by Dusty Miller
He was relatively warm in his dry-suit. Relative was a good word. Pulling the mask down, he rolled off the rock and continued his survey. He’d pulled up a few bits of aluminum, distinctively charred and melted. Vaporized might be a better term. It was the first dive of the season. Lately the opposition had been making it tough to get a moment to himself.
The sound of the boat dropped off but he could still hear it. He visualized the map in his head. The boat, proceeding northeast, had gone around the next corner. What was important was that they didn’t come in here, not just now.
What he was looking for, what they were all looking for, was the onboard control module. The guidance system controlled the satellite, the control module controlled the onboard systems. Then there was the power module, another prize find. The maneuvering module, a cluster of small motors, was the least technically sophisticated item on the agenda. Pieces had already been recovered. It was still mostly unaccounted for. Data and technology recovery was an advanced science these days.
While the major players had their own systems, probably just as good if not better than EMERALD, there were smaller players. There were rogue-states, plenty of wheeler-dealers and some just plain opportunists—some of them quite heavy hitters, who would love to get their hands on it.
It would be worth quite a pretty penny if you could find a buyer.
There were plenty of those these days. Not all prospective buyers had the wherewithal to pull off a deal, and yet they would still try. They would gather all possible intelligence and try, and if necessary, to rip it off if they could. Even if they didn’t have the technical capacity to actually employ it, EMERALD was nothing if not a bargaining chip.
Fortified with these and other thoughts, Liam kept an eye on his wrist-display. The device was attuned to fine changes in water chemistry and at short range, PH balance, plus changes in electrical conductivity. He swam up and down, back and forth. There was no way to use electromagnetic detection. It was more or less impossible anyways in mining country, with every second rock outcropping red with iron oxides. The beaches were littered with fool’s gold, iron pyrites. Geiger counters had their uses, but even so they hadn’t found the power module. Satellites were mostly aluminum and other alloys, with nothing ferrous whatsoever in their makeup, and so finding one that had burned its way down and then crashed, was always going to be a problem. They had located three major impact points, the thing taking a bad bounce off the last one and most likely ending up…somewhere around here, with thousands of lakes, rivers, streams and bogs, all within an hour’s driving distance.
Chapter Six
“Just get it fixed, then.” Emil had run out of patience.
The man was telling him all available boats had been rented.
“Ah, yes, sir.” Mark tried again. “But, ah, honestly, sir, this sort of thing happens all the time. No big deal. It’s a good thing you didn’t try to go on, you might have run into some real trouble. I can give you a gift certificate for fifty free litres of gasoline…”
“Argh.”
“Don’t you guys go away—I’ll get you one straight away.”
Mark hastily nipped back into the kiosk and pulled one out from the drawer. He stamped the thing with THE PINES in stinking blue ink just as quickly as he could.
He proffered it with a smile, and Mister Lom, the one known as Conrad, accepted it with thanks, although the older one was still steaming.
After giving the dock boy, Mark, proper shit for the condition of the boat and the ruination of their day’s fishing, a coldly furious Emil stormed back up to the cabin. It wasn’t an act, either.
“Argh.” He stepped inside and dropped his equipment bag and fishing tackle on the floor just inside the door.
It was a little too convenient. First the motor, then the plug. On a busy day when all the boats were out on the water. There was one little inflatable, looking about nine feet long, with a three-horse motor on the back. Emil had turned away angrily, as it was just too small to talk about. It was too small to be useful. Since he couldn’t explain why, it was better to feign anger, which wasn’t that hard, and stomp off, no matter how churlish it might look.
Emil ran a hand over his forehead, lifting the hat with the other and staring at the sheen of moisture on his palm. The desert was hotter, but it was a dry heat. What they said about the humidity killing you was all too true in this heathen country.
His mood must have been infectious. Conrad, coming in the door right behind him and laden with as much if not more gear, cursed in no uncertain terms.
The man had the nerve to nudge him, even. Emil brightened slightly, he’d been hoping for some sign, a smidgeon of spirit or something.
He stepped aside, nodding genially as he took in the room. Emil pulled his cell-phone out of his buttoned-down shirt pocket.
“Get the laptop.” He began punching in numbers on the face of the phone as Conrad stooped to get their machine out of the bag. “See where the hell he is.”
As the younger operative set it down on the kitchen table and lifted the top, Emil stepped into the bedroom. He closed the door, as he wanted a quick word before hooking up and transmitting data. While the satellite link was secure, there were always concerns. His perfectly normal-looking uPhone would pass the average Customs and Immigration inspection. It was a simple, two-level system. What you did was give up the password to level one. They had a look at your recent calls, all of them innocent.
After a while, they gave your phone back, and welcomed you into the country.
