Although Kele begs to come, he’s been grounded for cursing in Arápache—something he thought he could get away with, but didn’t. A good thing too. The last thing Lev wants is to put Kele in the middle of this. He needs to go alone.
• • •
The concert has already started when Lev arrives. There are maybe two hundred people spread out on blankets and lawn chairs picnicking and enjoying the warm August day. The band is good. They play a curious mix of traditional native music, pop, and oldies. Something for everyone.
Lev lingers, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, but he sees the occasional person spot him and whisper to the person beside them. Well, they’ll have plenty more to gossip about in a few minutes.
Lev makes his way toward the front, and as soon as the band finishes their first set, he pulls two pieces of paper from his pocket and climbs to the stage. He pulls the lead singer’s microphone down a few inches so he can speak without it blocking his face.
“Excuse me,” he says. “Excuse me, can I have your attention!” He’s startled by how loud and resonant his voice sounds. “My name is Levi Jedediah Garrity—but you probably know me as Lev Calder. I was a Mahpee taken in by the Tashi’ne family.”
“We know who you are,” someone shouts dismissively from the audience. “Now get off the stage.”
A smattering of agreement—some derisive laughter. He ignores it all. “I was there when Wil Tashi’ne offered himself to parts pirates in exchange for more than a dozen lives—including mine. Although one of the parts pirates died there, the two who lived took Wil, sold him to be unwound, and got away.”
“Yeah, tells us something we don’t know,” yells another heckler.
“I plan to,” Lev says. “Because I’ve found out their names, and I know where to find them.”
Then he holds out the two pieces of paper—each one featuring an enlarged image of a parts pirate. One with a missing ear, the other with a face like a goat.
Suddenly the entire crowd is silent.
“Chandler Hennessey and Morton Fretwell. They hunted AWOLs for a while in Denver, but now they’re trolling Minneapolis.” Then he puts the pictures down and gets as close to the microphone as he can. “I’m going to track them down and bring them back here to face justice.” And then, in perfect Arápache:
“Who will help me?”
The silence continues.
“I said, who will help me?”
For a long moment, Lev thinks no one will come forward, but then he hears a single voice—a woman’s voice—from the back of the crowd.
“I will,” she says in Arápache.
It’s Una. Lev hadn’t even seen her here. He’s both grateful and troubled. He was hoping to put together a good old-fashioned posse. If it’s just the two of them, what chance do they have of bringing in these pirates? What chance do they have of even surviving the attempt?
As Una moves through the crowd toward the stage, someone shouts, “C’mon! Clap for the clapper!”
People begin applauding. It starts slow, but it builds until the crowd is cheering by the time Una reaches the stage. Now any doubts he had are gone. His bid to win over the Arápache people has begun—and if he succeeds, he knows he’ll be able to pull them into the battle against unwinding. He’ll finally have his dam!
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, little brother?” Una asks him over the cheering crowd.
Lev smiles at her. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Part Six
Akron
TERRORISTS PLAN ATTACK ON BRITAIN WITH BOMBS
INSIDE
THEIR BODIES TO FOIL NEW AIRPORT SCANNERS
By Christopher Leake, Mail On Sunday Home Affairs Editor
UPDATED: 17:01 EST, 30 January 2010
Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, underground trains, and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes, or underwear to avoid detection. But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting “surgical bombs” inside people for the first time.
A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.
Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal.
Security sources fear the body bombers could pretend to be diabetics injecting themselves in order to prevent anyone stopping their suicide missions.
Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said: “Our enemies are constantly evolving their techniques to try to defeat our methods of detection. This is one of the most savage forms that extremists could use, and while we are redeveloping travel security, we have got to take this new development into account.”
Senior government security sources confirmed last night that they were aware of the new threat of body bombs, but were not prepared to make any official comment.
Published by permission of The Mail on Sunday.
See the full article here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247338/Terrorists-plan-attack-Britain-bombs-INSIDE-bodies-foil-new-airport-scanners.html
The Rheinschilds
Dr. Janson Rheinschild sits in a chair, in a room, in the dark, alone. His wife has gone to bed, but he cannot. After spending so many hours in bed, for so many weeks, he’s plagued by crushing insomnia, an unyielding headache, and a hollowness in his soul that he cannot describe.
Were he more shallow, he could be a very happy man—after all, he’s got millions in his bank account. He and Sonia could go anywhere they want and live out their lives in extravagant luxury . . . . But what would be the point? And where can they go that they won’t be reminded of the darkness they leave behind?
Unwinding is spreading. China was the first to jump on the bandwagon, then Belgium and the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union. The Russians claimed to have come up with the idea themselves, as if it were something worth claiming, and in third-world nations, where laws change as quickly as governments, the black-market trade in human organs has grown into a major industry.
And what of his attempt to change all that? What of his “life’s work that would end unwinding”? After one final attempt to get some answers out of BioDynix Medical Instruments, he was slapped with a cease-and-desist lawsuit and a restraining order that prevents him from coming within one hundred yards of any BioDynix employee.
Every day, the very existence of their basement reminds him that Austin—whom Janson and Sonia had come to care about like a son—is gone, and as if this cake needed any further icing, both he and Sonia have been virtually unwound themselves. Before Janson had been ousted from Proactive Citizenry for actually wanting to do some good in the world, they were working on digital footprint removal. It was supposed to be a way to protect one’s privacy on the web by removing unwanted and unauthorized references and pictures of oneself.
But like everything else, Proactive Citizenry found a way to weaponize it.
Now any and all references to Janson or Sonia Rheinschild have been eliminated from the digital memory of the world. Not only don’t they exist, but according to public records, they never existed. Those who know them will eventually forget them, and even if they don’t, those people will eventually die. Janson’s and Sonia’s footprints on this earth will be washed as clean as a beach at high tide.