Sincerely, Patrick Hennessey
Kuralski felt a small flush of warmth at that last sentence. He looked up from the letter, toward Johnson. "He doesn't allow much time to decide, does he?"
Johnson answered, "If you think about it, if someone needs a long time to decide something like this, then he probably doesn't need to go. Have you decided?"
Kuralski looked around at the interior of his house. Fading memories, painful ones as often as not. There was nothing there to hold him. "I'll go. Can I have a few days to get my house on the market?"
"You can take fourteen days from today. I'll send you tickets as soon as I finish making arrangements. You'll have to take care of your own passport, if you don't have one." Johnson offered his hand a second time. "For Pat, let me say 'Welcome Aboard.' Ah, what about your wife?" he asked, pointing at a picture.
"Dead. Cancer. It's why I'm not in the army anymore. I had to take care of her and so I missed my chance to command a company. No command; no chance."
"Oh. Sorry. Pat didn't know."
"Thanks. No reason he or you should have. Anyway, it would be worth the trip just to see Linda."
"She's dead, too. Pat said it was on seven-one-one in ^ the TNTO."
Kuralski bowed his head and began to fight back tears.
"You loved her too, didn't you?" Johnson asked.
Kuralski just nodded and said, "Yeah… yeah, I did. But, then, who didn't? What a woman."
Johnson smiled grimly. "I know. And pity the poor bastards who murdered the family of Pat Hennessey."
Interlude
31 December, 2049, Brussels, Belgium, European Union
Margot Tebaf's chauffeured limousine passed row upon row of empty, boarded-up shops and unmaintained apartment buildings. It seems like only yesterday, she thought, when those shops were open and vibrant, when there were flower boxes at the windows of the apartments, when the streets were clear. Has it been thirty years?
The driver cursed as one of the front tires slipped into a pothole. Nobody was maintaining the cobblestones anymore. He muttered something unintelligible but ugly sounding as he maneuvered around a pile of uncollected trash, then cut the wheel hard to avoid the charred and rusted ruins of a burned and ancient automobile, parked-if that was the word-so as to jut out into the street and make passage for those still able to afford private transportation more difficult.
Perhaps it was an ambush point; the city's crime rate was so high now that the police hardly bothered taking reports. Outside of the neighborhoods dominated by the European Union's bureaucracy, they didn't bother with enforcing the law even when it was violated before their eyes.
Margot's gaze avoided the street-too ugly-and looked instead at the little towers above, each ringed with green neon lights.
To a viewer of even twenty years before, the streets would have appeared remarkably clear of motor traffic. Instead young, unemployed men wandered aimlessly, followed often enough by black-clad women trailing masses of children. The men glared at the passing limo. Margot might have feared attack except that her auto was armored. It was also preceded and trailed by armed police escort vehicles.
The one-way glass of the limousine's windows allowed Margot to see out without anyone seeing in. Thus, no one saw her shiver when she considered what things might be like if Europe were a democracy in anything but name and merest appearances.
Thank the god that doesn't exist that my ancestors were wise enough to destroy democracy before we had a barbarian majority in our midst, she thought.
That was only one of the many depressing thoughts impinging on Margot's consciousness. Looming even greater than the barbarization of Europe was the continuing, annoying, infuriating prosperity of the United States.
Americans; I hate those bastards. And there are nearly five hundred million of the swine now. While my poor Europe is dying out. And the reason there are so many of the damned Yankees? Not only do their women bear children, just like the Moslems, in unsustainable numbers, but most of the young Euro women willing to have kids went there… or to Ontario, or the Republic of Western Canada, or Australia. Others fled east to Poland and Russia.
All our most talented young people left for other climes, leaving what remained to pay for the pensions for the old, the welfare for the immigrants, or the absolutely necessary government that runs things and keeps the peace, that ensures the people are cared for, cradle to grave.
Except that we can't care for them anymore, even with over ninety percent of conscripted youngsters devoted to social issues instead of the military. We have hardly anything to export now, except retired "workers" and Moslem children. And no one wants to buy, or even accept, those.
The limo turned to the right and began to slow. Ahead, the leading police escort pulled off to one side of a guarded steel gate. A guard emerged and questioned the driver of the police escort. Apparently satisfied, the guard turned and signaled to someone inside the small armored shack in front of the gate and to one side. Magically-Margot wondered how long it would be before such things were explained away as the work of magic or of the Jinn- the gate slid out of the way. She wondered, too, how long before the gate, all the security systems, all the technology of Europe broke down, never to be replaced.
She pushed such thoughts aside as the limousine began to move forward through the gate and toward the imposing glass and steel building surrounded by still meticulously maintained grounds that was the Headquarters for the European Union.
Chapter Seven Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth. -Archimedes
I'll make my own goddamned lever. -Patricio Carrera
Air Balboa Flight 717, 9/8/459 AC
Hennessey was a smoky wraith hidden in a wreath of smoke. He did not recognize anything around him. Somehow, though, it felt very high in the air. There was a floor beneath him above which he floated. Though floating, he felt the heat emanating from the floor.
He was drawn forward by laughter. The smoke parted as his shade moved on and through its swirling screen.
The laughter came from a swarthy man. "Infidels," cried the man, "see the judgment of Allah."
A voice he recognized shouted back, "Allah will send you to hell, you miserable wog bastard!"
He was drawn forward by the voice and away from the hyenalike laughter. "Uncle Bob?" he asked. There was no answer. The shade could not see the wraith, though the wraith could see the shade as it shook its fist. "Uncle Bob?" the wraith repeated.
The shade turned and knelt by a small group. Hennessey recognized his wife, his children. Others were there too, none of whom he recognized.