned building, Carlos says in Spanish, “You not going?”
Pablo shakes his head. “You go if you want. She gives me bad dreams.”
Carlos is surprised, “You too? I had nightmares for a week after I made it to the count of 30. Weird stuff. Had me waking in a sweat. You still have them?”
Pablo never said much about his dreams before. Wasn’t a manly thing to do, but since Carlos was spilling the beans, he says, “They never go away. I had three this week. Always bad. Always terrible things; people dying, screaming, crying. Stuff like the end of the world. National Stadium stuff. Torture and detention and murder like from the times of Pinochet death squads.”
“No kidding, that was what they were like for me. In them I see men killing people at the National Stadium too.”
Above them, they see Isabel jump out of the building window onto the metal landing on the side of the building, and race up the stairs to the roof.
Pablo shakes his head again. “Stupid chica. She’s got nowhere to go from there.”
They watch Roberto climb through the window and then race up the stairs after her. Quickly, the rest of the boys following them climb the ladder to the roof.
Pablo turns and starts back towards the street. Disgusted, he kicks an empty bottle on the ground, sending it smashing into the side of the building next to him.
Carlos is close behind. “You not going to wait for them?” he asks.
“They’ll be done soon and then Roberto will be a man, surviving her bite. Agh. We should stay away from the little puta Mapuche. It’s no good. My sister says the girl is demon possessed. Never goes to church. Even the nuns don’t want her. Says that ghosts haunt her, that she is filled with tortured spirits. Send her down south to Patagonia where her ignorant tribe lives.”
As they walk away, the laughter from the boys on the roof changes to a chanted count.
“One, two.”
Pablo turns around and glances up towards the roof. “Three, four,” he says under his breath.
Carlos joins in, “Five, six.”
Stopped and waiting, they watch the roof and quietly count with the boys, “Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, Twenty-twoooooo ....”
Suddenly, the air around them becomes thick with an electric burning odor. Their count falls off and Carlos asks, “You smell that? Smells like when my uncle’s electric winch on his truck burned up.”
Pablo is silent. A feeling of dread has come over him and memories of his last nightmare suddenly are strong. In his mind, as if he were dreaming, he hears people screaming and crying, but his eyes are wide open and looking up at the top of the building; this is no dream. He hears the harsh voice of a man yell in anger and the scream of someone in pain, as if from a nearby TV; unreal and out of place.
A little girl’s voice cries out, maybe the little witch, he’s not sure.
A bright light radiates from the rooftop, brighter than he has ever seen, forcing him to close his eyes and raise his hands against it. Then there is a muffled explosion from the rooftop followed by silence, absolute silence; no bird songs, no car horns, no traffic sounds from the street beh
ind, no voices–nothing.
He looks over to Carlos–seemingly knocked over by the burst from the roof–who is sitting on the pavement with a surprised look on his face and his mouth open.
“The little witch?” Pablo asks.
Carlos just shakes his head in incomprehension. Then, like someone who has seen a ghost, he is on his feet and running out of the narrow alley, around the corner of the building and down the sidewalk. Pablo quickly gives chase, catches up to him and stops him mid-block, slamming him up against the building wall.
“What are you doing? We can’t leave them!” Pablo is almost shouting.
“No!” Carlos struggles for release from Pablo’s grip. “I’m not going near the witch. I don’t want to be in the gang anymore. I’m not going back. She was in my head again. It was just like my nightmares. I saw bad men hurting people, killing them.”
“We have to go back. We can’t leave them. We act like scared little puchas and Emilio will kick our ass. We got to go back. We can’t let them know we ran away. You want to be known as a coward?”
Carlos does NOT want to be known as a coward. Just the word makes him flinch. Relenting he says, “Okay, okay, we go together, but we watch, watch for police. And I’m not going near her if she comes out of that building.”
“Police? You think police were up there?”
Carlos shrugs uncertainty.
“Okay. We wait for them to get out of the building and then we leave with them. We say nothing about running or what we saw. You saw it too, right? Explosion and dreams?”
Carlos looks away, “Yeah, I see it, but I never tell anyone. They call me coward, tell me I’m making it up.”
“Yeah,” Pablo agrees. “We tell no one. Now let’s go back.”
Carlos reluctantly turns towards the alley. Pablo grabs him by the shirt and pulls. “C’mon. Let’s get back before they know we left.”
Girl with all the Pain Page 3
