by Moulton, CD
“I’d bet they would be willing to dig the stuff by hand and wheelbarrow and leave the land ... but they’d take it away. They’d have to bring in fill or let it turn into a lake ... that would have to be diked to keep the contamination from killing the reefs for hundreds of miles. That would be a disaster of a magnitude that’s almost impossible to imagine!”
“It would make Chernobyl look like a minor distraction,” Clint agreed. “It would take a few years to begin to show the damage in a dramatic way, and then it would be far too late to stop it.”
“If it were inland, where there was a good chance it could be contained permanently, I’d say we need the phosphate, so we have to make practical decisions and all that bullshit. That isn’t on that comarca. It isn’t inland. It would be in the Caribbean the first hard rain, which only happens there two or three hundred days per year. It’s a damned rain forest area!”
“But ... do you have any idea how much money we’re talking about here?! Where the hell are your priorities?! Don’t you know money’s the most important thing in life?! What turnip cart did you fall off of?”
That got him a bird with a twist!
They chatted awhile, then Ernesto said he’d get the chopper checked out and they could head out in about two hours. He’d drop Clint off on the comarca and return to Panamá City. He wasn’t Clint Faraday and wouldn’t be welcomed on the comarca, what with this crap. They had to agree about that.
Ernesto flew off. Roso looked at Clint in a speculative way and asked what the problem was now.
“The sling. It’s more dangerous than you know – not because of anything you would do or it would do, but because it could possibly destroy civilization as we know it if it gets in the hands of certain other people – and it will, eventually.”
He nodded knowingly. “It is my greatest concern with the thing. It is necessary, then will be removed when it has done what it must do.”
“Which is put an idea into peoples’ heads that it would be very much beyond stupid to mess with the comarcas.” It was a statement. Roso nodded again.
“Clint, my good friend, we have made a solemn promise that one has broken already. We promised our benefactor that no other would be made, but one has broken that promise. He has been disciplined. He will never again make one of the things and will tell no one else about any part of it.
“It is a very surprisingly simple and relatively small device. It depends on one small thing to be correct and exact, or it will not work. The person who made the others feared he had destroyed our only hope when he took it apart because our benefactor had made something inside that moved things when it was opened. It was by luck alone that he was able to figure the correct positions. He said it made vibrations that must be in exact alignment. That was the importance of the parts being moved even a small bit.
“I do not know of such things. All I know is that it uses a battery to make objects move very fast in a straight line, so that we must never use it where it may make a hole in something many kilometers away. It must be up or down or with a very large mountain behind.”
“It makes things move very fast. I don’t know how.”
“By inducing eddy currents is all I have heard – which makes little to no sense to me.”
“It doesn’t help me much, either,” Clint replied. “How do you induce an eddy current in a nonconductor?”
Roso shrugged. “I understand nothing of what you said.”
“But the person who took it apart was able to make it work? How?”
“By a mathematical thing that produces fractal logarhythms.”
“Say what?!”
“My reaction exactly. Shall we have some hot coffee and fishcake? I have to work in the fields now.”
They went into the house, had the delicious snack, then Clint went with Roso to help make a new plot to plant several varieties of beans. He couldn’t think of any way to get more information, but was eaten up by curiosity about how the sling worked. He had seen Dave pick up a marble the kids had been playing with in the street to say, “To think an object like this can shoot down a bomber or sink a ship is almost beyond belief – but it can.”
That seemed to have been demonstrated.
How do you induce an eddy current in glass?
Of course, he didn’t say “with this.” He said “an object like this.”
Still, the object was a glass marble.
It used a battery. What size?
It damned well sure wasn’t any “AAA” size!
They had a charger, albeit a trickle charger. He’d used that to charge his laptop batteries and his cell phone. Did they have a bigger one?
He’d come up with the sling about the time he did the trisection of the angle. Did that math have a part of it?
Arc “A” plus Arc “C” divided by two equals arc “B” makes “B” the obvious trisection. It had been on the web and had gotten some attention by mathematicians, who said Pythagoras had shown it couldn’t be done. They argued that it “seemed” to work, but couldn’t overcome their education that said it couldn’t. They finally decided he had trisected the arc of the angle, not the angle – to which he replied, “How the hell do you trisect the arc without trisecing the angle?”
Dave said mathematicians had “proven” that a bumble bee can’t fly and that a duck can’t take off from the water. The bumble bee’s wings are too small and the duck’s wings are too far back on the fuselage.
For god’s sake! Don’t tell the bee or duck!
What a mood! He simply didn’t know where to go from here. He concentrated on clearing the plot. It would wait until morning.
“Roso, I don’t suppose you’d let me look at the sling?”
“You have. They had one while we were in the field yesterday.”
“They didn’t have anything but machetes and picks. And strainers. Let’s see, the water barrel?
“Roso, I saw it and didn’t know what it was?”
