"Anything else?"
"Tribalism is on the rise. Soon it will be on such an unimaginable scale it will be difficult, if not impossible, to stop."
The hush in the chamber was painful. Regis looked up. “Are we in agreement then? Understand that this must be a unanimous version from all department heads. What is your decision?"
Every light in front of the designated party was ... white. The world was going mad, and there was no other choice.
"Admiral Riekhert."
The admiral straightened. “Sir."
"What is your complement, at present?"
"Nine thousand sailors, seventy-three cruisers, sixteen anti-grav battle platforms, and a hundred and forty-six aircraft. Fifty percent of that is composed of fighters, thirty percent rescue, ten percent surveillance, and ten percent dreadnaughts. All have radar stealth capabilities and invisibility modes."
"Admiral Riekhert, current alert status is now red."
"I understand."
"You are directed to implement Project Savior. Are there any questions before you and Commander Ibrov leave?"
Riekhert drew in a deep breath, rose from his chair with Ibrov standing beside him, and with a quick shake of the head, they bowed courteously, turned and left the hall, their footsteps sounding like a march.
Regis banged his gavel lightly and announced the meeting was adjourned. Rising smoothly, he walked to the side exit and departed for some other destination. The hall cleared ... and then, from a far distance, a klaxon sounded. The complex was entering battle readiness. Soon every man and woman would be going armed to the teeth. Children who had passed their psychological fitness tests would be allowed to bear weapons. This was a time of great danger.
* * * *
Elizabeth Drew sighed. “It begins, then. What we all feared was necessary. We come from out of the shadows and declare war on the insane."
"And let us hope,” said her friend beside her, the fine line of her aristocratic Japanese features showing stern and beautiful, “that we're not too late in saving our world."
"And if we are?” Elizabeth asked, soulfully.
"Then,” said Anthony Pembroke's wife, “they'll get what they've been begging for during the last two thousand years."
* * * *
Gregory Stavarosz looked behind him, the lights of the searchers coming closer down the valley, and soon he and his wife and their children would be found, and if they were all lucky, shot.
"Iggie?"
He turned to face her and smiled, the picture of a woman with her man reflected in her face. Jonathan and Emily slept by her side, exhausted from the long, horrific climb.
"Yes, dear?"
"They're coming?"
He nodded shortly, unwilling to admit it even when they both knew.
"Yes. They're coming."
"There's nowhere else to climb?” she asked, regarding the towering cliff-face behind her. He looked up wearily for the thousandth time, searching for a way, if there was one, any way that led to additional time, but there was none. If there had been he had the ropes, the grapples, the technique. He could make it ... but even if there were, he looked at his wife, his childhood sweetheart, the children sharing her blanket, and knew he would not do it alone. This was where he belonged.
He crouched over her, and they kissed, their lips soft, filled with a final passionate message, and then he stood, tall and grim. He checked his bolt-action rifle.
"Marta, listen closely. I'm going now."
A hand rose to touch her throat, and she nodded. “I know."
"I'll try to decoy them away from here,” he explained. “If I'm lucky, if I can shift their attention from the trail, it will give you and our little ones a chance. You remember now ... alongside the clutch of boulders I pointed out yesterday. In daylight it would have been hopeless, but at night, with their attention elsewhere...” He looked across the expanse of the craggy slopes.
"I understand, Iggie."
"But if for some reason, if worst comes to worst...” He couldn't finish, but there was no reason to. She understood and nodded. She would do what he'd asked. It was why he had given her the pistol. She knew how to use it. For her children, for herself, so they would always be with him.
Without another word he turned, his pockets filled with cartridges, the two hunting knives at the back of his belt, and then he strode down the path they'd clambered up hours before. They had been cut off from the pass that led to safety, and so were against a cracked, glacial ravine without hope of climbing out.
A hundred yards on, he stopped to look back, and he saw her looking down. Then she turned and disappeared.
With a chuckle at his good fortune, having always known her, having always known that they thought alike even as children, he looked at the crescent moon with its flittering of stream-like clouds, satisfied with what he'd had, and now all that was left was a small price to pay.
He ran now and saw he'd misjudged the enemy. They made faster time than he thought. In a burst of speed, he slipped into a clutch of mountain brush as a spotlight passed over him. Hunting knife out, he began to grimly dig, not stopping until he had a foxhole to crouch in and shouldering the hunting piece, he picked his targets. He'd get them, at least, before being put in a crossfire.
With a soft curse, he adjusted the scope. It wasn't good for late evening work, but considering the ones who had trailed them, perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to have something better.
When they came, as they always had, in numbers, they showed their fear of the dark and the wonderful mountain silence by making as much noise as they could and shining lights in every direction.
The first note he had of their specific direction came from the dogs. He could picture them ... all good German shepherds that cost a fortune to feed, sustained by money from the mouths of starving children. And in the Romany hills, there were many who starved to keep others fat.
He would have liked a lighter caliber rifle. A seven millimeter made such a noise, but then he shrugged. Beggars couldn't be choosers. The weapons were stolen in haste, as were their lives, and being so wonderful to have cast off his fears, he regretted nothing.
