The Code War (30 page)

Hideki's success on the mission to 1860
had made him more conceited and unbearable than ever. Bezejel made
a mental note to have him ambushed and husked by a private gang she
knew as soon as possible after the mission was over. But for now
she needed him - and Hideki knew it.

'So let me get this right, Colonel
Hideki, you have charted the layouts of both women's minds and know
how to import the evil from one to the other, is that right?'

They were celebrating at Navaho's after
their return from the Manchur. Holzman and Lafarge were already
blitzed and had begun to leer at passing squaws. Zhivkin was lost
in a stupor of his own thoughts. Kodrob was swaying gently beside
Bezejel, but comprehension was gone from his stewed eyes. Around
them a raging cacophony was in place as demons drank and argued and
squaws led eager though barely-capable clients to the spiral
stairways. Drums beat in the background.

'Pay attention, all of you,' Bezejel
snapped at her drunken squad. 'We need to focus on the project.
Then you can drink and take your squaws.' But it was too late for
discipline. When they were like this, demons became fatalistic and
lost their fear of husking. Some of them even sought it out and
picked fights to accelerate the journey to gurndom and
finality.

'Yes, I know how to import the
evil. I have everything I need,' replied Hideki, looking past
Bezejel disdainfully. 'I will map the evil from one to the other by
myself in my laboratory. That will be done when I leave here
tonight. But the transfer will not take place until the right
moment. That comes when Nancy has received all of the letters of
the code. Most important right now is that we guard the
communication filaments carefully so that angels not interfere with
it. Nancy has received the word 'Red'. But there is more to
come.'

'I will put a round-the-clock
guard on Nancy,' declared Bezejel. 'If any of those feathered
wonders comes close to her we'll know it. She's on her way already
to the centre of the Brother organisation. With our help she'll
shake it up and turn it into the evil empire that humans have long
feared. Then Inferno will have a harvest of souls not seen since
the Flood. The Leader will reward us mightily. We'll be rich,
Hideki. You and me. Rich. You'll have more demons to torture than
instruments to torture them with. I'll have a never-ending line of
satyrs leading to the door of my chamber. The plains above my
quarters will be piled with husks.'

Hideki's face worked itself into
the closest thing to a smile that he could manage. He took a big
gulp of jet fuel, held a candle in front of his mouth and blew. The
flame soared over the heads of the hundreds of demons and squaws in
the huge hall. Before burning out it took the shape of a Chinese
dragon. As the dragon fell to the floor a tongue of flame licked
out from its mouth, scorching the wall. A cheer went up from
everyone present which Hideki acknowledged with a fluttering of his
raised hand.

Squaws were now descending on
Kodrob and the squad, attracted by their fame. Hideki
w
as approached by several pretty vixens,
impressed by his pyrotechnic display.

Bezejel spat on the floor. She
would get nothing from her team now. It was time to depart and she
made her way between the tables slapping the heads of any drunken
males who tried to touch her. As she reached the outer door a trio
of thirsty buccaneers entered, their packs bulging with petroleum
fuel to trade for time with the squaws. Bezejel smiled at them
invitingly. They weren't surprised to see a siren leaving the
squawhouse. It wasn't unknown for upper caste demonesses to
frequent Navaho's, looking for a bit of rough company. These three
were clearly taken by Bezejel's beauty although, unfortunately for
them, they didn't know who she was. She placed her hands behind her
back allowing the three to drink in her fine figure and her low cut
top.

'Hello boys. Have you been working
on a dangerous mission for the Leader? You deserve some reward. Why
don't you come with me and tell me all about it? You won't have to
spend any of your hard-earned liquor with me.' The three looked at
each other. Their luck was in. Bezejel took their arms and led them
out in triumph. She marched them to one of her favourite chambers,
a place with many rooms where she could entertain each in turn. The
three would never be seen again.

