The Code War

by Ciaran Nagle

  'I get it,' said Ruth. 'We make her work hard to solve our puzzle. Then she'll own the answer in a much deeper way. Very smart.'

  'That's right,' said Agatha. 'What I have in mind for Nancy is to give her a hidden message that she's desperate to break open. We give her a code.'

  Inferno, Navaho's Squawhouse

  'And so, we now know clearly the layout of Mya Ling's mind, particularly the exact locations of her ambition and ruthlessness. When we first looked into Nancy's soul some time ago and understood her great potential for Destructive Purpose, I made a similar chart of her mind's layout. Now I can prepare to map across all the evil from Mya Ling's mind to Nancy's across the centuries. When that's done our job will be nearly complete.'

  Hideki's success on the mission to 1860 had made him more conceited and unbearable than ever. Bezejel made a mental note to have him ambushed and husked by a private gang she knew as soon as possible after the mission was over. But for now she needed him - and Hideki knew it.

  'So let me get this right, Colonel Hideki, you have charted the layouts of both women's minds and know how to import the evil from one to the other, is that right?'

  They were celebrating at Navaho's after their return from the Manchur. Holzman and Lafarge were already blitzed and had begun to leer at passing squaws. Zhivkin was lost in a stupor of his own thoughts. Kodrob was swaying gently beside Bezejel, but comprehension was gone from his stewed eyes. Around them a raging cacophony was in place as demons drank and argued and squaws led eager though barely-capable clients to the spiral stairways. Drums beat in the background.

  'Pay attention, all of you,' Bezejel snapped at her drunken squad. 'We need to focus on the project. Then you can drink and take your squaws.' But it was too late for discipline. When they were like this, demons became fatalistic and lost their fear of husking. Some of them even sought it out and picked fights to accelerate the journey to gurndom and finality.

  'Yes, I know how to import the evil. I have everything I need,' replied Hideki, looking past Bezejel disdainfully. 'I will map the evil from one to the other by myself in my laboratory. That will be done when I leave here tonight. But the transfer will not take place until the right moment. That comes when Nancy has received all of the letters of the code. Most important right now is that we guard the communication filaments carefully so that angels not interfere with it. Nancy has received the word 'Red'. But there is more to come.'

  'I will put a round-the-clock guard on Nancy,' declared Bezejel. 'If any of those feathered wonders comes close to her we'll know it. She's on her way already to the centre of the Brother organisation. With our help she'll shake it up and turn it into the evil empire that humans have long feared. Then Inferno will have a harvest of souls not seen since the Flood. The Leader will reward us mightily. We'll be rich, Hideki. You and me. Rich. You'll have more demons to torture than instruments to torture them with. I'll have a never-ending line of satyrs leading to the door of my chamber. The plains above my quarters will be piled with husks.'

  Hideki's face worked itself into the closest thing to a smile that he could manage. He took a big gulp of jet fuel, held a candle in front of his mouth and blew. The flame soared over the heads of the hundreds of demons and squaws in the huge hall. Before burning out it took the shape of a Chinese dragon. As the dragon fell to the floor a tongue of flame licked out from its mouth, scorching the wall. A cheer went up from everyone present which Hideki acknowledged with a fluttering of his raised hand.

  Squaws were now descending on Kodrob and the squad, attracted by their fame. Hideki was approached by several pretty vixens, impressed by his pyrotechnic display.

  Bezejel spat on the floor. She would get nothing from her team now. It was time to depart and she made her way between the tables slapping the heads of any drunken males who tried to touch her. As she reached the outer door a trio of thirsty buccaneers entered, their packs bulging with petroleum fuel to trade for time with the squaws. Bezejel smiled at them invitingly. They weren't surprised to see a siren leaving the squawhouse. It wasn't unknown for upper caste demonesses to frequent Navaho's, looking for a bit of rough company. These three were clearly taken by Bezejel's beauty although, unfortunately for them, they didn't know who she was. She placed her hands behind her back allowing the three to drink in her fine figure and her low cut top.

