by Stephen Moss
He held out his hand and indicated the truck idling by the helicopter.
She looked at him, then at her father slumped on the floor, then at her brothers staring back at her with shock and admonishment in their eyes. She could have no idea what she was really being offered by the stranger. She only knew that if she stayed here she faced reprisals from both her father and brothers. She could not know that she also faced an unpleasant and ignominious death, but the life she saw laid out in front of her did not seem much better than that at that moment. She looked into the black eyes of the stranger. He was massive, and his face carried a threat of violence.
But as she looked at the black eyes of the man in front of her she also saw sadness, and then something different in his proffered hand: an offer of protection. Unlimited and undying protection. And as she sensed the depth of his commitment, her hand lifted from her side as if on a string. He took it, smiling gently and with fathomless empathy, and then he started to step back toward the truck, pulling her gently along with him. She followed, like a puppy on a loose leash, gently propelled toward a new life, more by the draw of his eyes than the gentle pull of his hand.
When they arrived at the door of the truck, she saw the surprise on the eyes of the man and woman now seated on its bench seat, and for a moment she shrank from their stares. But words exchanged in a language she did not understand quickly changed their mood. She watched the woman’s expression as she shot a look of dark anger back at where Banu’s unconscious father lay, and then with outstretched arms the strange lady pulled Banu onto her lap.
A moment later they were gone. Leaving Banu’s old life behind her. A way of life that would soon be smote by the disease that was even now multiplying in her veins.
One of the many mysteries Banu would struggle to understand in the months to come was the minuscule cell that even then was floating on a whispered comfort from Jennifer’s mouth, to be drawn in by Banu’s own hesitant breath. It quickly found purchase in Banu’s lungs, found its way into her bloodstream and began to multiply. Alone it would not be enough. Not even hundreds of its kind would have been able to stem the tide of viral growth already spreading through her veins.
But supplemented with the tens of thousands of others of its kind that she would inherit from Jack and Jennifer over the next few days, the combined horde would seek out and destroy the alien virus that was dividing busily inside her. In fact, it would seek out a host of foreign bacteria and viruses that infested the blood stream of her slightly malnourished body, and cleanse her of them. It would be the first of many changes she would undergo in the coming months. Changes the most open minded and well educated of children would have trouble grasping. Maybe on some level the parochial nature of her education may save her sanity as her world expanded exponentially before her eyes. Maybe it would even be a blessing, thought Shahim, trying to rationalize what he had just done.
- - -
Lieutenant Malcolm Granger of the British Consulate’s military detachment sped along, the alert voice of his colonel back at the embassy compound shouting through a satellite phone at him. Malcolm’s two-year stint at the embassy had been sorely disappointing to him at first, because of a lack of any hint of excitement. But that was all behind him now. After reconciling himself to the humdrum nature of the job, Malcolm had actually begun to appreciate the simple beauty of the country he had been sent to.
Turkmenistan may have played a relatively small role on the world stage in recent centuries, but with its borders with Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among others, it had been witness to some of the most important events in recent history. After a long run as a Soviet state, acting as one of the staging points for the forces that invaded Afghanistan in the first of the terrible wars that would ravage that hitherto peaceful and progressive country, Turkmenistan had made a slow return to its own tolerant roots, raising a generation marked, but not broken, by the scars of its totalitarian past.
Now an ally of the West and a burgeoning democracy, it harbored embassies from most of the major economies of the world at its economic and political heart: Ashgabat. But it was still a relatively poor nation, and the growing power of the Islamic regime ruling its burly Iranian neighbor to the south had forced it to establish strong outposts along that long border.
It was to the one of these many border outposts that Malcolm had been brusquely ordered, there to intercept and aid three American nationals that were apparently approaching the border even as they spoke. At first he had been confused by the request: why send a British soldier to meet American nationals? But his slight but growing grasp of the Turkmen dialect of Russian had not gone unnoticed by his superiors, and apparently it was a rare commodity indeed.
By his side in the embassy car was the Turkmenistan liaison to the British consulate, a man Malcolm had formed a burgeoning friendship with. Ruslan carried with him quickly processed papers for the fugitives, written under order of the Turkmen State Department who, in turn, had been implored by both the US and UK governments to make the three nationals welcome.
They actually had papers for five people, but they had been told that they should expect only three from that list to actually be at the border; which three they did not yet know. What that said of the fate of whichever two had not made it was something Malcolm did not want to ponder too closely.
- - -
The Iranian farmer’s old truck rolled up to the border gate, slowing as it approached in order to minimize suspicion. It was a minor factor, though, and unlikely to make this any less of an ordeal. They were two Caucasian adults, an Arabic-looking gentleman, and a young Iranian girl, traveling without just cause or permission. Their chances of getting across without a fight were slim, to say the least.
With that in mind, Shahim scanned the various guards and emplacements, surveying their firepower and angles of fire, formulating a plan. His machine mind calculated options for him, arraying statistics and probabilities of casualties on either side, and he sorted them quietly, refining his choices as the short line of trucks, cars, and carts shuffled slowly forward.
