Hope Triumphant II: Sister
by Parda, March 2004
Chapter 5
(World population: 6.88 billion)
Armageddon
====================
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Watcher Headquarters, France
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"Oh, my God." Joe Dawson stared horrified at the TV screen in the staff lounge at Watcher HQ. "Oh my God, no." He groped for the edge of the table, suddenly needing help to stand. No one noticed; they were all staring at the TV. Pierre, head of research, was frozen halfway through the act of sitting down. His executive assistant, Demiko, was sitting next to Marie on the sofa. They were holding hands, and both women had tears glistening on their cheeks. Rhee, Tribune of the Guard, was standing near a wall, feet apart, hands braced behind his back, like a soldier at parade rest.
"—exploded at 10:23 this morning, local time," the TV announcer's voice was saying. On the screen, an image of a mushroom shaped cloud carried the caption "File Photo." No cameras or film crew existed at ground zero. Nothing existed at ground zero. Joe's hands were trembling, and he carefully levered himself into a chair. His hands still shook.
The image shifted to a satellite photo of a sickly green-white blob encircled in red. The snaking lines of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers had been colored blue. "The radiation zone extends to the capital beltway," said the announcer. "The population of the metropolitan area is estimated to be …" In that awful pause, the thirteen Watchers in the room made no movement, no sound. "… to be over one million."
"Sweet Jesus," Joe breathed. Marie whimpered, and from his post near the window, Pablo Rosacra, chief of travel, gave a half-hysterical bark of incredulous laughter, full of pain. The mushroom cloud image reappeared, and Pierre finally finished sitting down.
"Survival within a two-mile radius of the center is … unlikely."
Joe translated that into plain English: One million people had just been killed. Vaporized. Blown to hell.
"Radiation poisoning may eventually kill thousands more; we don't know—" The announcer broke off, his voice choked with tears. "I repeat," he said, nearly strangling on the words, "at 10:23 this morning, an atomic bomb exploded in Washington, D.C. Congress was in session; the president and first lady were in residence. The vice president was in California at the time; she is currently en route to an undisclosed location. Except for military and emergency personnel, all traffic—air, car, rail, and inland waterways—is prohibited in the continental U.S. until further notice. Stay where you are, don't panic, cooperate with authorities." An image of burning homes came next, leaping flames and roiling black smoke, smeared over with gray rain. "Many of the surrounding suburbs are on fire from the heat blast. Stay inside to avoid the rain. I repeat, stay inside. The rain is radioactive. We don't—that is … Oh, God, I—" He broke off abruptly, and a woman's voice took over, talking about saving drinking water and staying off the phones.
"Goddamned terrorists," Joe swore. "Goddamned fucking war." His eyes met Rhee's, and the other man nodded. It was time.
Rhee turned to Marie. "I am convening an emergency Executive Council, the five council tribunes and all ten divisional tribunes. The teleconference should begin within two hours."
She didn't move, so Joe said sharply, "Marie?" She looked at him blankly, and Joe realized she hadn't heard a word that Rhee had said.
"I'll do it, Tribunes," Demiko offered before either man could say anything more. She glanced at her supervisor, who was still staring at the TV. "I don't think anyone's going to be doing research tonight."
"Go," Rhee said. She nodded and left the room, and Joe turned back to the TV screen.
The fires were still burning.
"Ten minutes until the conference, Tribunes," Demiko said as she wheeled the cart bearing drinks and paper and pens into the first of the teleconference rooms.
Marissa Olenskaya nodded and smoothed back her already perfect raven hair. Bjorn Wildorfer's thin lips wrinkled into a moue of irritation under his graying mustache as he checked his watch, an almost paper-thin rectangular face on a brown leather band. Joe Dawson studied the spidery black lines, wondering why it was so hard for him to figure out the time. He'd read watch hands upside-down before. Five fifty-one, he finally came up with. The conference would start at six, one hour and thirty-seven minutes after "the event," as the newscasters had taken to calling it. "The infamous event" one fellow had called it, noting that the "day that would live in infamy" had happened exactly sixty-nine years ago. Joe didn't think the timing was a coincidence.
"I heard you requested the attendance of the Keeper of the Chronicles," Olenskaya said, smiling at Joe with one of her perfect smiles.
"That's right," Joe answered.
"Such a request should have come from me. I am the Tribune of the Chronicles; the Keeper comes under my authority."
"That's how the table of organization has it," Joe agreed with a cheerful smile of his own before he reminded her of the rules. "For an Emergency meeting, any tribune is empowered to request the attendance of any Watcher."
"Quite right," said Wildorfer. "I requested the Chief of Security to attend."
Joe felt his smile slipping, but he said casually, "I don't think we'll need her. The Tribune of the Guard is here."
"We are all concerned with security today; I thought she might have added insight. Just as you wanted more historical insight and so asked the Keeper."
Olenskaya gave Wildorfer a dirty look, but didn't dare complain. She was a whiz at computers and at organizing people and information, which was what her job required, but everybody knew she didn't know an Albigensian from a Pomeranian.
Demiko emerged from the First Tribune's room and went into the room labeled "Tribune of the Guard." Rhee was already in there, talking on his cellphone; Joe caught a burst of rapid-fire Korean when the door opened. Joe checked his own watch, relieved to have easy-to-read digital numbers. Five fifty-two. Jules Kananga appeared in the windowless hallway, nodded once, then entered the First Tribune's room and shut the door. Kananga had never been much for chit-chat, and right now, Joe was glad.
Olenskaya was eyeing the row of doors with distaste. "I dislike these basement cubicles."
Wildorfer, Tribune of the Exchequer, gave his customary little sniff. "Teleconferencing is efficient and inexpensive."
"The five of us are here," Olenskaya pointed out. "We at least could sit in the conference room."
Wildorfer shook his head. "We tried that when the system was first put in. We looked at each other, and those on monitors could not see. This is more equitable."
You could always depend on Wildorfer to count the beans, Joe thought.
"I heard South America won't be with us," Wildorfer said next. "He is somewhere in the Amazon Basin."
"I spoke with Pacifica and East Asia before I came down," Olenskaya said. "So they are awake, and I think everyone else is available."
"A good turnout, for such short notice."
Yeah, Joe thought with a silent snort, it was downright neighborly of them to roust themselves out of bed for an atomic bomb. Demiko was starting on the fourth room, so Joe left Wildorfer and Olenskaya nattering in the hall and opened the door labeled "Tribune of the Guild." An archaic title, maybe, a reminder of the days before the Watcher academies had been built, but Joe liked it. A guild was more than just a school, anyway; it provided security, support, education … a family.
Joe shut the door and got settled in the comfortable chair. In front of him was a small desk, clear except for a cup of steaming coffee (black and unsweetened, the way he liked it), a computer screen and keyboard, and a pad of lined paper with a pen laid precisely at its side. The monitors on the opposite wall stared at him with blind eyes, four rows of five, like the composite eye of some legless bug. Yet another wonder of modern technology, Joe thought sourly as he looked at display. Each monitor was capable of featuring a different head from a different corner of the globe. No place was out of touch these days.
No place was safe.
A death toll of one million … an initial death toll of one million … Joe's hands started shaking again, and he rubbed them briskly on his thighs, clearing his throat and blinking hard. The dark scent of coffee rose lazily, and he fiercely wanted a slug of the bitter brew, but it wouldn't do to face an Executive Council with coffee slopped all over his shirt. Joe took a deep breath and squeezed his hands into fists, relaxed them, then squeezed again. Five fifty-seven.
