by Alex Deva
The boy considered for a few moments, then asked:
"What's even greater than a bishop?"
"I don't know. The Pope, I guess."
"Can I be the Pope?"
"You don't wanna be the Pope, you silly. The Pope is not as powerful as you think."
"But he's God's man on Earth, and he's bigger than the bishops, so how can he not be powerful? I bet he's big as a bear and has an axe as tall and wide as a man," the boy said.
"I doubt it. Not this Pope, anyway. My mom said some king took him hostage and kept him in a prison for four months."
That left the boy gaping again.
"The Pope?! Hostage in prison?! For four months?!"
"Oh, yeah," said Doina. "Because he didn't want to make the king, King," she said, somehow managing to pronounce the capital letter.
"Huh?"
"I mean, this king was obviously king of his kingdom, but unless the Pope makes you King, you're gonna have trouble with the Pope's bishops and whatnot," she explained.
This scenery of great powers interacting with each other really sparked the boy's imagination. He could see giants shooting flames towards each other, kings and Kings and Popes and bishops and blinded warriors, in a fiery land over a background consisting mainly of fire.
"Wow," he said. "I wanna be King."
"Well, good luck," she said. "And I wanna fly like a bird."
The boy started pounding the statue again, twisting in place, jumping around, using all sorts of imaginary battle techniques and screaming:
"Take that! And that!"
The dog started barking again.
"Cut it off, will you," said Doina. "I told you you're scaring the sheep!"
The boy hit the statue a few more times, then stopped to catch his breath.
But the dog kept on barking. And then the other dog joined in.
A great ribbon of yellow light appeared from the east, hanging on nothing but the blue sky itself and sweeping the green hills. It hopped from place to place, advancing towards the ruins, the flock of sheep and the two kids. Doina saw it and gave out a cry.
"Simion, look out! Get out of there!" she shouted.
The little boy raised his eyes, startled. He saw the great ray of yellow light and froze on the spot.
"Hide, Simion! Hide!" shouted Doina as she jumped off the wall and knelt next to it, on the other side.
Simion did not budge. Mouth agape, unable to move a muscle, he stared at Doina as the light engulfed him. For a few moments, he was turned into gold. Then the ribbon moved on, and the boy fainted in the tall, soft grass.
Doina curled down, at the bottom of the thick wall, shut her eyes and started to sob. She felt alone and afraid. A wave of panic came to her, and she began to pray to control it: Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur Nomen Tuum, adveniat Regnum Tuum...
Then, through her eyelids, she saw bright light. She opened one eye and saw that the grass and rocks and the feet under her had turned into gold.
Fiat voluntas Tua...
And then her feet turned orange, and then red, and then dark red, until the light turned into shadow and the stones became grey and then black, and then blacker than black, while everything else around her stayed the same. And then there was a black flash.
A little later, the boy woke with a start and stood up. The sheep were quietly grazing, just a few more steps lower down the hill. The two dogs were still guarding them, also silently doing their jobs. He looked towards the sun; he couldn't have been out for more than a few moments. He looked around for his friend, then searched every corner of the ruins, inspected each wall and boulder, shaded his eyes and looked in all directions around him down the hill.
Doina was gone.
III.
"My grandfather fought in the great war," the taxi driver said.
"Oh, really? On which side?"
That stumped the driver for a second.
"Well, the Germans, of course. He maybe fight with Russians too, but he was killed by one of your people before we change side."
The red and white taxi negotiated the narrow streets of Alba Iulia, en route from the train station to a hotel. Its single passenger, a man in his late thirties, with short cropped hair and green eyes, looking quite fit for his age, pulled out his HTC One and checked it again for messages. There were none.
He inspected the driver's ID card, which was hanging from the rearview mirror. The driver appeared to be in his sixties. Old enough to have had a grandfather in World War II? Maybe.
"How did he die?" he asked.
"At the oil fields, in Ploiești," came the answer. "He was an anti-aircraft, how you say? Shooter?"
"Gunner. Well, I don't think he was shot by my ancestors, then," said the passenger. "It was mostly the Yanks who bombed your oil fields, back in forty-two."
"And what are you? Not American?"
"Definitely not American, mate. I'm British. English, actually."
The taxi driver was disappointed.
"I thought you were American."
"Sorry," said the passenger, wryly.
Long, drab apartment buildings with four floors and shops at ground level, remnants of the Communist era, lined the street on both sides. People, most of them carrying colourful plastic bags, walked hurriedly on the sidewalks. The city was generally clean, and obvious efforts were being made to keep it beautiful -- trees had been planted and were being looked after, colourful flowers adorned the roundabouts, and everything seemed to have been repainted recently. There was much construction going on too, with cranes and heavy equipment visible everywhere.
Bank offices and mobile phone shops abounded; there seemed to be at least a couple of them every hundred metres. On the road there was no shortage of big, expensive cars; he had counted more Mercedes, BMW and Audi logos than he had seen since... That he had seen in a long time.
