Xenophobia (3 page)

Under his breath, Jameson uttered one word. “Fuck.”

“You’re not wrong,” Bower added.

“
Details are still emerging, but it seems the crew of the Orion were not aware of their deadly payload. President Addison has admitted to his involvement in authorizing the placement of the nuclear device on the Orion as a contingency in the event of hostilities, saying it was not an overtly hostile act in itself, but Congress disagrees.

“Given the severity of the accusations and the weight of evidence against the President, the Congress has issued a Memorandum of Understanding to the White House, informing the President that Congress will honor the impeachment process and conduct proceedings in an orderly and timely manner, but will not tolerate any abuse of executive power during this time. The language is verbose, but the meaning is clear. The Office of the President still stands, but the President himself is powerless. Essentially, Congress is outwardly offering the President the courtesy of due process, but in practice the White House has been shutdown. Congress may have exceeded its mandate, but that will be for the Supreme Court to decide.

“
With the President effectively under house-arrest, the executive branch of government has been paralyzed, awaiting the outcome of impeachment proceedings. Congress contends the President exceeded his executive authority by placing a nuclear weapon on a civilian spacecraft. The Special Legal Council, established by the Senate, further contends that such an act is tantamount to a declaration of war against an unknown alien race.

“
Condemnation from around the world has been swift, with the British government saying such an act threatens the very existence of life on Earth. While French ambassador ...”

Static broke the broadcast. Words faded in and out, fragments of sentences came through, barely enough to grasp their fleeting meaning.

“
Beijing has lodged a formal complaint ... following UN Security Council resolution 2992 intended to limit interaction with the alien spacecraft until such ... President is defiant, insisting his actions were in the national ... unilateral action vetoed by Congress ... ultimate decision may rest with the nine members of the Supreme Court, five of whom are Republican appointments ...”

Bosco slapped the side of the radio, shaking it in an irrational effort to improve the reception.

“As protests within the US mount, Congress has authorized the withdrawal of American forces from hotspots around the globe, bolstering its forces in country ... National Guard ... mobilized in support of police ... Russia has withdrawn ... Pakistan ...”

The sound was fading.

Bosco turned up the radio volume but that made the static worse. Slowly, the broadcast signal faded to a hiss.

Elizabeth Bower was doing all she could to maintain the stoic, stiff upper-lip for which the British were renown, but the radio broadcast had shaken her. It wasn't so much what was said as what wasn't. There were so many questions, so few answers. The frustration of being isolated from the civilized world weighed on her mind. She wondered about her parents and her sister, wondering how much more they knew. Somehow, there was solace in knowing. It was irrational, really, she thought, and yet confidence had always come from knowledge. Even a condemned man could be at peace if he knew the schedule by which he'd be executed. Not knowing was torture.

Bower had thought she was ready for anything. Ever since she was a child she brimmed with confidence, but now uncertainty clouded her thinking. Having spent a couple of years in Malawi, she thought she’d seen the worst the civil war could produce. She'd never been on the front line, but she'd treated those who had been. She liked to think nothing could shake her, and yet now her world seemed to tilt sideways, like the deck of the Titanic slowly slipping beneath the waves.

Bower busied herself by organizing patients, assessing who could flee with the villagers and those that needed specialized care. She moved between them, talking with the remaining few patients as they lay on mats stretched out on the grass, waiting for the evacuation to begin. Most of those that were able had hobbled off with the rest of the tribe along with several she'd expected to stay. One man with tuberculosis shouldn't have been going anywhere, but he felt he was better off with his family.

The village chief said he expected the rebels to torch the huts and was going to take his people into the bush.

Physically, nothing had changed since this morning, and yet nothing seemed the same. Bower’s hopes of packing up the hospital and relocating seemed futile. The UN would not be back, not any time soon. Jameson said they should leave the hospital tents standing and give the rebels something to burn, something to focus their frustrations on. Ultimately, he expected the rebels to be lazy. If they had easy targets they’d attack, but if they had to work for their prey they’d soon tire. With the villagers going bush for up to a week, he figured the tribe could avoid hostilities and then get on with rebuilding their homes.

The village was almost empty.

Outside the hospital there were three nurses, an orderly and a dozen patients waiting for the trucks. One of the patients had a broken leg, several were recovering from malaria, while another was recovering from a severe bout of dysentery and had lost a lot of strength. She was improving though, and once she regained her muscle-mass she'd be fine.

Bower's eleven AIDS cases, all with advanced symptoms, had left with their families. They said, if they were to die, they wanted to die where they were born, not hundreds of miles away. One of her patients was a sixteen year old girl with a premature baby born at roughly thirty weeks.

