Fluid

    “To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer to his "why?" He was full of morality and natural religion, which some say is no religion at all. He gained the name of atheist by declaring with Gotama that there are innumerable worlds, that the earth has nothing beneath it but the circumambient air, and that the core of the globe is incandescent. And he was called a practical atheist--a worse form apparently--for supporting the following dogma: "that though creation may attest that a creator has been, it supplies no evidence to prove that a creator still exists." 
 						- Sir Richard Francis Burton, 
						King Vikram and the Vampire

chapter n

i was at work when the message came. we'd all be waiting for generations, but like anything that you wait for for generations, i never thought it would actually come. to add insult to injury, rather than being some 19th century leather evelope from darkest africa or carved ivory inset to a tibetian mandala, the message came though my normal syndicated work feed. i was taking notes on the requirements of transfering early 20th century film to the digital archive, trying to decide if corrections to film imperfections should be made in data aquisition, or by software correction later. the practical upshot was that i was having to stare very closely at the 1906 buffalo bill cody's wild west show in london, frame by frame, and evaluate the best way to preserve the data integrity, and whether later damage to the film was part of its historical value. I was in a windowless converted room in the basement of the radcliff science library with extra leads hanging around undecorously for my particular requirements, as a firm archivist and curator. i had everything external running to my knee display to minimize the chance of actual interruptions. consequently, my knee had probably been flashing at the table leg for some time before i pulled up my leg and looked at the message. it was marked importent, then unmarked by my server since it couldn't verify the sender. 

   we humbly request your assitance in locating an 
   artifact of interest. please confirm reciept. 

without even really considering what i was doing, and before everything had sunk in, i hit reply and typed 
   
   rcvd

i walked back to my office in a kind of daze. what did i do now? it had happened, it was in the past tense. i'd gotten the message. i had always assumed there was slightly more information than that in the message, because i had no idea what to do next. just then a co-worker ducked his head in the door.

"kate, there's a courier for you, wants you signature specifically."

i walked out to the lobby. there was a swarthy, uncomfortable man with a slightly greasy looking book sized package. 

"cath-er-rine page?" he demanded in a thick accent, pronouncing every sylable. i nodded.

"sign here, to conclude this arrangement!" he announced. he was striking something of a comic figure. i signed, and he looked extremely satisfied. and then just as i reach for the package, he pulled it away.

"wait, how do i know you are cath-er-rine page? he looked darkly suspicious, and slightly mad.

"because i told you i am." i replied, somewhat confused. 

"not good enough!" he announced. "prove youself!"

"um." i said. by now, our conversation was drawing some interest. "come back to my desk, i'll show you some id, i guess" 

we made a sight, me looking flustered, guiding this slightly dirty suspicious man though the office, who was cluching a package to his chest and leering at everyone we passed as if they were going to attack him and take his package away.

we reached my desk. by now we'd gathered a small crowd of people trying not to look interested. i got my purse and pulled out my passport. he looked it over, glancing from it to me and back again. 

"look" i said, "that's a valid form of id in every country in the world, i'm not going to be able to produce anything better."

he looked at it for a few seconds more, the space around him growing more and more awkward. 

"ok" he announced. "is good enough!" with that, he threw the package on my desk. He caught my eye and smiled. "see you in africa!" and with that, he spun around and marched out, the entire office staring after him.

I looked down at my slightly greasy looking book sized package. The cuoriour had been perfect, a surreal messenger for a surreal message. For a moment, i considered just throwing it in the trash, or walking up to the street and giving it to the pitt river museum so that they could hopefully put it in a drawer and forget to catalog it. Since the dutch divesture of their colonial collection pitt river's attmept to organize itself had fallen to pieces; theorectically they'd only agreed to take the items the dutch couldn't find appropriate owners for in their home countries. practically, that was a lot of items. It was especially difficult as the only dutch speaker working for pitt river at that time had suddenly quit and moved to america, and as packeges came in the staff was at something of a loss of what to make of them. As a practical joke over the last couple months people had been dropping by packeges with dutch all over them and sneaking them in to leave on tables and in the overflow mail area. One person, in a not very well thought out act of kindness had baked cookies for the poor confused and overworked staff, which were actually only unwrapped when the smell had reached such a crescendo they had to be found right then. My office followed the trials of pitt river closely, as they were the only people around with more material to sort through and less resources to do it than ourselves. So there, i thought to myself, a little dutch text on this package and viola, i never have to think about it again. 

Somewhere in my childhood, mom was showing me the letters, and getting me started on transcribing them. Taking the old crumbling things in my hands hooked me into loving the past. And then, at an age when literacy still held a bit of novelty, i could make them new again, make them last for another age. I never had any question about what i wanted to be when i grew up, i knew that i wanted to be there in the last moments of the life of history, be the last one to hold old things, and be the one to carry them forward.  When i transcribed the family documents as a child i often didn't even know what the words meant. It was enough to trace the shape of them, it was enough to write the letters down. If my mom could read them it was enough to make me happy.  I wouls ask her to read me the letters at bed time, and she would.

"someday" my mom used to tell me, "you will take all of these to africa!" 

on slow summer days when school was out i would ask my mom if it was time to go to africa yet. Not yet not yet, i could hear her dreamily in my past, you must wait for the message. But she would let me read about africa, all preperation for the trip i would take when i got the message. 

When i was a teenager we did it again, with the transcriptions and remaining originals.  This time we made it digital and put the files in several locations just to make sure nothing happened to them. Reading though them i realized i might never be called to make the trip to africa, that i might instead be some child of mine to whom i'd passed all this onto. But i really hoped it would be me. I would day dream in class about a silver clad arab warrior, busting into my class, bowing, and asking me to go to africa. I carried the digital copies with me just in case. straight into adulthood i carried those copies with me, just as i carried the passion for preserving the past into my education and career. 

All of that was at war inside me as i looked at the still unopened package on my desk. I really liked my life, I wasn't sure i wanted to run away on a romantic dream to africa. I had been waiting so long i'd stopped waiting. It felt too early and too late to be heading off to fulfill some 200 year old mission my family was on. 

I never really had a choice though, my life had been building to this moment for so long that momentum alone could carry it though. Without feeling willed to, my hands undid the package. It contained an old notebook, which was full of the more notes and tips and so on for africa. As i flipped through i saw snippits of data that completed what i'd learned and transcribed as a girl. It was the key to burton's artifact, proof that i'd been called. It was above all, my secret fulfilled. My heart was beating hard. 

I shut the notebook, and went off to the office's destructive scanner. I set it for preserve image of page and ocr. I cut the binding and covers off and slid the guides around the pile of pages left over. I slipped a memory card in the slot and went off to find my boss' office while the scanner worked.

I found his door ajar and knocked, just hard enough to open it to where we could see each other.  He was alone, working on a notepad. I let out a little breath of relief i didn't know i'd been holding. I didn't know what i would have done if i had to wait. 

"i really need to talk to you, as soon as possible." i told him. 

"come in, and shut the door." he said. Robert, my boss' name was robert. I always had a hard time remebering bosses were human, even nice ones.

"how would you feel if i took a sabbatical?" i asked. 

he looked a bit pensive, a bit uptight. "when are you thinking of going? what are your plans?”

i decided i was feeling a bit pensive too. "what about more of a family leave thing then?

"look kate, what's going on?" 

"i have to go. i don't know when i'll be back."

robert sat back in his chair. "i don't know that we can let you go right now." he told me, very matter of factly. "we don't have anyone that can pick up your projects, and in this economy we aren't likely to find anyone was your set of skills." 

it was time to interupt. Robert was a good boss. He wasn't willing to just put my work on other overburdened people that wouldn't know how to do it. But  i didn't know if he understood the concept of extrordinary events in people's lives outside of work. 

"ah. so i think i may be leaving anyhow. it would be great if there was a job when i came back, but not, strictly speaking, required."

he looked taken aback. "is it that serious?" 

"it's pretty serious. Actually, it's the most serious thing in my life. I'm sorry robert, i'm sorry this is so sudden." i was fidgiting and nervous and i knew i looked it.

he suddenly looked very sad. then i remembered that he's lost his wife to cancer very quickly a couple years back before he was specifically my boss. I felt like telling him no no no, it's nothing like that, but i also realized it was somewhat useful to let him think it was. 

"look" he started, and stopped again. 

"when," he said, "um, when are you thinking about going?" 

"i need to get my things in order, i need to pack," i was realizing i had a lot to do, and i couldn't possibly do it all. It was time to get down to the things i really needed to do. "i guess i need to pack, and give my cat away."

he nodded, and thought for a second.

"well, i'll put your position open. If it's still open when you get back, you can apply for it."

fair enough. I had the pertinent expereince. 

"thanks robert. Thanks for everything."
he grabbed my hand warmly and wished me luck. All i need now was someone to give my cat to. I headed home to pack. After packing, i headed back to the office to get the memory card and notebook i'd forgotten earlier. I was never great at organization.

I retrieved my memory card from the scanner and set the original notebook for shredding. On my way home i took a walk to think about what i was doing next, through some old college buildings. It was just occuring to me that i didn't know when i'd be back in oxford. i brought up a feed of friend's public geolocation data and did a search on africa, just to see if i had anyone to drop in on. I didn't really have a good reason to go to africa otherwise, and i didn't want to answer too many questions about why i was suddenly going to a country where i didn't know anyone for a family emergency. Two names came up, both emotionally complex. marcia, one of my best friends since childhood and the mother of my child, and simon. Simon was my ex, my most dramatic, most flamboyant ex. 

"so," i explained to the air, "i'll be calling marcia then." but i texted her instead. I was feeling nervous. No one can tell you are nervous in a text message.

    Need to go to africa. Want to come visit you. What's the 
    best way to get there? Where are you going to be? Any 
    chance richle is with you?

A few minutes later marcia replied.

    I won't be here long enough to bother, and 
    richle is back in london anyway. Why the sudden 
    interest in africa?

I stared at that message for a minute. What to say? Marcia was not someone i lied to, she was at most someone i prevaricated a bit too. She saved me the trouble, as she was one of the few that knew of my family's little curse, as it were.

    Did you get the message?

I typed yes back on my knee keyboard, but the send didn't take. This was strange as i hadn't actually had any problems with this service in months. I pulled up the diagnostic mode and looked at messages for the last few minutes. Everything had been fine, and then the signal had suddenly dropped to nothing, no wireless towers reachable. Either a couple of towers had fallen over simutaneously, or someone had turned on a jammer. I looked over in the quad of the christchurch college, which i was walking through, and saw something burning. A crowd of drunken and huge boys ran into me, laughing and pushing me  out of the quad and into a darkened area near the bathrooms. The burning thing was probably a boat, i figured. Just then i got shoved from behind again. I looked behind me to see a procession of 3 robed figures, whom i was in the way of. I hustled ahead, but they kept behind me, and were joined by another column from the direction of the quad. In the firelight and the lights of the college i could see young men's faces under the hoods looking very angry. I'd doubtless stumbbled into some hazing thing for a dining society, and i was ruining all of their young men's mythology with my adult womanish presence and normal clothing. 

i went into the women's toilet. I don't know exactly what i was thinking, that maybe they wouldn't come in here because they were all men. they didn't, but only because they'd already been there. There was a dead goat on the floor and messages scrawled in the wall in blood, presumably the goat's blood. 

“how did they get a goat in here?” i asked the air. The air took no notice.

Besides the usual pentagrams and horns and whatnot, there was a message - 

  it belongs to us

“i've walked into some weird college hazing shit in my time, but, wow.” I said, and reached for my headset to call the groundskeeping office for christchurch. The headset was ripped out of my hand just as someone grabbed my hair. I tried to swirl around, but i heard the headet clatter to the floor almost the same time as i felt a sharp point in my throat. I went limp. 

A voice whispered in my ear. “ms page, you go and get it. And when you've got it, you bring it to us. And then we won't kill you. Do you understand?” she, i think it was a she, pulled my head down by my hair and sliced upward with the knife.

“what are you talking about?” i yelled “what is...”

but my assailent threw me to the floor and ran out before i could say anything more. I got up, and brushed some goat's blood off myself, and retreived my headset. I looked around the bathroom again. Now everything seemed to point to me, where before it was been all generic foolishness. I called the grounds keeper's office and reported a bloody mess in the women's loo. I looked again at the wall. Whoever had done all this knew how to write impecibly in blood, or used some sort of tool, or both. Everything was very detailed and precise. I grabbed a paper towel and smudged out the “it belongs to us” before dropping it in the bin and heading out. 

Great, i thought to myself, now i have to go change my clothes, and hope that no one notices the blood on me right now. I started to head for the high street to catch a bus to my flat, and finally the fear struck me. They knew who i was and what i was doing. If i went home now, they'd probably know where i lived. But then, they had to know where i lived, didn't they? It was no great secret, i wasn't too good at protecting my privacy. I stood on a street corner a bit paralyzed. I started walking again, around the block, killing time, moving, trying to think of what to do. I needed the most bad ass person i knew, someone that could just tell me what to do. That was marcia, and marcia was in africa. I didn't know anyone else that could cope with this kind of stuff. There were a few people in london, maybe, but they'd want to know about why the satanists were after me, and my trip, and enough people appeared to know about that already. In the mean time i was litterally walking in circles, my head down, probably muttering to myself. I nearly ran into a man in a trenchcoat before i saw him standing in my path, facing me. 

“good evening.” he said. He was another american.

I wanted to run, but a deep lizardy instinct in my brain told me not to, told me to stand still. 

“are you,” he paused, and looked at a scrap of paper, “are you 2001:618:400:3bb9:230:65ff:feb0:c95e , currently resolving to OxKateTPage?”

that was me, that was my phone. But why tell him that? I wondered. I decided he didn't look like a satanist, and hoped cliches would hold. 

“yes i am.” i answered. He looked slightly surprised. He didn't seem to be expecting another american either. 

“i'm detective inspector gillian, would you care to acompany me to my office? I'd like to ask you what you know about some livestock and the defacing of a college bathroom.”

of course, I'd left my geolocation data on. They'd just checked their caller id and handed the police my number to trace. I'd been reporting my location every 6 seconds, tracing a lovely square around this block. That must have really looked great to the cops. Kate, i thought to myself, you're a fucking idiot. 

“hold on one second.” i told him, and started typing on my thigh. He looked at me suspiciously, and grabbed for something in his pocket. My signal dropped to zero again. I just smiled, i wasn't trying to make a call out anyhow. I was adjusting my calling options. I set encrypted calls, geolocation data to be sent to called party only. After that, i looked back up to the cop.

“sorry, i wasn't trying to make a call. I just thought of something i wanted to change, and figured if i didn't do it just then i was going to forget. Thanks for waiting.” 

he looked at me quizzickly, perhaps a little annoyed. 

“um.” i explained, “sometimes i just have to do things right then and there or they just don't happen.”

he asked me to come with him, but i had the feeling i wasn't really matching the image of a goat killing bathroom defacer in his head.

Detective inspector gillian, or rick, as i called him after we got to chatting wasn't really suspecting me very strongly. He just wanted to know why i hadn't stuck around, and what i'd wiped with the paper towel that came up with my dna on them. I said “the wall.” figuring that the best way to lie was to stay as close to the truth as possible.

“why?” he asked.

I shrugged, trying to figure out what to say, again, the truth seemed to be the best lie. “because there was something particularly nasty and scary drawn up there, and i figured no one else really needed to see it.”

“weren't you concerned with destroying evidence?”  he asked.

“not terribly. It was just a graffited bathroom, with a dead animal in it. I mean it was nasty, but i just chalked it up to some immature kids in christchurch, and i couldn't see any actual harm done to the structure. Is it something more serious?”

“we don't know. What was the drawing of?”

this is was ready for, and this i was lying about.

“it was of a demon deficating while holding its penis. I just found the whole thing a bit obscene.” 

he looked a bit taken aback, and a bit sympathetic. I felt like maybe i was winning.

“what looks bad here is that you reported it to the groundskeeper, and then you left.”

“i had places to go.” i said. As soon as the words left my mouth, i realized that i'd made an aweful mistake.

Mr gillian leaned in a little closer to me. “why were you walking around that block, if you had places to go?”

“i also have a lot on my mind. I guess i got a bit caught up with that.”

“ok, ms page. I have down here that you work for the library on a digital film archive project?”

“until today, yes”

“what happened today?”

“i quit. As i said, i have a lot on my mind, a lot going on in my personal life right now. The last thing i needed was to get involved with something some stupid kids who think they are getting all into the occult were doing in the girl's loo. I felt i should report it, but i didn't want to stay around.” 

i was on dangerous ground. There was a huge ammount of tension between me and him. I was so obviously not telling the whole story, i'd even said as much. He was in the unenviable position of trying to decide if i the story i wasn't telling was about this silly bathroom problem or not. 

He stood up. “would you like some tea?” i shook my head, and he stepped out.

He came back a few minutes later with a tea in his own mug and sat down.

“can you stick around town for a few days in case we have some more questions?”

“no” i said. “i'm leaving the country most likely tomorrow due to a family crisis.”

“ah.” he said, “can you at least answer the phone if we call?”

“yeah, i think i can do that.” i replied, smiling. 

He smiled and shook his head. “have a better evening, ms. Page.”

when i stepped out of the police area and consequently the phone jamming field my phone lit up. It was marcia, time delayed message. 

   What the hell are you doing behind a police jammer? 
   Are you alright? Should i send a lawyer?

The next time delayed message was a smart business card for a london law firm, one that put them on retainer for me, debited from a third party account if i didn't reply withing 12 hours. I smiled at marcia, so far away, and so effective in her worried and canceled the business card.

I sat down on the street corner to compose my thoughts for a message to marcia. I doublechecked that my message was encrypted and going through an encryted tunnel, and required her server to support end to end encryption on the message before i sent it.

   Yes i got the message. Ran into a bit of trouble 
   regarding the artifact. Some satanists seem to want 
   it, whatever it is. But i'm ok for now. Do you know 
   anyone that would look after my cat?
   
i was still in the same boat for going home as i had been when i was intercepted by mr. Gillian, but i cared less. They wanted me to go get this thing anyway, what use would it serve to trash my house? I started to make my way home. Marcia came through. 

   I have a ticket booked and waiting at heathrow for 
   tomorrow to johhanesburg. Cheapest fare, you just
   have to confirm the debit. Don't worry about the 
   cat, i'll take care of it. I've contacted simon and 
   he's available to pick you up. Stay safe. Remember,
   richle needs you.

I shifted over to my accounts to confirm the debit. She'd found a very cheap fare indeed.

Chapter n – 1, background

marcia is my most amazing friend. she's the big martial artist type, sometimes corp exec, looks like a model, the one with all her shit together. the one out of a movie. marcia does everything that she says she'll do. she's got the least used agent on the net. she is so self organizing, it has nothing to do. men fall over marcia, men feel like tufts of lint in her presence. geek types esspecially fawn over her, since she is the most cyborg person i've ever known. she uses men, but far less than they are hoping for. she has a slightly boyish athletic body, still with generous boobies and one of those eternally young, slightly androgenous faces. i've seen every kind of man go after marcia, and many kinds of women. they all come up empty though, marcia had most of what people think of as sexuality and libido surgically removed. 

i asked her right after the surgery the question you are wanting to ask her right now. what's it like? what does it mean to lose the biggest motivating factor in human existance?

she answered what she always answers to that question now;  "i feel as though i've lost my worst enemy."

a few years later, she asked to come stay the weekend at her place. She told me it was important. I showed up with my things, which we carried off to the guest room. She sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her. I obliged her, and sat.

“there's something i want to talk to you about.” Marcia began. “i've decided that i want a child.”

“Didn't you rather make that difficult?” i said. I was still getting used to the whole sexlessness thing. 

“Don't be flippant, i've given this a lot of thought.”

“i'm sorry, i didn't mean it. That was bad of me. Are you thinking of adopting?”

“no. When i became a eunich i had some eggs put on ice.” 

That surprised me. Marcia's split from the world of sexuality had been so complete, so profound, so enthusiatic, the thought that anything as sexual as reproduction could get though boggled me a bit.  But it made sense; while marcia couldn't really do the pair bonding involved with something like marriage for phsiological reasons. There were micro lesions in her brain that insured that the things we do to reinforce romantic bonds would never be more than torture for her. But there was nothing stoppoing her from loving a child. Or being loved by one. 

“This is about bonding, isn't it?” I asked

marcia smiled. “See, this is why i talk to you, this is why i pick you for these things. You get it, i don't have to waste time explaining things.”

“You probably have to waste a little time. I don't know how good an idea it is. After the bonding, which isn't there for everyone anyhow, you have to commit to this lifelong relationship. And relationships aren't something you've had a lot of experience with. What are you going to do if you feel like you're bad at it? It's not like you can rethink this decision.”

She was still smiling. "this is so like you. You get to the heart of the matter. But this one, i know. I've always wanted to share my life with someone, and the someone i want to spend my life loving is my daughter. And i'm telling you before i'm telling anyone else because i want to ask you to be my daughter's father."

i hate it when people strike me speechless. At that moment i was very speechless. I continued with the general speechless motif until marcia started looking impatient. 

I finally managed "but i can't even, and you can't,"

now i was getting upset. Marcia was just staring at me, arms crossed. I didn't understand what i was supposed to do in this situation. "ok, look, we're both women, and you don't even have most of your reproductive system. How the hell are we supposed to have a child? And why ask me? Why do you want me to be that 'father'?" 

it was marcia's turn to be upset. "look, if you don't want to, just say, but don't play stupid. You are far too clever to not understand me." 

she looked more vulnerable than i ever thought possible. Invincible marcia, sitting 5 inches from me with her arms crossed, forhead slightly wrinkled from emotional effort. It was profoundly wrong, it made me want to run away and hide under something. 

"just humour me and explain what you are thinking. I'm in no fit state right now to work it all out for myself. Is that so outrageous?" i said.

marcia relented. "i guess i'm very tense, i just want you very much to say yes. My plan is to use one of my eggs and a sperm, probably from laramie, and replace his dna with yours, then implant her into penelope to carry her to term." 

the whole plan was very strange, and technically difficult. I was still in shock, and i don't ask the best questions when i'm in shock.

"penelope your sister or penelope your college roomate?"

"sister. You know, i haven't thought about my college roomate in some time, but thanks for reminding me." snarky, that was better. That wasn't the strangely scary emotional marcia i'd just seen. 

"why laramie's sperm? I mean, the sperm casing has nothing to do with anything at that point."

she shrugged. "Two reasons really. A, in some countries donating the sperm technically makes him a parent, and i travel a lot. And b, in most countries it puts him in the line of succession should anything happen to me. I'd like him there. I think in a pinch he would make a good father." 

“huh.” I said. “This kid's going to have 4 parents.”

“Yes, she would. But with you as dad we know it'll be a girl. “

i smiled at her. “X is all i have to give.”

“Does that mean yes?” she asked. 

“no. that means i'll think about it. You are asking me to be a parent, and i at least need to think about it.” i said.

“Do you want to know why i want you to do it?”

I thought for a moment. I thought about all the answers she could give, all the possible praise and pratical reasons. Part of me wanted to swell with the tremendous honor, and bind marcia, the incredibly successful marcia, closer to me. But none of these were the right reasons to say yes or no to her. It struck me that right now her reasons were unimportant. 

“no. i don't want to know why. Give me a couple days to think about it.” i told her.

She nodded. "48 hours."

over the next two days i talked worse care senarios over with marcia. 

What if something goes wrong with her? What if she's not as bright as you want? What if she's everything, but she dies on you? What if she grows up to be a serial killer? What if you die? What if she and i never have anything to talk about?

Marcia answered my concerns deeply and patiently. Some of her answers were practical, but mainly her answer was "i don't know, we'll do our best."

two days later i told her i'd do it, on the condition that i got to name our daughter. 

"what do you want to name her?" marcia said.

"i want to name richle." i replied.

“Just to annoy laramie?”

“Partly, and partly because i think it's a nice name.”

“Ok,” marcia said. “I can appreciate both reasons.”

Next she headed off to convince laramie. Seeing as he was a catholic priest and the church looked askance at things like this he was liable to be a tougher sell. But in recent years the church had taken a softer line on fertility treatments, which this technically was. There being no actual genetic relationship to laramie helped as well. In the end marcia signed a contract binding her to single embyro implantation and a few other technical points, and the body of christ said it was ok for laramie to assist in a fertility treatment. She nailed penelope's ok with a phonecall. Slightly over a year and a bevy of hormone treatments later she was breastfeeding richle for the first time on a bed next to her sister in a recovery room. 

I dropped in the next day to say hi to both of them and to see my new daughter. I had no idea how i would feel. When i first picked her up she seemed so small and alien. She didn't cry, or pee on me, or anything people told me she'd do, she just stared at me. I visited the new mom everyday for the first couple of weeks, and then about a weekend a month. She did fantastic, and she and richle were everything together she's hoped they would be. Richle was so beautiful i could barely believe she was half from me. I was falling in love as sure as her mom, and i realized that i couldn't really afford to. So when richle was a about 8 months i told marcia i would see less of her and our daughter. I feared relief or worry or something from her, but marcia understood.

"I understand." She said. "drop in from time to time. But not so often that it gets too hard to leave." and that's what i did. 

Richle was five years old by the time i got the message. 

Marcia never stopped looking out for me, and never infringed on my independence. It was a hard line to walk, but she manages it. 

I slept at home uneventfully that night, bags beside my bed. I woke to an early alarm and began to make my way, in the semi-coma of travellers who are always suffling their feet without enough sleep and not fully awake.

Chapter n – 2, more background. 

i first saw laramie many years ago walking away from the kotel in jerusalem. I was fresh from my first trip through africa and doing the tourist walk of old jerusalem. The kotel is the west wall, the most sacred place in judaism. He was walking out of the men's side, and i not looking where i was going, stumbled into him. he was tall, swathed in black that fit tight neck to navel and fell away to a skirt style bottom and boots. he was wearing a cowboy hat. everything was black, everything but the priest's collar. what impressed me most was that all the blacks matched. he flashed me a toothy smile. i am not, apparently, a super attractive woman. i am at best slightly striking, and mostly i trade on my amazing personality. laramie was gorgeous, and at that moment i want to be gorgeous too. i hadn't really bothered to take the collar into account. i think at some level i decided that he was too sexual, too vibrant to possibly be celebate. the other thing i knew, with that style and that swagger, was that he had to be american. i was half right.

i decided to ask directions. yes, that would be how i would strike up a conversation. oh, yes. 

