black plastic. “All yours,” he said.
Jerusha peered at the phone. She entered in the number she’d wanted to call for days now. There was a crackle of static, a hiss, then a distant, clear ring she could hear through the steady churning of the patrol boat’s twin engines.
“United Nations,” someone said on the other end. “Committee for Extraordinary Interventions.”
“This is Jerusha Carter,” she said. “Gardener. I need to speak to either Lohengrin or Babel. It’s extremely urgent. No, I’m sorry, it can’t take hours. I don’t have hours…”
Bahr al-Ghazal Base
The Sudd, South Sudan
The Caliphate of Arabia
Tom stood beside the mess tent and watched as the sun fell into the endless sea of washed-out green reeds, turning them to dark thin shadows that made intricate patterns as they slow-danced to the music of a sluggish breeze. Somewhere to the north a battle murmured, rattled, occasionally boomed with a flash that lit the orange and indigo sky a startling yellow-white.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the swollen red sun. It felt as if the inside of his eyelids were lined with sandpaper. His arms and legs felt like cloth bags filled with powdered lead. His brain felt as if his skull were stuffed with cotton balls. He couldn’t remember when he’d had his last decent night’s sleep.
Do I even fucking dare to sleep now? he wondered. That prick Meadows almost got me for good last time. He actually managed to steal control of my fucking body.
All over Tom felt the sick rush of violation. It wasn’t theft. It was soul-rape. And he’d stolen some of Tom’s most potent powers.
Tom feared no one on Earth. But he lived in increasing terror of the hippie in his own head.
Despite feeling the fatigue thicker than the heat and heavier than the humid turgid swamp air; despite being so tired he felt as sick as if he’d been caught by some awful tropical disease himself, the very thought of sleep filled him with a terror that almost blanked his mind.
“ Fuck it,” he said. He turned about on one Converse knock-off tennis shoe and walked back into the dimness of the tent. It was time to load up on coffee.
I just won’t sleep, he decided. Until I’m strong enough not even Meadows can challenge me anymore.
It was coming. He felt it.
Soon I’ll be invincible.
Robert Cumming’s Apartment
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago did have good pizza. Cumming’s apartment reeked of pepperoni, garlic, and tomato sauce. The tall joker sucked down Coke after Coke. Jaako and Mollie drank beer. Noel and Mathias sipped a heavy, rich Chianti.
The pictures that Noel had snapped with the tiny cuff-link camera were strewn across the coffee table. Red fingerprints dotted more than a few of them. “What do we think those might be?” Noel pointed at the grooves in the floor and ceiling.
“In a world where people can teleport and walk through walls you want a nasty surprise inside,” Mathias said with a shrug. “I’m betting metal walls run back and forth across the vault. Cut you in half if they hit you.”
“So, can you figure out the pattern?”
Cumming shook his head. “They wouldn’t be that stupid. They’d let the computer randomize the movement of the walls. I think we just need to turn them off. Otherwise you guys going in are going to be hopping around like fleas moving from dog to dog. I’ll control the cameras so everything in the room will look normal. But you’ll need to work fast because my movement of the walls will start to look like a pattern. If the guards are sharp they’ll spot it.”
“And you can do all that?” Noel asked.
“Yeah, if the security computer at the bank gets set to port 950 I can control everything in those rooms that’s controlled by a computer.”
“And how do we do that?” Mathias asked.
Cumming shrugged. “Somebody’s got to go into the security office and reset the computers.”
“And who does that?” Mathias asked, his tone pugnacious.
“Moi,” said Jaako, and pointed to his chest.
“And won’t the security guards notice when this guy comes crawling out of the computer screen?” Mollie asked.
“The guards are going to be occupied elsewhere,” Noel said. “There might be one left behind, but I’m confident Jaako can handle him.”
“So let me give you the information you need to make the switch,” Cumming said. “I’ve poked around, and the bank’s firewall is running Redhat. We still need the root password, but every office I’ve ever seen has it written down and Scotch-taped inside a drawer. So here’s what you do. First go to / etc/sisconfig su to root. Once you’re at root… vi space IP-tables and add this line… minus A space RH-firewall F-1-INPUT space…” Cumming was writing while Jaako pulled his lower lip and frowned at the ever-expanding lines of gobbledygook.
Mathias pulled Noel’s attention away when his blunt finger thrust down on one of the embedded nozzles high in the wall. “I want a respirator just in case those fire off. And we must expect that the floor is rigged to sense an increase in weight. That will not be controlled by a computer.”
“How do we get around that?” Mollie asked rather shrilly.
“As you teleport, Mathias is going to have to make you weightless.” Noel looked over at the little man. “Please don’t cock up the timing.” The Hungarian nodded and lit another cigarette. Noel hoped he sounded unperturbed and confident, but the level of complexity was daunting, even for him.
Well, at least he knew he could get out fast if the whole thing went pear-shaped. His biggest worry was making sure Weathers somehow made the connection between the missing gold and the Nshombos. He didn’t have that one figured out just yet.
Jaako’s rather nasal voice pulled him back to the conversation. “You’re going to look a pretty bunch of fools floating around and bouncing off the safety deposit boxes.”
“Hey!” Cumming said. “Pay attention. You got the 950 space minus J, ACCEPT, right?”
“You know I don’t have any fucking idea what you’re talking about,” Jaako said.
“You don’t have to. You just have to follow instructions and not have a typo. You have a cell phone. If you get confused you can call me.”
“How are we going to maneuver in there?” Mollie asked.
“There’s equipment for that,” Noel said. “And Jaako, you understand that you’re going to be part of this party in the vault, right? Mathias can make the gold weightless, but it will still have mass. It will take all four of you to control the pallets and guide them through the door that Mollie will open.”
This time the use of the word “you” elicited a response. “What do you mean you, kemosabe?” Mollie asked. “Aren’t you going to be with us?”
“You better fucking be with us,” Jaako said.
“I’m going to be getting guards out of the bank. I have an… associate who will handle the teleport.”
“Wait just a damn minute. This is the first time we’ve heard about another person,” Mathias said. “I’m not sharing with another person.”
“You won’t need to.” Noel took his time lighting up a cigarette. Cumming made a big point of waving his hand in front of his face and coughing. Both Noel and Mathias ignored him. “She’s my girlfriend. She’ll share in my share… so to speak.”
“And we can trust her… why?” Jaako asked.
“Because I say you can.”
“This isn’t cool,” Cumming said. “We should at least meet her. Make up our own minds.”
“And do what? You can’t pull off this heist without a teleport. She is a teleport. We either abort or you accept my judgment.”
There was a long silence while the other four looked at each other. “Yeah, well, okay,” Jaako finally said. “He’s got a reputation for pulling off the impossible.”