He reached for his cup then drank as he stared at the wall of monitors. Ollie Garrido, tribune for the Central America Division, liked her display in alphabetical order, but Joe had put the five council tribunes on the top row (except his own screen would stay blank, because Joe hated looking at himself when he was talking). The next two rows set the divisional tribunes almost like they were on a map, with North and South America on the leftmost column, Western Europe and Central America in the next column, then Eastern Europe and Africa in the middle. Central Asia and Western Asia took the fourth, and Pacifica and the Subcontinent got the right-hand side. The five remaining screens on the bottom row were for guest speakers and the like. The Keeper of the Chronicles would get one today. So would Sharon Seligman, Head of Security. Damn. Joe admired and respected the woman, but the former Mossad agent wasn't known for her patience or for her tact.
"Hey, Rhee," Joe typed on the keyboard. "Tell Sharon to stay cool at this meeting, OK?"
Less than a minute later, the computer cheeped quietly and the message from Rhee appeared: "I have done so already."
Joe sighed, rubbing a hand across his beard. The monitors were still blank, though sixteen of the "active" lights showed green. Sure enough, South America wasn't going to be on. Probably everybody else was straightening ties or combing hair or doodling, and didn't want to be seen. Joe wasn't in the mood for talking, but he missed the settling in of a real-time meeting, when people shuffled papers and pulled out chairs and either ignored each other or talked about fishing or the game. He didn't need to listen to Wildorfer and Olenskaya—he saw them all the time—but he wasn't so sure of the divisional tribs. Their five-year term had finished in June, and almost half of them were new. This TV stuff just started Wham! and you couldn't get any sense of how the land lay ahead of time.
Speaking of time … Joe set down his coffee, cleared his throat, and stared at the clock on the wall, silently counting down. Seven seconds to go. Kananga always started on time.
At 6:00:00, the monitors flicked on. In the monitor for Central America, a woman's skirt whisked out of view and Ollie turned around and seated herself. At the bottom of each screen was the person's title and name, and, for the divisional tribunes, a tiny map with their geographical division colored in red. The center monitor on the top row brightened when Kananga rapped a gavel on his table. His slow, deep voice rolled out in measured, time-honored cadences, with a lilt that reminded Joe of Jamaica, even though Kananga was from Senegal. "Watchers, we are met. Ours is the duty, down through the ages, to observe and record. Ours is the burden, to know the secret of Immortals. Ours is the honor, to hold that trust even unto death. Duty, burden, honor—Watchers, these are yours."
"Duty, burden, honor," repeated the Watchers, affirming once again that ancient oath. All the monitors brightened as all the Watchers spoke. "These are ours, down through the ages."
Kananga rapped the gavel again then laid it down. "Watcher Sun Myung Rhee, Tribune of the Guard, has summoned this Executive Council, but before I yield the floor to him, I will speak of this day's events." He steepled his fingers together, tip to tip, a favorite pose with him. Underneath his cap of tiny white curls, the fine lines on his blue-black skin seemed gray. "As with many capital cities, Washington was an international attraction and an informational resource. In addition to the Watchers of Immortals, we had three historians at the Library of Congress, two media contacts, seven operatives in various government or international agencies—"
Agencies that included, Joe suddenly remembered, the center for the International Monetary Fund. Halloo, global economic downturn. God, what a mess.
"—and three traveling Watchers permanently based there. The names are on your screens."
"Damn," Joe muttered, looking at the list on the computer screen at his desk. Other monitors flickered into brief brightness as other people swore or exclaimed.
"Our CIA operative may still be active; their headquarters was outside the blast zone," Kananga continued. "We have been unable to establish communication at this time." He paused to sip at his tea. "In addition to the twenty-two Watchers permanently based in Washington, a report was filed by Sayyid Rastogi twelve minutes before the explosion. She stated that Immortal Mykhaltso Demidas was entering the Hirschorn Art Gallery on the Mall. Tribune Rastogi," Kananga said, addressing the Subcontinent Tribune, "please know that you have our deepest condolences on the death of your granddaughter." Rastogi bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment, and Joe looked away from the grief etched there.
Kananga's hands were clasped together now, and he took a deep breath before he spoke. "The bells will be rung at the chapel in Geneva at sunset; the gongs will be struck at the temple in Goa at dawn. We will remember."
"We will remember," repeated the Watchers in a ragged chorus. Joe suspected he'd be hearing that phrase a lot in the days to come.
They were all silent for a few moments, until Ollie asked, "Who were the Immortals?"
The North American monitor lit up as Mary Hammond answered. "Kirin, who used to be Kage, Keith Boyer, Reagan Cole, and Gianni Fabiano. We had one solo Watcher and three double-teams on them, so that's seven of us right there. From the reports filed between twelve and two hours before the explosion, it's likely all four Immortals were within city limits."
"No loss on Fabiano," muttered Western Europe, a Brit by the name of John Bancroft, Ian's second cousin once removed.
"But are we completely sure they're dead?" asked the Keeper of the Chronicles. "Immortals have lived through explosions before."
"Temperatures at the center of an atomic blast of that size will vaporize metal," stated Sharon Seligman. She leaned forward, her dark eyes grim. "Immortal Yamazaki Yukari was in Nagasaki in '45, and she was never heard from again." Sharon shook her head. "Those Immortals are not only headless, they're bodiless, too."
Sato Hasegawa, the new Tribune of Pacifica, spoke next. "In the light of atoms, people leave behind only their shadows—and their shades."
A pause followed this observation; then Kananga rapped the gavel again. "Tribune Rhee," he said formally, "you have called us together in council. Speak."
It was a count of five before Rhee said anything. "Five Immortals, twenty-three Watchers, and perhaps as many as one million people—dead."
As Rhee's measured words came forth, Joe looked at each face in turn: grave faces, tired faces, faces ranging from alabaster to dusky brown to jet black, faces from all over the globe. One big family, even if not very happy. They were all in this together now.
"Terrorism is nothing new," Rhee continued. "We have seen it before, in many places, in many times. Read the chronicles; you will see it all through history. But this takes us beyond where we have been before." He paused again, giving everyone time to think about that. "As Tribune of the Guard," Rhee said, "I propose that a new department of Watcher security be formed: a department of global security, whose purpose will be the gathering and analyzing of intelligence on terrorist activities, all across the planet."
Ibn al Muamar, Tribune of Western Asia, was tapping his pen on the table. "And then?"
"The information would be disseminated to the United Nations anti-terrorist task force, with proper controls and anonymity, of course," Rhee said. "Watcher secrecy would be preserved."
"Tell me, Tribune," Olenskaya asked, "have you discussed this plan with anyone else? Tribune Dawson, perhaps?"
"Since he is in charge of all Watchers and Watcher training, he and I discussed the feasibility of it."
The Central America monitor lit up as Ollie asked, "And just how feasible is it? I do not know any Watchers named James Bond. We are not trained for this, Joseph."
"I'm not saying that field Watchers should go looking for this kind of thing," Joe explained. "But there are some Immortals who are into arms dealing or smuggling. Sometimes, their Watchers hear things. And sometimes our researchers put information together. We can't just do nothing."
"We have shared such information before," Rhee said. "The truckload of bio-bombs this summer, the train derailments last year."