"excuse me, do you know where the..." hadn't thought through that part. "the..." 

"the... what?" he said. he didn't just say, he challenged. plus, he spoke in a hard to place european accent of some sort, so not american afterall. he knew what i was up to, he wanted to see if i could make it worth his while. he was such a perfect creature, why would i be the first to try this with him? it was almost certainly a lost cause, i decided the least i could do is go out memorably.

"do you know where the place we are going to have drinks is? i assume it's nearby." i tried to speak smoothly, but it was all a bit of a blurt. 

he looked taken a back, almost offended. i'd hit him with a line and he'd not been expecting that. 

he began to stammer slightly. "you seem to be getting ahead of me.."

"damn, there i go again, not showing my work. this is why i never did well in math. Let's start with names and hands." i suggested, “my name is kate." i offered a hand.

He he smiled took it. "Please call me laramie. Kate as in kiss me kate?" 

oh, this was going well. i smiled warmly and nodded, 

"yes, as in kiss me kate."

"well then kiss-me-kate, i think the place we are having a drink is right over here."

wow, i thought, this is really going well. right up to 15 minutes later when he explained that he was gay. also, he was a french expat living mainly in arizona. work brought him to jerusalem. i was stuck on the gay part, but trying very hard to remember the rest in case he quizzed me. 

"what work?" i asked

he looked a bit startled, then confused. "i'm a priest. i'm sorry, i thought you knew."

i suppose i should have guessed from the collar. still, it was all very confusing. 

"are you a missionary of some sort?" 

"ah," he replied "i think i see the source of your confusion. no, i suppose i'm more of a research priest. i am also a doctor of archaelogy."

"of course you are."

it wasn't six months before i ached for him. Laramie, i decided, was just always going to have a place in my heart. As for him, he wanted a friend, and i think he wanted essepcially a friend outside the church as a fresh perspective. I became that for him. He bounced ideas and politics off me, and i was wholly secular at him. Trying to convert me was outside the bounds of our relationship, as was trying to talk him out of catholocism. 

That's how i came to be in love with a gay priest.

the cheapest way to joburg, by some fluke, connected though tel aviv with a 5 hour layover. I texted laramie and asked if he could make it. He replied that i'd picked a particularly free day, and he had a place in mind. I walked out of customs with the normal israeli security shell shocked feeling, and he was there. He was dressed in custom black, white, and red motocycle leather, with, i kid you not, a priest's collar done in leather. I walked up to him and peered at his throut. The whole thing zipped up to his neck, and the white bit hooked onto the rest of the collar, sealing it against the wind. 

"hi kate, i'm up here." he said cheerfully. 

"wow, that is quite a getup. Did you have to explain alot how you wanted the collar done?" i said.

He laughed. "it's really nice to see you too, kate. And no i didn't, the man that made it came up with that and suggested it to me." 

"so if you are on a motorcycle now," i began. He rolled his eyes.

"we'll get a cab, foolish woman."

we got snarked at the taxi stand by a chassidic man. He flashed me such a look of discust, which was surprising. I rarely found chassidim that would look at me at all. As we got into the next cab, i asked laramie,

"what is the very frum hampstead heath?" frum, by the way, means ultra religious jews. The ones that won't touch the hand of the wrong gender, men that won't listen to the voice of women singing, and so forth. 

Laramie looked confused. "hampstead heath?"

"it's the area in london where the gay men go to have anonymous sex. Every city has one, i figured that holds true for israel, and probably doubly true for the frum, since none of them can afford to be gay."

laramie looked curious. "i honestly don't know. But thanks for the tip on hemapstead heath, i'll have to use that if i find myself in london."

i got my best shocked face on, "you?!"

he glanced at me. "no. Kate, i'm celibate. That's why it's ok that i'm gay."

Laramie was born to a very religious family in a very religious 
village on the coast of france. About the time that was i was having naughty dreams about the chess club president, laramie was laregely taken up with collecting sea shells and periphenalia from the beach. To each he gave stories, tried to imagine their purpose, how they were used, what the hand was like that held them. 

He found an old home made fishing pole on the beach with a wine bottle cork fed though the line as a float, and bait long gone and a plane hook on the end. He took it home, and used it to re-arrange his shells and rocks. He imagined christ's hands on the pole, rather than his own. He imagined christ healing people when he touched the pole to rocks and shells. He would say (in french) you i heal of leprosy, tapping one rock, and you i heal of limblessness, tapping a shell. They were stories of magic tricks though, and nothing more. Jesus was the action hero of laramie's early life. Games about jesus were the only games he was allowed to play without getting a good beating as well. But despite all that, one day he was walking down the road to the center of town, and he was struck. The awe of all that was good, of god's goodness, filled him. He felt as if he could see all the saints dancing in terrific joy in front of him, and as he held on to the pole he could hear the verses he'd read, playing in his head again. "suivez-moi, et je vous ferai pêcheurs d'hommes" (serve me, i shall make you fishers of men) and most of all, most powerfully of all, elle excuse tout, elle croit tout, elle espère tout, elle supporte tout. La charité ne périt jamais. Les prophéties prendront fin, les langues cesseront, la connaissance disparaîtra.

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

Laramie was floudering like a beached fish on the road to damascus. He was streaming tears. He barely could walk, he was so struck in all one moment by the spirit of his faith. He made is way to the church and begged the father to let him devote his life to christ right then and there. But laramie was a child and his father's only son. The old priest knew his father, and knew that he would want his son by his side. He knew the man who had been his friend for many years looked forward to granchildren that would bear his name. He talked the boy out of priestly devotion and told him that many time the lord calls on us to serve him in smaller ways in our lives. Love the lord, he said, and he will show you the way. To love the lord as a boy you must above all honor your father and mother. Laramie nodded solelmly, and returned home. He was both elated and dashed. 

His consumine love of god, christ, mary, and the whole crew didn't leave him. He brought them his whole soul as he found it. Which is why he found himself a few years later confessing to the same priest that his affection for men was profound, physical, and driving him. that his love of his fellow man was perhaps inappropriate to his love of god. 

The old priest, still a friend of family's and at heart a compasionate if simple man, rocked on his chair.

he pleaded to the priest, he was still bathed in the ecstacy of his religion. he still wanted to make himself all better, in order to serve god. 

"perhaps," he said, drawing a deep breath, "perhaps we should consider the priesthood after all." 

for what it's worth, i've always assumed his spiritual awakening was the result of some sort of misdiagnosed aneurism. 

"is it really ok that you're gay?" i asked.

He shrugged. "certainly more than it used to be. But not in many communities, and no one likes how out i am. For that matter, i'm not very out. I don't tell people unless they ask and its not often that people come out with a 'father, are you gay?' unprompted."

he thought for a second. "it helps that they need my skills here. And it helps that i'm not really a missionary. I think they would be nervous about a gay missionry."

we pulled up to the cafe, and negociated our way inside in a few  minutes. I picked up where we'd left off, roughly.

"you told me you were gay without my asking." i said.

"that was different- you don't know me in the context of the church. Also, i needed someone to talk to." he paused, and then, "also, i needed to let you down gently but quickly."

my turn to shrug. "fair enough. I've always thought your catholosism was weirder than your sexual preferance anyway."

he laughed. "this from you- you are so strange. you know, kate, if i were  straight, i'd leave the priesthood for you."

he got me for a second, for a moment i just fell a little deeper into his spell. 

"Huh, really?" i said, "but you say that to all the girls, don't you?"

he flashed a grin, and looked into his coffee.

"yes, yes, you're right, i tell all the girls that." 

we started to laugh. I felt my chest loosen and tighten all at once. 

We talked on and burned our time away. We caught a cab back to ben gurion for the next leg of my flight and laramie came as far as security to see me off. 

As we walked, laramie toting my lugage, he told me "look, i want to see you more. You must come to jerusalem, i'm there nearly full time at the moment. I've even set you up a place to stay- i have a cousin zia who is a jewish convert- no don't ask, we don't have that kind of time now, but anyway, she lives in jerusalem, and she's said you can stay anytime and she doesn't really care how long. Her and her husband's house is too big for them anyway. So come anytime and text her- i'm sending her number now- and stay and we'll have coffees." 

i accepted the number to my contacts. "i'll think about it, it's very kind of you. Honestly though, I don't know when i'll be back. I don't know what's going to happen to me."

we both looked troubled. But by then there was a young israeli security man, taking my passport and ticket out of my hand and tapping them impatiently, and my visit with laramie was over. 
i've always had a way with men. Not a particularly good way, but a way none the less.

One of my first passionate affections was in 8th grade. He was a start boy, president of the chess club. to all appearences, he liked me enough. i had a serious crush on him, had had one for ages. Somehow, and i don't remember how either of us managed it, we arranged to have something that aproximated a date.

i was feeling pretty good. he had the geek shyness. he said very little, but when he spoke it was to blurt out facts. he had delicate features, partly hidden under an overgrown mop of hair. we had a  pass off campus at lunch, and took it at the local burger place. we grabbed our food to go, avoiding the crush of other students and trying to act together but not too together. as we walked back he told me about making rockets with his dad and brothers at home and firing them off on trips out to the desert. i listened attentively. i'm sure rocketry would have facinated me normally, but i couldn't have cared less. he could have been reciting mein kamf and i would have listened, kept my eyes on him, half smiled. 

when we got back to school we were at a slight loss for what to do. i suggested chess, and he looked pained for a minute. i didn't really pick up on it at the time. it took years for me to see that this was were i really went wrong. he agreed and brought out a pocket magnetic chess set. this is where he went wrong, and i hope he's gotten over it by now. chess looked cool to me, and i'd gotten to the point where i was completely confident about how all the pieces moved. 

and that was about it.

i moved first. i like knights. i like them because they can leap over other pieces, they seem like the action heros if chess to me because of that. so, i moved my action knight, with a bit of a flourish, out in front of the pawn line. 

he moved a pawn. 

i moved another knight. action, action, action!

he moved a bishop.

bishops are good, i thought. they have a very fast move thing going. you can slide them accross the board, pull your hand away and make that brief all important signifigant eye contact with your opponant. it's the eye contact that says "there, i've moved my bishop, he is most definately moved, and moved with confidence. it is not my turn anymore!" however, looking at the board, i realized i couldn't move my bishop. i hadn't moved any pawns. this is the failing of the bishop, he is not much of a leaper. i wanted to move my bishop badly now, but i was learning patience and preparation, so i decided to move my pawn in preperation to move my bishop. i moved a pawn right by my knight. i moved him two spaces, because i knew he could, and because two spaces allways looks more impressive than one. i wanted to be serious to him. i wanted to be impressive. i wanted him to look at me when i moved.

he didn't though, he just looked at the board. he moved a pawn.

oh, wow. now it was getting tough. i could finally move that all important bishop, but i could also threaten one of his pieces with a pawn. how good would that be? i could be strong and forthright, i could make the first threat of the game. how could he not notice me then? he'd have to look up from the board. i looked longingly one last time and mr. bishop, and then abondoned him. i move the pawn and threatened his pawn. i looked up from the board, hoping to be there to meet his eyes. no luck though, he was head down. 

he seemed stuck in amber for a moment. he wasn't looking up,but he wasn't really looking at the board anymore either. he moved his queen.

and then, barely audible, he said, "checkmate"

i snapped my head back to the board. it was true. i was in checkmate, the game was over in three moves. six if you count mine, but there wasn't much point in counting mine. i never had moves in the first place, i had flourishes. 

we sat in awkward silence after that. i had expected to lose, but i thought i'd have more to say when i did. i couldn't think of anything to say. for the first time i realized it had been important to him that i do well on the chess game, and there had never been a possibility that i would. he gathered up his chess set. 

"um, tell me more about rockets" i said

he paused, and then  "uh"

a moment later he said "i don't think there's much more to tell, i told you all about them"

"oh" came my witty rejoiner. "i guess you've been playing chess for a long time then, to be that good"

"well, that's kind of a standard thing, but i guess i have."

i had the inkling of what went wrong there. he hadn't needed me to win, he hadn't even needed me to be good at chess, he just needed the chance to show off his skills. i had been so simply aweful that i had denied him the chance to even do that. he mumbled an excuse so low i couldn't hear and suddenly he was gone. i looked down at half eaten french fries. my attempt at a date hadn't lasted though the fries. i wanted to follow his lead, i wanted to make an excuse and get away from myself as quickly as possible. instead i finished my fries and avoided the chess club for the rest of the 8th grade. 

At some level i believe 8th grade set the tone for my man troubles in life. 

Chapter n + 1

Nearly 17 hours after leaving oxford i touched down in jo'burg. simon was there to meet me at the airport. He'd lost weight and cleaned up, he was dressed sharp, and he caught my eye and held in a way that clearly said “i've been taking my meds right on schedule.” that is perhaps unfair. It wasn't simon's fault that he was born with a disposition to progrssive degenerative manic depressive brain damage, or as i called it, drama queen disease. But while it wasn't his fault, that was scant comfort to those of us who had attempted to date him. Simon had never really accepted it when i broke up with him. He didn't believe me when i told him i didn't have the energy to keep up with the mood swings and the bizarre adventures they took us both on. Partly this is because simon is something of a spoiled child, and partly because there wasn't a very good way for simon to tell the differnece between his own brain telling him to call it quits and me telling him. 

He was standing in a sea of professional drivers, all holding signs with their client's names on them. He was holding a carboard sign that just read “trouble”. I gave him my long suffering smile, and snaped a ring pic of him for later. This will help, i said to myself, if he tries to seduce me. 

“simon,” i said, “it's so good to see you. Thanks for meeting me here. You know you didn't have to.”

“bullshit.” he announced. “i absolutely had to.”

he took my luggage cart and started leading the way towards the parking lot. 

“How is your father?” i asked

“he's well. He was annoyed when he got the assignement to botswana, but he's quite pleased now, it's not at all what he expected.”

i nodded. “i know what you mean, everyone thinks of southern africa as a smoking crater until they come here. How are you liking it?”

he took a deep breath. “i love it. Frankly, i'm thinking of staying on if dad accepts re-assignment.”

that surprised me. simon was on his father's staff. It wasn't as nepotistic as it looked, since simon had studied for and actually done the job for years as aide to the ambassator, unpaid. He has a good enough resume at this point to work for many other ambassators, but he prefered working with dad. Since simon's mom had passed away they had grown close and mutually supportive. Some people looked askance at the situation, but the state department had known devon, simon's father for years amd simon all his life. I had learned something while dating simon- the unfortunate truth about nepotsism is that often the families of competent people end up being the best trained for the job. 

Then there was the matter of simon's affliction. Technically he couldn't be denied employment as a depressive or manic depressive under WTO human employment standards- this applied in the western world trade area, including north america and europe. Not only could he not be denied employment, he couldn't be fired for any resultant behaviors connected to his brain damage either. He could be put on unpaid medical leave for treatment, and forced out of active employment for not seeking appropriate treatment, all of which ammounted to being fired. Suing under wto standards was terribly painful as well, so the only employees that really benefited from them in any substancial way were governement employees, which simon was. But while a job was effectively garenteed a cooperative and understanding boss wasn't. This was another benefit of working with his father, he knew quite a lot about drama queen disease. All of this was always more important than any particular place has ever been, until now.
“what's making you want to staying botswana?”

“have you been to botswana, kate?”

“actually, no i haven't.” i admitted. “i've mainly been to south africa and for a camping holiday in madagascar.”

we arrived at the car and he loaded my stuff into the back. 

“get in, and i'll tell you why.”

i got in, and simon jumped into the drivers seat. 

“in 1966 botswana gained independence from england...”

i put up my hand to stop him. “i have an idea. Skip the history lesson, and just tell me what you like about it.”

he grinned. “it's well managed. The people like the governement, and the governement likes the people, and that's never been true in any other country i have lived. It was that goodwill that saw them through the aids crisis, which as horrible as it was made them even gentler and closer to each other. Plue it turns out i dearly love big game. First time i even got my car stuck behind a group of elephants walking tails in trunks, my heart was in my throat and it's never really left. Do you know there is more big game per square foot in botswana than anywhere in the whole world?”

i was smiling. I'd never seen simon so genuinely happy. “no, i did not know that.”

“yep. During and even before the zimbabwean civil war all the big animals made their way to botswana, as if they knew this was where they'd be safe.”

“i had no idea elephants had such good instincts for geopolitics.” i said.

He smiled. “apparently they do.”

well fell into silence for a little while, and without realizing it i simply fell asleep. I slept all the way though south africa and straight into gaborone, botswana. 

Simon had put my stuff in his flat and gotten a small dinner together while i slept in the car. I don't sleep on planes, and was consequently most exhausted than i realized when i touched down. I woke with a note taped to my forehead, the car seat let down to put me in a roughly reclined position. I pulled the note off my forehead and read it:

   This way to candlelit dinner

it said, with an arrow pointing the wrong way. Oh dear, i thought, it's going to be one of those trips. And what's more, simon's as healthy and happy as i've ever seen him. I pulled up the ring pic with him holding the trouble sign, and studied it, trying to commit to memory how fucked up simon could be. And then i joined him for dinner. 

Dinner was lovely, a stew of groundnuts, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, and a type of african yam i'd had before but not in years. He'd gone very local on it, which was getting the whole trip off to a lovely start. 

“What's bringing you to africa?” he asked over dinner.

“backpacking trip. I just figured i'd head off, avoid countries where i'd end up kidnapped and see where i end up. I'm hoping to do some prep shopping tomorrow, go get a map and start out.”

“you sound exicted.”

“i am. I haven't done anything like this in years, i was afraid i was getting too old.”

he nodded, looking down at his food. “it's a bit sudden, isn't it?”

“what do you mean?” i asked, getting suspicious.

“marcia called me, said she's talked to you and there had been some trouble. Southern africa is a long was from oxford, I was just wondering if that's why you were here.”

thanks marcia. I muttered to myself. Before he could ask me what i wa muttering about i said “i just needed to get away for a little while. Backpacking in the most beautiful places in the world is a great way to do that. I'm not in any trouble that a little r & r can't fix.”

“marcia wanted me to look out for you. She's worried. She said some shit went down in oxford, but wouldn't give me detail. Will you give me details?”
 
“i don't need looking after. I'm fine. This trip is fine.” i said tensly. “it's just that i need you to drop this subject.”

He looked hard at me. He was definitely the healthiest and strongest i'd ever seen him, and consequently he was more perceptive than he'd ever dreamed of being when we were actually going out. I was probably more of a mess than he'd ever seen me, belying everything i was trying to convince him of. He broke off his gaze.

“alright, i'll drop it and take you shopping, and everything, on one condition. Tell me where you're really going.”

“tanzania.” i answered.

The rest of the meal passed in awkward small talk. We broke the tension after dinner with a silly boliwood movie out of his extensive collection. Over my protests he put me to bed in his room and took his own couch. The next morning he fed my biometrics into his flat door, took me into town to shop, and headed off to work. I went back to the flat and geared up. I was getting a later start than i wanted and simon came home to see me off. He looked sad. And i realized that for all its charms, botswana lacked something for simon. He was stronger than ever, but also lonlier than ever. I figured that it was time to make my goodbyes.

it was getting on toward evening, and despite the fall, it was hot. 

"hmm" i said, "it's a bit hot."

"not really surprising for the kalihari." simon replied.

we sunk into silence for a moment. 

"it's not technically the kalihari in gaborone. that's slightly west from here." i said.  

"you know, there's no way to add it up so that it isn't a lot of miles to go alone." simon said.

i had my backback on, my little one man tent and sleeping roll strapped underneath. jerky, water bottles, and dried fruit and veggies were hanging off every concievable loop point on my body, and cash was stash on a belt, a sock, one wrist, tucked into my panties, slide into a secret jacket pocket and even a token amount along with some pre-canceled credit cards, in my wallet. my real cards were tucked into the bottom of my shoe, along with spare memory cards. and one non-spare memory card. it was one hell of a bad time to be starting this argument.

"really? i thought after i walked for a mile or two the tooth fairy took me the rest of the way."

he shifted in his seat. "it's amazing you have all that stuff ready to go like this. it seems like you took no time at all to get ready,"
 
wait for it. 

"are you sure there isn't something important you've forgotten?"

"of course there'll be something importnat i've forgotten. but none of them will be cash, credit cards, passport, or cell phone. therefore, i can get it on the way." except the memory card, but i have that, i said to myself.    

"what about entry visas,"

i cut him off, "waiting for me at the borders." 

he looked up this time, breaking off the stream attempts to stall me. "how did you manage that?"

"well, at most borders i can just buy the visa there, and the other ones i asked marcia to call ahead and make arrangements."

"and that's all taken care of?"

that was a really desperate poor attempt.

"she says it is, and she's only failed to deliver on something she said she'd do once in the last five years, when she was in that car accident."

he looked defeated. 

i relented. "go make me a cup of tea, we'll run though the trip, and you can try to predict where i'll die."

he grinned, and left.

i was still standing. i figured i was due for plenty of that, so i dropped my pack and sat. i was feeling a bit melancholy, but then, that was only natural. what i was doing was not going to be fun. i was going to the source, like my great great great + n grandpa had done, though at least i knew where it was, or that it existed at all. on the other hand, i was a woman. which wasn't as bad as it was in his day, but wasn't hugely better.

he returned, with a slightly sly grin. 

"earl gray, and something special for one of my favorite ladies." he put down a cup, surround on its saucer with little gold packets.

"is that melty blend? it is isn't it?" it was. my favorite japanese chocolates. either this was an olive branch or the weirdest atemtpt to make me stay. "how the hell did you get melty blend into botswana?"

"diplomatic pouches are amazing things. i have more, but i doubt they will transport well." he gave me a slightly pleading look. 

Maybe a little of both.

"then i suppose we shall eat them now." i said, and we did. 

i waited until morning. i wasn't in a hurry. if i'd been in a hurry, i suppose i would have been flying, and simon had offered to call a peace corp friend with a kit plane. I had turned him down in what i hoped was a gentle and firm manner. Events in oxford convinced me that i needed a low profile. by the next morning simon put up no resistance. he made me a cup of tea in silence and put it in a nice steel travel mug (there was something i'd forgotten). he kissed me on the cheek, and said goodbye, and that he had a meeting, and that he would miss me, and he left.

sitting alone in simon's flat in gaborone i considered dumping the whole deal again. i could change my name, sink away, something. then again, anything that had chased me to botswana probably wasn't going to let go of me, and i'd hating living in a backwater. i'd be that one white person in the village somewhere in angola or something, the one everyone is nice to, but everyone knows they have some horrible dark past. i didn't even have a horible dark past, as least not of my own. no, i had a horrible dark future. if i wasn't going to run away, i might as well get too it. so i walked outside and set my thumb against the lock and listened for the deadbolt spinning into place. from there, i began to make my way across africa.

about three hours later, after trying to sort out tickets on trains and buses, i gave in and bought a bike. I hoped this artifact didn't mind a little more waiting.

chapter n + 2

the highway that stretches from gaberone to the northern border with zambia is one of the best highways in southern africa. it is two lane, but well built and very well maintained. it often has reasonable passing room and proves that given the oppurtunity africans can drive like reasonable human beings. the bush is cleared on either side as wide as the highway itself. that is particularly helpful, as things pop out of the bush and head for the highway and the lead time is useful. it is a wonderful place to bike ride, baring the occasional scary elephant. botswana is pleasantly flat, so i made good time. i snacked on the bike, and drank my camelback nearly dry. i broke for lunch near a petrol station where i could get some water. with that, i was back on the road, feeling genuinely fantastic just to be moving again. maybe this was what i had needed most, something to shock me out of my complacency, something to get me out of the university offices and back to the bush. bycling through africa is a fanastic chance to think, but there's nothing in it to keep you from thinking your way into all the wrong places. 

firstly, about me. i am the illegitimate great great etc grandchild of sir richard francis burton by the indian wife of a delhi banker in the 19th century. it's all very scandalous, and very very well documented in my family. he translated the kama sutra into english for his mother country; she tanslated the kama sutra into action for him, while the cuckolded banker spent literally years out of town. there was some debate by external sources as to whether burton every knew of the young mulato daughter he had by susila. less doubt within the family; they exchanged letters, which avasa, his daughter, kept, and his wife burned the other end of. but much can be drawn from one side of the corespondance. susila was quite the power house for the daughter of her one great love. she embezzeled for her from her own husband and sent her to england and then america over the weak protestations of her father. he didn't want her ruining his rep, but neither the mother or daughter had any desire to do that. they weren't above hanging the threat over them, but i doubt they would have done it, had they ever felt the need. they were both weak in affection for the man, and too strong to need much from him. 

susila was chronicled in the letters between her and avasa. when i was a girl i'd transcribed them digitally with my mother, from some originals and mostly previous paper transcriptions. we were dead serious about preserving our history in my family. of all of susila's children (whom she loved friecely) only avasa was a half breed, and therefore hidden. but none of them were the children of her husband. she leveled with them, and explained this was through no lack of effort on her part. she didn't hold her husband's useless seed against him either, she just saw to it that she mainly got knocked up by any men that looked quite a bit like her husband. susila was a tough cookie, but not without her own internal ethics. she would have done well in any age. only burton ever convinced her to do anything stupid, and she was arguably one of the only women that convinced him to do anything stupid, besides the queen. 

i like to believe that burton carried a torch for susila through the rest of his journies, even though he never saw her again, and in the end she never left india. i don't really have a good reason to believe it other than the thing that was taking me on my journey now. the iron case hidden in a cave or something somewhere along his path toward lake tanganyika, containing something or other that my mother said one of us would have to go and get someday. and since apparently several people of medium power were hunting around for me, and the case, i had to go low-profile. in any case  backpacking africa was something i had done before, and wasn't too likely to raise suspision now. I hoped.

So it seems wandering in the wild and preserving information are somewhat in my blood. They are, at the very lest, two things i am happiest doing.

When night had properly fallen i pulled off the road in a fairly desolate spot and made camp. It had been a while since i tried anything like this, and i was a bit scared about wild animals. Being scared about wild animals was a bit of a relief from being scared about strange humans chasing me though, so i induldged it. I was roasting soup on the campfire when i started hearing rustling in the dark bushes around me. I felt my body get frantic from adrenaline.

“it's nothing.” i insisted to the air, “there's nothing bad out there.”

the rustling wouldn't stop. I finally grabbed my axe and crept away from camp, looking for the source of the disturbances. As i get closer, the rustling increased and i heard a muted but distinctive clopping. As i made it away from the light of the campfire, i had entered a herd of donkeys. I felt redicuous, but comforted. As i headed back the donkeys formed a circle all around my camp. They got close to humans because big cats didn't like to be, i supposed. i was glad they were there to keep me company. I went to bed but left a little fire burning for them. By dawn they had drifted away and i continued along the road out of gaborone. 

