by Patty Jansen
THE SAHARA CONSPIRACY
A Capricornica Publication / 2015
UUID# CFC017DF-8B79-49B8-B3F3-96C75EEAE943
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Copyright © 2015 by Patty Jansen
Cover Art copyright © 2015 by Tom Edwards
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http://pattyjansen.com
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PUBLISHED IN AUSTRALIA
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
* * *
THE CALL CAME late in the evening, a few hours after we had gone to bed. Exchange staff came to wake us, even though they knew we were on a flight before dawn, and I’d given instructions not to disturb us.
Dare I say the word honeymoon?
“It’s very urgent,” said the young girl who had been given the unenviable task to knock on our door and deal with my slightly rumpled appearance and even more rumpled temper.
I took the reader she held out to me. My eyes needed a few seconds to figure out if I was reading Coldi or Isla, never mind what was on the screen.
Words fought their way into the lingering fogginess of sleep.
Threat to security and Nations of Earth.
Immediately . . .
African . . .
Seriously, what the fuck.
Thayu had also gotten up and stood as a warm presence behind my back. She looked over my shoulder. She read some Isla, but wouldn’t understand the nuances of the language, or, in this case, the lack of nuance.
Mr Wilson, you are to see me in my office immediately regarding an immediate threat to Nations of Earth security relating to the African plans.
It was signed Simon Dekker, who was one of Acting President Sigobert Danziger’s henchmen.
As soon as I’d read it, the text vanished. I stared at the blank screen for a few dumb second before I realised that this was one of those untraceable high-security messages, keyed to a high-resolution scan of my retinas that every Nations of Earth employee with any level of clearance had to submit. I was surprised that the thing worked, because my eyes certainly weren’t working too well.
I laughed. “See us in his office? It’s in Rotterdam. We’re in Athens.”
The young woman said, “This device was brought to the gate by a courier. He’s waiting there in a car. Apparently there is a hoverjet at the local airport.”
I looked at Thayu. She frowned.
That urgent, huh? she said through the feeder.
A chill crept over me.
“Um, yeah.” I scratched my head, feeling increasingly stupid. They would not come to wake us if it wasn’t urgent.
The young woman was Coldi and a minor employee of the Exchange. She wouldn’t have any more information than what she gave me. “Wait here. We’ll be ready in a moment.” I went back inside the apartment.
“Do you have any clue what this could be about?” I asked Thayu when the door had shut behind me.
Thayu was flicking through the news on her reader. “No.”
“I thought Danziger was getting busy with his election campaign.” And, being faced with some stiff opposition in the election, he had plenty of campaigning to do.
“Maybe it’s about the election campaign.”
“In Africa? He doesn’t need to campaign in Africa. With all his humanitarian work, it’s the only place where his vote is secure. It’s the rest of the world he needs to worry about.”
She gave me a blank look and I figured she knew little about Africa. I hadn’t seen a reason to inform her. Lately we’d spent a lot of time discussing the point of elections.
“Africa is like . . .” I sought for words. “Like Beratha. It’s hot. It’s dry. Not many people live there because nothing grows there, and there are sand dunes and miles and miles of desert.” Well, the northern and central parts at least.
She continued her blank look as if she wanted to say, That sounds just like Asto, anything wrong with that?
“Africa is where, many years ago, Mizha Palayi, Asto’s Chief Coordinator at the time, planned a refugee camp.” In the Sahara to be precise.
Her face cleared up. And then a frown. “I thought we established that this was no longer an issue. They’re still going on about that?”
“I’d hope not, but I don’t know. If he wants to see me urgently, and it’s to do with Africa, I can’t imagine that it would be anything else.”
“I guess I better pack up, then.” She went to do just that. And Thayu being Thayu, she was done in moments, because she always travelled light. I always joked that the weight of her little travel bag was less than that of her weaponry.
My preparations were much less organised. Hell, I was less organised, still grumpy from having been woken up. What the hell did one wear on a midnight meeting with the president when one had been on a holiday and only had worn, rumpled and dirty clothes? Would it be acceptable to appear in a full a set of gamra blues?
Most of our possessions had already been delivered to the Exchange’s freight counter for decontamination and packing for transport back to Barresh, with little chance of getting them back at such short notice.
I sniffed my dressiest but still decidedly non-dressy shirt that I’d worn on the flight from New Zealand to Athens. Urgh. I couldn’t possibly wear that.
Gamra blues it was, then.
Damn, I better wake up Nicha, too.
I crossed the room and knocked on the door that connected our room to Nicha’s.
