A Vial Upon the Sun

by James Codlin

  The picture on the monitor started moving. The string of lights moved toward the camera, dropping off screen one at a time as Martín passed them.

  “That’s it,” she said. “Keep moving! Something will turn up. Just keep moving.”

  *

  Nicolás Ibarra peered through the ventilator grate. “We’re at the subway tunnel, southbound,” he said into his microphone. “How’s my brother?”

  “He’s down in that tunnel,” Gina replied. “He’s delirious—maybe from the fall, maybe from the drugs—but he’s walking now. I can’t tell whether it’s north or south.”

  “Has he come to any stations?” Nicolás asked.

  “No. Just a long line of lights in the tunnel.”

  Nicolás felt wind blowing on his face. “Train coming,” he said.

  He listened as Gina said, “Martín, listen to me. Get over against the side of the tunnel. That’s it. Turn ninety degrees… now, straight ahead. Now, step up over the rail! Go ahead… two feet, one foot, put your hand out. There, that’s the wall. Turn the camera to your left. Get flat, get flat against the wall!”

  Through his earpiece Nicolás heard the train thundering, and a few seconds later it flashed past the grate. He turned to Dennis Prinn and Teodoro Lenin.

  “He’s in this tunnel and he’s close. This way!”

  *

  Pope Pius picked up the phone on the first ring. He glanced at the television where the live broadcast from Mexico City had been hastily superseded by a prerecorded program about the Inquisition’s role as a bulwark of the holy faith and underwriter of political power.

  “Yes?” he demanded.

  “Your Grace, I—”

  “I don’t want to hear excuses! There are none for that, that…” The pope sputtered as he gestured toward the television.

  “We’re doing the best we can to find Ibarra and—”

  “What do you mean, your best? Your incompetence has cost us much of the momentum we needed for the next phase.”

  “Of course, Your Grace. We will find him and capture him so that we can carry out the sentence on tele—”

  “There’s no time for that. Just kill him and we’ll show the body afterward.”

  King Carlos nodded as he nervously listened to the conversation. His ascension to power was, to put it mildly, experiencing some bumps in the road. He reminded himself that while the dog-and-pony show in Mexico City was symbolically important, the truly crucial element was what was happening right now in Kourou. Even with the auto-de-fé ending in a fiasco, the eyes of the world were still all focused on one city block in Mexico City. And like a good magician, the Inquisition would utilize that diverted attention until it was ready to dazzle its audience with what had really been going on all along.

  *

  Colonel Lavigne heard the voices of a multitude singing and chanting all around him, the combined volume vibrating his chest. His staff vehicle stopped and he was lifted to a standing position.

  With a sharp tug, the blindfold was ripped off his head. He blinked rapidly as his eyes accommodated the stunning white lights. Lavigne looked around and saw that he stood between two revolutionary soldiers.

  He twisted his head around. Behind him his men lay or sat in the back of French army trucks, all of them blindfolded with their hands handcuffed behind their backs.

  He looked to the other side and saw the Ariane Six rocket, shiny and graceful, poised for launch. The red-painted gantry tower stood next to the rocket, embracing it protectively with structural steel arms. Metal towers stood in a circle around the pad holding banks of sodium vapor lights that turned the night into day. The festive crowd around them stretched out into the surrounding darkness.

  A young woman in camouflage military fatigues rose from the front seat of Colonel Lavigne’s staff car and put a bullhorn to her mouth. Her left arm shot straight up and her hand clenched into a fist.

  “Vive la liberté Guianaise!” she shouted through the bullhorn.

  A roar came back: “Vive la liberté Guianaise!”

  Commander Delta swept her eyes across the crowd, seeming to make eye contact with every one of the thousands who were now surging close to the army trucks. She dropped her left arm and said into the bullhorn, “Tonight, I have witnessed a death. Tonight, I have witnessed a birth.”

  An earth-shaking shout came back: “Vive la liberté!”

