Pulling The Dragon's Tail (22 page)

“I’ve seen incredible transformations of violent
people with the use of CHOFA’s principles.”

Campbell didn’t want to get into an argument
about religion. “I’m sure that’s true, especially in the middle of
warring factions finally coming to their senses. But I don’t think
you’re CHOFA’s Eight Steps is going to matter much to a sociopath
who marches to the beat of his own drummer.”

“Maybe he’s fighting his own war,” insisted
Nate.

“I’m telling you,” Campbell found her voice
rising in impatience, “that for this kind of violence, you have to
meet force with force. We’re trying to get inside the mind of a
serial killer, not to save, but to stop him. Father Abraham can’t
save him, so stop thinking he can.”

Nate was silent, but steaming underneath, again
frustrated at how Campbell the atheist so casually dismissed
everything he stood for.

“I need not remind you that if we …if you had
killed him in the cave, we wouldn’t face this problem,” chastised
Campbell.

“I tried to subdue him with the PPD! You were
the one who missed him!”

“If you weren’t so damn afraid to carry a real
weapon—“

“My non-violent principles stand by themselves,”
he replied, voice rising. “Even if we’d known that he’d killed
Wakely, what could I have done differently?”

“Let’s not let this deteriorate into woulda,
shoulda, coulda,” suggested an irritated Kalpana.

“I agree,” echoed Es. “Discussing our past
actions or inactions serves no purpose. We need to focus on what to
do next. We must anticipate problems and set contingency
plans.”

Kalpana offered the next step. “I’ll do my best
to contact all the others I can.”

“How many’s that?” asked Campbell, still eyeing
Nate with a look of annoyance.

“. I maintain some regular contact with Ivan,
Madeline, Charles, and Kasai.Two are known killed, William and
Wakely. That leaves fourteen, if Herschel hasn’t done anyone else
in.

“That’s all you know?” said a disappointed
Nate.

“Except for you and them I gave up the social
calendar days a long time ago,” Kalpana said. “I’m much too busy
for that now.”

“All right,” said Campbell, “with you three, and
Herschel, and the four that Kalpana’s aware of, and two dead—that
makes ten. Who else?”

Inexplicably, and without a word spoken, Es left
the motel room and headed down the hallway.

“She acting a bit strangely?” asked
Campbell.

“Do ya think?” grunted Nate. “Anyway, I have
personal knowledge of Manning and am in process of tracking down
Keith. But I have no idea where Damien is.”
If they think
Herschel’s dangerous, wait till they meet Damien.
He shuddered
at the thought and immediately prayed that such a meeting would
never happen.
Herschel’s part of a crime syndicate; Damien runs
one.

“So what’s that add up to?” asked Campbell.

“Thirteen. We still have three totally
unaccounted for, Josefina, Roger, and Li Ming,” concluded
Kalpana.

“I would strongly urge us all to not
over-react.” It was Es. Her return had gone undetected.

“Are you okay?” asked a startled Nate. “You’re
creeping me out with your disappearing acts.”

“Yes,” she said with a hint of defensiveness.
“Why can’t I ever relieve myself without you becoming paranoid?”
She stared at him a moment, appearing irritated. “To return to the
matter at hand, we need to be careful who we contact. Right now we
don’t know who can be trusted.”

Nate eyed her carefully. “And that’s my point.
We can’t be sure
who
can be trusted,” he said firmly. He
gazed once more at her constant, machine-like nutations.

Kalpana frowned on the other end of the video
linkup. “Es, what do you mean?” She suddenly felt nervous, and did
a quick mental review of who she had communicated with
recently.

“Browning Watts aka Herschel Hatton may have
co-conspirators, and those co-conspirators could conceivably be
inside the Alpha Group. I urge us all to be extremely careful in
transmission of any and all data to our other colleagues. We could,
unwittingly, be placing them in increased danger.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something,” wailed
Kalpana.

“Over-reaction is unwise,” replied the
unwavering transhuman.

“Sounds paranoid,” asserted Nate. “I think it’s
bad advice. You could unwittingly be putting them in danger by
not
warning them.”

“It’s prudent to be cautious,” answered
Campbell.

“You’re agreeing with Es?” he said with an air
of irritation. “Kalpana, I don’t care what the others think. Find a
way to contact everyone you can. Change your password and take all
the precautions to make your communications secure and coded.”

