Noel made the last turn through an open gate in a long white fence, and then the house appeared out of the storm. It looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, complete with a Christmas tree twinkling in a front window and smoke pouring from the stone chimney. A big barn lay off to the left, and as Noel stepped out of the car he heard the lowing of cattle.
Since he wanted to test her power in a real world setting rather than the artifice of American television, he locked his keys in the car.
The brass knocker on the front door was etched with the words “Bless This House.” It was All Americana perfection. Noel considered the file he’d compiled-nuclear family, mom, dad, nine kids, eight boys and one girl, grandma and grandpa living in the house, and all of them farming the family land. Noel began to despair of ever attracting this young woman into a life of crime.
There was the sound of many running feet, and the door was flung open to reveal a long hallway filled with a sea of young boys ranging in age from seven to seventeen. “I’m looking for Ms. Mollie Steunenberg,” Noel said. “Is she in?”
“MOLLIE! THERE’S SOME GUY HERE FOR YOU!” one of the boys shouted.
“HE SOUNDS LIKE A FAG!” another yelled.
“Mollie’s got a boyfriend, and he’s a fag,” the smallest boy lisped in a singsong.
There was a clatter of boots on the stairs at the far end of the hall. Mollie Steunenberg was short, plump, and cute, with curling red hair and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She had dark brown eyes and they were brimming with anger. “Shut up, you jerks.” She pushed through the gaggle of boys. Now Noel could see the family resemblance, and his flagging hopes soared. “I’m Mollie,” she said, and stood, arms akimbo, and stared challengingly up at him.
“I’m Mr. Fontes with the Brookline Agency.” He handed over one of his fake cards. “We’re in the business of developing and utilizing wild card talents in a variety of industrial settings.” Noel had a feeling that a hardheaded farm girl from Idaho wouldn’t buy the idea a movie agent was interested in her so he’d invented Mr. Fontes and the Brookline Agency. “Your fourth-dimensional powers have some interesting applications, and we’d like to talk with you about employment.”
“Great. Let me get my coat.”
“Don’t you want to talk here?”
Mollie looked horrified. “Oh, God, no. There’s no privacy here.” She bestowed a glare on her brothers.
“But your parents…” Noel began.
“They’re watching Wheel of Fortune and they hate to be interrupted.”
Wheel of Fortune. It couldn’t be more perfect.
Once outside Noel made a production of having locked his keys in the car. “If we could get a coat hanger from the house,” he said.
Mollie made a face. “My brothers will think you’re lame, and I’ll get even more shit from them. I can get the keys.”
Noel watched as she focused on the car door. A small opening appeared in the metal. Mollie reached through and her hand vanished, and appeared out of the dashboard of the car. It was disturbing and rather creepy, as if her arm had bent into strange, twisted angles. But of course she was reaching through a fourth-dimensional gate. It wouldn’t be normal.
She snagged the keys and tossed them to Noel. He allowed himself to biff the catch, and had to fish them out of the snow and mud.
Special Camp Mulele
Guit District, South Sudan
The Caliphate of Arabia
Mid-afternoon in the sudd was the hottest part of the day. Some hippos drowsed in the nearest arm of the river with just their ears and bulbous eyes and road-humped backs showing above the brown water. Even the little birds that groomed their thick hides for ticks and parasites had given up and sought shelter until the heat of day passed.
Tom touched down on white dirt packed firm by small feet. Special Camp Mulele drowsed under open-sided tents and awnings that did little more than cut the sun’s sting. Some of the child aces sobbed quietly to themselves. A pair of the younger kids sat cross-legged playing patty-cake, one with child hands, the other with the blunt furry tips of giant spider legs. Ayiyi was an Ewe kid from Ghana’s Togo River region, west along the coast from Nigeria. His folks had moved to Lagos looking for work a year before its liberation. Only ten, he had a kid’s head sticking out of the body of a black-and-white spider with a yard-long body and an eight-foot span on his eight fuzzy legs. Like any spider, Ayiyi had humongous fangs and creepy little jointed leg-things to bring food to his maw. But he ate with his human mouth. It was a process Tom could never bear to watch. Those nasty fangs injected a venom that immobilized its victims with sheer pain, as it liquefied them inside their own skin.
“Listen up, kids,” Tom called in French, then repeated it in English. “We got things to do.”
They stopped and turned to him. Some faces were sad, some horrifying. In all of them he saw a kind of hunger, avid as that of any starving man peering through the window at a plutocrat’s feast. They’re looking at me, he thought. They know I have something to give them. A purpose to their poor twisted lives. Purpose to their suffering. Is that really such a bad thing?
“It’s time to step up and fight for the Revolution,” he said, and grinned. “We’re gonna have us some fun.”
International House of Pancakes
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
They found a twenty-four-hour IHOP. Noel, fearing what would pass for cuisine, satisfied himself with a cup of coffee. Mollie was tucking into Stuffed French Toast drenched with strawberry syrup and piled high with strawberries and whipped cream.
“You know that came out of a can,” Noel said with a nod toward the whipped cream. “It has never come within even waving distance of an actual cow.”
“It’s good.”
Noel suddenly felt far older than thirty. He was preparing his opening statement when Mollie took it away from him. “So, is there really a Brookline Agency? ’Cause I’ve never heard of it, and I’ve been looking for some way out of here, and away from farming.”
Noel leaned in confidentially. “No. But I’m going to found it right after the holidays. It seems to me the most logical and frankly brilliant idea.”
“So, why did you come asking after me?”
“Because I do want to utilize your powers. Just not as a means of securing spent nuclear fuel.”
“Hey, now that’s a cool idea.” She took another huge bite of toast and mumbled, “Okay, but what is it you really want me to do?”
“Help me liberate some ill-gotten gains from some very bad people.”
Mollie frowned. “That doesn’t sound legal.”
“It’s not… technically… but morally it’s very pure.”
“I don’t want to go to jail.”
“The funds are in Africa.”
He watched the frown vanish, and he could even follow the thought process. Outside of the United States it’s anything goes. If you steal from foreigners it’s not really stealing.
“And I’d get paid for this?”
“Three million dollars.”
“Sign me up.”
In the Jungle, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The jungle was their enemy, as much as any pursuers.
The jungle didn’t want them to walk straight east. It forced them to jog north or south to find a good place to ford the frequent streams, or to avoid pools where crocodiles lurked in the rushes. It made them bypass hills that were too steep for the children and the burden of the jokers like Eason who they carried. It laid tree roots and ravines across their path. It send hordes of mosquitoes and huge black flies to torment them. It yammered at them with a thousand eerie and strange sounds that made the children shudder and cry in return. It plagued them with heat and humidity; it wrapped them in a claustrophobic world of green and brown that smelled of wet earth and rot.