He came to the door a moment later, just as rumpled as I had been. “What, time to go already?”
“Nope. We’re going back to Rotterdam.”
CHAPTER 2
* * *
I GATHERED ALL MY electronic gear and stuffed it in my bag, hoping that whatever Danziger had to tell me wasn’t going to divert us for too long, or I’d need to buy some clothes. I was sure that even if they didn�
��t show it, Thayu and Nicha were similarly unprepared for a long delay.
And Nicha was none too happy with the situation.
“Danziger? Why the hell do you listen to that disloyal piece of crap?” Nicha asked me with his hand on the doorknob, about to go into the corridor. “You’re independent now. You’re Ezhya’s. You don’t have to listen to Danziger anymore.”
“Yeah, I agree with him,” Thayu said. She still sounded cranky from being woken up. Hell, we were all cranky. “Anyone who pulled on me what he did to you would get the big FU from me.”
In my heart I agreed with them, but unfortunately that was not a feeling I could act on. If I was Coldi, oh yes, I could. By stalling on my salary payments and cutting off my communication with Nations of Earth, and by keeping Nicha under arrest for much longer than necessary, Danziger had broken his commitment to me big-time in their eyes. But this wasn’t Asto, and Coldi style networks did not operate here. I had to contend with politics and democracy. Which in practice meant you could treat your subordinates like shit and still expect them to crawl for you, as long as most people still voted for you. Because you were the president. Welcome to Earth.
I told them, “You know how we discovered that Mizha paid for favours from some African countries? We only discovered that because some people in those countries were not careful with their data. Who knows which other countries were paid, where else money went and what was done with it?”
“That was all so long ago. Why does anyone get upset about it now?”
Another cultural issue reared its ugly head: Coldi lived much more in the present than people on Earth did.
“Because these are some of the poorest countries on Earth, because the people in those countries are susceptible to someone coming in and buying their way into their loyalty.”
“You can’t buy loyalty.”
“No, on Asto, you can’t.” Loyalty networks were physiological. “On Earth, you can buy the support of people, especially if they’re desperate. There are a lot of desperate people in Africa.”
I thought of the scenes I’d seen when I was younger, of crammed refugee camps on the eastern shore, of people driven out of their homelands because of drought, and unable to enter any of the protected enclaves where the locals still had crops to harvest. Of refugees selling their children to pirates and slavers.
In places like Djibouti, where everyone came together in their plight to get out, there was no food, no water. Infrastructures had collapsed under the sheer weight of human despair. People just died, and everyone was too busy surviving to care. I’d never forgotten the images of the “skeleton fields” to the west of Djibouti: dusty remains of refugee campsites littered with bleached bones. There was a lot of scope for trouble in Africa. It only needed one crazy despot to light the fire.
I said, “If this is about some Coldi people trying to revive the colony plan, all of gamra is likely to be affected by this. If it is about Mizha and this money, Ezhya would want it solved. In this situation, I’m as much Ezhya’s representative as Danziger’s. I need to know what he has to say. If it’s about something else, we’ll listen and go home.”
Nicha gave me a hard, grumpy look. “Do you even listen to your own bullshit? You’re not Danziger’s pawn.”
“Actually, my contract with Nations of Earth doesn’t expire until the end of the month.”
“Ah.” He pressed his lips together. “You could have told me that first.”
Coldi: painfully blunt and honest.
The young woman had waited for us in the corridor. For some reason, it was quite busy in the residential part of the Exchange complex, and most of the apartment doors were shut because the apartments were occupied. The names of the occupants were listed on the doors. I read the clan names as we passed: Palayi, Lingui, Palayi, Azimi, Domiri—all the usual suspects. Those were the clans with money and power.
Our footsteps sounded loud on the lino floor. Many of these guests would fly out some time during the night, because the Exchange operated only at night, so there were soft sounds of people talking.
The woman accompanied us to the lift. Because the Exchange was in operation, the large hall on the ground floor was as busy as an airport terminal. People with cases and bags lined up at check-in counters and others used their passes to enter the departure and arrival part of the building.
Of course the vast majority of the passengers were Coldi, with their metallic-sheened, dark hair, and the destinations were not displayed anywhere except on people’s readers, but they were all off-world.
The only wink to Earth was the giant television screen that hung at the back of the hall, and it displayed, as usual, the newscast from World Newspoint or something equally staid and boring, appropriate for the time of day. A man was reading financial news, I thought. The level of boredom from the announcer’s voice was reassuring.
At least Danziger didn’t want to see me because there had been some huge disaster.