  “Tonight, I have witnessed the death of a colonial anachronism—the death of French rule. Tonight, the dead hand of Eurocentric white rule has dropped away from the throat of the people of Guiana.”

  “Vive la liberté!”

  “Tonight,” Commander Delta went on, “after painful hours of labor, came the birth of a new free nation, of a new free people. Tonight, I humble myself before the citizens of free Guiana.”

  “Vive la liberté Guianaise,” the crowd roared, and guns were fired into the air.

  When the firing stopped, Commander Delta again scanned the multitude, looking into the faces of the men, women, and children. She smiled. “I hope I will not be presumptuous to say that I was the midwife in this birth.”

  The crowd roared its approval. Carolina waited for the cheers to dissipate, relishing the expectant silence that followed it. Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper.

  “The man who we can all agree is the godfather to this birth of freedom… is not here tonight.” She stopped speaking and swallowed several times, letting the drama of the moment grow. “Nicolás Ibarra would have walked barefoot through broken glass, would have crawled through burning coals, would have broken down the gates of hell, to be here with you this night.”

  The thousands around her hung on the pause, not daring to breathe.

  “The man who fought for you, sweated for you, and bled for you cannot be here this night—this magic night, this birth night—” She spun around and slashed her index finger into the chest of Colonel Lavigne. “Because of this officer, this relic of colonialism, this dead hand of the old tyranny!”

  The thousands roared, and a chant went up. “Mort, mort, mort!”

  Carolina’s voice rose again.

  “You, who have suffered so long, deserve to shed his blood. But he is only a lackey in the power structure, and I believe you should be magnanimous toward him. For it was not this particular officer who killed Nicolás Ibarra—it was those of his reactionary military fraternity in the Latino Union who killed him.”

  She again muted her voice to a prayerlike susurration.

  “Live with me, now, tonight, the horror. My companion, my compatriot Nico, leading brave men and women through the dense forests in the Latino Union. Their dream: to be with you tonight for this moment. They endured unspeakable hardships for weeks and months. They were near their goal, looking across the river from Suriname into your land. But that river was to become their River Styx! Fire and steel rained from the sky, and after an eternity for those brave men and women, they were transformed into martyrs to the cause of freedom.”

  Shrieks and howls of grief ripped from the crowd.

  “But,” she said, raising her voice, “on this night of freedom, I say we show our higher purpose by forgiving these agents of death.” Carolina waved broadly toward Colonel Lavigne and the French soldiers in the trucks. “I say we spare them even though they would not have done the same for us. I say we use them as shields for this magnificent engine of struggle.”

  Commander Delta gestured grandly toward the Ariane rocket.

  “This is now our prize of war and we will use it to protect our freedom from the vicious despot Ishikawa and the Latino Union that will surely try to crush our free state and annex it into the imperialist union.”

  The crowd roared its approval and again the cracking of gunfire filled the air.

  “I ask you tonight to stand with me, to shield me and my friends for a few hours, and we will give you the instrument to preserve your freedom. Now, this night, this moment, chain the French mercenaries to the rocket! Then, I want you�
��all of you—to take your place on the gantry tower. Take your place with your children, with your elders, with your friends, and give us a bulwark against a strike from the air by the same cowardly dictator who murdered Nicolás Ibarra and the magnificent revolutionary men and women with him!

  “I call on the spirits of hell to claim Ishikawa as one of their own and take him from this world. I call on the Prince of Peace, Pope Pius, and his temporal brother in Christ, King Carlos of Spain, to deliver us from Ishikawa’s tyranny into their warm embrace of freedom and Godliness. Do it now, my brothers and sisters! Take your places now—be my aegis—and in return I will give you the weapon to protect your freedom forever!”

  The thousands of men and women cheered and surged forward, with small children riding on their shoulders and infants in their arms. They led the French soldiers from the trucks and snapped their handcuffs to the gantry structure at the base of the Ariane rocket. The people formed a joyous line, singing freedom songs and dancing as their column undulated in serpentine-fashion up the gantry steps, level after level, until the entire structure rang with a vibrant festival.