  'Hello boys. Have you been working on a dangerous mission for the Leader? You deserve some reward. Why don't you come with me and tell me all about it? You won't have to spend any of your hard-earned liquor with me.' The three looked at each other. Their luck was in. Bezejel took their arms and led them out in triumph. She marched them to one of her favourite chambers, a place with many rooms where she could entertain each in turn. The three would never be seen again.

  Flying Hippo, 25000 feet above Sahara Desert

  Nancy sat in the navigator's seat behind Adima, wide awake. She'd playfully tried to hang on to the relatively comfortable co-pilot's seat for as long as she could but in the end had been evicted. The three had engaged in friendly banter for a couple of hours, teasing each other about the relative superiority of men and women. Nancy was sure she'd had the best of it.

  Now she sat back thinking about the sheer craziness of the last 24 hours of her life. A host of images swam through her mind as she asked herself if she could have done anything different, or better. The faces of the children came back frequently to haunt her. Thirty five young boys and girls off to work in the fields, probably as slaves. She'd heard the phrase 'indentured slaves' used before. What did 'indentured' mean? Must look it up.

  Anyway, Lafi was dead now - and good riddance. He had intended to kill her but had been killed by his own kind. Brutal justice. At least he wouldn't be slave-trafficking any more. She felt a pang of remorse as she remembered that she had been partly responsible for the children's passage into slavery. She had helped get them across the border using all her charm and wit. Then she had brought drugs in the other direction. What did that make her?

  But as she surveyed the recent past from every conceivable angle she began to realise one extraordinary thing. She had enjoyed it. Far from wanting to return home to safety and certainty she wanted the danger to go on. She had intimidated border guards, fought off a killer, crossed borders with two illegal cargoes while driving a military truck and survived certain drowning at sea. How could she go back to England now and resume her former life as a timid travel agent? The cork was out of the bottle, the jack was out of the box, the genie had escaped - how could it go back? She had had fun! No. She had had FUN! It was dangerous and illegal but it had been heady, exciting stuff. She had never felt so alive as when driving the truck across that moonlit beach. Romance? Far better to have someone point a gun at you and work out how to escape them. That was living. That was the edge. That was what she was made for. Damn, Nancy, you're good at this stuff. Go, girl, have a life, not an existence.

  She was looking forward to seeing Habib again. Boy, would he be surprised when he learnt what she wanted. As for the three boys, well, she hoped they were enjoying their incredibly boring archaeology trip. Let them go back to their ruins, their bones and their dungeon of a university. Let them plot the lives of the dead for the rest of their careers. She was going to escape.

  Nancy felt excitement run through her as she contemplated Habib and his organisation. Brother? Well, let me tell you something, brother, you're inefficient, badly organised and wasteful. Why was this plane flying empty? Why had they hired an unprofessional loner like Lafi? Why had the yacht carrying the drugs across the Atlantic ended up in the wrong cove? Brother needed someone capable and professional in their operation. Someone with an eye for detail. Someone with the patience to plan ahead and improvise rapidly if things went wrong. Someone like Nancy.

  There was still her great-uncle to visit. But that wasn't going to change anything, surely?

  Nancy knew that she needed to sleep. She couldn't afford to waste the night dreaming, she already knew what she h
ad to do next. What time was it? She flicked on the backlight on a digital clock in front of her.

  1.11

  Really? She thought it was later than that.

  She looked to her left at the clock in front of Jimoh Bah. Also 1.11

  Nancy got up. 'Just going to stretch my legs.' She walked into the hull of the Hercules. You could have an orchestra in here, she thought. Or a tennis court. Outside, the hum of the engines was constant and reassuring. She closed her eyes for a minute and allowed the vibrations to pass through her, relaxing her like a sedative.

  She returned to her seat. 1.11

  'Jimoh, is your clock working properly?'

  Jimoh looked up and tapped the face of the clock. He looked at his watch and back again at the clock.

  'The clock has stopped. But my watch has stopped also.'

  'What does it say on your watch?'

  'Also 1.11'

  'So two clocks and your watch all say 1.11?'

  'That is very odd, Missy Nancy. They are separate clocks, not connected. And my watch is powered by movement, not batteries. It's high quality, never breaks.'

  'OK, Jimoh, never mind. I'm going to have a nap now. Wake me when we refuel.'

  'Sweet dreams, Missy.'

