by Dave Mckay
ButnMoshe had conditioned Moses to hear and respond to a signal that was only just barely audible to the human ear. Using this signal, Moshe could get him to make the smile at appropriate spots in the speech, which he (Moshe) had prepared. Together they might be able to convince the world that the old Moses was still alive.
Table of contents
Chapter 31. The Entertainment Hall
Moses spent most of his time in his room, where (when not sleeping or sitting motionless in a soft chair) he would browse through the books that had been placed there. Novels were of no interest now, whether based on truth or fiction. He could not relate to any of the characters, and even if he could, he had no interest in what they were going through, just as he had no interest in what he was going through. But he did have a casual interest in some of the reference books, especially those with plenty of pictures.
He left his room for most meals, and often on the way to or from the cafeteria, on the far side of the palace, where he usually ate by himself, he would check out some of the other rooms. The palace staff had been briefed to ignore his occasional interruptions to business meetings (which never held Moses' attention for more than a few seconds anyway). But, between therapy sessions, he spent time in and around the heated pool, where he learned that he could get more free massages.
On the morning of Moses' second day there, Moshe had pointed out the huge hall where Dangchao offered free entertainment to visiting diplomats each evening. Moses had not been back there until one Sunday evening, two weeks after he first arrived in Jerusalem... the day after he bumped into Dangchao in the hallway. The evening meal had finished a bit later than usual that night, and he was returning to his room, when he heard a noise, like someone was in pain, coming through one of the many almost soundproof doors that led to the hall.
The young man pushed through the door and entered a small stadium; but the sound had stopped by the time he entered. A hundred or more people, mostly men, sat around the perimeter of a smoke-filled room, overlooking a big oval-shaped stage that was a good ten feet below them. Empty seats at the back of the room were much higher than those at the front. Moses moved down to the gold railing on which arms and chins were resting, so he could get a closer look at what was happening down in the polished timber pit that served as a stage.
Below them, on the stage, someone was putting body parts into a wheelie bin, including the head and torso of what must have been a young boy, still in his teens. Moses guessed that it must have been the dying screams of this same boy that had caught his attention. He sat down in a seat near the railing and continued to watch as the cart was taken away, and as the stage was sprayed clean of blood by water coming from little jets built into the sides of the entertainment area. Everything disappeared down a drain in the middle.
"And now for some lighter entertainment of a sexual nature," said a voice over the speaker system.
There was almost a groan of dissatisfaction from many of those in the audience. Most viewers moved away from the rail, to rest their backs.
Moses must have looked confused, because a middle-aged woman in the seat next to him turned and spoke to him as if she knew she was explaining things to a novice.
"It's always like this on Sundays," she said apologetically. "Something to do with organising the sacrifices. Someone's day off, I think. Instead of sacrifices, they mostly do the same old sex shows. It'll be more than half an hour before they do another sacrifice."
"What do you come for?" Moses asked politely.
"Oh, I come for him," the woman effused, and she nodded her head toward an ornate throne on the opposite side of the arena. It was empty, but Moses guessed that it was for Dangchao.
"Most people watch the shows on TV these days," the woman said, "Or they go to the Temple during the week. Only diplomats get to see him here. It's not the same if you watch him on TV. You have to be here in person to get the full effect."
Diplomats had reasonable access to Dangchao in his role as Secretary-General, so Moses wondered why this woman would be making such a big deal over seeing him in person. But she was not the only one who wanted to be there to see Dangchao. Over the next few minutes others started to enter the hall, filling up the vacant seats. Curiosity was not a part of his new personality, but Moses had nothing else to do and he was not tired. So he chose to stay a bit longer.
"The Secretary-General comes on at eight o'clock each Sunday; it's the only night he appears here. Everyother night he goes to the Temple shows," the woman continued, with her hands clasped over her heart like a starry-eyed teenager. Her eyes rolled upward as she tried to imagine (or perhaps to remember) how it would be when the man of her dreams made his appearance."It's too hard to get close to him at the Temple, but here we are only a few metres away."
The half-hour of live sex that preceded Dangchao's appearance was far more than live sex. It involved animals, rape, children, and some audience participation. But, as Moses had observed ever since his strange recovery at the Aga Khan, none of this fazed him. He knew it was wrong. He knew it would have sickened him in the past. But he was a different person now... with only an academic interest in what was happening all around him. He took more interest in the arrival of new spectators, turning to gawk each time another door opened, as he took in the actions of the "entertainers" down below.
There was, for his part, little to interest him when Dangchao came out also, despite great fanfare from an invisible orchestra. By this time, at least three or four hundred diplomats had squeezed into the tiny arena, and they were totally silent in anticipation. While Moses had enough memory to understand that spectators would find the atrocities exciting, he still could not understand what was the special attraction about Dangchao himself.
