by Patty Jansen
There was no winning this issue.
“You’re leaving tonight,” Amarru said. “We’ve got everything organised. Take everything you’ve got with you except documentation that identifies you by your real name. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Can I at least let my father know that I’m not dead?” I asked.
She shook her head. I’d known that. “We’ll drop him some hints. Give me your ID. I’ll look after it.”
She held up her hand and I deposited my gamra card in it. She was good. I trusted that the news that I was very much alive would reach my father in some way, because he was sufficiently clued up on gamra communication to pick up on it.
I was going to ask her about Ezhya, but stopped myself before I made a fool of myself. Of course he’d know I wasn’t dead. He didn’t read Flash Newspoint. Sometimes even I needed to be reminded that Earth media were not the main source of all information.
* * *
Amarru told us to rest, and we slept a good part of the afternoon, Thayu and I in the bed and Nicha on the couch. The room was so large that it refused to warm up despite the fire. At least the down blankets were warm.
When the day faded into night, we gathered in the kitchen for an evening meal. It was just on the tail end of getting dark, and a pale glow remained on the horizon, visible from the kitchen window, although I wondered if those were the lights of Athens rather than the setting sun.
While we were asleep, Amarru had returned to the exclusion zone, and we were left in the house with a few guards who said little beyond the necessary. A few times one or two got up from the table and went into the hallway. We’d hear their voices, but whatever they spoke about wasn’t important enough to mention to me.
Likewise, Thayu and Nicha said little because they didn’t know which association the guards belonged to and Evi and Telaris said nothing at all because they rarely did anyway. I spotted one of the men leaving the kitchen with a bowl of dog food.
It was not the most amicable meal I’d ever shared.
When we were done, we were told to pack and wait outside.
We did, not that “packing” was the right word for collecting our bags from the room, which took all of a minute.
The night was without clouds. The Moon had yet to rise, but an ice-cold wind had come up. I shivered in my hot-weather clothes. I hated to think what Thayu and Nicha felt. In fact, I hated the entire mission already.
I should have told Dekker to get lost. But I also knew that I couldn’t have, and he knew it, too. In the ramp up to the election campaign, Danziger sought to bring me under his influence so that I couldn’t be too outspoken against him. If I’d refused the job, he would have attempted to discredit me and the people I represented. He would find plenty of ammunition to do so.
All of a sudden there was a whoosh of air that was a good deal stronger than the icy breeze.
If I hadn’t known what to look for, I wouldn’t have seen the aircraft that landed in front of us. With the current through the surface, the craft was never rendered entirely invisible, but it was close enough not to be noticed.
Holy crap, did the Exchange regularly break its own rules about no craft landing anywhere other than at the Exchange?
And of course Thayu knew what I was thinking. “They have security reasons why they sometimes do it.”
A door opened in the side of the craft and the ramp extended. We clambered in, getting covered in dust that blew up from the downward jets. It was dark in the cabin, with only bluish light coming from the controls. There were three rows of seats behind the pilot. We found a seat each. I sat next to Thayu with Nicha on the other side of the aisle. Evi and Telaris went in the back. We passed our bags to them, and Evi stacked them on an empty seat.
Apart from the pilot and communicator, there were no other crew on board.
To my surprise, the pilot was not Coldi, but Indrahui. That was . . . unusual. One of the guards outside shut the door and banged his hand on the metal surface. The craft was off with a sudden jerk and when I next looked out the window, we were high above the land. The glow of the city beckoned on the horizon, not as close as I had suspected.
The craft climbed and climbed. We left the land behind. The moonlit ocean glittered below us. It never ceased to amaze me how powerful these engines were. I also wondered about flight routes and air traffic control and if the Exchange had anything to do with this highly illegal flight. The communicator was doing all kinds of things on his screen, but nothing that looked like normal air traffic control stuff from the Exchange. Of all things, he was looking at satellite images.
Soon, the outside view turned dark, except for the occasional light from a tanker on the tranquil waters of the Mediterranean.
Neither the pilot nor the communicator spoke to us. I wanted to ask exactly where we were going, but that wasn’t a thing delegates did. Your staff was meant to be responsible for that, never mind that they wouldn’t have a clue either.
Evi and Telaris were discussing something in Indrahui. Their voices were soft and barely rose over the rushing sound of the engine and the air under the wings of the craft.
Nicha used the time to catch up on some sleep, but Thayu was studying something on her reader. She was normally the first to sleep, but I could tell that she wasn’t happy with the situation of being in an unfamiliar world without knowing where we were going.
Well, that made two of us.
CHAPTER 11
* * *
I MUST HAVE DOZED a bit, because all of a sudden there was a lot of noise around me, and I woke up feeling sweaty with a crick in my neck.
It was still dark outside. Judging by the tilt in the floor and the low hum of the downward jets, we were landing somewhere, apparently. Already?
“Where are we?” I asked, my tongue still rubbery with sleep.
