He had a carefree air. He was smiling, relaxed, practically jovial. He wished me good morning and suggested an outing. He raised his eyebrows slightly when I didn’t leap at the chance. I had come here to work with Henry, to learn new things, to behold new wonders, not to go sightseeing. Besides, Hsi-tau did not leap to mind when you heard the words tourist destination. I had already flown or driven over hundreds of miles of its tawny surface. Everything looked the same even when the wind blew, which was all the time.
“Sounds great,” I said weakly, anticipating yet another gourmet picnic lunch and hoping against hope that the natives I kept expecting to see, but never did, had invited us to share Mongolian hot pot in an authentic yurt.
Reading my face—and for all I knew, my mind—Henry gave me a quizzical look. He led me to a Humvee that stood with engine idling outside the door of the yurt. Two chows—mine and Henry’s—sat in the backseat with black tongues lolling. A couple of Kalashnikov assault rifles and two large holstered pistols were clipped to a rack behind our heads. A canvas bag, perhaps containing spare ammo or even hand grenades, and a pair of army-green, state-of-the-art binoculars dangled beside them.
At breakneck speed we raced down the arrow-straight road to nowhere for a few miles, then Henry turned off the pavement and we proceeded much, much more slowly across a trackless wilderness, Humvee lurching over the rough surface. The bag of grenades, if that’s what it was, swung wildly, banging itself against the window posts, and I kept twisting my head to make sure it hadn’t yet exploded.
“Do the guns bother you?” Henry asked.
“Only if they go off.”
“They’re not loaded.”
“Then what’s the point of bringing them along?”
“The Boy Scout motto,” Henry said.
The country was more rugged here, and as we traveled the dunes got progressively larger. The Humvee’s big knobby tires spun, gripped, spun some more, and gouged deep tracks in the sand. Despite the fact that we were equipped with a two-way radio and a couple of satellite phones interfered in no way with my fear that the Humvee might get stuck and we might die of thirst and exposure. Consider the consequences: If Henry died, so did humanity’s last chance to take command of its fate, unless he could get the president of the United States on the phone before we perished and tell him what was coming.
The Humvee crested a hill. In the distance I saw some tents clustered in the shadow of a mesa. I got out the binoculars and focused on the campsite. People were scurrying around the tents or working on the wall of the mesa, which was pockmarked with excavations of various sizes. As we drew closer, I kept on sweeping the site with the binoculars. The lenses were powerful and self-focusing. Details emerged in great clarity. People were climbing down from the mesa. Most of them were local, but a few who were larger and clumsier than the others were Caucasian. One of them was a brawny fellow with a red handlebar mustache who wore a cowboy hat and, sure enough, when I panned down with the glasses, cowboy boots.
I stifled a gasp. I knew this man. And as soon as I got out of the Humvee, he recognized me. Apart from a look filled with hatred and loathing, which I returned, he gave no sign that he had ever seen me before. He was grotesquely huge, a slab of muscle and bone nearly seven feet high. In a windchill factor of about thirty degrees Fahrenheit, he wore shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His biceps were the size of a normal man’s thighs. Even his teeth, when he grinned at Henry, were half again as large as standard human teeth.
In a booming bass voice he shouted, “Hot damn, Henry! I thought you’d never get here.”
He enveloped Henry in a bear hug, lifting him off his feet and pounding him on the back. After giving him a final shake that dislodged
“Sounds great,” I said weakly, anticipating yet another gourmet picnic lunch and hoping against hope that the natives I kept expecting to see, but never did, had invited us to share Mongolian hot pot in an authentic yurt.
Reading my face—and for all I knew, my mind—Henry gave me a quizzical look. He led me to a Humvee that stood with engine idling outside the door of the yurt. Two chows—mine and Henry’s—sat in the backseat with black tongues lolling. A couple of Kalashnikov assault rifles and two large holstered pistols were clipped to a rack behind our heads. A canvas bag, perhaps containing spare ammo or even hand grenades, and a pair of army-green, state-of-the-art binoculars dangled beside them.
At breakneck speed we raced down the arrow-straight road to nowhere for a few miles, then Henry turned off the pavement and we proceeded much, much more slowly across a trackless wilderness, Humvee lurching over the rough surface. The bag of grenades, if that’s what it was, swung wildly, banging itself against the window posts, and I kept twisting my head to make sure it hadn’t yet exploded.
“Do the guns bother you?” Henry asked.
“Only if they go off.”
“They’re not loaded.”
“Then what’s the point of bringing them along?”
“The Boy Scout motto,” Henry said.
The country was more rugged here, and as we traveled the dunes got progressively larger. The Humvee’s big knobby tires spun, gripped, spun some more, and gouged deep tracks in the sand. Despite the fact that we were equipped with a two-way radio and a couple of satellite phones interfered in no way with my fear that the Humvee might get stuck and we might die of thirst and exposure. Consider the consequences: If Henry died, so did humanity’s last chance to take command of its fate, unless he could get the president of the United States on the phone before we perished and tell him what was coming.
The Humvee crested a hill. In the distance I saw some tents clustered in the shadow of a mesa. I got out the binoculars and focused on the campsite. People were scurrying around the tents or working on the wall of the mesa, which was pockmarked with excavations of various sizes. As we drew closer, I kept on sweeping the site with the binoculars. The lenses were powerful and self-focusing. Details emerged in great clarity. People were climbing down from the mesa. Most of them were local, but a few who were larger and clumsier than the others were Caucasian. One of them was a brawny fellow with a red handlebar mustache who wore a cowboy hat and, sure enough, when I panned down with the glasses, cowboy boots.
I stifled a gasp. I knew this man. And as soon as I got out of the Humvee, he recognized me. Apart from a look filled with hatred and loathing, which I returned, he gave no sign that he had ever seen me before. He was grotesquely huge, a slab of muscle and bone nearly seven feet high. In a windchill factor of about thirty degrees Fahrenheit, he wore shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His biceps were the size of a normal man’s thighs. Even his teeth, when he grinned at Henry, were half again as large as standard human teeth.
In a booming bass voice he shouted, “Hot damn, Henry! I thought you’d never get here.”
He enveloped Henry in a bear hug, lifting him off his feet and pounding him on the back. After giving him a final shake that dislodged
Similar Books