“It looks like something you see everywhere. It can be made with things you find around many homes and shops. It is very simple.”
“And uses a battery to work.”
“Yes.”
“What size battery?”
“It doesn’t matter, but a smaller one will only work for one or two times. A larger one will work more and will give more power. We use a car battery for most of them.”
“Twelve volts?”
“It doesn’t matter. Marine batteries are twenty four and they work.”
“Crap!”
“What?”
“It’s made of junk you find around the house and uses a battery that’s handy anywhere in the whole damned world!”
“Clint, my dear friend, aren’t you wasting time concentrating on the thing instead of the reason such a thing is necessary?”
That was a shock! He was!
“You’re right. We have to find a way to keep that mine from ever happening.”
“Which is why the device.”
Clint nodded. He said he was going to the area of the phosphate to try to think of something and went off in that direction. Emilio, a nine year old boy, said he’d go with him. They walked along the trail, talking about whatever came up. He’d seen the sling and thought maybe he could make one, but he didn’t know about some of the things inside. He wasn’t really interested in that kind of thing. It didn’t have any use, except to protect you, and there was only the need of that in the cities, except they needed it here.
“I’m going to try to take that need away. I just don’t know how,” Clint said.
“They will have to bring heavy machines here to dig it?”
“Yes. Certainly. Very large machines.”
“When the time of the very high tides is here, the machines could not go there. They would sink.”
“They could probably shore a part of it up for those times.”
“Could you make the land stay wet and soft all the time?”
Clint looked at the little stream tha
t ran across the swamp and grinned. “Maybe! Just maybe!”
He spent four hours going all around the area. What he had in mind might actually work.
He checked the place where the stream went out between two mountains.
“I think we’re going to have to come to a compromise about the area, but maybe it won’t be so bad,” he said, on the way walking back to the village. “It depends on what’s on those mountains where the stream goes through.”
“Nothing. It is too steep to farm. Even cattle can’t go there.”
“That’s almost too much to hope for. They can take anything we do out, but it would take a lot of time and they would have to go all over the area behind the mountains and even here. If they believe you have the sling they won’t. I can promise them worldwide publicity for what they plan now, and it would be too much if they had to expand it.”
They went into the puebla to find two police/soldiers and a foreigner arguing with Roso and an assortment of Indios.
“What’s the problem here?” Clint asked. “Why are police on the comarca?”
“My questions,” Roso answered.
“You’re this Clint Faraday character?” the white asked.
“Uh-huh. And you?”
“You don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in for, shithead! We have government permission to come here and we’re coming here!”
Clint grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him up. “You threaten me once more and I’ll legally tear your wimpy fucking head off. You and these clowns have no status here. You’re illegal and under comarca law. If Roso and my people think the lot of you should be executed for threatening us you’ll be executed. They are the law here! Got it?” He shoved him down to his knees.
“Shoot him!” the man screamed. “He attacked me! Shoot him!”
Clint kneed him in the mouth. He felt at least one tooth break. “They even act like they might someday maybe think about shooting anyone here and they’ll be fertilizer in seconds. Get it through whatever passes for your brain that they’re nothing on the comarca and you’re less!”
He turned to Roso. “What’s this idiot’s name? He tell you?”
Roso looked at some papers and said, “Sidney Portis.
“You think we should execute him?”
Portis was moaning and holding his mouth. He screeched again. It was dawning on him that the police weren’t going to do anything. They had probably agreed to come along solely because Portis thought it would give him some kind of lever.
“That’s always so messy, what with relatives coming to get the body and officials making us file reports and all that. He can go. This time. If he ever comes back onto the comarca he will be executed. He has threatened us.”
Clint winked at Roso where the police or Portis couldn’t see. Roso turned and walked away. The other Indios followed him. Clint told the police officers to get Portis off the comarca and not to be so stupid as to bring anymore of the type there. One of the officers, who showed some Indio characteristics, hid a grin and said he wasn’t about to argue the point. They didn’t have authorization this time. Portis had hired them just outside the entrance road.
The other cop couldn’t decide what to do. Clint walked off after Roso and the group and left them helping Portis to his feet.
Clint said he had a plan, but didn’t know if it was feasible. They would talk about it tonight and he would go to Panamá City in the morning.
They watched the trio leave, walking to the Land Rover not far from the village and heading out. Portis evidently wasn’t going to drive the police back out with him, but one said something and unsnapped his holster. Portis got the idea. They drove off.
The rest of the afternoon was spent working in the field. When they got back to the village, the mood was grim. It seemed Pancho Salvez had been attacked and killed in Panamá City. They got the call just twenty minutes ago.
“That uncorks that fucking bottle!” Clint hissed. “Who?”
“They say it was a mugger, they believe.”
“A mugger attacks an Indio? Since when? Indios don’t carry money and don’t have jewelry or gold!” Silvio exclaimed.
