The Titicaca Effect

by Richard N. Tooker

  “Janey, say hello to Alicia,” Freeman said in introduction. “Alicia, this is Janey.”

  Janey held out her right hand and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Montoya.” It sounded rehearsed.

  “Well, I’m very pleased to met you too, Miss Freeman,” Alicia replied, taking the young girl’s hand. “Why don’t you call me Alicia? Would it be all right if I call you Janey?”

  “OK,” Janey grinned.

  “Janey, how do you feel?” Freeman asked. He had only been out of the country for a few days, but it had apparently been long enough for his body to re-acclimate to sea level. He was feeling the effect of the altitude again. It wasn’t as bad as the first time, but it was uncomfortable.

  “It’s kinda hard to breathe,” she said.

  “You’ll need to take it easy for a day or two,” he said. “It’s the altitude. We’re almost three miles high.”

  “I’m OK,” Janey said as they walked toward the airport entrance to a waiting embassy staff car that Alicia had arranged. “Where are we going now?”

  “To my apartment,” Freeman answered. “We thought we’d let you get settled in for a few minutes, and then if you feel like it we can take a walk so you can see the city. I live in a high-rise, right downtown.”

  “Do you live there too?” she asked Alicia.

  “No, Janey, I have my own apartment,” Alicia responded.

  “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Alicia asked.

  “Aren’t you my Dad’s girlfriend?”

  “Well, yes,” Alicia said. “But we don’t live together.”

  “Why not?” Janey persisted.

  “Well, that’s not something people do here. It’s one of the things that’s different about Bolivia.”

  “It’s cold,” Janey said, apparently satisfied with the answer. They had emerged from the airport into the crisp air of the altiplano. “Is it like this all the time?”

  “It’s fall, honey,” Freeman answered. “It gets pretty cold, especially at the lake. Did you pack some warm clothes?”

  “It’s not fall, it’s spring,” Janey said. “I thought it would be warm.”

  “That’s another thing that’s different about Bolivia,” Alicia said. “The seasons are backwards. When it’s springtime in the states, it’s fall here. And when it’s winter where you live, it’s summer here.”

  “I’m gonna freeze to death.”

  “It will be warm in the car,” Alicia said as the embassy driver opened the door for them. “I have an idea. As soon as we get to the your father’s apartment, why don’t I loan you a sweater and we’ll go shopping?”

  “Cool,” Janey grinned.

  “Tyler, is that all right with you?” Alicia asked.

  “Sure,” he answered, reaching for his wallet. “As long as I don’t have to go. Let me give you some money.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t” Alicia responded, winking at Janey. “If you do that, we’ll only be able to spend what you give us. I’ll just charge it and we’ll give you the bills. How would that be?”

  Janey giggled.

  Freeman rolled his eyes in mock resignation. “I can tell when I’m outnumbered. Just try to leave something for the other customers, OK?”

  They started down into the city, Alicia pointing out landmarks to Janey along the way. When she told Janey she was a language teacher, they immediately launched into an introductory lesson in Spanish. By the time they reached the apartment, Janey could read most of the road signs and even some of the billboards they had seen along the way. She was obviously a very curious and bright young lady, and Alicia, who was used to dealing with children in her work, knew exactly how to communicate with her. Freeman was delighted that the two of them had hit it off so well. It would make his daughter’s visit a lot easier on him.

  When the embassy staff car pulled up in front of the apartment building where Freeman lived, there were six men in black suits waiting on the busy sidewalk near the curb. One of them was Manco Capac, and Freeman immediately recognized the other five as being among the men he had seen with Capac when they had met. They moved toward the car as it pulled to the curb.

  “You two wait in the car,” Freeman said as he opened the door. “Don’t get out for any reason.”

  “Who are those men?” Janey asked.

  “Just stay in the car. I’ll take care of this.” Freeman responded. “Lock the doors,” he said to the driver, then slammed the door behind him. The embassy driver did as he was told, then used his cell phone to call the Bolivian police as they watched Freeman confront the six well-dressed Indians.

  “Mr. Capac, what are you doing here?” he said.

  “We heard your daughter was coming for a visit, Mr. Freeman. We thought she should be properly welcomed to Bolivia,” Capac responded.

  “Listen, you sonofabitch, you get within ten feet of my daughter and I’ll have your ass thrown in jail!” Freeman growled. His body looked like a coiled spring and his hands balled into fists.

  “Please, Mr. Freeman, you mistake my meaning.” Capac said, his tone as polite as the first time they had met. “We only mean to offer her a gift. She is an honored guest.”

  Freeman glared at him, his body still tense. “Yeah, sure. I know how you treat your guests, and I’m telling you, you lay one finger on her and I’ll break your Goddamn neck!”

  Capac motioned to one of the men with him, who produced a cube-shaped, gift-wrapped package about six inches to a side. “It is a gift, Mr. Freeman. A priceless artifact created by my ancestors. We truly mean her no harm.”

