A Desert Called Peace-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  The boy smiled, as best he could manage, and nodded. He wished his father could see him, too, see him grow up to be a man. He had wanted to be a soldier like his dad. Well, he would act like one now.

  Bob stood there for a moment, watching the silent interplay with admiration. I was so wrong. What a woman my nephew found. What children she brought to our family. I, he concluded, have been an utter ass and a fool.

  He walked the few steps to Linda and handed her his cell phone. "Here, call your husband if you can get through. Give him my regards . . . and my regrets." He patted her shoulder, not ungently, nor even lacking a certain late-blooming admiration and affection.

  Linda took the device and smiled up, gratefully.

  "I have something else I have to do," Bob announced.

  The uncle, the old tyrant, walked to his desk, fiddled with a computer that had no wires coming from it, then began to speak.

  "John," he said aloud to a face that appeared on his screen, "there's not much time. Can I do a codicil to my will over this line? I can? Good. Prepare to copy this then. 'I, Robert Hennessey, being of sound mind and body . . . '"

  Cochea, 0924 hrs

  Hennessey was pale, Parilla saw; paler even than the gringo norm. His eyes were glued to the television screen that showed the imminent collapse of all his hopes, the destruction of his life. On the screen people were jumping from the flaming towers to smash their bodies below. It was better than burning.

  Hennessey's own cell phone rang. Jimenez picked it up, answered, then – not without some reluctance – passed it over. "It's Linda," he announced in a breaking voice.

  Like a drowning man grasping desperately for a life preserver, Hennessey took the phone.

  "Honey, where are you and the kids?" he asked, desperately.

  He heard screams and cries in the background as Linda answered, "I'm here at Uncle Bob's office . . . the children are with me. I am so sorry, Patricio."

  Hennessey felt his heart sink. "Is there any way out?"

  Her answering voice held infinite sadness and regret. "No . . . I don't think so. The only way off would be helicopters, now. And I don't hear or see any. It's getting very warm in here, husband. We'll have to go soon. Why don't you talk to the kids? Do not worry; I will wait as long as possible but I will not let our babies burn if I can help it. Goodbye, Patricio. You know I love you."

  "I love you, too, Linda," he wept. "I always have."

  "Dad?" Hennessey heard young Julio say, voice quavering, then firming up. "I am being brave, Dad . . . "

  TNTO, 1003 hrs

  The air was very bad now. The windows people had knocked out in order to jump had let in as much smoke as fresh air. Ashes floated on the fire-fanned breeze.

  Uncle Bob, Linda and the kids crouched low, breathing what oxygen there was in the hot, stifling, and murky office.

  "Not much more time . . . Linda," Bob said. As if to punctuate, a chorus of heartrending screams came from down the hallway. The fire had eaten through the floor, consuming a half dozen office workers who had been steeling themselves for the jump. The screams seemed to go on and on.

  Linda stifled a sob as she hugged Milagro and Lambie to her breast. With tears rolling freely down her face, she said, "It's just so wrong. What did my babies ever do to harm anyone? What did I do? What did Patricio do that he should be left all alone?"

  Bob just shook his head. He had no answer that would help. He looked out the window towards the GNN building, even as a cloud of dust and smoke began to billow out from it.

  "It's collapsing," Bob gasped through the smoke laden air. "The fire is getting worse. We have to go now."

  Linda nodded, sniffed, suppressed a cough. "One last thing first." She took her arms from around the girls briefly, put her hands on her stomach and said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father . . . "

  * * *

  It was almost time to go. The heat rising from the floor, telltale of the flames below, was already too much to bear for long. Nor could anyone on the floor stand for all the thick, toxic smoke that hung above.

  A swarthy man laughed. "Infidels," he cried, "see the judgment of Allah. See the wages of your iniquities. You will all die here and burn in Hellfire forevermore for your crimes against the will of the Almighty."

  Uncle Bob answered back, with more force than reason, "God will send you and all your kind to Hell, Samir, you miserable, treacherous bastard."

  Julio looked calmly at his mother. Ten years old or not, he was her son, and his father's. "Mom, will Daddy make them pay, the men who did this?"

  "That will be as it will, my baby," Linda answered. "But . . . knowing your father, I can't imagine that he will not. He is . . . he can be . . . a very harsh man."

  Linda looked at the flames rising behind her. "Almost time, children. Pray, now." She began to recite, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come . . . "

  Others joined in the final prayer, and one began to sing a half-remembered hymn, in English. Yet Linda recognized the song by its Spanish version. She, then the children, then another dark and lovely young girl in a short red shirt joined in, in Spanish.

  Perhaps because she was an island of relative calm in a sea of insanity, people clustered around Linda. Most stopped praying, a few going silent but more joining in the hymn. In English it was known as, "Abide with me."