  *

  Lenin stumbled yet again as he supported Dennis, who limped while transferring as much weight as possible to the professor. Nicolás moved ahead of them, impatiently pushing the pace.

  “Come on, come on,” he hissed at Lenin and Dennis behind him.

  “We’re doing the best we can,” Lenin said, gasping for breath.

  Dennis clenched his jaw against the pain in his leg where the laser had cut into his skin. Gritting his teeth, he turned to the professor and said, “Come on, prof. I can push the pace a little more. Nothing like a little searing pain to get the adrenaline going.”

  Lenin looked at Dennis skeptically, then nodded and dutifully increased his speed.

  *

  Gina’s eyes watered with the strain of studying every visible detail on the monitor. The seemingly endless string of lights was interrupted occasionally by other light sources. Another metro train had approached and she had guided Martín off the tracks and up against the tunnel wall. She turned him and started him on his way—toward what, she had no idea.

  As she swept her eyes back and forth on the monitor, she saw one light black out momentarily, then shine again.

  “Martín, stop!”

  The swaying movement on her monitor halted. She watched the lights and saw two of them blink out at the same moment.

  “Someone’s up ahead,” she whispered. “Turn to your right. Now, two steps, up over the rail. Two more steps. Put out your other hand.”

  On the monitor, she could see some details of the concrete tunnel wall.

  “Now, Martín, lie down along the wall and point the camera the way you were walking.”

  She watched the monitor, seeing the line of lights. From the very low angle they seemed to merge into one large luminous blob. There was an interruption of the lights, then another, and then another.

  “Stay down and stay quiet,” Gina warned. “Keep the camera pointed.”

  On the television she saw a human form in the dim light. It was moving forward with stealth, head turning from side to side. It paused, moved ahead a few paces, and paused again. Behind it were more figures, close together, matching the leader’s starts and stops—implacable, searching, advancing.

  From the camera angle looking up from the floor of the tunnel, the figure suddenly loomed, towering above Martín. It stopped and looked directly into the camera. Gina could see no features except for the two dark orbs of the eyes.

  Then the face zoomed up close.

  *

  Martín stopped breathing. He heard the footsteps approaching him pause. He realized he was still holding the television camera out from where he lay, but there was no longer any narration from Gina—his eyes and conscience for the last several hours.

  Martín could feel, as well as hear, shoes planting firmly beside him. Hands spaded under his armpits and he was propelled to a standing position. Strong arms encircled his shoulders and constricted him, forcing the air out of his lungs.

  “Martín!”

  It was Nico, and relief flooded Martín as he returned the embrace.

  *

  After the subway train raced past, Father Serrano called on the radio to the guards who had gone the other way. No, they responded, they hadn’t found anything yet.

  Serrano put on night-vision goggles, giving him an eerie green-tinted view of the tunnel. The line of work lights were hot spots washing out the features around them, and the rest of the panorama showed the concrete ties, the steel rails, and the third rail.

  Serrano rechecked his pistol, making sure a round was in the firing chamber and ready to shoot. He held it up in front of him.

  The priest moved carefully but relentlessly, scanning up and down and side to side to ensure that he missed nothing. Rounding a gradual curve, Serrano saw four figures standing to the side of the tunnel. Two were embracing, with two more standing behind them.

  Serrano dropped to one knee and studied the scene before him. His grip on the pistol tensed. From here in the darkness he would have the element of surprise and could take out one of them for sure—maybe two—before the rest scattered or returned fire. He would have to get off a few rounds and then retreat further into the darkness where his goggles would give him the advantage.

  He would have to make these shots count, and his top priority was to make sure that Martín Ibarra, the heretic, was taken out for good.

  Serrano crouched in the darkness, moved forward to get the best shots possible, and listened for Martín’s voice.

  *

  Gina listened to Nicolás’s voice cracking as he said “My brother, my brother, my brother” over and over. On the monitor, the picture was a blur. It stabilized as the two brothers talked.

