by David Gullen
Bowling-ball sized rocks were stacked in its lee. Ellen picked one up. Crayfish larvae scrabbled for new cover. When she was a child she had played ducks and drakes on the lake in front of the lodge, skimming the flat pebbles and counting the pitty-pats. Hefting the rock she lobbed it effortlessly into a nearby pool.
Her next throw sent a twenty-pound rock over a hundred feet.
Ellen realised she had never really tested the limits of her exoframe.
She and the frame were essentially one thing, two components in synergy, neither could do alone what they could achieve together. She picked up a two-hundred pound boulder, the weight of a well-built man, and lobbed it fifty yards downstream. That was harder, that took real effort. Ellen’s shout of release rose above the river’s roar.
She spent the next few minutes leaping from rock to rock, up and down the river. Then she threw ten-pound rocks as far as she could. This turned out to be about a quarter of a mile.
After a while she noticed an eight-foot tall ursine para-human watching her from the far bank.
‘Try for that.’ The bear-man’s deep voice travelled easily across the water.
Ellen followed his arm to three dead pine stumps on a rock island a hundred yards away. She palmed a boulder, the wrist display showed twenty-five pounds. She drew back her arm and threw.
Her aim was true, the stone splintered one of the dead trunks.
Dropping to all fours the bear man bounded from boulder to boulder across the river until he stood nearby.
‘Impressive,’ he growled. ‘You are Lady Ellen. We were told you were weak, that you are sick.’
‘I am,’ Ellen replied. ‘But not like that.’
‘Can you move without your machine?’
‘No.’
The bear man was deep-chested, long in the arm and short in the leg. He wore a leather harness over his thick brown-black pelt, a simple breechclout covered his groin. Pouches hung from his waist, two huge knives were sheathed across his chest.
‘My name is Theodore,’ he said. ‘My home is nearby. May I offer you a cup of coffee?’
Ellen was delighted. ‘I’d like that very much.’
Theodore’s camp was set in a depression sheltered by holly thickets and deep bracken. A pair of wooden cabins roofed with bark shingles faced each other across a patch of clean ground.
‘I share this camp with two lupine women. They are scouting,’ Theodore said. ‘We did not build this place. Your father caused these houses to be built. He fulfilled his obligations to his oathsworn as a leader should. Gold is not for keeping.’
The door of Theodore’s hut was too small for Ellen and she would have been too heavy to enter. Through the window she saw a sturdy bed, basic cooking equipment, a bench and a wooden table with keyboard and console screen. Printed books were stacked neatly on a shelf, one was open on the bed. Beside it, unstrung, was a powerful recurved bow. At the foot of the bed stood a sheaf of long arrows.
As Theodore prepared the coffee the lupine females returned, seeming to appear in the clearing rather than enter it. They were friendly, but incurious about Ellen’s exoframe. Sinewy and lithe, both were dressed in simple sleeveless shifts of grey yarn and wore their silver-grey head hair cropped short.
‘I am Gretel, she is Hilda,’ the taller one said. ‘Today we scouted our territory and contacted the groups adjacent to ourselves.’
‘We know who you are,’ Hilda told Ellen. ‘You are your father’s daughter. We will protect you until you leave here.’
‘Lady Ellen is sick because she is too big.’ Theodore handed Ellen a blue enamelled mug of coffee. ‘Even so, she is admirably strong.’
Theodore’s speech was steady and considered, the lupine women snapped and bit their words out of the air.
Gretel studied Ellen. ‘When will you die?’
Ellen discovered she did not mind such direct questions. The entire situation was dreamlike, a fairy-tale thing. The para-humans had curious minds, when something intrigued them they were persistent. Soon they understood Ellen’s syndromes.
Hilda frowned. ‘We are here to protect you but we cannot protect you from this.’
‘It’s all right,’ Ellen said. ‘Nobody can.’
Theodore dropped to one knee. ‘Lady Ellen, surely this is a task for your father.’
‘He has hired the best people, they’ve tried everything.’
His head bowed, Theodore struggled to find the right words.
‘What is it?’ Ellen said.
