|
Prelude
Mar 26, 2008 19:23:35 GMT -5
Post by kouter on Mar 26, 2008 19:23:35 GMT -5
Hey, this is the prelude to a novel I'm working on. I'd like to know what you guys think. Does it grip you, make you want to read more etc etc?
Thanks!
_________________________________________________
Patricia Dempsey ignored the heat and discomfort of her robes as she stepped upon the prayer mat and watched the sun sink into the South China Sea. The subtle hues of orange and passion-fruit red painted Manila’s hundred-storey skyline in a cascade of warmth, the contrasting glare of the city’s halogen-blue holograms slowly emerging, claiming their preeminence over the night. From her vantage atop the fifth floor of the US Embassy the image was mesmerizing, the beauty of nature blending so effortlessly with the glamour of technology, symbolic of the Philippines as a whole really: a world of contrasts, the ancient beside the new, the poverty amidst the wealth, the divine and the mundane.
As if on cue, the melodious calls of Salah sounded throughout the city, instantly gracing the modern façade of the metropolis with a depth of culture and tradition centuries old. The amplified voice of the muezzin was deep and powerful, beckoning all to kneel in submission to Allah and his messenger’s call.
“Allahu akbar,” Patricia whispered softly as she turned her back to the setting sun, her eyes toward the Ka’bah of Mecca. She sat upon the heels of her sock-clad feet and then prostrated herself as was the custom of sajdah. The echoing calls of the muezzin soothed her spirit completely; she neither felt the heat nor bother of the humidity now, her mind focused on Allah and the words of the prophet. Her forehead touched the edge of the prayer mat with each Raka’ah, her veil draping from her face as she whispered again, “Allahu akbar.”
She hoped she did honor to the practice.
Would the Muslims here truly accept her? she wondered. What about the Christians or the Buddhists? She embraced them all, of course, but could they truly be taught to embrace one another? And in so short a time? Such was her mission here in the Philippines. In less than a week’s time she would have to somehow bridge the gap between centuries of ignorance and misconception. Only then could this country move forward, healing itself, becoming one with its sister nations around it.
Despite the challenge, she felt honored to be a part of it all. At only thirty-six she was chosen as the delegate to carry out this task ahead of hundreds. She had worked hard for it: three degrees in theology and a short stint in politics had prepared her well; the Unity Faith Society’s best and brightest. Too bad she didn’t think of herself that way. She was still just a small town girl from Indiana in her own mind and scared out of her wits at that. She was about to negotiate a political treaty that would affect the lives of millions. Could she do it? Could she actually make it all happen? It was enough to make her stomach curl, contemplate backing out. But no. She was guided by her faith to come to Manila. The Great One, the Divine Intellect in all Its forms wanted her here. It would see her through.
“Enjoying yourself?”
Patricia stiffened at the intruding voice. It was female, but unfamiliar to her. She thought she had closed to door to her suite, but perhaps not. Was it one of the embassy aides? “I’m sorry,” she said. The woman was most likely American and didn’t understand the importance of Salah. “I am in my prayers at the moment. Could you please—”
“That I can see. I asked do you enjoy it?”
Patricia halted mid-bow at the sharp tone, her stomach tightening as she glanced over her shoulder. At the far end of the balcony a female figure clad in black crouched below the level of the railing, hair and face covered by a silk cowl, a set of jade eyes visible through a slit in the dark material, piercing her own.
Her heart thundered in her ears as her body froze in stone. Who was this woman? How did she get into her room, past the guards even? Patricia thought about shouting for help, but no, if she acted rashly it could prompt an attack. Talk. That was her only defense. Get her talking. Distract her while she tried some other means to summon help.
“W-what do you want?” she managed to stammer, the same time triggering her neural net implant to reinitialize within her head. She had shut if off just before prayer as usual, but now she needed it to reach the outside world, call the police, anyone. The system came online, displaying a small window within the corner of her vision. She accessed the communications link, but was abruptly met with an error code. What was wrong? Why didn’t it work?
