by Jim Wurst
“Mr. Minister, our security team says they have heard rumors that some men with reputations as poachers and smugglers are moving inland in our direction. Someone in the ministry must have leaked the news about the baby.”
“Why my people? Why not yours?”
Jamal clenched visibly.
“There are very few people here compared to the ministry. I trust them. And even if the leak was from here, wouldn’t it be easier for someone already here just to steal Rabu?”
“Who?”
“The baby orangutan. The last report of the selling of a kidnapped orangutan was half a million dollars. Anyone here could snatch the baby and disappear. Why go through the trouble of recruiting poachers?”
“I see they hired you for your scientific skills, not diplomacy.”
“I suppose this is the wrong time to mention that the nature zone needs to expand. The more successful we are at replenishing the population, the greater the temptation to invade.”
“We’ll investigate your rumors.” And with that, the screen went blank.
Jamal moved his chair to face Ruth. “Liar. He knows full well that the news is out and where it came from.”
“Could they get half a million for Rabu?”
“Sure. That was three years ago. Rare animals are getting rarer. You only need a handful of billionaires to keep the market alive. And orangutans are a hell of a lot safer to capture than tigers.” He paused before turning to his least favorite subject. “You know, my offer to give you rifle training still stands. Karen ...”
“I know how to shoot.”
“You know your way around a firing range. You don’t know how to shoot.”
CHAPTER 49
It wasn’t true, but the air seemed so much fresher at the Colorado border. The Dust Bowl winds were still blowing, but they were blowing against her back. She wanted to believe there was snow on the mountains she saw in the distance. She wanted to believe she was mere steps away from being able to sit under a tree. As was her strategy, Sandy aimed for a minor crossing point, but the minor crossing points meant dangerous mountains or deserts. She could have tried slipping in through Kansas, there was essentially no border between Kansas and Oklahoma, but she had had enough dust. She could have tried slipping in through New Mexico, but she had had enough of Indians.
The only safe crossing between Oklahoma and Colorado was the main crossing at Campo. So Campo it was. Sometimes blending into a crowd was the best option, but these days Sandy often found herself to be one of the few white faces, so that wasn’t the best idea. Desolate posts worked better: bored guards willing to accept her favors because what else was did he have the energy for?
The Campo crossing was the busiest she had seen in her travels. She looked around the trucks, hoping for a hitch or to hide in the back. But everything was locked tight. And there weren’t many of them to begin with who had anything to ship into Colorado? Most of the traffic went the other way.
She had no choice but to walk through as if it was something, she did every day. She was ready to find the opportunity to offer her services, but that ended as the door slid open. The agent was sitting behind a Plexiglas wall, massive arms folded across a massive chest, waiting for the next slob to enter. Grim, squat. And female. Going forward was Sandy’s only option.
Looking Sandy over as if she were a fish that might not be quite fresh, the agent asked through a speaker, “Where are you from?”
Sandy had been practicing her accent. “Tulsa, I’m here to visit friends.”
“Friends,” the agent repeated with absolutely no conviction. “And you walked? Nice friends.” She just kept looking at Sandy. She had tried to clean up a few hours before. She knew she smelled of the road, but she couldn’t have been that disgusting. The agent slid open a small door and commanded, “Hold out your hand, palm up.”
She had no choice, but she did it as slowly as possible. For someone who barely moved, the agent was fast, grasping Sandy’s wrist as soon as it was through the door. She took out a small, pointed tab, and again with a practiced swiftness, pricked Sandy’s finger. Sandy instinctively tried to pull away, but the vice was firm. Once the tab was red with a few drops of Sandy’s blood, the agent let go. She put the tab in a small device that looked like a scanner. After one minute or one hour, the device flashed. The agent looked at it and for the first time showed an emotion other than boredom. “Whoa.” She looked at Sandy again, this time it was a sharper appraisal. Then she hit the intercom. “Security. One for quarantine.”
Sandy was fast.
The guards were faster.
CHAPTER 50
“Bridge, this is RV 3. Ready for launch.”
“Stand down, RV 3. VIP ship approaching through sector N-0046. They’re ahead of schedule. Once secure in the docking port, you will receive permission to release.”
“Roger.”
He sat back and waited. Since all he could see out the window was the docking bay, he studied the blips on his computer instead. The small, slow-moving blips were the other cleaners. He could see some larger chunks of debris, but then there was something moving oddly. It was the same size as the cleaners, but it was moving much faster and heading straight at the Roosevelt. This had to be the VIP, but what the hell was he doing?
“Bridge, this is RV 3. Don’t want to be telling you your business, but isn’t that ship approaching fast?”
“Right on both counts it’s approaching too fast, and it’s none of your business.”
“Roger that.” Someone was nervous. He probably had Hightower leaning over him, breathing fire while watching some idiot zeroing in on his ship. Ron resolved himself to staying put for a while. No one was going to be thinking about him.
