Gabriel's Stand

by Jay B. Gaskill

  “I need a recording device.” They both laughed.

  “Alice, I do see it… I’ve been a bit too distracted, a little out of balance lately.”

  “You’re excused. The world looks like it’s coming unglued, doesn’t it?”

  “Our world. I understand that John Owen is in some kind of exile. They may have even tried to kill him. Even without a body, everyone has concluded that Lance McKernon was murdered. Thurston Smith is sure of that now. Our daughter was deep into this Gaia cult thing and now she’s running from something scary. I’m sure this ties back to John or Lance. Snowfeather is only safe by the grace of God.”

  “My God, Gabriel, suppose our daughter is a witness to a kidnapping or murder, how can she ever be safe?”

  Gabriel winced. “Only when the good side wins this. Meantime, she has melted away, as far away from that Gaia crowd as she could.”

  “Where is she, really?”

  “It has to be in Arizona or New Mexico. That’s where Fred Loud Owl could do the most to hide her. He has more hiding places than a fox.”

  “So we go to Arizona or New Mexico or wherever and find her.” Alice’s eyes flashed.

  Gabriel nodded. “I want to, but we are too conspicuous. It won’t do Snowfeather any favors for us to be followed. I think I will call Governor Wright and Bill Foster at home tonight. I need to prepare them for my replacement. I owe Idaho that much.”

  Alice sighed. “I so want to find Snowfeather. You are conspicuous, Gabriel, not me.”

  “We both are. And we still need more information from Loud Owl. We’ll surely draw attention to Snowfeather even if we just make inquiries.”

  “I can’t stand this uncertainty, Gabriel.”

  “Me either.”

  Alice sighed and stood up. “I might as well start packing up. I hated this damned town anyway.”

  “I remember. Gabriel stood, wrapping his arms around his wife’s neck, nuzzling her hair. “We may need to get you completely out of the crosshairs for a while.”

  “But I want to help find our daughter.”

  “I know. But maybe you could work on finding another safe haven for her. Who else could I trust to do that right now?”

  Alice hesitated. Then her expression became calm and focused. Yes. Something practical to do. Something that might actually help. “I could go back to work with the Intertribal Foundation for a while—the new offices are near Sandpoint. Snowfeather might even like it there. They can always use her help in the office. And I could even start painting again.”

  “Good. At least we’ve got some savings,” Gabriel said. “And Cousin Steve has taken good care of the old ranch.”

  Alice pulled away and looked up at Gabriel. “We’ve seen worse times.” Then her face darkened. “Gabriel, what do you think Snowfeather running from? Why didn’t she even call? If she is frightened, shouldn’t we be frightened?”

  “I could pretend I’m not scared.” Gabriel’s eyes teared up. “But our girl is obviously running from that Gaia cult. I think she can expose something they desperately want hidden. Nothing would surprise me at this point.”

  “So why didn’t she come here?” Now Alice was openly weeping.

  “You know this isn’t a safe place anymore,” Gabriel said. And at the moment he had spoken those words, a chill descended over them both.

  Part Two: The Human Conspiracy

  “Character is destiny.”

  Heraclitus

  Chapter 33

  Early Spring, one year after the Treaty Ratification. Southern Idaho

  The auto-camera light went red.

  Gabriel’s breath smoked in the crisp spring air as he cleared his throat. A servo motor whirred. His new AutoCam, a single camera mounted on a tripod nearby, had gone live. An umbilical connected it to a portable satellite video transmission unit braced against a lava rock.

  The wind stirred and Gabriel’s horse snuffled in the background. Gabriel listened to the computer voice in his concealed ear piece:

  6,5,4,3,2,1…Live.

  SatCom On: 0:6:07 Hours M.S.T.

  AutoCam: Pan. Frame scene.

  The scene AutoCam framed was an early dawn and a rugged Native American man in jeans, flannel shirt, a well used down vest. He is crouching next to a small campfire and a deep red glow seeps into the black sky behind him, igniting low clouds.