By midday the road out of gaborone was becoming the road into francistown, both in traffic and in my head. Francistown had the shell shocked quality of a ground zero town after the aids epidemic had passed, like hiroshima and the atomic bomb, or jerusalem and monotheism. Something so big had happened there that the city that was left couldn't hope ot contain it in its city limits or history. Francistown would always be the place where aids happened, both the disease and the cure. It would take me another day to get there, but i was glad i was going through. I'd never seen francistown, just learned about it in school. Kate, i thought to myself, you're making this a siteseeing trip, aren't you? It had all the earmarks of it, camping on the side of the road, biking instead of hastling with the transport, and now i was looking forward to a day of modern history in francistown. I felt that i wasn't taking everything seriously enough, but i also felt like maybe i woul dlose my mind if i did. For now there was no pressure on me. For now, i would be a tourist. That night in my little tent off the road and in the bush i slept better than i had in ages.

pulling into francistown the next day i was surprised to see hiv whores on the street corners. Women looking around with slightly furtive eyes wearing t-shirts that said things like hiv-- on them, and the like. When the virus was cured with a counter virus that could be, among other thereputic procedures, sexual transmitted,  a cottage industry of sorts grew up around the novel vacine/cure. Women would get the counter virus or simply claim to have gotten it and sell themselves as hiv whores who could transmit the cure to you though sex. They were well enough paid that after a time all whores decided they were hiv whores. Much of that had died down after the epidemic had mostly passed, but francistown had been in the forefront of the disease. At one time as much as 70% of the total population was hiv positive. Aids remained a tough disease to fight even after there was a cure. The counter virus remained hard enough to produce and keep viable that the price never came down as far as they hoped it would, putting it outside the reach of most africans. The political pressure to cure aids was so strong that paradoxiacally few drug companies wanted to touch it. but the doctor that engineered the counter-virus, (dr. kelgra, as we all learned in current events class) had released the relevant patents into the public domain, so at least several of them could take a stab at it. A few years later with goverments dithering and drug companies draining what little there was to be had of african gdp, dr kelgra re-engineered his virus to be transmittable through body fluids, and started injecting people in francistown until he ran out of money. But that was quite a while ago, and aids was hardly a threat now, going the way of leprosy. I suspected people around there still died of aids since as it turned out many of the hiv whores actually had the virus rather than the cure, and because the counter virus can't do much for you in the late stages of the disease.

After the hiv whores on the road into town, everything looked fairly normal. Like hiroshima and jerusalem, at its heart, it was just a town. I was getting board just looking at things. I ducked off the main road and did a couple loops of areas with shops and restuarants in them. Tucked away on a perpendicular street to the main throughoufare was a cafe, the outside all done in mosaics of trees. A line of bikes already graced the front. Calm movement and music emanated from the place. The glint of a coffee maker, and a stove with two kettles on became visable as i got closer. Baobob cups, it was called, written across the top of the door in pieces of broken pottery. It may as well have been glowing with angels pointing the way. I love finding cafes in odd places. 

I put my bike next to the others and snaked a chain through and locked it. I stepped inside, digging though my pockets looking for pula coins mixed in with rand and euros. I ordered a coffee and a soda and sat down in total relaxation. This seemed as good a time as any to plan my trip, to really plan my way to tanzania and then what i would do when i got there. As much as i wanted to at the moment, i couldn't bike right the whole way there. I was close enough to zimbabwe to duck across and catch a bus or a train, i figured. I took out a notebook and started taking notes. Get into harare or lusaka, both should be accesible, and then maybe catch a plane or more trains to mozambique and then tanzania. Eventually i would make my way to dodoma, where i could easily catch a tour that would take me to kigoma, the town were burton sat while speke went on to victoria, and where the object of everyone's affection was obstensibly located. Everything was working out fine. I would just keep a low profile until i got to dodoma and then blend in with the tourists until i could vanish in kigoma. All of that worked out, i started just doodling on my notepad. I made little maps and diagrams of what i could remember of the scraps and clues from the notebook i'd scanned and destroyed in oxford. I was getting them fairly commited to memory now, which wasn't hard, because they made sense next to the notes i'd spent so much of my life devoted to learning. The other half of the diagrams, the ones in my letters, those were so commited to memory i'd exhausted their doodle potencial by jr. high. 

In my reverie i hadn't noticed that the cafe emptying out. i looked up slightly confused by the lack of other patrons. Before i could really form a complete thought though, rough hands shoved a ball in my mouth and a hood over my head.

It was there, lying in the trunk of a car with the gag still in my mouth, a hood on my head and my hands tied behind my back that it finally occured to me that i wasn't really qualified for this sort of thing. I was no kind of secret agent. The bouncing around was terribly painful. I suspected i'd be too beatenup to walk fast, even if i did somehow open the trunk and successfully throw myself from the back without killing myself. I'd struggled with the rope on my wrists, movie style, but it only made the rope tighter and much more painful, then not painful at all. I'd managed later to relax it enough to get the pins and needles feeling back into my hands, which i took as a good sign, and stopped there. I wondered briefly if they were planning to drive me all the way to tanzania, because that would suck. I already had to pee. That's another thing about being trapped in a trunk that didn't fit with movies; i really needed a toilet. I found myself wishing that this time i'd left my goelocation data going, but that was something i never seemed to get right. I wondered if this were the satanists, but what little instinct i had told me no. this was too efficient and not at all showy for them. Plus, they could have either kidnapped me in oxford, or not bothered with the display in oxford if they were planning to kidnap me later. I was pretty sure i was in the hands of someone much better at evil than the actual satanists.

Sometime later, i gave up and peed my pants.

It occurred to me that i had one bit of data; we were probably in zimbabwe. We'd stayed mostly on a straight road or roads, and it was badly rutted. If we'd been making many turns i would have been carsick. That meant we weren't taking the roads west or north out of francistown and the only other straight road out was through zim. I wondered if they'd bribed a customs person or just trusted luck that no one would open the trunk. We'd come to some stops early on, and i'd tried to make a little noise banging around and squeaking through my gag, but never with any response. Eventually, despite the discomfort that continued as long as the roads were bad, i fell into fitful sleeps here and there. 

Many hours later we stopped. We remained stopped long enough for me to fall asleep properly, though not long enough for me to be well rested. Eventually the trunk was opened. I was lifted out and slung over a shoulder. It was day again- i could see light through my hood, a bit. i felt a corse blanket over me, and was carried inside. I was put down on my feet, but they didn't hold me. I crumbled to the floor and managed to catch myself on my knees. Still no one had said a word to me. Hands untied my hands, and immediately attached handcuffs instead. Someone reached under the hood and removed the gag, which felt wonderful. I smacked my licks and wiggled the muscles of my jaw  in relief. I was picked up and put back on my feet, and this time i was able to stay on my feet. I was led by the cuffs somewhere; dripping water. Another snap and my cuffs where attached to something. Someone was taking off my trousers. Now i started to struggle, kicking and throwing myself against whoever was there. They stepped out of my reach. A thick accented voice filled the small echoey space.

“do you want to use the toilet, or do you want to shit yourself?”

she stepped forward and started to take off my pants again. I let her. I figured if she was going to beat me or rape me or something, there wasn't much i could do about it handcuffed to some part of a toilet. she didn't beat me. she left me half naked on a toilet seat and shut a door fairly loudly.

I was probably there at least an hour before she came back. she started to uncuff me from whatever toilet bit i was cuffed to.

“can i wipe myself?” i asked. she paused.

“i will give you a hand. Don't try to remove your hood, or you will sit in your own shit from now on.” 

she got to the other side of me and uncuffed my left hand, thrusting some toilet paper into it. The left hand thing was interesting, because from where she was standing it would have been easier to release my right. I decided either she was a muslim, or she happened to release my left hand. Fifty/fifty chance, i decided, was good enough for me to do a lot more theorizing. Why would muslims be after me? What would interest both some muslims and some satanists? I finished my business and managed to flush. My captor returned, recuffed my hands and dressed me again, but not in my own trousers. I was in a skirt that fell nearly to the floor. That meant i didn't have to sit in my own pee anymore, but it also meant no phone and no connection to the outside world. I was put back into a car, but this time to my relief i was put into a seat. Another voice, male this time;

“if you can keep quiet, we will not need to put your gag back in. there is no point at which anyone not with us now can hear you. Can you keep quiet?”

i nodded.

The voice chuckled. “clever. You may keep your voice for now, and keep it still.”

he turned to face some other way, and began speaking to someone else in the car in a mix of french and arabic, which was a bit of a bummer for them, because i speak both.

We burton types are big on languages.

What was really lovely about it for me was that they were clearly switching between them often enough to try and confuse me in case i spoke either french or arabic, though they wenta bit heavy on the arabic, presumably because an american girl was less likely to know arabic. It was the first break i'd had in a while, and i really relished it. I sat back, leaned my head back into a nice comfortable position and listened. I could even risk a smile under my hood. 

We were in a car that had been driven into the back of a lorry that was then filled with maize meal bags, which explained why no one could hear me and how we got though the borders. My captors were in fact muslims, and they were very interested in my family's artifact. They refered to it roughly as “the wrath”. Oh, i thought, wrath, that sounds very spooky. that must be what the satanists were into. It seemed they were trying as much to keep it out of the hands of some other group chasing me as they were trying to get it themselves. I figured this refered to the satanists, but then it didn't quite seem to fit either. I began to wonder just how many people had been following me down the road out of gaborone. I was struck with the image of a procession of cars having the slowest chase scene ever with me, tracking just out of view while pedeled along. I was so funny that i had to supress a giggle, which i turned into a sneeze to escape suspicion. They paused for a moment, then when back to talking. What they didn't give away was why they had snagged me or what they were planning to do with me next. 

We drove though most of the night. Eventually they gave me water, but i was still hungry when we stopped again. We all sat at a table, me still hooded and handcuffed while i listened to to them eat and then head off somewhere, all except one that remained behind to feed me and give me sips of water. It was ambrosia, the most wonderful of food- the food you eat when you are terribly hungry. The last one went off and other people came, or came back. I was grabbed by an arm and hustled off for a long walk in relative silence. They said very little to each other, mostly asking the time, where a provision or such was, and all in french, and in an accent i didn't recognize. Occationally they would say something to me like “stairs” in english right before i needed to climb up or down stairs.

I did learn that there was some concern about another group interested in me that might or might not be catching up with this group. Perhaps this can be useful, i thought. Then i heard a smallish jet engine, and we started climbing up aluminum stairs. Less useful now, i thought. 

The female voice of my bathroom assitant returned. She spoke to me slowly in the chopped english of the not-fluent. It was hard on the ears. I wanted to tell her to just use french, but of course i couldn't. She slide very close to me, so that i could fell her bumping up against my handcuffs with the movement of the plane. She spoke low, presumably to keep the others from hearing her. 

“i will tell you something that would anger the others if they heard me tell you.”

“i'm listening.” i replied.

“perhaps you are a good woman. I will tell you this: you will need the love of Allah now more than you have ever. Only allah the merciful can help you now. Do you know the love of allah?”

i sighed. This wasn't what i had been hoping for.

“no, i don't know the love of allah. Perhaps one day i will, but today i don't believe in any god.” i told her. “i think submitting to allah under the circumstances would be less sincere than i would hope for. Perhaps when all this is over, then i can explore the love of allah.”

there was a long pause.

“i hope that you will see that day, then. You seem to be an honest woman. I hope that i will see you in paradise. Think on what i have said.”

i felt a bit of a shiver. I wished that hadn't sounded quite so final. On the other hand, i'd lifted her phone out of a pocket on whatever garment she was wearing while she was talking to me. So much for honest woman. It was an old style chording glove deal, but i could handle that. I had it hidden in the folds of the skirt they'd given me. I hoped it was on. I hoped it was sending geodata, at least to the call receiver. I had a lot of hopes. I dailed up marcia.

   Taken prisoner out of francistown, not sure who 
   by. I think we are headed for dar es salaam. In 
   over my head. Love, richle's dad.

Messages that contained “richle's dad” were whitelisted for immediate delivery on marcia's server. Then, i thought about it for a second and hit the power button and did it all again. Hit the power button a third time, and did it again. The older phones sent geodata by default, and reverted to those defaults on boot. On of those time it should have been on and sending geodata, i hoped. I leaned over in the direction my unknowing benefactor had been and gently placed the phone in the seat crevice.

Four hours later we touched down in dar es salaam. It was a country width away from kigoma, still many hours to possibly escape. But even if i did, i would have no passport, no phone, none of my supplies. Plus i was in a country without being legally admitted and without being signed out of the last, what would a border agent make of that? I wasn't sure what good my freedom would do. On the other hand, if these guys were going to kill me i'd happily take a long involved argument with a border guard. 

We got off the plane and i was walked across the runway. I heard a car door open, than then a trendous explosion threw me off my feet. I hit the ground some feet away with a kind of whole body thud. It knocked the wind out of me. I lay there for a second convinced that was paralyzed, and then forced myself to move. I hoped the air would catch up with me and fill my lungs, but for now i needed to get free. I used my handcuffed hands to rip off the hood. All that was to be scene was a blank overcast sky with some smoke curling into it, from the direction of my feet. My ears were a feast though. More explosions, not as big, and gunshots and screams. I really knew i should look around better, but my body was failing to respond to commands. Everything i sent out to the limbs was coming back “sorry, no can do. Too much abuse recently.” also, i was in a lot of pain. So much pain that i wasn't really in pain anymore, more a kind of swimming in pain negative euphoria. I hoped i wasn't permenantly injured. at least, i thought, flat on the ground is a good way to avoid being a target. 

A man appeared above me. He looked down at me, cocked his head and looked up again. He shouted something in swahili. Unfortunately i don't know much more in swahili than roughly what it sounds like and how to ask for a bathrooom. Bafu iko wapi, incidently. He never used any of those words. He continued to shout in swahili until another man walked up with a brightly colored small print out of something familiar that i couldn't quite make out. He looked at it, and down at me again. He smiled broadly. He shouted something very loud in swahili and began waving one arm. The pain began to subside, which probably meant i was more shocked and beaten than actually injured. Unfortunately this meant that the pain had subsided to a level where i could really start to get upset about it.

I closed my eyes for a second and threw my mind back ten years, looking for another phrase in swahili. I found it. I opened eyes again, this time there were three men above me, smiling. This time i also registered that they were incredibly heavily armed and wearing military looking fatigues.

“Kuna mtu anayesema Kiingereza?” i managed, slowly, painfully, and almost certainly without correct pronounciation. I had possibly asked if anyone spoke english.

Their eyes lit up. They began talking very fast to each other in swahili and laughing. And then the first man looked back to me and said in english:

“your swahili is very bad.”

i narrowed my eyes at him. 

“oh yeah? Think so, do you? Well, bafu iko wapi.” with that, i closed my eyes and sank into a tired hurt trance.

they laughed again. Then they put me on a stretcher i hadn't noticed showing up and took me to the bathroom. 

On the way i opened my eyes briefly and noticed that the small brightly colored piece of paper that almost half of them where carrying was a picture of me that marcia kept in richle's room.

Go marcia.

They had set up triage in a bathroom hanging off a small office building like space just beside the small airstrip i'd landed on. they'd apparently hit more resistance than they'd expected, and had a few other wounded beside me. If there were any dead, they weren't being taken here. 

The guy that found me stayed by me while i was patched up by a medic. He was an eternal smile, was giving me sips of water off a canteen, and he laughed at my jokes, all of which made him the best person i'd encountered in at least 3 countries. My clothes were torn, so he got me a set of their fatigues. The trouser leg had a slot for sliding in a phone, and i thought there was suddenly a lot of calls i wanted to make. I asked him if there was a spare phone i could use. 

“don't worry,” he said, “getting back your stuff was part of the contract.” 

sure enough a bit later someone came in with a pack including the sadlebags from my bike, my phone, and even the shoe i'd tried to be clever about hiding my memory cards in. i spent a minute ruminating to myself again about how bad i was at this, and then slotted my phone into place and dialed up marcia.
   
    whatever you did, it's fantastic. Thanks.

I was feeling a little too tired to make all the calls i felt would be a good idea, so i settle for that note to marcia, and sent “ping” to simon just to let him know i was ok now. 

I looked over at my companion. “you probably know this, but i just wanted to say, you are very good at what you do, and thanks. I'm kate.” and then after a moment, “but you probably have that in a dossier somehwere.” and i extended a hand. He took and shook it vigorusly, possibly a little too vigorously. I was pretty sore. 

“yes i'm sure we do,” he replied, “and we got it in the mission briefing. I am william. Are you hungry?”

i hadn't eaten since the few bits of food and sips of water yesterday or the day before- i didn't have the best grip on time. I had been too scared to feel hungry most of the time, though. As soon as he said something, hunger passed over me like a wave.

“i could eat the ass of a lion.” i told him. 

He laughed again. “then we will find you a lion!” i hoped to god he was kidding. He turned to another person who had just walked in and said something in swahihi, and then back to me. “you will have some food shortly.” the food didn't make it in time; i was asleep about 30 seconds later.

I was woken up about an hour later by a message on my knee. It was from marcia.

   Ok, you're welcome, but i need to explain a few things. 
   I put out an advert on craigslistnet tanzania for someone 
   to intercept your coordiantes and attempt to retrieve 
   you. I offered a month's peering and a british 
   copyright lib comp license. The contract was grabbed by 
   the governement and blocked out for 4 days. I confirmed 
   and they went after you. I'm as surprised as you are, but 
   the whole thing looks legal to the smart contracts.  So 
   you get to have the tanzanian equivalent to special 
   forces for that long, and they get an infusion of new 
   textbooks for the schools for a month, or something. Get 
   in, do what you need, and get out. I don't know what 
   happens when the four days are up. 

It took a minute for that to sink in. i had my own personal small army for four days based on a network peering deal. But it all flew from my head when i realized there was a plate of food in front of me. I don't really even remember what it was. I just ate as quickly as i could, and when it hit my stomach like a brick, i ate the rest of it slower.

I looked up at william. “you're doing this to get net access and copyright download prilages for a month?” once again i really hoped no one out there had died for that or me. William's smile never flagged though. He nodded vigorously. He pulled out his phone and started showing me pictures of his kids.

“they get the best educations, all the best for them from america and europe. Better than almost anywhere in africa, and that's because we do contracts for peering and comp licenses.”

it completely made sense, i'd just never thought about it. Most of the african nations weren't rich enough or big enough to negociate compulsory licenses with the copyright holder conglomerates. They had to buy their data piecemeal or try to pirate it, which could land them in a trade war. Contracting government services to private companies that could offer comp licences put them through a wto loophole for a resource they weren't allowed to pay for. The licenses were the most basic value add to a net connection in the powerful countries; out here they were pure gold. Marcia was a technical director for cable and wireless; dealing out peering was her job anyway. 

I laid down again and thought for a second. And then i looked at william. 

“so essentially this is my army for the next 4 days, and in exchange you all are getting all you can eat data for a month? And so are your schools?”

he nodded. “essentially, yes. And other government departements as well.” 

“so, what are you planning to download, then?” 

he swung his rifle around his front. It was large and shiney and new looking and had a big scope. 

“these we got in a deal with the taiwanese governemnt. Cheaper because we had no manuals or rights to the manuals. No one had worked out how to use the sight,” he said, tapping the top of the gun. “Right now we have the manual bookmarked and orders to study it over the next week.” 

i blinked in mild disbelief. The copyright treaties had made the world an even weirder place since my childhood. “useful, then.”

he nodded. 

Over the next few hours I felt like a princess, albeit a warrior princess. My new tanzanian army conveyed me to a proper hospital and kept fulfilling my every whim, though i was a bit in shock still and largely whimless. On the advice of my physician i ate even and went to sleep, skin salve patches all over my body. My guilt was alieviated by finding out that they did this sort of thing all the time and i settled down to enjoy myself. William was assigned to be my companion and translator. We got on fabulously in between my naps. 

The next morning i issued my orders- we were to head to kigoma immediately, with a list of supplies-

Shovels
torches
lantern
pen and paper
metal detector
crowbars
repelling gear for 6
overhead map of kigoma

They put me in a gunship full of bristling mercs and everyone else in trucks to play catch up and headed out for the west. 
We touched down outside ujiji (the twin town of kigoma) in the afternoon. Locals were waiting with a table and laid out food for william and i. His smile never flagged. 

“i don't usually get the special treatment like this,” he confided, “i am only getting this because you like me so much.”

i smiled. “cool for you! Merry christmas! I feel like the data and dinner santa claus now. How do you normally get treated?” 

“i am a soldier, i live as a soldier. We live well in tanzania, we are the heroes of the people, but it is also hard. I miss my little ones very much.” he said.

“do you get to see them much?” i asked

“no, it is hard, we train so much. I have combat training, urban assult, espionage, international intellectual property, internaltional law, the list goes on.” he said.

Ip? why do you study ip?

That is what we are out here to do, of course. We in particular secure ip contracts for our nation. It is important that each of us understands the law, both so that we know what we are fighting for and so that we don't make any mistakes. He shook his head, and altered his smile a bit. Sometimes the legal minefield is the most terrible of all.

Ok, i have to admit, i told him, i don't really understand about the whole ip-merc thing. Could you explain and use small non-legal words?

It's a recent innovation, i am not surprised that you don't know about it. Since these days most of the data that runs the world is digital, big powerful countries negociate compulsory licenses through the world intellectual property organization and pass legislation that requires all copyright creators to sell or licence their creations to on of the copyright conglomorates, who in turn sell it to media groups in the US or the state, in europe. further law requires you as a citizen and therefore a data consumer to pay a yearly fee for the licence which is passed back to the conglomorates.  This fee is more than most people make here in tazania.

That part i understand, i interupted. I'm on a monthly debit plan as a british citizen, and i have to pay a token upkeep ammount as an american citizen. Sometimes i think non compulsory countries have it better, i burn though nearly a third of my income, whether i read anything or not. And it's not like i come from the land of well paid writers, even. 

He shook his head sadly, and the smile lost a little traction. No, dear kate, it isn't better to be a non-compulsory country. We buy our data piece by piece and almost everything is subscriction based.  Imagine if you couldn't make the bill one month, and all the manuals to all the equiptment in the hospital just went away. Or imagine paying the patent fee to manufacture drugs but not lining up the copyright fee at the same time- the factories sit silent while you wait for the instructions on how to make the drugs. Because we are a non-compulsory country it is illegal under international law fo rus to pay for a comp license fee as well; all the money in the country can't buy the data we need at times. The screens won't give us the data and we turn to stashed printouts and people with very good memeories. 

What about buying books?

Hah! Books are the luxery of compulsory contries. Most data in tazania is illegal to print, even with a lifetime payment. If the wrong book is found, we must detroy it immediately or face censure from wipo or wto. 

Well, this is a fucking disaster. Why not pull out of wipo, break the digital rights management on the net and get the data all you can eat? 

He shook his head. I admire your spirit, but it would be death for tanazia. The only countries that can do that are ones that can afford to lose all international trade. Only countries rich in oil, or uranium, or something like that can afford to flout wipo. As it is, each violation wipo inspectors discover currently results is withheld oil. We are still a country very in need of oil, ms kate. People will die without it.

“this is discusting. I mean, comp licences seem bad enough, but people dying over ip violations?”

he leaned forward, speaking in a low conspiratorial tone. Did you know people used to create all manner of copyright works and give them away for free? 

Of course i do, but that's illegal now.” I shrugged. “You are required to sell or license to one of the conglomerates. I don't have to worry about that though, everything i work in is 20th - 19th century and in the public domain.”

he smiled widely again. We don't have to worry about it here either Here, in tanzania, we are beginning to create for free and give away for free. There is a growing movement among the african nations, and wipo can't stop us without offering comp lisences, which they don't want to do.”

but where does the ip army come in?

Aha! I got distracted. As i said, we can't pay for a licence, but we can get one temporarily as part of a network peering deal. It's a loophole that no one is closing because content rich network peering is the only way the conglomerates can get all of our free work. 

So let me see if i understand this. I said, you peer with cable and wireless, and you get the benefits of the comp licence for a month, and download everything you can.

“government connected agencies only, private busiensses and people still have to pay piecemeal.”

ok, i undertand that- but while you're peered with c & w they are downloading everything they can of tanzanian digital production and then what? Reselling it to the conglomerates? 

Yes

so they can sell it to me?

Yes

you know, this whole things sucks.

He laughed. It does. But for now, i fight for peering deals, and those deals keep the hospitals running and the schools as the best schools in eastern africa. Before we became peering mercinaries they were some of the worst.

I like you, i told william. It feels like maybe you are fighting for something that matters. 

“i like you too, kate. I would like to tell you a secret.” 

“ok, what's that?” i asked.

“i overheard a pre-briefing after i reported back to my superiour. When our contract is up we have another for your capture and the capture of an item you will posess.” 

“oh.” i said.

He knit his blow slightly, and adopted a slightly different smile. “i think our new client may have thought he was outbiding our current contract. But the smart contracts don't work that way, they automatically stack.” he shrugged. “i suppose he will find out soon enough.” 

i wasn't smiling. I could feel all the blood draining from my face, and possibly the rest of me. This well oiled machine was going to turn on me, in, i glanced at the time, basically 2 days plus a few hours. 

“do you have any suggestions?” i asked.
He sat back for a moment. “well, we don't go to zanzibar. We even have a get out clause for it in the contract. It's out of our juridiction- that was one of their treaty conditions.”

i remembered some trouble with zanzibar and the mainland a few years back, though i never knew the details.

“well then.” i said, picking up my glass. “here's to my trip to zanzibar, day after tomorrow.” he picked up a glass and we toasted.

“William,” i said, “the next contract, the one for my capture, it isn't the people you just got me from, is it?”

“no i don't think so. I don't think it could be. The contract was closed while we were still fighting. But i suppose anything it possible!”

“but you don't know who it is?” 

he tsk tsk'd me. “I am your friend, and i have told you this thing that will help you, but i cannot breach contract. If we start breaching contracts, what is to prevent data subscriptions from being pulled, or our peering cut off?”

i leaned forward dramatically. “my very life, william, isn't worth that!” and we both laughed. 

