The Long War

The cop wore a dark visor, carried a massive gun in a holster at his hip, and, as he sauntered over, he had an all-round air of menacing dominance. ‘Mr. Nelson A-zi-ki-we?’ He took a lot of care with the name. ‘I’ve been expecting you. Show some ID, please.’

Nelson drew breath. ‘No, sir! Show me your ID . . . Here we are, two strangers on an empty road, both uncertain of the other’s identity – and allegiance. A quintessentially Chestertonian moment, don’t you think?’

The cop’s eyes were invisible behind the visor. But he grinned and said, ‘In the breaking of bridges—’

More Chesterton. Automatically, the words coming straight up from the obsessive reading of his adolescence, Nelson said, ‘Is the end of the world.’

‘Good enough, friend. No further credentials necessary. Unfortunately a genuine patrol officer is on the horizon, so excuse me for running. You’ll find coordinates in your sat-nav.’

Thirty seconds later his motorbike was lost on the horizon.

Of course the kosher cop, when he arrived, was inquisitive. Nelson went into innocent-and-mildly-disorientated-tourist mode, and managed to stall him until three Winnebagos, all with California plates, zoomed past doing somewhere over eighty, low-hanging fruit that couldn’t be ignored by any Wyoming cop.

Nelson drove on.

It was the middle of the following day when he drove the Winnebago into the forecourt of an electronics factory, and faced locked, unmanned gates, marked with the logo of the transEarth Institute. A small speaker on a pole by his driver-side door demanded, ‘Identify yourself, please.’

Nelson thought it over. He leaned out and said, ‘I am Thursday.’

‘Of course you are. Come right inside.’

The gate swung open silently. Nelson took a moment to run an online search on that name: transEarth. Then he drove through the gate.

47

HE FOUND A door, which revealed a short corridor, which led to an elevator.

‘Please walk forward,’ said the voice – Lobsang’s voice? ‘Take the lift; it will operate automatically.’

Of course it could be some kind of trap. But had the voice purposefully called the elevator a ‘lift’, British style, to put him at his ease? If so, cute, but strange.

He walked ahead willingly. The elevator sealed up around him and descended.

Even now that disembodied voice spoke to him. ‘This facility used to belong to the US government. Since being bought by trans-Earth, somehow it’s slipped off the map. Governments can be so clumsy . . .’

The elevator door opened to reveal a kind of study, perhaps a rather English design, complete with fireplace and dancing flames – obviously artificial, but crackling fairly realistically. He might almost have been back in one of the grander of his parishioners’ houses in St. John on the Water.

A chair shifted, set beside a low table. A man of indeterminate age stood to meet him, wearing a monk’s orange robe, head shaven, smiling – and holding a pipe. Somehow, like the fire, he had an air of artificiality.

‘Welcome, Nelson Azikiwe!’

Nelson stepped forward. ‘You are Lobsang?’

‘Guilty as charged.’ The man waved the pipe vaguely towards another chair. ‘Please sit.’

They sat, Nelson taking an upright chair opposite Lobsang.

‘First things first,’ Lobsang said. ‘We are safe and discreet in this place, which is one of several such support facilities I own across the world – indeed, the worlds. Nelson, you are free to walk out of here any time you wish, but I would prefer it if you never spoke about this meeting – well, I believe a fellow Chestertonian will be discreet. Grant me the liberty of confirming your favourite novel – The Napoleon of Notting Hill, was it not?’

‘The source of the railings quote.’

‘Exactly. Personally my pick is The Man Who Was Thursday, still an excellent read and the precursor of many spy romances over the years. A curious man, Chesterton. Embraced Catholicism like a security blanket, don’t you think?’

‘I found him as a kid, when I was digging around in a Joburg library. A stash of ancient books, a relic of the days of the British presence. Probably not been read since apartheid . . .’ Nelson ran out of steam. He supposed the idea of a bongani like him sitting in a dusty library absorbing the adventures of Father Brown had been surreal enough, but this situation took the biscuit, as his parishioners might have said. What to ask? Where to begin? He essayed, ‘Are you part of the Lobsang Project?’

‘My dear sir, I am the whole of the project.’

Nelson reflected on various searches he’d run. ‘You know, I recall gossip about a supercomputer that endeavoured to get its owners to accept that it was human, a soul having been reincarnated into the machine at the moment it was booted . . . Something like that. The nerdosphere consensus was that it was a red herring.’ Nelson hesitated. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

Lobsang dismissed the question. ‘By the way, would you like a drink? I understand you’re a beer man.’ He stood and crossed to a walnut drinks cabinet.