“I can see what you doing.” The woman sauntered toward her, her words short and sharp, a Filipino accent. “You dart your eyes when you access your net. Did you know that?”
“Won’t work,” another voice called out from behind her.
Patricia’s heart leapt again as she spun about to reface her front. She saw a near identical figure standing before her now, clad in the same black suit, face hidden by the same dark cowl, same piercing jade eyes.
“So… you’re the one that seeks to mold our future.”
“Please, I don’t under—”
“Tell me,” the figure said from behind. “Do you truly believe in both Allah and God?”
“Buddha and Christ?”
“The Caliph and Ali?”
The last phrase came as a sting. Were they Muslim? The Shia extremists she had heard about? Only they would denote such a distinction within Islam. She knew the Shia opposed what she came here to do, but had they found out about her so quickly? Talk, she told herself again, it’s all you know how to do. Talk yourself out of this.
“Please, peace be upon you, sisters.” She forced her words between quivering lips. “We are of the same faith. I merely seek to serve Allah in all His forms. We can co-exist in uni—”
A sudden burning sensation engulfed her neck as the woman lunged past her. Her movements were so quick she could barely comprehend what had happened. It seemed impossible, inhuman even. Patricia opened her lips to cry out as the warmth about her neck grew into a searing pain, but no sound escaped them, only a sickening hiss of air that seemed to emanate directly from her throat. As she tried to inhale she felt her lungs fill with fluid as hot blood erupted from her neck. She clutched her throat gagging, falling backwards at the knees. From her quickly blurring vision, she saw what she had been cut with, something shiny that was in the woman’s hand: a thin loop of wire that glistened like fishing line in the light of the setting sun.
She was dying, felt her life slipping from her. She panicked, tried to access her comm link again. No avail. She did the only thing she could think to do next. She couldn’t send a message, but she could record what she was seeing through her eyes.
The two women stood over her, watching as her legs kicked uncontrollably, the mind searing pain of asphyxiation driving her mad. “Who will you pray to now to save your soul?” one of them said as she keyed her neural net to record. “Buddha? Christ? Mohammad?”
The other stooped down and began writing something in the pool of blood that had formed near her head, something she couldn’t quite see. She strained to make out what it was, blackness consuming her sight.
“Fool,” she heard faintly as the darkness finally took her, “only Satan will have your soul now.”
|
|
|
Prelude
Mar 26, 2008 19:35:04 GMT -5
Post by kouter on Mar 26, 2008 19:35:04 GMT -5
In case you liked the prelude and wanted more, here is Chapter 1. Appreciate any feedback! Thanks~
__________________________________________________
Rick Macey accessed the internal comms of his neural net as the sun-bleached hangars of the old Downey Fields Complex loomed like an airport ghost town on his right. It was an hour’s sojourn from downtown L.A. and the autodrive had him arriving right on schedule for the transaction.
Good timing—he wanted this deal over with quickly; one glance at the itinerary from Sheila and already he wanted it done. One last job, he reminded himself as he closed the email, isolated his comm from the net.
One more and I’m out of here.
The Downey Complex was little more than a couple of rusted out buildings and a patch of mud and overgrown grass where the original airstrip used to be. Few would probably even know these days, but America’s space program was greatly advanced at the Downey site in the 1970’s. But that was well over a hundred years ago now and like most things, the Downey Complex was only as important as its ability to be remembered. Downey was now completely indistinguishable from any other industrial burnout zone in the reclamation district, but ironically that made it perfect for his purposes today.
Macey took manual control of the Neo-Deuce’s steering column, the whistle of its alcohol powered turbine changing pitch as he downshifted to negotiate the turn into one of the hangars. He swung the Neo-Deuce through the hangar doors with a wide spin of the wheel, chirping tires as rubber met hard concrete. The Deuce handled like an oil tanker with a broken rudder, but then, you couldn’t expect much from a two-and-a-half ton military transport truck loaded with munitions.
Revving the engine loudly, he brought the behemoth to a halt with another screech of rubber, before switching off the ignition and scanning the interior for signs of life. As he had hoped, his noisy entrance didn’t go unnoticed. Within moments three figures emerged from behind a stack of pallets lining the walls. He took note of them quickly, running their facial images through his neural net’s database for possible ID matches.
