Vatican Ambassador (48 page)

The central tube station is far more spacious than the outlying one. Tubes arrive and leave from the hub. The tubes all empty out into a large, roughly circular central area with a ten foot high ceiling. The circular ends of the travel tubes line the outer wall, broken up by four exit doors to the facility above. BC spots the exit he needs.

Other passengers pass through the central hub, walk by BC as he makes his way through the tube station.

There’s more activity here. It’s not bustling, but there are some people around, even at this
early hour.

BC adjusts the keffiyeh and heads up out of the travel tube station amid other techs and early travelers. He goes over the central dome’s plan in his head and orients himself. He needs to get up several levels and then into a secure area in order to see Al-Salid.

There should be an elevator bank around the corner.

He finds the nearby elevator bank, presses the up button and calls a car. The doors open. A tech walks out past BC. BC gets in and presses the top button.

This is great – techs don’t even notice other techs! I feel like I’m invisible!

BC rides alone up four levels to the civic center, up and out under the main dome. The elevator door will not open when the car arrives at the fourth floor. A shrill “beep” sounds.

A red security light comes on.

Security. Of course. But I’m just a tech on a job, officer! Wait a sec, let’s see…

BC plugs the tech reader into the elevator’s control box. After a brief electronic exchange, the reader’s screen and the elevator security light both turn green, and the elevator door slides open.
That worked!? Open Sesame!

BC pokes his head out of the elevator. The civic center will be bustling in just a few hours, but now at around four in the morning it lays empty and still.

He walks slowly across the civic plaza, allowing himself one quick glimpse of the domed ceiling.
Feeling entirely too conspicuous.

But I’m in! So why does it feels like I won’t be able to get out again?

BC walks from the plaza into a wide lane dividing two rows of buildings. The dome arches far overhead, a dimly lit gridwork sky.

There are lights up there… they’re just not turned on at this hour. It’s not completely dark…

it’s sort of a state of permanent dusk.

Central command should be just up this “street”.

The administrative area of the UIN is made up of several buildings all clustered together under the open domed ceiling above.

BC looks from building to building and their floor plans flash through his head. He notes an impressive building ahead on the right. The tallest he’s seen, it nearly touches the dome. A large, wide, open flight of stairs leads up and back from the wide lane up to the entrance of the building, ending under a pair of oversize arches at the top.

There it is. The administrative center for the UIN Mars holdings. I’m just your average
ordinary tech, don’t mind me!

He heads up the stairs to the front door.

Locked. Naturally. Let’s see if this thing is worth anything.

BC plugs his tech reader into the control box outside the locked doors of the administrative offices of the UIN and requests access for repair work. The green light comes on as the doors click open.
Beautiful. Deeper and deeper!

BC ducks inside the doors, easing them shut behind him. He’s in the building’s lobby, empty save for a security guard asleep at a large desk. BC creeps across the lobby and into a dimly lit doorway. A corridor stretches off towards the back of the building.

If the plans are right, it’s on this floor, back there.

He walks down the corridor toward the offices of Al-Salid. He puts his repair order on the screen of the reader, and then toggles it back into Arabic as he walks.

A lone guard sits at a desk outside what should be Al-Salid’s office door.
I’m a bored tech. I have a boring job to do in this boring office. You don’t want to be bothered
by me at all. I bore you.

The guard looks up as BC approaches.

He challenges BC in Arabic. BC nods politely, and holds out the tech reader. The guard nods back. Then he nods toward the door, giving BC the go-ahead.

BC tries not to hurry as he passes the guard and heads in through the office door. The guard watches him enter, then turns back to something on his desktop.

Just your average ordinary tech, nothing to see here.

BC walks through the office suite and heads for the inner sanctum, Al-Salid’s private office.
It should be right… here!

BC looks over the door.

No nameplate. Nothing to show it’s his office… but why would he need to?

