Lifter: Proton Field #2

by Laurence Dahners

  Before anyone knew what was going to happen, Massoud had beheaded the man with a bolo that he swung like a baseball bat. Blood spraying from the man’s neck went everywhere. As the missionaries drew in breath to shout out as one, Massoud leaned forward waving the bloody bolo knife, “Make noise and you will die!”

  A few minutes later, Massoud had chosen two men and four women. They’d been blindfolded and had their wrists bound to belts about their waists. The ropes around their waists were tied to one another at three-foot intervals. Of course, the beautiful missionary girl everyone had been talking about was one of the six.

  Omar was left behind as the rest of the Abus marched away with their captives. One of the missionaries, having already soiled his pants, was placed on his knees in front of Omar. Massoud made a big show of handing the bloody bolo to Omar. He leaned close and whispered in Tagalog, “Stand behind him with the bolo held high, telling them that you’ll kill him if anyone moves. Then make all of them face the other direction. Give us ten minutes, then slip out and follow.”

  To Omar’s astonishment, it worked perfectly.

  Not very far into their trek, one of the women behind Mark stumbled with a curse. We’re all gonna fall, he thought. As he’d predicted, the rope around his waist suddenly jerked him over backward. As he fell, he twisted and reflexively tried to put out his hands. Since they were tied to his waist, he couldn’t. He bowed his spine, trying to keep his head from smacking into the ground. Instead it crashed down on Wendy’s stomach. He thought she probably kept him from a painful whack to the skull, but he heard it drive the wind out of her. Then Greg crashed down onto Mark, painfully driving an elbow into his crotch.

  In a few seconds, their captors had gathered around them, cursing them quietly but vehemently. Though Mark just wanted to lie curled around his injured groin, they were urged back to their feet with a series of threats and blows. It turned out that blindly getting up, without using your hands, when you’re tied at the waist to someone else who’s also getting up—but not quite simultaneously—proved impossible. Repeatedly over multiple attempts, someone fell while getting up, making the other five fall again.

  Eventually, their captors took off their blindfolds and helped pull them to their feet. There was some discussion of untying their hands, but it didn’t come to fruition. The blindfolds seemed ridiculous in view of the fact that it was so dark they could hardly see where they were putting their feet. Mark could see their captors were using some kind of dim red flashlights to see where they were going.

  Mark turned his head and said, “Wendy, sorry about knocking the breath out of you.”

  Morosely, she said, “I wish I thought that was the worst thing that was going to happen to me.”

  Mark stood uncomfortably, trying to think of something reassuring to say to her. However given the fact that he thought her worst fears were probably going to be realized, he thought anything he could say would sound fatuous.

  When he turned back toward the front, his eyes caught on the stars of the Big Dipper and its lip that pointed at Polaris. The North Star was almost directly to his left. We’re going east! he thought.

  Mark started counting his steps and simultaneously trying to estimate how far they’d already come.

  ******

  As the sun came up, Mark sat with the others on a patch of uncomfortably hard ground. He funneled rage through his eyes and focused them on the guy who’d killed Steve Hansen. The man had introduced himself as Massoud Totioni, the leader of Abu Sayyaf. After trekking much of the night in darkness without water or rest, this morning the six hostages had been allowed to drink from the stream they were resting beside. The captives were so thirsty that they’d readily plunged their faces into the stream without regard for whether or not the water might be clean. The guards had untied them for this break, but had taken their shoes from them and replaced them with flimsy flip-flops. They were being guarded by young men in sturdy shoes, armed with AK-47s. Running didn’t seem like much of an option.

  Totioni claimed that he was a devout Muslim, dedicated to Abu Sayyaf because of his beliefs and a desire to free “his people” from the Christian majority in the area. Mark was going to be surprised if the man did the five daily Islamic prayers or paid more than lip service to the Quran. He thought these guys just liked terrorizing people and would spend any money they might collect from a ransom on themselves, not their community.

  The night before, as Mark had staggered through the darkness, counting his steps, he’d berated himself for deciding to come on a mission like this. He couldn’t believe he’d thought it’d be okay to travel to an area known to be populated by kidnappers and terrorists. Those thoughts alternated with bleak sentiments that, if any missionaries were going to be captured and killed by these assholes, he’d just as well be one of them. He’d been suicidal after all. Even though he was feeling better, if they killed him it could be considered an answer to a prayer. Intermittently, the horror of Totioni’s beheading of Steve would intrude into Mark’s internal conversations about his own fate. Mark had found Steve’s gentle proselytizing mildly irritating, but he had no doubt that Steve was trying to do good in the world. Mark didn’t think Totioni was trying to do good for anyone but himself. Steve hadn’t done anything to deserve being murdered by a despicable group like this one.

  A stir at the edge of the little clearing signaled the arrival of a couple of men carrying something suspended on a pole between their shoulders. This turned out to be food which was quickly distributed amongst the Abu Sayyaf. One of the younger of the guerrillas came over with a large bowl of rice, “I am Carlo. Massoud says I will be the one to take care of you.”

