On Fire

by Thomas Anderson

Christopher Gray lies very still in the tall grass in the fading heat of the day by the side of the road. He allows himself to cool off, sweat still poring onto his brow. He wears dark, protective clothing and while it hasn’t impeded his movements at all, it has attracted the heat in a powerful way. Now he will rest and cool off while considering his remaining options.

  He is out of Beijing, in the countryside, in a ditch. He is looking across an open field, one recently harvested, the long shadows of afternoon etching their way across lengthy furrows of brown soil. Far across the open field is an old two story farm house, utterly simple, completely unadorned, primitive, unpainted, dark and unappealing. There must be a road back there, somewhere behind it, because there is a tall hedgerow extending away from the house. A line of telephone poles runs across the field, delivering electricity to the house. Maybe the second line on the poles is a phone line, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. He will be gone long before that can become a factor.

  He has been on the lam for hours, taking off as soon as the embassy got wind of his possible arrest. He had been escorted by the staff as far as a safe house and was then driven outside the city. Here he was left off in a new Chinese village. The houses in the village are made of brick, a sign of the capital region’s new prosperity. But in a way the new houses are also a sign of new headaches. All the villages near Beijing have experienced an influx of peasants on their way to find undocumented work in the city. The influx is just a small part of a massive rural to urban migration, the largest in the world. It is in fact the largest human migration in history.

  Everywhere are the signs of the wrenching poverty of the countryside, evident in the way children are dressed, in little more than rags, in the sight of donkey drawn carts, in the way tree branches are collected and bundled by size and carefully stacked, by size, against the back walls of tiny wooden homes, in the 1930’s era village tractors that are still present, and in the way tiny vegetable plots are organized with fences still made of twigs. But most easily are the signs of poverty found in the faces of the poor themselves, in skin burnt by the sun and the wind, in deep set eyes made fiercely bright by endless adversities faced, beaten back and triumphed over.

  Gray was careful in moving about to maintain a low, insignificant profile, his face half hidden by a dark ski cap pulled low, as he exited the little town, passing it’s small lit up grocery, it’s bright internally illuminated signage making it the most optimistic of places to be found here within the most desolate of places. His ultimate destination is known only to himself. It is something he programmed into a machine using a pin and he has never done it before, except in training, and he has no idea how it is going to work, or even if it will. But it better.

  Gray skirted the edges of two villages and took an alley hemmed in by stone walls, traipsing over flagstones, past four foot tall stacks of recycled roof tiles, careful not to brush against anything, not to knock something over, not to make any noise, not to attract attention, not to be made to speak and be therefore discovered a foreigner and, automatically, a subject of suspicion. Here the alley walls captured the glow of his e-pad device when he illuminated it to check his bearings.

  Gray lies in a ditch in a copse of trees and checks his device again out of sheer nervousness. If he is afraid of getting caught he consoles himself with the idea that there are many fewer people living in the Chinese countryside these days to try and find him then there used to be. It used to be that eighty percent of the Chinese lived in the country. Now it is about half that percentage, cold comfort if what’s left decides it’s time to come looking for him.

  The beads of sweat on his face dry in the gentle wind. The sun sets in slices of orange banding across the sky. It has been cold at night here. As early as it is in the season, snow lines the edges of fields and ditches. The night sky is going to be clear and it will be cold tonight. The air is chilly and it lulls him. Gray drifts off.

  Later on, when he finally wakes up, Christopher Gray looks up. There are no longer mountains visible in the distance, it’s too dark. He looks about and sees the barely visible outlines of miniature Buddhist pagoda shrines sitting five feet tall on the other side of the road, made of delicate looking wood gradually deteriorating in the constant rain and snow.

  Gray hears distant ringing. He turns and tilts his head, triangulating the sound. It’s coming from an out building near the house, some kind of barn. It must be a way of letting those in the field know when a landline call is coming in. So they can drop whatever they are doing and rush to get it, just as it quits ringing? Does that make any sense?

  It continues ringing for a while. Surely there is someone in the house to pick up on the line there? Why aren’t they getting it? Is anyone there? Are there any lights in the house, any sign of activity? He sees none. But he can’t be sure.

