The Far Side (24 page)

“I am Melek, a sergeant in the army of King Zod.  Identify yourselves!  You are in restricted territory.”

The other said something that he didn’t understand in a language he didn’t recognize.  Collum, one of the privates, pulled a bit on the arrow between his fingers.  The other might not be understandable, but he knew a threat.

“Collum, you draw that arrow another finger, and I’ll stick it up your ass!”

The other realized what he was doing and relaxed, letting the arrow sag.

“Sorry,” Melek tried to explain. “A private... what can you expect?”

The sound the other one made sounded pretty much like a laugh and agreement.  So, maybe they could recognize some of his words!  He held up three fingers, waved at them and said, “Three.”

The other held up three fingers and repeated the word, then held up four fingers and waved at Melek and his men and said something Melek didn’t recognize.  To make matters worse, the man pointed at the three with Melek and made a divide motion with his fingers and said “Three” to Melek.

Some words were the same?  Or was the other just smart, having figured the word out?  Worse, he realized that the one with the long hair was indeed a woman, pants or not.  He’d been about to assume the short one was a man as well, when she moved just so, and he realized she had breasts, just rather small, like she was.  Since small breasts weren’t that uncommon, he was frustrated.  Women were to be protected at all costs.  It was the duty of the soldiers of the King!  As it had been from the early days, when his ancestors had arrived on East Finger with four men for every woman who had survived that awful journey.

He turned to Collum.  “Put your bow on your back.  Return to the lieutenant along the path we came here by, and tell him we have found three strangers without bows, two women and a man.  They may be from the East.  They don’t speak like we do.”

Collum’s departure didn’t bring a reaction from the man, except he watched him go.  Melek gestured well away from the observation post.  “He is going to report.”

The other nodded, which was agreement or not.  There followed a short discussion of yes and no.  The strangers’ words were completely unlike the common language of the land.  True, each Finger had its own unique accents, but the abandonment of East Finger had muddied that.

The lieutenant came back with Collum.  He eyed the three strangers and spoke to Melek.  “What’s going on?”

“They don’t speak our tongue.  At first I thought we might have some words in common, but none of the words he tells me sound at all like ours, and the words he’s repeated to me sound like he’s learned them.  I believe, sir, this one is a soldier, perhaps an officer.”

The lieutenant stood in front of the soldier, inviting a salute.  Melek was sure when the other realized what Menim wanted.  The stranger faced Melek, turned rigid, and held one hand over his right eyebrow, palm down.  There was an audible click as his heels came together.

Then the stranger turned to the lieutenant and tossed off a much more casual salute.  Melek suppressed a grin.  So, the other knew the difference between sergeants and officers, and was almost certainly a sergeant himself.

“Evidently, he thinks you’re an officer and I’m a slacker,” the lieutenant said with a repressed sigh.  There was no way Melek could explain things to the lieutenant without upsetting him, so he left it unsaid, hoping the young man would understand at some point in time.  The stranger was making fun of both of them, using exaggerated gestures both times.

Melek waved around them, then pointed to himself and the others, made a walking motion with his fingers across his hand, and pointed in something like the direction to the observation post.

The other nodded and pointed to himself, then the two young women, then made a walking motion and pointed to a black hole in the mountain.

Melek kicked himself.  It had been there all along and he’d ignored it.  Caves were common here and he didn’t bother thinking about them.  The odd thing was that the man had stopped and was staring at the cave entrance himself.

Without a word, he walked towards it, about a hundred yards away.  The two women followed along, and perforce, so did Melek, the lieutenant and the rest.  The stranger stopped at a large boulder, maybe twenty feet on a side and maybe half that thick and reached out and put his hand on the rock.  He pushed and Melek saw the rock move.  No way!  The man would have had to have the strength of fifty to move a boulder that size!

The stranger moved towards the entrance and looked behind the boulder.  Melek could tell he was amused.  He beckoned at Melek and Melek joined him.  At first, Melek wasn’t sure what he was seeing, and then he did understand.  Someone had hollowed out the boulder.  Not only that, there were iron rods spanning the inside, holding it together.