Flying Hippo, 25000
feet above Sahara Desert

Nancy sat in the navigator's seat behind
Adima, wide awake. She'd playfully tried to hang on to the
relatively comfortable co-pilot's seat for as long as she could but
in the end had been evicted. The three had engaged in friendly
banter for a couple of hours, teasing each other about the relative
superiority of men and women. Nancy was sure she'd had the best of
it.

Now she sat back thinking about the
sheer craziness of the last 24 hours of her life. A host of images
swam through her mind as she asked herself if she could have done
anything different, or better. The faces of the children came back
frequently to haunt her. Thirty five young boys and girls off to
work in the fields, probably as slaves. She'd heard the phrase
'indentured slaves' used before. What did 'indentured' mean? Must
look it up.

Anyway, Lafi was dead now - and good
riddance. He had intended to kill her but had been killed by his
own kind. Brutal justice. At least he wouldn't be slave-trafficking
any more. She felt a pang of remorse as she remembered that she had
been partly responsible for the children's passage into slavery.
She had helped get them across the border using all her charm and
wit. Then she had brought drugs in the other direction. What did
that make her?

But as she surveyed the recent
past from every conceivable angle she began to realise one
extraordinary thing. She had enjoyed it. Far from wanting to return
home to safety and certainty she wanted the danger to go on. She
had intimidated border guards, fought off a killer, crossed borders
with two illegal cargoes while driving a military truck and
survived certain drowning at sea. How could she go back to England
now and resume her former life as a timid travel agent? The cork
was out of the bottle, the jack was out of the box, the genie had
escaped - how could it go back? She had had fun! No. She had had
FUN! It was dangerous and illegal but it had been heady, exciting
stuff. She had never felt so alive as when driving the truck across
that moonlit beach. Romance? Far better to have someone point a gun
at you and work out how to escape them. That was living. That was
the edge. That was what she was made for. Damn, Nancy, you're good
at this stuff. Go, girl, have a life, not an existence.

She was looking forward to seeing Habib
again. Boy, would he be surprised when he learnt what she wanted.
As for the three boys, well, she hoped they were enjoying their
incredibly boring archaeology trip. Let them go back to their
ruins, their bones and their dungeon of a university. Let them plot
the lives of the dead for the rest of their careers. She was going
to escape.

Nancy felt excitement run through her as
she contemplated Habib and his organisation. Brother? Well, let me
tell you something, brother, you're inefficient, badly organised
and wasteful. Why was this plane flying empty? Why had they hired
an unprofessional loner like Lafi? Why had the yacht carrying the
drugs across the Atlantic ended up in the wrong cove? Brother
needed someone capable and professional in their operation. Someone
with an eye for detail. Someone with the patience to plan ahead and
improvise rapidly if things went wrong. Someone like Nancy.

There was still her great-uncle to
visit. But that wasn't going to change anything, surely?

Nancy knew that she needed to sleep. She
couldn't afford to waste the night dreaming, she already knew what
she had to do next. What time was it? She flicked on the backlight
on a digital clock in front of her.

1.11

Really? She thought it was later than
that.

She looked to her left at the clock in
front of Jimoh Bah. Also 1.11

Nancy got up. 'Just going to stretch my
legs.' She walked into the hull of the Hercules. You could have an
orchestra in here, she thought. Or a tennis court. Outside, the hum
of the engines was constant and reassuring. She closed her eyes for
a minute and allowed the vibrations to pass through her, relaxing
her like a sedative.

She returned to her seat. 1.11

'Jimoh, is your clock working
properly?'

Jimoh looked up and tapped the face of
the clock. He looked at his watch and back again at the clock.

'The clock has stopped. But my watch has
stopped also.'

'What does it say on your watch?'

'Also 1.11'

'So two clocks and your watch all say
1.11?'

'That is very odd, Missy Nancy. They are
separate clocks, not connected. And my watch is powered by
movement, not batteries. It's high quality, never breaks.'

'OK, Jimoh, never mind. I'm going to
have a nap now. Wake me when we refuel.'

'Sweet dreams, Missy.'

Nancy settled back in her seat and
pulled over her a blanket that Adima had found in the navigator's
locker.