But Thayu must have decided that it was safe after all, because she was fast asleep in the seat next to me.
Nicha sat up, wiping sleep out of his eyes. “I have no idea. You’re the expert on this world.”
I tried to look out of the window, but all I saw were a few lights in the darkness. A vehicle, I thought. It was hard to see because the air was hazy.
The craft settled on the ground. The shuddering of the floor caused by the downward jets stopped. Dust drifted past the windows.
Evi and Telaris were peering out the window. Their night vision was better than mine. Thayu had now woken up with an unhappy moan.
“Is this where we get out?” I asked.
“It seems so,” Nicha said. He didn’t sound particularly happy either.
The communicator opened the door. Sharp and crisp dry desert air came into the cabin, laced with the smell of hot stone—the result of the downward jets roasting the sand.
I rose, feeling sick and stiff from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. Ow, my neck.
Outside in the dust stood a battered old minibus. The headlights lit a patch of pebble-strewn sand, dust swirling in the beams. The driver wore some kind of loose-fitting kaftan, with cloth wound around his head. A pair of brown eyes studied us through a slit in the fabric. The surrounding skin was dark and wrinkled.
We got into the bus. The seat directly behind the driver was taken up by haphazardly stacked boxes.
Evi and Telaris took the seat immediately behind that, Thayu, Nicha and I behind them. Our bags remained on the floor in the aisle because the very back seat was also buried under what looked like the local parcel deliveries.
The driver exchanged a few words with the aircraft’s communicator before the door to the craft shut again. I had no idea what language they spoke.
The driver came to the bus, jumped up the steps, dropped in the seat and took off. Never mind t
alking to us about where we were going. Never mind closing the door.
The road was bumpy, full of dustpans and potholes. Whatever little of the countryside was revealed in the beams of the headlights didn’t look particularly interesting: sand and rocks and more sand. Most of it was brown and dusty. The terrain was rough and hilly. Sometimes we went down a gully where there might or might not be water when or if it rained. Sometimes a few clumps of dead grass or the occasional dead bush or tree trunk that had long since lost its smaller branches.
Too hot even for termites.
It was December, I had to remind myself when I thought that it wasn’t particularly hot today.
After an hour or so, the sky started to lighten in the east and, because the sky was cloudless, the sun rose soon after. The first of morning light revealed a desolate landscape that looked disturbingly like Mars. The terrain was rough, with deep gullies and sharp ridges. The truck had to pick its way over a goat track that wound up and down the rough and rocky hillsides. The parched soil was yellow or brown, with rocky outcrops. The only vegetation consisted of small clumps of grass between the rocks, and the occasional grey bush.
For a long time, we saw no people, but the path we followed was marked with many tyre tracks. Then again, with the little amount of rain this region received, who knew how old they were?
Later on, there was a little more vegetation, mostly greyish grass. A few camels roamed the hills, although there didn’t seem to be anywhere near enough vegetation to sustain them.
Around this time, probably about eight in the morning local time, my feeder sprang into life with a crackle that made jump.
A voice in my head said, I see you’ve arrived. It was the dry voice of Asha Domiri, sounding like he sat in the bus with us.
I breathed deeply to calm my racing heart. It was just me hearing this, right?
Thayu and Nicha were both dozing, Nicha leaning against the window, Thayu lying curled up on the bench on the other side of the aisle from me.
Can you hear me? the dry voice came again.
Yes I can. My excuses. I wasn’t expecting this.
You have arrived at your destination.
I don’t think so. We’re in a vehicle. I’m not sure how long we still have to travel. We seem to have been given a ride with the local postman.
You’re in the area. We can see you.
Great.
We’ll be doing some scans of the region with this pass. At our current orbit, we will be overhead twice a day for you, and we won’t have reception the rest of the time. You’ll also find that your local feeder will move in and out of action as we pass overhead and disappear out of range. The area where you are has zero Exchange coverage.
I had not expected any different. The feeders generally only worked in some parts of Europe. When we visited my father in New Zealand, they didn’t work either. And of course that information now went to him.
I could feel his mirth when he chuckled. You are truly a curious fellow.
Curious and a subject of Coldi interest, maybe, but I was going to make sure that this whole project, and Asto’s obsession with not being seen to be involved in activities that would get them in trouble with the gamra assembly over their involvement on Earth, was not going to lead to anything that would lead to my getting in trouble with Nations of Earth. Not to mention cost any lives on Earth.
I want to make it clear that I’ll use the images you obtain, but if you want to come any closer, like, to get involved in a conflict, I have to abide by Nations of Earth rulings and will have to notify the assembly. In the current climate, I don’t think they will take too kindly to that.
I understand completely.
Why did I get the feeling he was laughing at me? Why, every time I dealt with a high-ranking Asto figure, did I see that article at Flash Newspoint, written by Melissa Hayworth when she still worked there: They Toy With Us.