‘There may be something only he can do, as leader, as your father.’ Ponderously, Theodore shook his head, ‘Such things may have been forgotten.’
Hoping to reassure Theodore, Ellen explained the doctor’s latest plan.
‘You would dream inside a dream.’ Theodore said.
‘And it would seem to last longer than my whole life,’ Ellen said.
Ears twitching, the lupine women conferred in whispers.
‘You should not do this,’ Gretel told her. ‘Dreamtime was a shared time. If you do not wake, how will you know when you are dead? What if a machine was made to help your head, like the one that helps your body? You would be dead, yet still be dreaming. You would never wake up. You would have become a thing.’
- 39 -
The Babes are Back!
Surviving members of the Bariatric Babes have mounted a legal challenge against doctors caring for Zeppelina. I caught up with them outside the courthouse. Little Missy Massiv held back the tears as she explained.
‘As you know, the next edition of Venus Maxima is a memorial devoted to Zeppelina, her life, her struggle, the joy and the pain. We’re also doing a limited edition hard-copy, an actual physical book, real retro stylee. How cool is that?’
‘What’s the basis of your challenge?’
‘The doctors put Zeppelina in something called an induced coma. We want to wake her up so she can sign the books.’
‘All your fans know you’re still struggling to cope with the tragedy. In this time of heartbreak is it hard to think about the future?’
‘The Bariatric Babes will go on. Zepp was a doll and we loved her dearly. It’s going to be hard but we need a replacement.’
‘You’re going to audition?’
‘We’re so excited!’
– Wesley Strosner, Venus Maxima
Benny lay on the back seat moaning with pain.
Marytha swung the car into a side street. She drew to a halt in the darkness between two streetlights, ‘What happened?’
‘He forgot to duck,’ Novik said.
Marytha opened Benny’s door. ‘Dear God,’ she said as she saw Benny’s blood-soaked chest.
‘A simple mistake,’ Benny gasped. ‘I forgot how primitive Earth technology is. My force field is set for energy weapons, not kinetic projectiles. It needs an upgrade–’ Benny grimaced with pain, ‘a downgrade–’
Novik wanted to shake some sense into him. ‘You need to upgrade your state of mind. Aliens, Benny. Give it up, you could have been killed.’
‘Mr Car would have understood,’ Benny groaned.
‘We need to get him to a hospital,’ Josie said.
‘Not with a gunshot wound,’ Novik said. ‘They’d ID us all. I can’t take a DNA profile, they’ll lock me up and throw away the key.’
‘Me too,’ Marytha said.
‘You want to do a drive-by dump-off outside ER?’ Josie said. ‘No way.’
Benny struggled upright. ‘Don’t abandon me. These bodies may be soft and fragile but I can regenerate.’
Marytha straightened her shoulders. ‘I’ve had some training. If it’s not too serious I can look after him. We’ll get a room somewhere, get bandages and antiseptic from a drugstore.’
‘He’s hurt bad. The hospital is where he needs to be.’
Josie pinned up her hair. ‘We’re not leaving anybody behind. Novik, we need another vehicle. We can’t drive around in a car full of bullet holes.’
Benny clutched Novik’
s arm. ‘I know you want to get rid of me. Please don’t, what you’re doing is too important.’
Dumping Benny was exactly what Novik had been thinking. This time he knew it was intuition, not mind reading. Benny was a true odd-ball but he was also smart. However you looked at it, getting shot was pretty grim. Novik looked down at Benny with more sympathy. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m all right, really. It’s just this pain thing, I’m not used to it.’ Tears brimmed in Benny’s eyes. ‘It really hurts.’
Marytha cut away Benny’s sleeve and mopped the wound with the material. ‘Incredible. I can see the bullet, it’s about half an inch in. Must have been a ricochet.’
‘Partial kinetic depletion.’ Benny fell back, soaked in sweat. ‘I’ll put in a requisition… New model… Two days… bullet-proof…’
‘Lucky this one was low calibre,’ Marytha said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘It didn’t take your arm off.’
‘Oh.’ Benny’s eyes were round and wide. Then he passed out.
