An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

Curry was up the moment the jet stopped, checking Sherman's vital signs, adjusting the drip on his IV and the flow of oxygen to his nasal cannula. She reached into a pocket, shined a penlight into his eyes.

"Shit," she said, shaking her head as she reached for a syringe.

"What's wrong?" The medic asked, and Carol looked on wide-eyed.

"His O2 sats are all wrong, his BP is too high. I must have missed a fragment, or the resection is failing."

"Or pressurization rebound," the Israeli medic added. "Not uncommon after a long flight like this, with someone in his condition, but I agree, he should go straight to the ER."

"Is it close?"

The medic nodded his head, went forward and spoke to the pilot, and a moment later the air-stairs opened, flooding the cabin with very warm, very dry air. Escort vehicles and a military ambulance pulled up to the jet, and soldiers came thundering aboard; they rolled Sherman's gurney to the door -- and straight across into the waiting ambulance, that had somehow elevated and positioned itself by the open stairs. Curry and the medic hopped across and into the beast -- then it drove off quietly into the night, leaving Carol and her Israeli escort alone in the cabin.

"We must leave, while it is still dark," the man said, and she followed him down the stairs and into something that looked a little like an old-style Land Rover -- except this thing was almost brand new and painted flat tan. Two -- what, paratroopers? -- sat in front, and three other vehicles, each identical to this one, formed up ahead and behind as they made ready to leave. The little convoy slipped through a heavily guarded gate and onto a narrow roadway, and she saw mountains ahead, their jutting profile highlighted by the pinkish-amber glow of the sun -- still just below the horizon.

"Do you need air conditioning?" one of the paratroopers asked.

"I'm fine," she said, but she felt anything but just then. She felt disoriented, alone and unsure of herself as she looked out yet another window -- passing through farmland one moment, through a small settlement the next, and then she saw blacked out buildings that looked oddly military in function -- before rolling through more farmland.

'I'm in a war zone,' she said to herself. 'In a war zone, a spectator looking at the world pass by through a parade of windows...'

Farm-village-farm-factory...this oddly variegated landscape was as disorienting as her mood, and nothing she saw made much sense to her American eyes -- yet closing them didn't help. After a half hour of this, her little convoy turned off the main road -- and she saw a small sign indicating they had just entered the Tarum archeological settlement -- 'Whatever the Hell that is' -- she said to herself. They followed the lead Rover as it pulled onto an arcing, narrow street, then into a driveway. She saw a house: dark, austere, immensely plain looking and very small, and the colonel with her looked at his watch, then got out of the truck and opened her door, looking up at the last stars fading from the night.

Hills, low and rocky-tan, their flanks covered with wind-burned trees, and just up the nearest trail -- a tank. Low and menacing, it's barrel camouflaged with brush, She saw troops everywhere, under trees. Waiting. Watching her, and waiting, and she wondered why they were under trees when the sun was barely up...

"This way, please," her escort said, and she followed him up to the house and waited while he fumbled with keys in the near darkness. He finally unlocked the door and walked inside, turning on lights as he entered, holding the door open for her, then quickly, too quickly, shutting it behind her.

The interior looked like something haphardly thrown together, a scrambled mess straight out of an Ikea catalogue -- all bright primary colors and spare Danish lines -- and even the air smelled like freshly molded plastic; the overall effect was simply devastating with it's soul-crushing ability to render her soul speechless.

"This will be your new home," the colonel said, beaming, his arms held expansively wide.

She looked at him, suddenly feeling an intense desire to drop dead on the spot, but she nodded her head. "Okay. Where's the bedroom, and how do I find out how Ted is?"

"Bedroom, right this way," he said, leading her into a ten foot by ten foot room decorated by someone who had obviously spent way too much time in an underground missile silo, and then she looked in the closet, saw clothes hanging on the rack that were -- "Oh, what a surprise..." -- just her size. Shoes too, nice, sensible flats and running shoes, also her size. Ted's selection was beside her's, right down to the same style of white Adidas tennis shoes he kept in his own closet back home. The sight filled her with dread, and a certain encroaching nausea. She felt a line of sweat bead on her forehead as a profound anomie settled over her, like a snowflake in August.

"The bathroom?"

He pointed and she walked in. All their usual toiletries, laid out in neat, orderly rows -- 'Ready for inspection, Sergeant!'