An hour later i gathered up a team of 4 men plus william. We loaded the gear in the back of a truck and set out north of ujiji into kigoma, william at the wheel. A few minutes later i asked them to pull off. It was time, finally, to do my thing. I pulled out the map of kigoma and the notepad and made a few quick sketches based on the letters of my childhood. Then i loaded the memory card scan of the notebook into my phone and searched for the bits that filled in the rest. I knew it was in kigoma, had always known. I even knew how deep it was, a part of the puzzle that only my family knew. But where and how it was hidden exactly, that was another matter. Here was a square structure so far from the shore, here it was on the modern day map a much larger square structure over it. 

Oh no, i thought for a second, what if it's completely burried? Well, we'll see, won't we? 

I made more notes, combining the notebook with what i already knew and looked up at william. I was feeling comfident, i was finally in my space and doing the part of all this i had been born to do. 

“take me to the train station.”

he nodded, smiled, and off we went. 

We arrived and unloaded the gear. I looked at william.

“find me the basement to this place.” william waved one of the men over, and they talked for a while. Then they waved me to follow. They led me past the main platform down a set of stairs to a maintainence area. William turned to me “this is the closest the station has to a basement. I am sorry.”

i looked at my notes. My guess was we weren't too far off the original structure built here. I went to the north wall, the most interior wall, and started pulling supplies away. The guys joined me. We cleared a set of shelves and a chest of drawers away. I saw a fairly new looking seam. I grabbed a crowbar away from one of the men and put it in the seam and pulled away the wall; a chunk came off easily revealing another wall underneath, this one badly water damaged.

“can we clear this wall away?” i said turning around. The guy were all smiles. They were having a great time. It occurred to me this was probably a lot more fun than getting shot at. 

They had the entire wall down in no time. There was a door behind the wall, also water damaged so that you could barely read the german on it. 

“do any of you read german?” i asked, pointing at the door. 

They looked around at each other and shrugged. “ok” i said, we'll hope that doesn't say 'this way to the vat of acid' and move on.”

we pried the door off and found a small landing with more stairs- stairs that definitely were too damaged to hold anyone's weight. One of the men leaned out as far as he could with a torch, and then leaned back in and started fitting william, myself and one other man with repelling gear. William turned to me and explained that we would tie off on the radiator, but be belayed by the other men in case the radiator didn't hold. I nodded, and the three of us proceeded. We used the shovels to break the staircase out from under us and proceeded into the room below with lanterns and torches, unhooking from our grapling gear with a tug to the gentlemen above. Water dripped in the background. We were in a tunnel now. Built possibly by german colonialists, possibly before. I looked at my notes. I was getting very lucky so far. We started walking north in the damp tunnel and i unslung the metal detector from my back. I passed to back and forth over my field of view, and the readout drew picture of the metal content of the landscape it passed over. We walked in silence, me sweeping the detector over the floor, the men staying a little behing me and shinning their lights in my path. There was a good hour of this before i found the plate. It was only showing about a third out of one of the tunnel walls. I swore aloud, it was the first sound anyone had made in a while. 

“bad news?” said william

“no. we've, or at least i've, gotten amazingly lucky. There's no reason for this to be showing at all.” i said, indicating a metal plate in the floor and scraping the dirt away to make it visable. 

i looked up and down the wall. “do you think you could go into this wall safely?”

he looked the wall up and down. The two men looked at each other, and then at me. 

“sure!” said william

i wasn't at all sure they actually believed it was safe. I was pretty sure they weren't going to leave until the found how this ended. I can't say i blamed them, i felt the same. 

They pried out the stones and started digging out the earth behind them. I took a shovel, and william went back to get some of the old timber. He found the strongest of them and brought them back building a sort of leanto over the metal plate. We all pried it up. The men stepped aside and let me get first peek in with my torch. It was a room below the tunnel, about 6 feet high, wood floors. To my amazement, it was filled with what looked like strange treasures- skulls adorned with gold headpieces, stools and pillows inlayed with precious stones, that sort of thing. I looked back at the guys

“we're going to need more rope.”

william went back and got two more lengths of rope. I was so glad i trusted these people at this moment, having found an unexpected hoard of african treasure underneath the kigoma train station. Also, it helped that i didn't care about the treasure at all. 

William returned with gear, and he and i decended into the last chamber. I looked at him and smiled.

“not bad for a day's work. We got very lucky!”

he smiled back.

“I think your little notebook had something to do with that.”

he looked around. “so it was old slaver treasure that you sought.” he sounded a little dissapointed.

“Nah,” i said, “you guys take this stuff. Though i imagine it belongs in a museum. I'm looking for an iron puzzle case, one foot wide, three feet long, six inches deep. It's in three pieces that lock the top on. It can only be opened by”

he interupted me, “i think it is already open.” 
sure enough william was standing over the open case, matching the descrition i had commited to memory, right down to the enscription;

   RFB

in frilly letters on  the top, the top currently lying askew about a foot from the rest of the case. I walked over and looked in the case of my family, disapoint washing over me. The artifact had been looted probably long before i was born. I never even got to know what it was. There was still something in the case though, tucked into a corner. I pulled it out. It was a small scroll case, ivory, maybe. Tentatively, gently, i opened it. Within was a piece of tapastry. 

I rolled it out on the lid of the case and brought the lantern over. It began to come apart even as i rolled it out. Whatever it was, it was very old, and not complete. 

[It was a scene done in flat medieval style. Holy men garbed in white where standing below what looked to be the seven hills of jerusalem. Angels hung in the sky, and a knight on horseback was handing something to someone beyond the tear.]

Below were two long strings of latin. I pulled out my phone and started snapping pictures of it. Then i put down my phone and looked at william. He was standing behind me, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. He saw me looking at him, and smiled.

“it's like being in a movie, around you.” he explained. 

“huh.” i said. “do you smoke?”

yes, he said, why?

Do you have a lighter?

He dug through some pockets and produced a nice little butane lighter. I took it, thanked him, and burned the tapestry.

“but” he said in a shocked voice behind me, “is that not what you came all the way here for?”

“i'm an archivist, william. i'm a destructive archivist as well. That means sometimes i have to make a judgement call on which is more important, the object or the information the object carried.”

i stood up, hands sooty from making sure the scene and the words were burned away. “and if i must say, that was the easiet call of my career. Let's snap some more pictures for your government for later excavation of this room, and get back dar es salaam”

i turned to head for the hole in the ceiling while william took pictures. 

We emerged back into the light without incident. I shed all the equipment and made my way back into the truck. The men all looked expectantly at me, then at william, who shrugged.

I sat silently in the truck on the way back. The men talked amongst themselves. William turned to me and said

“the men want to know, and the ones back at the camp will as well, where is the object?” 

i shrugged. “the middle east, or at least it once was. Now you know as much as me.” 

“was it taken?” 

“it may have never been there, honestly i don't know”

i felt a bit of relief spread over me. Some of the pressure was off, at least until the story of the burnt tapestry got around. There was still the matter of the next contract though, and what to do when i got to zanzibar, and what to do once i was in zanzibar without an army to protect me, and how to leave without having the army capture. me. 

But those were tomorrow's problems. Tonight i would eat and sleep.

Chapter n + 3

i requested a train to dar es salaam, and a strong dosage of anti-travel sickness medication. The men didn't look happy, but they complied without complaint. I think they wanted me to be in their hands when my clock ticked over, just to make the job easier. But it's not as if they could say as much about my decision to take the train. Not only was it much faster than my other options, it was much nicer. Tanzania had managed to get a couple of europe's first decommissioned bullet trains as part of an aid deal and built the track to support them with a grant. They had a lost luxury about them, in a kind of bulletproof plastic way. I sat down and watched tanzania go by. It was a beautiful country, and i wanted very much to visit it under better circumstances someday. Provided, of course, that i lived though all this. 

While i was lost in thought william came up and sat next to me.

I have a leave coming to me, my family is in dodoma, so that is where i will be getting off. Best of luck to you, getting to zanzibar.

Would it be not allowed for you to tell me exactly when my clock ticks over? I asked

he shook his head. Then he clapped me on the shoulder.

“you will do fine! Be healthy and well my friend.!”

“william, thanks for everything. You have been a good friend to me.” I tapped a card out on my phone and sent it to his phone. “if ever you find yourself in britain, please come by.”

“the same, of course if you ever find yourself in tanzania. With more free time!” 

and with that and a chuckle, william, still smiling, left me.

I was feeling more nervous, but i told myself- i am moving as fast as i really can, on independent travel. I needed to stick close to these guys until my time was up, and then i needed to hope i could get away. But for now, i was enroute. There was nothing i could do. Actually, i thought, i could get a cup of tea. Also, i could slip some of their equipment into my own backpack. I managed to get a trowl, a grapple and rope and one of their galileo/nav/walkie talkies.

We got to dar es salaam without incident. I asked for a map and a car, then i kicked the driver over to the passenger side and drove myself to the ferry. There was a contingent of men meeting me there. I smiled and waved at them, and booked myself on the next ferry. The men weren't smiling anymore. I took that as a good sign that i might just get away with this. I went for coffee at a booth near the ferry. I asked if any of them would like a coffee, but got no reply. Coffee in hand i doffed my 12 hour time release anti-motion sickness medication, and thanked what gods might be that i lived in the age of modern pharmaceuticals. 

The ferry was 15 minutes late. I was figditing wildly by the time it showed. With some slightly rude queing i was one of the first people on the ferry, which was a huge pontoon deal. It took another 40 minutes to get everyone and their cars, bicycles, etc. loaded on, but i was happy to see none of my bodygaurds were coming on. A few minutes after we launched i was unhappy to see they had tagged along in a helicopter. I decided to scope the place out a bit, walking all over the areas passengers were allowed and peering into the areas they weren't. I was a big boat, it would take some time to search, i decided. 

Then i heard a scream from te deck above me. I was pretty sure that meant my time was up. I looked at allthe exits form the passenger compartment i was in, 3 puplic ones and one crew one, and one open deck window. I pulled out the grapple and rope i had, hooked the grapple under a table and threw the rope out of a window. The other passengers were staring at me. 

“they're coming to kill me!” I yelled, “get out of here, they don't care who they kill, they're going to come in here firing guns!” one man screamed, but other than that everyone emptied the room. Via the passenger exits. Then i ran into the crew area, found a men's toilet, and hid in a locker. 

I have no idea how long i hid in that locker, because time stuffed in a men's room locker dilates to fill all the time availble. At first i thought maybe i could wait until we'd crossed into zanzibar, but after i'd been in the locker for a while i felt the boat grind to a halt and begin rocking gently the way boats do when they aren't going anywhere. I sighed. Eventaully i was going to have to try and make a break for it then. I sat in there for a little while longer. “At this point,” i said to the air, “i'm just waiting in here until i get caught.” i opened the locker door, and was greatful to not see a half dozen men with guns waiting for me in the men's toilet. I opened the door to the toilet, and found an equally empty hall. I ran down the way i'd come without looking around me or wanting to know, really. I was nearly to the passenger are when a huge a man yelled out in swahili and i heard and felt a warning shot go over my left shoulder. I didn't bother looking back, i just turned the corner into the passenger compartment. My rope and grapple were still where i'd left them. I grabbed the rope and threw myself out. I thudded against the side of the boat and took a second to survey my surroundings. A small diver's float had been attached to the side of the ferry where they'd looked for me in the water, and then hopefully gone. It looked like there might still be some equipment on it. It was about 40ft to the water. I let go. 

The water hit me shoes first as i'd planned, but it still felt like i'd jumped off a building. The beating my body had taken after the last week caught up with me again, and i felt pain surging over me and struggled for consciousness under the water. I manged to hold my breath. I allowed myself to float to the surface and took a deep breath. I had rarely  in my life been so pleased to be alive. I looked around, and there was no one immediately there to take my life either. I could see a beach though. I thought about going back over and looking on the raft for supplies. Maybe they didn't know where i'd gone, but maybe it was too soon to count my blessings. “fuck it” i explained to the air, and i made for the shore swimming with all i had left. 

I will never know how close they came to getting me. I will never know how hard they tried, even. I remember being in the water still, and my feet hitting the ground, and standing up and discoving i was in chest deep. I turned around and there were several men in boat, waiting in the water. One i recognized from the trip to the train station. He smile, his bright teeth against dark skin, and cartoonishly mouthed in english, “be careful”. I nodded and gave a quick wave. Then he said something in swahihi, and they turned the boat around and left. 

I waded slowly to shore and collapsed. I didn't care if i got captured at that moment. The sand was soft, and the sun was warm and not too hot, and i fell into dozing, and then asleep.

I was roused by someone shaking my shoulder. Someone had set up a table with two charis at it right on the beach, about 5 ft from me. A swarthy man in a traditional arabian winter robe and thagiyah was sitting at it, with another man pouring tea into a delicate china cup. Yet another man was kind of looming behind me, blotting out the sun. 

the man at the table spoke.

“would you care to join me ms. Page?” i crawled up to my knees. Everything ached. I decided to crawl the rest of the way, just to try and make the scene more awkward. No one made a move to help or hinder me. I struggled into the seat, glancing down at my phone just to check. Sure enough, i was jammed. Another delicate cup appeared before me. The first silent servant filled it with mint tea. The man in front of me, clearly the boss took in a deep breath. 

“ah, how i love the scent of tea. If women smelled of tea i would have no choice, i would have to drink them.” he said in a booming voice.

Now, that was a damn weird thing to say. I sniffed my tea, and decided agianst drinking. I was pretty thirsty, but this was damn weird. 

Um, who are you?

It isn't who i am, but what i represent.

This was getting annoying. Why did everyone i meet seem to think they represented something?

Ok, what do you represent. 

I represent victory, and for you, safety and calm. With the wrath in our hands, we can protect you form anything. You must be missing that calm, what with the christain fools chasing you, and the rats of allah biting at your heels, and even your bodygaurds turning on you.  

That surprised me; i'd taken him for another muslim, especially calling it the wrath.  

“How do you know about the wrath?” I asked. After a lifetime of mystery it was getting positively inconveniant to never know the identity of burtons's gift. I was hoping someone would clue me in on what the hell it actually was.

He looked up sharply, suspiciously. Stories of thewrath have been handed down for a thousand years. Perhaps a thousand thousand, who can know?

I can, i thought, we haven't been handing down stories for that long. Still, i wasn't going to tell him what i thought. 

“who can know. Of course.” i said. 

Then I sat back. “So the thing is, I began. I'm looking at this set up, and i already just can't believe i will ever throw in with you. But by all means, go on and give me your story.” 

he looked a bit nonplussed.

“of course you do not have the wrath with you, but then neither do any of our enemies have it. It remains that you are probably the only one that can find it. This makes your valuable, it means none of us are willing to kill you. But that can change, quickly. It could be that killing you is the best way to keep our enemies from getting it, and vice versa. Given that your life could at any moment be worth less than the trail of a slug, would you care to listen to what is probably not only the best but also the only offer you will get, not at the point of a sword, so to speak?”

“um” i said. It had been a while since i'd been so effectively shut up. “how do you know i don't have it on me?”

“the wrath is reported to be 3 feet long, and made of a metal that is harder than diamond. We didn't think your pockets would have fit it easily. Perhaps you would tell me what you know of the wrath, and i can decide if it is actually anything at all.” 

i cursed silently. You know grandpape, these are the kind of details you could have left in the letters, i muttered into the air.

“what was that?”

“i said, given the circumstances,that i would love to hear your offer.”

he smiled a chilling smile, the kind that is only mouth while the face stands still and the eyes stay dull.

“You mistook me when you saw me for a muslim. I will tell you more- others mistake me for an imam. But for everytime i say all praise be to allah, i twice say to my heart, may he be cursed forever. Everytime i say muhammed, peace be unto him, i twice say to my heart may he rot in his own cursed blood.” 

“oh” i said, “you really have some issues with islam. Maybe you should get a new job.”

he laughed. Someday i shall, but for now, i serve the cause of my master, whom i adore. 

Oh god, i thought, not more satanists.

Your master is..? i said

“the enemy of allah, and the one that will defeat him.” 

“Lucifer.” I said.

“You may call him that.”

“so were you the people in the christchurch bathroom?”

He looked confused for a moment.

“sorry, i ran into some satanists. I just wondered if you were them. But i guess they were the christain fools you were talking about.”

he still looked a little confused, but shook it off and moved on.

“we wish for you to join us. You would have an honored position in the reign of kings to come, assured to you by the strength of your blood and the delivery of the wrath. The rats of allah and the vicious jews, and the christain fools- they offer a heaven in the sky. But we offer a heaven before you now. You need not even ask for your desires to be fulfilled- we can find for you desires you didn't know of yourself. We are the true peace bringers of history, we who have fought-”

he was really getting started, and i was already nearly at my limit.

“so you know a lot about me, presumably. Have a dossier somewhere.” I said, “You must know that i'm an athiest. Hell, i'm pretty much a skeptic. I find all of this religious stuff non-sense. Gods, anti-gods, all cut from the same nonsense.”

“how do you explain the item you seek, its rare qualities, its strangeness? Or do you know nothing of it, and nothing of the world?”

“i know how to find it. that's pretty much all i need to know.” 

“perhaps then, that is all we need you for. Your bodygaurds can not protect you here, ms. page.”

so much for thinking that this was who had picked up the tanzanian contract after me. In an even slightly worrying turn of events, the man's two assistants had lined up behind me and far closer to me than i liked. 

“you can't afford a struggle here in open, in case i scream and draw attention to you. You can't hit me in the head,” i reasoned, “because you need me to remember where to find the artifact.”

“but we can dose you with ether and put you in a boot.” he explained.

As he spoke, his assistents grabbed me and covered my mouth with something that smelled terrible. 

I woke up some time later, hands tied behind my back, mouth gagged, back in the trunk of a car. This ride was much smoother, and the trunk was comparatively comfy, but i had a headache that could stop time. Whatever they'd used to knock me out hadn't actually done any damage that i could tell, but certianly made me feel like it did. I was feeling disinclined to escape. Nevertheless i gave my bonds a perfuctory few tugs, and succedded in only making them tighter. So i guess satanic muslims are just as good as normal muslims at tying people up, then, i thought to myself. 

The car stopped not too long after that. I heard two doors, one door shut, and then someone opened my trunk. The light was a bit blinding, but i could make out the familiar figure of one of the satanist's assitants. He grabbed me roughly and pulled me out of the car. We were in an ally of old white buildings, some renovated, most not. He set me on my feet, and never letting go of my arms marched me off into the backdoor of a rundown white building. 

We entered a mostly bare room, with only a card table and a few chairs around it. The assitant sat me down in one of the chairs. The satanist came in and sat across form me. His please demeanor was gone. He looked all business, and all mean. The asisstent took out a knife and went behind me and began cutting through my shirt. I started to turn, but mr. Satanist started to speak. 

“A lot of technology has been invented for cause pain, ms. Page.” He began. “Neural shunts and cattle prods and so forth. But i say fuck all of that. Give me a good old fashioned cane instead.”

and with that the assitant stepped back and applied the cane. It knocked me off the seat and i hit the floor face first. I was surprised to not feel anything from the cane, just the impact of my face on the floor. Then, a moment later, it hit like fire across my back and spreading out into my limbs. I yelled and laughed all at once. I can't really describe the sensation better than that; it hurt so bad i gave out a kind of screaming laugh. I was picked up roughly and put back into the seat. 

“Shut up or you'll get another.”

i shut up. I took all the sensation that was flowing out of my mouth, and i stopped it, i damned it up at the top of my throat. 

“I don't like you miss page. And that is dissapointing for me, because i thought i would like you. I really wanted you to join us, to help us, to strengthen our society with your blood. But i suppose you may yet do that.”

he gave a hand signal and the assistant poured something down my back. It caught fire again, and i yelled out. Satanist fucker just smirked at me. Irrationally i suddenly wished i'd drank his tea. I was terribly thirsty in addition to the pain, and if he'd poisoned me it couldn't have hurt this much, i thought. 

“would you ask me something, already?” i croaked.

“what was that?” he said, leaning in.

“would you ask me something so i could just tell you and get this over with?

“you think we are doing this for information? Is that what you imagine? No, ms. Page, we are doing this out of the kind of frustration and anger that blind men to even their fondest goals. But i do have a question for you, bitch. How did you come to retain one of the finest smart contract lawyers in all of zanzibar, when i saw with my own eyes wher eyou washed up like a diseased fish on the beach?”

“i don't know what you're talking about. A lawyer?”

“of course not. Lash her again.”

this time i threw myself out of the chair and managed to avoid the hit. Hitting the floor almost felt good, knowing that i was missing the cane. I felt squishy with pain and blood and sweat.

“don't you even want to know where to find the artifact?” i yelled out from the floor. I was trying to inch away from the assistant, but he grabbed me and put me back in the chair anyway. 

“no, blister from a whore's ass. I don't care about that anymore. Would you like to know why?”

i didn't reply. 

“because i am to be killed. I will never lay eyes on the wrath. You have killed me, you dog whore. The only reason i am not killing you now is that i prefer a quick and clean death.” 

i gaped. A lot can happen while you're passed out in the trunk of a car. 

“She will be here in a moment. And when she has reported that she has you and that you are in good health, my masters will come here, and cut my throat. This is the thing you have done.” 


“but why? I don't understand...” i said.

He interupted me with a slap across the face. 

“she froze our assests. Oh, she succedded in liquidating mine for contract infridgement on a carpeter. A fucking carpenter! Then she found every contract that traced back to the society and found bugs. Loopholes. Lies, breaches. She put leans on every dinar. She froze us, and it's only a matter of time until she exposes us. Except she will only report leans to five leans-holders, she says, if you are given to her, healthy and free. And now my masters have decreed that  i must die. But i have told my son to take two bites out of her heart, and your heart, when he is a grown man. One bite for me, and the other for himself, for having no father to guide him.”

i felt like i was choking. The extent of my barbarity in life was probably really liking veal. Now i had a man, admittedly an unplesent man, telling me how his son was going to have to go through life without him because of me. 

“i.. i never meant for anyone to get hurt.” i said, very low, almost in a whisper. 

He leaned forward, the most unbearable look on his face. “You never meant for anyone to get hurt? You, the gaurdian of the wrath? How i would bury you in shit and blood until you died of it.”

i stared. Everything hurt. Everything was horrible. There was nothing i could say. I started to cry.

We sat in silence like that for what seemed like hours. Me crying silently onto my bloodied shirt, him trembling in anger and fear. 

It didn't happen like he had said it would, though. His masters, robed in black and faces hidden showed up first. They looked me over. They spoke briefly to each other in muted arabic, and then commanded the assitant to administer one lash. Like me he crumpled to the floor form his chair, like me he was transformed in pain. When the knife came he looked relieved. 

And then he just looked dead. I started screaming and crying, shaking in my chair. The men in robes held me down and muffled my cries until my lawyer arrived. 

She wore an abayah, the long overcoat worn by arabian women, and a full face and hair covering. She had fast, confident moves and she swept her head around the scene, taking it in. her eyes came to rest somewhere above my head.

“release her” 

they did. She extended a hand to me. I got up, but i could feel the fresh scabbing on my back tearing a little. I moved slowly and tentitively toward her. She crossed the distance, and took my arm, glancing over my back. 

“this lash will cost you dearly, but it will cost you less if you can disinfect it right now.”

the dead man's assistant produced a bottle of iodine, which was poured down my back. Then the woman walked me to her car, spread out a towel in the back seat for me, and drove me to a hospital.

I fell into a kind tired hurting dream state on the way to the hospital. I was a child again, and my mother was holding me. I was so young, i didn't know she was sick yet. Maybe none of us knew. She was holding me and singing to me. I couldn't remember why, and then i could. My leg hurt terribly, and it was the wrong shape. I'd  broken it, and my mom was holding me waiting for an ambulance to come. I didn't remember how i'd broken it, there in the back of my lawyer's car. I just remembered her holding me and speaking softly and singing, and telling me over and over again that it would be ok. I remembered her being so beautiful. I remembered her telling me to be strong, and that it would all be ok. And i began to cry again as they transferred me to a stretcher at the door of the hospital, but not because it hurt. because my mother was long dead, and it was not going to be ok. Then someone injected me with something, and i felt trapped in amber. After that, the world went away. 

I woke in a recovery room. I tried to sit up, but i was on my stomach. I flinched up onto my knees and collapsed again in pain. Two women were sitting by me, in hijabs, headscarves many muslim women wear. 

One looked at the other and back at me. 

“don't do that.” she spoke in arabic. “you are injured. Lie still.”

i did. Now i noticed the dermal plasts along the lash across my back. i looked back at the women.

“who are you?”

“i'm your doctor,” the first woman said, “and this is your lawyer. We were just discussing your discharge. She is asking when the earliest medically advisable discharge is.”

i moved again, this time more tentatively. I managed to get to the edge of my bed and swing my legs over so that i was sitting up.

“it's not soon enough” i said. “we have to leave now.”

both the lawyer and the doctor stared daggers at me. My lawyer spoke. 

“while i understand your reasons,” she spoke english to me, “you will remain here until it is medically feasible for you to leave.”

“i'm not really accustomed to being told what to do, so this may not be the best stradegy,” i told her. “And how did you find me? And become my lawyer?”

“all that can wait a few minutes, while we work out your discharge time.” she'd switched back to arabic.

“sure” i replied. We both looked at the doctor.

“ideally, we'd like to keep her here for another full body fmri to assess the effect of her blood loss. Also, we'd like, with your permission, ms page, to administer a round of post traumatic stress disorder medications.”

i shook my head. “these are the drugs that make you forget, right? i need to remember, the people that did this are still out there.”

the doctor smiled indulgently. Doctors everywhere have that same smile; the one that says “ah, how cute, you've spent a few minutes online reading health information.”

she spoke in english now, presumably to make sure i understood. “there are three levels of ptsd treatment; and yes, the most powerful one would cause the last 12 hours or so to seem like a dream, or like it happened to someone else. Details would be foggy- this is the level with the highest success rate. The second level would preserve the memory but disconnect you emotionally from the experience for some time. This one also has a high rate of success, but requires a comprehensive follow up. There is a possible pyscho-surgery if ptsd symptoms emerge. The third is riskier, and more likely to end in psychosurgery. We administer an anti-emotive now which doesn't stop you from remembering or experiencing the emotions of the truama, but does prevent those emotions from going into a cascade and causing ptsd damage to your limbic system. After that you must self administer the anti-emotive when you go to sleep and whenever you remember the trauma. This therepy can last from a few weeks to years, depending on how powerful and consistent your emotional cascade is.” 

i began to speak, but my lawyer interupted me. “may i have a word with my client?” she said. The doctor nodded.

