The Day of the Nefilim (10 page)

The two Nefilim had arrived, escorted by some MPs. They climbed into a helicopter and sat waiting.

The General’s cell phone buzzed at him. He answered, listened without speaking, and then put the phone back in his pocket. He was angry.

“Shit! Fucking shit!” he said quietly to himself, but within earshot of Thead.

“What is it?” asked Thead, who had yet to learn that here a subordinate only spoke to a superior when spoken to, or when there was a good reason.

The General looked at him coldly, but replied anyway. “We’re going to be accompanied by the Vice-Secretary Gores. Both of them,” he snarled, then walked away.

Thead’s imagination didn’t have much time to exercise itself on the matter of who the two Vice-Secretaries might be. A few seconds later, a jeep came careering noisily onto the landing deck. It screeched to a halt and a man and a woman jumped out.

“That’ll do boy, you get on back, now,” the one who had been driving said to a private who was sitting in the back, gripping the edge of the seat with white knuckles.

“Now there’s no need to go all troppo, boy. Just know a driving lesson when you see it, that’s all,” the man laughed as the youth clambered into the driver’s seat and drove slowly away.

So these must be the Vice-Secretaries Gore.

They both wore full dress uniforms, as though they were about to attend a formal parade. They were obviously twins. Average height, no more than forty years old, round cherubic faces topped with sandy-colored hair and punctuated with green eyes that sparkled, bright and friendly, taking in everything with a childlike enthusiasm, free from any taint of conscience.

“And you must be… the… neyoo… boy,” said the female Gore, accentuating every word so that the sentence seemed to become some kind of joke. She grabbed Thead’s hand between both of hers and shook it vigorously.

“Welcome to the only team in town, Thead, what sort of a goddamn name is that? Never mind boy, we’re just here to do the lord’s work, aren’t we now, Theo?”

“Damn right, Alexis, damn right,” the other Vice-Secretary replied. “Why don’t the new boy come with us? C’mon boy, come in our chopper. We might find some interest in such a forinner as yourself. Ain’t that so, Alexis?”

“Damn right, brother.”

“Thead is traveling with me,” said the General, who had been pointedly ignored by both Vice-Secretaries.

“Is he now? Oh well, boy, you just have a good time with the old man,” said the male Gore, winking in Thead’s direction.

“Where’s our baby?” The sister was looking around for something.

“Isn’t she here..? Our baby is not here?” Vice-Secretary Theo’s face turned red and his voice lifted to a screech. His eyes were beginning to bulge when the General, to whom this was nothing new, and who knew the value of cutting their temper tantrums off at the pass, spoke up.

“Relax. Your helicopter is on its way. It had to go down for a refit after the last thrashing you gave it.” He sounded exasperated. “You should try to be a little more careful. These are expensive machines. And delicate. You should use one of the pilots.”

“But flying is just such a spiritual experience for us, General,” Vice-Secretary Alexis smiled beatifically.

Her brother’s face had retreated back down the color scale. “Well we’ll just have to stand ... here ... and ... wait ... won’t ... we ..?”

“Oh, there now, boy,” she massaged her brother’s shoulders. “The ol’ avengin’ machine’ll be here real soon.”

At that moment the whine of an approaching motor heralded the end of the scene. The General muttered gratitude under his breath.

A helicopter appeared beyond the edge of the landing pad, swimming up from one of the levels below. It was smaller than the other machines, with an even sleeker form. It was painted a multitude of shades of red, like an angry insect. Directional turbines and a double row of heatseekers were slung discretely beneath the fuselage.

“Aah, baby,” cooed the Vice-Secretaries as the pilot saw them and maneuvered in to land.

“Christ,” muttered the General, gesturing his soldiers on to the helicopters. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said in the Vice-Secretaries’ direction, not caring whether they heard him or not.

A few minutes later they flew away from Mount Weather, across the rain forest and then a desert that stretched beyond several horizons.

Thead was puzzled by the scene at the landing pad. “Who are the two in the red helicopter?”