That was good news, I hoped.
I wanted to go home. This morning I’d sat on the tiny balcony of the apartment at the Exchange, looking out over the hazy air that hung over Athens, thinking of the violent thunderstorms that would lash Barresh almost every night at this time of the year. The monsoon was about to start. From my balcony off the living room, you could see Ceren’s twin suns set under the blanket of ominous clouds that rolled in from the land every afternoon. The sky would go green and wind whip at the trees, carrying clouds of pink petals. The air would be humid and sticky, but we’d go to the baths and sit there in the rain, then walk back cool and refreshed.
Damn it, I longed for those times.
The young woman led us out of the hall through the glass doors into the coolness of the night. There were a few Exchange-owned taxis outside the entrance and their drivers gave us strange looks when we started walking under the starlight. Nobody walked that way, certainly not at this time of day.
It was early December, and even in Athens the nights acquired an unpleasant bite that I had become unused to while living in Barresh. Not only that, but my gamra blues were made of thin fabric, and I’d been taking adaptation medication that increased my body temperature in preparation for going back to Barresh.
It was cold.
Some time in the twentieth century the building that housed the Exchange had been constructed as a private hospital. It had a long driveway lined with date palms that cut across the lawn—green because it was winter. The driveway led to a set of gates which the Exchange drivers operated from their inside vehicles. The headlights of a vehicle shone through the metalwork of the gate, making the dew on the grass glitter. Only a non-gamra vehicle would have to wait outside.
“There he is,” the young woman said.
The car was a dark-coloured passenger vehicle, and the driver got out when he spotted us. He wore the grey uniform of the Nations of Earth general guard, and he was not a local. Not Coldi and not Greek.
The young woman tapped her pass to the gate. It rolled aside with some creaking and rumbling. We went through, into the glow of the car’s headlights.
“Mr Wilson?” said a male voice in the dark.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Come with me, sir. The plane is waiting.” The driver took my bag, but gave Thayu and Nicha an odd look. “Um, Mr Wilson, sir? What about them?”
“They’re with me. They’re my zhaymas. I don’t travel without them.”
“Um, sir. Yes.” He went to shut the back door, and then stopped. Clearly had no idea what zhaymas were. “Do they carry arms, sir?”
“Yes. For our protection. So do you.” Why the hell did Nations of Earth insist on sending me these ignoramuses? It was almost as if they did it on purpose.
He fidgeted some more. “I’m not sure i
f . . .”
“I stand guarantee for them.” Seriously, when were these people going to get over their oh my god, it’s an alien hang-ups? “If it’s not all right, I’m not coming. If you want to call Danziger about that, I’m happy to wait.”
“Um. No, sir, it will be fine.”
We got into the car. As per security protocol, I got in the back. Thayu came with me and Nicha sat on the front seat bench. I didn’t think the driver was impressed with that situation. He must have been told to collect only me.
I didn’t care. He should have been informed that I didn’t travel alone, ever.
Nothing was said on the way to the regular airport where, ironically, I rarely came. I usually took the fast train to Rotterdam because it didn’t take much longer, and the border guards weren’t half as stupid as those at the airport.
Instead of dropping us at the main terminal, the driver went down a side road past the huge hangars. Bright flood lights spilled out of one hangar that faced the road, and maintenance personnel crawled over the solar suborbital plane inside, a giant delta shape with a top surface made of solar cells. We’d flown here from New Zealand in a similar craft.
Maintenance crew raised their heads and turned around at the approach of our car. They greeted the driver. The driver returned their greetings.
We plunged back into darkness past hangars where planes stood as dim silhouettes, waiting for daylight.
There was a spot of light on the tarmac to the left. By now we’d gone so far that we were almost on the other side of the airport.
The girl at the Exchange had been right. A hoverjet waited for us, lights already on, engine idling, ready for take-off.
CHAPTER 3
* * *
THE PLANE WAS of the private jet type, unmarked and quite new, I thought. There was a Nations of Earth logo on the side. We climbed up the narrow ladder into the cabin, carpeted and lined with birch wood. A tinny voice that came from a hidden loudspeaker told us to strap into our seats. The seating consisted of a luxury couch and a couple of easy chairs with covers of cream-coloured leather, arranged around a low table. Works of art hung on the walls, and there were blue curtains over the windows, held aside with silver rope. Soft, cream-coloured carpet lined the floor. I checked my shoes so as not to make dirty footsteps on it. A short passage led to a kitchenette behind the front wall of the cabin, and sounds of clicking glass drifted from the open door.
