Pinatubo II

by Les W Kuzyk

  Chapter 13

  Vince stepped with Brad from the cool Nissan air into the swirling dusty heat. He squinted around at the crowd of jumbled traffic-of-all-sorts leading along the approach road to the Hippodrome. Many stood tall and thin wearing white turbans and shirts of many colors. Tattered clothing covered most, many barefoot but some with sandals. These mixed with a sprinkle of shiny business shoes below tailored suits. A few stood beside bicycles and threesomes sat squashed astride motorcycles. The odd man sat high on horseback or lower on donkey back.

  “That was good of Aahil to drop us off.” Vince fell into stride beside Brad. “So Friday would be a day off for him, kind of like Sunday for us?”

  Brad nodded his head emphasizing their driver would spend the day with his family. “They keep a few months’ supply of food in their house, you know that Vince?”

  “Who?”

  “Aahil.”

  “And?”

  “Food would be a first concern, absolutely.”

  “Your survival cell?”

  “The Pacific Northwest looks good for any climate change scenario.” Weather patterns and soil conditions in his mountain valley made for local food production, Brad explained, and the precipitation trend though erratic was on the rise there while the prairies baked. Without a greener thumb Brad felt more motivated to help develop a strong community. A tight family first, like Aahil’s. For basic adaptation, you wanted your family around you and extended family made things more tribal—cousins on your side was a good thing. And then the local valley community. He rephrased Jerry’s Dunbar number into a future-aware tribe you found, formed or joined.

  “Which country will your valley town be a part of?” Vince humoured his friend.

  Strategically best not to rely so much or really at all on any distant federal or state government. As a last resort Brad speculated. National government would be good to keep, but not the insanity of a worldwide military. Who beat their chest the loudest, like really, who or what really was the enemy? Back on the plains of Africa, but not in a modern context. Aside from the hypothetical, how current were the national governments now? So who knew what they would do, a traditional track record didn’t bode all too well for the future. A local community could keep that national thing on the sidelines in case they did actually grow up. If they could sort out their differences without a war, that was a good sign. But not for the basics of everyday life. Think local, like venison would do as a protein source; the mountain valley white tailed and mule deer lived quite well among people with their intermittent fields and forests.

  "You've got yourself a plan," Vince said.

  "Getting a lot from Aahil," Brad said. “You know, he says they’re trucking biochar from the south to Agadez.”

  “Who is?”

  “The Chinese. You have to have a bio source where lots of vegetation grows—that would not be in the desert. One way of replacing the desert with grasslands is biochar. Takes carbon out of the air, and stores it in the ground almost permanently. Helps create soil, which is what you want on top of the desert sands.”

  “So, our project has competition.”

  “You know what else?” Brad shifted his eyes around. “That Taureg man says if we pay a little extra, we get a seat in the shade.” Aahil had described the economy of the race tracks somewhat, a little world of business mixed with struggles amongst young and old over alms turf. They walked through the crowd towards the roof covered stands.

  On their first weekend free, they’d come to watch the horses race at the Champs de Course. Brad had convinced Vince of the need to celebrate their successful field test release—after working day in and day out for over a week since their arrival. How to celebrate? The glimmer in the eyes of their driver spoke to them of the free spirit of the Sahara horse racing through his Tuareg blood. Friday at the Niamey tracks, he told them. Now they found their place in the shuffle progressing across the stony parched ground towards what they judged to be the entrance gate.

  A young boy hobbling up to them, calling out his services in French at first, then English as he caught the emptiness in Brad’s eyes. Falling in beside them, his one crutch acted at least as well as the missing leg from the knee down. Vince felt his heart swell and tears rising in his eyes. This boy couldn’t be more than a few years older than his daughter.

  “Je m’appelle Antoine …” Then his English spoke of how he would be their guide. He would find them the best seats, and for a small amount extra he would find them soft pillows to place on the hard bench. He would show them, he confided, where to place bets on their favorite horses—not at the official booth. Or, his voice dropped another notch, to the only good-luck seats in the stadium.

  “All desert horses today, sir,” Antoine spoke in a normal voice again. “Good race, very good race, sir.”

  “Good-luck seats?” Vince raised an eyebrow in fun. “How do we get luck out of a seat?”

  “Bonne chance.” Antoine noticed the interest and led them through the crowd. “Come.”

  His services proved true and the two engineers found themselves sitting on cushioned seats in the shade. Antoine pointed out the repaired seats just next to theirs. The boy then raised his finger up at the shading roof above. A circle in the roof looked refitted with different colored metal sheeting.

  “Patron Abul Malik,” Antoine said. “Feu de l’enfer.” He lifted his arms, shaking his hands as they rose and shushing deep in his throat. “Missed.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Brad said.

  “Where these seats get their good-luck,” Vince said. “Say a meteor struck. That’d be extra luck if it missed you.”

  “I get you bière, now, yes?” The boy asked.

  Vince nodded, handing Antoine paper money to pay.

  “Feu means fire. Or flame or blaze,” Vince translated out loud. “But enfer, that’s literally inferno or could mean hell.” He looked at Brad. “So the fire from hell came down through that roof. Meteors come from hell?”

  “What? Oh shit.” Brad stared at Vince. “Not a Hellblazer. That’s a military missile from a Marauder drone.”

  They looked at each other, stunned.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, that’s military flight talk.”

  “Okay, so you wouldn’t want to join al-Qaeda. Not around here,” Vince said, glancing up at the roof. “You would not want to become a drone target.”