“you should know that you cannot refuse treatment.” she told me.

“bullshit.” i said, “i have every intention of refusing treatment, and getting out of here as soon as possible. And hell, she did say 'with your permission'.”

she shook her head. “not here. Here, it is your doctor's decision when you leave. We must be cooperative. She was being polite. 

“That's insane, you can't treat me without permission!” to my dismay, i realized that i'd yelled that out.

The doctor re-entered momentarily to shush me, and remind me we were in a trauma ward. 

When we were alone again, my lawyer started talking.

“you are familiar with the british legal concept of sovereignity of self, which allows a mentally affected patient to consult on their treatment, up to and including refusing to be treated unless they pose a right to society, yes?”

“yes.” i said.

“we have no such nonsense here. Here, mentally affected patients are treated under strict criteria. Most patients can have input, but the signifigance of that input is determined by the doctor. 

Now, you aren't the easiest or safest of clients i have ever had, and i dislike the exposure of being checked into a public facility every bit as much as you. i would like to get out of this hospital as soon as possible, but no sooner. If you don't show a more reasonable and cooperative demeanor, i doubt we will be going anywhere for some time.

One more thing. You should know that when you came in you in shock from blood loss, and only able to babble about needing your mother and your leg being broken. The only reason that you can have this conversation at all is that you were revived with a cocktail that included an anti-emotive already.”

“oh” i said. “ok”

“that's better.”

she waved toward the doctor who re-entered the room. She came and sat in front of my bed.

“i'm sorry for my outburst.” i said.

“it's understandable.” she replied, “you are unfamiliar with our proceedures. Nevertheless, your apology is appreciated. Shall i continue?”

“please.” i said.

“There is evidence under the fmri and in your behaviour of previous limbic damage consistent with some ptsd. This indicates a more aggressive course of treatment.”

given my circumstances, that might be difficult.

i'm not sure i understand your circumstances adequately.

My lawyer stepped in. “she is being pursued by several illegal international groups intent on doing her harm, but not killing her. They are less discriminate about those in her immediate environment.

My doctor turned back to my, slightly pale. “are you a criminal of some sort?”

“surprsisingly, no.” i said. 

Then you won't mind giving a police report before discharge.

I glanced at my lawyer, who nodded.

“I would be happy too. Esspecially if it leads to the arrest of the people i spent the last day or so with.” 

“that is unlikely, but a excellent sentiment. can we continue?” my lawyer said. 

As i was saying, the doctor continued, i would prefer to restrict our treatment to one of the first two options.

I was thinking furiously. I had to get out of this. “given that i have to leave the country soon, and possible encounter these people again the least invasive proceedure might be best. 

Both my doc and my lawyer looked surprised. “leaving? I can't protect you if you leave, you must stay here.” said my lawyer.

“indeed, i can't assure the efficacy of any treatment monitored in another country.” said the doctor.

i'd hit upon what i was looking for. They couldn't make me stay in zanzibar. I decided to make a break for it, but give the doctor a way out.

“i will be leaving zanzibar within 24 hours of my release, and i will probably be encountering these people again. It will endanger me to lose any details of our past encounter. But i assure you i will take the lightest option, and seek followup care at home.” 

the doctor began to protest. “give me one moment.” i said turning to my lawyer.

“you are a smart contract lawyer, correct?”

“one of the finest in zanzibar.” she said.

“can we draw up a quick contract whereby a rising percentage of my personal worth is deducted into a non-interest bearing holding account until i verify that i have sought adequate treatment at home, and then released back to me?” they both looked surprised. 

“sure” my lawyer said.

“why?” my doctor said.

“because you don't want to release me because you don't trust me to take care of myself. If i promise to administer my medication and seek treatment, i can be out of your hair and on my way in no time, and you don't have to worry that you've done something unethical. If i incentise that promise by draining my own bank account you have a reason to believe me, and i have a reason to come through- beyond my own health, that is.”

the doctor looked at the lawyer, who shrugged.

I tapped out a code on my phone. “here are my financial details. Please set up a date by which i must receive treatment, and calculate my balance to nearly zero for that date. In the mean time,” i said turning back to my doctor. “i have a not unreasonable fear for my life. What good does it do me, to have a healthy brain in a kidnaped, or worse, body?”

the doctor got up. “i have to discuss this with my superiours.” and walked out.

My lawyer looked at me. “you are one of the strangest clients i've ever had.”

“yeah, how did i come by you for a lawyer, by the way?”

“i was retained on your behalf anonymously several years ago, and half again my normal rate. Plus, i am an admirer of sir burton.”

“how do you know about that?

It was in the dossier i was given when i took your case.”

what else was in there? 

I'm can't say. 

So are you my lawyer, or the lawyer of whomever retained you.

Formally? I'm both. And i can't discuss matters of privilege i have with other clients. 

oh. 

the doctor returned. “given the unusual circumstances, we've agreed to your contract. You have six months to seek treatment, and all medical data must be cc'd to this address. She entered an address into her phone, and it flashed up on my knee. I saved it, and backed up to my server immediately. 

I turned back to her. What now then? 

Now, we have some tests to do.

They laid me down and covered my body and my hair, explaining that this was a shi'a hospital, and i was going to an area that was a male /female shared environment. Then they passed the fmri over me, and fed it to a unit that chuncked out all sorts of data. Apparently breaking my leg and then losing my mother to cancer had given me a 3.4 on the paulson ptsd index, whatever that was, and the estimated addition of a lashing moved me up to 7.3. 

they had given me artificial blood and the dermals were holding, doing their jobs. They'd also treated some muscle tears and general fatigue. Physically, i would be ready to go within 8 hours. Mentally they wanted to do some more feedback treatments to pinpoint the damage to get more specific on the drug treatments. 

I was the perfect patient. The next morning they discharged me with a bottle of pills, take one every evening before going to sleep and an inhaler for any time i remembered the lashing. I promised to use them, and even better than promising, i put my thumb against the contract pad. 

The front desk woman called my lawyer, and i waited in the lobby, reading the news. She arrived not long later.

“good afternoon, ms. Page.” 

where are we headed?

“the area hotels would be inadvisable, so i thought i would put you in my spare bedroom.” she said

on the way back to my lawyer's house i looked at her. Hijab, black clothing, all the things that had in my mind become symbols of the subjagation of women. At yet since landing in zanzibar all of the most competent women i'd met wore them. 

I was thinking about all the mental evaluation stuff back at the hospital. The doctors all understood how religion arose form the brain. The effect was achievable or supressable with custom psycopharmacueticals. It baffled me, how these women might choose this, understanding everything that they did. 

Amal, i began, and hesitated. How do you ask that kind of question, of someone you don't even know? 

yes? She said

you are all shi'a, aren't you? 

“Yes.” she said. “I am trained first and foremost in shi'a law.”

why? I mean i know you are muslim. But why be muslim? Why not choose a different faith? Is it just because you were raised that way?

“I wasn't.” she said. “My upbrining was arab, but secular.”

“i can get a drug that will make me feel as faithful as the most estatic sufi about allah, or give you a drug that would make it impossible to believe, based on activity in your occipital lobe or something somewhere. Why do you choose to go on believing in an age when we can completely physically decontruct belief itself?” 

She stopped at a red light, and looked at me, clearly struggling for words. “because now more than ever in history, you have to take a stand, and that stand becomes your context. islam is the only thing that can give my life context.”

and she turned back to driving.

We drove the in silence. I don't know what she was thinking about. I was thinking about her.

Chapter n + 4

Amal lived in burton's old house in zanzibar. She didn't mention it for some time, she just walked around with a sly grin until i finally told her it was beautiful. 

“i've admired burton all my life, since i read a biography of him as a child. And when the old man that live here died, i offered his children a fortune beyond its market rate, if only they wouldn't even bother listing it for sale. They accepted the deal. Someday i plan to dig underneath it and see if burton left anything for *me*.” she told me, as we drank tea. 

“here's hoping he did.” i told her. I was so thankful to her, and i liked her, but i still didn't understand where she came from. And i didn't really understand what we were doing here. I had the images, though, the images that told me to head to israel.

How long do you want me to stay here?

Just until we can get an apartment rented for you nearby. I've examined the tanzanian contract; it's very good, no very exploitable bugs. But it does have a three month time limit, and they are allowed other contracts in that time period as long as they apprehend you and turn you over whenever you emerge from zanzibar.

There's no way i can afford to stay here for three months. Speaking of which, there is no way i can afford you either.

Me, you don't have to worry about. You retainer is paid up for a year right now. But your rent is your own problem. Of course, i could probably arrange for permission to work for you on the island while you are here. What do you do?

“i'm a film and print archivist, but it doesn't matter, because i really need to go sooner than that. I mean, being in zanzibar protects me from the tanzanian special forces, but none of the other,” i counted in my head, “at least three, probably four groups chasing me.”

“you'd be surprised. Zanzibar's leading industry is the smart contract; it rule the economy and almost all negociations. They will find it difficult to operate here, and impossible to get you off the island without at least having to do some contracts against my own.”

“I thought in the real world cash is king. Especially the african real world.” I said

she laughed. Not here in zanzibar. African currencies are unstable, and smart contracts carry reputation as well as currency. No use trying to retire on a stolen fortune and a bed reputation if the people you stole from can inflate the currency out of any debt, and you are left with nothing but people that automatically don't trust your metrics. If you wave a lot of cash around zanzibar, you can't even get served a meal. 

I kind of knew that if you wanted a contract hacked right, you put it through zanzibar, i just hadn't realized how thouroughly it ruled the local economy. 

I wondered if i should wait it out, try to work here. I looked at her again. 

I guess, i said, i'm going to follow your advise.

Within a week i was living in the stone city, working out of a dark room at a local office. I had a contract with the british film institute doing the same thing i'd been doing, roughly, in oxford. The reels were delivered in their original containers and i was evaluating them. I was flattered that they went to such lengths to use me, but i knew part of it was that i was working at half my normal rate, which easily covered their shipping costs. Life was so much cheaper in zanzibar, i was living better than i had in oxford even on the reduced rate. 

It would have been wonderful if not for the continual survelence, the 3 am knocks on the door, the shadowy figures behind me, and the hideous threats that showed up in my mailbox. I met with Amal everyday. She was having the time of her life, or at least her career. She was fending off every city service, public or private, that could be used to get at me. She was in high aerobics lawyering, and she clearly thrived on it. Every night i got home, locked up the house tight and examined the pictures from kigoma, memorizing every line until i could sketch it and recite the latin beneath it. Every night i put it away and tried not to think about it too much. Tried not to think about anything. Amal- could see me growing more and more depressed at our meetings. She recommended to me that i see a doctor; i declined. She recommended that i see a friend, invite one out with the lure of exotic zanzibar. I thought about it, and agreed. I polled around my friend's public information and discovered that simon had some vacation time coming to him. I asked him up; he said yes, but it would take a couple weeks to wrap up his current project. 

One day about 3 weeks i could barely muster the energy to go to work. I kind of wanted one of those shadowy figures to catch up; to have a fight; to try and get my data from me. I sat in bed, waiting for someone to drop from the ceiling. Finally, after no one had, i got up and wandered into work. I arrived, i grabbed the reel i was working on and slipped it in the machine.

i watched old reels click by slowly; parades of black and white jagity people in a barely 20th century london i couldn't recognize. everything was muffled and contrasty, it was almost like a digital world. one bit on and black, the next bit off and white, and all together they added to children running through a parade here and an extra tall man there. someone much later but lost to history had already moved the format once and set the scene to a penny whistle off tempo from the jerky motions of the people. it made the whole scene marvelously sad. i leaned in close, to where the feet on the street where tromping across the scene, and watched the abstract shaped the grays made, flowing into one another. pure white came in from the right, crawled accross the screen with one last pair of feet, belonging, as i could see after i pulled back, to one last boy in suit and cap. and penny whistle held a high, scratchy note for a moment, shifted down, and it was all over. i sat back in my chair, light still shining through the last frame. it wasn't just that the boy in motion was dead by now, it was that his childred were dead, and his children's children, and so on. it seemed wrong to see them in motion, people so long dead. it was ok when it was writings or pictures, but this animated moment left me conflicted with my work and the constant mortality of it. i'd been chased, tortured, threatened, and generally harassed in a mortal way for thousands of miles, but it wasn't until peering back at an old reel that i felt time crawling inexorably toward death.

It was then that i realized i couldn't go on like this; i wasn't living anymore. I was waiting until Amal tripped up, and i died, or worse. I couldn't stay in zanzibar anymore. 

I packed up the films in the return crates carefully, and sent them back with a hand penned resignation for “personal reasons.” it would be one less place i could get an easy job in the future, if in fact i had a future. 

I headed back to my apartment and packed up the few effects i had, also into boxes and labeled them to my apartment. I mused, writing out the labels, about their chances of making it there unmolested. I reassembled my backpack, sleeping roll and pup tent. I took the labeled boxes down to my car, and went up and had a short discussion with the building manager's wife, explaining that yes, i really did want to do this no, i didn't need the rest of the month's rent back. I dropped off the key and went on my way.

For the first time in ages, i felt a little better. 

I drove to Amal's to tell her my decision. As i walked up to her white house i got a sort of nervous twitch. I was afriad to talk to her, afraid that she'd tell me i couldn't go, and that i would plunge back into waiting for my own end. I almost turned around and left again. “this is silly,” i said to no one, “she works for me.”

i gathered up my courage, and touched my thumb to the doorplate. A moment later an intercom crackled to life.

“Come on in kate, i'm working in my office.”

i went in. small autonomous cleaner robots were working in various rooms in the house. Most people in zanzibar with any money used human servants, as a sort of status thing. Amal was more modern, and used the normal sweeper/cleaner robots common in western environs. Living alone in that old arabian style house it made the robots i saw back home all the time look outlandishly science fictiony. I watched them for a moment, working up my resolve, and went into Amal' office. 

What brings you in so early, kate?

I have to leave

what? And come back later?

No no no, i have to leave zanzibar.

I thought we went over this?

We did, but i'm going insane here. I'm just waiting for someone to kill me. For you to slip up, and someone to kill me. 

i've got half the city protecting you. I'm fighting a group out of somalia, the disciples of satan, and about 3 other groups that i can't positively identify. How can you imagine you'll be safer somewhere else?

Yeah, so, what happens if you get hit by a car? Or for that matter if you get the flu and you're operating under the weather for a week or something?

She looked pensive.

I just can't wait here. I know where i have to go next. I have to get this over with, get on with my life. Also, i've quit my job and moved out of my apartment, so i don't have much choice. 

She leaned back, lost in thought for a moment. 

“alright” she said. But i'd like you to stay here for a few days until i can arrange for safe passage out of zanzibar.”

“i can't really argue with that.” i told her.

Also, your friend simon is showing up on thursday, and you might want to either wait that long or cancel.

i'd forgotten about simon. I felt like a complete fool for it too. 

“Oh damn, i must cancel.” i said, pulling my knee up. But cancelling seemed like such an ass thing to do.

Don't, said Amal, this may be useful for you. He may be your cover out of here. 

She was typing furiously, not looking at me. I sat in silence for a while, and she glanced over, looking slightly interupted.

“Make yourself at home, i will be busy for the rest of the day.”

i got up, and headed for the kitchen. I was amazed how quickly and smoothly Amal had changed modes. She hadn't tried to argue me out of leaving, and i hadn't known until that moment that she couldn't, but she'd known. In the few weeks of knowing her i'd learned that amal was above and before all efficient. She waste no movement, no breath, no energy, no waking moment. I was her client; if she couldn't keep me where she wanted me, she would keep me safe however she could. For the manyith time, i silently thanks the benefactor that retained her for me, and wondered who it could be. Marcia was the obvious choice, but marcia had denied getting her. I didn't completely trust marcia on that point, but i couldn't think of why she wouldn't own up, unless she was afraid of me trying to pay. Also, i wasn't sure marcia actually had the financial wherewithal to retain a smart contract lawyer like amal.

Amal worked 12 hours a day minimum for the next 3 days, until simon arrived. She suggested we take a day out on the city while she worked a 4th. We did, and i showed simon the sights of the stone city, and told him what local lore i'd worked out in the short time i'd been there. Simon came because i needed him, but i was determined to make it as much of a vacation for him as i could. He and amal hit it off very well. He was polite and gracious, she efficient and generous. I hoped amal would still be part of our circle of friends when someday she wasn't being paid to be. At one point i went off my own to procure flowers to spread around amal's house as a small thank you. When i came back flowers in hand i found them sitting in amal's study expectantly. They'd clearly worked something out. 

Simon spoke. “we're booking a flight out of zanzibar today.”

just a regular commercial flight? I asked

He nodded.

Doesn't that seem a little obvious?

We're doing it under assumed names. He explained.

How will that work? 

Here amal smiled. “it won't. And you'll be arrested for fraud on your way out.”

i blinked. “that was what i was afraid of.” i waited for them to elaborate. They didn't, they just sat there smiling like fools. “except?” i finally said.

“Except you'll actually be on a boat headed north toward the red sea.” Amal was positively grinning. 

Oh, i said, less than enthusiastic. This must have been simon's idea, seaman simon.

I looked at simon. You told her that you like long distance sailing, didn't you? They both nodded, still looking like they were getting away with something.

You didn't tell her i get sea sick thinking about boats, did you? Amal's face fell into her thinking expression, Simon continued to grin. 

No, he said. But that's even more perfect, no one will expect you to be on a boat. 

It won't be perfect unless i have medication, simon, it will be positively unperfect. I will be calling them and telling them where i am if only they promise me still land. I said.

No, amal said. No medication. If you are on record getting it people might suspect where you are. 

You want me to do a thousand miles in a big boat-

“light pleasure craft.” corrected simon's

“light pleasure craft, tossing and turning in my own sick while presumably, i gestured at simon, he has the time of his life. 

Simon grinned impossibly wide at me.

You wanted to leave zanzibar, amal pointed out. This is the best way. Simon is right.

Simon is getting revenge for getting broken up with a few years ago. I said.

Amal looked at him and back at me. I think he's going to get it.

Revenge, simon said, is a dish best served wet. 

Amal was back behind her desk, annoucing our flight plans and setting up a ghost identity, with a ghost arrest record and everything, to get lost in som administrative obbliette in the tanzanian prison system. She booked a normal flight for simon as well, a few hours early, then checked him in for it and called a courier to bring his luguage down to the airport to catch the flgiht to jo'burg.

That should keep them chasing their tale for a little while, she said, turning back to us. 

Amal then bought herself a pleasure craft from the docks of stone town, one clearly not up to the task. Simon looked its specifics over on her monitor “perfect! That will do fine.”

i put my head in my hands. 

Amal and simon were a flurry of activity. One of them pressed a cup of tea in my hands and tried to cheer me up, but i wasn't as sad as i was making out. This would be miserable, but no indeterminate.

---

“land ho!” i cried out. 

“kate?” simon said, “we've been going up the coast, keeping land in sight. We've barely ever been out of sight of land. What's with the 'land ho'?”

“yeah, but this is the land we were actually looking for.” i pointed. “elat! Jewel of the red sea!”

“i thought it was just a provincial israeli coastal town?”

i shrugged. “that's a bit like jewel of the sea. There's really no better jewel of the sea than the place where you are getting off of it.”

there was a port with a border authority in elat. Simon and I moored the stood on zanzibar at a pleasure boat dock in elat, had the morring fee debited from his account and made for passport control without much time before closing. They stared at us, two unscheduled americans, one with a diplomatic passport. They stared for a while. They asked lots of questions, went through our stuff, and eventually asked us to stay in the boat for the evening. One more night not being the difference between life and death for a change, we did. The next morning, they let us though. With a fresh stamp on our passports we went into elat proper and had the nicest meal we'd had in sometime, joked and laughed, and sat closer to one another than we had in a while. We made it a lazy day and a long meal.Over the last coffee simon grew introspective. 

“i'm more of a grownup these days.” he said.

“i know.” i replied. 

“I can't stay, i can't see this through right now. I've left so many unfinished projects back home. Back in gaborone. I mean, what would marcia say? She wanted me to look after you. But the work we're doing there. For the first time in my life what i'm doing seems to matter. a little. To me at least.”

“i know.” i said again.

He was pleading, but not really with me. 

“I can't stay. But i need you to know, kate, that i love you.”

“I know. I knew this was coming. i hoped it was. I love you too simon. This mess is mine to bear.”

he shook his head. “this mess is too big for your to bear. It's just that no one can help you.”

“what are we doing with the stood on zanzibar?” I asked, changing the subject.
    
“it's already sold, I got lucky. It got bid up in an online auction and was sold less than 6 hours after we landed. The owner shows up in 3 days. By then i'm guessing you'll be in jerusalem, and i'll be back in gaborone.” 

“ha. ok, i'll pay the way to tel aviv, as long as you don't mind going by bus.” i said.

“i've got a better idea. How about we catch an afternoon commuter flight? It's quite a bit cheaper than the bus anyhow.” he said.

“oh, well, ok, let's do that then.”

we headed for the commuter airport in elat, and got the afternoon commuter flight to ben gurion. It was half empty, we were going against the traffic. 

Simon had himself booked into the same flight to jo'burg that he had met me from. I saw him off in the kind of melancholy pleasure that laramie and i had seen each other off. It wasn't long ago, but it seemed it. Time in africa often dilates, and this trip had been no exception.

i texted laramie's cousin zia from the airport. 
  
    hi, this is kate, laramie's friend. i'm in tel aviv,  
    would you care for a random houseguest?

Without simon as a shield for purchases i thought i ought to start dealing more in cash. i got to a cash point and pulled out a wad of shekels. i chuckled to myself, trying to imagine what the anchient jewish patriarchs would have made of the modern shekel. Like so much of israel, the shekel was both old and recently invented. i started hunting around and aquired a cab to jerusalem. either way zia went, i needed to get to jerusalem. my knee beeped.

    attach: geo-cookie
    i'm in paris right now, but laramie fed your biometrics
    into our house ages ago. please feel free, and please check 
    on our plants. the neighbor girl never gets the watering 
    right. It's #4.

i put the geo-cookie on a memory card and handed it forward to the driver. "i want to go here."

he pressed the card against the dash and handed it back. 

"320 shmeck" and turned his attention back without waiting for an answer. 

We pulled into the san simon neighborhood in west jerusalem, and he dopped me off near two nice new rows of bungalows. I looked confused for a moment, and he pointed to one of them, and looked at me expectantly. I dug though my pockets and located my new shekels- counting him out 400. he counted me back 40, and started moving very slowly on the last two twenty shekel notes. 

“keep them.” i said, obligeingly, and headed for the row of bungalows. I located 4 and pressed my thumb up against the pad on the door, and was relieved to hear it click, and the deadbolt whirr back. I threw my stuff down and made for the kitchen. 

That night i lay in the guest bed playing back my pictures of the tapestry again and again. It wasn't that the knight was in the seven hills, i decided, it was that he'd left them behind, and as far as i could tell headed east. I could make out other landmarks between the seven hills and the knight- it was a map to get from jerusalem to somewhere else. I recognized a bit of what might have been the jordan river, or even the arabian coast coming in from the torn top. I copied the latin out onto a pad of paper. I downloaded a latin translation program to my phone, and fed the words in out of order. Then i decided i was being too paranoid and just fed them through in order with my uplink shut off. 

To the passage of river below the home of the essenes;
to the dome of the underword, the western spiral room.
To the rising sun, to the northern star, to the southern wind.
Always decend.
To the room with the african door.
(that was the name in the family letters for the metal door stuck in the floor above whatever room the artifact was in.)
and once more, sharpy to the east.

it gave me a lot to think about, and for the first time in ages i had time to think. Had the sword ever been in tanzania? Had burton hidden it, and then taken it with him later? Why move it? In a way it made sense. He'd done a turn in damascus, why not take it with him? Would that mean that i'd have to go to utah, then brazil, and eventually london?

If that's the case, i explained to the air, i'm going to figure out how to raise his old bones from the dead and kill him again. 

What if, i thought for a second, it's just buried with him? But that didn't seem right. Why go moving it around if you don't want it to be found by anyone but some trained from childhood decendent? Especially if apparently a bunch of people knew about it and wanted it, which i wished someone had mentioned in the family lore. No, i decided- if it was buried with him, it's not going to be there anymore now. I might as well keep on the trail i was on. But that didn't mean it was in syria, or utah. My speculations continued, striaght into sleep. 

Next morning i struck out for breakfast, but not before wiping the picures and latin notes off my phone and burning my pad of paper over a casserol dish. 

Breakfast was at a funky little cafe in west jerusalem. It would have been enjoyable and relaxing under normal conditions, but my experience in francistown had taught me to be more cautious. It passed without incident, and i regretted not taking longer and relaxing more. 

Walking out and down jaffa street for a few minutes i tried to think of what to do next. I didn't know israel well enough to know where the landmarks on the tapestry led to, and there wasn't an easy way to ask. My problem was scale; the landmarks could have led to somewhere inside east jerusalem or on the coast of the arabian sea. I could make a sketch for someone, but then i'd have to burn it and hope no one picked that poor someone up and tortured them or something. The only part that made much sense to me was the bit that was family lore; things like the path to the african door, which wouldn't make sense to anyone else. I wandered around lost in thought until i found another likely coffee place and got another to go cup. It was coming out that i finally worked out that i was being followed.

Most people in jerusalem have pale colored cars, if it's the heat or to match the white jerusalem stone that clads all the buildings, i don't know, but it makes big black van following you from block to block stand out like sore thumbs. I started walking quicker and ducking down allys to try an avoid it, it started following me more avidly. I turned down a road that got narrower as buildings met, to where the road itself became a walkway. The van jolted to a halt behind me and two dark clothed figured jumped out and started chasing me. I burst through the narrow point and into an open air market, full of stall and vendors and most importantly a press of people, both tourist and native. I slowed and looked behind me. One of the two men was stopped at the edge of the market, watching me, but the other one was grimly plowing forward to where i was on the edge of the crowd. I stepped forward a little, and he grabbed me from behind and started to haul me back. I screamed, and a crowd turned to see this man dressed in black dragging a woman toward an ally. They were on him in a moment; whoever it was wasn't terrible familiar with the character of israelis. 

He let go of me after a couple of punches and and ran back for the ally, after his partner had long disappeared. other people dragged me away and asked me again and again if i was ok, and if i knew that man, and what was going on. I said yes, no, and i don't know repeatedly. Someone gave me a bottle of water, an american tourist gave me a hug, and eventually, after disauding several people from calling the police, my phone rang and gave me an excude to get away. It was amal, on voice.

