The War of Immensities (67 page)

“This is Lorna
Simmons. Please stop what you are doing, everybody. I’m coming
down. Everyone stay where you are and stop whatever you’re
doing.”

Magically, all
of the frenzied movement on the pilgrim side of the line ceased and
people and police alike paused to look upward at the helicopter.
Lorna smiled. Thank you, Chrissie, she breathed.

The Highway
Patrol Captain came down to meet her as the helicopter landed
behind the line.

“We got a
situation here, ma’am,” he said urgently. “Sure appreciate your
help or else I don’t know what woulda happened.”

“Why don’t you
let them through?” Lorna demanded of him.

“We got orders,
ma’am.”

“The person who
gave you the orders does not understand the situation,” Lorna said.
“They have to go. It’s compulsive. If your men start shooting,
they’ll just keep coming until you run out of bullets and then
they’ll walk right over you. Don’t you understand that?”

“I was gettin’
that impression.”

“Then let them
through.”

“Can’t do it
ma’am.”

“Look, what on
earth do you think is going to happen?”

“Durned if I
know.”

“Then I’ll tell
you. They’ll just make their way down the highway toward Nevada
until sometime tomorrow morning when they’ll stop and turn around
and come right back again.”

“That don’t
make sense, ma’am.”

“Still, that’s
what will happen. There won’t be any problem.”

“You can’t be
so sure of that.”

“Captain, what
harm are they doing? Just driving on the state highways, minding
their own business.”

“Waal, to start
with, it’s a convoy, ma’am, and you gotta have a permit.”

“It isn’t a
convoy. It’s just a lot of individuals who all happen to be going
the same way.”

“I’m sorry,
ma’am. I got my orders...”

Lorna stamped
her foot with frustration. Her eyes flared and her hair glinted
fire in the sunlight. At least, that was what she hoped happened.
“Captain, you can’t massacre people just because they want to go
for a drive. How will you live with yourself, shooting down so many
unarmed people?”

“I just can’t
stand by and let them break the law.”

“You mean you
can’t be seen to back down.”

“I mean...”

“Look, Captain,
all you have to do is order your men not to shoot. You can explain
it to your superiors that on the grounds that you didn’t believe
the circumstances justified gunning down honest unarmed
citizens.”

“I guess.”

“And then get
your men out of the way because we don’t want to hurt any of them
either and that rig is coming through.”

“We can’t let
you wreck all them cars, ma’am.”

“Then move most
of them. We’ll just dent a couple so you’ll be able to say you
stood your ground but we broke through.”

The Captain
scratched his nose and screwed up his face, looking around in utter
discomfort. The rig was roaring its engine. His men where all
beginning to shout encouragement to each other as they levelled
their weapons. “You ain’t bluffin’, are you ma’am?”

“I assure you,
it’s no bluff. These people are under a compulsion to move that
they cannot resist and they are not able to back down.”

The Captain
thought it through again and came up to the same anxiety. “Waal,
ma’am. I always enjoyed bein’ a patrolman better than this desk
job. You got a deal.”

“Maybe you
could even give us an escort.”

“Waal, ma’am. I
ain’t so sure about that.”

“And you can
supervise it all from my helicopter.”

“Heili-copter,
ma’am. Why, in that case, you got a deal.”

He hurried back
toward the siege, waving his arms and shouting wildly. “Okay, hold
your fire. Don’t nobody shoot nobody. Get these cars outa here.
Leave those. Come on, snap to it. And for God’s sake, these are
just plain folks so no firin’.”

And the rig
roared and ploughed through the fenders as the patrol men
scattered. As the rig came by, it paused and Lorna swung up onto
the tail, beckoning all behind her to follow.

