Hidden Empire Read online

  Since Dr. Bekaba had translated only what Chinma had told her, nobody knew why he was suddenly crying.

  "Poor kid," said Dr. Wangerin. "He's lost his whole family." But Chinma's family had already abandoned him to die when he got sick. He had no more tears for them.

  "He's lost his country," said Dr. Bekaba, though she was the one who would feel that loss, not Chinma. He had no country now.

  "He's crying because he knows he's safe now," said the light-haired gunman.

  "He's not safe," said Dr. Wangerin, "until he's out of Nigerian airspace. See to it that it happens, Captain Austin."

  "Yes, sir," said the light-haired gunman. "And I can promise you, President Torrent will know this boy's whole story within three hours."

  "Oh, you have the President's private number?" asked Dr. Wangerin, amused.

  "No," said Austin. "But I know someone who does." Then he turned to Chinma. "It's going to take a few minutes to get this set up. No offense, kid, but you stink. I'm going to strip you and hose you down and give you clean clothes. All right?"

  Chinma stopped crying and nodded. "Thank you very much, sir," he said.

  "The kid's polite," said Austin. "Maybe I'll get him in to meet the President."

  "First get him and his notes to somebody who can speak Ayere, and get that SD chip to the proper authorities."

  "Bullshit," said Austin. "I'll get these pictures and the photocopies of the kid's notes up on YouTube and Facebook and everywhere else I can post them. Then the authorities can have them."

  Dr. Wangerin nodded. "You're right. We don't want this to get buried."

  "Our government may not be run by thugs," said Austin, "but all governments think that the people shouldn't be told anything. So we'll tell the people first. The genocide of an entire tribe is not going to be kept secret in order to preserve our good relations with Nigeria."

  Dr. Wangerin frowned. "That means they might shut us down here."

  "And how much more were you going to accomplish?" asked Austin. "The nictovirus is out of the bag. There's no boundary in Africa that's going to keep it in now."

  Dr. Wangerin looked at Austin with new interest. "You've had that opinion for a long time, but you haven't said a thing till now."

  "Not my mission," said Austin.

  Dr. Wangerin stood up. "Well, you're right. Hose down the boy. Keep Dr. Bekaba in custody and do not trust her to be alone with the boy or even close to him. Maybe she hates the government as much as she says, but maybe she'd also do whatever it took to bring down the plane with him on it—and you and those notes and that chip. And me. Because I'm going with you."

  "You are?" asked Austin.

  "Once this goes public," said Dr. Wangerin, "my work here will be finished. So I'm leaving now instead of waiting for the embassy to work out a deal to get me out."

  All Chinma understood was that he was going to America and he was getting a bath.

  "Food?" he asked. "Water?"

  "You got your priorities straight, kid," said Austin. "Water, food, a bath, clean clothes, and then an airplane."

  "My name is Chinma."

  "Chinma," Austin repeated.

  "I am the last Ayere," said Chinma proudly. Because Ayeres were always proud to be Ayere.

  THE REAL WORLD

  In a world with real menaces, it always struck me as a kind ot wishful thinking, this notion that global warming was our most urgent danger, one so dire that it was worth the risk of wrecking the world economy in order to take steps that everyone admitted would be futile—even if human activities were causing global warming, a fact nowhere in evidence.

  Throughout the entire time that the global warming alarmists were savagely attacking anyone who dared to raise a voice of reason, this fact remained clear to anyone who cared to notice: The world was markedly warmer in 1000 A.D. than it is today, without anything like present human carbon emissions. The sea level was higher, and the human race coped with it. The weather was more clement, we had fewer terrible storms, our harvests were bigger than normal, we suffered fewer losses from disease, and yet somehow the human race managed to muddle through the crisis.

  Our global warming bubble thrived on ignorance—of science and of history. Then we were faced with a real danger: the nictovirus, the "sneezing flu." Isn't it astonishing how quickly any mention of global warming simply disappeared? It was hard to get very exercised about warm weather when a rampant new disease was killing between thirty and fifty percent of those who caught it.