Two were African; Sudanese it looked like, dressed in cheap powder blue suits, worn to blend in with western society more than likely. They would probably be more comfortable wearing a thawb and kufi; probably look better in them too. Young, thirties maybe, dark skinned, freshly shaven. One of them also wore glasses, an oddity in this day and age—in the US anyway. His search program failed to find a match, but it didn’t matter. New kids on the block or not, they were here to make a deal and he was going to oblige them.
Walking ahead of them was a much shorter Latino kid in his twenties, a cyber-ganger from the reclamation district, dressed in usual Blitzer fashion; black leather trench coat and pants, no shirt, a piece of galvanized chain hung around his neck. Ridiculous gear for a summer day that was well into the nineties, but that was the code of the Blitzer crowd, form before function. The same went for his most obvious gang trait: two external memory drives stuck to his forehead, modified to look like vacuum tubes and placed like a set of horns just above his eyes.
But Macey didn’t need the gang getup to know the kid was a Blitzer. After all, he knew this one by name. Opening a secure comm link on his neural net, he patched a signal through to his remote memory server back at his apartment and then redirecting it to his contact just outside.
‘So this them, Bobby?’ he spoke internally, using his inner voice rather than his actual one.
‘Took bloody long enough,’ Bobby quipped through the comm.
He shook his head as he exited the cab of the Deuce, slamming the door behind him. ‘How long you gonna keep talking like that?’
‘Oy, I’m in character, mate!’
In character, he thought with a smirk. The Blitzers had one more trait he found quite annoying. The gang’s roots lay in South London and the local chapter tried to emulate the accent. Bobby failed miserably at it of course, sounding more Australian than anything else. Still, there was no need to put on the act through the comm, only they could hear their conversation. Plus the link was encrypted through his remote server; even if the two Sudanese gents could hack into their channel, they would hear only static. But that scenario was made even more unlikely considering their clients probably didn’t even possess neural net implants much less hacking skills. Cyberization was not widely embraced by Islamic states and even less so in an impoverished country like Sudan.
He rounded the front of the Neo-Deuce and reclined against the still-warm grill, folding his arms as the two clients approached. They too spoke clandestinely as Bobby and he did, yet not encrypted through digital means, but hidden by language. He heard a few words and his neural net’s synth-speech application automatically detected it as Arabic. It then proceeded to auto-translate for him, creating movie style captions at the bottom of his vision. The translation was awful, unable to distinguish the slight nuances of their Sudanese accent from standard Arabic. Some of the words that popped up were enough to give him a laugh, but for the moment he had to settle for a stifled chuckle.
“This is ‘im then chaps,” Bobby said aloud, gesturing to him with wide arms. “Best contact you can find within the good ole United States Space Force. Commander—”
“Jack Russell.” He outstretched his hand in greeting, careful to tip the USSF cap he wore that matched perfectly with his naval gray fatigues. The two men shook his hand with obvious caution, neither of them giving so much as a smile. It wasn’t surprising. They were a thousand miles from their homeland, trying to purchase illegal arms from a supposedly crooked USSF officer, in order to launch some retaliation strike against the US for their recent involvement in Darfur. Pretty tough crowd to get a laugh from, even his fake name didn’t get a rise.
‘These guys probably don’t even know what a Jack Russell is,’ he piped a message to Bobby.
Bobby glanced at him eyes only, his mouth remaining shut as he responded. ‘What you mean?’
‘The name, Jack Russell. You know it’s a type of dog right?’
Bobby stared blankly then glanced away. ‘I bloody well hate dogs.’
The Sudanese wearing glasses spoke first, his English heavily accented. “You have what we have agreed, yes? Let’s see the truck.”
Macey switched gears before he replied, wanting to break the ice a bit. As he formed the words in his mind, the synth-speech application displayed their Arabic equivalent in the corner of his vision, but he hardly needed them—he’d brushed up on his Arabic for just this occasion.
