In the Shadow of the Towers

by Douglas Lain

  Still breathless, he asked Donna, “This is your cousin? What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “Shut up and walk,” she said.

  The thin man punched Carl again. “You, fucker, you give Ziviad Haydor to the enemy, to your fucking friend Firadzov. Now you pay.”

  They were walking fast. It was hard to believe that this had happened in the police precinct.

  Cops were everywhere, mainly men hurrying to get into wheeled cars. There was a crisis on the pipeline road. So the thin man and his prisoner slipped away. No one took any notice of them.

  They reached a fast road crossing. On the other side, Carl was pushed into a tall building with an ancient crumbling facade. Sweet smell, not pleasant, greeted them inside. They started down a flight of steps, some rather broken. Carl turned suddenly, striking the thin man across the face with a violent blow.

  The gun went off. The bullet whistled past Carl’s ear. Donna chopped him across the neck with a sharp blow from the edge of her hand. He fell, and went tumbling down the remaining steps.

  They were after him and on him. They hit and kicked him, cursing in their own language.

  He was then frog-marched down a stone corridor. A side door was unlocked and he was kicked into darkness, so savagely that he sprawled on a damp and filthy floor. The door slammed behind him.

  Carl lay there, groaning and breathing hard. After a while, he pulled himself up and leant against a wall.

  As his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, he saw there was a choked grey light filtering from a grating in the corner of the cell. Calming his breathing, he listened. Someone or something was breathing nearby.

  He moved. The cell was larger than he had at first assumed. In the far corner, away from the light, a man was hanging.

  Cautiously, Carl stepped nearer.

  “Hello!”

  There was no reply, but the man raised his head slightly.

  Carl now saw that he was suspended by his wrists by ropes attached to steel rings set in the stone ceiling.

  “How long have you been here like this?”

  The answer came faintly in a foreign tongue.

  “You poor bugger, hang on and I’ll get you down.”

  In their rage and anxiety, Donna and her cousin had not searched him. He drew the knife from the sheath strapped to his lower leg and, reaching upwards, sliced through the ropes.

  He caught the body as it fell, to lower it gently to the floor. He knelt by it. He gently massaged the injured wrists.

  Again the man muttered something.

  As Carl sheathed his knife, he reassured the man as best he could. The poor fellow had been forced to relieve himself and stank.

  An idea struck him. He peeled off his outer jacket and forced the injured men into it. Taking the man by his shoulders, he dragged him into the darkest corner and propped him sitting against the wall. He then stood waiting alertly by the two severed ropes.

  The minutes crawled by. His resolution did not fail. When he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, he leapt up and seized the ropes in his two hands. As the cell door was opened, he hung his head as if unconscious.

  It was the thin man, Donna’s cousin, who had entered. He grunted as he took in the recumbent figure, before turning his attention to the hanging man. He came closer.

  Carl threw himself on his captor. They fell together, the cousin striking his head on the floor. Carl slammed it again against the stone slabs. The cousin did not move.

  With a quick look into the corridor, where a guard of some kind stood distantly, Carl dragged the unconscious man to a position under the grill in the wall. By standing on his chest, he could now gain leverage on the grill. Fragments of rust came away in his hands. He heaved and felt a slight movement.

  “Rotten—like everything else in this damned place,” he said to himself.

  He pushed hard, and pushed again. One of the bars crumbled away. He rattled the grating. It gave. He heaved it to one side. Clasping the sides of the hole, he made a mighty effort and heaved himself up into daylight. Once he had an elbow on the ground, he knew he had made it.

  Another struggle, kicks against the inner wall, and he was free.

  Breathing heavily, he stood up, having to lean for a moment against an ivy-clad wall to look about him.

  He was in a neglected courtyard. Brambles and other weeds sprouted from among flagstones. At one end of the courtyard was a wrought iron gate, through which uniformed men could be seen. Ducking low, Carl sprinted to the opposite wall. He clutched at a thick woody stem of ivy and hauled himself up. Beyond the wall was a busy street with shops, restaurants and a cinema. Many men, the majority wearing robes, strolled about, indolent in the heat.