The barking of the dogs grew louder, along with the excited voices as the hunters neared. He stilled himself, waiting for the first to come up, holding a lamp in his hand. This was the one who gave them so much trouble. The man they called The Tracker.
If it hadn't been for him, they might have had all the time in the world to make their escape. But he pressed closer and closer until their only means of eluding those he led became a desperate, unsparing run. Then, when they ran into a dead end, they knew that was it.
Gregory Stavorosz was not a killer by nature. He was a mathematician. A teacher. A scholar of letters. Climbing mountains, camping, hunting, were only sports he had indulged in when he could, wanting to teach his children what he knew, but now they probably wouldn't get a chance to grow older. He wasn't a fool. He knew the odds and was thankful he wouldn't be alive when Marta used that pistol.
He smiled darkly. At least he'd have the satisfaction of killing this one man. Of course, those behind would finally get to him, but until then Marta and the children had a chance to cross into the frontier.
She'd know what to do then. The mountain people were clannish and despised the secret police, remnants of a splintered empire, refusing to die out. If for no other reason than to laugh about helping a widow and her children escape, it would be doubly acceptable for a woman of their blood.
Soldiers shouted as the dogs whined. They'd come across fresh tracks. There was no help now. Any moment ... he aimed through the scope, placing the post sight in such a way as to pick out the slimmest outline holding a light, the slimmest chance that was to mean everything—
And a light that lit the entire valley shone upon them, and a thundering voice came from out of the skies:
"Attention! Attention! Go no further in your attempt to secure the arrest of Gregory Stavorosz and his family. T
his is a ship of the international rescue services. We are a multinational force recognizing neither borders nor power groups."
With a startled hiss, Gregory turned around trying to look into the awesome light. It filled the entire sky over their little valley, and the valley had to be little in comparison to what hovered over them.
Screams came from below. Sporadic shots fired upwards. Then multiple shots, then rapid fire, then automatic fire. Someone was bringing up heavy weapons and aiming skywards. A couple of rifle mortars were shot in some general skyward direction. But aside from making a lot of noise, it didn't affect anything. Except, of course, to attract attention.
Several thousand yards of forest burst into flame, and everywhere white beams of lightning scorched death back and forth until the night was filled with annihilation. He flinched, eyes unable to bear the agony, the images blinding him. He burrowed into his little hole, his arms crossed over his head for cover, and as suddenly as it began, it was over.
Hesitantly, he crawled upwards. The horrible stench of burning flesh amongst the pines made one want to gag. Appalled, Gregory stared into a caved in mass of ashes.
It was easy to see, with a dozen raging fires lighting up the area, that he'd been on the periphery of hell. He chuckled hoarsely, and then laughed in delight.
Here he was covered in the ashes of those who would have thought nothing to have burned him and his family alive. Covered in their ashes ... absolved in their remains—and alive—alive—alive!
Laughing with hysterics, laughing as if his soul would burst with joy, he lunged out of the smoldering brush, swung stumblingly around, and ran uphill, yelling for his beloved and his children, wondering over the miracle, wondering at the cosmic joke. With shouts of their own, they came into sight, and his eyes filled with tears.
Above, the cruiser came to a rest, and the ship's commander thought it best to wait before coming closer in an approach pattern. He had to be delicate. Men like Dr. Gregory Stavorosz, had their pride.
* * * *
But that was not the only singular event. There were others. From hundreds of sources came stories about spacemen going out of their way to save people from disasters. Those who would have died from starvation, fires, floods, earthquakes and worse, were spared. Refugees stealing across closed borders, political prisoners lifted bodily out of labor camps ... Then there were stories of revenge.
One told of a Gulag installation where soldiers asleep in their barracks and at their posts woke to find their prisoners and their families gone, and the commandant hanging from a lamppost.
Stories came from China, Russia, South America, Africa, England, America, and Australia ... wherever there was repression, hidden or otherwise, there were its enemies. The color of another's skin, the accent of another's tongue, the ideology of another's politics, all meant nothing. Only justice was to make its mark.
A prison in Belfast found its electricity turned off for an hour, and when they finally got it working again, a famous philosopher turned terrorist, hunted down for killing soldiers who had fired their weapons into a packed group of schoolchildren, was nowhere to be found. Justice and justification went hand in hand with these people.
Then came the incredible tale of Doctor Maline de Corday of Haiti. With her own resources she'd set up a clinic for the impoverished and the ill, working day and night to help them through the nightmare of transitional homegrown despots. But each new variety brought greater peril for herself and her patients ... until the day soldiers carted away her precious medical supplies, and one particular soldier shot a nurse for trying to stop him.
Doctor Corday went berserk. Screaming, she grabbed a machete, intending to do as much surgery as possible.
The soldier who'd been grinning at the nurse he shot swung around startled, looked at what was coming, and turned his machine gun to fire. Then a light of incredible intensity flooded the clinic, and a voice thundered with a crack that sounded like an explosion. Lightning walked down the halls, picked out uniformed soldiers and blasted them into formless pieces of bloodied flesh.