  Cue. Auto cam: Zoom tight to campfire, then pan to blackened coffee pot.

  A callused hand pushes a stick into the flames.

  Cue. AutoCam: Zoom out to upper body.

  His long gray hair hangs loose against a weathered face. In the firelight, the image could be a nineteenth century daguerreotype.

  “This is Senator Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom and as long as you are getting this on the web, there is still hope.

  “Look.”

  Cue. AutoCam: Zoom out and pan.

  Sagebrush, lava outcroppings, more sagebrush, all fade into the distance. A horse is silhouetted against brightening horizon.

  Gabriel continues, “This how the Idaho desert looks. I am standing a few day’s ride from the Bitterroot Mountains where Grandfather Fat Bear hunted with a bow and arrow. The dawn has just announced itself and the spring air still smells like winter. My breath makes a cloud and the sagebrush is still showing the night frost. The Little Lost River is just over the hills from this spot. I imagine ice has formed where it runs shallow and slow.

  “In this country, in Boise, Burley, and Bone, in Coeur d’Alene, Caldwell and Carey, in Paris, Portneuf, and Pocatello, in Moscow, Mud Lake, and Malad, my friends still call me Senator Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom…even after my resignation. That ‘take this job and shove it’ moment was my act of defiance…like this webcast.

  “I love this land. My roots here go back beyond written history. I say this because you must know where my loyalties lie. You may know my environmental record, but I want you to know my heart.

  “In the last few months we have lived with the first harsh steps to implement the Earth Restoration Treaty, a dangerous surrender that I and a few other Senators opposed.

  “Oh, I was tempted to support it at first. After all, I thought: We have been subjected to far too much change, far too fast. We’ve all suffered tech overload. At some point, my own history, my heritage, and my very soul…all of it became cartoonish and unreal, like those digital landscapes in the old video games. If I spent ten peaceful minutes in my native Idaho in twelve months, it was a miracle…me, a proud member of the United Tribes, with the blood of the Sioux, the Nez Perce and three other tribes in my veins.

  “I longed for something more peaceful. Something older. That was the hook for most of us when the advocates for the Treaty promised a return to the old days. At some point, I think we all idealize the past. We fantasize being lifted out of our electronic, over-stimulated world, and transported through time and place to a simple meadow, soft in the afternoon sun, a limpid pool, white clouds drifting, far, far from digital, virtual, chattering, ultimately fake realities. Too many of us live in a construct, a made-up version of that world. Ultimately the virtual is always inauthentic, a hollow imitation of this.” Gabriel picked up some dirt and let it spill back to the ground.

  “So I do understand the temptation to extremism. We all needed time to regain control of this monster technology. Before the big environmental disasters hit us, we were prepared to give up, to step aside and let others solve our problems.

  “And that was a devil’s bargain. Why, you ask? Because there are always unbalanced people willing to take over running things for us. Except for a few of us who woke up at the last possible minute, everyone bought into it.

  “The misery we have lived through in the last year is nothing compared to the hell that waits for us. Many of you have already lost whole businesses; others have been merely inconvenienced by the sudden inflation and the unexplained shortages. Some of you have noticed the unexplained disappearance of technologies you thought were useful and necessary. Mark
my words. No technologies will be exempt from confiscation. Check your medicine cabinet. Start hoarding right now. This is just the beginning.

  “In future webcasts, I will explain how terrorists and fanatics have hijacked a good cause, how poisonous language was inserted into this treaty, and how control of this very country is now passing into the hands of a cult.

  “This is my message to all of the Commissioners and their puppeteers. I know your game. And you know that I do.

  “I think you might even have me killed if you dared. To you, I must be a contradiction and an embarrassment. You think: ‘Surely Gabriel Standing Bear, an indigenous man, still bonded with his people, and with the bruised earth, would come to support these changes.’

  “You fail to understand that I belong to a larger tribe than the Shoshone and the Nez Perce, larger than the Sioux Nation. Larger, even, than the American nation I have proudly served.