“Let us speak in the language of the angels, my brothers,” he said in their native tongue. “This American swine won’t be able to understand us then.”
Their eyes grew wide, lit brightly by the joy of recognition only common faith could achieve. But as quickly as it had come, it left. “You are a Muslim?” The same one with the glasses spoke again, his brow furrowing as he glanced at his companion. “Where are you from?”
“I was born here,” he said with a show of palms, “but please don’t hold that against me, brother.”
Macey grinned, trying to elicit a smile, but his attempt at humor caused only another glance of concern to flash between his two clients. Finally he inhaled and prepared to utter words he knew would win their confidence. “‘Ash hadu alla ilaha illa Allah, wa ash hadu anna Mohammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu.’”
He recited the phrase phonetically, his stomach tightening as he tried to keep his mind from acknowledging what he had just said. But it was impossible. He knew their meaning all too well: I testify and witness that there is no god worthy of being worshipped other than Allah and that Mohammad is his Messenger.
“Allahu akbar!” glasses exclaimed, embracing him to kiss upon both cheeks. “Our path is blessed. We have found a brother in our cause. I am Fateen.”
“I am Aban.” The other embraced him as well. “Your Arabic is excellent, brother. You must be a truly faithful believer to have learned the language of the Prophet—peace be upon him—so well, especially in this Godless country.”
“How else can one study the Holy Qur’an if not in its true form?” Macey smiled and then quoted. “‘Verily! It is We who have sent down the Reminder, the Qur’an, and surely We will guard it from corruption.’”
“‘Surah Hijr!’” Fateen’s glasses flashed as he nodded in recognition of the verse. “Truly Allah has sent you to aid us in our struggle.”
Macey grinned, placing his hands upon their shoulders. “Tell me brothers. How many more are you?”
“Just the two of us,” Aban said beaming then curling his fist he added, “It was all we could afford to send. But we are ready. I have made a great sacrifice to ensure our victory.”
“Perhaps I can aid in your struggle. Tell me, what is the target?”
“The Olympic center,” Fateen said. “With the explosives you have brought, it will be a strong message to the Americans.”
‘It’s just like we figured,’ he said to Bobby through the comm. ‘No cell activity here. Just some amateurs on a hit or miss suicide run.’
‘Right then. What now?’
‘We call it.’ Macey switched channels on his comm, locking to the CDI band. ‘Alright Paul, I got the info I needed, they’re all yours.’
Paul Webb’s voice came back through the comm, sounding a little surprised. ‘Already? That was quick. You want to keep your cover intact?’
‘Nah, no need. There’s no network. Just bust em.’
Seconds later the air filled with the blare of a loudspeaker.
“C-D-I! Get on the ground now!”
Fateen and Aban crouched at the sudden outburst, their eyes darting wildly as two security vans roared in through the back of the hangar, sliding to an ear piercing halt. The van doors rumbled open and two squads of CDI agents poured out. They were clad in SWAT style flak armor, toting snub-nosed submachine guns, their laser targeting scopes painting Aban and Fateen in a red-polka-dot light show of promised death.
In the midst of the commotion, Macey spotted Colonel Paul Webb, poised behind one of van doors, the mike to the van’s loudspeaker in hand. Black, fifties, bald with a trimmed moustache, he was tactical leader of the unit, dressed in plain clothes in stark contrast to the rest of his men. He raised the mike again and issued the next command. “I repeat this is the Department of Civil Defense and Intelligence. You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit terrorism. Get on the ground now!”
“Brother!” Fateen looked up at him imploringly as he began sinking to the floor, his hands raised above his head. “What should we do?”
“I suggest you do what he tells you,” Macey said in English this time and then looked to Aban who was still standing upright, staring about in a daze, “both of you.”
The first squad of agents advanced rapidly, guns trained on the two would-be terrorists, yelling for them to get on the floor. They snatched Bobby out of the way with practiced professionalism, pushing him quickly to the side. They then stepped in between himself and the two Sudanese and began manhandling them to the ground. Fateen looked up at him bewilderedly as an agent zip-tied his hands with plasti-steel bindings. Finally he seemed to understand what was going on.