Brazil and
Sulawesi both straddle the equator and are at exactly opposite
sides of the earth, but the Pacific Ocean is wide and along that
line is almost the greatest possible distance between them.
Moreover, since the part of Sulawesi inhabited by the sleepers
there, and the section of the Matto Grasso to which the Japanese
pilgrims and many enterprising Californians who wished to go now
occupied, are both slightly south of the equator and the Earth
being not round but an oblate spheroid, the east-west line placed
them even further apart. The shortest way is south, via Antarctica,
but of course that placed the European and American pilgrims, along
with those few hundred the Kevin Wagner’s team relentlessly pursued
in Japan, and Andromeda Starlight’s hordes, a vast distance away.
The next best option, creating a great circle that passed through
Sulawesi and Brazil and incorporating the locations of the other
groups, was over the Arctic circle. And so the Focal Point moved
north again, to locate itself near Prince Patrick Land, by
coincidence almost exactly on the Magnetic North Pole.

Harley Thyssen
had forgotten to tell Brian Carrick about that until they discussed
their plans by satellite telephone just a few days before the
linkage. Which, on the whole was rather fortunate, for ignorance
allowed Brian to misinform a lot of people of the direction the
Italian pilgrimage would go, without having to actually lie to
anyone. It might have been the only means by which a man like Brian
Carrick could have perpetrated such a deception.

For there were
big plans made on the basis of Brian’s ignorance. The pilgrimage
was to be combined with the state funeral of Christine Rice—Saint
Chrissie as the media now always referred to her although no
murmuring of beatification had officially emerged from the
Vatican—and there would be a great possession. It would begin at
the convent and make its way west (following the line of Brian’s
mistaken belief) through Naples and on to Rome. St Chrissie, lying
in state in an open coffin, would lead the pilgrimage for the last
time. It was when Thyssen heard these plans on the news—he was busy
at the time arranging matters in Brazil—that he had urgently called
Brian and put him straight.

“Don’t worry
about it, mate. We can work around that,” Brian told him.

Brian
immediately called Severni and they quickly revised their plans.
The pilgrims had filed by the body in the first few days after her
death as she lay in state in the convent, but immediately that was
done, a shop mannequin was substituted with a waxwork face provided
by Severni, and the actual corpse was privately interred. The
matter was carried off with the greatest secrecy and only three
outsiders attended the quiet sad funeral— Felicity Campbell stood
by the graveside with Harley Thyssen on one arm and Brian Carrick
on the other. They stayed briefly afterwards, before hurrying away
to their respective tasks. The secrecy prohibited the attendance of
Lorna Simmons.

When the time
for the linkage came, the Italian pilgrims set forth, following the
shopwindow dummy mounted on a stately carriage and pulled by two
white horses. The pilgrims followed in the customary convoy of
trucks and wagons and bicycles and motor-scooters and a few crowded
cars and only the most acute observer might have noticed that there
were twice as many of them as before. Outside Salerno, half the
group broke away from the main procession and headed north through
the mountains, toward the north coast road where they had travelled
so many times before, but this time when the reached the coast,
Brian Carrick had a sea-going ferry waiting to carry them away to
Brazil.

The fake
pilgrims, diligently arranged by Severni, continued to follow the
fake body of St Chrissie to Rome, where Cardinal Valerno had made
the finest Papal funeral arrangements possible, with all due
pageantry, for he, as much as anyone, had cried for Christine Rice.
His guilt and shame consumed him and threw him into the work in a
frenzy, for he had done what he had to do, what he had been
instructed to do, but that did not make it right. When it was over,
he had determined, he would quietly take his own life and leave the
justifications of his actions to that higher court, to make of it
what they might. He was prepared.

As is happened,
he need not have bothered, for one evening, just before the linkage
was due, as he hurried through the colonnade of St Peter’s, where
the wind gusted at his robes and scuttled the leaves on the
terrazzo, a man stepped into his path. Luigi Valerno frowned,
realising he knew the man but the moment that he took to recognise
Fabrini was one that he could not spare. Fabrini, his drooping
moustache gleaming with sweat, his eyes two spots of black fire,
made a single upward thrust that took Valerno just under the
breastbone and was firm enough to lift the cardinal onto his toes.
The long blade penetrated unerringly into his troubled heart and
then Fabrini made a series of jerks and twists with his hand, and
the razor point of the blade tore Valerno’s heart and lungs to
shreds.