The Keeper added, "There are other precedents. Watchers were involved in the fall of Troy and in the Crusades."
"For?" Hasegawa asked pointedly. "Or against?"
Olenskaya was almost smiling. "The unbelievable arrogance of you Americans. You want the Watchers to become spies for your country."
"Not my country," Joe denied. "The United Nations."
Ibn al Muamar waved that away. "We all know the Americans simply take what they want from the U.N., while giving nothing in return, including their dues."
"Over one and a half billion dollars owed now, isn't it?" Olenskaya asked. "And of course, the United States does not sign international treaties."
Joe plowed on ahead, trying to get the conversation back on track. "Nuclear weapons affect the entire planet. These attacks hurt us all."
"But the U.S. has been a prime target of late," Olenskaya observed.
"Yeah, the U.S. is taking a lot of the hits," Joe said, wondering if Olenskaya hadn't ever gotten the news about the Cold War being over and done. "The U.S. is fighting a lot of this war. The U.S. is the one protecting the shipping lanes, they're keeping—"
"The U.S. is the one destabilizing governments," broke in Ibn al Muamar. "The U.S. is the one who set the Shah on the throne of Iran and ignored his excesses. The U.S. fought the 'Gulf War' to protect its access to oil and to keep other countries from gaining control. The U.S. supported the Taliban in their fight against its enemy the Soviets, and then did nothing for years to protect the people of Afghanistan from the monster it had helped to create, not until the Taliban turned on them." He flipped his pen back and forth, tapping each end on the table. "Panama in 1989, Grenada in 1983, the Nicaraguan Contra affair, Chile …" The pen stopped. "Vietnam." The pen started flipping again. "And there are many more; the list goes back through the years. The United States has created its own dilemma, Tribune Dawson."
That pen was still going click-click-click, and Joe wanted to rip it from Muamar's hand and stick it where the sun didn't shine. Muamar knew damn well that Joe had lost his legs in Vietnam. Tact, Joe reminded himself forcefully. Diplomacy. This was no time to get sucked into an argument. Roll with it and move on. "Look," Joe said, pulling out his earnest aw-shucks kind of charm, "my country's made some mistakes, yeah. I admit that. I know that. What country hasn't? And the U.S. is a big country; sometimes the mistakes have been pretty big, too." Muamar was blinking a little in confusion, and Joe smiled to himself. Nothing like having an opponent publicly agree with you than to bewilder a man.
Joe dropped the charm and spoke earnestly. "But we're not talking about the U.S. We're not talking about war. We're talking about terrorism. We're talking about fringe groups and rogue states and gangs of thugs with guns. And we're talking about the Watchers, about what we Watchers can do to help keep the world safe, for everybody."
"I must ask, Tribune Dawson," said Ibn al Muamar, "exactly who you define these terrorists to be?"
Joe gritted his teeth as he held onto his temper. "You know, the ones who blow up hospitals, airports, pizza parlors, schools?"
"The ones who fly airplanes into buildings," Mary Hammond added, and Joe could tell by the tightness around her jaw that she was gritting her teeth too. "The ones who explode atomic bombs," she continued, getting hotter by the syllable. "The ones who kill women and children—"
"There were women and children in Baghdad in 1990," Muamar said. "And in 2004." 1
"And in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945," Hasegawa said. "Your country was the first to use atomic weapons."
"We were at war!"
He lifted a slim eyebrow at her. "And you are at war now. Your last president declared it a war nearly a decade ago. What did you think? No one on your team would be allowed to die?"
"God damn it—," Joe started, but Rastogi was talking, so Joe shut up, and he was relieved when Mary shut up, too. The council needed to hear from someone who wasn't an American.
"Bombings are horrific and tragic, whatever their scale," Rastogi said, the gentle rise and fall of her Indian accent only underscoring the firmness of her tone. "Still, we must acknowledge that all countries wage war. None is innocent. But violence leads to violence. An aggressive 'war on terrorism' breeds more terror, and terror breeds more terrorists. Witness the decades-long conflicts in Palestine, in Ireland, in the Balkans, in America."
"In Pakistan?" Muamar inquired.
Rastogi bowed her head. "Even so."
The Eastern Europe monitor lit up. "Terrorism strikes at us all," Witkowski said. "It follows no rules, no patterns. It is chaos. We have lived with it—and died with it—for decades. It rips apart the fabric of our lives. It eats at our hearts. The civilized peoples of the world must—"
"Civilized?" Kwame Nkruma, Tribune of Africa, repeated with an air of puzzlement. "Civilized," he said again, this time in disgust. "I am tired," he said, "of this equating of 'industrialized' with 'civilized.' I am tired of being told that I live in 'the third world.' There is but one world, and you do not own it. I am tired of my country being looted for its minerals so that 'first-worlders' may have two computers and three television sets in every home, while my people share one radio in a village. I am tired of my country's trees being logged so that Americans can build expansive decking with hot tubs, while my people live in cardboard shacks with no fires to cook what little food they have. I speak not only to America, but to Europe, Japan, Australia … all you 'civilized peoples.' You have so much, and yet you always want more. And then you are surprised that the other peoples of the world resent you, and you are shocked beyond words that they hate you."
"Those are corporations doing that," Wildorfer objected.
"They are ecological terrorists who profit from their aggression!" Nkruma snapped. "They do not explode bombs, but where they have mined, the land is poisoned. They do not shoot guns, but where they have taken the trees, the soil bleeds out into the seas. They take what they want, and they leave us behind. Our farms are barren. Our wells are dry. The animals have disappeared and the fish are gone. The people die by the thousands, by the millions, and not one of you 'civilized people' cares." His mouth twisted in a bitter grimace, and he waved a hand at the monitors. "And here I sit, wearing synthetic clothes at a plastic table, talking into an electronic box, while my grandfathers hunted lions. There are no lions now."
Kananga said something short and soothing, and Nkruma subsided. "This discussion," Kananga said to everyone, "has drifted out to sea. We are discussing Watcher business here. But first, I must say—Tribune Dawson, Tribune Hammond—we sympathize with you and with all your countrymen, in this time of tragedy. To lose so many, so much … The Watchers—all the Watchers—grieve with you."
"Thank you," Joe said, somewhat stiffly, and Mary Hammond nodded before wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
Kananga leaned back and gave a slight wave of his hand, permitting the discussion to continue. Olenskaya jumped right in. "Indeed, Tribune Dawson, Tribune Hammond, we all agree that such violent acts are terribly destructive. However, that does not mean that everyone agrees with the way in which your country has chosen to stop them, or chosen to try to stop them," she added with a patronizing smile. "The Watchers were not formed to assist the United States in its aggrandizement—or in its aggression."
"The United States is not out to take over the world!" Mary snapped.
"You dominate it," Ibn al Muamar said. "I have no wish to live under a 'Pax Americana.'"
"You prefer war?" Bancroft demanded. "You prefer riots, chaos, blood in the streets? Because that is what we will have, all over the world, if the terrorists are not stopped."
Wildorfer was stroking his mustache with one finger. "Throughout the centuries, the Watchers have always maintained a policy of neutrality in war."
"Like the Swiss bankers?" Sharon Seligman asked venomously. "Like the Pope?"
Ibn al Muamar smiled at her with malignant dismissal. "The Watchers took no stand during World War II."