The baby was doing well but should have been in an intensive care unit. His breathing was shallow. His tiny hands moved in spasms rather than in a coordinated motion, and Bower feared there had been some brain damage from oxygen starvation during the protracted delivery, but such an accurate diagnosis was beyond the reach of her equipment. Quietly, she hoped he’d show signs of normalizing as he grew in size. For now, it was a case of waiting, keeping him on a drip feed and keeping his environment sterile. His young mother, still very much a child herself, rarely left his side.

Bower buried herself in the concerns of her patients and not in her own worries, even though her nurses were quite capable of caring for the handful of patients by themselves. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was trying to distract herself from the implications of being abandoned as the world turned its focus out into space.

Bower sat down with
Alile, watching as Kowalski finished packing medical supplies.

“The nurses are talking,” Alile said. “They say there’s a spaceship from another world.”

“Apparently there is,” Bower replied with a smile. “It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

Alile nodded, asking, “Do you think they’ll be friendly?”

“I hope so, but I really don’t know. We’re in uncharted territory.”

“In Africa, we have a saying,” Alile said. “To get lost is to learn the way.”

“Well,” Bower replied. “I like that. When it comes to dealing with creatures from another planet, we are most certainly lost, so I guess you’re right: we’ll learn along the way.”

Bower turned to Alile. As they were so physically similar she saw a lot of herself in the young lady, a desire for knowledge, a desire to help others, a desire to change the world, even if it was only one person at a time.

“The funny thing is,” Bower continued. “I’ve been in Africa for five years, mostly in Kenya, but in the almost two years I’ve been in Malawi I’ve barely thought about home. Not the place, not the people, not even my family. Oh, sure, I get letters from them and the odd present comes through the mail, but all of a sudden some spaceship arrives from another planet and I can’t stop thinking about home. How strange is that?”

“It is not strange,” Alile replied. “Water that runs slow runs deep.”

Bower wasn’t sure what Alile meant by that, and was going to ask her to elaborate when Elvis pulled up in the squad Hummer, pulling a truck with a tow rope.

“We’ve got problems,” was all Bower overheard as the private spoke with Jameson.

Bower felt she needed to be involved, even though there was nothing she could do and she’d probably only get in the way. All this was her fault, or so it seemed in her mind, and she wanted to fix things, only this was no broken leg she could set.

“There were three trucks, none of them in working order. We salvaged what we could and dragged the best of them here, an old Deuce. Smithy reckons the transmission is gone, and there’s a crack in the engine block, but she says she can get her working again.”

“How long?” Jameson asked.

Elvis turned to Smithy as the young female private walked up beside them. “Three, four hours, if everything goes well.”

“OK, so worst case, eight to ten hours. Looks like we’re going to be here for the night. We’re going to need to set up some defensive positions. Doc, you’re going to want to get your people into the village, behind the low stone walls. If we get into a firefight, keep your head down.”

“Understood.”

Bower felt an immense sense of gratitude for the soldiers. It was reassuring to see how calmly they dealt with the possibility of violence. Their confidence gave her comfort, and her mind boggled with the realization that her headstrong thoughtlessness could have seen her and Kowalski stranded.

Several hours passed idly by.

The odd villager moved between the huts, either hiding possessions or packing up cooking equipment. In the distance, most of the villagers were walking down a grassy slope with their meager possessions wrapped in bundles on their shoulders or balanced on their heads. The men herded cattle before them, kicking up the dry dust as they slapped the ground with sticks, the sound driving the cattle on.

Elvis used the Hummer to pull the truck onto a dusty patch of ground normally covered in market stalls. He and Smithy worked on the engine, lifting the hood and crawling underneath the old truck as they sought to fix what looked like a classic American army truck from World War II. It couldn’t have been that old, Bower thought, although in Africa anything was possible. Certainly, Elvis didn’t look out of place standing next to the drab olive truck with its knobby tires and high wheel arches.

Bower could hear Smithy and Elvis joking with each other as they worked on the truck.

“Pass me a wrench,” said Smithy, her feet sticking out from beneath the vehicle.

Elvis was too busy looking at himself in a cracked wing-mirror on the side of the truck. He was running his hands through his hair, slicking back his dark locks.

“What the hell are you putting in your hair?” asked Smithy, her dusty face appearing from beneath the truck.

“Brake oil.”

“You fucking idiot,” Smithy laughed. “We
need
brakes. Don’t go bleeding them dry for your bloody hair.”

Elvis laughed. “I can’t help it if I’m sexy and you’re hot.”

“Dream on, loser,” Smithy replied as Elvis handed her the wrench. They both laughed.

Elvis was humming a tune. Bower couldn’t quite make out the song as she walked past, but she was sure she knew the artist, and he hadn't been alive for decades.

“Hey, baby.”