  There were no implements, so they had to dip the rice out of the bowl with their fingers. Though the bowl was fairly large, when shared among six people it only provided a small amount of rice each. As they crowded around to eat Nina leaned close and whispered, “I read up on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings before we came. We’re going to be hungry because they pretty much starve all their captives to some extent.” Her eyes tracked around the little group. “Believe it or not, these groups don’t usually rape women if they think they’re married. Apparently raping someone else’s wife conflicts with their limited understanding of Islam.” Nina glanced down at Linda’s hand, “Linda, move that ring off your index and onto your ring finger. Talk about your imaginary husband whenever the guards might be listening. Greg, put your arm around Penny and, as soon as you can, start requesting things like food and water for your ‘wife.’ Mark, you do the same for Wendy.”

  Wendy said in an appalled tone, “What about you?!”

  Nina shook her head, “I’ve got some ideas about that. I’m still working them out.”

  Stunned, Mark scooped a little bit of rice into his mouth with his fingers. He’d pictured himself as the person in charge of the little group of captives, but in the space of a few sentences, Nina had established herself as a leader with a workable plan to protect at least some of her people. He suddenly realized that, so far, he hadn’t done much more than chastise himself for coming in the first place.

  Mark tried not to even think about how much he’d rather pretend to be Nina’s husband than Wendy’s.

  The only thing of consequence Mark had accomplished so far was to recognize their direction and count their steps last night. By his estimation, they were about ten kilometers east of Lopana at present. However, while he felt proud of the achievement, he hadn’t been able to think of anything useful he could do with that information. No one was speaking, so he leaned forward and told the group where he thought they were and how he’d figured it. He shrugged, “I’m not sure what good it does to know that though.”

  Nina further established herself as their leader by saying, “No, no, that’s great! Every bit of knowledge we have is another weapon. I’m pretty sure they’re going to have to keep us moving so they can stay ahead of any pursuit. You should continue keeping track of where we are. Filipino terrorists have alw
ays moved their captives around a lot. I’ve been limping since it’s been light and now I’m going to ask them to cut me a walking stick. I’ll slow us down, which will help any pursuit, but more importantly, the stick will mark the ground so that anyone trying to track us will be able to tell the trail is our group.” She glanced around and got nods of comprehension from the others. She continued, “Kidnapped groups tend to get named by where they were kidnapped, so we should get used to thinking of ourselves as the Lopana group. Anytime we can get a little privacy, for instance when we’re going to the bathroom, we should try to scrape ‘Lopana’ or even just an ‘L’ on the trees or just in the dirt. That should also help people who’re trying to find us.” After a pause, she said, “In fact,” she looked around as she swept a few last bits of rice into her mouth, “I’m going to ask to go right now.”

  Nina stood up, making a little bit of a struggle out of it, and limped over to Carlo, “I need some toilet paper so I can go to the bathroom.”

  He looked at her in some surprise, then shrugged. “No toilet paper here.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  He turned and untied a plastic jug from his backpack. Holding it out to her, he jerked his head at the stream, “Fill this with water. When you done, use water an’ wash yourself.”

  Mark saw Nina’s eyes widen as she grasped what Carlo meant for her to do, presumably with her fingers since they had nothing else to wash with. But a moment later her expression hardened with resolve. She took the jug and limped to the stream to fill it. Then she turned back to the other captives, “Penny, Linda, can you come with me to make sure our captors don’t try to peek?”

  As Nina started to limp over to the bushes, Mark felt grateful that she’d warned them about the limp. She was making it look so realistic that Mark would’ve been worried about her. A couple of the guards got up to follow the girls, but Mark got up and halted them, saying, “They’re going to the bathroom. Please, give them some privacy. It’s only human decency.”

  One young man said, “They might try to run away!”

  Mark shrugged, “We don’t know where we are, or where to go. Nina’s hurt her leg and can barely walk. Surely you don’t think they could outrun you in those crappy flip-flops?”

  The two men stood and suspiciously watched the girls make their way behind the shelter of a few small bushes. Mark suspected that—not wanting the guards to get even more agitated—Nina intentionally didn’t take them so far that the colors of their clothing couldn’t be seen through the brush. Uncomfortably, he turned to the two guards and, placing his arm around Wendy’s shoulders, he waved a hand in a different direction, “I’m going to take my wife to those bushes so she and I can go to the bathroom.”

  “No! You wait until the others come back.”

  “Okay,” Mark said, trying to sound resigned. He didn’t even know if Wendy had to go.

  When he sat back down, Wendy said in a quietly desperate tone, “I won’t be able to go with you standing beside me! And, now that you brought it up, I really need to go!”

  Mark whispered back “I’ll just be standing guard with my back to you. I’ll keep my distance. The important thing’s that they’ve heard me call you my wife.”

  Chapter 3

  Ellen looked up from the new proton field generator she and Vinn had been discussing with Randy. Randy had started as Vinn’s tech, but as his flair for assembling high-tech equipment had become apparent, he’d become more and more the go to guy for building new devices, especially modified field generators.

  When Ellen looked up, the other two also looked up to see what’d gotten her attention. Myr was standing in the door, holding a backpack by its straps and grinning. “You guys ready to try flying?”

  “Oh yeah!” Vinn said, standing up and starting for the door.