The General was more talkative now than he had been on the ground. “Theodore and Alexis Gore. The two Vice-Secretaries of the Standing Committee of the United Nations. They’re id… extremely eccentric. I would suggest that you don’t upset them. They’re very tight with the Secretary-General. Don’t upset him, either. Or me, for that matter,” he added, as an afterthought.

They continued the journey in silence, Thead wondering only slightly less than the others what they would find at the Pilot’s Station.

* * *

THE CURRENTS ON THIS PLANET suited the ship well. They were making good time.

Reina and Bryce kept quiet until they were well underway, but once the course was set, they started with their questions. First Bark told them how he, the Senator, and the rest of the crew had come to their planet.

The two locals sat and listened with such open-mouthed attention that Bark couldn’t resist throwing in a few adventure stories from his travels.

By the time he was ready to deal with the matter of their destination, it was dark, and they were sailing high above a black sea shot through with glittering phosphorous. The breeze had stayed warm, and Bark had taken a bottle of something old and expensive from the hold.

“Every planet has a Pilot’s Station.” He filled their glasses.

He was holding the map that had led them here. Concentrating hard, he studied it in the light of an oil lamp, trying to remember what Thead had told him, piecing together the few symbols that he knew or could decipher. Helped by the fact that he knew what he was looking for, it wasn’t long before he found it, in some highlands on a peninsula between two larger land masses.

It meant nothing to Reina when he showed her. “So what’s in this place that we need to see?”

“Convention requires that every vessel that visits a place must register its passage with the Pilot who has been assigned there. It is his job to keep a log of the comings and goings of ships and other vessels, but that is not his only function. He also collects information about the planet, from travelers and from any other sources that he can, so that anyone wanting assistance or guidance can usually do no better than to start at the Pilot’s Station. If there is something to be known, the chances are that the Pilot will know it.”

“You mean there will be someone there?”

“There might be. There should be. I don’t know, really. The Stations are supposed to be maintained continuously, so for as long there is a station, there should be someone there. It depends on how well-traveled these parts of time and space are. If there’s someone there, we should be able to get some answers.”

“Answers to what questions, exactly?”

That was a good question in itself, Bark had to admit. “We need to know what the Nefilim are up to,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt, “and we should also find the best place to start looking for Sahrin.”

“Wasn’t there another member of your crew? Onethian? Was that his name? What about him?”

“Ha! Yes, Onethian. He ran away. He can take his chances wherever he likes.” Bark was quite happy to be rid of him. The antipathy between them had its origin back in the time when Onethian had been the ship’s captain, and in the reasons behind his replacement by Bark. That, however, was another story, and not one for the moment.

In the space of a few hours, Bryce’s liking for bindoo leaf had become a character trait. He was still chewing on it. “Do yink thu ... d’th ... d’you think we’ll find this Sharon woman of yours?”

The Senator and he had strung a couple of hammocks up in the rigging. The Senator had found the whole day rather tiring and had dropped off to sleep, a blank piece of paper in one hand and a newly sharpened pencil in the other.

Bryce relaxed into a bindoo-induced reverie, during which he maintained a conversation of sorts with Reina and Bark, but kept his eyes turned towards the black masses of the clouds as they floated past the ship. Or as the ship floated past them. Bryce was trying to work out which.

“It’s
Sahrin
. Who knows?” Bark’s mind went back to the caves beneath the sand dunes, Sahrin’s footprints in the dust, and the rows of Nefilim they had seen. “I hope so. I hope she comes back.”

“Are you a couple?” Reina asked.

“Oh, no. Well,
once
, after too much of this.” Bark nodded at the bottle they were drinking from. They talked a while more, and slowly drifted off to sleep, so gradually that none of them could be sure when they stopped talking.

* * *

When they woke, it was late morning, and the sun was well into its journey through the sky. The clouds of the previous night had passed, leaving the sky empty and blue in every direction.

As the day progressed, the desert below them gave way to dense vegetation. They took the ship down so that they were sailing only a few mast heights above the treetops. Brilliantly colored parrots and large dark monkeys with flashes of gold and white in their fur darted around in the foliage.

Bark and the Senator had never seen anything like it.