Melek turned to the lieutenant.  “Sir, this might be Rangar’s place.”

“Rangar?  What?”  The lieutenant backed up two steps, his hand dropping and lifting his bow.  Melek saw the stranger watching the lieutenant carefully.  He had no bow, so Melek didn’t see what the other could do, but he looked careful, not concerned.

The two girls seemed to be following his lead.  Neither of them had said a word that Melek had heard.  He contemplated his own sisters and wondered just what sort of persuasion the stranger had used on them to keep them quiet.

The stranger made the walking motion with his fingers and pointed inside the cave.

He was either admitting to be one of Rangar’s men or Melek wasn’t understanding him.  The lieutenant was recovering and had missed everything important.  He was, Melek thought, a decent lieutenant as long as things were going the way of his training.  Put him an unfamiliar situation and he wasn’t very good.

The stranger beckoned Melek forward and Melek moved inside, wondering what they were going to use for torches.  All three of the strangers had small torches that threw directed beams of light, mystifying Melek how that could be done.

The stranger pointed to rocks lining the ground along the tunnel sides just inside the entrance.  They were about six inches thick and a foot on a side.  The stranger mimed lifting one up and carrying it to the big boulder outside and dropping it inside.

Melek whistled.  Fill up the false boulder with these, and if someone accidentally leaned against it, it wouldn’t have moved.  It wouldn’t be the fastest door to close, but once closed it would take very clever observation to know what was behind it.  The lieutenant was asking a stream of questions, but the most important question the stranger had for Melek consisted of a single word.

“Rangar?”

The other shrugged.  Melek tried to pantomime murder, theft, rape... He wasn’t sure the other understood, but he strode inside, the two young women following, flashing their lights around.

When Melek realized where he was, he sucked air.  The lieutenant hissed with fear, and at least one of the privates shit himself.

Melek got a grip on himself.  It was obvious that people had been here long ago.  They hadn’t been concerned about dralka, so why should he?  This might be a millennium-old rookery, dating from when their ancestors first arrived.

He faced the stranger and sketched the beehive shape.  The other didn’t understand, and for twenty minutes Melek tried, but there was no way to get the idea across.  Finally the other grew impatient and waved them forward.

Melek saw the small passage and frowned.  That was too small a passage for a rookery -- it had to have been added since then.  Rangar!

The man led the way with the two young women looking a bit uneasy, as if they didn’t understand either.  A curiosity.

Inside, the man waved the light over the floor.  Melek was the one to hiss this time, not with fear, but with fury at what he saw.  The lieutenant came forward, asking a querulous “What?”

Melek doubted if the lieutenant knew the truth of expeditions like this.  The better junior lieutenants were sent on arduous, dangerous, or just plain shit jobs like this with a senior sergeant like Melek.  Melek wasn’t the man’s executioner, not unless he really screwed up, but Menim had just failed his first chance at a captaincy.

The stranger pointed at Melek and at the terrible things on the floor.  Shaking with anger and rage, Melek shook his head as violently “No!” as he knew how.

The stranger met his eyes, and gestured at the two girls, then at the eyebolts, then miming arrows at Melek.  This time Melek shook his head as hard as he’d done before.

The stranger stepped forward, close to Melek, his arm extended.  It was, Melek realized, the old “Warrior’s Salute” used by their ancient enemies in the East.  He got a grip on himself.  Almost twelve hundred years had passed, and if these people were from the East, they had a right to be judged as they were, not as if they were Tengri.  He gripped the stranger’s arm as the stranger gripped his.  Their eyes met and Melek knew he’d met a true brother.

They clenched arms then, clapping each other on the back, not at all like the old salute, more like the gesture they used among themselves.  They traded gazes and Melek jerked his head yes, and then moved his chin to each of
the young women.  My duty too!

“Sergeant!  What is this?  What are those rings?  What’s going on?”

Collum actually had his sword half drawn.  One of the other privates spit at Menim’s feet.