"And millions upon millions of people died, in the battlefields, in the cities, in the ovens!" Sharon was on her feet, and her voice was raised, too. "We Watchers swear not to interfere in the Game, but this is no game! We have to stop the terrorists!"
"Agreed," Ollie said firmly. "Otherwise, we will have World War III."
"We already do," Joe said, but he didn't think anybody had heard.
Ibn al Muamar was standing, too. "If the Watchers collect information on the military activities of one side in a conflict, then they should collect information on them all. I propose that all information about American military activities be forwarded to their current opponents."
Sharon was standing in front of her desk now. "You can't—"
"And—," Muamar cut in loudly, "I propose that all information about Israeli activities be sent to the Palestinian liberation groups."
Sharon said something to him that sounded particularly nasty, and Joe wanted to bury his head in his hands. He'd been afraid this would happen. Sharon and Muamar couldn't wait to spit on each other's graves. Her fists were clenched, her back was ramrod straight, and she was fighting mad. "The Israeli military," she bit out in precise, bullet-loaded words, "is not a terrorist organization."
"Try living in Palestine as a Palestinian for a few weeks," Ibn al Muamar said coldly. "Maybe the bombs and the raids would give you a different perspective. Uniform or no uniform, a terrorist is still a terrorist. I believe the Irish and the British came to that conclusion about each other some time ago, eh, Tribune Bancroft?"
"It's not the same."
"It never is. But what one side calls a terrorist or a rebel, the other side calls a freedom fighter or a patriot. The lines are not always clear." He shrugged magnanimously then grew serious. "But one thing is clear to me, and should be very clear to all of you. If the Watchers vote to do this thing, then Watchers will also be collecting information to eliminate all terrorists, both the ones in uniform who are already sponsored by their homelands, and the ones who have no uniforms and no homeland—yet—to sponsor them."
The silence was broken by the slap of Olenskaya's hands on the table. "This," she said, "is why the Watchers are neutral. This is why we observe, we record, and we never interfere."
"That is when we watch Immortals!" Ollie said.
"And that is a Watcher's job," Hasegawa stated. "That is our purpose, our only purpose. I do not think that the Watchers, as an organization, should gather or supply information. However, each of us is still a citizen of a country. A Watcher oath does not preclude us from serving our countries as we see fit."
"But can we serve both?" Wildorfer asked, two fingers on his mustache now. He seemed genuinely curious, even if in an abstract sort of way, reminding Joe of a math professor he'd known years ago. "We have Watchers in many countries' armed forces now, do we not, Tribune Dawson?"
"We do."
"If a Watcher-soldier knows his country is planning to attack a city, and he knows that other Watchers are in that city, should he warn them and in so doing, break his country's secrecy?"
"That would be treason," Sharon said immediately, and Joe had the same gut response.
"Then he should say nothing and let them die?" Wildorfer probed. "He should participate in the attack? Kill a fellow Watcher?"
"He should—," Sharon began, but then she fell silent, and in the matrix of monitors, the Watchers watched each other, saying nothing.
Kananga, First Tribune of the Watchers, had the last word. "We are Watchers," he proclaimed. "We watch Immortals. We observe and we record. I, too, am sickened by the bloodshed. I, too, wish to see peace in this world. But what you propose, Tribune Rhee, would splinter the Watchers and shatter our brotherhood, as we have seen here today."
The proposal was defeated, by a vote of nine to five.
Joe headed for home right after the meeting. The streets seemed quiet; a lot of TV sets were on. Joe could see blue flickers in almost every window. His wife met him at the door with a hug that lasted a lot longer than usual, and still wasn't long enough. "Hey," he said finally, reaching up a hand to fix her hair, so that the short brown curl went in instead of out. "I love you, Emory."
Her smile was beautiful, even though he could tell by the redness around her eyes that she'd been crying earlier. "I love you, too, Joe."
"The kids asleep?" he asked, still holding on to her.
"Mm-hmm, about an hour ago." They went into the living room, hand in hand, and sat on the couch. "How did it go?" Emory asked right away, because he'd told her about the meeting when he'd called a few hours ago.
Joe couldn't manage even an ironic smile. "They voted it down. Once Kananga said no, that was the end of it. He said it would splinter the Watchers, and he's right, I can see that, but … Jesus, Em. Something's got to stop this." She held his hand and nodded, but didn't say anything, not right now. Em was good at listening when she knew he needed to talk. "I can see why they voted that way," Joe said, "but at the meeting it was like 'beat up on America' day. Olenskaya, Hasegawa, Muamar—they were all taking shots. Like the bomb wasn't enough." Joe shook his head, still surprised by the intensity the others had shown. "They seemed so angry at us, so glad to see us down."
"That's probably part of it," Emory said. "But they're also frightened that it might happen to them."
"So am I," Joe said grimly. He got to his feet. "Come on. I need to see the kids."
Ian was sound asleep, lying on his side with his thumb half in his mouth. Haylie lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs every which way, taking up the whole bed. "She's getting so tall," Joe said in amazement. It was like he hadn't looked at her in months.
"She's almost six," Emory said. "And Ian just turned four." Emory slipped her arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "What kind of world are we giving our children, Joe?"
"I don't know, Em," Joe said, wishing to God he had a better answer. But Methos had said he would visit right after Christmas, and Joe was hoping to get some tips from the old man.
"Let's go to bed, Joe," Emory said. "I'm cold." He could feel her shivering, or maybe it was trembling. Joe kissed his children goodnight then tucked them in carefully and kissed them goodnight again. Once in bed with Emory, he wrapped his arms around her, trying to keep her warm—and hoping desperately to keep her safe, even when he knew that nowhere was safe, not anymore.
Methos
====================
December 2010
The Dawson Home, France
====================
"Methos!" Joe exclaimed, opening wide the door to his home. "What a great surprise! We weren't expecting you until next week." He turned around and called, "Hey, Em! Guess who's here?"
Methos set his suitcase down next to the door and found himself enveloped in Joe's arms. The man had a powerful hug. Methos returned it, with a thump on the back for good measure, then took off his coat and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Paris in the middle of December wasn't as frigid as Berlin, but it was still bloody cold. "Amanda had a sudden change of plans," Methos said, but it wasn't much of an explanation for either him or for Joe. Methos was still curious about what she had gotten in the mail that had made her pick up and leave the next day, but Amanda hadn't been talking, no matter what Methos had tried.
"She does that," Joe said. "She sure is something, isn't she?" he added with a wink.
Methos checked to make sure Joe's wife wasn't in sight—or earshot—yet, then winked back and said, "You should know."
Joe cleared his throat and dropped the subject. He hung up Methos's coat in the closet, then turned to smile at his wife, who was skipping down the hall, holding hands with a child on either side.
"Dadam! Dadam!" called the little boy, and he let go of her mother's hand and abandoned skipping for running. His sister ran too, her ridiculously—and endearingly—short brown pigtails flopping up and down with each stride. The children flung themselves at Methos's knees. "Dadam! You're here!" repeated the boy.
"Ian!" Methos replied. "Ian, you're here!" He scooped the child into his arms, then turned him upside down. Ian shrieked in glee and shrieked again when Methos pretended to drop him. Haylie was shrieking, too, and jumping up and down. Methos carried Ian into the living room and then really did drop him, bouncing him on the couch. Then he grabbed Haylie and did the same to her. "And now you're there!" he told them. The kids giggled and rolled off the couch onto the floor, then kept rolling until they almost bumped into the stacks of presents under the Christmas tree.