  Carl dropped down onto the road, picked himself up and walked rapidly away. His plan was to enter a restaurant and there call Tinkja—until he realised he was covered in filth, picked up from the floor of the prison cell.

  As he was walking rapidly to the end of the street, a taxi eased slowly beside him, a decrepit old vehicle with a turbanned Sikh at the wheel.

  “Taxi, sah?”

  He trusted no one in Diyarbekir, but there seemed nothing for it but to get in. Besides which, he liked and trusted Sikhs and their religion. He climbed into the back of the vehicle and told the man to take him to police H.Q.

  “I will leave you by the gate, sah.”

  As he paid off the taxi driver in dollars, two black police cars came roaring from the yard and drove away down the road the taxi had taken.

  He called Tinkja from reception. “I need a wash and some clothes.”

  She sounded surprised. “You are still in the dissident prison.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “I sent cars for you.”

  “I’m here in your reception area. How did you know about the prison anyway?”

  She explained that she had planted a bug on him earlier, afraid he might meet with trouble. It was on his jacket, sticking like a burr. The jacket remained in the cell.

  “I don’t do this for everyone,” she said. “But come on up.”

  Now the crisis on the wrecked highway was under control, the elegant Tinkja actually escorted him in his new clothes down to where his auto was parked. She blew him a kiss with her neat leathery hand.

  “Don’t come back, Carl, okay?”

  “You could say life is rather like a long long road,” he said lightly, as he climbed into the car.

  “Except you can repair a long long road,” she said. Carl let her have the last word.

  There were indications that the architect’s car had been searched. A rear-view mirror had been deflected, a seat had been reoriented. The revolver was still in place. There was also an elusive scent, which Carl recognised as coming from a fingerprint spray.

  It was all a safety precaution, part of the life they led. He thought nothing of it. Trust was not in it.

  Once he had fed in his biometricard, the car moved slowly along the feed road to the pipeline highway. Still it ran slowly. Power had been reduced. He was travelling at 50 mph.

  At about Denghuo (or Station) Thirty—lights blazing because there was a drab overcast—the helicopters started hovering. They were painted wasp-coloured: Chinese Suoyue Military. The auto moved still more slowly.

  Intense activity ahead. Gathered around a fair-sized crater demolishing the stretch of the road were huge BCW excavators, construction units, cranes, concrete-sprouters and other vehicles, among which wheeled cars moved like beetles. Emergency cabins had been erected. On a mountain to the south of this activity there was also movement. Tanks had been called in, plus a large number of military personnel in a variety of coloured helmets.

  Carl stopped the vehicle. He took binoculars from the front locker and was about to get out when the machine said, “Do not leave your vehicle, Carl Roddard!”

  But he did leave it.

  Barely had he raised the glasses to his eyes than a siren sounded and an armoured vehicle came howling up.
A Chinese captain jumped from it before it had stopped and came at Carl in a run, levelled carbine aimed at him.

  “Hold it!” said Carl. He half-raised his hands. “I’m Architect-in-Chief of this entire road, Dr. Carl Roddard.”

  The captain’s hostility was not relaxed. Still pointing the weapon, he said, “I don’t care who you are, sir, get back in your car!”

  “Hey, I have every right to—”

  “You have no right. Please get back in car fast!”

  Increasingly angry, Carl said, “Lower your fucking gun, will you? I want to speak to your—”

  “This is military area.” He came close, prodding Carl with the muzzle of his gun. “Please return into your car fast and right now.”

  Carl did as he was told.

  The captain became less confrontational. Staring down at Carl, he said, “Is radioactivity here. I want see your biometric details. Where is young lady you had earlier?”

  “Locked up by now, I’d guess. Back in Diyarbekir.”