1.11. Strange. Within a few
minutes she was sound asleep.

Lightship Factory, Dry
Tree Desert, Paradise's Ninth Dimension

'Can I have one of these to keep?' Jabez
had had his first run in Chan and Jo's lightcraft and was excited
at the possibilities for sneaking up on friends and surprising
them. 'You could be in their living rooms for hours and they
wouldn't know. It's so cool.'

He ran his hands over the perfect curves
and sleek lines of the superbly engineered lightcraft. The bodywork
changed colours under his fingers as if he was playing it like a
musical instrument.

'May I remind you, young Jabez, that's
not a terribly heavenly idea,' joked Jo, swirling her dreadlocked
hair. 'Are you sure Heaven's the right place for you?'

'Oh, you know, I was just thinking of a
little fun, nothing sneaky. Though with one of these I could
definitely beat Luke at golf for once. Just think what a lightship
could do for your handicap!'

'Send this one for moral re-education,
Jo' said Chan, grinning behind a cupped hand.

'By the way what's it called, Jo?' asked
Ruth who was also present, having made the introductions and
wanting to be closely involved.

Chan and Jo looked at each other.

'Well,' began Jo, 'we're thinking of
calling it the Finest Unseen Ninth Dimension Intercruiser and
Lightship.' She looked down at her watch.

Jabez was pensive for a moment.

'So, the Fundial.' he pronounced.

'2.68 seconds. I told you he'd beat 3
seconds, Chan,' said Jo delightedly.

'Yep, the Fundial,' Chan agreed with a
smile.

Ruth cut in. 'Because it's about
navigating the Dimensions as easily as dialling a globe and it's
about using light for a purpose like the old sundials and it's
about having joy and fun at the same time, right?'

'My, my, you're a cute angel,' said Chan
in genuine surprise. 'Go straight to the top of the Christmas
tree.'

Ruth blushed and looked around her as a
way of changing the subject.

'Jo, take me for a walk while the boys
talk man stuff. Tell me about the desert.'

Jo readied her wings with obvious
delight. 'OK follow me up to the canopy and we'll talk there.' Her
wings flared and beat down as she took off, followed immediately by
Ruth. A small sandstorm engulfed Chan and Jabez. The two females
flew to the top of a nearby tree and alighted on adjacent branches.
They settled themselves down and folded in their wings.

'We never get tired of showing
visitors around,' Jo admitted. 'The Dry Tree Desert is exactly what
you'd expect from a desert. There's no rain, no rivers and no
water. But dry trees have roots that penetrate deep into the
underlying igneous and quartz rock and are able to extract hydrogen
and oxygen separately. Then they blend them together within the
rootballs to make H
₂
O. Water. So dry trees aren't
really dry at all. But the name has stuck.'

'How do they get their appearance?
Is it from minerals?' asked Ruth in wonder. She fondled some leaves
which had the patina of laminated rocks but the texture of regular
foliage.

'Exactly right. The minerals that
dry trees ingest from the rocks along with the water they make
gives them colours like living rock. Angels come here on vacation
and they fly through our amazing desert forest and they can't stop
talking about it.'

'What about at night? What do they look
like in starlight?'

Jo curled her leg around her
branch and raised her wings as
she looked
out across the treetops. 'Picnicking in the canopies is a
favourite. Especially at night because our sky has different stars
from almost anywhere else in Paradise. The stars come out at
different times and drape their light across the forest in
unpredictable ways. It's delirious. It looks like diamonds and
rubies and emeralds and everything else you can think of, swirling
and changing with every passing minute.'

'Oh, I just wish we could stay the
night. But I think Jabez wants to get back,' sighed Ruth.

'You can come any time. We're always
here.'

'It sure is a great place to work.
What about the drifting light effect? When can we see
that?'

'Any moment now,' replied Jo,
excitedly. 'There's a breeze coming. Watch out, it can make you
dizzy.'

A breath of wind riffled through the
trees making the branches and leaves dance.