  The phone silences and there is only the sound of a light breeze stirring the dried out leaves still stuck to the skinny trees in the copse. He looks up. There’s full moonlight breaking through wisps of glowing cloud, illuminating the field dimly, outlining a few piles of hay that have been heaped up in different spots. He wonders if he will need to use the hay piles in his efforts to stay out of sight.

  Moonlight is not ideal. Moonless would be best. What he can’t see on a moonless night but needs to find he can always locate with the navigation functions of his device, should that prove necessary. It won’t be. The moon is pretty full and going nowhere. He checks the handheld electronic for the time instead. He fumbles with it as his hands have grown cold and clumsy.

  Soon.

  Satisfied, he turns his attention to the stars. So far from the city there are quite a lot of them, not that he has the ability to identify a single one. They peek out from between the trails of the wispy clouds. He shivers and feels the penetrating cold.

  A bird rustles in a nest nearby. Gray hasn’t moved in hours and worries that he is getting stiff. He doesn’t have long to wait. On his screen a dot moves over a diagram of his position.

  At first he isn’t sure he is hearing anything at all. Maybe he would have to be a dog, with powers of hearing beyond those of humans, to hear the high whine of a distant approach. Or, maybe, after all, that’s it.

  A few more seconds and he thinks he is confirming it. That has to be it.

  Suddenly it grows louder and changes its pitch. It’s Doppler effect is dropping, slowing, signaling him that it has arrived, telling him it’s time to go. His heart skips a beat. It begins to race.

  There it is, a moving dark shadow, outlined in glinting moonlight as it circled, and it’s now heading down onto the field, coming at him from the other end. The engine cuts out as it levels its approach and touches down, bouncing. It has wheels and skids, a computer driving their delicate interplay with the ruts and rubble of the harvested field. He checks the screen again and sees the indicator of the drone change color, meaning it has stopped moving.

  It’s down. He looks at the house. Nothing.

  Suddenly he is up and running at his maximum until he reaches the spot where the UAV has come to rest. He immediately places his lit up device against its side, activating the opening of a panel.

  Gray emits a low whistle of satisfaction. Something in him always told him that if and when it ever came to this, there would be no such thing. There couldn’t be. No real asset would ever be worth this kind of technology. He always assumed that in this situation he would have to follow through as ordered, knowing how ultimately futile his efforts would turn out to be. Everything about his training and experience informed him that this could, would, never happen.

  Somehow though, it has.

  The drone sits low and the panel, longer than a human being, extends from the cylindrical side in slow motion on a heavy metal armature until the panel locks in place. The dull black drone rises considerably above him and stands between him and the view of the house.

  Gray looks into the opening of t
he drone and sees a cockpit, albeit one without means of navigation for its occupant. It could also be mistaken for a pilotless coffin, albeit one rather comfortably tricked out, but it will serve as his home away from home for the next fourteen hours.

  The thought of such a long, uninterrupted and yet very cramped journey delivers another thought to him. He unzips quickly and takes a piss, watching the ground steam. Finally, Chris Gray climbs in and pulls the big panel closed, listening to it lock reassuringly.

  Assuming the deceptive beacon technology that the drone is specially fitted with works, he will remain hidden among the many thousands of drones in the sky over China on his way to his destination and won’t have anything to worry about. On the other hand, if the spoofing technology doesn’t work, he won’t have to be concerned about that either. In that eventuality, the drone, with him in it, will undoubtedly be blown unmercifully out of existence long before there is any chance to even think about it.

  Gray turns philosophical as he feels the drone activate, turning rather bumpily about to face back across the field it has just landed on, smoothly powering itself up. Gray’s body is pushed back against the cushion he rests on as the drone takes off from the field and then accelerates at several G, disappearing into the black folds of the night sky.

  It is something Gray learned from the Ambassador. One day, after hearing some of Gray’s complaints about his job, the Ambassador pointed out to him that everybody has a boss. People with real power, he said, will tell you that the more power you have, the more you feel penned in and constrained by your choices. As the ambassador put it, in the end, the only authority with real power over this planet is God.

  And he’s not talking.

  Chapter 25