Melek turned to the lieutenant.  “Lieutenant, they bespeak the fate of the women kidnapped by Rangar.  Have a care, sir!  I am a Chain Breaker!”

It was the duty of the soldiers of the king to protect women.  Gonno VI had failed in that duty, and his own soldiers had killed him in a violent rage at their King’s failure.  The failure to rescue those women was considered a stain on all of the soldiers of the kingdom, and it had been assumed they’d never be able to blot it out.  Maybe, just maybe, there were clues here that might lead to Rangar!

And of all of the soldiers of the land, the Chain Breakers would one day lead the freeing of those enslaved by their enemies.  They had sworn it, each and every one of them!

Chapter 9 -- Uncool

Oliver Boyle hugged his wife and was surprised when she hugged him about ten times harder than she’d ever hugged him before.  “Helen?  Are you okay?”

He tried to ignore the two guards standing just a few feet away.  As bad as concerns about his wife and daughter and the others were, it was terrible to contemplate the fact that he’d never be able to look at a policeman again without revulsion and distrust.

“I’m fine... it’s Linda Walsh.”

“What about her?”

“They’re going to kill her.”

“What?”  That shocked him to his core.  Sure, they’d beaten the men, and they hadn’t seen the Chinese fellow after the first day, but surely they hadn’t treated the women the same way as well?

“They beat her the evening of our second day here.  It was brutal, Ollie, really brutal.  They were demanding that she give them her Blackberry.  She kept saying she didn’t have one.  They didn’t believe her.  Ollie, that time they beat her unconscious, then some Nazi woman came in and just cut her clothes away and did a brutal cavity search that might as well have been rape.

“I tried to give her some clothes, but they cut those to shreds as well.  She has to go around naked.  Earlier today, they beat her again, Ollie.  I mean, she should be in the hospital -- she has two broken legs.  I never imagined brutality like this -- not in this country.  I’d like to think she’s going to be okay, but she laughs at them and taunts them, telling them that everything they say and do will be on the Internet within the hour.  From their anger, she must be right.”

Oliver shrugged.  “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone outside, none of us have.  We talk between cells in the middle of the night -- the guards are usually all asleep.  During the day they hit you with a billy club if you try to talk.”

“Ollie!”

“Yeah, I have broken finger, I think, and a cracked wrist.  You can practice on me when we get home.”

“I can’t believe this!” Helen told him.

He shook his head.  “Helen, you’ve known I’ve been a closet Republican for years.  I have never been more embarrassed by anything as much as this in my life.”

“The governor is a Democrat,” Helen exclaimed.  “And the President and the Mayor are Democrats... I never thought anyone in this country could behave like this.  Well -- maybe Republicans.”  Neither of them thought much of the wan attempt at a joke.

“And I kept my mouth shut, and we can see the tyranny that’s resulted.  I don’t know if my voice would have made an iota of difference, Helen, but I was silent -- so I’ll never know.  I am profoundly ashamed.”

“How could you possibly know?”

“Her husband?  Her advisors?  The scion of the Kennedys who is the vice president?  How could I have possibly known?”

She put her head down on his chest.  “We have to do something.  They’re going to kill that girl.”

He stroked her hair, knowing that if anyone else died here, it wouldn’t stop with one more.  The guards were prison-camp brutal.  Anyone who sassed them about anything was beaten senseless.  David Solomon had admitted the night before that he was never, ever going to vote for a Democrat again after having been a life-long Democrat.

One of Helen’s guards pressed her earpiece more tightly to her ear.  “Time to go!”

They jerked Helen from his arms and hustled her away without another word.

Oliver Boyle steeled himself.  There was no way he dared tell Helen that each of her visits cost him dearly.  As soon as she was out of sight, guards would come for him, and he’d have another session with his interrogators.

He didn’t understand the brutality, and above all, he couldn’t fathom the pointless questions.  Was Andie an alien spy?  Why was his daughter helping an alien?

Did they listen to themselves?