Suddenly there was a deafening roar, and every spectator in the stadium dropped to their knees in the space between their seats and the ones in front of them... everyone, that is, except for Moses Chikati. The raspy roar was coming from Dangchao's face, which had changed to the face of a creature that was half-animal and half human. His expression was so horrible that the reaction from everyone else in the room was totally understandable to Moses as he looked on from his unique perspective. Dangchao had not noticed that Moses was in the hall until this happened, and then it was not clear whether he was angry with the young man for his indifference, or whether he was proud of him as his "son".
Moses was not thinking about Dangchao's reaction at all, however, for his mind was occupied with a search for where he had seen that same hideous face before. And then it came to him. It was the face that had appeared in the clouds of smoke over the burnt out forest in his near-death experience. Dangchao (or whatever it was that was manifesting itself through Dangchao's body at that particular moment) had been present in his near-death dream... if it really was a dream.
Moses simply rose to his feet and walked out through the same door he had used to enter the arena. He wandered casually back to his room while pondering this simple observation. If there was anything more that Dangchao said or did during his TV appearances, Moses did not know, nor did he have any interest in knowing. He never returned to the entertainment hall.
Table of contents
Chapter 32. The Alien
"Here! In the Palace! One of the aliens!"
Moses was just finishing breakfast in the cafeteria the next morning, when a young office worker sat down at the table next to him, with news for others at that table that one of the aliens had just been captured at the airport, trying to hijack a plane. "They're bringing him here now," the informant explained. Moses got up from his chair and walked over to the table where the announcement had been made. Because the people seated there were all staff members, and because they all recognised him, they did nothing to stop Moses from listening in.
"They're bringing him here?" asked a woman at the table nervously. "But he could kill us!"
The man next to her gave a little poke with his elbow as he g
lanced quickly toward Moses. Locals had come to think of Moses as Dangchao's son, even though the young man had hardly even met his benefactor. In the minds of most palace workers, anything said to Moses would be passed on to Dangchao.
"Obviously, Dangchao is going to use him as bait... to get the other one here," the elbow-jabber piped in. "Don't worry, Naomi, Dangchao knows what he's doing. He's the most awesome leader the world has ever known. Take it from me, we're safe as virgins in chastity belts." The others laughed nervously. They were clearly not convinced.
In the palace? Moses thought to himself, as he tried to imagine where Dangchao would put the alien.
He turned and walked away from the table, then wandered the corridors of the palace in search of the alien, before coming to a room that had special U.N. troops guarding it. The soldiers recognised Moses, and so, when he indicated that he wanted to go in, they did what they would not have done for anyone else in the world at that moment... they let him in without a pass.
"Where's your partner?" Dangchao growled.
Moses could see only the back of a chubby man with long brown hair, who was seated facing Dangchao.
"I don't know," the man answered quietly.
He doesn't look like an alien to me, thought Moses. He's just a harmless old man.
"Maybe I should hold you here for a few days and see if he turns up."
The alien said nothing.
"We could have some fun with you."
"And God could have some fun with you!" the alien shot back. There was an air of authority in the man's voice. Perhaps he was not entirely harmless after all. But there was something else in his voice which was even more significat. He had an accent... an Australian accent.
It sounds so much like Kyme, Moses thought to himself; but then any male Australian accent would have sounded like Kyme's, since Kyme was the only Australian he knew apart from Winky.
But from what Moses could see over the back of the seat, the man did look a lot like Kyme... a bit greyer, perhaps, and a bit heavier than Moses had remembered Kyme to be, but very much like him, all the same.
Dangchao spoke. "I was only kidding," he said.
He's afraid of him, Moses thought. But Dangchao went on. "I just want to ask your friend some questions. We really need to work together... for the good of the whole world."
Moses changed his thinking once again. Dangchao was not afraid at all. The staffer in the cafeteria was correct. He was diplomatically using one alien as bait to attract the other. But surely the aliens would know that, and they would not fall for such a trick.
Just then, the alien turned in Moses' direction, as though he had been aware all along that Moses was watching him. He looked deeply into Moses' expressionless eyes for a second or two, smiled, and then winked, before turning in the opposite direction and walking toward the door on the far side of the room. He did not even wait for clearance from the Secretary-General.
"Go with him!" Dangchao said to an aide, and the man raced to catch up with the palace guest.
"I'll show you to your room," the aide said as he approached the alien.
For Moses Chikati, however, the man would never be thought of as an alien again. He was, instead, Kyme Rosenberg, Moses' personal friend and advisor, with whom he had lost contact a couple of years earlier!
The young man's mental faculties were such that he could not experience shock, fear, disappointment, or anything more than a slight increase in curiosity in response to what he had just observed, but it did not stop his mind from sifting through events in his past as he sought an explanation for how a kindly old Quaker from Australia could be the alien monster that had threatened to undermine all that the United Nations Secretary-General had done to prosper and stabilise the nations of the world.