"This is a fucking nightmare," she whispered.

"You've found everything in order?"

"Yes. Fine. What about Ted?"

"One of us will be out front at all times, and as soon as we know anything I'll call you," he said, pointing at a telephone on her bedside table. "We'll bring Dr Curry out here as soon as we can."

"Dr Curry? Why isn't she returning to...?"

The man smiled, looking at her as if she was an extraordinarily slow child: "I doubt she will be returning anytime soon. It could be very dangerous for her." He turned and left the house, and she turned and looked at the bed, at the barren concrete walls that suddenly felt more like a prison cell than a home. She walked over and looked out the front window, saw four men gathered beside their vehicles, smoking cigarettes -- obviously talking about things inconsequential, each armed with heavy machine guns and with bulky night vision goggles perched on their khaki helmets.

'I wonder...are they here to protect me?' she whispered to herself. "Or to keep me here?" She looked around the surreal living room once again, the slick Scandinavian designs at odds with the painted cinder-block walls, and right then she decided sleep was the easiest course of action.

"As long as I don't dream..." she said as she crawled off the find the nearest rock.

+++++

Jeanie Curry was beyond livid.

She had a full schedule of procedures on the books for the morning, and where was she? In Tel Aviv? Israel? What the hell was going on?!

Kingman had asked her to help with Sherman -- just as she saw four men wheeling him into a waiting ambulance. Then the cop had asked her to get in the ambulance too -- "To make sure he makes it to the airport" -- and then? A twelve hour flight to Oslo, where they stayed on the ground just long enough to refuel, then another six hours crammed inside that hideous metal tube watching the cop's condition deteriorate?

And then, on asking that someone tell her what was happening to her, she was -- what? Escorted to a hospital, then shuffled off to a military convoy, and she was now being driven "up into the mountains"? Mountains? These people called the little anthills ahead 'mountains'? Looking out the truck's windows, she saw curiously arthropodal looking helicopters ranging ahead of their convoy -- criss-crossing the roadway like they were protecting her, or trying to draw fire.

"Why all the helicopters?" she asked one of the soldiers, and he shrugged, then pointed at the skies overhead.

"F-15s up there too. I have no idea why." He turned away from her, resumed scanning the road ahead.

Then she noticed the machine gun in his lap -- and turned away, craned her head, looked out the window and up into the midday sky, shielding her eyes from the blistering sun. Yes, she saw little pinpoints circling high overhead...but, what could that mean?

Those cops up on Benedict Canyon? Someone had tried to kill Sherman.

An enemy of the State of Israel had tried to kill Sherman.

So Sherman was somehow of vital interest to the State of Israel. Or to someone who was.

Smithfield? Why was he at the hospital?

And she had been sucked into a goddamned subterfuge. Unwittingly, stupidly, carelessly.

"When can I leave?" she asked the soldier, but he just shook his head. "Couldn't you just take me to the airport? Let me get on a plane?"

The same shrug again, but this time he spoke on his radio.

"Look, am I a prisoner? Why can't you tell me what's going on?"

"We're almost there."

"There? What are you talking about? Where are we?"

He turned, and this time he looked right at her. "Home," he said with a smile as he pointed at this tiny wisp of a village.

They were driving through what looked like a small settlement now, all the houses looked ten, maybe fifteen years old, yet they all looked alike -- like hybrids of some sort, a union of house and bomb shelter, and each and every one of them was tiny. "You've got to be kidding me..." she whispered.

They pulled up to a house on a circle -- 'or was it a dead-end road?' -- and she saw troops everywhere -- yet they appeared to be hiding, under trees, under awnings -- always out of sight. And she'd seen at least three tanks hidden in the low, stunted trees around the settlement...

"Sorry," the soldier said, looking at his watch. "Satellite overhead now."

"A satellite? What's...?"

"Russians. They take photograph now."

"Russians?"

"Five more minutes, we get out. Need air conditioning?"

"Uh-huh, yeah, I sure do." She was steaming now, and tried to hit a few pressure points on her wrist when she felt the first wave of a blinding migraine coming on.

The soldier got out a few minutes later and opened her door, and he led her up the gravel walk to the little house -- then she saw Carol inside looking out a window at her, heading for the front door as soon as she recognized her.