  “My tribe is Homo Sapiens.”

  Cue. AutoCam: Closeup on face.

  Sad dark eyes.

  “You have gone too far and now we are at war.”

  Chapter 34

  When the old frying pan seemed ready, Gabriel opened the cooler and pulled out his last trout, plopping the headless fish onto the seasoned surface. He replaced the cast iron cover with his stick and poured himself black coffee.

  The sun boiled above the chilly desert horizon—where it struck the sage, a faint mist rose from the invisible dew. While the trout hissed softly in the fire, Gabriel folded up the camera tripod and rolled the cable into a coil.

  Webcast number one, he thought. Both parts fit neatly into the satellite transmitter case. Gabriel snapped shut the lock and looked across at his horse. The appaloosa stallion was engrossed with trying to reach a tiny spot of grass just outside the tether.

  I missed last Memorial Day, he thought suddenly. Snowfeather should have been there. A familiar pang of worry stabbed at him, but Gabriel noticed his trout was burning.

  ——

  When he broke camp an hour later, his thoughts returned to his wife and daughter. Snowfeather was as opinionated and beautiful as her mother, and as stubborn and eloquent as her father. He remembered how she looked that night on television, those long months earlier, when he and Alice sat together, watching with a mixture of pride and horror. The Treaty ratification still hung in the balance and—partly because of their daughter’s charisma and eloquence—disaster loomed. The image of Snowfeather, standing on a police car, held millions of viewers in thrall on behalf of a cause her parents shared, while she innocently served an agenda dangerous to the whole human race. Snowfeather was riding high, topping the crest of a wave that would drown a whole country. The television image was still vivid in his mind. “Chief Seattle must be weeping because now I learn that a poison more terrible than anything nature can produce is killing the ocean, the cradle of all life…”

  Alice said it. “In her place, you would have done exactly the same, Gabriel.” Alice was always the wiser one in this marriage, he thought. And now I need my daughter’s eloquence. But what would Chief Seattle say about the new poison, aimed at humanity itself?

  A second image was equally vivid in Gabriel’s mind. It was just nine days after the demonstrations, so swift was the popular will heeded.

  President Chandler was speaking in the Rose Garden—his defining moment. “Today, with the ratification of the Earth Restoration Treaty, we usher in a new era of technological responsibility. Hereafter, this Earth Day will be known as Earth Treaty Day.” As Chandler signed the proclamation and implementing legislation, the cameras pulled back. And there was their daughter, Snowfeather, standing and smiling—right behind the President of the United States.

  Gabriel and Alice had not seen their daughter since that April 22 telecast – it seemed an age ago. History is littered with the casualties of good causes taken too far, he thought. God help me if…

  Don’t go there, he told himself. Snowfeather is a survivor…

  ——

  As Gabriel’s horse plodded up the gravel road to his trailer, he wondered if he would be fighting a lone battle in this. Last week a long delayed encrypted message from a furtive and very worried Senator Thurston Smith had reached him with the news that John Owen is a fugitive, but safe…somewhere.

  Not a word from Owen. Now even Smith has gone dark, Gabriel mused. And nothing from Snowfeather. I suppose Fred is being extraordinarily careful with her. At least Alice is safe among trusted friends. Safe for now and crazy with worry…

  Inside the trailer, the message light blinked on Gabriel’s encrypted satellite phone with mindless urgency.

  No one ever calls me here. Gabriel tossed his gloves on the counter, typed in a code. It was a recorded call.

  “Excuse the intrusion, Senator. This is Arnold Winger. I know how you value your privacy. Senator Smith gave me your secret number and asked me to call you right away. I will be standing by at the following number. This is something you need to know.”

  Gabriel scrawled the number on a scrap of paper. Shedding his jacket, he entered the number with one arm still in the sleeve. The answer was immediate. “Arnold Winger.”

  “This is Gabriel. You called.”

