But would there be enough time for the contents of the capsules to escape into the water main? Heat, after all, was the one thing that could kill them. But still, the water would protect them for minutes or longer. The contents would have escaped by then.
“Sir?”
“What?” he snapped. He had forgotten the driver. The man had asked him some sort of question.
“Forget something, sir? Need me to turn around?”
“Get me to the airport. I’m in a hurry. There’s an extra ten pounds in it for you.”
“Yes, sir.” The cabdriver hit the gas. These days, he was getting maybe one or two fares a day. This strange British gentleman might be rude, but he was a godsend for the cabdriver. He could afford groceries.
The cabdriver didn’t realize that he would be dead before he reached his neighborhood market. The man who ran his favorite shop would be dead, too. Everybody in his poor but friendly little neighborhood would be dead. Most of the people he knew would be dead.
The man in the back seat was their killer.
“I’m doing my best to get you there quickly, sir,” the cabdriver said. He could sure use the extra ten pounds.
“Five more pounds if you shut up.”
The driver happily shut up. He was an easygoing kind of guy, and he could tolerate a rude Englishman in silence—for free, let alone for fifteen pounds. He didn’t know he would never get a chance to spend the fifteen pounds.
The cabdriver was hungry and thirsty. He’d celebrate his good fortune with lunch at the new Burger Triumph outlet, which was still in operation despite the recent coup d’etat. He’d get their new Triple Triumph Megarific Meal. It came with an order of Trium-Phries and a large soda.
The bloke in the back seat was watching his telephone.
Not much for gadgets, Wylings had bought the telephone for the great undertaking. There would be times when he needed to be in touch, no matter where in the world he was. Right now he was in the armpit of Africa and needed to see a legitimate news station. He got one, relayed to his phone via satellite from Gibraltar.
Breaking news on the BBC announced that parliament had taken an important vote. The prime minister had been on the scene and had scheduled a press conference within the next half hour, but unofficially the results were well-known. Great Britain had finally “come to its senses,” as one of the fast-walking parliamentarians said. There would be a parliamentary condemnation of the recolonization movement and an official declaration that the Proclamation of the Continuation of the British Empire was not legal and never had been legal.
Even before the prime minister was allowed to make the announcement to the world, dissent was in the works.
There was his good man Sykes, Dolan at his side, orating for the news and taking just the right tone. “Of course a statement must be made to the world regarding the proclamation and retaking of British colonies,” Sykes started out with—nicely worded so as to not actually commit to any instance against the proclamation or the colonizers. “But parliament has done everything wrong this time. Firstly, parliament has no authority to discard British law in such a sweeping fashion. It is especially ludicrous to believe that the lawmakers can go on record saying one of the laws of the land was never a law. That’s patently absurd.”
Well spoken, Sykes, Wylings thought.
“What’s worse, parliament has delivered a stunning insult to the royal family. Parliament on this day has essentially given the aggressors of the world carte blanche to strike out at her duly appointed knights.”
Interestingly aggressive stance, Wylings thought. Wildly overstated but most dramatic. Good work, Sykes! The man was a slower thinker, but a much more dynamic personality than Dolan.
But it was Dolan who delivered the truly delightful surprise. He stepped up beside Sykes and spoke in his ponderous, serious voice, which often lulled listeners to sleep—but on this occasion it had just the correct tone of morbidity. “For this reason, we have just this day formed a coalition of those within parliament and others within the British government who would like to go on record, and at this moment, to state that we do not wish to condone wholesale arrest and murder of British knights, as have our colleagues in parliament. We stand by the Crown. This debasement of the royal family was perpetrated in spite of our efforts and certainly not with our blessing.”
Wylings almost laughed out loud at the extravagant claims coming out of Dolan’s mouth, but delivered like a dirge. This speech would have impact. The cameras pulled back to show members of parliament crowding in behind Dolan and Sykes as the cameras pulled back—politicians rushing to be seen as supporters, hot offenders of the Crown.
Wylings did laugh out loud at that moment.
The driver wanted to ask him what was so funny, but didn’t say anything. He was in a pretty good mood himself, thinking about his fifteen extra pounds, and he didn’t want to spoil it.
He dropped off the Englishman and was thrilled to get a fifty-pound note as payment in full. He wanted to thank the man, but the Brit was gone already, rushing down the sidewalk to the terminal for private aircraft. Maybe his fare had meant to give him a twenty instead of a fifty. Probably the man was too rich and too hurried to care. The cabdriver sang himself an old pop tune, but he changed the words around. “Hello, Yellow Gold Road.”
He pulled into the shiny new Burger Triumph and didn’t have to wait in line. He ordered a Triple Triumph Megarific Meal.
“You would like to Terrifi-Size that?” asked the cute young cashier.
“What? What are you saying?”
“They make us say it like that,” she explained, leaning over the register to speak confidentially. “It’s their silly way of saying you wanna get an even bigger order of Trium-Phries and an even bigger cup of soft drink.”
“Oh.” The cabdriver was feeling self-indulgent. He was also very thirsty and the soda looked unbelievably good. He could count on one hand the number of times he had tasted a drink with ice in it. “Yes, please, missy, I’ll take the terrifi-super-duper-giant whatever it is.”
She giggled. “Okay, big spender.”
“I’d even be willing to buy a terrifi-size for the terrific girly at the counter if she had a lunch break.”
Oh, did she start giggling then. “Maybe later. I get off in a couple of hours.”
He looked at the name badge on her shirt collar. “Couple of hours, then, Ms. Trainee.”
Oh, you should have heard her giggle. “Actually, it’s Maluuna,” she said as she gave him his heavy bag of food and the obscenely huge soft drink.
He sat in his car feeling on top of the world and sipped the ice-cold drink, thinking he had never tasted anything better.
The tiny metallic bits that had come from the city water and mixed with the soda syrup were too small for him to feel in his mouth. They were too few in number to register on his taste buds. He was one of the first victims to ingest them, and they had yet to procreate in sufficient numbers.
In the Ayounde City water supply, the microscopic devices were fulfilling their reproductive function by pooling in the water conduits where the sediment settled in unused conduit junctions. They gathered metallic particles and worked them, speck by speck, into little copies of themselves. The copies created copies. By evening, a hundred thousand little robots had become a billion.
They were swept away by the millions, traveling up the plumbing and into the homes and restaurants of Ayounde City. They were consumed by the people. Once they sensed the first damaging attacks of stomach acids, they were triggered into performing their second function.