by Barry Klemm
The captain had the place surrounded but his men were relaxed, lounging about, smoking and chatting or sleeping, paying little attention to what was supposed to be a siege. Wagner frowned—time was running out and surely these men should have been out there somewhere, hunting down his last remaining fugitives. But he wasn’t about to try and tell the captain his job.
These Japanese were like a dog with a bone—once they got their teeth into a captive, they weren’t about to let go. Unless his name was Katsumi, who, Wagner had heard although not from the captain, had apparently vanished completely.
But this man was not The Yellow Pimpernel. This was an old priest who wasn’t going anywhere, not to Brazil, not even out of the temple. The old man, bald and wizened, sat cross-legged on the stone floor before a brazier in which a small fire flickered, silent and seemingly unaware of his surroundings.
Wagner squatted down and tried to speak to the old fellow, but there was not even acknowledgment of his presence. It was another one of those jobs that the captain reckoned Wagner needed to see for himself before he explained. For the moment, Wagner could not understand why they didn’t just lay hand to the old bugger and drag him out. But of course, it wasn’t so simple.
“It is his lifelong mission to guard these stones,” the captain explained.
“Can’t we place a guard until he gets back?” Wagner said, knowing that solution would be far too practical to work.
“He must guard them himself. But there is good news.”
“I’m always suspicious of your good news, Captain.”
“The old priest is dying, Mr. Wagner. He has Leukemia.”
“Does he? I don’t suppose he’s likely to pop off in the next ten days by any chance?”
“Every possibility. He is not expected to last out the month.”
“But no guarantee.”
“No guarantee.”
“Has anyone explained the situation to him?”
“Oh yes. He fully understands. He prays continually that his life be ended before the deadline. Is that the right word?”
“It was never righter. So he wants to die, before the deadline, to help us out.”
“That’s right. But at present the gods have not obliged.”
“I’ve never met an obliging god yet. Why don’t we help him out?”
“He suggested that. He suggested we should shoot him.”
“Why don’t you?”
“This is another of your honourable jokes?”
“Yeah. You can laugh any time you like.”
“It would be murder.”
“I know. I don’t suppose we can interest him in the idea of suicide?”
“No. This would offend the gods.”
“I thought you guys were deeply into bumping yourselves off.”
“Only when the alternative is dishonour. Anyway, he must stay and guard the stones.”
“Who guards the stones when he dies?”
“The stones will fall when he dies.”
“Might I suggest a bomb?”
“Perhaps Professor Thyssen can arrange for Fujiyama to erupt and bring the stones down on the old man.”
“I’m sure he would, if he was here.”
Wagner walked across the uneven platform and knelt once more beside the old man.
“Die, you old bastard,” he said grimly.
The old man turned his kindly eyes upon him and spoke. There were tears in those eyes. Smoke from the brazier was getting in Wagner’s eyes too. The captain, standing over them, translated.
“He promises that he will die before dawn on Monday, as you wish.”
“You mean he understood what I said?” Wagner asked in slight shock.
“A dog would have understood what you said.”
Wagner bowed his head and raised himself to his feet. Reaching down, he touch the old man’s bald head lightly. The old man raised a hand and closed it over his. And then he spoke again.
“There has been too much death,” the captain translated. “It hardens every heart. Everyone he ever knew is dead. Every hour, he says to himself exactly what you said to him, in exactly the same tone. Every hour, he prays to die. He will make a special effort now, because it is so important that he be dead.”
“Tell him thank you. The lives of many depend on it.”
“He knows that. He is sure he will be dead by Monday.”
Wagner withdrew his hand. It was tacky with sweat from the old man’s diseased scalp. Sickened by that thought, Wagner strode out of the temple.
*
Twenty-four hours had passed since Glen Palenski vanished with a shrug and a smile through a doorway on the far side of the room, and throughout that time, Thyssen was completely alone. A prisoner in fact, in what amounted to a technological torture chamber. All around the room, the virtual planet earth rotated on its screen saver axis, except at those times when temptation had overwhelmed him and he went to work on one of the terminals.
Everything he ever dreamed of and ever needed was in this room as if it had been designed especially for him, which, in an indirect way, it had. No one disturbed him, but he knew in the end someone would. He presumed that his every movement and action was being observed and recorded, by the cameras that peered down from every corner, via the computer system. He assumed he was unable to leave but, after a time, when no one appeared, he checked it out thoroughly. First he went around the room and explored every panel. He went to the toilet and found it windowless. He examined the food dispenser—it had enough in there to sustain him for months. He sat at a terminal and searched out the plans of the building, the air conditioning system, the ceiling space and cable ducts. There was no way out.