The technical procedure was the same for Apollo XX, but the protocol was distinctly different. This time Captain Hightower himself and two junior officers were waiting at the airlock. Their VIP had arrived. He hated the political part of the job, but it was part of the job. First the EuroNet crew and now a civilian. This was not a hotel. He didn’t want both parties, but the EuroNet visit got scheduled months before and this new one was an addition he couldn’t reject.
The door opened and out strode a tall young man. He took in his surroundings with darting eyes that never fixed on any one thing. He looked at the people, but never in the eye until he focused on Hightower. Then he looked the captain up and down, a bit quizzically.
“Welcome to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Prescott.” Hightower extended his hand. Prescott was a civilian, so this was all the formality Hightower felt he needed. The young man took his hand, glanced into the captain’s eyes, but immediately drifted to their joined hands.
“Thanks, Captain. An amazing trip.”
“I see you piloted yourself. Very impressive.” Even though Hightower took an instant dislike to the young man, he grudgingly admired his skill. We do not design ships like his to fly this high into space, he thought. Joyriding just below the debris belt, say 600 kilometers above the Earth, was the typical extent. Even though his ship was top of line, to surpass 1,500 klicks without spinning out of control, it needed a sure hand to ensure a safe trip.
Prescott didn’t so much as release his handshake as let his hand slip, as if he had forgotten it was there. His eyes were now roaming the corridor. When he spoke, he had stopped looking at the captain and instead seemed to look at all the computer panels along the wall.
“Been flying since I was a kid. This is my third trip into space.”
“Amazing, I know a hundred people who would love to make even one trip.”
“Yeah, well, everyone’s not me, are they? What’s your first name?” He still wasn’t looking at Hightower when he said this.
The captain was taken back. The escorting officers stole glances at each other. He didn’t read up on the Roosevelt before he left.
“Charles.”
“Mind if I call you Chuck?”
The escorting officers tried to make themselves small.
“Mr. Prescott, you are on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and I am its captain. I prefer, Captain.”
“Absolutely, absolutely.” It was as if he heard the words, but not the slap back in the voice.
The two walked down the corridor with the junior officers following as far back as safety permitted.
“I don’t get it,” one whispered
“His dad is a friend of Ailes,” said the other.
CHAPTER 51
Ike didn’t think it was possible, but Peter’s new office in the Pentagon was more loaded with computers than his old one at the Academy. Peter couldn’t have been happier than if he had gone to heaven, which in a temporal sense he had. But at the moment, Peter’s bliss centered on their leader, not his machines. “This is truly extraordinary. The General tells us to watch out for Zhidoi and in only a week, the news is out all over the world…”
“But the news came from SID, not the White House or Pentagon.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s the hand of God at work. The General knew what was going to happen. He saw everything we all saw, but he saw more. Your father’s passing brought that data file to you and General Adams to you. And he knew about Zhidoi. Even the fact that you needed me to read the data file fit the plan: The General needed someone like me. This is not a series of coincidences. Remember when he said your father could never have done this alone? He needed General Adams at Cheyenne Mountain, but we’ve progressed so that the help doesn’t physically have to be in different places. Under his instructions, I’ve been able to reprogram several computers to act at our command without ever leaving the Pentagon. We are missing only one more element…”
Peter didn’t finish his thought when the general entered. Both captains came to attention.
“As you were. Peter, you’ve explained everything?”
“All the technical arrangements, as you instructed.”
“And?”
“About the hand. I was about to tell him about the hand. But I thought you would, rather.”
The general motioned for the men to sit. Then he sat, pulled his chair closer and leaned over. And with that movement alone, he ceased to be a general but was now family. A favorite uncle. Adams was very good at persuasion. “Ike, think about all the humble men God has called to his service. Even Moses considered himself unworthy. But think for a moment. Why should the all-powerful God need men to perform his deeds? Could not God had freed the Israelites and parted the Red Sea without Moses? Of course, he could. He didn’t need Joshua to destroy Jericho. He created the Flood without man, why could He have not saved Noah and his family and the animals without the ark? Why?”
“Because God created man in His own image and called on man to test him, to test his faith in God. God could have freed the Israelites without Moses, but without the will to act by Moses and the Israelites, they would not have proved their faith in God. God calls on man to show his faith.”
“Exactly!” Adams quickly reached over and in a surprisingly swift and strong motion, he grabbed Ike’s right hand and thrust it skywards. His gaze followed his movement and the captains instinctively followed the general. At that moment, all three were staring at Ike’s raised hand.
CHAPTER 52
The EuroNet plane made several wide, low circles over the Galapagos Islands. The team had been here three times before over the previous seven years, so they knew what they were looking at. They saw the expanding patches of green on some islands especially Isabelle and were sure a few of the smaller islands were definitely lost beneath the ocean. All the shorelines were under stress, but it would not have been possible to judge how successful the re-planting of the mangroves and creation of artificial nesting platforms for birds had been.