  Nancy settled back in her seat and pulled over her a blanket that Adima had found in the navigator's locker.

  1.11. Strange. Within a few minutes she was sound asleep.

  Lightship Factory, Dry Tree Desert, Paradise's Ninth Dimension

  'Can I have one of these to keep?' Jabez had had his first run in Chan and Jo's lightcraft and was excited at the possibilities for sneaking up on friends and surprising them. 'You could be in their living rooms for hours and they wouldn't know. It's so cool.'

  He ran his hands over the perfect curves and sleek lines of the superbly engineered lightcraft. The bodywork changed colours under his fingers as if he was playing it like a musical instrument.

  'May I remind you, young Jabez, that's not a terribly heavenly idea,' joked Jo, swirling her dreadlocked hair. 'Are you sure Heaven's the right place for you?'

  'Oh, you know, I was just thinking of a little fun, nothing sneaky. Though with one of these I could definitely beat Luke at golf for once. Just think what a lightship could do for your handicap!'

  'Send this one for moral re-education, Jo' said Chan, grinning behind a cupped hand.

  'By the way what's it called, Jo?' asked Ruth who was also present, having made the introductions and wanting to be closely involved.

  Chan and Jo looked at each other.

  'Well,' began Jo, 'we're thinking of calling it the Finest Unseen Ninth Dimension Intercruiser and Lightship.' She looked down at her watch.

  Jabez was pensive for a moment.

  'So, the Fundial.' he pronounced.

  '2.68 seconds. I told you he'd beat 3 seconds, Chan,' said Jo delightedly.

  'Yep, the Fundial,' Chan agreed with a smile.

  Ruth cut in. 'Because it's about navigating the Dimensions as easily as dialling a globe and it's about using light for a purpose like the old sundials and it's about having joy and fun at the same time, right?'

  'My, my, you're a cute angel,' said Chan in genuine surprise. 'Go straight to the top of the Christmas tree.'

  Ruth blushed and looked around her as a way of changing the subject.

  'Jo, take me for a walk while the boys talk man stuff. Tell me about the desert.'

  Jo readied her wings with obvious delight. 'OK follow me up to the canopy and we'll talk there.' Her wings flared and beat down as she took off, followed immediately by Ruth. A small sandstorm engulfed Chan and Jabez. The two females flew to the top of a nearby tree and alighted on adjacent branches. They settled themselves down and folded in their wings.

  'We never get tired of showing visitors around,' Jo admitted. 'The Dry Tree Desert is exactly what you'd expect from a desert. There's no rain, no rivers and no water. But dry trees have roots that penetrate deep into the underlying igneous and quartz rock and are able to extract hydrogen and oxygen separately. Then they blend them together within the rootballs to make H₂O. Water. So dry trees aren't really dry at all. But the name has stuck.'

  'How do they get their appearance? Is it from minerals?' asked Ruth in wonder. She fondled some leaves which had the patina of laminated rocks but the texture of regular foliage.

  'Exactly right. The minerals that dry trees ingest from the rocks along with the water they make gives them colours like living rock. Angels come here on vacation and they fly through our amazing desert forest and they can't stop talking about it.'

  'What about at night? What do they look like in starlight?'

  Jo curled her leg around her branch and raised her wings as she looked out across the treetops. 'Picnicking in the canopies is a favourite. Especially at night because our sky has different stars from almost anywhere else in Paradise. The stars come out at different times and drape their light across the forest in unpredictable ways. It's delirious. It looks like diamonds and rubies and emeralds and everything else you can think of, swirling and changing with every passing minute.'

  'Oh, I just wish we could stay the night. But I think Jabez wants to get back,' sighed Ruth.

  'You can come any time. We're always here.'

  'It sure is a great place to work. What about the drifting light effect? When can we see that?'

  'Any moment now,' replied Jo, excitedly. 'There's a breeze coming. Watch out, it can make you dizzy.'

  A breath of wind riffled through the trees making the branches and leaves dance.

  'Oh, I can see it,' shouted Ruth. 'Oh, it's amazing. It feels like a dream.' Everywhere around her, leaves and branches were in several places at once, sometimes solid and sometimes with a ghostly see-through quality about them.