There were a few things that Conrad didn’t necessarily need to know. Conrad’s device was similar. The devices would be used to upload data from the laptops and the other machines they were equipped with. Communicating was always going to be weak point. The only solution was to go without electronic communication altogether.
Conrad hit the button, warming it up. He cursed as he had a typo and it wouldn’t go.
Passwords were a bitch sometimes.
There were times when you really had to think about it. First thing in the morning, Conrad suffered from a bit of brain-fog, and he usually made his coffee and lit up a cigarette before attempting to remember which day it was and what the bloody password should be…
What next, thought Conrad?
Sooner or later, someone around here’s going to have to start thinking about some lunch.
Most likely that would be me.
Emil stood looking out the bedroom window.
A little privacy and the ability to speak freely, more or less, and within the bounds of small-talk as camouflage, was a prerogative of rank…it could also be tremendously reassuring.
There was one final ring and then someone picked up.
“Ah! Hello.” Emil always spoke very loudly during these calls. “Uncle Speck?”
He spoke Greek, that most musical of languages, as a matter of course. It wasn’t his native tongue, and he doubted if it was the other individual’s either.
Nothing you could really put your finger on, really, it was just a little feeling he had.
***
It was Sunday night, about ten p.m. At this time of year, full darkness came late. When Lindsey stepped out of the store, finally, after a very long day, her body vibrated in physical and emotional exhaustion.
She shivered in the sudden chill, but when she tipped her head back under the wan light of a half a dozen sodium bulbs on their tall standards, her jaw dropped.
The northern lights were going nuts.
“Oh!” She looked around, but there was no one there.
That was always the way, wasn’t it?
It was just her and the crickets.
She stood hugging herself for warmth.
No one there.
Off to her right, voices and the snapping of the flames came from a dozen different campfires scattered up and down the hill. People partied, drank, talked or just stared mindlessly into the flames. Their bonfires, rarely small, were a source of endless fa
scination to young and old alike. People dreamt by the fires, she being reminded of something Dale had once said. The old guy could be profound enough when he wanted to be. It just took a couple of stiff ones.
The trouble was, that this was the here and the now, this was not a story—and she had no one to share it with. This was an experience, perhaps even a potentially mystical one. If only the right person were there.
With her heart sinking a little, she lowered her eyes and turned her head. She could always go up and party. Sit by the fire and talk. She’d be welcome pretty much everywhere. With someone or other. They were all pretty nice folks…guests, really.
Cabin Seven, the vagaries of fate and the course of development being what they were, wasn’t too far off. It was the second one in on the beach side of the road. The lights were still on inside, and just as the thought came, she saw his head and shoulders in the kitchen window. He was face down slightly, probably washing up at the kitchen sink.
She bit her lip.
The aurora borealis didn’t often come in summer, and the display, stretching from horizon to horizon, was totally spectacular.
She had nothing to lose.
With the resolve to at least give it a try, she put her head down. Marching up the gravel road, around the corner and onto his front porch, she raised her hand. Looking right and left, her uncle Dale or Mark were nowhere in sight. This was a good thing, although one or two guests were visible strolling along on their little road. They didn’t matter nearly so much.
Taking a breath, Lindsey thought of her first line, and then gave a couple of gentle raps.
“Frank? Can I call you back later?” His words came, dimly caught through the thin walls of the cabin.
She could hear Liam moving around in there. He most likely took a quick look through the peephole. The front light came on above her. The latch snapped and then her eyes were flooded with warm amber light and he was right there.
He wore the earpiece and the thin extension microphone of a hands-off telephone system. It occurred to her that he might have been working. She had no real idea of what he did for a living.
After all…they barely knew each other.
Like the proper fool she was, in spite of some initial planning, she blurted out the first thing that came into her head.
“What’s that wonderful smell?”
Liam Kimball grinned. Shirtless, his hair was slightly disheveled and he was barefoot. His hand came up and he pushed his hair down, somewhat at least. There were one or two tufts still running rampant.
He didn’t often have this kind of effect on women, but it was something she had been unable to hide. Crikey, she couldn’t have been a day over eighteen or nineteen. It was making him feel distinctly old, possibly even grubby. Maybe even a little bit dirty.
All of this at the age of twenty-seven.
All of this before he’d even really had a drink.
With this one, you were sort of cautious about taking a real good look.
“Ah. What a wonderful question. I admire enthusiasm, incidentally.” Reaching out, he took her hand.
Liam Kimball pulled a slightly-bemused and unresisting Lindsey into his comfortable, albeit temporary new lair. He closed the door behind her, trying not over-linger on her protuberant nipples or the pert belly-button revealed below her cut-off, hot pink tank top.
Lindsey had very nice shoulders, he observed.
“I’m glad you asked that. It’s my own concoction. Not three, not four, nor even five peppercorns. Mine is what I call six peppercorn gravy…”
He wasn’t kidding either.