Fabrini
released the bone handle of the knife and hurried on about his
business, not even looking back to watch his victim fall. Valerno’s
hand replaced the killer’s about the handle and, staggering
backwards until he hit the wall, he pulled it out and threw it
aside. It clattered ringingly on the marble floor. The red robes
that they said were so to hide the blood did no such thing and it
flowed a great red stain down the front of him. Valerno slid down
the wall, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish, his
arms spread, until he sat, understanding what had been done to him
fully, wondering how they were going to explain it. Then the pain
exploded like a hand grenade within him, and that was what he
carried away with him, screaming all the way to eternity.

Even the tone
with which the air-conditioning breathed throughout the building
seemed to be whispering conspiracies. People here probably
conspired over how much sugar they had in their coffee and whether
they read the back page of the newspaper first. It was the US
Embassy in Kuwait, where anyone who wasn’t a spy was not properly
qualified for employment. The Deputy Ambassador, if that was what
he was called and who he really was, was flanked by two very
handsome young men in very nice suits. They might as well have been
wearing armbands with CIA written on them, except Thyssen supposed
they were something far more sinister than that.

“It was good of
you to come, Professor Thyssen,” the Deputy said.

“Did I have a
choice?” Thyssen asked flatly.

The biggest
earthquake in recorded history, 10.6 on the moment-magnitude scale,
had hit northern Iran. Yet he had left Felicity in the coffee
lounge at the airport, waiting for the Orion to be cleared to
move.

“I’m afraid
that I have to inform you that permission for your team to enter
Iran has not been forthcoming.”

“I take it the
Ayatollah has not yet admitted that the disaster occurred.”

“They have
called for aid and the United Nations, and indeed the US Government
is responding. But the assistance of your team will not be
required.”

“According to
whom?”

“My
instructions come direct from the highest level of the Iranian
Government.”

“Argue with
them.”

“Professor,
your team is not undervalued in this situation, please understand
that. But it is their country.”

“It’s our
planet.”

“Not all of us
are privileged to cross international boundaries as freely as your
people seem to, Professor. But in this case, the wishes of the
Iranians must be respected.”

“And what if I
chose to ignore them?”

“Your aircraft
will be shot down should it enter Iranian airspace. They aren’t
kidding. And since your aircraft is unarmed, very slow and the only
one of its type in the region, I doubt you’ll get very far.”

“Have you
spoken to President Grayson about this?”

“The President
is aware of the matter.”

“Get him on the
hot line. Let’s see if he’s willing to say so to me.”

“That will not
be possible... I hardly think an expression like hot line is
meaningful these days anyway.”

“Those people
are in terrible trouble. The expertise of my team is superior to
all other assistance they might be offered.”

“With all due
respect, Professor, the emergency teams in place have now had
considerable experience as a result of working with your people and
feel they will be able to cope.”

“So we just sit
on our asses and let innocent people die.”

“We suggest—we
strongly suggest—that you return to the United States
immediately.”

“I intend to.
And I’ll be hammering on the White House door when I get
there.”

The Deputy
half-turned to the man standing beside him, who immediately removed
a long envelope from his inside pocket and presented it to Thyssen.
Thyssen was able to ignore it.

“This is a
subpoena ordering you to appear at a Senate Inquiry into the
activities of one Joseph Solomon, with whom we understand you are
an associate.”

“Waste of time.
I’ll take the fifth to all questions.”

“You haven’t
heard the questions...”

“No. But you
have heard the answer. But in case I didn’t make myself clear, go
fuck yourself, and you can stick your subpoena where the sun don’t
shine.”

“These
gentlemen have been ordered to remove you to the inquiry by force
if necessary.”

“It won’t be
necessary. I’ll be there. Somehow I suspect you won’t deliver the
message with quite the same emphasis that I will.”