“Hi amal, has something gone wrong?” I answered.
 
not yet she said, but you need to stay away from the borders. 

Why, what's up?

There's a security alert out for you. I'm guessing someone managed to report you as a possible hazard traveler and get you blacklisted from crossing the border. I would suggest getting out of israel before there's an actual warrant out for your arrest, but i wouldn't suggest going out like you came in.

how would you suggest i get out?

honestly i'm not sure what to tell you, but perhaps you should go to the american or british consulate and see what they can do for you. In the mean time, keep your head down.

“When,” i said to her, “am i ever allowed to have it up?”

i'm going to look into the notices as much as i can and see if i can figure out where they came from. If i find anything more i will text you.

Thanks amal, as ever. I said, and she disconnected.

I wondered if i'd been foolsih to leave zanzibar. That wasn't a problem i could easily solve just then, so i decided to focus on the ones i could work on. I decided to head back to zia's and do some large printouts of regions east of jerusalem, and see if i could work out the scale of my map. I wandered back.

Zia's apartment wasn't what i'd call ransacked. everything had been touched, looked though, and tampered with, and put back nearly perfectly. if it had been my own place i would never have noticed. i'm obessed with being the perfect guest though, which mean to me not changing the little things in someone's house. when i cam home labels on bottles weren't quite facing the same way, in every room. the dust on the hats on zia's wigs wasn't right. they were probably looking for the same thing i was looking for, whoever the hell they were and whatever the hell that was. they probably thought i had it, since supposedly only i could find it. or maybe they wanted me to know they were going to take it away as soon as i found it. i didn't care. I decided to forgo the printouts and just move.

i packed up my things, dropped my keys behind the aloe vera, as previously agreed, and left. i walked all the way to the downtown square and sat under a cigarette stand to think. i was going to hail a cab and take off in a dramatic flourish, but two things occured to me- 1. while they do that in movies a lot, the camera alway pans away from the cab and changes scene. i wouldn't be with the camera, i'd be stuck in the cab, which threw into sharp relief the number 2. i didn't know where i was going. 

"well," i said to the air, "there's always coffee with laramie."

i texted him on my knee. 

   kate here. want coffee?

he replied fast. 

   here as in here here? i'd love a coffee. you're buying, i got the last. 

ha.

   being chased by persons unknown since at least 
   botswana. they've been all over your cousin's 
   apartment, they may still be following me. 
   could get you involved in all this. still on 
   for coffee?

i sat and waited. i knew the answer, but it was only polite to ask. my knee beeped gently.

   such intrigue! yes, bring me your troubling coffee company. 
   things have been deadly dull around here. all dirt, no
   fortified stone, if you know what i mean.

i started to get up, and sat down again. this was really bad, and i was appealing to laramie's worst instincts. I owed it to him to try and be the grown up right now. i kicked up my knee again.

   maybe this isn't such a good idea. i'll catch you later for 
   the coffee. 

and i sat backdown, buried my head in my hands to think. back to square one. i waited for his argument. maybe i was waiting for him to convince me to let him be my hero. i wouldn't though, i tried to muster my resolve. this time it was all me. my knee beeped again.

   first rule to not getting found, turn off your 
   geolocator. look up. 

laramie was about 25 feet from me, standing on the edge of a fountain. he was all in linen. he looked for all the world like the conquering colonialist. 

i put my face down and marshalled myself again. i felt like one big sigh. when i looked up, he was a few feet from me, grinning.

"for what it's worth, it's over an encrypted tunnel and reports my geo data only to people that i call, but yes, i probbaly should turn it off." 

"whatever." he said, "you owe me coffee."

i stared at him. 

"in 1963," i began, "a 9 point earthquake struck southern alaska. it killed plenty of people, but not in alaska. no. most of the people who died where in cresent city, california. cresent city got a tsunami warning, and masses of people went down to the beach to watch the tsunami come in. and they saw it too, it came in about six blocks. Much faster than crecent city residents could run.  you would have been one of those people."

he was still grinning. "no, kate, i wouldn't have been. you know why? because i know what tsunamis are. and you know how i know? because i have you for a friend. coffee."

i got to my feet and we walked off to the closest cafe. 

laramie plied me with mochas and tried to pry away my secrets. "so why are these guys chasing you?"

"i honestly don't know. they seem intent on not actually doing me major bodily harm, but than that, they don't have a lot of respect for my boundaries. by the way, i'm not telling you everthing, and i'm not going to tell you everything. but i hate lying to you, so i'm telling you that much."

"you would make a terrible spy."

i nodded. "i would. i so would. i make a really good victim of a spy organization. they barely would have to torture me at all, i would spill everything instanly." 

i looked at him, but he was trying to hail the waiter. i pulled the inhaler out of my pocket and took a hit. He didn't notice, or politely pretended not to.

"what did you find in tanzania?" he asked.

“a room with a box in it that used to contained something that according to my family letters my great great great etc grangpape stole from the last decendant of the moguls in india. you know, the nile is really really long, and it takes a really big lake to feed it."

"i knew that. i didn't know that either burton or the mongols even made it to tanzania. Or at least, i thought burton never made it to the source of the nile."

"he did, kind of, they didn't. they probably looted it from some important arab they beheaded, who probably got it off some greek, or something. it's apparently been in circulation for a while, at least that's the implication in the family letters."

"ok, grand daughter of destiny, what the hell is it?" 

i sighed. i felt like i was going to collapse. i wasn't even going to tell him all this. i'd even told him that. "i don't know. no one in my family's known for ages, we just know where it is, kind of."

laramie was undoubtedly about to say something wise and kind, because right then he exploded in a shower of blood. i partly hit the floor, but mostly fell out of my seat. laramie was lying there,looking kind of pale and twitchy. gunshots continued in the background. i realized he was only shot in the shoulder, but it still looked horrible. he turned his head and began to wheeze at me.

"you're covered in blood"

i looked down. he was right. "it's your blood, i haven't been hit."

"ah" he said, and moved as if he was going to straighten his neck, and then gave up. "run, you idiot."

people were streaming out of the cafe. he was right, this was a very good time to run away. i got up and grabbed a towel off the bar on my way out, mopping laramie's blood off me. more gunshots going on, but in the time that i had been sitting on the ground with laramie they had turned out to be israeli police gunshots. whoever had fired at me had done it from a car, and hadn't stopped when the police showed up. now the car looked chewed. the police and ambulances were rounding up people from the cafe. i was still slightly bloody, but many other people had actually been shot besides laramie. i saw a break in the comotion and was pleasently surprised that i managed to slip away. i cleaned up the rest of what i could of the blood, dropped the towel in a waste bin and found a patch of dirt. i dirted up the rest of the wetness, and then brushed off everything i could. i was fairly sure i no longer looked bloody, and more looked homeless. next i completely turned off everything geolocation related on my body. apparently the whole not wanting to kill me thing had changed, then. 

"ok!" i said aloud, again to no one, "laramie's been shot. but we're in a nation with good hositals, so he'll probably be fine. no need to go visit him and make sure. no-sir-ree." 

apprently i wasn't done talking to the air. "who the hell is trying to kill me?" the air had no answer. i looked around. i had made my way to an old graveyard in terrible repair. the stones were moslem. it was like a rule between these two people; they hated each other but they wouldn't actually go so far as to destroy each other's history. they just let it fall apart. the moslems used to back their toilets onto the kotel when jerusalem was theirs, but they wouldn't actually tear it down. the jews left this graveyard to rot, but in the middle of prime real estate, they wouldn't actually tear it down. it was covered in wild looking trees, and there was a bench which looked relatively new. for want of another option, and deep in exhaustion, i curled up on it and fell prfoundly asleep. 

chapter n + x

i was feeling well fed, and the bus was bouncing all over the ground, which did not bode well for possible car sickness. "fuck" i thought to myself. "i am far far too wimpy for all this shit." i was deep in the west bank with a team of vatican sponsored archaelogists, proving that getting laramie shot hadn't been a complete waste. 

they had sent an assistant out to find me on the insistance of a barely conscious laramie in the hospital. the fact that he did find me quickly, based on laramie's description and the last direction he saw me going in was proof that i had done a shit job covering my tracks. i was still wondering how many minutes ahead of the mystery shooty people their assistant had been. he got me off the bench, brushed me off and put me in his car, and took me back down to a vatican office ouside of the downtown area. 

"how did you find me, was i that conspicuous?" i said, slightly sheepishly.

"you've been to jerusalem before, right?" i nodded, he continued, "how many blood encrusted homeless people do you normally see sleeping on benches around here?"

"ok, you have a point."

"who are you then, why is father rickard going so insistant that we find you? he seemed affronted by this duty, which made sense. he'd gotten this job to explore the archaeology of the bible rather than get inovlved with strange intrigues of possibly non-catholic bloody women. 

"father rickard is a kind man and a protector of life," i said, "and he knew mine was in danger." with that, i fell asleep again.

when i woke i was alone the car in a car park outside of a white stone office building. i was startled that they'd leave me here exposed like this, but then it was a step up from the bench in the graveyard. there were a few priests talking outside the car. i opened the door. at the sound they stopped talking and walked over. 

"good afternoon, ms. kate. i am father vindelhote, and these are messers russpini, leah, and dr. hirt."  oh right, only one of them was actually a priest. "we've been told that despite current apparences you might be of great assitance to us in the field, at a location near the jordanian border.  We will have some idf assistence." wow, i thought, so instead of getting offed by my mystery assailents, i'm going to eat it via a palistinian guerilla cell. neat. 

"i'm not sure how i can actually help, father, i..."

"father rickard assured me that you are handy with a shovel. also, he said you would know something about some documents we found in qumran recently." 

"not the dead sea scrolls, i take it?" 

he looked peevish. "no. somewhat younger than the dead sea scrolls. father rickard assured me your cooperation, and suggested that we might drop you off near the river." 

"i'm not sure what good that would"

"on the other side of the river." he interupted. 

"oh." i replied. that was not a way i had considered getting out of israel. i was still weighing up a cab to tel aviv. then again, i was pretty good at getting myself nearly dead, too.

father vindehote was clearly getting tired of me. "we have all the documents in order."

"oh." i repeated. "you can do that?" 

"have done it. we have excellent secretaries."

"oh. ok."

i showered, and they had clothes laid out for me. my pack was refreshed, and dollars and jordian dinar laid out along with my passport and visa documents, and even extra memory cards. i flipped though my passport. i'd already been stamped out of israel and into jordan, so those were very good secretaries indeed. 

we set out the next morning in a regular sedan, with an armed escort. We switched for a bullet proof bus with another team of archaelogists already waiting. we pulled out, and were shortly joined by an esspecially beefy idf escort. less than half the bus were seats taken up with people, the rest was equipment. they were serious, they weren't just going out for the day. They were serious about securtiy as well- there were idf on the bus with us. about an hour in we pulled into a heavily gaurded hotel and had a sumptous but very kosher lunch. we ate until stuffed, and it finally occured to me to wonder what the hell the israelis were doing being so buddy buddy with the vatican. obviously the vatican was paying handsomely for all this, but it was out of character for the israelis to cooperate at all. we pulled out again, and that's when i started thinking about car sickness. 

no one had talked to me, and i hadn't looked to anyone else for conversation either. it was like we all knew that would be a bad idea. so when vindehote walked back to me on the bus, hand sliding along the top rail to keep himself steady, i was pretty sure i was in for something unpleseant. 

“Father rickard is an excentric character, but you are surprisingly colorful, even for him. How did you come to know his aquaintence?” from the way he talked, colorful character wasn't a compliment.

i leaned close to him. “would you like to know the truth?”

“of course.”

“i've had a sex change, but before that we used to be lovers.” i said.

He looked at me with confused shock. I sat silent with him for a moment, and then realize this guy might not even know laramie was gay.

I sat back in my seat. “we met outside the kotel some years ago when he was originally assigned to the holy land. He then contracted out some 19th century photo analysis with me, and we've been friends since.”

father vindehote pinched his face like a man sucking brine. “that sort of thing is not neccesary, ms. Page.” 

“it passes the time.” i replied.

"i'd like to know what you think of something" he said, acting as if i'd never made a joke, and failing.

i tried to tell him to go away with everything but my voice. 

"i'm not much on antiquities" i said.

"this isn't what i would call an antiquity." he reached into his dungarees and pulled out a piece of cloth.

hands around a little sword, being placed on or lifted off an alter. flat medaival style. But obviously not that old, the materials were all wrong, the colors were too bright. The tear was familiar though, it was the other half of my tapastry. The scene continued past the altar, which was under a city, and beside what i could only guess would be the dead sea. There wasn't any latin on it though, all that had been on my piece. 

“looks fake.” i said, “and i don't even really know this stuff.” 

he pursed his lips, speaking through a tight mouth. “i don't need you to tell me that, ms.page. Have you seen anything like it before?”

“in what way?”

what?

Like it in what way? Fake? Medieval? Featuring a sword and altar?

Like the rest of it. Have you seen the rest of it?

I don't know. Where did you find this piece? I asked.

It has been in the vatican collection for some time. He said. Until recently in its original envelope. Addressed to one emily Kuwata.

My turn to be shocked. That was my mother's maiden name. This must have been supposed to be part of one of the letters, one that never made it.

Who was it from? Where did you get it? I asked hurriedly.

He put it back in his pocket. Shall we discuss this later then, perhaps after we arrive?

I.. i guess we will. I replied. 

I looked around the bus. For the first time it occurred to me that this was a very small crew with a very specific destination, under tremendously heavy guard. Everyone was somber, even for a vatican dig. I looked at the guards, who were looking at me. I looked out the window, at a passing olive grove, at the idf infantry mover, and back at my own lap. I looked up at the guards, who were still looking at me. it finally dawned on me that i wasn't a guest on this trip, i was a prisioner.

I looked down at my phone. To my surprise it wasn't being jammed. I might still be filtered at the uplink, but presumably they need their own phones enough to not bother jamming mine.

I slid over in my seat. They would probably figure out what i was doing, but it was worth a try. I looked at the time, he should be recovering in bed i supposed; I dialed laramie. He would know what to do.

   In the transport now, i think we've been tricked, 
   i think someone at the vatican is after the 
   artifact, and knows about me.  

I hit send. My hand was in motion, hitting send before i could stop it. Of course someone is setting me up, i thought, it's laramie. Fucking hell kate, you have your head so far up your ass. But how could he? One of my oldest and best friends, one of the parents to my child. 

“maybe i'm jumping to conclusions” i muttered to the air, btu i didn't really believe it. And then a message arrived on my knee:

   don't worry, kate, i'll see to it that you aren't 
   harmed. Just cooperate, and you'll be back in oxford
   by next week, with your old life back.

I slammed myself so hard against the window that both the gaurds and vindehote jumped up. I ignored them and kept hitting the window with my arm while the rest of the bus looked at me. I let the tears just flow freely, not knowing or caring how i must have looked to them. Things up to now had been painful, and horrible, and scary, but none of it had been the ache of betrayal. The inviolate house of trust in my friends that had carried me though everything without me even knowing it was crumbling. My phone rang, on voice. I glanced down at my knee. It was laramie. I switched it off, and continued to cry. For a moment i thought maybe i would just give in, cooperate, take them to the sword, the artifact, the wrath, whatever the hell it is today, and go home. But that's why laramie had told me, wasn't it? He could have kept up the charade and acted outraged, i probably would have believed him. he knew that they were close, and he knew it would break my spirit and i'd cooperate. It would cost him a friendship, but get him this find and please his church, his beloved above all church. I didn't know what i was going to do.

We arrived at the dig site in quram. Everything was very arid and very beautiful. They unloaded, and guards standing by me. No one was playing at pretense anymore. 

“I have to go to the toilet.” i announced. Vindehote pointed to a port-a-loo i'd not noticed before. The guards acompanied me there, and one starte to come in the small smelly chamber with me. 

“i don't suppose i can ask for a little privacy here?” the guard shook his head. 

“i'll hold it.” i said, and walked back to the dig site.

We walked though an area i'd actually been to once with laramie, many years ago. He'd asked me if i wanted to see where they found the dead sea scrolls one afternoon when we had nothing better to do, and i said sure. It was terribly dangerous and transgressive. The palistinians had turned the area into something as like a dmz as they could manage, and still live there. We got into his church-provided four wheel drive econo-box and drove out there as fast as we could, hoping to not run into any trouble bigger than we could talk our way out of.  We argued politics all the way out there. He favored the israelis, but not that strongly, i favored the palistinians, but not that strongly. In end we compromised and blamed the british mandate. 

“that's always easiest.” i remember conceeding. We'd had a fantastic day. We never made it to the site of the dead sea scroll. He's been a distracted ferret the whole time, showing me new digs out there and new places he wanted to dig, and telling me why. We even hid in a cave while some farmers drove by us. He told me they'd discovered a whole complex of tunnels under the rock we were on. 

“some of them are natural, but it looks like some of them are carved as well. It's astounding what they did out here, they built a whole city of tunnels. We think they may have lived here much longer than anyone suspected, preserving another line of jewish and maybe even christian culture during the diasporia. We've just discovered another level that's below the level of the river.” he said.

“jesus christ!” i exclaimed, and he gave me a narrow eyed look. I grinned sheepishly and said “sorry, father.”

getting back was harder. We ran into a palistinian checkpoint, and started looking around for anything in the car that i could use as a hijab. I found a giant knit sweater someone else had left in the car and fished my head through the sleeveso that only my face was showing. They were skeptical of us, but i manged to convicne them that we weren't jewish with my accented arabic a handful of euros. Closer in we ran into an israeli checkpoint. I sat quiet and laramie talked his way though that one. Instead of a bribe they wrote him out a ticket for violating the terms of his movement paperwork, which came to slightly more than the bribe. We laughed all the way back to jerusalem, arguing the merits of a legal vs non legal taxation on movement. As we parted after dinner in old jerusalem, and i told him he had to be the most fun catholic priest around. 

“nah,” he said, “i'm just an archaelogist-priest, we have specialized super-dooper fun priests at disney's god land.”

“now that, i'd convert for.” i told him. He winked, and said he's see what he could do. 

Headed home that night i decided if there was a god theme park, jerusalem was probably it.

I was back in quram, agan at laramie's whim. He was such a seductively close friend it was always easy to forget who came first.  

“i don't know how i could have forgot.” i said quietly, to no one.

They'd gotten the gear down a whole and preped. I was led to a staircase built into a fast decending cave. They had 2 jeeps down there, which surprised me. two assistants were filling their tanks with gas cans from the bus. They loaded me up with my idf gaurds and started driving into what seemed to be the bowels of the earth. 

We drove for about 25 minutes, Sometime slowing considerably to get though a tight passage. Then we came to a stop and i stood to the side while gear was unloaded for carrying. The way from here on was too narrow for the jeeps. They talked to one another, and vindehote looked back at me on occasion, shining a torch on my face, but they never spoke to me. Eventually we entered a large chamber with a spiral carved into the side of the wall down to the floor. We proceeded single file. At the base one of the asistants started filling what looked like a generator in the lamplight. A couple minutes later he stood up and flipped a switch. Lights came on all over the big and beautful chamber. Vindehote began to speak.

“we are still dabating whether this was used as a church or a synague or a food storage area, or all three. There's evidence for each.” he bent down, laying his fragment of cloth on the ground.

“It was the discovery of this chamber that put us back on the quest for the sword. You see, the map to it begins with this chamber, and then a line points of to the east, “ here he pointed, “and continues on the other torn half of the tapastry to some chamber with this stone and the sword.”

“stone and sword. So, is it like excalibur or something.?”

he looked at me severely. “romantic mythical nonsense. But then, imagine it is if you like. I don't care. You're only going to lay 
eyes on it once.” He took my arm, marching me up to his fragment.

“What does the other half look like, ms page? Where do we go from here?”

i just stared at him. 

“listen to me carefully, ms. Page,” he said, “we don't need you. We know we're close. We can just keep excavation this area until we find the chamber. But it will be far easier with your assistance.” 

“how did you know it wasn't in tanzania?” I said. 

“Oh, we didn't. We thought that it had been moved from here to another location at some point. We werent sure where it was until you went to tanzania. We thought it would be quite easy to let you get it, then let your own body guards pick it off you. But you were empty handed, and when you escaped and headed here, we knew it had to be close.”

so it was the vatican, after all, that took the contract. And canceled it when they realized i was headed right for them anyway.

he looked around, and then back to the east passage. “which brings us up to date.”

“when did laramie betray me?” i asked.

“if you don't help us, we can leave you down here with a supply of food and water to wait and ask father rickard yourself. He'll be here to finish the search next week. We all agreed that a week in the dark would pursaude you to our cause. Don't worry, you won't be hungry, or thursty, or bothered by anyone.”

the thought of laramie showing up to force me, after a week alone in the dark, was too much. I gagged back another sob, and started heading for the east passage. 

We walked along in silence. 

I walked it like i had walked it a thousand time, the directions ringing in my head. A left, a right, always deceneding, then a cave in. i stepped back and pointed. The crew came in and cleared it, while vindehote got me out a meal. A couple hours later we had a passage we could crawl through, and pull the gear on ropes after us. One member of the crew stayed behind at that point. Then it was to a chamber, and i stopped until i heard the ring of metal instead of the dull thud of limstone. The crew pried back the plate, and we went down one by one on a rope ladder, again leaving one member of the crew up top. I jumped the last few feet, and headed for the passage out, slightly ahead of the group and the lanterns.

I stopped suddenly. I was at the end of my directions. It was dark, and distantly drafty and wet. Vindehote's lantern entered behind me, and the room exploded with color. There were painting all over the walls in the same style as the tapastry, and there, on the floor in the middle of the room was the stone altar, empty but for some dust and moisture.

I heard vindehote cry out in frustration behind me, and for the first time in a long while, i smiled.

Over the next couple of hours, while they examined the room, taking pictures and having quiet little discussions over details, i just sat on the edge of the room, laregly ignored. I liked looking at the painting on the wall. There was something familiar and comforting about it, but i couldn't tell what. it was punctuated with multicolored spidery flowers and had no eye for composistion at all, it was just a jumble of people and things, holding ropes. Here was a smith, hammer untouched on  his anvil, holding a rope. Over there a crowned man held a rope with an angel, not far form where a farmer before a white field held a rope with a townsman before the gates of his town.  Not all of them had people. Some off them were iconic, with ropes tied too them, like one burnt tree. They receded on the edges to icons so small it was hard for me to make out what they were. It all looked liked like a silly way to convey information. It occurred to me slightly later than everyone else that this was the key to the next location of the sword, partly because there was a pillar between me and the little icon with a sword painted underneath it. Partly because i wasn't paying attention, because i didn't care anymore. Without knowing exactly when it had happened, i'd given up on ever getting the sword. I didn't want any of the other people i'd encountered to have it, but eventually one of them would win and would. They'd work out this secret or the next or attack whoever had it until the world froze, i suspected. I felt as if all the world's christmas gifts had been taken from me, i felt as if i'd been too normal to deserve to be burton's heir. I sleep too much, and i get seasick. 

The icon did have a little more family lore to it. Beneath the sword on the wall it said in latin:

northern star
african door

then a pattern,
*       *
  *   *
    *   *

vindehote came over and hauled me onto my feet by one arm. 

“do you make anything of this mess?” he demanded.

I shook my head. “i suppose you won't be giving me any pictures to study either.”

“no, i don't think we will, ms. Page.”

he marched me back though the doorway, i noticed a tiny icon holding a tiny rope in the corner. It was an elephant in front of a building, and the elephant was holding a rope by trunk and tail. I squinted at it for a second, with the nagging feeling that it was terribly important.

Vindehote turned back to me. 

“don't imagine this means you're free. Everyday you will be watched, by us, and probably by far more unsavory people. This is your life; all of us waiting and watching, until we've gotten the sword. If you do come across it, do yourself a favor and call us.”

“that's funny, i had a bunch of satanists tell me the same thing a while back.” i said, in as stinging a tone as i could manage. 

He gave me a sour smile. “we are far less likely to sacrifice you after you comply, ms. Page.” what made it more horrible was that i suspected he was right. 
He hauled me back up to the rope ladder, and let go, leading the way out. I followed with the crew behind me. That last icon was playing in my head, like my own brain was trying to tell me something. I wracked my memory for something out of the family letters about elephants, something out of india, anything at all. Elephants were singuarly absent from my family's letters. 

We reached the central spiral room again. Vindehote hit the switch and looked over at me.

“this is where we say farewell. You will exit that way.” he said, pointing, and we this way. If you make your make a right, follow that tunnel the second right after, first left, you will come to a room with a pillar-- take the left fork. then third right, you will eventually come to daylight near the town of wabi seer, in jordan. If not, you may be in these caves for some time. Also, two more things you should know, ms. Page. This latern,” here he set the lantern he was holding at my feet. “has about 8 hours of light left in it. You should just about be able to make it, if you are quite speedy. I would not suggest rests. The other thing is that we have planted a gps broadcaster in you, so you might find that you have compnay when you clear the limestone. Best of luck. And, ms. Page, i hope you have a very good memory.”

he turned to leave.

“why don't you just kill me?” i yelled after him. 

He turned around. “i am a christain, i do not murder. In fact i have armed you quite well to survive, better than anyone else you are likely to meet. In fact, take this.” he tossed me a canteen. “it should help a bit.” 

and with that, they left. The crew looked a bit shocked and sheepish, walking behind vindehote. The last one out with me exchanged looks with another, who nodded. He slipped off his gear at the edge of the door, took out his phone and notebook, and left. I watched them receed. I wondered how much the others knew of vindehote and laramie's plans for me, but then, i would probably never know. When they had gone I switched off the lantern and switched on the generator light. I noted what i could remember of the directions down on my phone in as much detail as i could remember. Then, I took stock. 

1 lantern
1 torch
2 canteens, each mostly full
some dried food. 
My phone, no signal
a gps unit broadcasting my location implanted on my body.
A fold up shovel. 
One emergency blanket

i considered for a moment trying to go back and look at the room again, take my own pictures this time with my phone. But it seemed to be no use, i would die trying or trying to get back. I folded it all up beside me and switched off the generator light to take a nap. No use fighting for survival tired, if you can avoid it, i figured. Drifting off the mysterious elephant played back before my eyes. He was dancing now, in front of his grey ramparted house. He wouldn't leave me alone. Then it hit. I sat up and cried out in an urgent voice, “elephant & castle!” and it all fell into place.

