Hieroglyph (71 page)

The cruise ship dock was a city-block-sized square of walkways. He stood onshore. Two sides of the dock went straight out to meet a thick white immensity of concrete with cleats as big as Luis's arms. The
Ruby Sea
had tied up just in front of an even bigger boat. Temporary fences served as security, each manned by armed, uniformed men in formal poses.

A few passengers and crew stared out over the rails on the second and third decks. This would be a port of call only, but it was also the first few hours the passengers had onshore since the
Ruby
left Africa.

Doors opened and bright orange gangways started to roll out.

“Can you get closer?” Saad asked.

“I'll kick you out if you're not quiet.”

“Beast,” Makena teased in a hushed whisper. She had the last word—his watchers all shut up and watched like they were supposed to.

A group of ten mixed Coast Guard and uniformed Port Authority police marched out onto the dock. Luis recognized some of the faces from agencies he'd been asking for help. He smiled.

They left a human barrier five people wide on the far side of the fence. The other five walked through the gate and past the watcher and up to one of the pursers. A policeman showed the purser a set of papers.

The purser shook his head.

Words were exchanged. Luis couldn't make them out, but they sounded determined.

The purser called two others over. Apparently he wanted them to watch the police, since the purser then disappeared into the bowels of the
Ruby Sea
.

The scene looked tense.

The gangways were all out now, bobbing from almost flat to slightly canted as the
Ruby Sea
reacted to slight and periodic jerks of her engines.

People started down the closest gangway. The guards by the fence let them through with no questions, but the five on the dock stopped them. Hushed but heated voices talked over one another in multiple languages.

Newsbots started arriving, many no bigger than his hand, a few even smaller. A mix of drones and UAVs jostled for position. One knocked another out of the air and it fell into the sea and floated.

The standoff continued for ten tense minutes.

Four huge men in suits came out of the
Ruby Sea
. Two stopped to talk to the authorities right outside and the other two moved toward the blocking police, talking the crowds out of the way.

Luis narrated as best he could. “These will be bodyguards, and maybe also lawyers.” To his surprise, they only said about three sentences to the officers, and then the officers turned and left the dock, followed by a string of passengers.

“Anyone know what happened?” Luis whispered to his watchers.

The lawyer spoke. “Diplomatic immunity.”

“Damn.” Luis gave out a slow whistle. “On what grounds?”

The lawyer again, bitterly. “One of the women on the dock is the new ambassador from Benin.”

“But we can still search the cargo areas, right?” Luis asked.

“If they've pasted a diplomatic seal on them, then, no. Otherwise, maybe. Watch.”

The rest of the passengers disembarked. Some looked sleepy, some excited. Only a few had young children with them. Women carried purses and men and children backpacks, but none wheeled luggage.

The tusks weren't escaping this way.

He was even more certain they were here. Diplomatic immunity might succeed, too, darn it all. There had been nothing about it on globenet, but names and nationalities and bank accounts of passengers could be hidden by international law.

A bus and two cabs pulled up and collected the passengers. The newsbots floated slowly away. Nothing to see here.

He would wait until the ship left if he needed to. It was only here until nine in the evening. He had brought an apple and cheese in his bag, and although he was hungry, he decided he might be hungrier later. He thought of talking to Makena, but she liked her privacy. So he settled for waiting, staying as meditative as possible while watching statistics for the other Angel programs. Tigers and rhinos were doing well, but the world had lost four whales to three separate incidents—two to the Japanese whaling fleet, one that beached itself off Baja California, and a legal traditional hunt by Native Americans off the Washington coast.

He had applied for whales, but there were no openings there yet. He might not go now, even if they offered him a job. The elephants needed him.

On the dock, all but one of the gangways pulled back in.

THE EARLY MORNING WASN'T
yet spilling light into Francine's window. Almost. While she watched her flimsy screen at the kitchen table, Araceli glanced at her grandmother from time to time. Francine flew the drone smoothly now, with a sense of grace in the flutter of her hands. She knew the elephants by name, too.

Araceli watched Makena through the drone's cameras. Spears of sunset bathed the elephants in hot orange light while Araceli shivered in a navy-blue hoodie and fuzzy slippers.

The animal tracking maps showed impala near the herd, and a family grouping of wildebeest, but no lion or tiger or human to threaten the scene.

Araceli noticed movement in her window to Luis. It was already midmorning in Charleston, and the shift in point of view as Luis stood up clued her that something had changed. A boat slid through the water from behind the
Ruby Sea
.

“MAKENA,” SHE WHISPERED. “WATCH
Luis.”

“Yes,” Makena said softly. “I already am. Two more boats are coming.”

It was hard to see—her point of view was slaved to Luis, who appeared to be running; the scene in front of her jerked up and down. Then she heard a loudspeaker proclaim, “Stop! Coast Guard.”

Two larger boats chased the medium-sized boat that had come from behind the cruise ship.

They weren't far from the dock. Too far to jump, but close enough to swim.

“Shit.”

She had never heard Luis curse.

Men in black uniforms boiled up out of the center of the boat, shooting. At least six of them.

Shots came back from the Coast Guard boats.

Figures and guns fell into the water.

Newsbots zoomed over Luis's head.