BC tries the door. It’s unlocked. He opens the door and walks into a spacious corner office with windows on two walls looking back out into the dome. Tapestries hung on the other walls warm the room with gold and red and amber designs.

This has got to be his office. Unh!

A sudden pounding at his temples stops BC in his tracks.

No!

Stop!

No headache! Not now!

This time, though, the headache doesn’t cooperate.

BC feels the throbbing intensify. Pain chugs like a train through his brain, each chug a devil’s chorus of cacophonous voices shouting different words simultaneously.

BC falls to his knees, doubled over by the pain.

Damn!

Worst in a long time!

Stop!

The headache won’t stop. BC crawls over to one of the wall tapestries and uses it to pull himself to his feet. He staggers forward, falling into Al-Salid’s desk. BC pulls himself around the desk and collapses into the chair behind it.

Then a loud voice echoes in his head.

WHO IS THAT?! WHO IS THERE?!

BC hears the words shouted at him, but not aloud. The shouting is all in his head. DO YOU HEAR ME?

“No need to shout,” BC mumbles.

AM I “SHOUTING?” YOU MUST BE PROXIMATE!

“Who are you?” BC asks out loud.

LET’S SEE… CAN YOU DEFEND?

Fuck!

BC’s head explodes with pain, as if a long spike had just been drilled through his skull from temple to temple.

He sees red, and then he sees nothing at all, blacking out.

BC wakes up in a small space, curled up into a fetal ball. Somehow he’s crawled… somewhere. He rubs his eyes.

Under a desk.

I must have fallen under Al-Salid’s desk.

OH, my fucking head!

BC’s temples are still throbbing with pain.

I would prefer a hangover. A hangover would be an improvement. That’s how bad this hurts!

Gotta learn how to put up my “mental” dukes. Somehow raise my mental fists, protect myself.
He drilled into my head! Least it felt like it. But now I know that attack. I can see the shape of it;
feel the how of it since it was done to me. Maybe I can stop it next time.
As he attacked, I could feel how he was thinking… he doesn’t think like us. He’s not like us, not
one of us. He really is old… ancient, heh, guess you’d say. Ancient Enemy.
It’s gotta be him: Dolomay. It’s gotta be. The Eldred said something about them having greater
powers than we do, said we were weaker. What if that motherfucker can read minds? Or blast
other minds with pain? That’s what it felt like. Like he was blasting mine!

What else can he do? And where is he?

Is he here on Mars?

How does he get in my head?

And what time is it?

The tech reader sits on the floor next to BC. He picks it up to check the time.
Still early. Six AM. Things will be stirring soon.

BC stops. He tries to “listen” with his mind for the voice.

Hello?

No answer?

Good.

BC creates a mental picture in his mind of two large lead doors. He thinks of the feel, the shape of the attack against him, and how it was done, and thinks that into a lock on his mental doors. Somehow, it feels right.

Let’s see if that will hold back any new mental onslaught.

I thought my mind was my exclusive domain. Now I’m suddenly forced to reckon with someone
else trespassing in here? What the fuck?

Where is he coming from?

BC stretches out, cautiously emerging from beneath the desk. The office is still empty. BC sits down in the chair.

Won’t this be a picture? AL-Salid walks into his office and here I am. God, though, my brain
hurts!

BC sits and waits. He rubs his temples. And then he falls asleep in the chair. He wakes up with Al-Salid standing over him.

“Wake up, I said!” Al-Salid says in a loud voice.

“Huh? Unh,” BC tries to answer as he wakes up.

“I would like to say you’ve surprised me, Campion, but that is not the case. I was, uh…
informed
that I would find you here this morning,” Al-Salid tells BC.

Informed? How?

“So much for my surprise,” BC answers.

“It does not…” Al-Salid begins. He stops. A puzzled look crosses his face, as if he’s lost his place. “I do not…” he starts, and stops again, again looking confused. Then his countenance clears. He glares down at BC, a wild look in his eyes.

There’s something strange about him, something weird going on behind his eyes! I hope he’s
okay.