Between times, he kept the monitoring system running. A map of The Congo indicated Andromeda’s current position and he went down through the levels until he arrived at a satellite image that showed the fractionally mobile blob of body heat that was her vast legions of pilgrims. There was a list with every name. They had covered 833km since the trek began, four months ago and 117 individuals had died for various reasons since then—mostly aged souls, or children from illness, and three taken by leopards. The map continually calculated their rate of progress and made predictions of where they would be when, at their present rate of progress. Thyssen was carefully not to pay any heed to the final location. He determinedly showed no satisfaction that they were right on schedule.
While he was there, the ship transporting the Italians arrived in Rio de Javier and he could put up the complete passenger manifest, all in alphabetical order except for Brian Carrick who was at the top of the list. A touch of the screen brought up his personal details. It recorded assault charges and classified him as `approach with caution’. Brian would have loved to have know that. While he ran down the manifest, Thyssen was doubly pleased to note the name of Fabrini, Giacanni; in its rightful alphabetical place, which was great because Thyssen happened to know Fabrini was not on the ship but already in Brazil, having flown there directly after a not very mysterious detour to Rome.
At times lights flashed and he eventually realised it meant that new data had arrived concerning his team. A news report of the siege of Bakersfield, where the FBI had the pilgrims surrounded and officials warned of a feared massacre or mass suicide. Of Lorna, there was nothing to be seen whereas, you could bet, if they were to permit her to appear on camera, she would certainly do so. Apparently, the news report revolved around the fact that a meeting seemed to be going on in the football stadium and everyone was there. Helicopter shots showed the crowd pouring in. The FBI chiefs thought that portentous. Nobody mentioned the most vital piece of information—whereas last time the Californian pilgrims headed north, this time they would be wanting to go south.
Over by the wall was a couch that was exceedingly comfortable, and there, for a good deal of the time, Thyssen slept. He found he slept more these days, as if he had used up all of his last reserves of energy. He slept, he ate, he eliminated and went back to play more
with the computer, and toy with his masters, sensing their frustration growing. Did they really expect that he would be foolish enough to give away his secrets? Did they truly hope temptation would overwhelm him and he would utilise this system to work out his next prediction, thus revealing to them his methods? Actually, if that was their plan, it was a pretty good one. For to sit here, playing with these wonderful toys, seemed to Thyssen to be just a bit childish. Stubborn refusal to give in when his own vision of paradise lay at hand. And what harm could it do anyway? He was beginning to wonder who indeed was the drongo in the end.
*
His disgust was immeasurable. 633 only marginally legal Italian immigrants had passed through the officialdom and entered Brazil, the authorities not raising an eyebrow. Twenty other dubious passengers and crewmen from the ship were admitted with only the merest glance at their documentation. Across the barrier, a hunted murderer—of a cardinal no less—stood with a broad welcoming grin. Of them all, only one individual was stopped—the only one of them all who possessed a completely legal passport and visa.
“Would you be good enough to step in here please, Mr. Carrick.”
*
Most days, for most of the day, Andromeda marched at the head of her flock, loping along with the same easy stride they did, dressed in a baggy colourful robes that flowed back from the outline of her body, her hair in a band typical of that which all of the women wore. More often than not, she received visitors who could join her as long as they were willing to walk beside her. Journalists came and did interviews, the camera crews bravely marched backwards over unknown ground for she would permit neither rehearsals nor retakes.
Government officials of all kinds came to discuss documentation or plans. Often Captain Maynard strode beside her in his rolling sailor’s gait, making his bi-daily reports and expressing his concerns about the conditions ahead. His job had been made much easier now by the co-operation of the Government of the Republic of The Congo, who saw the pilgrims as a much needed tourist attraction, as well as a bargaining chip in international trade negotiations.
The President of the Republic had taken a personal interest in the food supply chain and had broadened the whole concept to a giant aid program for his entire population, and talked about a democratic election for the near future. The two C-130s carried the supplies into the path of the pilgrims tirelessly but now two dozen similar machines carried out the same operations throughout the vast state of The Congo, although the President was careful to ensure the Earthshaker Project operation was never interfered with. Ahead of and behind the marchers, his troops cleared the road and offered detour routes around the vast swarm of people moving onward, relentlessly onward. The President knew a social miracle when he saw one and most of his people clearly understood that he was fully responsible for it.
Then there were the pilgrims themselves who dared to approach her from behind, usually the most senior female of each family group, to tell her all the gossip concerning the people she marched with, to speak of her kin, and their illnesses and who had lost children in the war and from disease in the bad days and how much better it was now and finally, always finally, where were they going?
“I don’t know,” Andromeda always answered. “It is you and others like you who will know when we arrive.”
The women, flattered beyond imagining, always offered her gifts which she took gracefully, blessed and then handed back.
“This gift you have given me, is now my gift to you with my blessing added,” she told them. The women retired, thrilled by their newly acquired treasures.