It was dawn before Novik returned to the room they found in a back-street rent block, a building so run down it could have been road-kill. Hire by the day, cash in advance, no discount, no questions. Benny was fast asleep on the bed, his shoulder clean and bandaged. Josie and Marytha rested on the broken-down couch.
Novik knocked as they had arranged and Josie let him in. He swung some holdalls down onto the threadbare carpet, ‘How’s Benny?’
‘Asleep. He’s going to be all right.’
‘That’s good. He’s a pain in the ass, but…’
‘I know.’
‘I bought another car, nothing special. Mid-range saloon, fixed head this time. Also, I laundered the money.’
Marytha and Josie looked at the holdalls. None of them looked particularly full.
‘How much did it cost?’ Josie said. ‘Wasn’t it dangerous?’
Novik looked pleased with himself. ‘Three hundred dollars. I hired a Laundromat for a few hours, locked the door, tipped the money in the machines and ran a cold wash. We lost maybe a couple of thou in the tumble dryers, those things are worse with cash than socks.’ His grin died by degrees. ‘What you see is what we’ve got. Fifteen, maybe twenty million.’
It didn’t sound like very much.
‘We have to think more about what we’re doing, get our heads straight,’ Novik said.
‘That was the drugs. That’s over now. You did good, babe,’ Josie said.
Marytha pushed herself off the couch. ‘We’re not in harmony. We’re like those little Bonsai trees. You can’t arrange them in a pleasing group if there’s an even number.’
Novik knew exactly what she was referring to – Mr Car. It was a conversation he thought was long over. He’d apologised once, he wasn’t going to do it again. ‘What are our options with that theory? How about we leave Benny some cash and drive away? No, wait, let’s get back up to five – I’ll kidnap someone and lock them in the trunk. That would be harmonious.’
Marytha looked up at the cracked and water-stained ceiling. ‘I’m just saying.’
Novik sat on the end of the bed, Josie on the sagging couch, Marytha stood by the window. Everyone looked at the holdalls and thought their own thoughts.
This was the kind of room where dreams ended. Where couples sat hunched on opposite sides of the mattress hour after hour in silence until one of them said, ‘I’m going out for cigarettes,’ and never came back. Where whisky-sodden loners cried in the night and blew their brains out. Where chronically underweight women lived year after year with a shoebox of letters from pen-pals in Okinawa and La Paz who never visited and who married and sent photos of their children. This was a room that would, if they let it, force them one at a time onto dead-end streets.
Novik pushed himself to his feet and slung a holdall over each shoulder. ‘Five of us, or four, or three, it doesn’t matter. We’re on our way to Canada, to Palfinger Crane. He’s the ultimate reason Benny was shot, he’s why we’re here, now, today. He owes us. He owes everybody. Let’s go.’
- 40 -
‘President Snarlow, what is your impression of Ahmed Hirsch?’
‘President Hirsch is a great man, a sincere man, the leader of many great European nations, and their peoples.’
‘What sort of relationship did you build at Camp David?’
‘Very good. Informal yet respectful. Despite our differences we have a lot in common.’
‘Exactly what common ground did you find?’
‘I like to think we bonded.’
(Laughter)
‘On the subject of informality, what did you make of his dress code?’
‘He’d be very comfortable at some of the board meetings in California. (More laughter) I certainly didn’t think it was disrespectful.’
– Excerpt from White House News Conference.
‘That’s not bad, Ginny,’ Lobotnov said as the recording came to an end. ‘Newsgroup approval is fifty-four percent, the meta-poll has “Optimism”, “Pride”, and “Confidence” as the most frequent expressions with respect to American self-perception. It’s a good performance.’
‘How’s it running in the EU?’
‘I don’t see that we actually care. They have their agendas and we have ours, everybody knows that. What’s important is you’ve carried American public opinion and the best thing about that is that right this moment nobody is asking awkward questions. In a matter of days it won’t matter – we’ll be the only technologically advanced country in the northern hemisphere, we’ll have 100% employment and every American citizen will be too busy making money to care.’
Guinevere knew he was right but was struggling to stay upbeat. Camp David had been utterly exhausting.