King's cross, angel, chalk farm, blackfriars, knightsbridge, they were all underground stations. The other more strange icons made sense as well, but must have been harder to represent. How do you paint an icon of tottenham court road? All holding ropes, representing the lines, and the strange colorful flowers decorating the whole thing, they were tube maps. Very primitive and inaccurate, but obvious once you looked for them. We'd all been making the same mistake and assuming that burton had moved the sword from here. Also, i was surrounded by european catholic clergy, who are the world's foremost scholars and many things, but not the london underground. It meant something else though; i was back in the game. I had a gps tracker and the eyes of several powerful groups on me at every turn, but i was finally back to knowing something they didn't. I knew where the damn thing was.

“provided,” i explained to the air, “the damn thing hasn't been moved again.”

with that, i lay back down, and managed to get my nap. 

When i woke i packed up and headed out on torch light. Within the first couple of hours, i was fairly sure i was lost. At least, i never came to any damn room with any damn pillar in it. I kept time on my phone. The torch lasted about five hours, and i left it and an empty canteen behind me. I considered retracing my steps, but i had no idea how i would. I cursed and wished i'd left some kind of breadcrumb trail. I sat down in the dark and started tearing up my emergency blanket. With a pile of breadcrumbs in my pockets, i went on. I abandoned vindehote's directions when i ran across them again. 

I switched off my lantern and tried to think, tried to calmthe panic i could feel rising in my gut. I remembered there beinga point at which i was distinctly rising. I decided that would be the order of the day- follow any rise, abandon that for any water, and most of all, follow any draft. 

I returned to the rise and went all the way to the top. My only options were to follow two paths that went down. I set a timer on my phone- i would give each path 10 minutes, and then decided. 40 minutes later i was back at the intersection, choosing the first path again. In this manner i ran through the next two and a half hours, until i stumbled into a room with a pillar. 

I sat down, switched off the lantern and finished the last of my water. What the hell to do now? Was this even the right room? Was vindehote lying anyhow? I decided i would follow his directions for an hour; and then head back on partial light from one emergency blanket scrap to the next. That would probably exhaust me, but then i could start tearing up my pants or something. 

I ran most of it. I was startled by my own will to survive. Vindehote was a bastard, but he was a bastard with a sense of personal honor. I popped out of the caves shortly before my hour was up, dusk-tinged daylight burning my unaccostomed eyes. I felt truimphant, i would be home in no time. And then i remembered that i hadn't gotten my passport back from vindehote. 

Jordan used to be an easy and free land of nomads. The idea of “id” would have taken hours to explain to say, the old [beduin], and they still would have found it silly. But the jordan of today was a different story. Jordan today was somewhere you didn't want to be without id, and with a gps tracker broadcasting your location on an open frequency. Neither the british nor american embassy was likely to hear from me, unless it was accompanied by a ransom note. I had traded one maze for another.

I saw another cave, and while i was wondering if i should walk for it, i heard the distinct noise of a 4x4 somewhere behind me, out of view. I paused for a moment, considering my options, considering the chance of this being a friendly encounter. And then i bolted for the cave mouth with all i had. 

Whoever they were, the doppler effect from inside the damp cave mouth suggested they had passed. But i didn't come out. I retreated back to a point where my phone didn't work anymore, and sat down.

drip

i was fairly far in a wet limestone cave, and

drip

it was making stalagtites

drip

all around me. 

drip        drip          drip

there were some columns aready, slighly farther back.

drip

where bottom and top had met, made out of the particles suspended in tiny drop of the water.

drip      drip

I wondered about the 4x4 that had passed, i wondered about satanists and muslims,  catholics. But i wanted to wonder about other things, so i wondered idlely how many stalagtites i'd drunk by now in my life. also, for a moment i thought of marburg and other hemmoraggic fevers cought in wild caves like this one, but

drip

it seemed better to think of other things. 

drip 

so i thought about the water. the small and attractive particles, all dancing in a sticky mass.

drip 

selectively sticky, sticky only for each other.

drip but not so selective that they wouldn't take along the calcium of millions of year old fish bones and algae poop that now was making limestones around me. drip but water is a fickle substance, all the little h-2-os drip act like you are welcome, but at the end of the day they leave without you. drip they head back to their cycle, and they never drip look back. 

drip

there wasn't much more to imagine about this water.

drip

it wasn't doing anything so amazing. just depositing limestone around me. 

drip drip

ah, some surface tension had built up to breaking, and taken down an extra drop. i wondered how often that would happen?

drip

was i planning to stay long enough to find out?

drip

none of this was turning out right. but then, it was my own fault, wasn't it? drip i didn't have to leave oxford, and chase some ghostly dream from the drip 19th century. i could have ignored it. for all i knew, everyone else had. for all i knew my mom had recieved a letter one drip day, looked at my father and me and simply walked over and drip dropped it in the fireplace. for all i know i was the first drip person in the family in a hundred years that didn't just quietly slip the message back under the door, with a patient drip and firm "screw you, burton." but somebody had moved the sword, somebody in the know, somebody in the family. 

it was getting dark outside, and consequently getting very very dark inside. i slowly moved further in. i decided that maybe i'd stay here for the night, and maybe i'd just sit in a limestone cave in jordan and have a nervous breakdown. 

just trying to put what i knew together hurt my head. the vatican was involved, the israeli govenment was cooperating, the people trying to kill me were some combination of a satanic reverse conspiracy of the christains and/or a satanic arab faction. some missionaries were trying to help me, and others were trying to just throw up barriers in my way, but they were all trying to convert me. whatever was going on, it was terrifically monotheistic. i resolved right then and there, that if i got out of this, i was becoming a budhist.

i sat up with a start in the dark.

"you know what i haven't heard in a while?" i said to the air again, "any drips."

a heavily accented voice answered. i had to listen, and then play it back in my head to get all the words.

"i wondered why my foot was getting wet."

and then

drip

"that's better." i answered. i decided that if this new person was here to kill me, i was just going to throw jerky at him and go fetal. i really had nothing left but that. but fuck it, i decided, at least i was going to see whoever it was first. i flipped the switch on my lantern, and saw not one, but two people, one older jovial looking arab man dressed in a sort of beduin gear, and the other a sleeker younger man dressed in a sort of burgler's black with a monocle strapped to his head. he had a knife in one hand and a sap or some sort in the other. the man with the weapons was, of course, closer to me. the men regarded each other with some shock and what appeared to me to be recognition. then the younger man spun back towards me. 

"fuck this! fuck all of you!" i yelled, and pitched a big chunk of limestone at his head. it connected with his temple and he crumpled like someone had switched off his power supply. i stared. this was my first full act of volition since africa, and definately the first act in some time that had gone well for me. i looked briefly at my hand, and back to the unconscious or dead man. 

"do you have another rock for me, then?" i'd fogotten about the jovial arab.

"that depends..." i began, and then looked around. "actually, it doesn't depend, that was the only loose rock around me."

"ah, then allah has smiled upon me yet again." he said, and laughed.

"so who the hell are you, then?" i stared at him, then looked away, then back. i couldn't decide how much i wanted to pout. i was feeling really put upon, and this guy was going to hear about it. 

"i am someone who has been very eager to meet you." he began.

"you must pardon me for saying this, but that hardly makes you unique, lately." i said. 

"ah, but you have been very eager to meet me as well!" he was beaming. 

"how do you figure that?" i said.

"you replied to my message."

that brought me up short. i had wondered as a child who would send the message, but at some point in the process of growing up it had just stopped occuring to me to ask who. now it felt really weird that i never really asked who had sent the message in the first place back at oxford. at some deep level of childhood romanticism it was always grandpape burton who sent the message, to his chosen grandchild. but of course, there had to be another tradition, somewhere corosponding to our own family, a tradition that was waiting to send the message. 

"you" i blurted, "who, why would you send,"

some tradition that burton set up, or was invovled with. Something he trusted, something he believed in.

"i get it." i said, "you're a sufi."

he laughed heartily. "yes, yes, i am. and yes, a teacher of old made a promise to mr. burton, which i am now fulfilling. 

"how did you find me? The gps broadcast?”

"you've gotten better since you began this journey, but still, you leave quite a trail. and i've found a ruckus follows where ever you go!" he said, still jovial. 

“so you followed the ruckus?” i asked.

“the gps broadcast helped.” he explained.

So i'm not really very safe in this cave, then, i mean if the guy on the ground over there wasn't enough evidence.” i said.

“no,” he replied, “not terribly. But come, i will need help carrying our friend here!”

“by the way, i'm supposing you know my name already, but what is yours?”

“i am ahmed ms. Page, and i am most profoundly at your service.” he gave a little bow. 

Then he walked over and disarmed the mysterious man on the floor. He put his fingers to the man's throat and nodded. Then he picked up the monocle and squinted though it. 

“oh!” he exclaimed. “i can see you, all in red!”

i laughed. “that ir thing must have been annoying to use in here. I wonder how long he was bumping into pillars.”

we gathered up our friend, and trompped out to a waiting truck full of other men. They took the unconscious man and tied him to the rings on the side of the truck bed. 

Ahmed turned to me. “do you know where the artifact is?”

“i know it's a sword, so we can drop the whole artifact thing.” i replied. They looked at one another, back at me. Ahmed nodded. 

“alright, do you know where the sword is?”

“look, you guys seem great and all, but i don't really have a lot of trust anymore. How about i just keep whether i know where the sword is to myself until i know which answer is most likely to get me killed.” i said. 

Ahmed smiled. “as you wish.” he said and gave me another little bow. Then one of the other men handed me a hijab, and a robe to wear over my decidedly western cloths. I got in, and we left. 

We pulled up to a tent about 15 minutes later. 

“i rather thought we were headed into town.” i said, with some distrust.

Ahmed replied. “not with that thing still broadcasting your location, we don't think it would be wise. Within you will find a woman to help you.”  

i went in. i didn't like the arrangement, but i figured he was right, and i didn't have much choice other than trusting him for now. 

Inside were two women in fairly traditional costume, but without hijab-- i was guessing they weren't expecting any male visitors. One on her phone reading something, one knitting. When i walked in they looked up, breaking into remarkable smiles.

“praise be unto allah, you are safe! Are you injured in anyway?” sadi the first. 

“No, thanks. Who are you?” i asked.

“i am ----, and this is -----. we are doctors. We were waiting here in case you were injured. 

I looked around. For a tent, it was a very well appointed surgical room. 

“this is a bit too good to be true. How did you do this?” 

“we are called upon to assist the heir. That's you. Now, you must have been brought here for a reason, or we would have just been called to head back into annan. What brings you to us?”

“a priest installed a gps tracker-broadcaster in me somewhere.”

they just looked at me for a moment. Then at each other.

“do you know where on your body it was installed?”

“no.”

do you have any tender areas, or aches?

no.

they got to work. First they frisked me, then they went over me with a finer touch, then they sat down to confer. One of them started tapping things out on an arm phone. A few minutes later a man presented himself at the door of the tent, and passed a metal detector inside. They asked me to disrobe. they first ran the detector over the clothes, with no result beyond buttons and zippers and the like, then they laid me down on the surgical table and ran the detector over me. Sure enough, it went off on my shoulder. 

“Oh,” i explained, “that's my contraceptive inset.”

----- looked at me with a tight smile. “i don't think it is, anymore.”

i felt really foolish.

“i think they must have meant for you to find it eventually.” she said, by way of comfort. 

She sprayed on a topical anesthetic and made a slight incision. With a pinching motion on my skin she made it pop out. She dumped it in a bowl and patched up my arm with a small dermal. Then she picked up the bowl and knocked on one of the tent stakes, handing it out. 

“there,” she said, “i think we shall be giving them a bit of a merry chase across the desert. I believe ahmed will be wanting to take you to amman, now. 

I donned a hijab and walked out. Ahmed and crew were beginning to deconstruct the camp, while another car disapeared into the distance, presumably carrying the broadcaster. I helped them brak camp and load up. We were in amman by midnight. 

Never let it be said the highly spiritual muslims don't know how to party. 



Chapter found. 

I went down to the platform. I went to the end of the platform, and right before the last train pulled up and ducked off the end, down the platform stairs into the tunnel. I found a deep cubby hole and moved to the very back and waited silently. An underground employee of some sort went by, but didn't notices me in the shadows; i held my  breath until he went by, and held it again when he went back out. After that everything went silent and dark. 

I waited until about two, and blessed my luck; no crew was working in my tunnel that night. I stepped into the path of the track and wandered down the tunnel to the north with a torch, looking at the tile on the wall. I found the pattern that had been below the icon in the tunnels below the river jordan. I looked down. Sure enough, i could just make out a crease in the floor. I lit my lantern and set it down. I looked down both ways in the illuminated tunnel, but i couldn't see anyone to disturb me. I used the jack to lever it up; nothing but dirt was visable underneath. I blocked the panel where it met the ground and left the jack engaged. I held my torch in my mouth and brushed the dirt until i felt cold metal beneath my fingertips. I brushed the dirt away quickly and found another metal plate. Marked in the high middle facing away from me was the initials RFB; it was the african door. I pulled out the rope and grapple to get ready, I pulled out a good old fashioned crowbar and pulled it up. There was no room beneath this african door though, no paintings and no buried treasure. There where just disused pipes, possible from some cable venture on the underground, i wasn't sure. I pulled on them each but with no luck. Then i took the crowbar, and had no luck for a while either. On my third pass of the pipes the second one seemed to move a little, like perhaps it wasn't as continuous as the others. I worked on it for another hour at least with my crowbar and my hands, working an end loose in the dark enough that i could sneak my fingers in; nothing but air. I glanced at my watch. The underground would open in another couple of hours, i had to get this done or abandon it soon. I put the crowbar underneath the pipe and started jumping on the end. I felt rediculous, but it was moving very slowly up. I sliped my hand in, this time i could feel something. I had a new burst of energy. I pounded on my crowbar until i could slip my hand all the way into the length of pipe. I felt something like a big bead. I slipped down a little further, straining to fit my hand in; a handle. I had it, it was here. I swore and wished to heaven i'd brought a second jack, and kicked the pipe a bit. Then i replaced my crowbar, and gave it a few more jumps. The end of the pipe shot up an inch or so toward me. I reached in and grabbed the sword, feeling it pull loose from something into my hand. 

It was beautiful. It glittered faintly in the dimly lit tunnel. The sword was broad headed edge and half, with thick serations down the last half. It had a thin shallow blood groove, which seemed to be where the light came from or was reflected from. It looked like a warm thing in the dim tunnel, like it was still very slightly hot from the forge, though i felt no heat holding it. i was still looking at it when my alarm went off; that was the point of no return. The trains would be running in 45 minutes. I grabbed the scabard out of the pipe and sheathed the sword, laying it well out of the way of the tracks. I jumped on the pipe and it collapsed loose next to and slightly on top of the other pipes. The african door went back into place next, and then the blocks out the ways and the microjack down. I turned off my lantern and my torch, stowing all my gear and the sword back in the cubby hole i'd hid in oringinally and came back. When i pulled the jack out the panel fell down with a loud and satisfying thud. I jumped back into the cubby and waited a few minutes. I strapped the sword to me and put my backpack over it and made my way to the mouth of the tunnel. I climbed up onto the station floor and peered around the edge; there was no one to be seen. I stood and watched morning commuters file in and finally the sign come to life; ------ in six minutes. I caught the first train of the day, and was back to the hotel before breakfast was served. I ate, the sword wrapped in a jumper with just the end of the scabard sticking out below my backpack. Then i went up to my room and took a nap holding onto it. I sleep deep and comfortable and dreamlessly. 

When i woke that afternoon i looked the sword over more throuroughly. There were wood and gold inlays in patterns all over the hilt and guard that looked almost like a pictographfic language like egyption, but with the wavy open lines evocative of hebrew. I looke close, tracing it around the hilt, in a spiral. Whatever it said, it looked palindromic, and symetrical down a line bisecting the hilt. I wondered if it could still be lingual and so perfect. The blade was darker than the steel swords i was used it. It was almost black. More of the strange script was on the blade itself, between the blood grove and the serations. Looking closer i noticed that the black had flecks of more silvery material in it, and i imagined that was what had caught the light in the dark of the tunnel. The whole thing showed some ware, but on the whole was in good condition. The style of the sword was like nothing i had seen, but then, i wasn't an expert. It looked anceint and modern all at once. It reminded me of really well designed buildings from any age, how they seem to stand out of their timeline and define their own context. It was a captivating piece of metal. It dominated the room, all the lines led to the sword, and when i picked it up it was light in my hand. I waved it a little in the air amateuishly. It seemed to hum very faintly. I stared at it, captivated. I didn't know how much of it was the family myth surrounding burton's artifact, and how much it was the sword itself that affected me. It didn't matter, i wasn't ever going to be an impartial judge. I put the sword down and looked a the sheath; nondescript wood, possibly mohogany. It didn't match the wood on the inlays. There was sanscrit around the top and bottom; it didn't match the sword at all. A later addition or unmatched set, i decided. I looked at the sword again. I didn't know what i had. Oh sure, there were plenty of people out there that obviously had theories, but they weren't willing to just share them with me. Nothing in the family letters ever gave anything away about the sword itself. Perhaps the sufis knew more, but i didn't know how to get a hold of them. They always got a hold of me. 

it was time to call on chris. Chris wasn't in any super loyal circle of friends, he wasn't someone i could go to when the world was falling apart, he was just a guy from keble road in oxford that i had lunch with fairly often. However, Chris worked in research laboratory for archaeology and the history of art. I put the sword down on hotel room bed and pulled up a knee to text chris.

     Busy?

A few seconds later,

     it's a bit late for lunch, i've eaten alrady.

How to entice him without mixing him up in everything. I was wracking my brain. Then it came; why he befriended me in the first place- he was a burton nut.

     No, i mean, busy at work. I've found a family heirloom 
     i thought you'd enjoy taking a whack at.

And then;

    i can probably find a few hours out for that. I have some new 
    toys to test out as well. Bring it on by?

I chuckled. Oh, he'd spend a few hours on this. I was mixing him up though, as soon as he looked at the sword he would be mixed up. Chris had a wife and some number of kids all staying at home, he did diy on the weekends and only really saw family on holiday. The furthest place he'd traveled to was florida. I was about to do something terrible to him. But inertia carried the day, and momentum doomed poor chris. Still, it didn't have to be today.

    Still in london. Can i drop by in the morning?

    Ok, try to be in by 9. i have an 11am meeting.

With some dread and some guilty delight i answered;

    done.

My journey to oxford was uneventful. Apparently the powers that were either weren't interested at me or weren't sure enough of my movements to pinpoint me. My flat was no good, but my flat hadn't been any good since this started. There were two men watching it at all times, watching the neighbor girl come and go, watering my plants. I had other places to stay anyway, i told myself. I tried not to let myself feel nervous about my home being cut off. 

The next morning i showed up at 10 to 9, coffee and pastries in hand, sword strapped to my back inside of a backpack and wrapped in black cloth. I met chris in his office. I put down everything and slowly, carefully untied the sword from my body. I opened the black cloth and presented him with the sword burton had hauled out of india, the sword that my family had been designed to wait for.

He tutted. "swords are difficult, do you have anything else from the site, to put it in some context?" 

oh fuck, i thought, he doesn't want to touch it.

"no, burton brought it out of india on its own." i explained. I was trying hard to play the burton angle. 

He picked it up, still inside the cloth. His hands has a certain trained carefullness, but beyond that, he clearly wasn't impressed. I knew chris was very good, and i began to wonder, was this the ral thing? Had i found a decoy, or even worse, and grampa been taken in? 

"the thing is, it doesn't really match india, or any other area's swords. It's kind of an amalgum of different sword making techniques and that makes me think novelty sword. Pre-1850 novelty sword to be sure, but novelty sword none the less." he must have seen my face fall. "i'll tell you what. I've got a new bouble that should let me run radiocarbon on these wood inlays on the hilt non-destructively. Then i can tell you for sure, will that work for you?"

i was profoundly relieved. "that would be great, answer a lot of questions i have about this item from the family letters. Burton really thought it was something, but it might not have been the first time he was wrong."

chris smiled for me. It occured to me he was a genuinely nice man in the act of doing a favor for an aquantance. Guilt struck me again, but also relief. Maybe it would be nothing. Maybe i could leave it on a street corner for whatever faction got there first and forget the whole thing. 

"be back in a few!" he said, and nipped off, leaving me to nurse my coffee and pastry. 

It really was only a few. He came back in, holding the sword a little more gingerly. "so the non-destructive radiocarbon puts this at 25,000, which is clearly impossible. It's new, but it hasn't gliched up like this before. Can i take a scraping and do a micro-destructive test? I need to figure out what's going on with my machine."

"how long will that take?"  i asked.

He looked worried. "A couple of hours. It's not nearly as hard to do as it was in the old days. We have micro environments to work with. Will it be alright?

I nodded. "is it ok if i stay here?"

he was already heading back out the door with the sword. "sure." he said over his shoulder. 

The day ground on. After the next test, which confirmed the results of the first test, i went ahead and joined him in the lab. He was happy to have me for immediate answers to contextual questions, i was happy to not have the sword out of my sight. Part of the inlay was colorful; he foudn it was ceramic and did non-destructive liminosity on it. 25000 years, give or take 1000. finnaly he looked up, slightly frazzled and pale and said "lunch."

over lunch i asked about non-destructing testing. "i thought you had to really destroy things, burn them, and the like. 

"oh, we used to, and sometimes we still do. But the new non-destructive and micro-destructive testing is wonderful. We use a quantum tunnelling imager to take surface samples up to 3 millimeters deep and turn the images into virtual particles making up virtual materials. For some tests we can just count what we get, for others we have to model the destructive techniques we used to use. It doesn't get the precisely same effect, which limits its usefullness in other fields, but it produces the same result for us, showing decay at the same levels of a perfect simulation." he paused. "but it isn't working on your sword. It keeps trying to tell me that it's 25000 years old."

"why doesn't that work?" i knew, but i wanted to hear from him. 

He laughed. "you work in 19th, 20th century stuff mostly. So you're not looking at materials degradation that's to bad."

i snorted. "you should see some of the stuff i have to get get the  image off for the last time, like reading off of ash." 

"there you are. The stuff i'm working in is often older than the local written language, or we could just look it up in the records. There's no reason for you to know it, but your family heirloom is exposing some real faults in our process. We're going to end up recalling other samples over this, i just know it."

"but why can't it just be 25000 years old?

"because that not only re-writes human history, it re-writes materials science. There aren't, for instance, many 25000 year old wood inlays out there." 

"that's pretty consistent with how fucked up this whole thing has been. I didn't know it was 25,000 years old, but i suspected it might break all the rules. There's nothing wrong with your machines." i told him, as casually as i could. "also, i was thinking maybe we could just keep this between us. As in never ever tell anyone what you saw today."

chris began looking very nervous. "what do you mean? Why? What's all this about? There's no way that thing could be so old, your not making any sense." 

i leaned into him. "that sword is strange. I didn't know how strange, that's why i came to you, it breaks all the rules. You have to understand, there are a bunch of people trying to kill me and steal the sword. I mean, lots of them, from different groups. I've barely slept two nights in the same place since i left. I've been shot at, tortured, chris. I've been left to die." 

he stared at me. We sat in silence, and chris didn't blink.

“is this some sort of sick joke?” he said, in the too loud hoarse whisper of a very upset man.

I shook my head and tried to look him in the eye and right through him. I wanted to bored through his skull with the seriousness in my eyes. 

“Oh i get it,” he began, “this is why you left town all of the sudden.“

i nooded, still keeping his eyes with mine.

“you know i have a wife. And i have two beautiful children. I love them very much. I love my life very much. Why would you bring this to me? What are you doing to my life? Are people going to chase me now? Just because i've seen it?”

“i'm doing nothing to your life as long as we keep this quiet.”

i hope i'm doing nothing to your life, i thought, i'd pray, if i believed in god. I might try it anyway after everything you've told me today. 

I failed to share these thoughts with him. 

I leaned back.

“i had to know, chris. I mean, this whole thing has destroyed my life, i had to try and find out what the hell it was.” i was beginning to plead. I really wanted him to understand and forgive me for invovling him.

He got up in a quick, jerky movement and grabbing my arm we walked all the way back to his office in silence. There he handed me the memory card he'd recorded the readings from the sword on. He literally gave me a push, and said “there's all the data on your sword. Get out of here. Don't tell anyone you came here. I never want to see you again.”

there wasn't much to do but leave. 

----

marcia certainly knew people. 

while i was waiting to meet with the director of the british museum i thought of a title for my paper: a family story: loss and recovery of a mythic sword. It wasn't meant to be super academic; it was meant in my mind to be accessable, and to give my vision for what the sword should be used for to the general public, in addition to a mission statement for the research. 

The director came to meet me in the lobby. As we walked back to the office he offered me a coffee. “sure” i said, and i thought he was being very gracious for a strange woman showing up in his office with an addition to the collection strapped to her back; and a weapon no less. All in all i was feeling very cheerful. “it's wonderful of you to see me like this. I mean, i think there's a lot to learn from this sword, and i think this is the institution to have it.”

well, he said, we're happy you came to us on this, and he opened his office door and motioned me in. 

i took a step in, and there was vindehote, sour smile and all, flanked by police.

“Fuck” i yelled, and looked behind me. Coming up from behind me were another two officers. The director waved me in again, and motioned to a chair. I sat down.

“am i being arrested?”

vindehote spoke first.

That depends on your cooperation, and of course the condition of our property. 

Your property?

He nodded slowly and deliberately. Our suspician is that you have been decieved, and we as we aren't vindictive people, and as long as you don't persist in your fiction, we won't feel the need to press charges.

I simply stared at him. I couldn't find any words. I kept seeing him tossing his canteen at me. I kept seeing him walking into the darkness, leaving me to get lost and dead in the earth beneath jordan. This wasn't the time or place to bring that up.

i'll explain to you what i just explained to the good director here, when i arrived with the police an hour ago. Will that be alright with you?

Of course. I croaked. 

The sword, called the wrath, was part of the vatican collection since the 12th century. It was looted by troops in wwii under the guise of “liberating” a monestary outside of naples. A liberation during which, i might add, many of the monks lost their lives and many pricless works of art and history were stolen or detroyed. The wrath was the prize though. Someone, presumably in your family or perhaps just connected with them hid the sword and laid a trail, laced with his own brand of rich mythology. He took a lazy sip off of his cup, and continued. We thought the relationship with burton was a particularly nice touch. Anyhow, from what we can tell your family knew one marcia kadanski, and this ms. Kadanski learned the story of the sword and set into motion events to get you, her friend to recover it, possibly for inclusion in her own collection. Ms. Kadanski is a collector of ancient art, is she not?