Methos turned to greet the mother, who had been waiting with her toe tapping this whole time. "Emory," he said, with a kiss on the cheek and an embrace, warm and affectionate, but not nearly so vigorous as Joe's.
"It's good to see you again, Adam," Emory said. "I'm glad you're here."
"Me, too," Methos said, holding onto her for just a moment more, noting with approval the new hairstyle of short brown curls that framed but didn't overwhelm her delicate features, the dark blue of a cotton sweater that accented the blue in her uniquely blue-green-gray eyes, the gray wool slacks instead of baggy, ripped jeans. Quite a difference between this confident, lovely woman and the shy, self-effacing girl of twenty-four he'd first met ten years ago. She'd grown up, in a lot of ways, and it was good to see. "You're beautiful," he told her, and Emory flushed slightly and half-opened her mouth as if to argue with him. That would never change, Methos was sure, and he was glad of that, too. But that didn't mean he wanted to listen to it right now.
"You're a lucky man, Joe," Methos said cheerfully, letting go of Emory and turning to his friend, who had also changed since Methos had first met him over twenty years ago. Joe's hair was pure white now, instead of black only lightly sprinkled with gray. He was going to be sixty-three this May.
"And don't I know it," Joe answered, and he and Emory smiled at each and would have kept smiling at each other had not Haylie and Ian intervened.
"Drop us again, Adam!" she demanded, jumping up and down on the couch. "Drop us again!"
"No jumping on the furniture, Haylie," Emory commanded. "You too, Ian."
Haylie and Ian obligingly jumped off, only to start jumping up and down on the floor. "Drop me again, Dadam!" Ian said. "Drop me again!"
"Hey, sit down," Joe invited with a wave of his hand. "Can I get you a beer?"
"Later," Methos said. "First, I need to teach these little monsters a thing or two." Haylie shrieked and started to giggle as Methos picked her up and dropped her. Then he dropped Ian, and then he dropped them both again.
After dinner came the children's bedtime. Methos assisted in the ritual of bathing, bed-time storying, teeth-brushing, and some more exuberant "drop-me-agains" for Haylie and Ian. When the children were tucked in their beds, Joe and Methos sat down in the living room with their beers. Emory had hot chocolate. That hadn't changed, either.
"How do you like being in a band, Adam?" Emory asked.
"It's good. Three years and they haven't found a different drummer to march to yet, so I guess they like me all right, too." Especially when Amanda had offered to sing with them. Attendance at their gigs had gone up steadily these last four months. "We have fun."
"We should play sometime while you're here," Joe said. "I know a couple of guys; we get together on the weekends, nothing too demanding, just some fun."
"I'd like that," Methos said, glad to get this chance to play with his old friend. "It's good to see work isn't taking up all of your time."
"I'll always have time for the blues."
Wouldn't they all, Methos thought. He turned to Emory. "You're about done with college, aren't you, Emory?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, one clenched fist raised in triumph. "Only one more class and then I start on my dissertation! It's taken me years because of the kids, but Ian starts school fulltime next year, so I can do school fulltime, too."
"Doctor Emory," Methos said with approval.
"I like the sound of that!" Joe said, lifting his beer in salute, and Emory nearly blushed but looked pleased.
"I don't know that you need the title, though," Methos teased. "You already seem to know how to read people's minds."
Emory rolled her eyes and laughed. "I don't want to read their minds," she complained. "I want change their minds."
"Or make their minds give you change?"
"I want a heck of a lot more than change," Emory retorted. "I'm not even licensed yet, and I'm already afraid to tell people what I'm studying! The last time I told someone I was studying psychology, the guy started telling me all about his dreams and asking if I knew any good hypno-therapists. Only it took another five minutes for me to understand 'hypno-therapist' because they aren't called that in French!" Emory crossed her arms and looked disgusted. "Sometimes I don't know if I should be studying for a degree, or if I should just buy a rattle and an African mask."
Methos half-opened his mouth as the vision of a fetchingly-clad Emory—dressed solely in a scanty grass skirt and a necklace of beads and shells, plus the afore-mentioned mask and rattle, and with black lightning bolts painted on her cheeks—came to his mind. But he decided not to mention this in front of Joe and instead asked, "Are you going to be licensed in the U.S. or in France?"
Emory looked at Joe before answering, and from the set of Joe's jaw, Methos sensed an unfinished "discussion" between the two. "I was looking into the U.S. license," she said, "but now …"
"I was going to give up my seat on the council when my six-year term was up," Joe explained. "Move back home, then go into research or teaching until I retire, something that wouldn't take so much time. I've given over forty years of my life to the Watchers; I wanted to give the next forty to Em. We were going to raise the kids on hot dogs and baseball instead of on brioche and 'le football.' But what with the war—" He broke off, rolling the beer bottle between his hands and staring at the junction of the floor and the wall. "I'm no good as a soldier, but this war is being fought with intelligence, too. I can do more to stop the terrorists as a Tribune of the Watchers than I could on my own. We all have to do something," he said, with the angry guilt of a survivor. "All those people …"
Over half a million dead at last count (the initial estimates had been overblown, thankfully, but it was still sickeningly high), and nothing to be done for any of them. There was plenty of work to be done, though, and there'd be plenty of sick people in the years to come. Methos suspected he'd be hearing about the clean-up for the next century or so. Nagasaki and Hiroshima had taken decades.
"Goddamn religious fanatics," Joe muttered. "Fucking terrorists. Cowards, the lot of them." He picked up his cane and headed to the bathroom down the hall.
Emory watched Joe until he disappeared from sight. "I guess this sounds stupid to you, Adam," she said, "but I never believed anything like this could happen to America, even after what happened to the Towers nine years ago. I mean, I never dreamed I would wake up one morning and find out that our greatest American symbols would be gone. We lost the national monuments, the Smithsonian, the Capitol, the White House … to say nothing of all the people who were killed." Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "How can people do such things?"
I killed ten thousand, Methos didn't say. There was nothing he could do for any of them, either. He took a long pull on his beer and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Emory was watching him. "I don't think it sounds stupid," he told her. "No one ever expects their world to change."
"But it always does."
"Yeah," he agreed. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Long ago, he'd thought he could make a difference in the great scheme of things. He'd worked for kings and princes, helped build empires and temples, written treaties, planned mighty aqueducts and canals. Everything he'd done had crumbled to dust, and everything he'd been a part of had been forgotten or destroyed.
"My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Shelley had gotten the tone right, even if his facts had been wrong. Methos and Emory sat in silence until Joe returned. "How're the Watchers doing, Joe?" Methos asked, choosing a safer topic of discussion.
"Eh, you know," Joe answered, calmer now. "Recruits are hard to find, department squabbles, Research thinks they're more important than field Watchers, field Watchers think Research exists only to hand them information, paperwork, admin, insurance … the usual hassles. Now I know why Emile was always bitching about being on the Tribunal Council."
"Tribune Dawson," Methos said with admiration, leaning back and shaking his head. "Tribune of the Guild."
Joe shrugged in embarrassment. "That's been the title for seven hundred years. Tradition, you know."
"Oh, I know," Methos said tellingly. He reached for his beer and took a welcome swallow. A man needed a drink to tell a proper tale. "I knew a Roman tribune once, fellow by the name of Marcus. Great chariot racer, but he died of dyspepsia after downing too many spiced hummingbird tongues."