  “Why would you want to give her a gift?”

  “As I said, we only wish to welcome her, and I thought perhaps we might talk today.”

  “Well, you’re not giving her anything. And I told you before, if you have business with me, call my office for an appointment.”

  “I did call, Mr. Freeman. Your staff would not put me through to you. I’d like to know what President Maldonado’s intentions are regarding the demands of the New Empire of the Incas.”

  “His intention is to ignore you, Mr. Capac, as I told you when we first met. He does not take you seriously.” Freeman could hear the sound of sirens in the background, growing quickly louder as police cars converged on the apartment building from three different directions.

  Capac took the package from the man who was holding it, then bent down and placed it on the ground at Freeman’s feet. “For your daughter, Mr. Freeman,” he said. “Please tell President Maldonado that he must take us seriously. If he does not, there will surely be consequences.” All six men then melted into the crowd of pedestrians and disappeared as the first police car squealed to a stop in front of the apartment building.

  The police searched the crowd for Capac and his men, but they had vanished into thin air. Freeman refused to pick up the small, gift-wrapped package, fearing that it might contain explosives. The police cleared a nearby park of pedestrians, then carefully opened the package to find an antique, solid gold figurine in the shape of a coiled serpent. It was clearly Inca in design, and appeared to be, as Capac had promised, priceless.

  Freeman was afraid that Janey would be frightened by the events, but she seemed to take it all in stride, telling Alicia that she thought it was “cool” the way her father had stood up to Capac. She was delighted when Freeman reluctantly agreed to let her keep the artifact.

  The shopping trip took place as planned, but only after Freeman convinced the police to provide an escort for Alicia and Janey. More than ever, he was now convinced that Maldonado’s dismissal of Capac as an minor irritant was a serious mistake.

  Chapter 20: Ready to Launch

  Freeman held the heavy golden goblet up to the sunlight and frowned. “You’re certain this is Inca?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” Stout replied.

  “It’s beautiful. Where did you find it?”

  “It came up with the sediment we were vacuuming off the bottom of the lake when we put the fo
otings in place.”

  “Damn, it must weigh three pounds.”

  “A little over four pounds, actually. Last time I checked, the market for gold was around $350 an ounce. That makes the gold itself worth more than $20,000, but I’m guessing that artifact is worth a lot more than that.”

  “I guess it belongs to the Bolivian government.” Freeman was holding the heavy goblet as if it were very fragile, turning it constantly to watch the sunlight streaming through the office window reflect off the precious metal from different angles.

  “We should probably take it to the University in La Paz. They can figure out what to do with it,” Stout said. “Think there’s any more down there?”

  “More artifacts? You can bet on it. The odds are, a piece that size must have been part of a shipment that sunk off the island. Funny though, that we should find it by accident when so many treasure hunters and other underwater experts – including Jacques Cousteau himself – have searched near these islands for more than a century with no luck.”

  “Cousteau was here?” stout asked.

  “Yep, in 1975. He had to calculate all new dive tables to dive at this altitude. No one had ever done it before. He actually came here to look for a legendary sunken city, but they didn’t find anything except frogs.”

  Stout laughed. “Tyler, you never cease to amaze me.”

  “Well, hey, I watch National Geographic. And I remember things.”

  Freeman handed the goblet back to Stout, who slipped it back into the bag he had taken it from, then placed it back into the locked cabinet. The two men were in the new offices that had just been built on the Island of the Moon, next to the nearly-completed staging area for launches. Freeman could see the staging area through the office window, with dozens of Bolivian workers scurrying about, getting ready for the first manned launch, scheduled to take place the next morning. The staging area was a quarter-mile long expanse of reinforced concrete designed for maneuvering heavy payloads into position for insertion into the pipe for launch. At the far end of the tarmac, a hanger that looked nearly large enough to house a dirigible was in the final stages of construction. The only thing breaking up the smooth surface of the concrete were two sets of rails leading directly to the launch area, designed to carry the heavy payloads into place.

  The apparatus that rode those rails was one of Stout’s design. Essentially a huge, round flatbed cargo carrier, it was meant to be loaded with whatever was scheduled to go into space, then to move that material to the center of the launch area. It positioned the materials in the center by means of rails on two reinforced concrete bridge trusses that were more than 50 feet apart and suspended over the now-dry dammed-off lake bottom. The cargo carrier rolled to the center of the anti-gravity effect on those trusses, then clamped itself to the trusses by means of automated, articulated arms. This kept it securely fixed to the trusses so that it would not fall up when gravity reversed. But the cargo placed on the carrier was not tied down, thus making it free to fall. The concept was simple, and in tests it had worked perfectly.