“Brother?” he spoke in Arabic again. “You are with them?”
“Afraid so.”
“Infidel!” Fateen spat at him, literally and then swiveled his head to Aban. “Don’t let them get you, Aban. Run!”
The Sudanese didn’t move right away, seemingly oblivious to his partner’s cry. He gazed upward as the agents swarmed on top of him, tugging at his waist and arms. He stood his ground, resisting them—he could have been a tree for all of their efforts.
‘Something ain’t right,’ he messaged to Bobby as the struggle wore on.
‘What you mean?’
‘He’s—’
With an almighty grunt, Aban whipped his torso at inhuman speed, flinging all three agents off of him in a single twist, sailing them through the air like children clinging to a rodeo bull.
“Look out!” Macey cried as one of them flew into him, his world careening as he slammed into the concrete floor. He struggled to reorient himself, pushed the agent from off top of him just in time to see Aban freeing his arms, breaking the plasti-steel bindings like tissue paper. The Sudanese then dropped into a crouch, vaulting straight into the air, soaring forty feet or more in the blink of an eye.
“No bloody way!” Bobby yelled.
The Sudanese grabbed hold to the roof rafters and began monkey climbing toward the ceiling.
“Open Fire! Open Fire!” Paul screamed through the loudspeaker.
The popcorn sound of automatic gunfire filled the air as the two squads of agents pointed their SMG’s to the sky. Sparks bounced off the ceiling and Aban’s body as he launched himself off the rafters, punching a hole through the roof above.
“A cyborg?” The agent who had plowed into him hauled himself onto all fours. “How our intel miss that?”
How indeed? Macey grimaced as he shot a transmission to Bobby. ‘What happened? You didn’t tell me one of them had an augmented body!’
‘I didn’t know!’ Bobby retorted and in truth how could he have. Bobby made a great contact to bait in suspects, but he wasn’t an agent. Macey had to take responsibility for this. This was the result of haste on his part and more than a little hubris and underestimation as well. Nothing was impossible—not even a Sudanese Muslim plugging his brain into a cyborg body. It made sense now why there were only two of them. In truth, Aban was all they needed. An augmented prosthetic body was lethal: Aban could have easily taken out an entire squad of agents before they eventually brought him down. Thankfully he had decided to run instead, but if he didn’t catch him, he could go to ground and turn this cakewalk of a case into a real nightmare.
‘Mace!’ Paul’s voice blared through his comm, bringing him back to reality. ‘You on this?’
“Yeah, yeah.” Macey clambered to his feet. He glanced up at the ceiling where Aban had punched through, accessing a satmap of the area the same time. Within a second he had a real-time satellite image of the hangar from above windowed in the corner of his vision. He spotted Aban still on the roof, preparing to make another jump to an adjacent hangar some fifty feet away. Breaking into a sprint, Macey leapt over the bonnet of the CDI van, accelerating as his feet touched ground on the other side. He jetted through the open hangar doors just as he saw Aban take flight on the satview. Glancing upward, he spotted him with his real eyes, gliding overhead.
He vaulted off the ground, wind pressing into his face as he soared toward Aban at tremendous speed. He timed the trajectory of his launch just right, meeting Aban on the downward arc of his jump about fifty feet in the air. The Sudanese barely caught sight of him as he zoomed in from below, his eyes widened in shock.
They collided in midair like couple of linebackers. Macey grappled him in a quick scissor lock, crushed him between his thighs. Gravity took affect and they plummeted earthward. He twisted as they fell, slamming Aban chest-first into the onrushing ground. Their impact shattered the badly weathered concrete as they bounced several times, pieces of Aban’s cheap body flying apart like debris in an IndyCar crash.
When they finally came to a stop, he had Aban’s remaining arm pegged behind his back and his own knee on the base of his neck. The Sudanese bucked and strained against him but failed to break free.
“Impossible,” he said in Arabic with another vain flex. “My body was purposed by Allah! It is invincible.”
