The Weapon - Exodus - part 10
By Diana the Valkyrie
A truck flies to Ramanmari


Back in dear old Blighty, I related events to Duncan. Of course, she'd been in
touch with him by phone the whole time, so there wasn't much he didn't already
know. The impulsive kiss and hug of the Potus turned out to be a premeditated
plot thought up by Duncan, and the dramatic door-shattering entrance had been
his idea too. But Wendy had mostly improvised, and deserved most of the
credit. More like all of the credit, really, since you can't really do what
we'd been doing without a front like Wendy. But she insisted that she couldn't
have done it without us, so I guess you have to see it as a team effort.

Over a lamb ragout (with brown rice) that Duncan had made, we discussed the
endgame. Things were going quite well so far, but, as Duncan said, "It ain't
over till the fat lady sings." "I'm not fat," said Wendy. Duncan explained to
her about Wagner, while I made a list of outstanding actions; when you're a
marketroid, committee work is your bread and butter. Duncan reckoned that we
could give ourselves a day off before pressing on with the next stage, and he
looked at Wendy. Which I guess was fair enough, I'd been getting quite heavily
Wendied in the last few days, and he'd been on short rations. So after supper,
while Duncan cleared up, Wendy flew me home, helped me have a hot shower (you
aren't using your shower properly until you've been showered by Wendy) and put
me to bed. And made sure I'd sleep well, by giving me a twenty-minute dose of
Wendy's Patent Tranquiliser And Sleep Inducer. I was out like a light.

Next day, I went out shopping for the list of stuff that we'd prepared, stuff
that we reckoned we'd need in Ramanmari. The main thing we needed was
explosives, and of course it's completely illegal in most countries to buy
anything that makes a big bang. With one important exception. Gasoline.
Wonderful stuff. You can put it in your car and powers you up the motorway, or
you can pour it on a barbecue and burn off your eyebrows and hair when it goes
"WHOOSH", or you can make the most appalling bomb out of it, and it's sadly
obvious how you do it. I had Molotov Cocktails in mind. So, I rented a truck,
bought a bunch of 45 gallon oil drums, and made the owners of a bunch of
motorway service stations very very happy. Heaving the empty drums into the
truck was easy; of course, I couldn't budge the full drums. But I knew a
flying bulldozer who would be able to do that for me.

The other stuff I bought was going to be a lot nastier. A drum of chlorination
powder, a drum of ethyl alcohol and a drum of sulphuric acid. There is
something very nasty that you can make from these ingredients; I was hoping
that it wouldn't be necessary, but you know what they say - Be Prepared, speak
softly and carry a big stick. This was going to be my big stick, since Wendy
didn't seem to be a reliable Weapon.

She rolled up in the late afternoon. "How's Duncan?" I asked. She grinned.
"He's sleeping it off," she replied, "he'll be fine in a few days, he's
suffering from too much sex, there's probably a medical term for it, like
hypershag or something." Unnhh. I wish you wouldn't say things like that,
Wendy. "Well, I'm ready too," I said, and I showed her the fruits of my
labours. "That'll burn well," she remarked, "you want me to lug all this
halfway across the world?" "Well, yes, that is the general idea, Wendy, you're
a heavy transport helicopter, yes?" "Well sure, but why not do it the easy
way?" "Easy way?" She sighed. "Men. OK, I'll do it, the truck and the drums,
right?" I thought; I hadn't actually planned on taking the truck. Besides, it
was rented, and I was pretty sure the truck rental people wouldn't allow it to
be taken out of the country. "Just the drums, love." "And how do you suggest I
carry them?" "Er. Can't you just, like, pick them up?" "Yeah, right. One arm
holding you, one arm holding an oil drum, and then what?" "Oh."

If you saw a two ton truck sailing through the air that day, now you know why.
We couldn't go sub-orbital, because the gasoline would have boiled away in the
vacuum and we would have arrived with a bunch of embarrassingly empty drums.
So the whole trip had to be done at not much above sea level. I drove. I mean,
I sat behind the steering wheel. Where would you suggest I sit? She lifted up
the front end, got underneath and flew the whole contraption up into the sky.
I didn't even have to steer, all I did was make the "vroom vroom" noise. We
went out to the Atlantic, then after we were several miles clear of land, she
took us supersonic. The wing mirrors blew off, then the windshield wipers, but
apart from those few bits, the truck held together. I hoped that no-one,
hearing a sonic boom, would look up. And I hoped that if they did, they'd
assume that our Ford truck was actually some kind of airplane. Maybe. Hah. Who
cares what they assume. Like, you're going to tell someone official "I just
saw a Ford truck fly past" and not get locked up?