Bower knew exactly what was going on. Elvis was fishing for a response, trying to bait her. He must have known she was not one to condone sexism, and ordinarily she would have jumped down his throat. On this day, however, the pressure of the moment elicited a different response, one tempered by her appreciation for how the soldiers were sticking their necks out for her and her team.

“I am not,” she said with a deliberate, polite smile, “your baby.”

The very word resonated only as a reference to newborns in her thinking.

“Sure thing,” Elvis replied, a swagger in his motion. “Whatever you say, sweet lips.”

Bower paused for a moment, looking down at her feet, trying to compose herself. She wasn’t sure whether to be angry or to laugh. She pointed her finger at him, shaking it softly and smiling as she turned and walked on, saying, “You’re outrageous.”

It was the accent, his southern drawl. Bower just couldn’t take Elvis seriously.

“She’s got your measure,” Smithy added, laughing.

Elvis grinned.

Jameson was sitting on a stone wall, his M4 rifle leaning beside him. With the sun sitting low on the horizon, his face was lit up in the soft warm hues of the coming sunset. Bower wandered over.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Nope.”

She sat down beside him, looking out across the valley toward the tableland. Dry grasslands gave way to dense jungle leading up to the mountain plateau.

“This wasn’t a good idea, was it?”

“Nope.”

Well, he was honest, she figured. What had she expected him to say? It was only after she’d asked that she realized how silly it must have sounded. Jameson was chewing on the end of a long blade of grass and seemed lost in thought.

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“Nope,” Jameson replied, grinning.

“Very funny.”

He smiled. “You see the dirt track leading down through the jungle?”

“Yeah,” Bower replied, struggling to make out sections of the road as it wound its way down from the highlands.

“At least a dozen trucks have driven down there in the last couple of hours. Our friends are on the move, spreading out in force.”

“That’s not good, is it?” As the words left her lips, she knew what was coming.

“Nope.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“Oh,” Jameson replied. “I think all hell is about to break loose. I’m just hoping we’re far enough away that we don’t get too much attention too soon.”

Bower was silent. Jameson must have picked up on her concern.

“Bosco got through to Af-Com. The task force is already steaming north, but there’s a destroyer bring up the rear, just off the coast of Madagascar. If we miss the flight from Lilongwe, they’ll dispatch a helo once they’re in range. We’ll get your people down to Kasungu and assess the situation from there.”

“What about all this other stuff?”

“What? The aliens?”

“Yeah,” Bower replied, leaning back on her arms, enjoying the cool, evening wind that was beginning to cut through the stifling heat of the day.

“I hardly believe it myself. Seems surreal. I try not to think about it too much. I need to focus on here and now. Once we get out of here, I guess there will be more time to think about that.”

Bower nodded her head in silent agreement.

“And you? What do you think?” Jameson asked. “Do you think they’re anything like the movies?”

Bower laughed. “Oh, no. I’m not too sure what to think, but I doubt they’re anything like what we see in Hollywood. I just can’t imagine an intelligent alien species tracking a bazillion miles through space to blow up the White House, draw crop circles, and conduct anal probes on rednecks.”

Jameson laughed. “Yeah, seems pretty silly doesn’t it? I wonder what they’ll make of our movies.”

“They’ll think we have an overactive imagination.”

“And we do,” Jameson replied.

They sat there in silence for a few seconds before Bower said, “You and your men are surprisingly calm given the circumstances.”

“You learn not to stew in the Rangers. Most people think the army is about combat, but the reality is, firefights last five to ten minutes, maybe half an hour but rarely any longer than that. Firefights are few and far between. More often than not, we’re marching or hiking, scouting or tracking. The glamour is pretty quickly replaced with boredom, excitement is the rare exception to mundane routines, so we learn to take it all in our stride.”

Smithy climbed over the front of the radiator on the old truck. She had her baggy shirt off. Her breasts were prominent beneath her tank-top, but Elvis wasn’t distracted by the view. He shimmied underneath the truck, following her directions. The odd swear word drifted by. As the wind changed direction, Bower overheard Elvis saying, “A-huh, a-huh. I’ve got that bad boy. Y’all just leave this to The King.”

Smithy said something in reply, but Bower didn’t catch it, something about king-dinga-ling. They were an unusual couple, thought Bower. Elvis was so muscular and imposing, while Smithy seemed fragile by comparison, but you’d never know that listening to their banter. They were clearly the best of friends.

“Don’t you think he’s a little strange?” Bower asked.

“What? Elvis?” Jameson replied, turning his head slightly to one side as he looked curiously at her.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, he’s got his quirks, but he’s a great soldier.”

“But don’t you think the whole Elvis routine is a bit ... immature.”

Jameson laughed. “A bit, I guess. We’re all children at heart, Doc.”