  Yet there are those who heard the news of this devastating epidemic with, I'm sad to say, feelings of relief. If this became a pandemic, it would accomplish what they had long desired: the decimation or, if I may coin a word, the dimidiation of the human race. Fifty percent kill-off? Just what they were hoping for, to get the world population closer to sustainable levels.

  They'll deny it, of course. They'll pretend to be shocked that the President of the United States would say something so terrible. But I have read what they wrote over the past ten, twenty, thirty years, and I have done something unforgivable: I remembered it.

  Sane people will do all they can to preserve every human life that can be preserved. Only the utterly uncompassionate will take satisfaction in the thought that the nictovirus will "reduce the surplus population."

  Yet even now, these very voices pretend to be compassionate. They claim there is something unfair or even racist about forcing Africa to suffer this epidemic alone, and demand that the quarantine of Africa be lifted. What is their purpose? To allow the nictovirus to spread outside the confines of Africa and kill off a third to a half of the human race.

  Here is the truth about these people: They want us dead. They have always wanted us dead—along with five and a half billion of our fellow human beings. But you and I and every other decent, compassionate person on this planet take the opposite view: We are determined to save every life we can by preventing the spread of this disease until we have developed a vaccine or an effective treatment.

  "Too intellectual," said Cecily.

  Mark, Nick, Lettie, and Annie were all in the living room with her, watching the President's speech on Fox News. Mark insisted on Fox because that was the news channel Dad always watched when there was any kind of important story.

  "I understood him," said Mark.

  "You're an intellectual," said Cecily. "I rest my case."

  "I understood him," said Nick. "And I'm a videogame addict."

  "It's about time we had a politician with a brain who thinks we have brains too," said Mark.

  "Well excuse me for not having a brain," said Lettie, "but what does global warming have to do with the sneezing flu?"

  "Didn't you know that global warming causes everything?" said Mark.

  "Don't be sarcastic," said Cecily. "Lettie is like most of America—she has no idea what the President was saying."

  "Maybe it was his strategy," said Mark. "Sound really smart so that the people believe you, imply that the global warming people are trying to spread the plague, and voila: You've just demonized all your opposition."

  Cecily recognized the echo of her own skepticism in her oldest son, and nodded glumly. "I hate it when Torrent plays raw politics like that."

  "Is he right?" asked Nick. "Are there people who really want to cut the human race in half?"

  "There is a segment of the environmental movement that believes the human race should never rise above a population of about half a billion," said Cecily. "They don't advocate doing it by means of an epidemic, but presumably they will think that cutting the human race in half is, to put it crudely, a step in the right direction."

  "So he's right," said Nick.

  "He's right-zsV said Cecily.***96?

  "Hey, you're the one who advises him," said Mark.

  "I didn't advise him to demonize the environmental movement."

  "Bet it works, though," said Nick. "I mean, they have to deny what he said, right? So they have to come out in favor of the quarant
ine, right?"

  The phone rang. Cecily ignored it.

  "Um, Mom," said Lettie.

  "Um, Lettie," said Cecily, "there's nobody I want to talk to. If you're so worried, answer it yourself. But I'm not talking to anybody. Tell them I'm dead."

  Lettie got up and walked into the kitchen, where the cordless phone hung on the wall. "Hello?"

  "She's going to say you're dead," said Nick.

  "Maybe it's not for me," said Cecily. "Did you think of that?"

  Lettie walked into the room, talking into the phone. "I'm sorry, she's dead."

  Cecily pantomimed screaming as Mark and Nick and Annie all laughed. "Give me the phone," she said.

  "Oops," said Lettie into the phone. "She has risen from her earthen grave and is reaching for the phone with mud and roots and a tattered apron hanging from her half-rotted arms. Do you wish to speak with Zombie Mom?"

  "Give me that," said Cecily, getting steadily less amused as the other kids laughed even harder.