Then there were the headmen, who invariably came with a long list of personal complaints, always against the leaders of their neighbouring tribal groups.
“There will be no fighting,” she told them. “Those who fight will return to the old land where there is fighting to be done.”
Captain Maynard’s men marched back in the mob, pairs of them staying close to the tribal leaders, their weapons always at the ready, and there was never any fighting. Andromeda wondered how they had coped when these men had been needed to cover the flanks.
At the rear of the column was an ever-increasing convoy of trucks which carried those unable to walk, and after them two armoured cars to ensure that any bandits in the vicinity kept their distance.
At the front, the tank creaked and groaned and whirred along, positioning itself to guard the latest payload from the planes against local scavengers. But the bandits and the scavengers too seemed to have understood the same thing as the President—that this was a miracle and they should not interfere.
Often, to the consternation of Captain Maynard, desperadoes with rifles slung, smelling awful and frighteningly skinny, the human jackals who were the bandit chiefs, marched with Andromeda to assure her that they were taking their band to the hills until the pilgrims had passed for it was death to steal and pillage on the sacred ground upon which they had trod.
But of all her visitors, the most improbable was Joel Tierney. He had arrived in a hired Cessna and she encountered him along the road, sitting on a bale of flourbags, smoking a joint, sweating furiously in his white cotton suit and straw hat. He fell into step beside her.
“We have to talk.”
“Talk.”
“I can’t. Walkin’ at this pace.”
The pace was slow and easy but Joel had to jog to match her long strides. The conditions were very hot and very humid but then they always were in this part of the world.
“There’s commitments, Andy.”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh come on. I got all sorts of hot deals lined up. Everyone wants in on you, baby.”
“Not until this is done, Joel. I’m sorry.”
“You can take some time off.”
“No Joel. No chance.”
“Okay. When? I got CBS. I got Eurovision. I got fucking everybody in the business.”
“Except me, Joel. You haven’t got me.”
“Okay, when?”
“When these people get to where they are going.”
“Where’s that?”
“We reach the Congo in three weeks.”
“Then what?”
“It will take some time to cross. Maybe then. But really, I don’t know. First we have to get to the Congo. That’s all.”
“But why?”
“Because that’s where we are going.”
“Andy, why are you doing this?”
Really, he asked all the same questions everyone else did. It was just that his motives were different.
“Because it’s what I’m doing?”
“It’s costing millions.”
“I know. But the project has the money and the people must be fed.”
“I meant the millions that you’re not earnin’.”
“I’ve already made millions. This is what happened as a result. I sang the songs. Now I must lead the people. That’s all there is.”
“It’s because that friend of yours that died, ain’t it. Saint Christine. You’re tryin’ to take her place.”
“No. I’m doing the same thing she was doing, with other people, for the same reason.”
“But what for?”
“Because this is what we are doing. That’s all there is, Joel.”
“Jesus, Andy. I spent the best years of my life making you famous, and now you don’t want to go on with it.”
“We’ve just passed your plane, Joel. Get in and buzz off.”
“You’ll pay for this. I’ll sue.”
“You’ve already got four breach of contract suits out against me, Joel.”
“I dropped ‘em.”
“Raise them again. At least it’ll give you something to do so you’ll stop pestering me.”
“You’ll be sorry. You’ll regret this.”
“No Joel. No matter what happens, I’ll never regret this.”
*
On the fifth day of his captivity in this technological paradise, he finally had a
visitor. By then he had taken to talking to himself and the machines and the security cameras and Glen, who, he assumed, had security personnel watching and listening, waiting for him to make a slip. No human voice replied but most of the machines did. Of course, he knew they would be monitoring everything, and limited his internet access and email, to prevent him reaching the outside world, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty to do. On every screen, he had something going on. A chess match with the computer. He took to playing computer games which he hadn’t done since the days when Space Invaders was new. He set up some wonderful fractals in abysmal motion and was getting close to reproducing the Mandelbrot Set. He reckoned he’d solved Hood’s difficulty with Fibonacci but then he lost the solution. He had a whole array of Glen’s models running. And he constantly kept track of his colleagues.
He watched Brian Carrick become a separate dot from his Italian pilgrims in Rio—presumably having his usual difficulty with Brazilian Immigration as he did with all officialdom—and saw him move at such a rate that he had to be flying, and land in Washington and then tracked him on a city grid map right to this very building so he knew who his visitor was before he entered.
“Welcome to Harleyworld,” he said.
Brian, who showed every sign of having been physically shoved into the room, stood with his mouth open for some time. It crossed Thyssen’s mind that most probably, in that instant, Brian’s worst suspicions about the leader of Project Earthshaker were confirmed. Perhaps that was why they troubled to drag him across two continents to get him here.