  Randy also stood and started for the door, saying, “Can I try it too?”

  Ellen put on an indignant tone, “Hey! Some of us are working here, you know. Did you guys think someone just declared recess?”

  “Recess always was my favorite part of the day,” Myr called back over her shoulder as she started down the hall in front of the other two.

  Ellen shook her head as she started after them. “How did I get to be the only grown-up in this group?” she muttered loud enough for them to hear.

  Soon they were on the green in front of Miller Tech’s main building. Vinn said, “This is its first flight? You haven’t already flown it around your lab?”

  “Nope. In a sudden fit of caution, I decided I should do it outside with some people standing by to catch me if I crash and burn.”

  Vinn said, “The safest way for you to do it would be to let me take it up.”

  Randy said, “Or someone expendable, like me.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes at them.

  “You guys’ll get your chances,” Myr said shrugging into the backpack which turned out to fit more like a heavy vest. She snugged some straps across her chest stabilizing the fuel cells and field generator firmly against her back. “Let me show you the controllers,” she said, pointing with her right hand to a large dial on the lower right front of her vest. “This one turns up the lift, but it’s spring-loaded. If you let it go, it drops slowly back down to nothing, kind of like a motorcycle throttle. This one over here,” she pointed to a similar dial on the left lower front of the vest, “stays where you put it. That way you can apply a certain amount of lift and let go if you want to do things with your hands.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ellen said, “what if you lose consciousness while you’re ascending or something. You could just keep going up until you died from a lack of oxygen, couldn’t you?” She shrugged, “Almost all manually controlled throttles are spring-loaded so they return to zero if you’re not actively holding them—kind of like dead-man switches.”

  Vinn gave Ellen a goggle-eyed look. “The next thing I know, you’re going to be suggesting that lifters be completely under the control of your AI, altitude no more than six feet, terrain following using your GPS. You’ll even want radar buttons mounted all over the vest so the AI can avoid collisions.”

  Myr said brightly, “Ellen’s going to want us to build lifters that are as boring as cars! ‘AI, take me to McDonald’s,’ and the AI does the whole thing as sedately as possible.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes again, “I should have known that you,” she pointed at Myr, “someone who actually grew up driving a car manually, would be thinking that people should just be turned loose to wreck themselves!”

  Myr laughed, “Come on. I know you’re old enough that you drove cars manually too, for at least a little while.” She shrugged, “No, I know some government agency’s going to step in and steal our aerial liberty someday, but not before I get in a few flights.”

  “Wait a minute,” Vinn said, “let me get Dr. Miller on the line. I’m not sure he’ll want his resident genius going up in the air and risking our most important intellectual property.”

  Myr snorted, “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I’m not going up very high.” She’d apparently been gradually turning up the power to the lifter on her back because the hair on her head was already standing up. She closed her eyes, grimaced for a second, then lifted herself gently onto her toes, bouncing slowly. She jumped up into the air about three feet. “Whee!” She bounced again, but turned more serious eyes on Ellen, “Even though eventually we’re going to have lifters that are completely AI controlled for people’s safety, I think some people are going to want to control them manually as a form of sport.”

  Ellen thought there was something weird about the way Myr looked. For a second, she thought it might be because her hair was pointing upward, but then she realized that all of Myr’s features were subtly distorted like they would be if she was hanging upside down and gravity was pulling them into a different configuration.

  Myr floated down to land, soft as a feather, then pushed herself back up into the air. She turned to Myr, “Righ
t now I’m not sure what kind of manual controllers we should use, so that’s why we fitted this jacket with both types. The problem with one that’s spring-loaded —like a typical throttle—is that, if you became unconscious and let go of the controller at a high-altitude, it’ll drop you like a rock. Personally, I think it’s safer using the set-n-forget knob.”

  Myr had been gently adjusting the knob on her left side and now floated a couple of inches off the ground. “I’m going to try bending at the hips. In theory, when I do so, having the weight of my legs out in front of me will tilt my trunk forward a little bit. Since the field generator’s tightly strapped to my back, that should put the focal point a little bit in front of me and make me start moving forward. Arching my back to put the weight of my legs behind me’s supposed to slow me down.” She glanced at them, “I’m hoping you guys will stay nearby to help catch me if I start to get out of control?”

  “Wait a minute,” Vinn said, “didn’t you try this stuff out with the one you first flew around the conference room with? The one you had plugged into the wall?”

  “Well, yeah, but I was holding that one in my hand. When I wanted to go forward, I tilted it forward with my hand and vice versa. This one’s strapped to my back and I’m controlling it by moving my body. To tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about getting flipped upside down since the proton field has no natural inclination to remain above me. It makes sense to me that, since the generator’s pointed up along my spine by the backpack, and that, therefore, the field will appear above my head and lift my upper body, that my legs will dangle below me. According to gravity, their weight should keep me right side up. So far it seems to be working,” she lifted a finger, “but, I don’t want to find out that I’m actually in a state of unstable equilibrium and that if I bend very much, the damned thing’ll take a dive and dump me on my head.” She looked around at the others and got nods, “So, you guys stand by. Okay?”