Ahmed Hirsch arrived in a cavalcade of US armoured limousines and motorcycle outriders. Gunships and pilotless drones circled overhead, robo-canines jogged along the flanks. A team of mechanics followed at a discreet distance, ready to repair or reboot the cyber-dogs when they walked into a lamppost or got a toe stuck in a drain cover.
After the public podium handshakes and exchange of flowers the two Presidents met privately in a comfortable, well-lit room hung with olive-green drapes. Tall vases of dried grass flanked the empty hearth.
President Snarlow dressed in a black double-breasted trouser suit over a gold silk blouse. Earrings, shoe buckles and lapel brooch displayed the motifs of blue chip American corporations.
Ahmed Hirsch, not yet thirty, with a surfer’s tall, rangy build, wore a sun-bleached pink tee-shirt, cut-off jeans and flip-flops. There was not a single logo in sight.
‘It’s how we like to hang out at The Hague,’ he told Snarlow. ‘It’s best to be comfortable. I am prepared to wait if you wish to change down.’
This was not the encounter Guinevere had envisaged. Confronted by Hirsch’s youth and insouciance she felt like a reactionary frump.
‘I’m fine as I am. Ahmed, I–’
Hirsch held up his hand. ‘Mr Hirsch, if you don’t mind. Conversation should not be informal.’
They were soon arguing.
‘We bailed you Europeans out against Hitler, Mr Hirsch. There’s a debt of honour.’
‘A long, long time ago, Ms. Snarlow. And no, you did not.’
Guinevere was not used to flat contradiction, especially by an upstart like Hirsch. ‘We won the goddamned war.’
Hirsch waved her words away. ‘Russia defeated Nazi Germany decisively when they destroyed Model’s armour at Kursk. From that point on Hitler was unable to wage offensive war. That war was lost and won long before the Western Allies set foot in Europe. The United States’ great contributions were confronting the self-destructive ideologies of Stalinism, and race hate.’
‘Well, at least you think you’re being honest.’
‘How else should we address the issues of the day? You are no longer what you were, but you can be proud of your achievements. All empires fade.’
‘The Emerald
Union included.’
Hirsch frowned thoughtfully. ‘As an evolved super-organism collective, we hope to avoid such a fate.’
Flustered, Guinevere offered Hirsch coffee. He accepted a glass of water.
‘Moving forwards, Mr Hirsch. The European Union must accept certain realities. Mexico and Canada are entirely within the USA’s sphere of influence.’
‘Then surely you are also within theirs?’
Guinevere conceded the point. ‘Nevertheless, both countries threaten American stability and security.’
‘I disagree, they only threaten USA ambition. American stability is not threatened, the continent of South America is not threatened. Mexican biotech was safe and ethical before you destroyed it. This has harmed Canadian interest via the significant damage to CraneCorp’s investments in Xalapatech infrastructure.’
‘Then you’ll take note of my visit to Palfinger Crane. We made him a generous offer. There’s even a seat on the Executive if he wants it.’
Hirsch spluttered with laughter, ‘For Crane that must be as enticing as a pool party hosted by crocodiles.’
‘You underestimate the benefits. Our economy and political influence still dominate the continent.’
‘Not so much as your military.’
Guinevere was tired of this scruffy young man’s snot-nosed attitude. She sat back and uncrossed her legs. ‘You noticed that, did you?’
Hirsch leaned forwards, his gaze intense. ‘Yes, we do notice.’ Before Guinevere could reply, he left the room.
The next morning was spent in phone calls, emails and hand-written notes passed between the two parties. Hirsch agreed to a noon video conference, then cancelled five minutes after it was due to start claiming a migraine. An hour later he offered a face-to-face for seven pm. Incensed by his petty politics, Guinevere let him stew for another hour. She sent apologies at fifteen-minute intervals, accompanied first by tea, then a bowl of fruit, and finally chilled Riesling and a selection of cheeses.
The hour was up, Guinevere went into the meeting room. Hirsch sat slumped in his chair, yesterday’s energy gone. His young face was drawn, his hand shaded his eyes. ‘For goodness sake, Madam President, what are you playing at?’