“It’s beautiful,” said the Senator.

Bark had been considering other matters.

“As Captain of this vessel, it’s my duty to oversee the appearance of my crew. Temporary you may be, but crew you are, nevertheless. As your Captain, I feel obliged to point out that your clothes are dirty, bordering on unpleasantly aromatic, and by far worst of all, they lack any style whatsoever. So unless it’s against your religion, I would like to see you outfitted with new and more suitable attire.”

“Well… sure, I guess.”

“Yeah? Whatever…”

“Senator, would you mind showing the crew to the wardrobe?”

“So you’re really a Senator then?” asked Reina as they went below deck.

“I was, and I would be now, if there was any justice; I would still have my seat in the Senate.” The Senator had become grim, his lips pinched into lines as thin as lemon rinds. This was not a line of conversation to be pursued, obviously.

He opened a door in a corner of the bunkroom. It led into a smaller room overflowing with clothes. They were piled on shelves, hung on hangers and hooks, packed into drawers. There wasn’t an inch of room to spare.

“Overkill,” said Bryce.

“It’s like a theater, isn’t it,” said Reina.

“A what?” asked the Senator.

“A theater. A place where people make believe, where they agree to help each other pretend to do things and to be people they’re not,” Reina replied.

“People do it for fun, among other things,” added Bryce, sorting through a rack of shirts. “It’s part of what we call culture.”

“Oh,” said the Senator, losing interest.

Reina started looking through a row of flowing ankle-length dresses. The Senator reached out to stop her.

“Not practical. Fine for deck wear on a day of leisure, but we don’t know where we’ll be or what we’ll be doing. Leggings, a short skirt, or maybe shorts, and something warm for your top, a jacket like this one here, here we are, this is you…” He reached into a closet and pulled out a jacket which was made of something similar to wool, but had the sheen of silk as well. Dark green and black stripes started wide at the bottom, and became thinner as they went up, so that by the time they had reached the shoulders, they were so fine that to the casual glance they seemed to have merged into a single color.

“Done,” said Reina, slipping into the jacket.

When they emerged an hour later, they had been totally refitted. As well as the jacket, Reina had chosen a loose top with a stylized paisley design in blue and black, and black tights, over which she wore a short skirt made of some clear material that felt like silk. She had finished the outfit off with a pair of lace-up boots with sensible heels.

Bryce was wearing a shapeless pair of black trousers and a gray top. Around his waist, he had tied a belt studded with colored gems arranged in the shapes of skulls and other bones. He had wanted to take a pair of shoes that matched it, but Reina wouldn’t let him, so he went for a pair of boots similar to hers.

He wouldn’t accept any argument, though, over his choice of jacket. It was deep blue, waistcoat length, and adorned with braids and insignia that meant nothing to him. The back and the lower halves of the sleeves were covered in beads and gems. He had to have it.

“It’s a theater prop,” laughed Reina.

“Oath it is. But a good one,” he retorted, determined that the shoes were going to be his only compromise.

They went back up onto the deck. Bark was at the wheel. “Much better! I approve. Now, look there.”

They looked, and saw a mountain of bare rock looming in front of them. Its top was lost in mist, and its foundations were lost in the jungle.

“The Pilot’s Office is somewhere there.”

“They’re not worried about catching the pedestrian traffic, are they,” said Bryce.

“How do we find it?” Reina asked. They both pulled their new jackets around them. The air was getting cold.

“Pilot’s Offices are always marked by a particular symbol. Depending on the terrain, it can be inscribed in any of a number of ways, but it will be visible from the air and at a distance, you can be sure of that. Look for anything that resembles a spider. It might be a sculpture, a carving, or even part of the landscape. But it will be obvious.”

The ship rose as Bark steered it into a course that would take it around the mountain. Dwarfed by its scale, Reina thought that they must look like insects as they passed in front of the great slabs of rock and the cracks and chasms that corrugated its surface. The air grew still colder as the mist gathered in around them.

With Bark at the helm and the other three leaning over the side looking for a spider, they had almost completed a full circuit of the mountain when a cloud of fog shifted in a sudden gust of wind.