  As the song neared its end, Linda and Bob stood. It was easier to stand near the smashed-out window than it had been in the smoke filled interior. Bob took Julio in one arm and wrapped the other around Linda's slender waist. Linda, with one arm around Milagro and the other holding Lambie stopped singing for just a moment to say, "Close your eyes, babies," and to kiss each of the little girls atop their heads.

  She resumed singing and began to walk forward, others following. At the very edge she hesitated, but only for the tiniest fraction of a second. She and Bob took the last step forward, the hymn echoing in their ears: "Help of the helpless, O abide with me . . . "

  It was a long way down. Linda felt her speed build. Her stomach seemed to want to come out of her mouth. She heard the babies she clutched so tightly scream as if from a great distance. She reached terminal velocity and the falling sensation in her stomach disappeared.

  There was a brief sense of shock and then . . . .nothing.

  Cochea, 1028 hrs

  "Don't look, Patricio," implored Jimenez, voice strained with despair for his friend.

  "No . . . don't," whispered Parilla, shaking his head slowly.

  Hennessey ignored them, his eyes fixed on the television image. Down went the Center Tower, slowly, majestically. With it went his wife, his three children, possibly a fourth, too. Linda had hinted before she left for the Federated States that she might be expecting. He gave off a soft, wordless cry.

  In the background Lucinda bit her hand to stifle wracking sobs. "The babies, the babies, the babies . . . my Linda . . . .I changed her diapers as a baby . . . my little ones . . . "

  Overwhelmed with grief, Hennessey just let his head hang, tears running down his face to gather and drip from the end of his nose and chin. He made no sound, yet his shoulders shuddered spasmodically.

  Not knowing what else to do, Jimenez walked to the liquor cabinet, extracted two glasses and a bottle, then poured a light drink for himself and a much larger one for Hennessey.

  "Here, Patricio, drink this. For a while, it will help."

  Eyes of the Prophet, Zion-occupied Filistia, Terra Nova, 11/7/459 AC

  As Hennessey wept, even as thousands and millions in the Federated States and some few other places wept their grief and shrieked their anger, a series of rather differently spirited and impromptu – but, one cannot doubt, wholehearted and completely sincere – demonstrations erupted around the globe. From one end of the Salafi and Moslem quarter to the other cheering people took to the streets, automobile horns blasting, people dancing, women warbling the Arabic call to battle and victory.

  Hennessey, thousands o
f miles from Nablus watched one such woman, her face transformed with radiant joy.

  Parilla whispered, "Bastards. Fucking bastards! They should be destroyed."

  Jimenez watched the image carefully, engraving every line of the harridan's face onto his mind. "'What though the field be lost?'" he quoted, whispering. "'All is not lost; Unconquerable will and study of revenge, immortal hate and courage never to submit or yield.'"

  University of Ninewa, Sumer, Terra Nova

  In contrast to the smoke and flames of tall buildings crashing down, the university was white and placid. Students and professors, some of them white coated, gathered in small groups to converse worriedly and even frantically.

  From a third story window overlooking the central green square of the campus, a Sumeri brigadier general watched out. His name was Sada and he, and the brigade he commanded, were here to guard. What they guarded only Sada knew and he wasn't telling.

  Turning away from the campus scene Sada looked back at the television screen which showed, over and over, the destruction in First Landing. He sat, heavily, and put his head in his hands. They're going to crush us for this, he thought.

  Interlude

  One of the questions the data from the Cristobal Colon could not answer was, "Why?" Another was, "How?" The last was "Who?"

  None of these questions was ever to be entirely satisfactorily answered, though theories abounded. Answering the last by calling the "Who" of the matter the "Noahs" was hardly a satisfactory explanation. Some other questions could be answered, though. Most of these were about Earth.

  It was learned, for example, from a video recording made and transmitted by Parachute Lander Number Two, that Smilodon, the saber toothed tiger, was an ambush hunter and did use its long canine teeth to rip open the bellies of its prey, wherever that was possible.

  Because this is what the Cristobal Colon had found: an Earthlike world, teeming with life from well before the last ice age but after the age of dinosaurs. The trees were there, the flowers and plants, the mammals, the reptiles. Everything was there except for man, though there were small groups of pithecines scurrying about. These, apparently, had been seeded before the mutation or mutations that led to homo sapiens.

  Moreover, several low passes by the glider drones had indicated the presence of huge numbers of whales, of shoals of fish, and of birds. Number One Drone had almost come to an early end as a result of failing to note, until it was almost too late, an enormous flock – though flock hardly did the thing justice – of passenger pigeons over the southern part of one of the lesser continents.

  There were dodos and there were great auks, though that news awaited further exploration as neither drone nor lander had seen any. There were cave bear, giant ground sloth and great Irish deer, though the rediscovery of these, too, took time. Phororhacos, the eight foot tall carnivorous bird of South America was there, as was the giant moa.