"Hummingbird tongues?" Joe shook his head dolefully. "A terrible waste of Trochilidae. Such a beautiful bird." He leaned forward, ingenuously curious. "Tell me … would that be the North American hummingbird, or the South American hummingbird?"
"Damn," Methos swore. Joe's eyes held a feral gleam of satisfaction, and Methos had to laugh. "Your personnel file does not mention ornithology."
"That's because my Great Aunt Tildy was the ornithologist, back in the Windy City. But I did a lot of bird watching while I sat on park benches, waiting around for MacLeod."
Emory was grinning from ear to ear. "Fibber," she proclaimed. "I'm not going to trust any of your stories from now on."
Methos toasted her with his beer. "Wise woman. I don't trust my stories, either."
"Guess I'd better go recheck the chronicles," Joe said. "More work to do. At least you Immortals are easier to keep track of now, with photographs and computers and IDs and all."
Methos nodded. He'd noticed the same thing. Time to disappear completely, if he still could. "And the geneticist recruiting?"
"Good, but still too slow. Thirty-five years since that program started, and we just can't keep up. The Guard is trying set a Watcher in every gene-bank in the world, to change the records on Immortals or to stop police from identifying people who use swords, but people keep building more databases, even in places like Katmandu."
So much for his idea of going to Nepal. Maybe the Andes would work. Or maybe the Ukraine. He hadn't been a farmer in years, and with gasoline and machine parts so scarce—and going to be a lot scarcer soon—the people there needed help in the old ways, and Methos remembered lots of those. A couple of decades of farming might be just the thing … disappear from view, work with his hands, be useful to a community … He needed that. Maybe he'd get married again. Everybody else was doing it: Joe and Emory, both the MacLeods, Elena Duran with her Lorenzo …
"Our job of keeping track of Immortals hasn't changed," Joe was saying, "but with the war on terrorists getting so ugly, I was hoping we could help there."
Methos should have known they'd be back to that topic. Everyone was talking about it.
Joe leaned forward, his elbows braced on his thighs. "Right after the bomb, Rhee and I put together a proposal to collect information all across the globe, but the council voted it down. They said it would splinter the Watchers."
"It would."
"I know." His snort was almost a laugh. "Ibn al Muamar said if we did that, the Watchers would have to work against the American 'terrorists,' too." Joe's earnestness was almost a plea. "We're just defending ourselves."
Methos had heard the same reasoning countless times over the centuries, with lots of pretty names: lebensraum, freedom, protecting our interests, homeland uber alles. The reasons came from both sides, and both sides believed they were right. Both sides died.
Emory's fingers were picking at the corner of the pillow she held in her lap, and she wasn't looking at Joe anymore. Methos figured this was another "discussion" she and Joe had had. Maybe it was time for him to join in. "Twenty-five hundred years ago, when I was in Athens," Methos said casually, and Joe—ever the Watcher—perked up his ears. Good. Maybe he'd actually listen. Methos continued, "I heard Socrates say: 'One should never do wrong in return, nor injure any man, whatever injury one has suffered at his hands.'"
"So what are we supposed to do?" Joe demanded. "Nothing?"
"He didn't say do nothing, Joe," Methos said mildly. "He said, 'Don't do wrong in return.' Violence isn't the only response to violence."
"Turn the other cheek?" Emory put in, quoting another famous man.
Her husband wasn't buying it. "Yeah, well … sometimes you gotta fight. I saw that often enough when I was watching MacLeod."
Too often, Methos thought, but Joe was right. Sometimes, you did have to fight. The problem was, too many people liked to. "Maybe Muamar's suggestion wasn't all that far off."
"What do you mean?" Emory asked.
"Maybe stopping everybody from fighting is the answer."
Joe snorted again. "Like that will ever happen."
True enough, Methos thought, finishing off his beer. World peace was never a likely proposition, and especially not now. The death throes of the wounded giant would affect the entire globe. Time to disappear—and fast.
Methos said goodbye to Joe and Emory the day after Christmas. "You're really going, aren't you?" Emory said. "For good."
Methos looked out the window to the small garden behind the house. A sparrow was hopping along a trellis festooned with dry brown leaves. "Too many Watchers know about me, Emory. And in the current political climate, governments don't take kindly to secret multi-national organizations that have hidden agendas." They wouldn't take kindly to Immortals running around and chopping heads off, either.
Joe was nodding, looking grim. "We know," he said. "We're taking precautions."
"Do me a favor?" Methos asked. "Erase my pictures from all the Chronicles and the Watcher records, including old in-house newsletters."
"I'll try. We've already started removing all the pictures from the Chronicles," Joe said. "We're going to keep them stashed, but even I don't know where."
"Good." He hugged Emory and kissed her on the cheek, then got a solid hug from Joe. "I'll be in touch," Methos promised. "But don't look for me."
Song of the Executioner
====================
Winter 2011, Scotland
====================
For her children's sake, Alex had tried to salvage something of the holiday season of 2010, but it was hard. "The U.S. is calling its citizens home, Alex," Connor had said the week before Christmas. "Do you want to go?"
She did, but— "My home is with you," she'd told her husband, a decision she had made when she had decided to marry an Immortal years ago. They might have to pick up and move at any time. But the Game wasn't the only thing to worry about now. "Peace on Earth" had never seemed so remote, and the new year wasn't much better than the old.
"Bombing!" the newscasters announced. The locations varied: Palestine, Ireland, Sierra Leone, Japan, San Francisco … anywhere. When the stock markets finally reopened in the first week of January, economies collapsed and entire fortunes disappeared. Methos disappeared, too. Demiko reported that the Watchers had lost sight of him somewhere in Prague. "Hardly a surprise," Cass said, even as her fingers tapped a frustrated tattoo. "Methos always was a survivor, and disappearing in times of trouble is not a bad idea."
Times of trouble indeed. Her native country a war-zone, half a million people dead, the entire planet erupting in riots and unrest … Alex found herself biting into her lip again, and she clamped her teeth together to stop it. "What's going to happen, Cass?"
"Nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway. Disruption of trade, social upheaval, shifting of national boundaries, wars, the collapse of the global economy. Things will simply move faster or in different directions than before."
Alex stared. "You mean the bomb won't make a difference?"
"In the long run?" Cass said, though Alex knew that Cass always looked at "the long run" of things. She could afford to. "Not really. And in the short run, the U.S. will survive this. They're holding elections next month, and they've already starting building a new capitol. They may emerge even stronger, although more paranoid. That will need watching."
"You mean influencing," Alex said, and when Cass nodded Alex asked, "With the Voice?"
"If need be. The U.S. can still do great damage, either by what they do or what they choose not to do. We don't have the time or the resources to completely rebuild, though the coming global depression should make it easier to convince people that extreme capitalism isn't a good way to run the world. Once the so-called 'cheap' energy is gone and our industries collapse, that's when the true dark ages will begin."
"Like after the fall of Rome."
"Yes, but worse. We've lost so much knowledge in the last few hundred years. We've forgotten what it's like to live by firelight."
Cass left the next day on a flight for New York City, where the Republican convention was going to be held. A week later, she was in Kansas City with the Democrats. She came back after the new Congress had been sworn in. "They're perhaps too isolationist," she reported, "but I don't think the majority of this Congress will support an all-out war, not yet. They're still bleeding from the last one. It would be different if they knew who to blame."