He looked around, wondering why his guards were taking so long.  There were only two guards visible, down the cell block by the door.  They were talking in low tones, well beyond earshot.

“They seem to have the wind up,” Kurt Sandusky told him.  Kurt’s voice was harsh whisper, his mouth hidden by his hand, as if he was coughing.

The door opened at the other end of the cell block, and two men in dumpy blue suits entered.  Oliver had no intention of getting his hopes up that the FBI was coming to their rescue.  One of them stood in the corridor while the other moved in front of Ollie’s cell.

The man held out a piece of paper towards Ollie, along with a pen.  “Sign this release and you can go.”

“Not without my wife -- and all the others.”

“You’re the first.  Sign the release.”

Oliver took the paper and looked at it.  It was a typed statement stating that he’d been treated fairly, he’d seen no one abused, and that he understood he was being released without prejudice, that is, they could re-arrest him at any time.

“Think of me,” Oliver said, his voice level, “as the captain of my ship.  There is no way I’ll sign anything like this.  Maybe, just maybe, I’d sign it if everyone else was released ahead of me.”

The man reacted by drawing a pistol from his holster and pointing it at Oliver’s head.  “Sign the release, or you will be shot while trying to escape.”

Oliver swallowed.  He wasn’t going to be any good to anyone -- not Helen, not Kris, not anyone at all if he was dead.

Behind him, Kurt laughed.  “Ollie, they’ve caved.  Just say no.”

The gun swiveled and fired.  Oliver closed his eyes in shame and horror.

From behind him, Kurt laughed.  “Oh, they have so folded their hands, Ollie.  Just tell them to open the cells.”

“Open your mouth again, you terrorist bastard, and I won’t miss the next time!” the FBI agent declared.

Kurt laughed harder.  “Never mind that I fought the bastards in Africa and Kuwait.  I’m sure that explanation will work really well with the people who know me.  Say -- maybe you’ve heard from some of my friends already?”

“Sign the paper or you’ll rot here,” the FBI agent told Oliver.  “You’re being held on Patriot Act charges of terrorism.  We can hold you for years without formal charges being filed.”

“Let everyone else go and I’ll sign,” Oliver told him.

“They have to sign as well.”

“That is so not going to happen,” Kurt Sandusky told him.  “If you had a winning hand you’d play a trump.  So far, you haven’t done squat.  Don’t sign anything, Ollie.”

Oliver was tempted to mention that he’d been lying but decided that that might be a felony, so he simply stood with his hands at his sides.

“Kurt, my left hand is useless because they broke my wrist.  I can’t hold a pen in my right hand because of the broken thumb I acquired here.  You’re right -- I just can’t sign any papers.”

“You’ll be sorry,” the FBI agent said darkly.  The words however, were rendered void as he holstered his weapon.

He and his partner turned and walked away without another word.

“Christ, Kurt!  You took a chance!” Oliver told him, turning to look at him.  The spalling on the concrete wall wasn’t as large as he might have thought.

“Naw, I was pissed, but I’m not blind.  His pistol didn’t have a magazine.  He had a round up the spout, but no magazine.  I have to admit I was surprised he wasted his one shot against the wall.  Small men, Oliver, do small things -- and they rarely do them well.”

“Jack?” Oliver asked.

Jack Schaeffer had come in for even rougher treatment than Oliver.  He’d lost teeth, walked with a limp, and cradled one arm with the other.  All it had taken for him to be beaten was to say “sue,” “lawsuit,” “injunction” or anything else about his legal rights.

“Mr. Sandusky is correct.  They are essentially conceding.  This was about damage control, and whoever told them to do it made it clear to their minions that no one was to get hurt.  I think our time of travail is nearing an end.”  He stifled a groan as he sat up in his bed.  “That said, someone could still screw this up, so follow your instincts, Oliver.  All of us at once, or none of us.”

The time of travail had a little time left to run, it turned out.  They’d been getting two meals a day, fetched by guards who stood over them, watching them eat... the only utensil they’d been given were spoons.  That evening there was no evening meal.

