Coyote Destiny (36 page)

“Amherst got through the hard times a lot better than most other towns,” Vargas said, as they passed farms and small, wood-frame houses. “Pretty much all of western Massachusetts did, really, but that’s largely because people here have always been rather self-reliant. But this town had a particular advantage, though, in that it has three schools . . . the state university, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. That meant that it had an advantage that other places lacked . . . mainly, more than the usual number of educated people who knew how to use the resources they had.”

Jorge gazed through the windows. The houses appeared to be well kept; most had rooftop solar arrays, and every so often he spotted small greenhouses in their backyards. “I’m surprised Black and his people didn’t try to take over. You’re not that far from Boston.”

“Yeah, well . . . we did have to worry about them.” Vargas glanced over the front seat at him. “Even though the Provisional Army wasn’t much of a threat to anyone outside Boston, Black had great ambitions. He wanted to . . .”

“I know. He told us that he wanted to bring back the United Republic of America.”

“Uh-huh.” Vargas smiled. “Thanks to you, though . . . whether you know it or not . . . they’re no longer a threat to anyone. The raid we made on their hideout pretty much put an end to them.”

That remark gave Jorge a clue as to what was going on. “By ‘we,’ I take it you mean the Terra Concorde. I assume you belong to them . . . whoever they are.”

Vargas looked away, becoming quiet once more. Ahead of them, the ambulance turned left onto a side street; Jorge caught a glimpse of a road sign marked HOSPITAL, and knew that this was where McAlister was being taken. He thought that Vargas was going to revert to his earlier reticence, but then he looked back at him and Inez again.

“I’m with the TC, yes,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this earlier, but . . . well, to tell the truth, I didn’t know it myself.”

Jorge stared at him. “How could you not . . . ?”

“I think I know.” Inez’s voice was very quiet. “You were memory-blocked, weren’t you?”

At first, Vargas didn’t respond, but then he reluctantly nodded. “I guess you’ve figured that out. Yeah, I was.”

“Memory-blocked?” Jorge peered at him. “What . . . you mean you were brainwashed or something?”

“That’s something else that another person should explain to you,” Vargas said. “To be honest, I barely understand it myself.” A rueful smile that quickly disappeared. “Believe me, though, it was necessary for this whole plan to work . . . and, yes, there was a plan behind all this. Nothing . . . ah, well,
almost
nothing . . . that happened was by accident.” He turned back around again but continued speaking. “Anyway, Amherst is also the location for the New England satrapy of the Terra Concorde . . .”

“Which is what, exactly?” Jorge leaned forward in his seat. “C’mon, Sergio, enough with the mystery already. You owe us an explanation.”

“I’m getting to that.” An annoyed glance, then Vargas went on. “The Terra Concorde was formed about twelve years ago in Canada, with the goal of restoring civilization under a global government.”

Jorge raised an eyebrow. “Not thinking small, are you?”

“No, we’re not. But when all the major superpowers collapsed, beginning with the Western Hemisphere Union and continuing with the European Alliance and the Pacific Coalition, there wasn’t any other choice. Even the United Nations was in a shambles. Something has to fill the void, or else there’d be nothing but chaos.” Vargas looked back at Inez. “We have your father to thank for that. The
chaaz’maha
showed us the way.”

Her eyes widened. “But you said you hated . . .” Then she stopped herself, and smiled. “Oh. Now I get it.”

Get what?
Jorge started to ask, but Vargas was already going on. “The TC got started at a conference in Montreal . . . one of the few cities in North America that didn’t fall apart entirely . . . and since then has grown into a worldwide organization. We now have chapters, or satrapies, in just about every country, where we’re working to do everything that needs to be done to bring about a global democratic coalition. But instead of adhering to the old ideologies, the Terra Concorde took the best of what’s worked in the past and tailored it according to our needs, while adopting the teachings of
Sa’Tong
as its guiding principles.”

“So my father is . . . ?”

“Our leader?” Vargas shook his head. “No. Oh, he was offered the job, all right. During the founding conference in Montreal, quite a few delegates wanted to elect him General Secretary. But he refused, saying that being
chaaz’maha
precluded his taking any sort of formal position within the government.” He shrugged. “So he’s something of a spiritual advisor, and pretty much operates out of the Amherst satrapy.”

Remembering something else that Charles Black had said in the State House basement, Jorge slowly nodded. “That’s why the Provisional Army wanted to get their hands on him. Black saw the TC as a threat to his own plans to restore the URA. If they’d killed him . . .”

“Again, that’s something which ought to be explained to you by someone else.” Vargas looked away from them again. “Be patient. Your questions will be answered soon enough.”

Realizing that he’d get nothing more from him, Jorge reluctantly turned his attention to the van windows. By then, the vehicle had entered the Amherst town center, and he couldn’t help but notice its contrast with downtown Boston. Pedestrians strolled along clean and well-maintained sidewalks, walking past shops and cafes that were beginning to open their doors for business, while small electric cars moved along streets that looked as if they’d been recently resurfaced. The van passed the town commons, and Jorge caught a glimpse of the library, the fire station, the city hall. Nothing was boarded up; there were no armed men in sight. It was as if the meltdown of the Western Hemisphere Union had never affected this small New England borough; the citizens of Amherst had refused to let their home collapse into ruins.

Turning left, the van followed another side street through a residential neighborhood until it reached a large granite sign: THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS. “Welcome to UMass,” Vargas said, as the van entered a sprawling, tree-lined campus. “That’s not all it is now, though. It’s also the Terra Concorde’s New England headquarters.”