Not knowing was harder, like being swarmed by mosquitoes and not knowing which way to turn. The latest reports said the bomb (an old Soviet model from the Cold War) had been set in a basement and detonated by remote control. Any one of a dozen groups could have done it; any one of two or three hundred would have wanted to. For now, the U.S. seemed to be licking its wounds and biding its time.
Alex was relieved. There were enough wars already. Their little corner of the world seemed to be holding on (except for steadily rising prices and shortages), but Connor put in greenhouses in their Edinburgh home and at the farm, and made plans to plant potatoes, wheat, and barley in the spring instead of letting the fields go to grass. Duncan emailed from New Zealand to say he was teaching his children wilderness survival skills and how to pluck chickens and butcher hogs, and from the gleam in Connor's eyes, Alex suspected her family would soon learn the same. Cass added "classes on age-old traditions" to the list of things for Phinyx to do.
The headlines painted stark pictures in black and white.
- Cannibalistic Cult Cites Scripture as Justification
- U.S. Closes Borders, Navy to Patrol Domestic Waters
- Global Warming Causes Blizzards, Heat Waves
- Attwater Prairie Chicken Extinct
- China Annexes Taiwan
- Cod Catch Plummets: Goodbye Fish and Chips
- Piracy Increases on High Seas
- Hypercane Gloria Sweeps New Orleans Out to Sea, 250000 Dead
- Food Riots in Buenos Aires, Water Wars in Peru
World-wide depression, inflation, trade disruption, food shortages, food contamination, internet sabotage, droughts, floods, fires, fuel shortages, bank failures, riots, wars …
Plague.
"I want to find cures for disease instead of developing birth control," Grace announced in her Edinburgh hotel room. She was in town for a medical convention, and she'd asked Alex and Cass to meet her.
"Ah," Cass said, a wordless sound that held no surprise. She poured wine for them all at the small table in the corner of the room. "You've done excellent work these last four years. We'll be very sorry to see you go. Can you recommend someone to take your place at the Phinyx medical center?"
"I didn't say I wanted to leave," Grace said, pushing her dark hair from her forehead with a quick hand. "The center could do disease research, too."
Alex and Cass exchanged glances, for they had discussed this a few months before. "The Phinyx Foundation funds research on birth control," Alex said.
"But not on death control?" Grace challenged. "Influenza killed nearly a million last year, tuberculosis another five. The plague in Palestine has spread to four countries now. Forty-seven million people have AIDS. If we don't cure those diseases, do you know how many people will die?"
"All of them," Cass said bluntly. "Even if those diseases are cured, all of them will die. Every single one."
Herself included, Alex knew. If not from disease, then from old age. Death was not an option for people like her; it was simply a matter of when and how. She picked up her wine glass and studied the rim, listening to the Immortals talk about how other people died.
"Have you seen someone die of AIDS?" Grace demanded.
"Yes," Cass replied. "Have you seen someone die of starvation?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen thousands die of starvation? Entire villages emptied, entire countrysides stripped of food, even to the blades of grass?"
Grace's dark eyes were bleak with memory. "Yes."
Cass wasn't finished yet. "Have you seen people kill for a handful of grain? Seen them dig up frozen feces for food? Have you seen them eat each other? Eat their parents? Eat their children?"
This time Grace looked away. "Yes," she finally answered.
Alex wondered just how old those memories were. Grace was not quite seven hundred; was she remembering the Black Death or the Hundred Years War? Or perhaps something much more recent? Or perhaps something happening right now. Parts of Africa hadn't seen rain in three years, and a fungus had destroyed the rice crop (all one genetically identical strain) in Indonesia. The Irish potato famine couldn't even begin to compare.
"Other people are already working on disease," Cass said. "Hardly anyone is working on birth control. Can you guarantee that you would be able to find any cures?"
"No," Grace admitted. "But they may not either. More people mean more chances."
"More people mean more deaths." Cass leaned forward, and Alex recognized what she had long-ago dubbed, "Cass's lecture mode." It wasn't hard to pick out; Cass used it often enough on her. "In 1960, there were three billion people on the Earth," Cass said. "In 2000, there were six billion. Assuming that growth rate stays constant, what will the population be in the year 2120?"
When Alex had researched this topic, she'd had to look up the rules on geometric growth. There would be time enough for three doublings in one hundred twenty years. Double the initial number, then double the resulting number, then double the next number yet again: 3, 6, 12 … The numbers marched on.
"Forty-eight billion," Grace answered right away; no doubt all her work with bacteria in petri dishes helped. "But the growth rate isn't constant," she objected. "We won't reach that number. They're projecting a leveling off at ten or twelve billion by the end of the century."
"Twelve billion, or even ten billion, is too many for this planet to sustain," Alex said, for she had done research on this as well. "It's true that hunger has been reduced in some areas that have returned to organic farming, and the people who've switched from growing all 'cash crops' for export to growing their own food are doing better, even when they live on farms only a few acres in size. But they still need those few acres, and the earth isn't getting any bigger."
"In a closed system, infinite growth—even so-called 'sustainable growth'—is an impossibility," Cass said. "In any system, uncontrolled growth is cancer. That's what we humans have become."
Grace's mouth twisted. "Not a pleasant analogy."
"You're right," Alex agreed. "But we've already pushed out or eliminated thousands of other species, and unless we restrict our population growth to zero, eventually we will destroy nearly everything else on this planet: the animals, the plants, the fish in the sea." She decided not to mention Harrison Brown's description of overpopulation: the earth covered completely with a writhing mass of human beings, much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.
"We're scraping the living flesh off this planet, strip by bloody strip," Cass said, "and people need more than just food. When we burn fuel, we add carbon dioxide to the air. When we mine or cut timber, we leave open, ulcerating wounds. Infection and gangrene have already set in. We are making the earth into a desert, and those few humans who do survive will find it desolate … and lonely."
"The earth will recover," Grace said.
"Yes, she will. But I don't think even we Immortals will live to see it. I knew Babylon when it was surrounded by endless fields of barley," Cassandra said, with her usual penchant for painting a picture with words. "I saw the seas gleaming silver with fish. I heard the rushing of thousands of wings. My hands touched the cedars of Lebanon and the groves of Delphi. Now the seas are empty, the skies are silent, and those places are barren rock and blowing sand, as they have been for hundreds of years."
"We're facing mass extinction on a global scale," Alex said. "For the earth to fully recover will take an entire new cycle of evolution, millions of years."
"I have dreamed," Cassandra said, her words slow, her eyes unfocused, and Alex shuddered when she saw the "prophecy mode" coming on. "The hunger of all those people will skin the earth alive," Cassandra went on, with an eerie sing-song tone. "When she is a carcass picked clean to dry bones, almost all of those billions of people—and the billions of other creatures of this world—will starve to death."
Alex set down her glass, careful to hide the tremors in her hands. She hated to hear Cassandra prophesy. Grace stood abruptly, then went to the window and looked out to the lights of the city. From her seat at the table, Alex could see the dark sweeping curve of the water beyond, lit here and there by the tiny lights of boats.
"The pang of famine fed upon all entrails," Grace said slowly. "Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assail'd their masters."
Alex recognized Byron's words. He was better at poetry than Cass. One of the lights on the harbor winked out, and then another and then a third. The lights of the city gleamed on, but the darkness stretched forever, into the night sky, to the planets, the entire universe.