The door opened, revealing another, much older soldier standing just inside the barely open door. The soldier escorting her handed this man a piece of paper and she was 'allowed' in -- and once inside she stopped in her tracks and burst out laughing...

"This just gets better and better!" she bellowed -- then she saw Carol -- and right then she knew whatever else this might be, it was no joke.

+++++

Grover Smithfield sat at his desk, turned and looked over the Pacific spread out below, then he looked at the phone on his desk. He was worried now, and even though the wilting sorrow he still felt about his son's death was never far away, his thoughts kept drifting back to Ted Sherman. 'We should've kept tighter surveillance on him, never let this happen.' Now things were getting complicated, and he wasn't sure if she knew about these developments. Still, he had to trust her.

The encrypted phone on his desk beeped once, and he inserted his key -- then, when the prompt came, he inserted his flash drive. When the light flashed green twice, he picked up the handset.

"Eagle," he said.

"Roost Two."

The line went dead and the shock of instant recognition hit him. He and Linda had either been, or were about to be exposed, again, but this time there'd be no hurried resignation, no helicopter waiting on the White House lawn to take him home.

No, this time there'd be a state funeral at Arlington, and he'd be the guest of honor. A silent, dead, guest of honor. And probably Linda, too. No wonder she'd been acting so strange lately.

'I wonder how much she knows?'

He opened his laptop and then an encrypted partition, and he looked over the details of Roost Two and shook his head. He read through them again, committing each detail to memory, then he activated the worm, and bit by bit the entire contents of the Mac's drives were obliterated.

He picked up the encrypted phone and put it in a nylon bag and went upstairs to talk with Linda, wondering all the way who was coming, and who'd get to them first.

+++++

Curry sat in the little living room on a bright red, yellow and blue sofa, her face in her hands now as the full force of her migraine hit. Carol looked on sympathetically, but she couldn't relate: she'd never, ever had a headache, not even in med school. Still, when Curry got up and ran into the bathroom, she just looked at the colonel and shrugged.

"Can I fix you lunch?" the man asked, but Carol just shook her head.

"What are we waiting for?" she asked.

He pointed up at the sky. "Satellites."

"Oh, that explains a lot," she said, shaking her head again as her fingers fidgeted away restlessly.

"Russian reconnaissance birds, maybe American, too. We don't exactly want them to know where you are. Yet."

"Yet?"

"Uh-huh. We're just moving a few pieces on the board right now. Shaking things up a bit."

"You mean they can see us?"

"If I held a golf ball out with the number facing up, ten minutes later some troll in Moscow would look at it, be able to clearly make out that number..."

"Sweet. Sorry I asked." She shook her head, tried to remember everything Ted had told her, but this was nuts. "You'll pardon my asking, but you don't exactly sound like you grew up around here..."

The colonel laughed. "Beverly Hills High, class of '87. USC, too, then the bug hit."

"The bug?"

"I'm a Jew. This is my homeland."

"You don't miss it? California?"

He grinned, a handsome, becoming smile, just as Jeanie came back into the room. "I'd kill for a Tommy burger right now," he said.

"The one on Beverly?" Curry said.

"That's the only one there is, Ma'am, if you know what I mean."

"A guy took me there once," Jeanie said. "I puked for a week."

"Not an LA girl, are you?" the colonel grinned.

"You got a name," Jeanie asked, "or is that classified, too?"

"Ben. Ben Katz, but it used to be Kaye."

"So, you went to SC?" Jeanie asked.

"Yeah, film school, if you can believe it."

Curry shrugged. "Why not? Good place for that, good as any, I suppose. I did my undergrad there, but went to med school in San Francisco."

"I know," Katz said. "USF. My sister was two years behind you. Mimi Kaye. Remember her?"

"No kidding! Man, small world, isn't it?"

He smiled again. "And you worked two summers at Disneyland, during your undergrad years, at It's A Small World."

Curry stared at him, not quite sure how mad she was yet, but she knew she was getting madder by the second. "So, who've I slept with the past year? Got that information handy?"

"As far as we could tell, no one."

"You goddamn mother fuckers!" Curry screamed. "Tell me what the fuck's going on, and I mean right now, or get me down to the fucking airport! Now!"

Katz laughed, then looked at his watch. "Okay."

"What?"