“You think you’re the only one stuck in a prosthetic body these days?” Macey tightened his grip. “Get over it. Maybe your Allah is trying to tell you something. What’s the chances of you bumping into another combat cyborg, huh?”
“Do not speak to me of Allah! You call yourself a Muslim? You are the same as these American pigs who persecute us!”
Macey responded to him in plain English, so that he got the point. “I’m not Muslim. Far from it, got that?”
“So you pretend? Do you think Allah will ever forgive that? Your flesh will burn in hell forever!”
“Just shut it man.” He drove Aban’s face further into the concrete so his lips couldn’t move. He’d heard enough fundamentalist babble to last a lifetime and Aban’s wasn’t that original.
“Now this is what I like to see,” a voice called out from behind. “Hot cyborg on cyborg action!”
Even without the phony accent he knew it was Bobby speaking. His comment was met with a few laughs from the CDI agents running along side him, but he could tell most of them were holding off from laughing for politeness sake. He never liked the attention his own prosthetic body could bring about and Bobby loved to remind him of that fact.
One of the field agents arrived next to him and then stooped beside Aban’s body. The Sudanese started making off in Arabic again, but thankfully she placed an inhibiter lock into one of the neural ports at the side of his neck and shut him up for good.
“We can take it from here, sir,” she said with a smile. “Nice take down.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He gave her a lack luster smirk, easing himself off Aban’s now paralyzed frame. He caught sight of Paul Webb arriving in one of the vans, the Neo-deuce trailing behind him, driven by one of the agents.
“Got a little hairy toward the end there, ‘eh Mace?” Paul gave a good-natured smile as he stopped. Macey had known Paul for years, far too long for him to open up a conversation with outright criticism, even though he rightly deserved it in this case.
“Come on, that was sloppy and you know it. Back in the day, I would have had you on the carpet for messing up as bad as I just did.”
“True.” Paul gazed skyward reflectively. “Then again, you’re the only agent we got left who can speak fluent Arabic and knows the Qur’an back to front. I’ll take the sugar with the salt.”
Macey chuckled at that one. It was true he supposed. The Department of Civil Defense and Intelligence still served much the same role as its predecessor, the Department of Homeland Security, save it had evolved since the turn of the century, becoming a branch of the armed forces. Macey’s specialty was religious based counter terrorism, which was apparently a dying trade amongst the new recruits. Cases like today were becoming his norm, pulled in at the last minute once the rookie agent-in-charge realized he was working way outside his scope of expertise.
“But seriously, that was some impressive work. It would have taken my guys weeks of fooling around to get that same info out of those two. You, on the other hand, had them open up faster than the legs of a five dollar…”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture.”
“Right, sorry.” Paul raised his hand in apology. “Keep forgetting you’re back on the ‘path of righteousness’.”
“Path of righteousness. You’re a real ham you know that?”
Paul squawked with a belly laugh.
“He’s right though, Mace.” Bobby arrived next to him. “I didn’t know you could speak uck buck so good.” He then leaned across him to shake hands with Paul. “Cheers Colonel, a pleasure working with you again.”
“Nice job, Bobby.” Paul then shot a glance to Macey. “You know, your protégé here is better than most of my field agents. I keep telling him he needs to sign up for the academy, but he won’t listen to me.”
“Won’t listen to me either.”
Both Bobby and Paul laughed at that.
“I assume you guys can take it from here right?” he said, noticing the agents had packed Aban into the back of the second van, along with Fateen. “I got a plane to catch.”
Paul’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah. Finally going on that vacation of yours, huh?”
“Not Vacation.” Bobby raised a finger in correction. “Honeymoon.”
Paul straightened his mustache with a broad grin. “Congratulations. I’m sure Sheila’s gonna be thrilled. How long you two been waiting now?”
“Four months…”
It sounded ridiculous to hear it said out loud, but it was the truth. His wife Sheila was CEO of Gentec, one of the world’s largest biotech firms and home of the infamous Miracle Treatment, the once controversial ‘live forever pill’. It was on a case involving the treatment that they first met about a year ago. They managed to find time to court and even tie the knot, but with their dually hectic schedules they had to hold off on their dream honeymoon until they could both get enough time off to make it worthwhile.