  'Remember, you're in the Ninth Dimension, not the Fifth. All light here is flexible and moves around easily,' shouted Jo whose own black plumage seemed to Ruth to move like waves on a midnight sea.

  'The patterns are unbelievable. Even the hangars and factory buildings are moving.' Ruth was holding her hand to her mouth and looking increasingly anxious.

  'Don't worry, it will stop soon,' reassured Jo. 'The wind doesn't blow for long. But flexible light is the reason we're here. We can control it. We can make it go fast, slow, stop, go backwards, bend it and make really fun shapes out of it. Chan and I have combined some fairly well-known astracraft technology with some light manipulation and developed the Fundial. That's why it's called a lightcraft.'

  'Can we get down on the ground?' begged Ruth. 'I need solid earth beneath my feet. Or even rocky desert.'

  'Sure let's go.' And Jo fluttered her wings and neatly hopped to Ruth's branch and led her down to terra firma.

  Jabez and Chan were sitting in the Fundial, discussing its capabilities.

  'So it can hold onto light in a way that makes an astracraft invisible not only to humans but also to Supernaturals.' Chan was drawing pictures in the air with his hands. 'Plus it has the usual properties of regular astracraft technology in that it can fly right through Fourth Dimension solids. It just pushes the molecules aside.'

  Jo and Ruth listened in. 'Now as I understand it,' stated the practical Jo, 'you want to carry out some fiddly stuff on Earth in the Fourth and make sure you're not spotted by the other side. What you gotta remember is that while you're inside the Fundial you can't be seen. But if you step out of it, you're back to normal rules. Also, although they can't see you, make sure they don't work out your location by what you do.'

  'What does that mean?' asked a puzzled Jabez.

  'It means,' explained Jo patiently, 'that if they can't see you but they can see something that you've just moved or changed, they can work out that you might be there. Then they might decide to try and figure out how to do something about it.'

  'OK,' said Jabez, 'I think you're telling me that nothing is foolproof and that I must take normal safety precautions.'

  'Exactly,' said Jo, 'you got it. By the way
we can also override the controls and recall the Fundial at any time, whether you're inside it or not. So don't think of taking it on an extended leave of absence. We can still bring it back even if we can't see it.'

  'Foiled again,' laughed Jabez. 'Looks like I can't give up the day job just yet.'

  'Seriously though,' he continued, 'Ruth and I are working on an Earth project and the Fundial would come in real handy. Can I take it into the Fourth for some hands-on application work?'

  'Ruth has already had our hands up our backs and 'persuaded' us to let you take it,' said Chan, grinning broadly. 'I don't need to say 'be careful' because only you know the dangers you're facing. But, hey, we made the Fundial for work as well as for pleasure so it would be good to see it tried out in a real enemy-facing situation. Here, take the keys.'

  Chan held his right arm out with his forearm up at 90 degrees. Jabez did the same, placing his forearm against Chan's and took his hand. It was a traditional angel greeting and marked the symbolic handover of the Fundial to Jabez's care. Jabez took Jo's hand in the same way. 'It's a superb piece of engineering. I'll guard it well,' said Jabez to Chan and Jo. Ruth looked on in approval.

  'Ruth, how about I give you a lift home?' Jabez motioned to Ruth to step aboard the two-seater craft.

  A minute later the Fundial disappeared from view.

  Chan and Jo looked at each other and sighed. 'Come on Jo, let's go and sing,' said Chan. 'I need a break from avionic systems that move around as you're trying to engineer them. It's doing my head in.'

  As they walked back to the factory which was still swaying drunkenly, they both lifted up their voices and broke into the Music allowing it to consume them and wash over them. They kicked up their heels and sang as they danced in unison, now a hornpipe, now a tango, then a reel and now a jive. They circled each other dos-a-dos, and they cartwheeled and span. They waltzed through a copse of dry trees and down a path and up a long high hill. And when at last they collapsed on the ground laughing and breathless they talked of engineering and light and time and how they would realise their dream to install a Fundial in every house in Paradise. Then darkness came and they lay out a while under the starlight, holding hands, watching the dry leaves twinkle and the trees walk until sleep overtook them.