“I seem to have another reason to go to Panamá City,” Clint replied. He called Genio, who said he would check into it. It happened outside his district in a poorer part of the city. Clint said to send Ernesto after him in the morning. He had to get some things that would put an end to something that had gone much too far already.
“I’ll need a few pounds of dynamite. I know I can’t get plastics here.”
“We can,” Ernesto replied. “How much? What type?”
“I want to move some big rocks. The whole sides of two mountains, really. C-four or better.”
Ernesto called Genio, who said it would be supplied, but Clint would have to sign for it and ... what was it for?
“To stop a war before it starts. A war between the indigenos and the government and some greedy companies,” Clint answered.
“Well, that should be sufficient reason,” Genio replied drily.
They waited until an officer came, carrying a case. He said he was the explosives expert for the policia, so would do whatever Clint ordered, but they would not, could not, put that kind of high powered explosive into the hands of someone not registered as an expert in Panamá.
“It’s not in Panamá, it’s in the comarca – but I don’t know enough about it to do a decent job, so thanks,” Clint said. “I’ll want to drop the sides of a couple of mountains to make a ridge between them.”
“For what purpose?”
“Let’s tag it as establishing a fast and efficient road between two parts of ... no. An access road to a large potential mineral acquisition area.”
“I’m Oscar Menendez. Oscar. I like the way you think. For the Indios, it would be a big stink. For mineral access, it is a necessary operation.
“I thought you were all for stopping that travesty?”
“Well, they need a way to get in there. I just forgot that making the ridge would make the minerals unminable because it would make it as much as impossible to use heavy machinery in the whole area. Bummer!”
“They won’t just move the blockage?”
“Too expensive. It’s fairly cheap to make the blockage, but would cost two-thirds of the profits to move it. Particularly when the Indios would make another five hundred meters away. “
He got a high five for that! They got in the chopper and went to the comarca. Roso had them wait an hour for the sentries to be informed, then they could do what they wanted. Roso mentioned that making the ridge road Clint planned would actually open a nice little chunk of arable land at altitude where they could grow some things they didn’t have now. He went with them to plant the charges.
Oscar studied the area for three hours, carefully checking the kind of material and how to direct the charges for the best results. He said it was a type of operation not a lot unlike dropping a large building in downtown Panamá City.
It was 5:12 when he set the timers to blow two series of charges at one-half second intervals. One series on each side of the pass. The results looked like a natural ridge/bridge between two mountains. One small section on the extreme end dropped a bit more than the sides. Oscar said there was a cave that collapsed and filled. They went to see in the chopper.
There were a lot of white rocks with wide grey streaks. Clint picked up a small one and said, “Shit! It’s zinc! All we did was find another mine site.
“Well, this one won’t cause much damage.”
“This one won’t cause any damage,” Roso said. “It does not exist. We did not find any such thing here.”
“I agree, except a survey plane will note this before the month is out,” Oscar said.
“How will they see it?” Clint asked.
“Fly over. Depression with a lot of white rocks. No growth on them. No growth on the cover when it’s on top like this. It’s probably already noted by the satellites.”
&n
bsp; “No. There will be no such things!” Roso stated positively. “We must return to the puebla very quickly.”
“What?” Clint asked on the way back.
“It is almost night. In the morning there will be only white limestone rocks and small brush growing in it. The same brush that is in all this area. It is only about a half hectare that must be covered. It will be done.”
As soon as they landed, Roso called that all in the village were to come with him with any picks and shovels and buckets or wheelbarrows they had. It was to save the comarca and they would all work the whole night.
Clint didn’t doubt they would do it. He said he had some business in Panamá City. Pancho made it necessary for an explanation to be given. If retribution was due it would be made.
“He was waiting for the bus at the terminal to go back to the comarca. He went around the end toward the bombas and didn’t come back. His friend, Julio Hernandez, went looking for him and found him behind the trash containers there. He was stabbed four times,” Genio reported. “We don’t have anything to go on. The hoods who hang around there are known. All of them say no one would try to rob an Indio unless they saw him sell something for a lot of money or whatever. Salvez didn’t have more than three balboas on him. Julio had the money.
“I sent an officer with him to the comarca, in case someone knew they sold about a hundred dollars worth of limes and yuca here. No one would bother him, that way. We just don’t have anything, Clint.”
Clint nodded and said he was going to check out a few things. Not as a police officer. Genio knew how that act worked. They wouldn’t say anything they weren’t forced to say to a cop, they would talk to a stranger. Maybe.
Clint grinned. “They’ll talk to me. You don’t know who to ask what.”
Genio grinned and gave him the finger. “You’re probably right.”
Clint went to the terminal and walked around the end where Pancho was killed. He talked to a couple of people who were there a lot of the time, then went to the woman who directed traffic when it was heavy on that end of the terminal. He asked if she was working there the day and time Pancho Salvez was killed.