“Wait!” said Es. “Suppose he also extracted
information from Wakely? Do you know who she regularly kept in
contact with?”

“I recall a couple years ago that she told me it
was Nate, Kasai, me, and William.”

“Let us assume,” said the transhuman, “that
Herschel got those exact names and contact information. If you’re
going to contact anyone, it makes sense to contact Kasai who is the
only one on that list unaware of Herschel.”

Nate glanced at Es, who simply returned his
steely glare with one of her own. “Call everyone you know, Kalpana,
especially Kasai. And stay safe!” Then he clicked off the
communication line.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said
Campbell in an irritated tone.

With a hard-set jaw, he replied, “I’d rather
take some action than no action at all.”

Campbell wrinkled her brow. “We have an uphill
battle. Psychopaths are a manipulative lot.”

Nate let out an enormous sigh, as if he had been
holding his breath for a long time. “How could our group have
produced a serial killer? And it still leaves Herschel’s motives
totally unexplained.”

“So the sooner we get to England, the better,”
suggested Es.

Nate eyed her suspiciously, aware how she kept
changing their travel itinerary. He glanced at the flap next to her
waist. It contained a small weapon. She sighed. “I wish you would
trust me. I am your protector, not a killer.”

“I can’t help but wonder. You have the
capability to do us all in any time you wish.”

“But I do not wish to do—”

“Yeah, apparently not.”

“Nate!” yelled Campbell. “Get over it! People
like Es help protect others; and of all people, I’d think you’d be
grateful since you refuse to protect yourself. You’re concentrating
so much on Es’s idiosyncrasies while I’m much more worried how you
CHOFA believers bend over backwards to justify such an impractical
non-violent approach.”

“I’m sorry you don’t see the logic of pacifism.
But my fear of Es has more to do with transhumans’ reputation with
the Church of Abraham. I know what you’ve told me Es,” turning his
attention back to her, “but your blunted emotions make you hard to
interpret. And just a moment ago, you mysteriously excused yourself
at a very inauspicious time.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Es asked calmly but
firmly.

He half hoped she would be upset at his
criticism, but there was no evidence of that. Her calmness bugged
him even more. “You know, it might be easier to talk to you if you
did get angry sometimes.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t. Emotional experiences
are not part of the transhuman journey. It appears as if are you
trying to change me.”

“But feelings make us human!” Then he realized
the irony. “Yeah, I forgot; you don’t want to be human. Do ya’ even
cry?”

“No.”

“Not even if you lost a close friend?”

“No.”

He sighed and glanced out the window at the
twinkling lights of the old port city of Santarem. In a few hours
they would be in Lisbon where they would head for Poseidon City off
the coast.
All this subterfuge to avoid Herschel and Gideon’s
Army. Oh, well, it’s better than facing him again
, he thought.
He made the sign of CHOFA.
Please, guide me and help me to do
your will, Father Abraham
. Turning back to Es, he said with a
hint of resignation, “No, I want you to stay with us.”

Dugan interrupted. “We can catch a train
starting at 5:30 a.m. for Lisbon. Ferries leave on a fifteen minute
schedule for Poseidon City from Lisbon twenty-four hours a
day.”

For the next few minutes they were alone in
their thoughts.

I have to sort things out with Sister Mariah
at the Retreat Center. Es still gives me the creeps. Father
Abraham, why are you allowing these delays to my mission when Earth
hangs in the balance? I have to see about Option 16Z. I just don’t
want any more trouble
.

“There you are, Hersch!” Pastor Leonard Kruck
smiled and waved from the end of the rows of soybeans inside the
gigantic rectangular warehouse on Hershel Hatton’s farm in central
Kansas. Kruck walked between the rows of meter-high
hydroponically-grown plants, approaching Herschel who was about
thirty meters away.

Herschel Hatton forced a wan smile from the
middle of the sunlit-drenched warehouse.

Pastor Kruck covered the distance with short,
choppy strides, and pumped his parishioner’s hand vigorously. The
pastor noted Herschel’s strong grip. Well-tanned muscles bulged out
of the white T-shirt of agri-businessman Herschel. Kruck was sure
that women beat a path to Herschel’s door.