Grace wrapped her arms around herself and turned from the window with a shiver, then came back to the table and sat down. "So that's why you want Phinyx to fund birth control, not death control."
"In the long run," Cass said quietly, "birth control is death control."
But birth control by itself wasn't enough. "We need to move faster, Alex," Cass said as she and Alex walked in the field behind the farmhouse, huddling into their coats against the brisk wind and squinting against the glare of a low afternoon sun. Spring had officially started last week, but it hadn't arrived in the Highlands yet.
"I know," Alex agreed. "The bomb in D.C., the terrorist war, the plague zones, the fuel riots in Berlin …"
"Yes, it's bad and getting worse, but humans have always been like that. If it were only us …" She shook her head. "But it's not. The last cheetah died a month ago, and half the Mediterranean is empty of fish. Even before the bomb, the oysters were gone from the Chesapeake Bay. Frogs are disappearing all over the world, the coral reefs are dying, and the trees are being slaughtered." They opened the gate in the fence, went through, and latched it behind them before starting up the hill. "I had hoped we could be cautious and slow, but we're running out of time."
Alex nodded. She knew that feeling well. She'd started dyeing her hair this last year, to hide the white and the gray. She hadn't mentioned that to Connor, though he'd been dyeing his hair for years. But he was using gray so he could look older, while Alex was trying to stay young.
Cassandra looked about thirty-five. Cassandra would always look about thirty-five, and her hair—and her beauty—would never fade. "Schools are the key," Cass was saying, as she had said many times before, and Alex pushed all thoughts of aging aside, as she had done many times before. Though the thoughts seemed to come more often these days, and they were harder to ignore.
"We need to train the next generation and then send them out to train more," Cass said to her.
"We've got one school under construction, and three more planned," Alex replied, summoning an interested tone. "Plus Ceirdwyn has eleven pre-Immortals at her ranch in Canada now."
"It's a start," Cass agreed, "but we need more. There is power in numbers."
And in information. "Heard from Demiko lately?"
"Methos is still missing. Demiko says some people are still arguing about whether Watchers should do more than just watch, but the council issued a strongly-worded non-intervention directive, so their official policy is clear. Dawson has said he wants another six-year term on the Watcher Council, and he's ordered the Guild to start five new academies. There'll be one on every continent instead of only in Europe and India."
"You don't sound pleased."
"As you told me before, keeping secrets isn't easy," Cass said. "We don't need them training more Watchers; they have too many already. If the secret gets out … " She shuddered. "I have no wish to spend hundreds of years in a cage, or being sent on fatal missions, or being experimented on. I suppose they might just decide to behead us all, but I'd rather not have that happen, either."
"Demiko's taken your pictures out of the chronicles, hasn't she?"
"Yes, and Connor's pictures, as you asked. She was going to do the same for Duncan, but pictures of him were already gone."
"Joe Dawson's been busy."
"No doubt. The photo files went into secret storage last month. We need to find out where; I want that cache destroyed. But even without photos, once people know what to look for, a simple scratch test will give us away." She tightened her scarf. "It's bad enough being wary of every Immortal I meet; I don't want to have to be cautious of all the mortals, too."
Alex didn't want Connor and Duncan to have to live that way, either, never having anyone to trust, or possibly spending centuries in a cell. "We could eliminate the Watchers."
Cass shot her a glance but kept climbing. The two of them made their way steadily up the hill. "We could," Cass agreed finally, "but it would be difficult. And they do have their uses."
"Risk versus gain," Alex reminded her.
"I know." Cass tightened her scarf again. "Let's think about it for a while."
"All right," Alex agreed, biding her time but planning on bringing it up again soon. Even though she liked Joe Dawson, she despised the organization he worked for, and she detested being spied on. And as the bomb had proved, none of this was a game. If the Watchers were found out, her husband would be, too, and her children might be targeted as well. Alex wasn't playing around anymore. "Anything else from Demiko?" Alex asked.
"Not much. Oh, she said she likes Joe's wife, Emory. They invited Demiko to their house for dinner a few weeks ago."
"I like Emory, too," Alex said. "We had a good time at Duncan's wedding."
"Yes, she and I talked about babies at the reception; she was pregnant at the time. We should keep in touch with her; we need more therapists, and she should be finishing her schooling soon. Would you mind seeing to it? I would, but I don't think Dawson would care to have me spending time with his wife."
"Probably not," Alex agreed, and put "keeping in touch with Emory" on her lengthy list of things to do. They reached the top of the small rise then stopped at the tumble of gray boulders, patched white and lighter gray with lichen here and there, then moved between two of the larger rocks to shelter from the wind. "Phinyx is going to take a long time, Cass," Alex warned. "And it won't be easy."
"I know," Cass replied. "But it needs to be done, and soon. We've drifted too long."
Alex looked across the shining ribbon of the loch to the ancient hills beyond, thinking of the billions of lives that had been—and were being—stunted, crippled, and slaughtered by the juggernaut of society that humans had created for themselves. "O brave new world," she quoted softly from Shakespeare, "that has such people in it."
Cass came back with the first part of Miranda's line in The Tempest: "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!"
"'Tis old to thee," Alex misquoted, for Cass's voice—that exquisitely trained Voice—had dripped bitter sarcasm into a larger wellspring of hope. "Are we taking on too much, Cass?" Alex asked suddenly. "Should we even try?" She looked from those ancient time-worn peaks to her ancient friend. "What gives us the right to think we can change the world?"
"We have as much right as anyone else, Alex. We exist." She pushed her mirrored sunglasses farther up on the bridge of her nose. "And also, I don't think we have much choice about it anymore, not if we want to keep existing. Things have got to change, and soon, or the Earth won't be a home for us anymore."
Alex nodded and leaned her back against the stone, feeling the hard coldness of it even through her coat. "So, what's next?"
"I'm going to start a religion." The sunshine reflected off the polished mirrors covering Cassandra's eyes, a blinding glare. "It shouldn't take long. The seeds are already sown."
Continued in Chapter 6: "So Shall You Reap", wherein certain decisions are made and some predictions come true.
NOTE: I wrote the scene about the bombing of Washington, D.C., in March of 2002. In the Watcher Conference scene, Ibn al Muamar says, "There were women and children in Baghdad in 1990. And in 2004." I picked 2004 because it was an election year and because the possibility obviously existed. The U.S. bombed Baghdad in March and April of 2003. I hope I'm totally and completely wrong about the bombing of D.C. (or any other city), and I also hope I'm totally and completely wrong about a variety of other things that go on in this story. I'd like most of this to stay firmly in the realm of fiction/fantasy, and not become fact.
List of countries the U.S. bombed between 1945 and 2002
1. China 1945-46
2. Korea 1950-53
3. China 1950-53
4. Guatemala 1954
5. Indonesia 1958
6. Cuba 1959-60
7. Guatemala 1960
8. Congo 1964
9. Peru 1965
10. Laos 1964-73
11. Vietnam 1961-73
12. Cambodia 1969-70
13. Guatemala 1967-69
14. Grenada 1983
15. Libya 1986
16. El Salvador 1980s
17. Nicaragua 1980s
18. Panama 1989
19. Iraq 1991-2004
20. Sudan 1998
21. Yugoslavia 1999
22. Afghanistan 1998, 2001-2002