Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"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.