Pastor Kruck, a soft-spoken man of sixty, wore a
hint of gray around the temples of his sandy crew cut. He was
casually dressed, wearing a white shirt with a collar. His sleeves
were rolled up. There was no tan on this retired fighter pilot, a
veteran of the US Armed Forces and World War III, before the de
facto USA break-up. His solid abs had not changed from his youth. A
chiseled nose and steely blue eyes communicated to all that he was
a man of authority.

Kruck took a look around at the farming
operation. “Can’t believe what you’ve done to this place in only a
few short years. That’s no mean feat in this darn hothouse of a
world.”

Herschel smiled. “Thanks. Lots of hard work.
After decades of drought, hi-tech hydroponics is the only viable
farming method left in Kansas. It’s revived the Plains region, from
central Kansas here to all the way west to the foothills of the
Rockies. They even use hydroponic farming in that weird intentional
community called Four, where they don’t use modern technology. Good
workers and advanced technology help me compete with the large
outfits in Asia. I do a lot of seedlings for trees and shrubs
before shipping them out too. Warehouses Three and Four are totally
devoted to tomatoes. I’m now the second largest tomato producer in
Kansas. And I’m finally turning a profit too. Plus, I never have to
worry about the weather!”

“I thought hydroponics was all about plants
grown without soil?” asked Kruck, observing the light gray sandy
soil in which the soybeans were growing.

“No. There are two types of mediums. One’s a
solution-based culture; the roots of the plant have nothing solid
in which they grow. But the method I use has a solid medium. The
light gray soil you see is called perlite. Comes from volcanic
eruptions. All it does is hold the roots, while all the nutrients
are dripped through a water solution from all those pipes suspended
above the plants.” Herschel paused. “Can you excuse me for just a
minute?” He spoke into a tiny wristband walkie-talkie while he
walked a short distance down the row. “Hey, Mike! Sensors indicate
in Spoke Five, the number Three Warehouse, row 28, segment 87 has
some water leakage. Can you check it out? Appreciate it.”

Herschel shut off the walkie-talkie and tried to
collect his thoughts. Summoning up the courage to face his pastor,
he turned around. He knew exactly why Pastor Kruck was paying him a
visit.

Kruck sensed a bit of unease from the farmer and
said, “Now I don’t want to take much of your time. I know you’re a
busy guy.”

“Yup, been traveling a lot.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Oh …a business trip. Just got back last night
from India.”

“Was it productive?”

Herschel momentarily pondered his response. “Yes
and no. You could say Cyclone Frederick kind of rained on my
parade. But believe me, we don’t want rain like that here in
Kansas.”

Herschel escorted Kruck outside of the
hundred-meter long warehouse at the outside of the hub. Five more
sets of warehouses, each set containing eight warehouses, dotted
the Plains farming operation. Like the spokes of a wheel, each set
converged into a central hub building. “Let’s go into my shed,”
said Herschel as he motioned Kruck to follow him between two
warehouses, finally arriving at the hub: a circular,
air-conditioned central communications center. Windows encircled
it, giving a full view of this particular spoke. Several computer
terminals sat nearby. Books were scattered on a forlorn looking
table. A small refrigerator sat to the right of the door.

The pastor noticed an open Bible on a chair in
front of a computer terminal. Herschel grabbed it, shielding the
pastor from seeing the page. “Apologize for the mess.”

“Is that your Bible?”

“Just doing daily meditations. That’s all.”

“Glad to see you’re staying in touch with God’s
Word, Hersch. To be honest, I’ve been a bit concerned about your
sporadic attendance. So how are you?”

All who knew Pastor Kruck were well acquainted
with his preaching the Word of God every Sunday at The Tabernacle
of Christ Gospel Church. Herschel, along with hundreds of others,
had joined his church, in part to hear the fiery sermons, but also
to bring a sense of community and family to a world growing more
alien to traditional Christianity.

Checking on church members had become a
necessity for Kruck. The fact was that many were leaving Christian
churches. To Kruck these were weak-minded people who gave in to the
ways of the world, finding credence in recent scientific findings
that supposedly demolished the cherished teachings of the early
Christian church. Satan was blinding people, he was sure of it.
Talk of the End-Date fueled speculation of end-times and
Armageddon. All religions seemed to benefit from a possible
apocalypse. However, what was new for modern Christianity was the
competition from other religions. The Church of Abraham was the
latest offender. His lips curled slightly, showing his own contempt
for CHOFA.