  Behind the reunited brothers, she thought she picked up some sort of movement, but once again the picture veered wildly. Gina tried to relax. Between the three men who still had their vision, one of them would be able to see anyone approaching much better than she would on her feed.

  “They’re not going to hurt you anymore,” Nicolás said. “By God, no more.”

  Martín sounded weepy. “Nico, you came for me. You weren’t broken.”

  “Me, broken? What are you talking about?”

  Martín’s voice filled with joy and relief. “You have come so far, Nico! Don’t you have men to order around in the jungle?”

  Nicolás chuckled. “For you, my brother, I am willing to leave the comforts of the jungle and come to… a rat-infested underground tunnel! The sacrifices I make for my family!”

  Martín smiled broadly, and then the smile faded and he grabbed Nico’s shoulder. “Where’s Gina?” Martín asked. “She’s alive, see, she’s alive! She’s in my head.”

  “Ah, yes! Your girlfriend—the living embodiment of all I hate in this world? Power, privilege, inherited class! Her? Yes, you will get to see her soon. Like you, she has quite the story to tell! Come, let us get you out of here.”

  Nicolás squeezed his brother’s neck affectionately and began to lead them slowly down the tunnel. Reflexively, Martín pointed the camera in his hand forward as they began to walk.

  *

  Gina listened with tears welling up in her eyes. Was it possible that she would soon be reunited with Martín? It seemed too far-fetched to actually happen, and there was still work to be done. Her friends were still being pursued, and she needed to focus on helping in any way that she could to get them out of the subway and to safety.

  On her screen the picture swung back and forth lazily as the two men turned and walked. She was about to ask Martín to give her a steady look down the tunnel when the picture stabilized, as if Martín had already heard her unspoken command.

  Gina now had a clear shot down the tunnel—and her blood went cold. Through the darkness she could now see some movement—a human form moving toward them in a low crouch.

  “Martín, Nicolás,
look out!” she shouted. “Just in front of you! Someone is approaching!”

  Nicolás let out an explosive breath and the camera angle dropped as he threw Martín to the ground.

  “The priest,” Nicolás hissed.

  “Serrano,” Martín said, certain of it, though he couldn’t see the figure’s face.

  “This persecution ends now,” she heard Nicolás say. “The justice you administer is from hell, not from God!”

  The picture stabilized, and Gina watched Nicolás running down the tunnel toward the shadowy figure, his back to the camera. The crouched figure in the shadows raised his arms, one supporting the other.

  “Gun!” Gina shouted. “Gun!”

  There was a bright flash on the screen and a popping sound from the speakers, and then another flash and pop. Nicolás spun completely around and stopped. He doubled over but then straightened up, turned around, and resumed his sprint.

  Nicolás’s image merged with the priest’s as a new series of flashes and pops punctuated the video and audio. The two men toppled backward, locked in an embrace, and then the images on the monitor’s screen were completely washed out by a brilliant flash of light. When the glare died down, Gina could see sparks arcing gracefully into the air and drifting to the ground.

  The speakers above the console where she sat vibrated to the point of distortion with a chorus of screams.

  Chapter THIRTY

  President Ishikawa sat staring, unblinking, at the large television screen in the Latino Union’s military command center. The rocket gantry at Launch Pad Three in Kourou appeared as a living thing, teeming with humanity.

  Major Soto consulted several sheets of paper on the conference table before him, then stood. “Mr. President, these images came to us fifteen minutes ago. Paris has not confirmed it, but it appears that the French Foreign Legion company and the gendarmerie in Guiana have surrendered. For now, French rule in Guiana has effectively ceased. From these images we estimate there are more than two thousand civilians on the gantry: babies, the elderly, women, and children. The Japanese technicians from Moto Electric are being held here—” the major paused the video and touched the screen with a metal pointer— “in this clean room around the nose cone, and a platoon of French Legionnaires are chained here, at the base of the Ariane booster.”