  Brad hung his head to check down under their wooden bench seats and Vince followed his down under gaze. Below the replaced seats the charred cut edges of an old metal frame twisted around into a bowl, laced with half melted bolts and a scatter of charred wooden remains.

  “Had to be using surface drone assist technology,” Brad said. “To get a target lock underneath a metal roof.”

  “True then.” Vince laughed nervously. “You would be lucky sitting over here next door to not get blown to pieces over there.”

  “Yeah man.” Brad shook his head. “Lucky.”

  Vince felt his chipper outlook surge, a strange feeling he couldn’t keep down today. How absolutely abnormal. And now he felt a extra tingle over this latest.

  “That drone surface assist is fairly new,” Brad said quietly.

  With his daughter flashing to mind Vince clicked a saddled horse photo with his Jeenyus, sending it directly with a text…hey baby, look at Google maps and find the horse tracks in Niamey. Look for daddy down there beside this horse… ha ha! Almost a moment of silliness—where had that come from? He still hoped to be home for Christmas, but at the moment, he felt fine anywhere. He could even stay in this place for a while.

  Antoine brought them glass bottles of Bière Niger from one of the booths.

  Vince accepted his, condensation covered and half cool to the touch. “Fire-from-the-sky?” he said, pointing up at the roof repair. “Feu de l’enfer. Hellblazer? Missile?”

  Antoine bobbed his head avidly in agreement, gapped teeth showing.

  “Foreigners try. They mi
ss.” He winked. “Abul have cousin double that day.”

  “Abul did not die?”

  “No no no,” Antoine shook his head. “Cousin look same. Abdul lives!”

  “So that’s the good-luck,” Vince said. And a local hero found in the boy’s tone. “Abul had a lucky day, even if his double didn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Brad said. “The luck of the draw.”

  Brad clinked his bottle against the one Vince held. “Well, success, man!” The incessant grin today went well with his toast held high. “We lifted three tons of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere within vertical distribution specs.” Brad took a swig. “And, we successful landed and retrieved all three balloons.” He had let Vince in on his personal retrieval policy on all aerial equipment. No balloon left behind. Vince took a long draw from his bottle. He could feel the African bubbles snap the sides of his throat and foam this dry city's aroma up into his nose. He nodded…what would come next?

  Across the tracks, order appeared amidst the confusion as horses assembled into a line. Mounts of pure black or desert ghost white, some painted mixed, others dappled, each saddled with an equal diversity of turbaned riders.

  “That Jeri sure has character,” Vince started to chat.

  “Yup, she has a lot on her mind.” Brad heard him, nodding. “She sure knows how to speak that mind, though, doesn’t she?”

  “Yeah…you know, if you listen, a lot of what she says sounds like she’s been doing her homework.”

  A couple of the things their analyst said had caught Vince’s ear. “She says people see nature as chaos, especially engineers.” He shrugged, looking over. “So, Brad. You feel a need to conquer nature? Do you hold within you an inherent desire to redesign ecology?”

  “I dunno,” Brad said. “I mean I don’t have any grand plan past my survival ideas, but I sorta get what she’s saying." He took a long pull off his bottle. "Like engineers design and build a bridge, say. Well, better than crossing the river on a log or even those big river boats they got here.”

  Vince nodded.

  “But when you design a wing, you've got inspiration and initial design coming from nature, from a bird say. After that, you can come up with a lot more…no bird can fly like a jet.”

  “What hits me hardest would be her take on human nature," Vince said. "People did develop here on the plains of Africa, and our brains are built around the stages of evolution we went through. I never heard of that Dunbar number, and I never saw it from a psychological perspective, but what she says, that’s true. We have an outdated decision making process based on survival of our tribe at the expense of that other tribe. But now we have a new situation. We’ve used up our one planet and we don’t have any Planet B.”

  Brad looked at his friend, an eyebrow raised as if in surprise at this new Vince energy.

  “So us lifting those three tons, is that gonna help us share the planet?" Vince said. "Or is this gonna bring about tribal conflict, just at a global national level?"

  Brad shrugged.

  "‘Cause climate change is gonna hit a kid like Antoine just like the kids in Bangladesh…a lot harder than our kids back home—already has. And now I see numbers on how much planet our kids use up. A lot more than Antoine ever did. While we sit back and say a place like Niger has a population problem. Like I kwikread an infogram last night on that equation, and you gotta add in affluence. The real equation becomes Population times Affluence equals the real People Planet pressure. You actually classify people larger depending a lot on that Affluence factor. Take us for example. When we get driven by our chauffeur in an SUV—we measure a lot bigger than these young guys working the horse tracks. Then there’s technology.”

  "Yeah." Brad looked at him. "C’mon Vince, let's watch these horses."

  “The total equation includes the Technology factor." Vince’s voice dropped. “Infograms says don’t count on that, like a wildcard.”

  “Well, horses are the technology today.” Brad transitioned focus to the race. “Good old horses—with a lot longer history in the Sahel than automobiles and balloons.”

  "So true Impact actually equals,” Vince spoke quiet to himself, then thought. “Population times Affluence times Technology.” He snapped another photo.

  “Look at that tall black horse. If I was gonna bet, I’d be watching that one. Got freedom written all over him." Brad clinked bottles again. "D'you know freedom is the name of the Taureg?”

  "Really." Vince switched gears. “Yeah, freedom. So cool!” By the third bière he was laughing deeply as they watched the black horse rider sparing for position as his mount galloped the track.