Because they did, and one day, something was going to blow up in someone’s face, and that someone was likely to be me.
* * *
We kept driving. Gradually, we came to areas with more vegetation, some green vegetation even, although the latter was mostly in fenced-off farm fields. Camels made way for goats and donkeys. We met a small truck coming the other way, and then a second one. We occasionally came through little villages where people lived in huts made from rough stones, where kids ran after the bus and the occasional other vehicle honked at us.
This was also where I saw the first petrol-driven vehicle I’d ever seen outside of a museum or some historic parade. It was a little truck with an open tray at the back that had once been red, but was now a faded shade of pink dotted with spots of rust. It was being driven by an old wrinkled man whose hair was much lighter than his skin, and the tray held a cage made out of concrete mesh, which contained two goats. Likely, the age of the vehicle was more than twice that of all its occupants combined.
It turned into the road in front of us, blowing a cloud of black smoke from the exhaust. Urgh.
Thayu had woken up and was watching the scenery with wide eyes. To be honest, she looked a little alarmed, especially when we passed someone with a camel that had a giant net full of cardboard boxes strapped to its back.
Nicha had also woken up, but Evi and Telaris were both asleep.
“Look,” Nicha said.
Before us the land sloped down to a jumbled shantytown. I checked my map. We had arrived on the outskirts of Djibouti. According to my documentation, this had been a refugee camp after the second wave of oil wars.
Both sides of the road were taken up with a messy jumble of flimsy constructions. Tents, cardboard, plyboard and many things that would collapse into a soggy heap when they got wet. Rain must be non-existent, because the street, dirt, guarded and closed off on both sides by a forbidding fence, was dry. Clouds of dust followed each vehicle. Children combed through rubbish thrown out by the side of the road. People sold melons and other produce in little stalls.
At intervals there were taps with, concrete washbasins, where long lines of mainly women waited to get water or do their washing.
As in the images I’d seen, there were many different types of people. Dark-skinned women in colourful robes, some with their heads shaven, others with their hair in little plaits; men in white kaftans, wearing head coverings like our driver; some men wearing modern clothes, shorts and shirts and sports shoes. There were children everywhere.
It was now midmorning, and the bright sunlight had washed out the colours. A haze of brown dust hung over the city.
Seen from our air-conditioned comfort, the scene was surreal.
“Just like the Outer Circle,” Nicha said.
“Nah,” Thayu said. I understood that she had spent a fair bit of time in the Outer Circle, although she never spoke about it much. “This society has no structure. Everyone works for themselves.” Coldi had an infallible sense for societal structure. Nicha had once explained that the first thing they’d look for in any group of people was its leader. They would determine in a glance if the leader was of higher or lower status than themselves, and if higher, they’d find the next level and work their way down until they found someone of the same status as themselves. To my question how they knew this, I got a blank look. It was sheya, the instinct. You knew. There was no explaining this.
Our bus got some odd and suspicious looks either from other drivers or people across the fence. The vehicle had been clapped out and old by my standards, but compared to local traffic, it was brand new.
Sometimes little children ran after us on the other side of the fence.
“What are they shouting?”
“Probably they want money or jobs,” Nicha said. His voice sounded dark. Over the four years I’d lived with him, I
’d learned that he appreciated his comforts.
Gradually, the buildings became more solid, even if that wasn’t saying an awful lot. Row after row of three or four storey apartment blocks stood crammed together. Exposed raw concrete was eroded and stained with rust. Most of the windows no longer contained glass. Some of the walls bore bullet holes from past conflicts. Were those from struggles between warlords or was this damage from longer ago?
There were people everywhere. On the balconies, on the streets, leaning on the windowsills, in the alleys between the buildings. Many of them were black, wearing long robes. Some were weathered desert people wearing white, grey or blue robes and fabric wound around their heads. Some were lighter-skinned, Arabic types.
The road was no longer fenced off and the chaos of vehicles, bikes, pushcarts, pedestrians and animals was complete.
For some reason, Thayu and Nicha went to sit on the floor between the seats. Both were intently listening to some security instructions that I wasn’t privy to.
The way Thayu frowned usually meant trouble.
I tried to get her attention so that she could tell me what was going on when the earpiece stopped talking to her, but it didn’t. She motioned for me to sit down on the floor, too.
They woke up Evi and Telaris, but they remained seated.
The floor of the bus was extremely dusty. It was also hard and the road bumpy. Either that or my backside was too skinny.
From my position in the aisle with my arms looped around my pulled-up knees I could see Evi’s face. His moss-green eyes roved but the rest of him was perfectly still. The gun rested on his upper leg, so that the barrel protruded in front of the window, where everyone could see it.
Then the bus stopped.
Another traffic jam?
People shouted outside. Cars honked their horns.
What’s going on? I mouthed to Thayu.
She listened and shook her head. Nicha was listening, too. A man outside was yelling, but I couldn’t make out what he said.