"I said Okay. Let's go take a peek behind the curtain first, Dorothy. Maybe you'll find an answer that agrees with you." He stood and led both of them to the door, then out to one of the urLand Rovers.

'Funny,' Curry thought, 'how everyone keeps looking at the sky...'

They drove a few minutes from the house, then turned up a narrow dirt trail, past a sign declaring the area a restricted archeological site, then the truck turned into thick brush, into what looked like a cave. Twenty meters in they came to a reinforced concrete and steel gate and stopped. A soldier came out of the shadows and looked at the colonel's ID, then waved them on. Another fifty meters down a steep ramp they came to a parking area, and Katz got out, opened Carol's door, then walked around to get Jeanie's, and then he led them to a simple steel access door across from the Rover.

He punched in a code and the door opened -- revealing a long corridor beyond. A couple of turns -- to confuse an intruder? -- and he stopped outside just another door -- and knocked.

The door hummed and unlocked, and Carol looked at cameras in the ceiling -- and waved -- then followed Katz and Jeanie inside.

Jeanie Curry's first impression was that she'd somehow stumbled into an concrete aviary, and that there was a very big owl sitting behind the desk across the room. The woman was enigmatically ageless -- yet somehow ancient, and she looked emaciated, almost terminally ill. And her eyeglasses. They seemed at least half an inch thick, making her eyes appear gigantic -- yet eerily intelligent. There was a laptop on the owl's desktop, and a large display on the wall behind her -- that was now showing an image of earth -- apparently from orbit.

"Hope?" Carol said as she peered at the owl. "Is that you?"

An owl named Hope, Curry said to herself. 'This isn't Oz...I'm Alice, we've just gone down the rabbit hole -- and now I've found the Red Queen.'

"Carol? How are you?" the owl spoke in a clear, precise voice.

Curry pointed at the screen on the wall. "What's this?"

The owl's head pivoted and looked at the screen, the turned again; she looked down at the laptop and sighed, entered a command and the image zoomed to an image somewhere in a desert, and to what looked like a smooth tan crater in the middle of a graded plain. "The Negev," the owl said, "south of here." More commands, a deeper zoom. Curry thought she was looking at a radio telescope -- only more massive, and made of concrete -- then the owl entered more commands and the image flickered once, changed to show a white space station -- apparently in orbit.

"This is the ISS, isn't it?" Jeanie asked.

"No," the owl said. "This is Hyperion."

"Are those shuttles? I thought they were...?"

"Those? No. The Boeing X-37C. They were used to build Hyperion."

"Is that what this is all about?" Curry said. "You're building a secret satellite?"

The owl studied her for a moment. "How is my brother?"

"Your brother? Who...?"

"Ted Sherman, my brother, How is he?"

Carol moved to sit down; she'd heard the barest outline of the project before, but had never seen any images. She found the reality somewhat frightening, yet now Ted's name was floating in the air, and she grew cold and still inside -- while she waited for the answer to take shape...

"He's, uh, I missed a bone fragment. He had a bleed on the flight, a bad one. We've made a repair, but we're in a kind of 'wait and see' period right now. Bigger issue now will be if he throws a clot."

"I see. Well, Dr Curry, what you're looking at isn't a satellite, not in the usual sense. It was originally conceived as a power station. It's a fusion reactor, but there have been unanticipated consequences to it's operation."

"Fusion? You mean...?"

"It's an Israeli project I've been involved with for a while, and it was deemed more appropriate to place the reactor in a geosynchronous, low-earth orbit, over the Negev. When operational, it was thought an intensely concentrated plasma beam would power the Negev facility, a conventional steam-turbine generator, and eventually dozens of reactors would be orbited above the earth, beaming limitless, clean power to harvesting stations like this one in the desert. We powered up the first reactor more than two years ago, then the plasma was released. This is what happened..."

She opened a file on the laptop, and moments later a new image appeared on the large screen, showing a Hyperion reactor in orbit, then -- for a millisecond Curry could see a beam of intense power leave the satellite, arcing down like a fat laser into the desert. Then the entire facility simply disappeared, leaving a trail of distorted plasma on the screen.

"What happened? An explosion?"

The owl laughed. "I wish." She rubbed the bridge of her nose, her eyes narrowed. "No, Dr Curry, it seems we opened Pandora's Box with our first Hyperion."

"Excuse me?"