“That’s what happens when you marry a billionaire tycoon babe, Mace.” Bobby elbowed his ribs. “Big waiting list…”
“Shut up punk.”
“I’ll see ya guys later.” Paul revved the van. “You enjoy it Mace and oh… check your messages. General Tamarack was trying to get a hold of you while you were undercover.”
“The regional director?” He didn’t like the sound of that. “She better not be trying to cancel my leave again. Sheila will be pissed.”
“She probably just wants to pick your brain about something.”
“Yeah, let’s hope so.”
Macey waved as Paul pulled away, followed by the second CDI van and finally the borrowed USSF truck that gave them a honk as it passed by. He then looked to Bobby. “Where’d you park the Lexus?”
“Over here.” He began leading the way. “So where you two going again?”
“Some private island off Malta Sheila rented for the month.” He pulled up the itinerary Sheila had sent him earlier. “Then we’re going to visit all the European Union states and then down to South America to tour el República Americana Latina.”
“The EU and the RAL?”
“Yeah, two super counties in two months. I get tired just thinking about it.”
Bobby cracked a grin. “Leave it to Sheila to come up with a schedule like that. Must be nice, though… Hey, I still get to house sit for you guys, right?”
“Just my old place,” Macey warned him as he reconnected his comm to the outside net. “Sheila wants the new house christened by us.”
Bobby snickered. “Understood.”
A half dozen email messages downloaded into his neural net and he sifted through them looking for the one from General Tamarack. He opened it and then groaned as he read its contents.
“What’s the matter?”
“‘Report to HQ immediately, extremely urgent, do not delay’.” He read it aloud for Bobby. “This doesn’t sound good. I told Sheila that we could finally leave after today. I already delayed our trip twice to finish off this stupid case for Paul.”
“Yeah, she will be pissed, man. See that’s why I won’t join the academy. Too much bloody hassle.”
“I envy you.”
They arrived at the silver Lexus he had lent Bobby to woo the two Sudanese suspects. He slipped behind the wheel and then closed his eyes, just as the Blitzer plopped down next to him.
“Yo, what you doing, man?”
“Just praying,” he said.
“For what? That Sheila won’t kill you or somethin’?”
Bobby’s grin was infectious. “Good guess, but no. Forget it. You’d probably think it’s stupid anyway.”
“C’mon man, what’s up?”
Macey took a deep breath, wondering if he should actually share or not. After all, the kid had a habit of making him regret telling him his inner most thoughts—the issue with his prosthetic body notwithstanding. “That cyborg back there… He asked me how I thought Allah would feel about me pretending to be a Muslim. Said I was gonna burn in hell for it.”
“Man, forget what that uck-buck said.”
“No, but seriously, you ever wonder what God does think about it?”
“Not really.”
“That’s what messes with me when I have to pull these undercover gigs,” he said. “Profess faith in stuff I don’t believe. That’s why I always pray afterwards, for forgiveness, y’know? Just to get myself right with God again. What you think? Too paranoid?”
Bobby nibbled on his bottom lip a moment. “Well, the book says to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’, right?” He shrugged. “Can’t be too cautious with directions like that, man.”
Macey smiled, he was surprised by the maturity of Bobby’s response. His faith was truly beginning to impress him. “Hey, why do you call them uck bucks, anyway?”
“Huh?” he said and then as if suddenly remembering the cure for cancer. “Oh, ‘cause they’re always saying it, y’know? Allah ‘uck buck’!”
Macey tossed his head back laughing. “Takes you to come up with something like that, Bobby.”
“What, man?”
“It’s actually Al-lah-u-ak-bar,” he explained emphasizing the ‘r’.
“Yeah, whatever, yo.” Bobby crossed his arms as he gazed out the window. “Sounds like bloody well ‘uck buck’ to me.”
Macey kept silent as he started the car—the argument just wasn’t worth winning.
|
|