  "Here she is," said Lettie, then handed it to Cecily, who snatched it with a half-serious glare at her oldest daughter. "Ow. The eyes of Satan," she said. "I've been zapped."

  Cecily left the living room and leaned back against the kitchen counter. The edge of it cut into her butt. Which was fine with her—she was in the mood to feel a little pain. And to inflict some.

  Of course it was Nate Ogzewalla on the phone, as she had known it would be. "Did you watch the speech?" he asked.

  "Yes. It was really effective. We're getting up a mob in our neighborhood right now to tear all global warming believers from their homes and burn them at the stake."

  "Oh, I see what your daughter meant about Zombie Mom."

  "That speech was beneath him. Or if it wasn't, it should have been. The nictovirus is the villain, not environmentalists."

  "Identifying and neutralizing the opposition is sound political strategy," said Nate. "Now all the controversy will be about whether the President should have been nicer or whether the environmentalists deserve—"

  "I understand the theory, Nate," said Cecily. "I just don't agree that it justifies slandering a legitimate political movement."

  "Meaning that you're a global warming alarmist?" asked Nate. "Your ox is being gored, is that it?"

  "I'm an environmentalist. I knew the facts about global warming but I always thought it was a convenient way to get the world to take actions that are necessary whether humans are causing global warming or not."

  "So I should put you down as pro-plague, then?" asked Nate.

  "Am I on the radio, Mr. Limbaugh?" asked Cecily.

  "Relax, I'm just teasing you," said Nate. "The President knew you'd hate this and he wanted me to call you just to reassure you that he is going to 'clarify' his statement later today to calm people down."

  "He shouldn't have—"

  "Shouldn't have riled them up in the first place, I hear you, Mrs. Malich. But he had to make a decision. He's got to rally support behind a ruthless policy of quarantine. He had to make it seem like somebody else was ruthlesser so that people would see the quarantine as an act of protection."

  "'Ruthlesser' is a very ugly word," said Cecily.

  "The official purpose of this call, Mrs. Malich, is to ask you one question."

  "Ask it and then get off the phone," said Cecily.

  "This is from the President himself, you understand."

  "I understand. What's the question?"

  "The question is: 'Are you still speaking to me?'"

  Cecily sighed. "Tell him that he'll find out the answer to that when he speaks to me himself, instead of hiding behind his chief of staff."

  "I'll tell him that it's a yes," said Nate.

  "Of course I'm still speaking to him. I'm not thirteen, I don't give people the silent treatment. The question is whether there's any point in speaking to him, considering how often he decides against me."

  "That's not fair, Mrs. Malich. He goes along with your views more than any other adviser he has."

  "Ten percent of the time?"

  "More like fifty, and nobody else is close. And he's going to need your advice more and more in the days to come, so please overlook this little act of evil on his part, and stay on the team? Please?"

  "Yes," said Cecily, and then hung up.

  "Wow," said Mark. "You really are angry about this."

  Cecily looked toward the doorway to the living room and saw all four of the older children there, watching her. "None of you has the right security clearance to be listening to a conversation between the White House chief of staff and the 'President's most-trusted adviser.'"

  "This quarantine," said Mark. "If refugees get on boats, like the boat people after the Vietnam War or the Cubans who fled to Florida, is he really going to have the Navy blow them up?"

  "Yes," said Cecily. "But they'll give warnings and humanitarian aid first, and if they turn back toward Africa our ships will escort them safely home."

  "It doesn't sound very Christian," said Mark. Then he went upstairs.

  Nick shrugged. "I guess Mark doesn't get it. This is the real world, not Mass." Then Nick headed upstairs.

  Lettie and Annie stayed in the doorway, looking at her. "I know what Jesus would do," said Annie.

  "No you don't," said Lettie.

  "Absolutely I do too," said Annie. "He always healed the sick."

  "Because he could," said Lettie. "He could do miracles."

  "Our scientists are working as fast as they can on a vaccine and a cure," said Cecily.