Their turn came.
As the guards approached the truck, Shahim could see the tension on their faces. The plague was spreading fast now, and the first trickle of refugees was starting to flow across the region, through border crossings like this one. But the disease was really still just taking hold, only a few deaths had been reported so far. The spreading coughs and wheezing chest infections only hinting at the scale of the epidemic that was around the corner. Once it came, the borders would start to close, maybe in a week, maybe in a few days, only time would tell.
A thick Northern Persian dialect barked surly words through his window, “Papers, please.”
Shahim withdrew a sheave of poorly faked papers that he had drawn from memory, his mind transposing an image from his databanks onto the sheets in minute detail. They were supposed to be letters from the Turkmen ministry, listing four names to match the size of his small party. The text, seals, and verbiage on the sheets were almost perfect, but the paper they were printed on, and their monochromatic tones, fell far short of authenticity. The guard was clearly suspicious, and with good cause. The papers were a sham. A second glance, a third.
Bending, the guard peered into the truck. Shahim had told Banu to pretend to be asleep across Jack and Jennifer’s laps. For Jack and Jennifer, Lord Mantil had thoroughly and somewhat brutally rubbed dirt into their white-skinned faces. He had done so with almost bruising force, but the effect had been pronounced: aging them and making them look impoverished, meager even. He had told them under no circumstances to show their teeth, a certain tell of the ardent attentions of American orthodontists.
He had also rubbed soil and even some fecal matter into his own teeth to disguise their uniform whiteness. A thick film of muck inside your mouth was not something he imagined a human would be able to stand for long, and neither would a Mobiliei, for that matter. But Shahim was neither human nor Mobiliei, he was a machine,
and he grinned a dirty brown grin at the guard as he spoke in broken Iranian at him, his voice lilted with a feigned hoarseness, his body stooped, a rancid stench wafting from his breath as he calculatedly emanated poverty.
And so, looking into the cabin of the truck, the guard saw three dirty, stinking adults, clearly poor, clearly farmers, and a sleeping child. The driver’s filthy teeth and foul breath disgusted the guard. Stinking peasants, he thought with the bitter snobbery of the poor judging the poorer. He surveyed the papers once more, dubiously.
They looked right but they felt false. The paper was too thin, the ink too light. Something was clearly wrong with them. He knew he should investigate further but the idea of searching these peasants turned his stomach. He glanced at the driver once more. In the end the guard was tasked with stopping money, drugs and wanted criminals from leaving Iran and he had no reason to believe these were any of those. That they had papers that were probably forgeries was Turkmenistan’s problem. Let them deal with these scrubs.
Shahim watched the guard from behind deliberately glazed eyes, and read the man. He was not surprised when he was waved through; he had assumed that getting out of Iran would be the easy part. The farmers he had stolen the truck from had no telephone, and it would be a while yet before it was light enough for the grounded helicopter to be easily spotted from the air. Only then would the Iranian forces searching for them know that the fugitives had taken a truck. Only then would the border be notified. The problem now lay not in getting out of Iran, but with the second set of guards ahead. It lay with getting into Turkmenistan.
He edged forward. His systems primed. If it came to it he would gun the car through the gate and then leap out, leaving Jennifer to drive onward while Lord Mantil took care of any pursuers and drew their fire away from the truck and the more vulnerable humans inside. But as they rolled up to the gate, they were greeted not by a Turkmen guard, but by a formal British accent.
- - -
Malcolm struggled to contain his reaction to the overpowering smell of the driver’s breath. Could this be right?
“Umm, Lord Mantil?”
It was a strange name, but he had been told to use that name specifically, and to deliver the following message, “I am Lieutenant Malcolm Granger of her Majesty’s Ambassadorial Detail, attached to the British embassy. My friend over there, our liaison to the Turkmen government, is expediting your passage into the country. I was told to get your friends to the embassy immediately to await further instructions. A ‘Neal Danielson’ sends his regards.”
Shahim allowed a smile to show on his lips and glanced at the palpably relieved Americans next to him. Jack slumped forward, the tension ebbing from his frame like a burst damn.
“Neal, you fabulous son of a bitch,” Jack mumbled into his lap, laughing weakly. Shahim noticed the Englishman’s crinkled up nose and remembered his deliberately potent breath. He deliberately minimized the air wafting over his grit-covered teeth, and as the aroma subsided, the officer’s politeness became easier, more natural, and the Englishman continued.
“For confirmation I was told to ask you …” he consulted his notes, “what are you the …” the next part was said with clear doubt, Malcolm certain it must have been incorrectly transcribed in some way. But he said it anyway, his orders clear: “what are you the second … arberator of?”
His brow crinkled and he looked back at the disheveled man in front of him. As he watched the truck driver’s black eyes, the man seemed to straighten, his whole demeanor changing. The lowly peasant he had seen only moments before surged, his back straightening, his expression setting in an iron look, the man behind the machine allowing the full measure of his pride to show in his expression and demeanor. Malcolm watched as Lord Mantil became the warrior before whom thousands had fallen, first to appease his race’s greed, and then to appease his own conscience.