Much of the new green was due to Scalesia trees more whimsically known as daisy trees were the most common genus on the islands. Clear-cutting for farmland and introducing goats and pigs that ate saplings decimated the trees. Aggressive efforts to protect the trees reversed the trends, but as El Niños started lasting longer, the growth cycle of the trees was disrupted and the balance between mature plants and seedlings were knocked out of balance. So, it wasn’t a matter of planting more Scalesia. Other indigenous species were carefully planted to aid the daisy trees and take their place if the islands’ climate changed too much more.
The mangroves were the most valuable and abused trees on the islands. Taken for granted for centuries, mangroves were powerful tools in maintaining habitable land. Their ability to extend their roots through salt water and anchor themselves in the shifting, silty soil below meant they were feeding ground for fish, nesting for birds and a bulwark against the wind and waves. But from Louisiana to Bangladesh, they were decimated as humans tried to master the environment. It was as if a medieval knight went into battle by removing his breast plate. At least in the Galapagos, they weren’t uprooted in the name of progress, but still climate change pummeled the stands, exposing the retreating land and robbing reptiles, birds and fish of food and nesting areas.
After they had shot enough footage, the plane began its slow and almost silent descent to Santa Cruz.
Electricity or biofuels now powered nearly all transportation. Oil-based internal combustion engines were mostly used for air travel and propulsion into space and a few nostalgic car races, mostly in the United States. The gas engine was still the most effective way to counter Earth’s gravity. Russia’s attempt at a nuclear-powered rocket to reach space ended with 5,000 dead and a landscape that made Chernobyl look like the Garden of Eden. The amount of gas used decreased even as the launches into space increased due to more efficient engines and lighter but stronger alloys used in the launch vehicles construction. Finally, launch vehicles were no longer the skyscraper sized rockets but were instead sleek air ships that piggy-backed spaceships up to the outer atmosphere where the spaceships separated and launched themselves into space.
Airplanes had gradually shifted to solar generated electricity. It wasn’t easy, and it was scary not to hear the roaring engines at take-off. But the designs were so elegant and evocative that the public fell in love with the idea of sitting in a plane that didn’t look like it should exist.
EuroNet had to make the most energy efficient aircraft possible. The dual goals of global travel and reducing carbon required a fleet of specially designed aircraft. Unlike commercial air travel where speed was a major selling point, EuroNet sacrificed efficiency for speed. That they couldn’t cross the Atlantic in three hours wasn’t the issue, doing it with zero emissions was. They were also free of the need for bulk. Commercial crafts needed to transport hundreds of people, no EuroNet design accommodated more than six people. EuroNet adapted its technology from commercial and military designs. But they added tilt rotors that added weight and slowed things down but eliminated the needed for landing strips. The rotors rotated 45 degrees and allowed the ship to land vertically like a helicopter. This was an important consideration when teams were visiting remote locales or areas where paving over land for an airstrip was not a popular notion.
Which was why the EuroNet plane arriving at the Galapagos had tilt rotors. While there was still one traditional landing field at Puerto Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz, all other airstrips had been torn up and replanted leaving only a room-sized patch of concrete for vertical landings. Even though they would have landed at Puerto Ayora, the crew opted for the soft landing in deference to their host’s distaste for swooping landings.
The first off the plane was Elsa. A 30-something Dane, whose athletic stride made her look taller than she was, looked around and spotted Sanjeet. She was followed off the plane by Marta, a Czech who was the camera operator/producer, and Pol, a Belgian, who was the pilot and doubled as the sound and light engineer when needed.
Sanjeet embraced Elsa. It was not a
casual embrace. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks.” She was in no hurry to let go. “From the air, it doesn’t look like much has changed.”
“These days, that’s a compliment.” They finally realized they had not let go.
“Are things any better?”
“Minor recoveries, mostly terrestrial. I have some hopes for some marine life, but we need more than one cycle to be sure. There has been little recovery from the last El Niño. At least three tortoises drowned during the last rainy season, but the mangroves on the eastern side of the islands are doing pretty well.” They started walking away, with the other catching up. “There’s a lot to show you. It’s about time you came back, I thought we were your most popular documentary last year.”
“Second most.”
“And the first?”
“’The Last Polar Bear.’”
CHAPTER 53
The helmsman had gone through his routine when a ship was leaving the port and heading away from the Roosevelt in this case, heading back to Earth. He monitored the ship, waiting for the moment it was officially outside of his station’s responsibility. But the routine ended too soon.
“Apollo XX, this is Roosevelt. Do you read me? You are off course, your speed is 20% too fast, please change course or you will leave the safe zone eight minutes early.”
The voice coming out of the comm was calm. “Man, you guys in a space station just cannot appreciate speed. Do you have any idea what I’m feeling?” His tone of voice let everyone know that “space” wasn’t just something outside the ship.