It was the worse flight I've ever made, including trips in commercial
airliners. You just try having a conversation with someone the other side of a
truck chassis, while travelling faster than sound, which means her answers
mostly get blown away. It was only when I stopped being stupid and got out my
mobile phone that I was able to talk with her. I yelled out to her, "phone
me", and she did. I powered my phone off the truck battery, and at least I
wasn't all alone up there any more. But still, a twenty two hour flight is
purgatory. No, it's hell. Ugh. Still, at least we didn't have to pay for the
call, she did a direct connect.

She landed us in the middle of nowhere, which is a good place to be when you
don't know where you want to be, and I didn't want people boosting my truck,
because the rental people would have been all over me like white on snow. By
that time, I was in dire straits, having not had a stretch for almost a day.
So I made up for that, and while I was trying to work the kinks out of parts
of me that seemed permanently kinked, she hit me while I wasn't looking. Wham,
she came from behind, and I was toppling over helplessly when she grabbed me
round the waist and we soared up over the treetops, then dived back down again
nearly to ground level. I guess she hadn't much liked being a truck-transporter
either, because in the next few minutes, she made up for the long boring trip
with a short and very exciting trip. I doubt if we were doing much more that
100 knots, but since we were only feet from the ground in a thick forest, she
was taking evasive action all the time, to avoid trees and large bushes, while
following the nap of the ground. Sure, she was showing off, but it was an
exhilarating ride, and I was almost sorry when she ended the performance with
a zoom up to above cloud level. I say almost sorry, because just above the
fluffy clouds, we made love again. This wasn't like the last time, which was
just a friendly quickie aimed at calming me down and sending me off to deep
sleep. This was the real thing.

They call it "making love", because it is an act of love. You do it primarily
for the other half of the team, although it doesn't hurt that the things one
half likes to get are often the things that the other half likes to give. In
Wendy's case, that was even more so, because she got her jollies by tapping in
to what I was feeling. The result of that is a positive feedback loop, and if
you don't know what happens when you create a positive feedback loop, try
putting a microphone near the loudspeaker that it's feeding. Each tremor on
the input is amplified and fed back to the output, which feeds back into the
input, until the clamour grows and grows; the only limit is the capability of
the apparatus to transmit the energy. In this case, I was the conduit; Wendy
was the amplifier. But she didn't allow it to explode immediately out of
control as it does in the mike/speaker situation, she was monitoring my
amplitude levels and only allowing them to build slowly. After a few minutes,
the sensation reached and exceeded my capability for feeling pleasure. I was
able to hear just fine, but most of what I heard was "Wendy, no, please"
which, when translated, means "Wendy, more please". Until the point when it
actually does mean no, of course. Which she continues to interpret as "more".
Wendy once asked me, why do I say "No" when I mean yes? Difficult one. Dunno.

Anyway, she took me past the "yes-meaning-yes" into the "no-meaning-yes" zone,
held me there for a while, maybe a thousand years or so, and then tipped me
over the edge into the incoherent scream zone, and just before I got to the
"No-I-really-mean-it" point she just held me close to her body as I shook and
shuddered and eventually started crying on her. Don't ask me why I cried at a
time like that. That just seems to be one of the effects she has on me
sometimes.

When she woke me up, we were high in a tree, and dawn the rosy fingered was
stealing o'er hill and vale. Breakfast was oatmeal biscuits and cream, and now
that we were both recovered from the horrible flight here, it was time to seek
out Lan Ho and give him the good news.

He wasn't in the village, but I soon ferreted him out, by the simple expedient
of asking someone in the Village. "Lan Ho?" and they pointed out into the
fields. We flew in that direction, and soon spotted him, hoeing a row of
plants. We landed several yards away, and walked towards him. He stopped work
when he saw us coming, and slowly straightened his back. "Lan Ho, greetings"
He bowed "May every blessing be on you and on the Ghost Woman. See, this field
is growing nicely, the harvest will be in a few weeks, and thanks to you, sir,
and to the Ghost Woman, our children are eating fully again. And the bandits
are afraid to come to our land."

Well, that sounded good, but it wasn't a stable situation. Power abhors a
vacuum, and if it wasn't one lot of bandits, it would be another, perhaps even
calling themselves a "government". If left where they were, Lan Ho and his
people would soon be imprisoned back into the same situation. The terrible
strength of economic forces is not obvious, but it is inexorable. The profits
of the opium trade are huge, and at the start of the pipeline, someone has to
grow the stuff, either willingly or by compulsion.

We sat at the edge of the field, watching the wind ruffle the green crops as I
explained to Lan Ho that it was as true now as it had been before the victory
against the bandits, the only long term answer was to poison the land so that
nothing could grow. "And what of us?" he asked, "once the food supplies we
captured from the bandits are all gone, we can only rely on our crops. If the
Ghost Woman poisons the land, then we're in a worse position than before you
came."