“I am the Second Arberator of the Orbital, Lieutenant Granger: Lord Mantil of the Mantilatchi.” said the man.
Malcolm was transfixed by the powerful stare of the transformed man. The black eyes were piercing. The mention of the strange title seemed to have given a surge of power to the suddenly imperious looking man, and Malcolm managed only a nod at the reply he had been told to expect to the cryptic question.
“Well,” Malcolm managed after a moment, “for you I have special instructions, Lord Mantil.” he said, and the Agent looked at him curiously, “I am to get you to the airport immediately. You are booked on the first flight out to London. You’ll be met there with new papers and then you are to head to Tel Aviv, I believe. There to meet a … John Hunt … who has further instructions for you.”
The message told him a great deal. That it came from a British soldier told Lord Mantil that the team was alive and thriving, and spreading out to gather new allies. That it mentioned John Hunt meant his colleague was also alive, and had not fallen prey to the satellites before they were destroyed. Finally that it mentioned Tel Aviv could only mean that they were seeking Raz Shellet.
Shahim proverbially licked his lips. A worthy opponent. And another chance to bring the shame he felt to bear on a just recipient.
Lord Mantil nodded, and Malcolm told them to follow him back to the embassy. He would get them all clean clothes, a shower, and any medical attention they required, then Shahim would leave with Malcolm for the airport per their instructions.
Malcolm did not inquire as to the identity of the mysterious child, nor did the border guards or Turkmen liaison. Many a stranger had been given passage through this border with far less of an invite than the one being extended to these refugees, and no one saw the need to be officious in that invite’s application.
Chapter 8: Team Mechanics
“The problem does not lie in the structure, but in the scale.” said Birgit, frustrated. Madeline looked at her with anger in her blood. The German scientist had joined Madeline only a day before in what was now Madeline’s personal laboratory in North Dakota.
In a surprisingly efficient move, the Japanese and US governments had jointly leased the entire site from Matsuoka Industries for an indefinite period. Neal had let Madeline know the news along with a host of other developments only yesterday, while sitting in his office in DC. The rest of the meeting had focused on the initial members of her new team, and the initial projects she was to focus on.
It had felt strange, taking orders from Neal. But they had not been delivered as a set of orders so much as a list of requests made of an equal, and after discussion he had willingly modified his expectations based on her feedback. Appreciative of the auspicious start to this new phase in their relationship, she had returned to North Dakota just ahead of the first of her new team members, Dr. Birgit Hauptman.
Dr. Hauptman was a surprisingly slovenly dressed woman in her fifties, shedding the stern stereotype of her German heritage along with several office dress codes that Madeline had not been aware she was a stickler for. They had met at the airport in Minnesota, and Birgit had joined Madeline in the back of the government Suburban driven by a member of the security detail now assigned to Madeline. They had talked of their backgrounds, and Birgit had quizzed Madeline on all that had happened over the last two years before her inclusion in the project. Most notably the revelations of John Hunt and the workings of the resonance manipulator.
Then their conversation had shifted to wave dynamics. While a little outside Birgit’s field, she had dabbled in them as part of her experiments. Like the many people experimenting in her area of expertise, Birgit had exhausted so many options looking for ever-better methods of containment. For Dr. Hauptman was a nuclear physicist. But she worked well outside the standard electricity generation and weapons antics of modern day nuclear science. She was among the many researchers who were exploring the alchemist’s dream of a practical fusion reaction.
Fusion was the controlled driving together of atoms to replicate the hot, potent release of pure atomic power occurring every day in the heart of every functioning star i
n the universe. Unlike fission, it did not require the use of heavy metals like plutonium and uranium, with all of their associated dangers and costs. Fusion yielded more energy, required no specialized fuels, and left no radioactive by-product.
An ideal to strive for? No doubt. But for fusion to occur, so much heat and pressure was required that the only place it happened naturally was at the core of a star. And so, to date, no one had been able to make a fusion reactor that didn’t take more energy to run than it actually created. Birgit did not know it yet, but by the end of this week those inefficient Tokomak reactors of her career to date would have joined the zeppelin as yet another impractical foible of the past.
Before the two accomplished women could reach that goal, however, they would have to surmount hurdles even John couldn’t help them with. For John could tell them how it could work, and his papers were like a treasure map to a wide-eyed, childlike Birgit; he could even give them a precise design that matched the small but potent reactor that burned within each and every Agent that still walked the earth. But they needed to replicate that design on a massive diversity of scales, and for that they needed not only a design but an understanding of how it worked.
With Birgit’s already extensive knowledge and expertise, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but they were playing with fire. Not the fire the first cavemen ignited eons ago, but a flame that could not only burn their curious fingers, but vaporize anyone within a blast radius they had yet to even calculate. They had to step very carefully indeed, as any misstep could cost them their lives.
But patience was an elusive virtue indeed when you had a machine in your laboratory that could almost instantly execute any design you could conceive of. Deus ex machina could easily become diabolus ex machina.