Yes, but-

please allow me to finish, ms. Page. She gathered the data to complement your own and hired people to play the other roles in your legend, with the intension to obtain the sword after you had retrieved it for her. 

That's rediculous! I declared, you have no idea how many people-

please ms. Page, i have something for you to review.

He produced a memory card and handed it to me. I took it and looked at it. 

Please ms page, load it up and look through the files. He said, indicating a terminal on the director's desk. I ignored the terminal and plugged it into my phone. It contained a series of self executing smart contracts. Amal being retained by marcia, the original contract for tanzania, dated months before i contacted her. A contract with a group out of botswana for transport to tanzania, and the most painful, a contract with a jordanian performance troupe to act as my sufi companions. I started follow ing all the links and making sure they were valid. Everything was checking out. I looked up deparately and back down. I heard the director speak

i think ms page has seen enough, can we move on? I am hoping to make a noon meeting. 

Vindehote replied.

Please mr director allow us to convene to a conference room. It is of the upmost importance to the organization i represent to help ms. Page get beyond the betrayal of this ms. Kadanski. 

The director looked annoyed. Inspector? Is this within your schedule?

The inspector nodded. We're hoping she'll be willing to testify against ms. kadanski. 

The director shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked at me and back at vindehote and the officers. 

Please feel free to use my office, my meeting is elsewhere anyway. He got up and left. 

I felt like being sick. I turned back to my phone and followed every contract link, verifing the date signature hashes against nist and other time servers; they all verified. There was even a contract hiring some of the christchurch kids to scare me in a bathroom. My backpack fell off my shoulders, and the sword fell across the chair behind me. I didn't pick it up.

This doesn't make any sense. I said. Marcia never even asked me for it.

That's because she's been in police custody on fraud charges awaiting extradition for the last 4 days. The inspector said. That's also why you haven't been able to get a hold of her, or her lawyer. 

I had nothing else to say. They'd had all the evidence that eveything i'd done, everything i'd lived and fought for was a lie fabricated by an overactive family imagination and nurtured by my best friend for her own gain. I sat silent for a while, and started picking my nails with my other nails. I could feel myself going numb inside. Vindehote leaned forward, and quietly, almost compassionately, he said

ms page? Are you done? We don't want to keep these gentlemen all day.

Yes. I replied. I suppose we are done. But i didn't move. I didn't know what to do exactly, when you've lost.

ms. page, may we have our sword back? 

I looked up. Huh? Yes, i guess, yes, ok.

I reached back and felt the cloth, the scabard underneath. For a flash i thought of pulling the sword, of fighting them somehow and making a break for the window. But i'd never have hurt anyone with it, and i never meant to be the bad guy. 

The director re-entered the office and sat down, waiting.

I picked it up, and pulled the cloth away. I heard vindehote catch his breath, and then compose himself again. No one else seemed too impressed. I spun it around, and handed it to him, hilt first. Again for a moment i flashed on pulling away the scabard and throwing myself on the sword, but i didn't really want to. I just felt sad, more sad than i ever had in my life. Vindehote got up, and he and the inspector made their way out. I stood up as well, but the director stopped me.

A moment, if you would, ms. page. 

Yes, i said, and sat down quickly like an admonished child. That's how i felt, foolish, powerless, like a child in terrible trouble.

One of the officers remained behind with me, sitting next to me, uncomfortably close. 

The director leaned in close. I am hoping you will give the prosecutor your full cooperation in this matter, but in the mean time i must inform you; any attempt to publish or speak publically about the sword won't be supported by this or any other british institution or the media conglomerates. The vatican has made it clear that they are more than willing to pursue suit against you and any publisher for libel and copyright infridement. No one will touch this, please keep it to yourself. 

oh. i said.

On a brighter note, the director continued, vindehote let me know that with ms kadanski under arrest and the sword safely back in the hands of its rightful owners, there's no reason you can't go home. I suggest that you let this go graciously, ms. Page, and offer your full cooperation. The vatican have been far kinder to you than i suspect you deserve. Good day. 

With that, he turned back to his desk.

Every word felt like a blow. I got up, thanked him in a quiet whispered and walked out. The officer came with me. 

Actually, i'd like you to come in for questioning. He said.

Do i have to? Right now? I mean, my world has kind of been destroyed and all. I'd like to have a nap first, or something.

He looked at me with pity. I have to make an appointment, but it doesn't have to today. I made an appointment for two days later at lunchtime, and headed home for the first time in ages. 

On the train back to oxford i let it all wash over me. Vindehote hadn't accounted for everything. Neither did the story i had believed was my life. I didn't know what i believed, i didn't know where i fit in. i didn't trust vindehote, and all the smart contracts in the world weren't going to make me trust him. I tried to ring marcia again, but she was still offline. I tried amal, but only got the same result. I turned back to the british countryside, wiping by me to fast to make out anything more distinct than the horizon. It din't really matter what the truth was, because the truth was the sword could have been on the moon by now. It was with the vatican, it was staying with the vatican, and i had to get on with my life. Walking home from the station in oxford i found my worries turning to getting my job back, if i even wanted it. It had always been the family lore that made me want to preserve the past, and now that i had doubts about this bit of history all of the rest of history felt like it was slipping away. What was the value of interpreting these documents, if you never knew what interpretation to trust? I didn't trust my own anymore, and it was the job of a dustructive archivist to be the last perspective carrying works forward to another generation.

I didn't trust myself to do that job anymore. I stopped on my way back to my flat and sat on a street corner, watching the traffic go by. I looked around, sure enough no one was following me, looking at me, interested in me. 

“I will never be sure what happened.” i said. “but i'm making my stand here. It means something, this history i grew up with.”

i sat for a while longer, talking myself back into wanting to love the past, wanting to be an archivist. 

Chapter n + pissed

Marcia had arranged for my flat while i was gone. Consequently, it looked quite a bit better than when i'd left. All the plants were thriving, and someone had cleaned the fridge. It was the nicest thing i could come home to. I'd lost the sword, probably my job, nearly lost my life and pretty much blown my nest egg, but at least home was warm and familiar and my plants weren't dead. I dumped my stuff, and went to go flop in bed, except it was already accupied. 

By, of all the fucking bastards it could be, laramie. He was lying on top of the duvet dressed but dozing on his side. When i came in he started awake and sat up. 

I was furious beyond description. 

"what the fuck are you doing here? Who let you in?" and without waiting for an answer i threw my purse at him. Unsatified, i started picking up the closest items to hand and throwing them at him, most of which turned out to be books. 

"what? Have you got more humiliation for me, fuckhead?" a book on medieval women bounced off his arm. "did you come down to see what a mess i have for a life now?" catch-22 caught him right over the eye, and he started trying to deflect the torrent of literature mainly from his face. "am i not dead enough for you? Did you come to 'finish the job' or something?" by now i was windmilling books at him, moving in closer so that i could pick up books i'd thrown and throwing them again. "ha ha, mr fucking action priest, isn't it funny to set up your friends, ha fucking ha," i continued, "did the pope like it? Does he fucking get off when you betray people? Is that why you fucking church shits did it so much through history?" i was getting incoherent now, and i didn't care. As hard as it had all been, i had only just now realized that the worst bit was being betrayed by laramie. It hit me like a shovel in the stomach, and i collapsed to my knees. I felt emotion rush through my body like a surge of electricity and began to sob.

"fuckyou fuckyou fuckyou fuckyou fuckyou fuckyou" i could barely manage as a whisper, and i just laid down on the floor and cried. 

Laramie just sat at the edge of my bed, in a pile of books and watched, and whispered. Eventually i could make out that he was just saying "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry." over and over again. I went silient. I suddenly felt so tired, so drained, like i could go to sleep right there head on a pile of books. I almost drifted off in a sea of hurt. One more sob shook me and i looked up at him.

"at least you could get me into my bed, you fucking nightmare of a friend." i said. He picked me up and tucked me under my duvet, walked out, and after standing and looking at me in silloette in my bedroom door, he flipped out the light. Less than 7 seconds later, i was asleep. 

Laramie had a meal ready for me when i woke up. I didn't have any idea of the time, i was so jetlagged and worn out from my emotions ealier. I felt like a dark and brooding ugly thing when i walked out and found him in my kitchen. I saw lamb and rice in a pan with coffee in the pot. "should i worry about being poisoned?" he opened his mouth for a slightly too fast reply, thought better of it, and simply said "no." i just kept looking at him. He looked strained. "look, if you want, we'll order out, you pick the restuarant."

i sighed and shut my eyes. They felt gluey. "no, i don't think you're poisoning me. I'm just not really hungry right now." 

"you're pale, you should have something. When was the last time you ate?" he said.

"i don't know. Look, why do you care, what are you doing here?"

"i'm awol. I'd say my bosses don't know where i am, but they probably do." he said. He was beginning to look desperate. 

"by bosses you mean a bishop or something?" i asked

he shrugged, "something like that. I can't imagine what could matter less right now."

"how about i get to decide what matter for a fucking change around here?" i snapped.

"i'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Look," he had his eyes pointed at the floor, "if you want to know how the management structure of archaelogists slash secret agents of the vatican works, i'll tell you."

"i can't imagine why i would want to know that. Ok laramie, you win for now, i'll eat. But stop looking at the floor, it's getting very pathological catholic school around here, and i don't feel like dressing up as a nun and beating you with a ruler." 

he hopped up and served me my food and coffee without so much as letting me see him smile at all. He really was catholic through and through.

I sat down with my plate of food, and it suddenly looked delicious and smelled even better. I savored it for a moment longer and looked at laramie, who was nursing a coffee. "I'm going to eat every bite of this," i explained, "and you are going to tell me a story. A good story, ok?"

he nodded, and we both began.

"i've always told you my first loyalty was to the church, and i lived up to that. It wasn't just that i went along with the proposal to kidnap you and force you to assist us, it was that i suggested you based on things you'd told me in confidence years ago. Some, but not all, of the people chasing you were in our pay. They chased you into jerusalem, right to our waiting team."

"did you volunteer to have your shoulder. shot, or was that someone else's idea?" 

he shook his head. "that wasn't our guy. We don't order suicides. Those guys were either stupid or suicidal, because the idf showed up and the one didn't stop shooting. The other tried to drive away we think, but the idf pureed them. They were the only people killed, though. But that whole incident made it important that we got you out when we did." 

he continued. "we had your containment team ready to go. From there it was just normal stuff, isolate you in a dangerous situation and give you cooperating with us as your only move forward. I didn't know how far it would go, i didn't know what we'd already done to you, actually, but only because i didn't want to know. I mean, i knew, i just didn't want to admit, i guess.

When it was all done, i lost my mind a little. I think i always knew i would. I don't know if i would do it differently if i had it to do over. I've told you, a long time ago, or at least it seems that way now, that i would leave the church to be with you, if i were straight."

"you tell that to all the girls."

"i do, but in your case i was never sure whether i meant it or not. I love you kate, i love you very much. So after i betrayed you i just up and left one day, asked my cousin for money and flew to london. It took me a couple of days to figure out what to do, but i went to marcia and asked her. She told me that i had to tell her everything if i wanted her help, and after i did, she told me to come here and take care of your place, to be perfect about it, and leave no trace of myself, and then, when you came home, tell you absolutely everything you wanted to hear. So i came and relieved the student she had housesitting, found the bugs, vatican and otherwise and disconnected them, and moved into a college guest room nearby."

"so now you are betraying the church, right?"

"yes. And i suppose when i'm done i'll go back and face whatever punishment they have for me, and beg forgiveness." 

"is that what you're here to do, beg forgiveness?" i asked, testily

"no, marcia specifically warned me agianst that. i'm here to make an offer. I'm here to help you get the sword back. Marcia and simon have already signed on to help, too. Plus there's another actuaa job waiting for you when we're all done at the bodlian, and marcia is bankrolling your flat for the next 3 or 4 months, as a favor to me. I've about used up my favors with marcia. She's going to have me emptying out the vatican vaults into her private collection if i'm not careful."

"you're serious? Even if it means burning the church?"

he nodded. I shook my head.

"no good. I don't trust you. You could be lying to me right now, because your people want something more from me. It's not beyond you, by your own admission."

he looked pained. "marcia said there was a good chance you'd say that, i had hoped she was wrong."

"marcia knows me very well."  

we sat quietly for a moment, and looked down at my plate. I ate a few more bites in while laramie sat in an uncomfortable silence. I was glad he was uncomfortable. I pushed my plate away.

"you're staying here." i announced.

He looked a bit bewildered. "i don't think i understand..?"

"i don't trust you, espeically not in the field and not in your old turf. You'll stay here while marcia and simon and i go and get it and coordinate things from london. No, wait, you can just coordinate them from right here, in my apartment. Do you understand?"

he looked a bit thrown, "but i have to be there, and i don't even know how long i can stay in england." he said.

"you can do it my way, or you can leave right now and i get to never see your lying fucker face again, do you understand?"

it was then that i realized he looked shorter, sunken in on himself, for the first time since i had known him, laramie looked sad and slightly broken. 

"ok" he said.

"ok." i confirmed. 

chapter n + revenge

i used to brag that my friends were so skilled, and so diversely skilled, that i could build a super hero group or a terrorist organization out of them. then one day, i did. 

it's all about the motivation. something has to happen that motivates people to get out of their daily routine and start getting pissed. something has to breakt hat routine. sometimes, it's obvious. their lives have been burned down and their children killed, and so forth. but sometimes the most incidious motivators is just something that messes with your sleep cycle, or gets in the way when you are eating your favorite food. 



---




chapter vatican rag

threatening priests wasn't really my forte. 



chapter ufo

just then i got a voice call. I wasn't expecting one, and looked down at my knee in a slightly worried confusion. Caller id said J.ChrisC14- chris' id. I hadn't expected to hear from him after he threw me out of his office. I couldn't think why he would call me, especially on voice, unless something had happened. I answered it. 

“chris, are you ok?”

“i'm fine, kate, really. I'm sorry about how i acted before, i was just scared.”

“you shouldn't be calling me chris, i'm not really the best person to be keeping in touch with these days.”

i'm just so glad you're still alright, what with all those wackos after you. Please say you'll forgive how i behaved the other day.

Look, of course i forgive you. What i did was totally shitty, i should be apologizing to you. But why are you calling me? It's not just to say sorry, surely?

No, not entirely. Look i was just hoping that you could bring the sword by again, i thought of some tests i really want to try on it. 

I paused. The worst occurred to me. 

Chris, is someone forcing you to do this? Is there someone with you right now?

He laughed. No no no, i'm fine, really, that's not it. 

Why do you want me to bring by the sword? I mean, it's really dangerous, you know that. 

Well, i'll level with you, kate. I kept a couple small material samples and got to playing with them. And i found out a few more things, and i'd like to verify them. 

Why didn't you tell me you kept sample?

Actually, i didn't think about it at the time. I was just so scared by everything, i just wanted you out. But they were in my lab, and i got talking to some friends-

oh shit, who did you talk to?

No one you'd know kate, don't worry, it's fine. 

But-

listen, let me finish. Here's the thing, i'm not sure all of that sword is *terrestrial*, if you catch my drift, and me and some of my friends are pretty excited about that. 

No, chris, i don't catch your drift.

Ok, this might sound a bit crazy, but i think it might explain a lot to you when i say it, so hear me out.

Um i said. Ok, chris, shoot. I owed him that much.

He took a deep breath. I think that sword may be proof that aliens visited earth sometime in the distant past.

I swore a blue streak. 

Kate, kate, are you ok? He said frantically

i'm fine. Its just everyone that looks or for that damn sword seems to lose their mind over it.

I haven't lost my mind kate. Hear me out. See, that's why all those religious groups are chasing you, because this single item has the power to disprove religion, and they will got to any length to bury it to prevent that from happening. 

Go on. I said. I figured the only way out of this was through. 

Ok, he said, like he was warming up. I know a group of people, they've got a growing body of evidence that aliens visited developing mankind, and maybe even gave us a nudge in the right direction

if you can call this the right direction, i thought to myself.

And this artifact of your, that burton picked, it may cinch it. I figure if we can run some more tests, you see the wood was native- i popped it into the genomics file, and it's baobab, but it dates back 25,000 years still, like the tests we ran. But it's been *treated* with something. It's a formulation that litterally doesn't match any terestrial pattern. We think the process was brought here from the alien's origin, and they used native materials to make the sword.

Why the hell would aliens make a sword for a hairless cave dwelling monkey?

We asked that very question in our last meeting.

You brought this up in a fucking meeting?

Look kate, it may be burton who found it, but it's the property of all people, it's not truly yours. 

i'll say, i muttered

what was that?

Nevermind, just go on. 

We think they made it and possibly other items like it to show us a path of development. But of course, that's pure speculation, until we can do more study.

Is it?

Well, it's good to have a starting place. Kate i can't tell you how exciting this is. Also we thought about it, and we think we know how we can go public with the sword and keep you safe. 

Oh, no satanist recrimination killing even?

Well, we'll do our best. He laughed. No really, we think we have just the people to turn it over to, so we can still study and keep it safe. We've been talking to someone in the smithsonian and- 

hold on, chris, i just want to know one thing; who haven't you told? Because really, i should call them and give them a heads up, so they don't fell left out. 

The line was silent for a moment.

Look, kate, i'm trying to help you and do my duty as a scientist. And frankly your duty as a scientist as well. Now, where are you?

I am so not telling you that. 

Don't you want to know more about the sword?

Of course  i do. I know next to nothing about a fucking sword that i've been chased, shot at, tortured, left in an underground maze (i fucking kid you not) for, not to mention raised to retrieve. I have to say, my curiosity is peaked. 

Then why don't you bring it by? I mean, i have one of the best labs in the world to study the sword in anyway. 

Two reasons, chris: one, this thing is such a sacred cow i don't think anyone can think straight about it, and two, i don't have it anymore. 

What?

I don't have it anymore.

What happened to it? He sounded very upset. 

Well, it was stolen from me. 

How could you let that happen? Who by?

As near as i can tell, the vatican. They probably have it in a vault somewhere in italy, or have it in the vault like office of some jesuit antiquarian, and it will never see the light of day again.

How could you let that happen?!? he was yelling at me. Now it's going to end up in some vault, and wait for another dark age or two, and we could have shown so much with it. We could have shown them the truth, kate!

You know, it's not like i dropped it by in a leatherette case for them. It was *stolen* from me. I went through hell to get that sword, and then it was taken from me. You are catching me on the best day of my fucking life chris, so fuck right off! I was yelling back. I hadn't meant to lose it at chris, but i wasn't ready to take this yet.

“i- i'm sorry kate. I just wish-

what? I was still fuming.

I guess i just wish i'd called you ealier. 

“Ah hell” i said, the anger draining from me. “You might as well hate me chris, i don't know that i would have given it to you anyway. I don't really know what i'd do with it, i always assumed that would be clear after i had it, but it wasn't. And it doesn't matter now. I'm sorry chris.” 

the line was silent for a while. 

I guess there will be other ways, he said. It was just so exciting, to be so close to it. 

I wasn't sure what it was.

Ok, chris, i've got to go. Have to try and avoid those satanic recriminsation killings, now.

Um,” he said, onw last thing”

what? 

Please don't, you know, show up around here. We're a lot of family guys and stuff, and i don't think we can really handle your kind of action.

I felt like i'd been sucking on a penny.

Ok chris, i think you can rest assured, i won't be showing up anytime soon. 

ok. thanks kate. Good luck.

And he hung up. I felt discusted. I suppose i had it coming, i thought, after i used him.


--

the flowers sat just below the window where they caught the light and reflected it back against bare wall. they trapped me as i rounded the corner and i sat on the stairs through the whole of dawn. first the greyish yellow, expanding to a pink light, and finally the brilliant yellow crawling along the walls. light is supposed to be the fastest thing in the universe, but at dawn reflected off the face of flowers it is an obviously viscious thing. it crawls and things caught in its path change. the brightest light heading up the stairs to where i was sitting revealed, or set into motion, the world of small particulates.  detritus of dust mites, cat hair, dead skin, a world reborn each day in the dawn light. 

----

 


___

Chapter: end bit.

Spoilers ahead. Serious spoilers, beware.

"it's called the sword of the archangel. It's supposed to be, shockingly enough, the sword of an archangel. 

Which one?

i'll get to that in a minute.
The israeli govenment actualy began this particular hunt for it, because it's said to have hebrew letters on it. The israelis saw it as a possible feather in the cap for historical zionism, one that help particular weight as the sword is of powerful interest to both muslims and christains, as well as jews.

Everyone else simply wants it.

Why?

Because of whose sword it may be. Some evidence points to gabriel, some to michael, but most people who have known of the sword believe it to have been dropped on the eart by the greatest angel, as he fell.

Guess that explains why the satanists want it then.

Oh yes, it does. And perhaps why they wanted it the most. They believe that with it they can give their master his power back and make him strong enough to defeat his former master.

Right. Of course they do. (fruitcakes. They're all fruitcakes.) What did burton believe? 

Ah, that is a convoluted question, but it's in his letters to avasa. 

Nope, sorry, it's not. I've read all those letters, i've transcribed all those letters, and there is nothing about any sword, much less the sword of an archngel, thank you very much. I said.

There are other letters. Letters that, at the end of her life, avasa hand delivered to us for safe keeping. And now, i give them to you. My duty done, i'm going to have some mint tea. Care for some? You will be reading a while.

I took a sheaf of, looking it over, 80 year old transcriptions. 

i'll take the tea. Thanks. I said.

And i sat down to read.

Ahmed and the others wandered off, but a guard remained posted at my door.

Burton felt the sword too valuable an artifact to expose to the foolish superstitious minds of his age. If the evidence of this age was to be believed, he was pretty much right. He felt that religion was caught up in glitter, but the age of reason had given him hope. He sought guidence from the wisest sufi he knew. 

His guide was annoying and vague, in the grand tradition of gurus everywhere. Lots of "god has granted you this item, and you must see why he has done this." and "follow what your spirit tells you. I will not tell you how you must proceed with the matter of the sword, nor will i take it from you. This is the burden of your making." 

reading between the lines it was roughly "this is your problem, richard. And it's not that important of one." and "no, i'm not going to take it."

the sword has always been something of a hot potato.

Eventually burton decided that this didn't belong in the british museum, yet. He wanted a more reasoning age to look upon it, to keep it as a public trust. He spoke of an age and a people that would neither raise it too high nor bury it too low, but look upon it for  for further understanding. The people of his time, he thought, they were too superstitious. They would make too much and too little of his find. So he decided to hide it. But then, he knew that not well enough hidden things were often found, and too well hidden never were found at all. So he hid it really well, and set the sufi to gaurd it without actually being able to get it. 

Then he hatched a plan with avasa- she would hold the other half of the key. She would be able to get it, but not be in a position to gaurd it. Then he buried the keys and the evidence and died of a natural death, despite the myriads of people that would have killed him for the sword. Avasa began the family traditions, carefully laid out, that carried down to me. She made us all sleeper agents for her dead father, and wrote letters back and forth with the sufis he had loved so much. Toward the end of her days she journied to them and delivered her letters for safe keeping. Then she returned home, and died a natural death.

I was beginning to realize that my family was much better at dying natural deaths than they really deserved to be. 

There was another folder below avasa'a letters. It was some of the notes of the sufi order know as the guardians of the sword. 

I wasn't the first to be called. My mother had probably burned a letter, and before her my family had moved it twice. Each time leaving a trail of clues, each time updating the sufis without actually telling them where we hid it. We all got the message. The sufis sent it to every generation, because the decision about what to do with the sword was never theirs to make. It was ours.

Mine.

I didn't know if the sword was really the sword of an angel, or if it was even an alien artifact. Or if it was just a relaly strangely old sowrd. But grandpa was right, all the religions interested in it, they weren't about a sword. All the people hoping for life on other planets, this wasn't life. This was instead something to beat up the other side with. The sword was a distraction, it was a reason for people to kill each other. But it was also a link to the past, it was the ultimate data to preserve.

"fuck it." i told the air. "i'm burying this stupid thing on the moon." 

we arranged the expedition the following spring. It took over a month on luna which marcia arranged as a geological expedition. I found a nice characteristic crater and we built a bunker under a tunnel about 100ft long. We sealed the whole thing biomentrically, and left no power supply. Some decendent of mine or richle's was going to have to power the sucker up somehow and put a drop of blood in it to get it. When we unpacked the equipment, i found one of my freinds had i covered in glyphs and hebrew script, and so on. Very funny. Before we left i found an inner hatch door to the lunar craft we wouldn't need on the way back and borrowed a cutting laser. Very carefully i carve RFB high on the middle, and set it just inside the entrance to the tunnel. Right before we left i went for a last walk to look at it. I felt at peace, even though i was never going to see the sword again.  It isn't often that one gets to find out the purpose of their life, much less fulfill it, i thought to myself. I kicked the lunar dust over it, and walked back to the craft. 

Back on earth i left diagrams of how to find it in the cave in tazania, and gave a copy of the pertinent details to the sufis.

The sufis were really nice guys. They took me out, fed me well, made me feel at home. I got the feeling they'd gotten used to this, after a fashion. Gotten used to the traditon, at least. We spent some real time figuring out how to split the key safely, and they had a lot of handy tips. When we were all done i went home, to start a family tradition, and die a natural death.

end


epilogue


rachjem page-samshi was watching the garden when the message drug bubbled up from a flower. He let it hang ther for a minute. He was busy encouraging the cells of a rhodedendrum to grow into salmon steaks for the evening. He had a date, and she liked salmon more than flowers. The plant started reacting to the custom agents from the portal spray gene resequencer and growing a meaty salmon fruit. It would be a few hours before it finished, though. Plenty of time to take care of other things. He turned back to the message flower, with its drug pollen hanging in the air. He sniffed it, and burning letters appeared before his eyes.

    we humbly request your asistance in locating the artifact of 
    interest. Please acknowledge receipt if you wish to help.

Oh wow, he thought, this might change the evening's plans. He closed his eye, let himself relax into his net connection. He embedded in his public agent's broadcast this:

    message recieved, happy to help, but not tonight, i have a date.

He giggled at himself, and turned back to his garden. The salmon fruit still had a way to go, but there were vegatables to grow, and he had to coax the vines into becoming a picnic table. He was going to impress this girl, no doubt. His solice was interupted by someone knocking on the door. Pounding wood with meat to be heard.

How weird.