  There were no dinosaurs, though there were a number of fairly large reptilian species. There were also no horses, though eohippus was found in some numbers.

  There was no trace of who had done this, no archeological remains, no cities, no settlements, no landing sites. Yet it was clear that at some time between the end of the dinosaurs and the arrival, or at least flourishing, of man, some people or some things had made an effort to preserve life as it was found on Earth at that time. Close estimates, based on the flora and fauna to be found in the new world, suggested a timeline of between three million and five million years, BC. Yet not all the animals and plants found fell into that range. Some seemed newer, still others older. Some were completely alien to both New Earth and Old.

  It was then suggested that evolution on the planet itself had continued, creating new species through the same mechanism as on Earth. This, however, failed to solve the riddle of the older animals, thought extinct on Earth well before the presumptive date of the transplanting. Some believed that the fossil record on Earth was by no means complete; scientists and explorers could have missed or misdated any number of species. Moreover, since coelacanth had hung on for some fifty million years longer than scientists had thought before it was rediscovered, why should not have archaeopteryx?

  The fossil record of the new world was quite limited. There were no missing links and most of the animals found seem to have suddenly appeared.

  It was not – and is not – known if the Noahs who had seeded the planet had also created the rift that allowed instantaneous transport between the Solar System and the other or if they had merely used something that was already there. As to whether man could make use of the rift, reliably, that awaited events.

  In the event, man being man, extinct species on the old world tended to become extinct species, extinct out of zoos anyway, on the new.

  Chapter Five

  In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

  —Herodotus

  Cochea, 12/7/459 AC

  Hennessey had first laid eyes upon his future wife at a national festival. She had been seventeen then, one of the dancers garbed in the national costume the Balboans had brought with them from Earth, the pollera. Linda's hair had been done up in an intricate array of gold and silver. There was no word adequate to describe her. Perhaps "stunning" came close.

  As he had first laid eyes on her, so had she – without at the time knowing – laid hands upon his heart. In a phrase, he had fallen, abjectly and completely. And he didn't even know her name.

  In his dream, Hennessey again watched the dance, again pushed his way through the crowd, again steeled himself for a very informal self-introduction.

  The dream Linda, as she had so many years before, smiled warmly . . . friendly . . . confident as only beautiful young women are confident. The brash gringo had a certain something. She admitted as much to herself.

  They walked as in a dream and the walk was a dream. "I am going to marry you someday," Hennessey said. "You and only you."

  Linda had scoffed. "You just met me. We haven't even been properly introduced."

  "No matter," he answered. "You and only you."

  "You are so sure? What makes you think I would marry you? Besides, I am only seventeen."

  "No matter. The girl is mother to the woman. I will wait." He seemed very certain.

  She laughed, white teeth flashing in the sun. "How long will you wait, brash gringo?"

  "Forever . . . if I must," he answered seriously.

  "Forever is a very long time," she countered.

  "For you, and only you, I would wait 'forever.'"

  Young Linda inclined her head to one side. Her eyes narrowed, judging, studying. "Hmm . . . perhaps you would at that."

  A face rapt with amusement turned suddenly serious. "Do you smell something?"

  Hennessey's nose wrinkled. He sniffed. "Smoke. From where?"

  He and Linda looked downward at the same time. "Oh," she said in surprise.

  The hem of Linda's green-embroidered pollera was on fire, the fire racing up and out. Hennessey knelt to try to beat the flames out with his hands. The fire raced on, ignoring his efforts. She began to scream as the flames reached her skin. "Please help me," she cried. "Please."

  For all Hennessey's thrashing hands, the personal inferno spread. His hands turned red, then began to blister. The blisters broke. His hands began to char. All the time he never stopped trying to put out the flames.

  Linda screamed with agony, her cries cutting through Hennessey's heart like a knife.

  Hennessey looked up. The girl was a mass of flame. Fire leapt from her hands to her head. Hair crackled. Gold and silver ran like water. The flames began to consume her face.

  Ignoring the fire and the pain, Hennessey wrapped his arms around the girl, hands still beating frantically to put out the fire that was eating her alive. The fire must have eaten its way inside her as well, for her eyes – once brown and warm – turned red, hot and then burst like overripe grapes.

&n
bsp; Still screaming, Hennessey sat bolt upright in his bed. He wept for a little while, as quietly as he was able. Then, to the sound of antaniae outside the house calling "mnnbt . . . mnnbt . . . mnnbt," he walked to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle. He didn't bother taking a glass.

  Ciudad Balboa, 13/7/459 AC

  Linda's family had volunteered en masse to drive him to the airport outside

  Ciudad Balboa so that he could catch the first plane – airships made the run, as

  well, but were just too slow – to First Landing and, perhaps, push the authorities to