“Man does not live by fish alone.” He’d done something with beef, judging by the lingering aroma.
She stood there with an odd look on her face as he beamed paternally, face a little flushed. She caught the smell of alcohol. It was discernable although he was far from out of control. A man like Liam would rarely be out of control, she thought, chin up and looking on that cautiously optimistic male face.
A man like Liam would be very much in control.
She couldn’t help but look around.
Her eyes widened slightly. She did her best to ignore a small automatic pistol on the kitchen table, in the middle of being stripped down to its constituent parts for cleaning and re-oiling…she closed her mouth firmly. There was a computer, screen glowing blue, and various bits of electronic equipment, of a kind she wasn’t immediately familiar with but it might have been a fish-finder…??? There was something forbidding about the black glass eye on the front end of it. The side was open, and it was trailing coloured cables and wires all over the table top.
This was probably a good time to mention the northern lights.
Her mouth was opening to speak.
He turned around to head for the kitchen and that’s when she saw the scars.
***
Taking her courage and her fate into her own hands, as she was so wont to do of late, Lindsey breathlessly told Liam about the aurora. He insisted on pouring a drink for her, straight scotch. He sipped speculatively, looking at her until she took a nip of her own, the fiery liquor burning a hole down her throat.
“Whoa. But that’s good.” She’d tried it at school, of course, at one party or another.
It did the job well enough.
Only then did Liam allow her to drag him, glasses in hand, out onto the beach for a look.
He stood stunned for a moment, still holding onto her hand. Standing there at his side, he could smell her clean hair, and feel her warm breath when she turned to speak. Out on the lake, a loon called. Liam had been hearing yaps and long, mournful calls. He wasn’t sure if that was wolves or coyotes but it was sure as hell one or the other.
“It’s lovely. Amazing.” He tore his eyes away and looked up again, sensing her pleasure at this much attention.
Lindsey took another quick gulp of liquor.
“We could go for a boat ride.”
That calm face turned to regard her steadily.
It sounded as corny as all hell, and she hastened to assure him that they could use his boat as it had navigation lights.
“I’m not suggesting a canoe.” She giggled quietly, finally letting go of the poor man’s hand. “It really is something, but it’s not for everybody.”
Was she challenging him?
It sure sounded like it.
“So what do you think?”
He could not help but grin wryly and nod thoughtfully, like a proper gentlemen.
Shit.
They agreed to get sweaters and jackets and meet at the dock in five minutes.
***
Lindsey drove the boat with Liam sitting on the foremost seat and looking up at the sky. They were bundled up, both wearing long pants and jackets. She was glad they had changed, for a small plan was forming in her mind. The bulk of the lifejacket, tightly strapped around her was a real comfort.
They were a kilometre, maybe more, away from the camp. The last faint pinpricks of light at the end of civilization and society had disappeared. The boat chugged along, engine idling. She switched it off, listening intently to the silence as if expecting to hear some remark, someone on shore marveling at their nerve or their good fortune…or something. Of course no one cared. Most probably, no one had even noticed their departure. Night fishing was less popular, but plenty of them did it. She looked around, but didn’t see any other lights out there. It was a change for the jaded fisherman, as much as anything else. It was a shitty thing, but it was like everything in her life seemed to come back to this place in some kind of never-ending metaphor.
Finally someone spoke.
“...my cover story is that I am retired, collecting a small pension and pecking away at my novel. The thing is to stay in character and not draw unnecessary attention to myself...”
That made her laugh. The boat rocked, but not uncomfortably.
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad, is it?” She sat there looking up at the colours, the bands of pink
, orange, rose and blue that swirled and danced in the heavens above.
Water lapped the hull, rocking the boat. Boats flexed and there was always some little leak and there was always something splashing around down below. She turned on her light and had a look, finding a cupful or two sloshing along the keel line. It was more sound than fury. She switched off again.
He let out an odd little noise. His dim form shifted around on the front seat and the bottle gleamed in the starlight. She was amused when he lit the pipe, hastily stuffed into a pocket with a pouch of the aromatic weed.
“No. It’s just that I really was burned out. And I’ve gotten a job offer—it’s in the private sector. The money is scandalous, it really is—” And of course he had no idea of what to do, so he had taken the sabbatical.
That was the great thing about the civil service, and the salaried nature of his job, he explained. One of the benefits of a public school education, but the term meant something different in England.
She knew all about that from Harry Pott-Head and the Crimson Brothel.
Liam chuckled. He threw his head back and laughed. The lady had a way with words, totally irreverent and he had always liked that.
No-holds-barred.
The boat drifted, the motion gentle and soothing. With her jacket zipped up, Lindsey was warm enough.
She sat up carefully. His form, laying back on the inner prow, seemed totally limp and relaxed as the boat moved under him. He was a pretty cool customer, for all of his manners.
