“Yeah, well, now he’s here.”
Zack found Scott; the man was standing off to one side next to what had to be a Russian woman. (Where had she come from?) But he wasn’t agitating…he stood with arms crossed, a smirk on his face.
“Harls, we’ve got to get a handle on this.”
Gabriel Jones was doing his best, trying to shout above the crowd, “People! People, calm down! This isn’t doing anyone any good—”
That seemed to work. The volume dropped noticeably. The shoving stopped.
Just then, however, Zack heard a voice not from the crowd in front of him, but from his left.
“Zack Stewart should not be leading you!”
That voice was American.
“Oh, Christ, it’s Bynum,” Weldon said.
Zack had no idea who “Bynum” was, which Harley knew. “He’s the prick the White House sent to spy on us,” Harley said.
Before anyone could stop him, this tall, thin, balding, agitated fellow in white shirt and dark slacks—the only American who dressed like the Bangalores—had reached where Zack stood with Gabriel Jones.
“Dr. Jones, may I say something?”
Before Jones could say no, Bynum turned to the crowd. “Almost none of you know who I am, so let me introduce myself. I’m Brent Bynum, and I’m the deputy national security adviser. At the time of the, uh, incident, I was at the Johnson Space Center.”
The crowd responded with feeble murmuring—clearly they were all hungry, worn down—but Bynum acted as if the lukewarm response were equal to the roar of the party faithful at a political convention. “Those of you who can, please translate this for our friends from India.
“You’ve heard talk about leadership here, and responsibility. It’s all well and good, but everyone is overlooking one major point: I am the only government official here.”
He paused, spreading his hands. “Unless there’s someone out there, someone from the government of India, perhaps? No?”
Weldon turned to Harley. “What does he think he’s doing?”
“Next thing you know, he’ll break into a chorus from Evita.”
“Come on, Brent,” Gabriel Jones was saying. “We can talk about the rights of man once we’ve had some food and water. And you should know, Zack was not responsible—”
“I was in mission control, Dr. Jones. I saw how badly First Contact went. And Stewart was the commander. If he’s not responsible, who is?”
Zack couldn’t take it anymore. He got in Bynum’s face. “You’re right. I was the commander. I am responsible for what happened, good and bad. What do you propose to do with me? Confine me? Execute me?”
Bynum seemed surprised by Zack’s willingness to confront him. Typical horse-holder, Zack thought. He has no idea what it’s like to make decisions that you can’t take back.
“No one’s suggesting that,” Bynum said, his voice suddenly pleasant and conciliatory. “My point, however, is that the fact that you were commander of Destiny and Venture doesn’t necessarily make you the leader now.” He gestured at Jones and Weldon. “Which is what people seemed to be saying.”
“Don’t worry,” Zack said. “I’m the original ‘if elected, I will not serve’ type.”
“You’re still not getting it,” Bynum said. He turned to the others. “None of you are getting it.”
He pointed at Zack again. “You aren’t the leader because we aren’t going to have leaders anymore.”
He dropped his arm and turned to the crowd. He scanned it for a moment, then fixated on a young black man standing near the front with a backpack in his arms. “You there,” he said. “Is that yours?”
“What?” the kid said.
“That backpack and what’s inside it. Does it belong to you?”
Allowing for the time it took non-English speakers to absorb that statement, the crowd quickly fell silent. “I found it,” the young man said. “And you know where, too.”
“That’s my point. I do know; I know that you have no more right to that backpack than anyone else here. You just picked it up.” He smiled. “Maybe you should just give it to your neighbor. It’s just as much his as it is yours.”
“Maybe you should kiss my ass.”
The crowd was growing agitated again. Zack wanted to take Rachel and slip out the back door, leaving this all behind.
Too bad there was no back door.
Bynum stepped forward. “Listen, it’s very likely we are here for the rest of our lives. Which means we will have to find ways to work together. Our society can and should be a clean sheet of paper! We can’t survive doing things the bad old way. We can’t afford ‘personal property’! There is no ‘mine’—everything here belongs to everyone. Share and share alike!”
Zack looked at Harley, who smirked and said, “That boy sounds like a dang Communist to me.”
Weldon shrugged. “No surprise there, given where he worked….”
The young man was charging toward Bynum. “Then why don’t you give back the gun?” Zack realized that he was American; surely his accent suggested Louisiana. Before he reached the White House man, the younger one turned and said to the crowd, “He didn’t tell you that, did he? How many of you have guns?”
There was a long moment. Bynum smiled and slowly reached behind him…drawing a shiny Colt pistol from his waistband.
“He’s right. I have a gun. I found it, just like Xavier here found his backpack filled with goodies. Does that give me authority? Does this gun make me more right? On Earth it did. Is that how we’re going to live here? Is that how we’re going to present ourselves to the beings that made this place, that brought us here? How is that working for us so far?”
Bynum was talking about nonviolence, but to Zack he looked crazy, on the edge of something terrible. If nothing else, he looked like a man who really wasn’t familiar with weapons, the way he kept waving the Colt around.
Zack stepped back, wanting to put himself between Bynum and Rachel. As he moved, his peripheral vision picked up a man moving parallel, but the opposite direction…toward the front of the crowd. Zack took a closer look, saw that the man was Asian, short, chubby—
“Daddy!” Rachel said.
Zack turned at her voice and saw the muzzle of Bynum’s pistol aimed directly at him.
Before he could react, behind him there was a pop, then a second.
Brent Bynum was standing with his arms stretched out, like Christ on the cross. He sank to his knees.
The Asian man moved out from behind Zack. He had shot Bynum.
Suddenly many people were yelling, and three or four started pointing and fighting.
“Get him!” Weldon was shouting.
Within seconds the Asian man had been gang-wrestled. Dale Scott took the gun away from him.
But it was too late for Brent Bynum. He bled out and was dead within ten minutes.
ARRIVAL DAY: ZHAO
Zhao had not wanted to shoot the American. In fact, he had not wanted to hold a gun in his hand; he had spent far too much time on shooting ranges performing urban assaults and mock assassinations to feel relaxed when armed.
And, in spite of his colorful background and training, he had never killed a man. Never shot at one. Had he been given time to reflect, he would surely have wondered if his training had made the shooting too automatic, too easy. Fortunately, there had been no time to think back—
When he picked up a weapon, he intended to use it.
And he had picked up this weapon, a 9-mm Glock 39, from the debris floating inside the Bangalore Object. He recognized it as the type worn by the Black Cats, the Indian National Security Guards at Bangalore Control.
He had not seen a Black Cat, though he had come across the bruised, blood-clotted lower half of a human body clad in the same gray trousers worn by members of that organization.