Araceli's heart pounded in her chest as if she were there. She wanted Luis to back away so he couldn't be hurt, but she had no control of him.

The muzzle of a gun showed up in her viewpoint, looking like she was aiming. “Don't!” Araceli yelled. Luis could end up getting caught up in jail, or in trouble. Besides, how would he know who to shoot?

Makena's voice joined hers.

Luis's hand shook and then he breathed out. “You're right.”

The gun disappeared.

There was no more gunfire anyway. Police and Coast Guard called back and forth to each other, coordinating. One of the two Coast Guard boats drifted away from them, but the other came up beside the smuggler and nudged it toward the dock. Luis's hand took a line and pulled, but then someone else took it from him. He let it happen and walked away. Araceli's view changed to the sidewalk in front of him. After a long time, he turned back so they could all watch from a distance.

“Luis,” she said. “They got them.”

“Thank God and Mary,” he whispered back.

Someone dragged a body onto the dock, wet and dripping sea and blood. Another. The way they were treating the bodies suggested they were the smugglers.

Police cars rolled up one after another with lights and sirens, and then two ambulances and a fire truck.

The newsbot swarm grew again.

Araceli flipped to a news channel, which might actually be able to see more than Luis could. Her instincts paid off: they already had pictures of the bottom of the boat lined with ivory. “They got them!” she shouted out loud. She checked on Francine, who wore a wide smile on her face. Makena stood on Delba's neck with an arm touching the sky, like a triumphant ancient warrior. But then, Araceli was grinning, too. It felt like their shared happiness had jumped distance and time and infected them all with lightness.

Francine blinked at her and then returned to her watch, tears filling her eyes, looking incongruous above her smile. Araceli felt as if she had expanded. “They did it,” she repeated to Makena. “They got them!”

“It is a lucky day,” Saad said to them all.

Araceli flipped to Makena, sitting again now, and to the elephants. The two babies pushed at each other and touched trunks, flaring their ears and making short mock charges. Makena sat on Delba and watched the play with a great wide smile on her face.

The very last bits of summer sun from Africa kissed the cold Northwest.

Resnak/Shutterstock, Inc.

STORY NOTES
—Brenda Cooper

First, the idea of paying people to solve ecological problems (partially as a way to offset a probable future that will have chronic high employment) started with a short article I did for the
Futurist
magazine. Here's a link to that article: http://www.wfs.org/futurist/september-october-2012-vol-46-no-5/22nd-century-first-light/forecasts/where-wild-things-are-not.

So then the World Future Society asked me to speak at their conference, and I started doing research. That research morphed into my Backing into Eden blog series at http://www.backingintoeden.com, which then got picked up at a few other places. One of my posts for Backing into Eden is about elephants—which gave me the idea of writing a story about elephants. I was working on that blog post as I was working on this story. Here's a direct link: http://www.brenda-cooper.com/2013/06/25/backing-into-eden-chapter-10-the-elephant-angels/. The emotional drive for this story came from my elephant research . . . the things humans do to these beautiful beasts make me very angry.

The post from Project Hieroglyph that was most related to ideas in this story was Karl Schroeder's talk about vertical farming, and the idea that if we start to do a lot more vertical farming we might be able to rewild some spaces, which sent me off to work on reading about the commons, which is also a theme in this story.

Of course, other bits of background in the story, like its global and multinational set of characters, came out of some of the general reading I do as a futurist.

FORUM DISCUSSION
—Protecting Protected Land

Brenda Cooper introduced her solution to guarding protected and preserved land to Vandana Singh and other Hieroglyph community members in June 2013. See the conversation unfold at hieroglyph.asu.edu/elephant-angels.

COVENANT

Elizabeth Bear

THIS COLD COULD KILL
me, but it's no worse than the memories. Endurable as long as I keep moving.

My feet drum the snow-scraped roadbed as I swing past the police station at the top of the hill. Each exhale plumes through my mask, but insulating synthetics warm my inhalations enough so they do not sting and seize my lungs. I'm running too hard to breathe through my nose—running as hard and fast as I can, sprinting for the next hydrant-marking reflector protruding above a dirty bank of ice. The wind pushes into my back, cutting through the wet merino of my baselayer and the wet MaxReg over it, but even with its icy assistance I can't come close to running the way I used to run. Once I turn the corner into the graveyard, I'll be taking that wind in the face.

I miss my old body's speed. I ran faster before. My muscles were stronger then. Memories weigh something. They drag you down. Every step I take, I'm carrying thirteen dead. My other self runs a step or two behind me. I feel the drag of his invisible, immaterial presence.

As long as you keep moving, it's not so bad. But sometimes everything in the world conspires to keep you from moving fast enough.

© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU

I thump through the old stone arch into the graveyard, under the trees glittering with ice, past the iron gate pinned open by drifts. The wind's as sharp as I expected—sharper—and I kick my jacket over to warming mode. That'll run the battery down, but I've only got another five kilometers to go and I need heat. It's getting colder as the sun rises, and clouds slide up the western horizon: cold front moving in. I flip the sleeve light off with my next gesture, though that won't make much difference. The sky's given light enough to run by for a good half hour, and the sleeve light is on its own battery. A single LED doesn't use much.