“Look,” BC begins, “Al-Salid, we agreed to meet after we each met the Eldred, to pool our information! Don’t you remember? I told you’d I’d come incognito, so we could keep it a secret for the time being, because we can’t trust the usual channels. It’s important enough that I had to come myself,”

BC says.

“You have nothing to tell me,” Al-Salid says to him.

What?

“But…” BC tries. “What did they do to you? Al-Salid, you’re not yourself! Did the Eldred do something to…”

“Guards!” Al-Salid shouts.

Two guards come running in, rifles at ready.

Oh. Great.

“Deal with this Trespasser!” Al-Salid commands.

“Al-Salid! What is this? I’m the Pope!” BC protests.

“I see no pope! I see a pretender, at best, and a cold blooded killer at worst!” Al-Salid growls at him. “I see a fish once way out of his depth and now way out of water! High and dry.”

“Al-Salid, we have mutual enemies! We need to band together!”

“So you claim,” Al-Salid says. “I say that’s no longer the case! We no longer have any need to deal with you and your lies! Take him away!” Al-Salid shouts.

The guards grab BC by the arms, one on each side, and lift him up out of the chair. They drag him out of Al-Salid’s office.

“Al-Salid!” BC shouts as they drag him off. “You said we should meet in secret to discuss our people’s future, to combat the sickness, the plague, together! There is so much I need to talk with you about!”

BC stops shouting as the office door closes behind him. He stops resisting his guards and stumbles along between them as they escort him out of the building and down the front steps. A small cart pulls up. They load BC unceremoniously into the back.

The cart whisks BC over to the elevator bank, where another pair of guards “helps” him out of the cart and onto his feet. BC is shuffled off into the elevator and down four levels, and finally into a holding cell somewhere in the UIN security center. He has a vague idea of where he is, although he didn’t spend too much time going over the plans of prison cells.

He paces back and forth in the small, six foot by four-foot cell.

This sucks! I HATE BEING CAGED! Hate how claustrophobic I feel!

BC is left alone, cooling his heels, for what seems like hours.

Great, this is working out perfectly. Just fucking wonderful. I knew he’d be surprised, but that
was not the reception I expected! I thought he’d be receptive, at least hear me out. He was
entirely different the last time we spoke. We talked about this! What could the Eldred have done
to him?

He looked so strange, something weird about his eyes, and the way he seemed lost a couple of
times.

BC’s head throbs.

No! Headache? No. What, then?

YOU! YOU ARE…

The shouting voice echoes in BC’s head again.

Gotta shut him up! Shut him out, somehow!

He thinks about the lead doors he sealed in his mind before, pictures them shutting once again, and the voice stops and goes away.

Hmmm.

A headache begins to pound at his temples. BC tries to think it away.
Stop! It’s like someone banging on the doors of my skull, pounding to get in! Keep Out! Makes
me tired. So draining.

BC pulls a cot down from the wall of the cell and lies down. He drifts off to an uneasy sleep.

A voice calls to BC in his dream. Or is it a dream?

“BC! BC!” A whispered voice calls his name.

“BC!”

He stirs, begins to wake up, and tries to sit up.

“BC!”

A little louder this time.

“Wha? Where are you?” BC asks.

I recognize that voice… who is it?

“Over here,” the voice says in a hoarse whisper, coming from over by the cell door. BC gets up and goes over to the door. The door of the holding cell is solid gray. There’s no way to see outside.

“Down here, BC!” BC hears the voice call from the foot of the door. He bends over, and kneels down at the base of the door. A small metal slot is cut out of the door’s base so that food trays can slide through. BC looks through the slot and sees two big brown eyes in a dark face.
I know those eyes! But there’s no way!

“BC! You sorry fuck! It’s me, Fiza!” she whispers as loud as she can.
Fiza?

Here?

How in hell…

“Fiza!?” BC answers.

“No time for questions, BC! I’m getting you out of here!”

There’s a loud “click”, and the door opens.