  "And meanwhile we're telling Africans to take a couple of Advils and call us in the morning?" said Lettie, in her snottiest voice.

  Cecily sat down at the kitchen table. "It must be terrible over there. In Africa."

  "It's always terrible," said Lettie. "Malaria. Sleeping sickness. And they don't even have clothes."

  "They have clothes, Lettie," said Cecily.

  "I've seen the pictures. They run around naked and their jugs hang down to here."

  "Most Africans wear clothing like ours, only cooler," said Cecily. "Don't confuse Annie."

  "I'm not confused," said Annie. "Remember, Lettie's been my big sister my whole life."

  "While I had a couple of blissful years without Annie," said Lettie.

  "Go away, children," said Cecily. "Mommy's thinking."

  "Does that mean dinner's going to be late?" asked Lettie.

  "Yes," said Cecily. "Either late or pizza."

  "I vote Donato's," said Annie.

  "Papa John's," said Lettie.

  "Go away or I'll whip up a batch of oatmeal Jell-O."

  "They don't have that flavor," said Lettie.

  "I'll use orange Jell-O and put raw oats in it. Lots of fiber and horse hooves," said Cecily. "And since you refuse to go away, I'm going upstairs to my room so I can lock the door and get some thinking done."

  They followed her up the stairs naming even-more-disgusting Jell-O flavors; Cecily didn't have the heart to tell them that some of them were real, at least according to stories about church suppers from her Protestant friends. Like carrots in orange Jell-O. And mini-marshmallows in lime. But Lettie topped them all with her suggestion of "athlete's foot in licorice Jell-O." Cecily was laughing in spite of herself as she closed the door and locked it.

  She wasn't thinking about the President's speech anymore. She was thinking about what Nick had said. "This is the real world, not Mass."

  Somehow Nick had gotten the idea that being Christian was something you did at Mass, and the rest of the time you lived in the "real world." That was not what she and Reuben believed, not what they wanted their kids to learn.

  And yet the President's quarantine policy was not very Christian. Or was it? Jesus healed lepers, but he didn't say that whealed lepers should be allowed to roam freely through society. He ate with the publicans, but not with the lepers. He healed the sick, he didn't let them run around infecting people.

  Still, though, she felt there was something de
eply wrong with blowing up boats full of people desperate to escape from a plague-ridden land. And it would certainly come to that. Maybe the President would find a way to keep footage of it from ending up on YouTube, but it would certainly happen. Or some refugees would rig their boat with explosives, and if the U.S. Navy refused to let them pass, they'd blow themselves up—as close to the American ship as they could. And they'd make sure there was another boat nearby, shooting video so everybody could see.

  A public relations nightmare, but if she were African, especially if she were in a country where the nictovirus hadn't come yet—which was most of Africa so far—she'd be plotting provocative acts to get America to change policy.

  Or would she? Quarantine was sound practice in a deadly epidemic, and Africa had a long tradition of it. She remembered reading about it when ebola first surfaced and somebody wrote about it in The New Yorker. African villagers would seal up your house and leave food at the door. When you got so sick you couldn't get up to take the food anymore, they'd figure you were dead and burn the house down. It's how a village survived in an epidemic. How was President Torrent's policy any more ruthless? Was it just a matter of scale?

  I have to think about this, she told herself. I haven't found the right answer yet. There has to be a middle way.

  GEni. cileimm

  The right of a government to rule over the citizens of a nation is not absolute. It's like the right of parents over their children. As long as the parents take reasonable care of their children, they rule supreme in their home. But when they neglect them or beat them or misuse them to a degree that outrages the sensibilities of their neighbors, the children are taken away and given to someone who will protect and provide for them.

  The standards for governments are much lower. They may arouse the disgust of their neighbors, but some truly vile governments have been able to abuse their citizens for many years without interference from outside. Nevertheless, there is a time when a government can go too far. When a government wages open war and conducts genocide against a portion of their populace, then any nation that has the power to intervene to protect the people from their government has a moral responsibility and a legal right to do so.