But the taxi was a Romanian car, a Dacia. He inspected it further, with some interest. It looked maybe a little cheap, but functional. The engine seemed to be running fine, and it didn't make any strange noises. He looked around himself. The upholstery was definitely cheap and stained, but the doors closed well and the windows were electrically operated. He glanced at the odometer: it read over six hundred thousand kilometres. To the Moon and back, he thought.
"Are you happy with this car?"
Glad to practice his English on a subject he actually knew something about, the driver took the ball and ran with it.
"This Dacia? This is Dacia Logan. I had this in taxi for six years. It was four hundred thousand kilometres when I buy it. I give it GPL and oil, and it give me money."
The Brit didn't understand.
"GPL? What's that?"
The driver gesticulated with one hand, trying to explain.
"Is, what you call it? Gas, but liquid. Liquid gas, understand?"
"Oh, you mean LPG? Liquefied petroleum gas?"
"I don't know. Big tank in the back, yes? Pressure tank?"
"Yeah, that must be it. Interesting, I didn't know LPG was so popular in Romania."
"Is very popular. Especially with taxi. Because is cheap."
The Brit had seen Dacias all over Europe. It was indeed a popular car, inexpensive but reliable, but he was pretty sure it was sold either on petrol or on diesel. He knew, however, that LPG could be fit relatively easily to petrol engines.
"How much is a Dacia Logan here in Romania?"
"New is maybe six or seven thousand euros. But like this, maybe one thousand."
"Wow. That's really affordable."
The driver stopped at a red light, leaned out of his window and started a lively conversation with a taxi driver on the next lane. The passenger tried to catch a few words, but couldn't; they were speaking too fast, and probably in the Transylvanian dialect. He pulled his phone out and checked it again for messages. There was still none.
The light turned green and the taxi got moving.
"So what you do here?" asked the driver.
&
nbsp; "I teach English," said the other.
"Really?" said the driver. "What you think of my English?"
"It's very good," said the Englishman politely. "Where did you learn it?"
"I work for two years in London, taxi driver. Four years ago."
"And then you returned and bought this car," completed the passenger.
"Exactly yes."
The road started climbing and the Communist era buildings made room for trees and parks. On top of the hill he could see a stone fortress.
"Is that the ancient citadel of Alba Iulia?" he asked the driver.
"That is the cetate," he answered. "I don't know the English word for it. It was called Apulum and if you look at it from up, is like a star, understand?"
"Yeah, I get it. How old is it?"
The driver shrugged. "The oldest part, Romans. But then they build it again, and then again. I don't know, hundreds of years, or maybe a thousand or maybe two."
Not impressed with the driver's knowledge of his hometown history, the Englishman made a note to look up some dates on Wikipedia. It certainly seemed like a place worth visiting, once he got set up. Whoever had renovated the fort had known what they'd been doing, he thought. Old portions of the wall had been carefully preserved and outlined, and the modern masonry was tasteful and in line with the original architectural intent. High up on the walls he even saw a man dressed in what he assumed was a historically accurate uniform, complete with a musket with bayonet on.
"Is very nice, you must go see. They do the, what's the word? Changing of the guards? Every day at noon. They change the guards and they shoot the cannons three times."
"Just like your granddad."
The driver laughed.
"Yes, just like my grandfather. Very funny!"
The Englishman smiled and pulled out the phone. He made sure it showed signal bars and that he hadn't got any text messages, then put it back in his pocket.
The sky was clear of clouds, and the summer air was getting pretty hot. The air conditioning in the car was turned off, no doubt to save LPG, and both front windows were open. As long as the car was moving, the draft made the heat marginally bearable. His shirt was already wet and sticky, and he couldn't wait to have a shower at the hotel.
"Look, see? That is one of the main gates. They have names, the gates. This one is called Dextra, I think." The driver leaned to his right, pointing excitedly up the hill, and almost hit the car in front of them. He slammed the brakes, and the Englishman's seat belt restrained him quite violently. He blinked a few times, literally taken aback.
"Fucking the fuck fucker and fuck," randomly cursed the driver through clenched teeth, and then continued with a long stream of Romanian profanities, all the time depressing the left-hand lever next to the steering wheel, which, it turned out, was where Dacia cars have their horn.
Suddenly, the doors of the car in front opened, and its driver simply took off running, leaving the keys in and the engine running. As they looked around, they saw many other drivers abandoning the cars, as well as pedestrians running or pointing excitedly, some talking on their phones.
The Englishman looked where people were pointing, and his blood froze.
A vertical, yellow ribbon of light, so tall that it was impossible to see where it originated, was scanning the street right in front of him. It seemed to hover for a second over each person it encountered, and it even seemed to be manoeuvring so as to not miss anybody.
The driver stared at the ribbon, then back at his passenger, dazed and stupefied, suddenly unable to remember any words in English. He made a vague gesture and a guttural noise, then he got out of the car, hesitated, and took off for the opposite sidewalk.
By then, the street was drowned in shouting and panic. The Brit saw a mother crouching to protect her two children, next to a wall. The yellow ray, almost two metres wide but displaying no halo, instead having sharp, well-defined edges, was impossibly tall -- as if it was coming from outer space, he thought for an instant. It found the mother and her children, and momentarily clad them in gold, before moving on. The family appeared, at first glance, to have emerged completely unharmed.