  “Thank God. I was afraid you wouldn’t get to me before I had to leave town. It’s been crazy here with all the staff changes, the transition. Thank you, Senator. I was the chief counsel for the Smith Committee on domestic terrorism.”

  “I remember you, Arnold.”

  “Good. Then you know about all the staff changes after Senator Smith left.”

  “Yes. Where is Thur now?”

  “Utah. He’s taken a teaching position in Salt Lake City. I know he’ll want to get together with you as soon as he is settled. But let me get to the point. You know the Committee had excellent police contacts in Seattle.”

  “Yes.” Gabriel’s stomach tightened.

  “Last night, it seems they finally identified parts of a body…”

  ——

  That same night, Gabriel joined seventy five million viewers who watched the following infomercial, one of fifteen that had aired recently.

  The piece opens with an aerial shot of Seattle, zooming to an archive shot of the Edge Medical Labs building. There is a steady drumbeat in the background.

  A voice-over: “At this site, some of the most advanced genetic experiments in the world were conducted.”

  The picture zooms to a window, showing man in lab coat.

  An announcer’s voice intones, “Experiments like this.”

  The screen is filled with laboratory rats. Then a close up appears of a rat with electrodes in its head.

  “And this.” A new frame shows a severed human arm, attached to tubes and wires.

  The drumbeat swells and a new picture flickers—a human eye is rolling in a stainless steel tray.

  The announcer says, “That operation was closed down thanks to the Technology Licensing Commission.” The screen fades to black. After a beat, there are the sounds of birds chirping and a meadow scene materializes. Patriotic music swells.

  A female announcer speaks: “Your Commission. Fighting the special interests. For you. For Mother Earth. For Gaia.”

  The full screen Gaia logo grows in size and brightness, superimposed on the meadow.

  The screen fades to green…

  Chapter 35

  Several months later, Seattle

  Louise had managed to secure a covert line of funding from the Baron in Germany to inaugurate Stage Two of her plan. Fowler and Longworthy will not be in this loop, she thought. As of now, the American G-A-N is mine and mine alone. For today’s occasion, Louise Berker had shed all her cult trappings. She was dressed in a crisp gray suit, riding the now familiar elevator down from the subterranean parking lot to the secure site of the Gaia Operations Directorate or G-O-D, carrying her own SmartPage under her arm, concealing the illegal technology in a tiny mailing tube.

  As the elevator whisked her one hundred feet below the
garage, Berker mused how easily her movement had exploited the blind enthusiasm of the technician classes. She had many models from the last century. The amoral devotion to science and technical mastery of the technicians had been tapped skillfully by Nazis, the Soviets and the Chinese.

  It turned out that even physicians could be enlisted in the cause of death, if the research were interesting enough.

  Of course Berker knew that the technological game eventually had to draw to an end. All her tech-people would ultimately be put down along with the rest of the planet’s excess baggage. But the day when even the G-A-N can fully shed the disease of technology is a couple of years in the future, Berker mused. It was an eternity as far as the technicians were concerned. Let those fools think we will let them live forever, she thought.

  There was the entire American political system to destroy in the meantime.

  To the uninitiated, the G-A-N was a loose collection of semi-autonomous cells, eco-terror groups known to Berker but not necessarily to each other. At the apex, however, Berker exercised control and dispersed funding and support via G-O-D.

  The Directorate consisted of three sections: Planning, Technology Resources, and Operations. This evening was a strategy review. It would be attended by only three others, the heads each of the three sections: Planning’s Chief Guru, Technology’s LONER, and Operations’ Alpha Dog. Berker chose to think of each of them by titles, their original names having long ago been suppressed.

  The three section heads of the Network always met in the same secure area in the sub-basement of the Fowler Building in Seattle—G-O-D’s Basement. As far as Fowler and Longworthy were concerned, this bloody little operation was to be a regrettable necessity and they were to be protected by plausible deniability. From Berker’s perspective these men were among the expendable useful idiots, still necessary at this phase, but ultimately disposable.