Moses left by the same door through which he had entered. It was around the corner from the one that Kyme had used, and so by the time he reached the hallway on that end of the room, Kyme and Dangchao's assistant had apparently disappeared around yet another corner some where down the long corridor. Moses wanted to see Kyme, but only just. He was struggling with an urge to just forget about it. What difference did it make how Kyme had come to be there? There were books to read in his room, and exercises that Moshe had laid out for him to do. But in the end, he decided that the exercises were not important, and he just wandered down one hallway after another looking for his old friend instead.
Half an hour later, and Moses had back tracked all the way to where Kyme had first disappeared. He discovered that the guards who had been outside the interrogration room were now outside the room immediately next to it. Moses reached out with his good arm to open the door, but he was stopped by one of the guards.
"Sorry, we can't let you go in this time, son. It's too dangerous."
Moses was about to say, "But he's my friend," when he suddenly lost interest and wandered off toward his own room.
Table of contents
Chapter 33. Another One
For the next three days, Moses had no further interest in seeing Kyme, or in finding answers to the questions that lay dormant in his brain. He knew there was a serious mix-up and he wanted to talk to Kyme if he could, but he had none of the overpowering urgency about it that you or I might feel. He was content to forget about it, unless circumstances changed in such a way as to let him meet up with his old friend from Australia.
On Thursday, circumstances did exactly that.
Thursday was the day when he was to have given his speech to the media, complete with plastic smiles choreographed by Moshe. But at the last minute it was called off. Moses asked Moshe why it had been cancelled, not because it made any difference to him, but just to show polite interest.
"It's a problem with the aliens," Moshe replied. "The other one is on his way here."
Just then, there was a rumble that shook the whole palace. Both men stretched their arms out to maintain balance. The damage to his brain had slightly affected his balance, and so Moses crashed to the ground, where he lay for a few seconds before climbing slowly back to his feet, with help from Moshe.
As the rumble eased, the latest bit of news from Moshe started to sink in. Dangchao's plan has worked, Moses thought to himself. The other alien is going for the bait. And then he remembered Kyme. Wait a minute. Kyme isn't an alien; so who could this second person be?
He had previously thought that Josephat was one of the aliens; but after that night on the bridge, he knew it could not be the man who had taken his sister and Winky away from him. But could there be a link between Kyme and the real aliens?
Moses dismissed himself from Moshe, relieved that he would not have to perform for the Press, and he continued to aimlessly wander the halls, as he had been doing when Moshe tracked him down. He thought back over all that he knew about the aliens and all that he knew about Kyme, but still could find no link.
A few minutes later, while approaching the room where Kyme was being held, he saw the door open, and two soldiers in U.N. uniforms come out, followed by Kyme, and then two more U.N. soldiers. They turned to walk on ahead of him, but his eyes and Kyme's eyes crossed in that split second before Kyme turned. Moses thought he picked up another wink. Was Kyme playing a game with him?
He continued walking behind his friend and the four soldiers, but fell further behind as they moved with a certainty that he lacked. Nevertheless, he did see the cluster of soldiers push out through the front doors of the palace, and he pulled out the special beeper he used to call his limo, something he had only done on two or three occasions since coming to the Palace, and then only for the experience of getting outside for a while.
"I am at the front entrance," he mumbled to the driver. Can you pick me up there?"
The limo was just pulling up when Moses pushed open the front door of the palace. He moved as quickly as he was able, which was not very quickly, down the wide stone steps. Perfect timing he thought.
A crowd of people moving slowl
y away from the Palace was his best clue as to where Kyme and the alien might be.
"Follow those people," Moses said to the driver, pointing in the direction of the crowd.
The driver said nothing, but drove slowly along the road leading up to the palace, until he was almost touching people at the edge of the crowd. They continued inching along like that for a few blocks, until someone from the crowd finally got the message and called on people to move aside and give the vehicle access to the two men who were the center of everyone's attention.
They were near a fountain, and so the two men sat on a bench facing the narrow roadway. The limo pulled up directly in front of them, and Moses rolled the window down. He leaned his chin on the stump of his right arm, which cushioned the edge of the open window.
Both men smiled toward him, and that is when the mystery deepened for Moses. Sitting next to Kyme was Ray, his good friend and other father figure from London. Still, in Moses' voice there was little surprise, and there was not much more in the voices of his friends either.
"Hello," Moses said, and they echoed his greeting with a wave of their hands. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"We're working for God," Rayford said. "We've been praying for you."
"Did you know I was here?"
"Yes, we heard from our people here in Israel before we left," Rayford continued. "It seems like half of Jerusalem knows about you being here."
The look on Moses' face was one of puzzlement throughout much of the conversation; mention of "their people" made him squint his eyes even more, in an effort to understand what Rayford meant.