He was reminded, for another instant, of a sci-fi film. "War of the Worlds," or maybe "StarTrek," or some such. We're being scanned, he thought again. We're being fucking scanned. If the Yanks or the Russians are doing this from orbit... this could be how World War Three starts. And then, coldly: Good thing I'm not even scared.
But he knew exactly why he wasn't scared. In fact, at that particular point in his life, he felt he might have rather welcomed World War Three.
Dozens of people were running around him, some abandoning their cars, nearly trampling each other, some shouting into their mobile phones, some inventively trying to hide underneath the vehicles, and apparently he was the only one able to keep his cool.
It's looking for someone in particular, he determined. I guess it's time to be the grey man.
He reached underneath the car seat, found the front-back adjustment lever, pulled it and slid the seat all the way back. Then he lifted his feet up onto the seat and crouched.
Then he waited.
When the light came near him, he inhaled deeply. He assumed it would not be painful, because none of the people who had been scanned seemed to be hurting -- except for one or two who fainted, most likely out of panic -- but he was ready for anything.
He turned golden. Even though he was still inside the car, the light shone right through the roof of the Dacia, as if it were made of clear glass. He tensed instinctively, fighting the impulse to move. Be the grey man, he repeated in his head, not noticing the irony of the colour metaphor. Be the one that stays unnoticed.
But it wasn't to be. His clothes and his skin turned orange, then fiery red, and then the light turned into shade, and the shade turned into blackness, although everything around him was still being bathed in light by the afternoon sun.
This had not happened to any of the other people.
His instincts kicked in, but there was nothing he could do. It all happened in a second.
The blackness got blacker than black, and then there was a black flash, if such a thing can be imagined -- on top of the other unimaginable things that had just happened.
Then the ribbon simply disappeared.
People slowly unfroze, mothers slowly stood up over their kids, screams stopped and someone began to cry softly.
In the silence that followed, the taxi driver, who had only gone a few dozen steps away, returned to his car. Slowly and apprehensively, he checked inside it from a safe distance, expecting to see a charred body at the very least. What he saw instead took him completely by surprise: the car was completely empty.
The Englishman was gone.
* * *
The civilian quick response teams made it to the site in less than three minutes. Over a dozen calls, ranging from excited to panicky, had been made to the 112 emergency number, but they might as well have not bothered. The dispatch building had a clear view towards the cetate and the entire team -- phone dispatchers and radio operators, medics and policemen on duty, as well as a number of traffic cameras -- saw the whole thing.
They all did their jobs as best they knew, given that nobody had any idea what they were facing. Representatives of the Romanian Police and SMURD, the renowned medical emergency service, jumped on radios, phones and dedicated fibre optics hotlines and screamed for every single car, cop, paramedic, medic and fireman available.
The police were first on scene, blocking both ends of the street with four cars. Then the firemen brought in a big intervention vehicle, but there was no fire and no serious car crash to speak of. Then the SMURD came, in two fiery red ambulances, lights and sirens blazing, and immediately started looking after the people who had fainted or were feeling sick.
The police major on duty at the 112 dispatch wanted to put in a call to his superior, but had problems figuring out how to describe what had happened. From the moment the yellow
ribbon appeared, no more than ten minutes had passed, and one of the phone operators yelled excitedly:
"Come look! It's on YouTube already!"
Thanking God for technology, the police major placed the call to his colonel in Bucharest, helpfully providing him, at the same time, with the YouTube link by email; the colonel called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who immediately panicked and called the Ministry of Defence, who immediately panicked as well.
Someone had the idea to call ROMATSA, the Romanian Air Traffic authority, and ask if anything suspicious had appeared on their radars. The answer was negative, and the Air Force confirmed it as well. Someone else said they had better do something, or they'd look bad at the very least, so another call was placed to the 71st Romanian Air Force Base at Luna, about seventy kilometres away from Alba Iulia. They quickly tasked an IAR-330 helicopter, a Puma SOCAT, with a recon mission.
The crew was told to look for unusual atmospheric phenomena, and that it was not a drill. They shrugged, ran to the helicopter, had it loaded with live ammo, then took off south. The powerful attack helicopter, armed with a swivel cannon and anti-tank missiles, arrived over Alba Iulia in about fifteen minutes.
It scanned the area with everything it had, from thermal sensors to radar to LIDAR to the Mark I eyeball, but found nothing in the air except birds and clouds. Nothing at all.
Then, the police major from the 112 dispatch called again.
A sweating, frenzied taxi driver had reported that his passenger had disappeared when the ribbon hovered over his taxi car and turned black. No, he did not have the passenger's name, but he was a foreigner. No, not American. He was British. Or English, one or the other -- the driver was not sure. The passenger had been rather short, in his late thirties, quite fit, had short hair and had said he was a teacher of English. He had been picked up at the train station, where he had arrived by train directly from the airport, carrying one single piece of luggage, which was still on the back seat of the car. The bag had no name or airport tag.