by Greg Keyes
“There’s more than one way to be the best, Jake. Don’t confuse the hype with the reality. Just because Legacy Squadron is going to get all of the public attention, it doesn’t make any other flight group less important. Nobody even knew who Russell Casse was, remember?”
As she said it, the day he first met Charlie flashed through his mind, when he’d shown the younger boy his “fighter jet.” He had encouraged Charlie to believe an orphan could do anything, aspire to anything. He’d used Casse to make his point—not that Casse was an orphan, but that he was a nobody.
“That’s all pretty easy for you to say,” he said. “You grew up on television. Everybody knows who you are.”
“It was an accident of birth, Jake. Are you going to hold that against me? And anyway, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. You think it was fun, being a teenager, having my every move scrutinized, having the very clothes I was wearing judged in front of the whole world?”
“I guess you and Dylan can commiserate on that subject.”
She was silent, dangerously silent.
“You know,” she said at last, “one thing I liked about you from the beginning was that you weren’t from my world. You weren’t born to privilege, you had to work for everything you got, and it was hard, and yet at the end of it you still had this big heart, this ability to love. When I saw what you and Charlie had, what you meant to each other…” She stopped and then looked at him. “If this is an issue, you need to tell me right now.”
“I don’t want it to be an issue,” he said, “but it seems like you’re trying to keep me sort of a secret.”
“We’re in public right now,” she said.
“Twenty miles out of town.”
Her voice dropped to a furious whisper.
“Look, if this is about me not jumping your bones in the vestibule of the White House, you have to understand a few things. My father is getting worse, and I don’t want to draw attention to him. Which means not drawing attention to myself. That’s difficult enough to do as it is, in the job I’ve got. So, no, I don’t need the news rags speculating anymore about my love life than they already do, okay?
“Yes, I want to keep you under the radar, for now. That has nothing to do with how I feel about you, but if you can’t handle it, I don’t know if this can work. It’s hard enough, the long-distance thing. If we’re just going to argue every time we do see each other—is this how it’s going to be?”
“No,” he said. “No. I get it. Okay? I’ve just really missed you, and things are getting really tense back at the corral, and you’re right. I want to enjoy the time we have together.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “We probably should have talked about some of this stuff a long time ago.”
“Probably,” Jake said. He paused and cleared his throat. “So this whole laying low business. Does that mean we won’t be, uh…?”
She smiled. “I have secret service at my disposal, Jake. Plans have been made.”
34
NOVEMBER
On the day the sky appeared, Dikembe didn’t know what it was, but he feared it, the circle of light. He crouched at the side of his cell, face to the wall, unable to bear the brightness and the sensations it sent crawling through him. He tried to think what it could mean.
After what seemed like a long time, he heard a voice.
“Dikembe,” it said. “Take the rope, Dikembe.” It was the first human voice he had heard in a very long time—and it was also the last voice he had heard.
“Zuberi?” He turned to look up, and saw the silhouette of a head appear in the brilliant blue disc. His eyes were adjusting.
“The rope,” Zuberi said.
Dikembe saw, then, that a rope had been let down. It had a loop tied in the bottom. He regarded it for a long moment.
“No,” he said. “This is some sort of trick. I do not trust you, Zuberi.”
“It isn’t a trick,” Zuberi said. “I’m letting you out.”
“Why?” he demanded. “You put me here.”
“Does it matter?” Zuberi asked. “Aren’t you tired of being in that pit?”
Dikembe stood up, stretching to his full height, realizing Zuberi was right, that it didn’t matter. In a way, he supposed, he was safe in the hole. It meant his father still wanted him alive—but what did it mean if his father wanted him out?
He could not bring himself to give a damn.
So he put his foot in the noose, thinking it might just as well be his neck. Then he grabbed onto the rope.
“Ready,” he said.
Something began pulling him up. When he reached the lip of his prison, he saw the line was fastened to a winch on a jeep. They were in open country. He didn’t see anyone but Zuberi.
Dikembe climbed out of the hole.
“Dikembe—” Zuberi began. It was as far as he got. Dikembe hit him below the waist, lifted him high and dumped him head first to the ground. Zuberi took the impact with his elbows and kicked at Dikembe’s chest. Rage had such a hold on him that Dikembe hardly took note. As Zuberi scrambled backward, trying to stand back up, Dikembe threw himself bodily on the man, slamming at his face with his fists. He connected and felt the crunch of cartilage, heard Zuberi cry out in pain. His betrayer covered his head with his arms as Dikembe continued to pummel him.
Dikembe finally realized that Zuberi wasn’t struggling anymore. Panting, he looked down at the bloody, brutalized face.
“Are you done?” Zuberi asked through split lips.
Dikembe relieved him of his sidearm.
He put a round in the chamber.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because you would be dead, otherwise,” Zuberi said. “They would have caught you and they would have killed you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Zuberi said. “When I brought you in, however, I was able to speak to your father. To plead with him to spare your life.”
“Spare my life?” Dikembe said. “So I could live down there? What were you thinking?”
“Well, I admit it wasn’t ideal,” Zuberi said, “but it gave me time. Your father trusts me completely now, and so eventually I was able to arrange this.”