Nor was there a lunch or dinner the next day.  On the other hand, guards had always been present during the day, and almost always one or two of them had been taken away for interrogation each day.  Oliver Boyle was happy to trade a few missed meals for a few missed beatings, and so were the others.

Finally, a little before noon almost two days after he’d seen Helen, a man in a suit, accompanied by three guards appeared in the cell block.

“I am Assistant US Attorney Richard Baldwin.  You are being released on your own recognizance, pending further hearings.  There are a number of things you may not do, just as if you were on bail.  You may not leave Los Angeles County without permission of the US Attorney.  You must surrender your passports as well.

“You may not gather in groups of more than two.  If you have any contact with Kristine Boyle or Andrea Schulz, you will report it at once to the US Attorney.  You will avoid physical contact with those subjects, and if you do come in direct contact with them, you will report that fact as well.

“You will not undertake or support someone undertaking research on fusors of any design.

“You may not comment on this in any way, shape, manner, or fashion with anyone for any reason.  You may not, under penalty of re-incarceration, discuss this with any member of the media or press.”

“And the little matter of the US Constitution?  The Bill of Rights?  Those things?” Oliver asked, his voice filled with anger.

“You are the subjects of an Executive Order, a copy of which will be made available to you,” Baldwin told them.  “Because of the nature of your infractions this extraordinary action was taken on the part of the President.”

“Leaving out, once again,” he spat in disgust, “that little bit in the Constitution about ‘Bills of Attainder.’”

“And you can guarantee that within an hour of my release, a request for certiorari for immediate relief will be delivered to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Jack Schaeffer announced.

“That would put you in prima facie contempt of court and would cause your immediate arrest,” the AUSA told him.

“This is the United States of America,” Jack Schaeffer declared.  “This isn’t some despotic monarchy where one man can simply write an order and people’s lives and freedoms put in jeopardy.”

“You scum!” the AUSA said, venom dripping from his voice.  “Do you have any idea what those insane children have done?  They may have killed every man, woman, and child on the planet!  Scientists have found hundreds of new species of microbial life in the water that they brought here from God knows where!  Any one of them could be another plague!”

“And you think the way to resolve such a dispute is throw people into jail and hold them for weeks, subject to brutal torture?  What happened to Lin Xi?  The young man was removed for ‘questioning’ the first night and hasn’t been seen since?  Where is due process?”

“He tried to escape and was killed,” Baldwin told them.

“That’s insane!  When we’re removed for torture, we have two guards with batons; we’re shackled hands and feet.”

“He was a Chinese spy,” the attorney told them.

“His family has been in the US as long as mine!” Oliver Boyle raged.  “My ancestors, most of them, fled the potato famine!  His came for the gold rush!”

Someone banged on the door at the end of the cell block, and a moment later another man in a suit pulled Richard Baldwin away by his arm.

Oliver had no idea what was being said, but Baldwin paled and looked stunned.  Finally he told the messenger something and turned to the prisoners.

“Something has come up that requires my attention.  I’ve warned you all of the limitations you are be released under.  Void the conditions and you’ll be back here at once.”

He walked off hurriedly, while the guards started unlocking cells.

They were escorted to a counter where a man wearing lieutenant’s bars and a jailor’s uniform demanded that they sign releases.  Jack shook his head, and none of them signed, even when the threats grew harsh.

Finally, they were led down another corridor; a jailor held a door open, and they were outside, still in their prison jumpsuits.

“I hope we’re not going to be shot as escaped felons,” Kurt Sandusky said, fingering the cloth.

“It isn’t outside the bounds of possibility,” Jack Schaeffer told him.  “To be honest, there has never been anything like this that I can think of -- not since the days of King George.”

A man in a suit walked by, eyeing them warily, talking on his cell phone.  Jack Schaeffer smiled winningly.  “How would you like to make a cool thousand dollars?”  A moment later he had the phone in his hand and was making a call.

* * *

Kris watched Ezra trying to talk with Melek and turned to Andie.  “The watch word here, I think, is misogyny.”