  The hard part had been blasting away enough rock on the island to level the area where the tarmac had been built. Until construction on the spaceport had begun, the entire island rose nearly vertically from the lake. There were no gradual slopes anywhere, and the area next the antigravity field was no exception. The construction crews had brought in demolition experts to blast away the tons of rock required to level the area adjacent to the pipe so that the tarmac and staging area could be built. There was a side benefit to moving all that rock, though. It had been bulldozed into the water offshore, effectively increasing the size of the island and providing more level ground for construction of facilities. The launch control center sat on a section of the island that had not existed before construction had begun.

  Since the launch control center was the heartbeat of the operation, there had been a formal ceremony when the cornerstone of the building had been put in place, one that followed the Bolivian custom of burying a llama fetus beneath the cornerstone. Freeman had gone back to the witch’s market in La Paz to buy the dried fetus himself.

  The spaceport itself was rapidly nearing completion, although the surrounding infrastructure still had a long way to go to completion. In addition to the offices, the staging area with its cargo carrier, and the hanger designed to store materials being readied for future launches, construction was nearly finished on a doughnut-shaped building that sat on the dam that completely encircled the 200-yard-wide area where the Titicaca Effect occurred every morning at 9:49:51. In fact, the inner walls of the circular structure were almost 20 feet within the antigravity area. Stout had discovered that this area, where the transition from normal to reverse gravity took place, produced a zero-G environment that was perfect for laboratory experiments and for the actual manufacture of pharmaceuticals and other precision molecular constructs used for everything from incredibly slippery lubricants to ultra-precise scientific instrumentation, even nanotechnology-based robots. The promise of zero-G manufacturing, never delivered in orbit because of cost and limited payload capacity, was about to be brought down to earth. Freeman believed that this capability would easily produce at least a third as much revenue as would be generated by the spaceport’s launch operations, and Bolivia once again had a monopoly. This was a manufacturing plant that could only be located one place on the earth’s surface.

  Freeman had made Stout a full partner in Freeholdings, Inc., the consulting firm he had formed to manage the spaceport, with a promise that Stout would get to keep all the profits generated for the consultancy by the zero-G facilities. Stout had never much concerned himself with money, but he knew that those profits would more than take care of his retirement needs.

  In the distance, Freeman could see the bridge to the island from the mainland at Sampaya nearing completion. Until it was completed, all the materials that had to be brought to the island still had to be ferried over, a time-consuming and expensive way to move things.

  At Freeman’s suggestion, this link to the mainland was a drawbridge, even though there was no reason to have tall ships pass beneath it. He had reasoned that secure access to the island would be much easier to guarantee if it were possible to simply pull up a portion of the only road, thus making it physically impossible to breach the island using land-based equipment. The post-9/11 world had to make allowances for terrorists and other crazies. Besides, he was still worried about the New Empire of the Incas. He had broached the subject of Manco Capac in conversations with Maldonado on several occasions, but the president continued to dismiss Capac as a mere annoyance. Freeman wasn’t at all sure of that.

  Defense from the lake itself was relatively straightforward. Only a submarine could approach the island without being seen from a great distance, and there were, of course, no submarines in Lake Titicaca. That left only one vulnerability. An air attack was certainly a possibility, but President Maldonado had taken steps to reduce that risk by building an air force base at Copacabana, where most of the country’s 14 Huey helicopters, acquired from the United states for use against the drug cartels, had now been redeployed, along with a collection of light fixed-wing aircraft and some transports. The U.S., eager to cement its relationship with an emerging economic force in the hemisphere, had offered Maldonado access to just about any new air technology he needed to update the Bolivian Air Force’s equipment, short of stealth.

  The rest of the island’s support services were also on the mainland at Copacabana, and the small city had been turned into a burgeoning metropolis almost overnight. Virtually every major international hotel chain had bought land in the area, with construction underway on seven facilities that would collectively offer more than 4,000 rooms upon completion, along with an assortment of restaurants and other travel-related businesses. There was a housing boom in the area as well, to satisfy the demand for shelter for the Bolivians who poured into the region by the thousands, seeking employment.

  Maldonado, eager to make E
spaciopuerto De La Titicaca a world-class facility, had expanded Tyler’s role to include licensing and permission to build such facilities in and around Copacabana, with only one caveat: the president wanted no part of the American penchant for fast food and other businesses he considered low-brow. All the major chains, including McDonalds, KFC, and Burger King, had offered very large sums of money to enter the market, to no avail. Freeman, who was generally offended by the garish signs and tasteless cuisine that always accompanied these hallmarks of American culture, had relished the opportunity to turn them down. In doing so, he became a virtual hero in the culinary world. The French, in particular, became very fond of him, which amused Freeman no end. He had investigated two airline crashes in France, spending more than a month in the country on both occasions, and the French had never treated him very courteously.

  Now, after all these months of planning, organizing and problem-solving, Freeman and his best friend, Thaddeus Stout, were ready to begin regular commercial operations at the spaceport, and in doing so, inaugurate a new era of prosperity for a country that felt more like home to them every day.