Numbed, the machete dropped from her hand, her eyes cleared from the dissipating flash effect, and amidst the debris of frightened, cowering patients, and a floor of blackened corpses, she laughed.
From that moment on, the clinic and those associated with Dr. Corday were under “someone's” protection. Those who planned storming the place and wiping her and her people out of existence were found hacked to pieces in their own beds.
Then ... the most fantastic story of all. A freighter came limping in from the China Seas with the captain radioing for assistance. His ship had been attacked by heavily armed pirates on the brink of hulling her and taking slaves, when out of the skies this weird craft came, and without a by-your-leave fired beams of lightning that blew up whatever they touched.
Three pirate ships were disintegrated. Several swimmers, thinking they had escaped, were trailed from above, and when singled out, nothing was left but a reddish spot of boiling water.
Every one of the hundred and thirty-seven passengers who had witnessed the event were questioned.
First, the “craft” made no sound. Second, the weapons used were of no technology known to earth. Third, the ship did not appear to use wings or to need hover-type fans.
The commander of the craft had declared that they were one of a fleet from the International Rescue Services. This group had no connections to any political foundation.
Then extraordinary medical supplies were dropped down to the deck of the wounded freighter, along with specific instructions on how to use them.
Feverishly, those tended to earlier were examined, and the flood of surprise was something that spelled a change in the direction their world was to take.
Lacerations healed when treated with a peculiar yellow gauze. A woman who had lost an eye was tended to by a brave fellow passenger following directions on the printed label of something marked “head-eye dressings."
Then with a fingernail-sized syringe carried in the package marked “for dire emergencies only” he had injected the pressurized contents into a sinus cavity. It put the screaming woman out. At first, he thought he'd killed her, then realized she was just in a heavy, deep sleep.
Faithfully reading the instructions, he applied a soft plastic film over the wounded area, followed by a sealant spray,, which hardened. The victim, as with many others, was parked like cordwood in the lounge and watched over by other passengers. The wounded captain, refusing attention until his ship was safely in harbor, steamed as fast as he could.
The worst ones were transferred to hospitals, x-rays were taken, and stunned physicians stepped back, staring at the films. Something was growing from the bandages that appeared to meet the wound, enfold itself into it ... and it looked like new tissue was being created.
Five doctors almost had duels over whether to break through some of the wrappings and stop whatever was happening. But, as with the brave passenger, who tended to the eye case, with a pirate's pistol in hand, he watched over her until whatever process was taking place was finished.
Three hours later, sneaking into her room, her protector found sleeping, exhausted in a chair and the hardened casing around her head had cracked open ... and she was healed.
A day later, when she awoke, she asked them what happened. The last she remembered she was struck by something ... and the ship was going down. She was thirsty. Could she have a glass of water, please?
A number of surgeons examined her, and they couldn't make out what happened, because it was on a cellular level, and the machines they used couldn't detect any damage.
Except for the pink skin ... the curious blemish of that new flesh, along with its new eye that was the reddish twin of the other, she was fine.
There were others wounded, and their needs would have called for extensive medical treatment, only it wasn't necessary. In several weeks, everyone who had been hurt was able to look back and wonder, as if it had all been a dream.
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For the medical community, it was a promise of advancements to come. For the political community, it was a disaster in the making. People clamored to know who their unknown benefactors were. American, Chinese, Russian, Australian, Italian, the demands were all the same, and world leaders found themselves besieged by a group that grew from a few radicals to entire populations. For those who hadn't any answers, the pressure grew, until one day...
A gigantic ship hovered over London in the clear blue sky. Jets were scrambled, but as they came near enough to fire, they were blown out of the air as though they'd been hit by a giant flyswatter.
The message was clear. We can go where we like, whenever we like, and do whatever it is we wish to do. Be thankful we're discriminating.
Jets were recalled. Riot police stood down. Marines returned to barracks ... and weapons were put out of sight.
Around five o'clock Greenwich time a telephone rang, and the assistant to the assistant secretary for the Prime Minister was called to answer. He turned white when he got the news.
The Prime Minister had been summoned...
When he returned the ship lifted up, went into an orbital trajectory, and disappeared. Which was when the Prime Minister started making phone calls.
It was the end of the empires. The genius was in its simplicity. What these people offered couldn't be refused. They offered freedom from torment, from disease, and even from want. If the offer was accepted, peace would be theirs. If refused, those doing so would be destroyed.
The religious zealots were the first to challenge the doctrine. From China to Arabia to the Vatican to the United States, lessons they learned were harsh. No one had refuge in the shadow of their God.
Still, some resisted ... and the final straw came when another mother ship made a landing in a drought-ridden patch of Africa. It left after dropping off a huge load of a remarkable food. It was nutritious and not only staved off starvation, but thirst as well. Then, as the ship lifted off, lightning flashed a dozen bolts, and for the first time in ten years it rained.
* * * *
The Fourth Guardian Page 20