Jorge gazed out at ivy-covered classroom buildings, high-rise dormitories, sleek glass-walled laboratories; some were relatively new, others obviously several centuries old. A left turn, then a right; the van passed two enormous geodesic domes built in what had once been an athletic field, the tall, slender pylons of wind turbines rising behind them. “Guess it makes sense to put it here,” he said. “If you’ve got a university in a safe place . . .”

“Uh-huh. Amherst had already done the hard work of providing a stable environment. As I said, it comes from having so many teachers, students, and intellectuals living in one place . . . they didn’t want their town to go to hell, so they got together and did something about it. So when the time came, the Terra Concorde only had to move in and set up their regional headquarters here . . . in fact, there it is.”

Turning in to a driveway, the van headed up a small hill toward a tall, slender building rising above the campus center. Twenty-six stories in height, it was built of red brick, with narrow, slotlike windows along its sides. The van circled the tower before gliding to a halt beside the elevated plaza surrounding it.

Vargas climbed out of the van, then opened the passenger door for Jorge and Inez. Jorge noticed an inscription above the building’s front entrance: W.E.B. DUBOIS LIBRARY. “The TC took over the school library?” he asked. “I’m sure the university must have loved that.”

“Actually, they didn’t mind at all.” Vargas led them up the plaza’s concrete steps. “It was built in the late twentieth century, when the faculty and students still relied mainly on printed material. After everything went digital, though, it wasn’t used for much more than storing old textbooks.” He grinned as they approached the front door. “The irony is . . . well, you’ll see.”

They entered the library through a ground-floor lobby, then walked down a flight of stairs to a spacious mezzanine located in an underground sublevel. A few dozen men and women—most of them Inez’s age or younger; Jorge assumed they were students—were seated at carrels surrounded by stacks of crates and cartons. A few of the boxes were open, revealing books of every description: history volumes, science references, novels, poetry collections, atlases. The students barely glanced up as Vargas ushered Jorge and Inez through the mezzanine; opening one book at a time, they briefly inspected their title pages and contents, then typed the information into the keypads of their desk comps before carefully placing the books on nearby library carts.

“One of the principal tasks of the New England satrapy is gathering and preserving published material.” Vargas spoke softly as they paused to look around the room. “Not everything was digitized before the collapse, and there are still a lot of libraries and private collections scattered around the world that have paper books. A lot of them were used for firewood, or burned by extremist groups like the Provisional Army, before the TC made it a goal to save as many books as possible. The students here are processing the ones we’ve been able to gather before they’re sent upstairs to be scanned.”

“What happens then?” Inez asked. “I mean, what becomes of the books you’ve scanned?”

“They’re being preserved for future generations. A lot of electronic databases were lost in the collapse, too. No one wants to have that happen again, so this time we’re saving the books as well.” Vargas raised a hand toward the ceiling. “This is why it’s terrific that we’ve been able to acquire a library of this size. Once the cities are rebuilt, we’ll be able to send our collection to local libraries around the world.”

Turning away from the carrels, he led them to the center of the library, where a row of elevators was located. Vargas moved a palm across a lighted arrow, and the doors of one of the lifts slid open. He raised a finger above a button marked 26; the doors shut, and the lift began to rise. “There’s more here than just books, of course,” he continued. “Data storage and retrieval, intelligence analysis, administrative offices . . .”

“Never mind that.” Jorge was unable to keep the impatience from his voice. “You said we were going to find the
chaaz’maha
. So where . . . ?”

“Soon.” A sly smile as Vargas gazed at the flashing numbers of the floor indicator.

The elevator reached the top floor. A quiet chime, then the doors slid open again. Walking out into a short corridor, Vargas escorted them to a small, glass-walled anteroom. A young woman behind a desk looked up as they came in. She didn’t ask who they were or why they were there, but instead rose from her chair and turned toward a mahogany door behind her. Not bothering to knock, she opened the door, then stepped aside and, a soft smile upon her face, bowed ever so slightly.

“Sa’Tong qo,”
she said. “Please, go in . . . he’s waiting for you.”

They entered a large conference room, with an oval, oak-surfaced table dominating its center and high-backed armchairs placed around it. Bright morning sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows that looked out over the campus; in the distance to the west lay a range of low mountains.

At the far end of the table, a lone figure seated in an armchair gazed out the foothills of the Berkshires. At the sound of the door opening, he turned about in his chair. In his middle years, tall and slender, with long, dark hair becoming grey, he had a face that was both young and old at the same time.

For a moment, he said nothing, but simply gazed at the three people who’d just come in. Then he stood up and walked around the table. He wore a long, white robe, its front and sides embroidered with
hjadd
symbols. Its hood was pulled back; as the robed figure came closer, Jorge saw a tattoo on his forehead, between his eyebrows and just above the bridge of his nose. Resembling an upside-down
pi
, with one leg a little higher than the other, it was a
hjadd
symbol Jorge recognized from photos he’d seen countless times.

Ignoring both Jorge and Vargas, the man approached Inez. He regarded her for a second or two, as if studying the young woman who stood nervously before him, then a smile slowly appeared.

“Hello, Inez,” he said quietly. “I’m your father.”

 

 

There was a timeless instant in which it seemed as if neither Inez
nor the
chaaz’maha
knew what to say or do.

By Gregorian reckoning, nineteen years had passed since Hawk Thompson had last seen his daughter, and then she’d been only a baby held in her mother’s arms the day he’d left for Earth. And she had no memory of him; indeed, she’d grown up believing that he was dead. They were practically strangers, separated not only by years but also light-years.