“And what is this?” Dikembe asked.
“A rescue,” he said. He winced and touched his bleeding lip. “There is enough gas in the tank for you to reach the border. I happen to know of one crossing which is not well-guarded today. You have food, water, and currency. And some clothes.”
“And you?” Dikembe asked. “How will you explain my escape?”
“You beat me up,” Zuberi said. “You took my sidearm and killed my men.”
“What men?”
“They’re behind the jeep,” he said.
Dikembe strode around the vehicle and saw them, both shot to death.
“It couldn’t be helped,” Zuberi said. “If it matters, they were two of the men responsible for the massacre. I chose them very carefully.”
Dikembe felt sick. He was having a hard time gathering his thoughts.
“In this story of yours—how did I get out of the hole?” he asked.
“Ah,” Zuberi said. “Your father sent me for you. My orders were to take you out.” He spit some more blood. “Are you going to shoot me, or may I stand up?”
Dikembe motioned for him to stand.
Zuberi got up, touching his face gingerly. “You’ve at least made my story seem quite plausible. I could hardly have done this to myself.”
“Why did my father send for me?” Dikembe asked.
“Because he wants you to attend an execution,” Zuberi said. “Your own, in fact.”
Dikembe let that sink in. He had suspected it, of course, but to hear Zuberi say it was a different mule altogether.
“Why now?” he said. “Why not earlier?”
“He had a dream or something,” Zuberi said. “Some sort of revelation. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but your father is really quite mad.”
“Yes,” Dikembe said. “That thought had entered my mind.”
Zuberi reached into his pocket and pulled out some car keys.
“Here,” he said. “You had better get going.”
Dikembe took the keys.
“Should I drop you off somewhere?” he asked.
“No,” Zuberi said. “I’ll walk. It’s not really that far, and it will look more authentic if he sends someone out here to have a look.”
He stuck out his hand and attempted a grin, although it was obvious that it hurt.
Dikembe took it. They shook.
“I am sorry I did you harm, old man,” Zuberi said. “I did not want to see you die.”
Dikembe nodded. “Take care of your family,” he said.
Zuberi smiled a bloody smile, and then walked away. Dikembe put on some of the clothes, and then got behind the wheel.
* * *
The kilometers scrolled by on his dashboard. Dikembe still squinted at what was only ordinary daylight. Despite the clean clothes, he smelled wretched.
The grasslands extended to each horizon, and he felt tiny, alone. It seemed almost too big after his time in the hole. Even in the light, rolling through the green grass and a sky like turquoise, the dark savanna of his drawings remained with him. He felt that if he got out and scratched the bark of a tree, he would find a nightmare beneath it.
He forced himself to look forward, to a flat in England, by the sea. Or perhaps a sunnier place, like Spain. A house that was mostly glass, with plenty of light. Some canvas, a sketchbook. Somewhere quiet, but not too quiet, where he could rejoin the stream of humanity.
He came to the border crossing. As promised, it was unguarded, and soon the sign declaring the National Republic of Umbutu was in his rearview. An hour or so later he pulled over at a truck stop. It was the usual informal affair, with a few cots and a little restaurant under a round arbor. Children were playing in the red dirt, and an old man sitting out front waved and greeted him in English.
Dikembe asked him if there was a shower, and there was—a gravity-fed affair in back. He took his time cleaning himself up, and when he was done he was amazed by how much better he felt. His spirits rose further when he sat at one of the small tables and was served chicken stew heavily laced with cumin and a lukewarm 33 Export beer.
The old man came over with a beer of his own and started chatting. Had he come from Umbutu? Dikembe answered that he had not, but from farther east. He asked the old man what he knew of Umbutu, and was regaled with tales of monsters, murder, and cannibalism. Dikembe hoped that the last wasn’t true, but the rest of it, although exaggerated and distorted, contained large grains of truth.
A few more men joined them as the shadows lengthened. They laughed and joked and talked about their day. For Dikembe, it was surreal—he had almost forgotten that people lived this way, just being ordinary. He wondered if his Oxford mate Brian was still alive, and if so what he was doing. Whether they would have anything to talk about if they ever met again.
He wondered where Hailey had ended up. Probably not on the yacht anymore. She would be around forty now, probably married with a few kids.
He might be able to track Brian down. Hailey would be more difficult, since he couldn’t remember her last name, but the owner of the yacht probably had an accounting of its employees. The point was that it was all out there, a planet mostly at peace, a world he had only been able to observe through a tiny crack in the wall.
He took a cot and slept more soundly than he had in many years.
* * *
The next morning, back on the road, something began to itch at him. Something didn’t feel quite right. He was avoiding something—and then he finally understood what it was.
Zuberi. Why hadn’t he rescued Dikembe sooner? Why had he waited until his father made the decision to execute him?
The answer was simple. Because whatever he said, Zuberi knew that in freeing Dikembe he was putting himself at risk, and he had not been willing to take that risk until there was—in his mind—no other choice.