  Carl handed over his card for inspection. The captain scrutinised it for several seconds, before processing it through a hand-held checker. He nodded, handed it back. When he spoke again, his tone was more moderate.

  “We have an accident here. The road is down. You must go by temporary road. You will follow this military vehicle along. Do not deviate.” He indicated a car just behind his car.

  “Follow? For how far?”

  The captain managed a rictus of smile. He slung his carbine over a shoulder. “Not too far. Do not attempt to deviate. Then you get back on the proper Suoyue road. Other people coming here we turn away. You official are lucky.”

  “What, you mean lucky to be nearly fucking shot?”

  “Get on your way, sir. Never lose your temper.”

  The captain nodded curtly, and returned to his vehicle. A second vehicle pulled out and signalled Carl should follow. A large red sign on its rear announced LEADER VEHICLE, just so there should be no mistake. Carl followed.

  The leader vehicle led on to an improvised road, which skirted the disaster site in a wide bow. Carl watched guys in radiation suits climbing from the crater. No doubt they checked on the kind of missile that had been fired, on its composition and where it had been manufactured.

  They had to halt. A signal was against them. The driver of the other vehicle came back and had a word with Carl, seeming curious about him.

  Carl said to the newcomer, “We may be witnessing the beginning, not the end of a crisis. This bunch of terrorists got themselves killed. You can bet others will come along.”

  “Just as well you’re going on leave, then,” replied the man.

  “What do you know about that?”

  “It’s not only oil that travels along this here pipeline.” He added that he had been told Carl would meet a reception when he arrived at the terminal in Mersin.

  The Go signal came through.

  It was a slow ride. Night was coming on. But once they left the site of the nuclear strike behind, the Leader Vehicle brought Carl back to the proper highway. The driver gave him a cheerful wave and departed back the way he had come.

  Ordinary civilian police directed him onto the pipeline road. Once again he was speeding through Turkey westwards. Now there were military patrol cars parked or bumping along beside the highway

  Carl stared out indifferently at the barren landscape. Beggars, ragged men and woman, gesticulated to him or simply stood inert, some holding out begging bowls.

  “Fat chance you’ve got!” Carl exclaimed. Yet Turkey had benefitted greatly from joining the EU; of course, that would apply only to the big cities.

  An ambulance was loading in a prostrate woman and baby on a stretcher into the rear of the vehicle. Then he had flashed past. The tiny cameo of drama and fate was lost far behind. In no time, they were approaching a well-lit bridge. Together with the pipeline, they crossed the youthful River Firat, once known as the Euphrates.

  In just over three hours, Carl’s auto descended to Turkey’s southern coastal plain. The waters of the Mediterranean appeared, flat, faintly gleaming. From here on to its terminus at Mersin, the great armoured pipeline ran on reinforced stilts, and the two motorways, the eastbound and the westbound, ran together in parallel.

  The newly constructed airport was at Mersin, on the outskirts of the growing city. This was where the great thousand-mile thrust of metal ended. Carl would soon be seeing his ex-wife again; that matter would certainly need some sorting out. Either she would see sense or she wouldn’t.

  Although it was midnight, Mersin was still extremely busy, preparing for the moment when the pumping station began operations and Central Asian oil began to pour into waiting Western tankers, to quench the inexhaustible Western thirst for oil and more oil.

  He climbed from the car. He could see an Allied American plane gleaming under searchlights on the runway. The Stars & Stripes were flying. They were symbols of home. An official welcoming party clustered behind the barrier, waiting for him, holding flags and placards. One placard read, “LESSEPS WAS A PIKER COMPARED TO U.” He felt only fatigue, not elation. He had had a job to do. Another job lay ahead.

  As he approached the crowd, a woman called out shrilly, “Come back safe, Carl.”

  He gave her a grin. A nice-looking young woman.

  She clutched his arm as he pushed by. Perhaps she sensed his scepticism. “Maybe things will be better when you return.”