"Lan Ho, have you heard of America?"

"Yes, of course. But we cannot ask for many, many years of charity." "You
don't need to. The Ghost Woman and myself were there already, speaking with
the Great White Chief" "Their president?" "Yes, and his cabinet. And we
convinced them that what they want to do, is invite you to live in their
country, and farm the land in Kansas. They will give you each a plot of land,
an opportunity to make a new life in a new land." "But why would they do that?
What must we give them in return?" "Nothing. It is worth the cost of doing
this, to lift the evil of opium-derived drugs from their country, to save the
lives of 20,000 of their children each year. All you have to do, is farm the
land, raise the crops."

He looked at Wendy, not at me. "Ghost Woman," he said, "should we do this
thing? Should we leave the place we know and love, leave the land of our
ancestors, to go to a strange country? Where the customs are different, the
laws are strange and they don't even speak our language. Should the fish leave
the water and walk on the land? Should the buffalo learn to dance?"

Wendy got that slightly glazed look that she put on to let me know she was on
the phone to Duncan. "You don't really have a choice, Lan Ho," she explained,
"the die was cast when we arrived. I certainly didn't intend that the bandit
should die, but that's what happened. And everything after that is just the
flower unfolding from the bud." "But, our land ..." "Quiet, Lan Ho. You asked
me a question, and you WILL listen to the answer." He fell silent. "One death
led to a dozen, a dozen led to a hundred. Each time we throw the dice, the
stakes are greater. Now the bandits are calling themselves an 'emergency
government' and intend to put down a 'terrorist insurrection'. That's you.
They have tanks, and artillery; you have a few captured cars and the
trebuchet. They have airplanes and bombs, you have wind chimes and holes in
the ground. They have a thousand trained military men, you have a crowd of
farmers. They will come here, with their tanks and guns and planes and bombs
and kill you all, and then they will say they've ended the terrorist threat.
Your bones will fertilise these fields, and your children will be sold like
animals. Or else, little Buffalo, let the Ghost Woman teach you to dance."

Lan Ho nodded. "This is the choice that is no choice." Wendy put her hand on
his cheek. "You will not understand the ways of the Americans, most of your
people will never learn their language. Their hearts will break in this
strange country with its strange people. But your children will bend, not
break. And your children's children, they will be as one with their new
country. They will be American. a tu lai'khe. ba le?" He looked up, startled.
"da' aun thin pei: nain mala? You speak our language? Yes, I will come with
you, Ghost Woman, hla phyu ne schwei ama. This old buffalo will learn to
dance."

As we walked back to the village, the first steps along the road that led to
Kansas, I asked Wendy what he'd called her. "Hla phyu ne schwei ama, it means
beautiful white and gold woman. George, how are we going to do this
evacuation?" "I have a plan, Wendy." Well, sort of. I mean, I was planning to
play it by ear, mostly, but I had a sort of outline plan. "Get everyone
together, Lan Ho, you'll have to explain it to them and get them on board."
"On board what, a ship?" "It's an American expression." "But you aren't
American." "No, but it's never too soon to start learning the lingo. Anyhow,
we'll be flying you out." He looked at Wendy. "Ghost Woman?" "Fraid not, Lan
Ho, you'll be going on a boring old jet plane." "Huh."

Lan Ho called a village meeting that evening, and the reaction of the
villagers was what you'd expect. People don't like change, and they couldn't
see a need for it. So Wendy stood up, and spoke for five minutes. And then
there was a long silence, and a few people started crying. "What did you say?"
I asked her. "Same pep talk I gave Lan Ho," she replied, "it's the usual
"consultant" thing, they know him, so they don't listen to what he says, but
when I speak people shut up and listen." "Yeah, well, you're Ghost Woman." She
nudged me. "Take that silly grin off your face, George, these people are
facing the worst thing that ever happened to them."

There was lots of talk, and of course I couldn't follow a word. Wendy mostly
kept silent, except when someone asked her a question, then she stood up, the
usual twelve inches above the ground, and spoke rapidly and forcefully.
"Wendy, when did you learn this language?" I whispered. "I didn't," she
replied, "I'm using a translation program." "Really? Where did you get that?"
"I made it." "Oh."

After a while, I got a bit bored with this; when you can't understand a
discussion, it's a bit tedious. I'd had a very tiring day. "Wendy, I want to
sleep now." "OK, sleep then." "Wendy, the ground is kinda hard." I looked up
at her, she gazed down at me. "Oh, all right then, come here."

. . .