Dikembe pulled over to the side of the rutted dirt track that passed for a road and turned off the engine. He got out and looked across the manioc fields that bordered the road, toward the blue distance he had put behind him. He looked ahead, where the fields were cut by a line of palms of some sort. He sat on the jeep for a moment, feeling the heat from the sun on his face, taking in the great dome of the sky that—only yesterday—he had all but forgotten.
Then he got back into the jeep and started it again. He drove forward until he found a small crossroads that allowed him to turn around, and started back the way he had come.
35
This time the border was not unguarded. Four men with assault rifles watched Dikembe approach. He stopped short of the checkpoint and got out of the vehicle.
“Stop there,” one of the men said.
Dikembe sized them up.
“You,” he said, pointing. “You are Mayele. You fought with my brother in the Salt Ridge battle. You fought alongside me when we cleared the lowlands.”
“That is true, my prince,” Mayele said.
“Don’t listen to him,” the apparent leader said. He was young, with wide-set eyes. He wore the insignia of a captain. “He is not a prince. The president has declared him a traitor and an outlaw, and that he is possessed by the demons.”
Dikembe ignored him, and instead turned his attention to a big man, who also bore the alien tattoo and hash marks on his arm.
“And you,” he said. “Jelani. I saw your brother and his family safely out of the country. You are aware of this.”
Jelani’s gaze dropped, as if to study the chalky dirt of the road.
Dikembe took a step forward. The captain brought his rifle to bear.
“You,” he said to the captain. “What’s your name? I don’t know you.”
“Faraji,” the man said. “Stop there.”
“Faraji,” Dikembe said. “Put down your gun.”
“I will not,” Faraji said. He motioned with his hand. “Take him prisoner,” he told the others. “Don’t any of you remember? He conspired against our country.”
“I conspired against my father,” Dikembe said, “because he is mad and he is destroying you, all of you. I’ve been across the border. There are no monsters out there, and the only monsters in Umbutu are those we have made of ourselves. Faraji, you were too young to fight, so you never knew their touch. Never learned to hunt them by sensing how they hunted us.
“I have known that. Mayele and Jelani know what I mean, and they remember what it was like to follow their princes into battle—the twins of Umbutu. What it was like to fight to save your people rather than to repress them.” He looked at the two men he knew. “It was a different feeling, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jelani said softly. “It was.” He raised his rifle and pointed it at the captain. “Faraji,” he said. “Lower your weapon.”
Mayele made his decision and covered the fourth man, who hadn’t said anything. That man dropped his weapon, but Faraji’s gun was still pointed at Dikembe’s heart.
“Put it down, son,” Dikembe said. “None of us need die here.”
“I will not betray Umbutu,” the captain said.
“You betray nothing,” Dikembe said. “I have come to see my father. I will not meet him as a prisoner, but as a son come of his own free will. Step aside.”
“Faraji,” Jelani said. “You are fixed to marry my sister. I do not want to kill you, but if you murder my prince, I will put you down like a dog.”
Faraji’s lips tightened across his teeth. Then slowly, slowly he lowered the weapon. Jelani took it from him, and his sidearm as well. They also disarmed the other man, who had yet to speak.
“Do not harm them,” Dikembe said. “We are all one people. We should not be killing each other.”
“What should we do?” Jelani asked.
“Make sure they don’t have any radios,” he said. “Take their jeep an
d follow me. By the time they can walk to an outpost, it won’t matter anymore.”
* * *
The village of Zuberi’s birth was only a few kilometers from the capital. It was a small place, with less than a hundred houses, most thatched with grass although a few were roofed in tin. The streets were dusty with red dirt, and the children playing in them fled at the approach of the jeeps.
Memory served Dikembe well—he had little trouble locating Zuberi’s house. When he approached, Zuberi’s eldest son, Moke, came to the door. He was fourteen and looked frightened, but also determined.
“Moke,” Dikembe said. “Is your father home?”
Moke’s eyes widened as he recognized him.
“No, my prince,” he said. “He is at the capital, with your father.”
Dikembe noticed someone approaching from behind Moke—a man in the uniform of his father’s Home Guard. Dikembe drew his pistol.
The man looked surprised, and cut his eyes. Following his gaze, Dikembe saw the assault rifle leaning against the wall on the inside of the house.
“Don’t, brother,” Dikembe said.
“I know who you are,” the man said.
“I have no quarrel with you,” Dikembe said. “Come out of the house.” From the corner of his eye he saw Jelani come up on his right. That seemed to do it—the guardsman held up his hands and stepped across the threshold into the harsh sunlight.
“Is your father here?” Dikembe asked Moke again.
“No,” he said. “It is as I said.”
“Then ask your mother to come out,” Dikembe said.
Moke vanished into the house and returned in a few moments with Eshe, a small woman with pleasant, round features.
“Dikembe,” she said. “How can this be?” She took a step back, as if fearing he wasn’t who he said he was.
“Eshe,” he said. “Do you remember who kept watch by the granary the first time you and Zuberi—”
Her eyes went wide.
“Hush,” she said. “My children are here.” But she looked relieved.
“Has this man hurt you?” Dikembe asked, nodding at the guardsman.
“No,” she said, “but I am afraid of him. He says my husband sent him, but I do not believe it.”