  He grinned into her smiling face and said, “And by then, if I can quote a friend, ‘The Arabs may be going back to their fucking camels’.”

  THREE: THE NEW NORMAL

  The phrase “the new normal” dates back to the end of the first World War. Published in the National Electric Light Association Bulletin in December 1918, the writer Henry Wise Wood asked the question, “How shall we pass from war to the new normal with the least jar, in the shortest time?”

  The original New Normal was established to stave off the abyss, to help the world continue on after it had admitted that it could not bear to. The New Normal was a kind of madness, a specific kind of madness born out of a death. This was a death of not just people, but of ideas.

  One of the ideas that died after 9/11 was the notion of civil liberty or liberal democracy. With the passage of the Patriot Act and the formation of the Total Information Awareness program, the twin ideas of privacy and the right to a trial were, if not entirely undone, then at least placed firmly on the chopping block of history.

  Beyond the loss of liberty that came as a consequence of the attacks, justified by a newly invigorated paranoia and the strong desire for security that this paranoia wrought, there were other, more fundamental, losses. Life in America, if not the rest of the West, came along with its own set of comforting myths and metaphysical niceties. The feeling was that, while we might not be much, and our dreams and aspirations might be small or banal, we knew who we were and what was real. We didn’t have a culture, maybe, but we had stuff, things, and those things were enough. If the old religions didn’t work that was okay, as long as we had something firm to grab onto. It didn’t matter whether that something was a Big Mac, a suburban home, or some ancient notion of transcendence and purpose. We lost all of that. 9/11 robbed us of our Big Macs just as surely as it stole away our illusions about liberty.

  It’s that sense of being adrift, of being unmoored, of being nowhere, that defined life after 9/11. It’s also what the stories in this next section are ultimately all about. Ketchum’s narcissistic nihilist antagonist, Pratt’s virtual reality without weather, Friedman’s losing hand, and Doctorow’s Little Brother are all telling us the same thing:

  This is the New Normal.

  Cory Doctorow is probably most famous as an advocate for liberalizing or loosening copyright law. He is also a co-editor at Boing Boing, the novelist behind books such as Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother, and a fictional character in the online comic “xkcd.” Doctorow apparently lives in a hot ai
r balloon and can often be found working on a literal floating “blogosphere.”

  Doctorow’s novel Little Brother tells the story a networked teenage life hacker whose “world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco.”

  EXCERPT FROM

  LITTLE BROTHER

  Cory Doctorow

  CHAPTER 2

  “I’m thinking of majoring in physics when I go to Berkeley,” Darryl said. His dad taught at the University of California at Berkeley, which meant he’d get free tuition when he went. And there’d never been any question in Darryl’s household about whether he’d go.

  “Fine, but couldn’t you research it online?”

  “My dad said I should read it. Besides, I didn’t plan on committing any crimes today.”

  “Skipping school isn’t a crime. It’s an infraction. They’re totally different.”

  “What are we going to do, Marcus?”

  “Well, I can’t hide it, so I’m going to have to nuke it.” Killing arphids is a dark art. No merchant wants malicious customers going for a walk around the shop-floor and leaving behind a bunch of lobotomized merchandise that is missing its invisible bar code, so the manufacturers have refused to implement a “kill signal” that you can radio to an arphid to get it to switch off. You can reprogram arphids with the right box, but I hate doing that to library books. It’s not exactly tearing pages out of a book, but it’s still bad, since a book with a reprogrammed arphid can’t be shelved and can’t be found. It just becomes a needle in a haystack.

  That left me with only one option: nuking the thing. Literally. 30 seconds in a microwave will do in pretty much every arphid on the market. And because the arphid wouldn’t answer at all when D checked it back in at the library, they’d just print a fresh one for it and recode it with the book’s catalog info, and it would end up clean and neat back on its shelf.

  All we needed was a microwave.

  “Give it another two minutes and the teacher’s lounge will be empty,” I said.