Asimov's SF, Sep 2005 Read online

  "What do I do?"

  Carl began wagging his finger as if counting. “One, we can't let anyone know the Embassy is involved in this deal. Two, we need you because you are British. Three, you drive around tonight and we have everything ready. Four, you take the dissident, whose hands will be tied and whose legs will be shackled, to the gates of the Interior Ministry. Tanks and major firepower will be there to protect you. Five, you speak over the intercom to the Interior Minister offering him the deal. Call off this nationalization ploy immediately and you hand over the dissident they want like mad. Okay? Will you do it?"

  Ron had begun to look dubious during this speech. “Very dicey. Who is this dissident guy anyway?"

  "His name's Haydor, Ziviad Haydor."

  Ron let out a whistling breath. “Him? Carl, you can't hand Haydor over to that bastard Firadzov! Haydor is a hero of the people. It was Haydor who represented the chance of a better life for everyone. Firadzov would torture him to death!"

  "Look, Ron, Haydor is a spent force. That issue's closed, okay? It's worth one life to get the damned oil flowing, isn't it?"

  Ron stuck his fists in his jeans and turned his back. “It's treachery, Carl. We swore to protect Haydor only a year ago. Sorry, I want no part of it."

  Carl grabbed Ron's shoulder. “Can't you see what's involved? This is no time for scruples!"

  "Take your hand off me,” Ron said. “I can't do it."

  "Fuck you! Then I'll do it myself!"

  He did it himself. It worked. Carl Roddard was hooded as he handed over his prisoner to the Interior Ministry. Ziviad Haydor disappeared into the regime's torture chambers. Next morning, President Firadzov himself spoke on television. He stated, “Regrettably, an attempt was recently made by unreliable elements to seize control of the oil pipeline. We of course recognize the legitimacy of the present international construction company to operate the pipeline for the benefit of all concerned. I have personally supported this great international venture, which affirms the greatness and importance of our dear nation, Turkmenistan.

  "Unreliable elements involved in this attempted illegal appropriation of property have been arrested, including the Minister for the Interior. They will stand trial at a future date."

  Stanley Coglan and Mr. Freddie Go from the Chinese Embassy shook hands with Carl in a brief ceremony. After which they toasted each other in champagne.

  "We must reward you somehow, Carl,” said Freddie Go, his face crinkling in the friendliest of smiles.

  "I didn't want anyone to adopt my baby,” said Carl, thus mystifying his Chinese friend. “My marriage has collapsed, Freddie. Margie refused to live here in Ashkabad with me. She's in England now. I'm hoping to patch things up, now that the oil is at last about to run."

  "Okay,” said Stanley. “We'll charter you a special plane right into London Heathrow—with our best wishes."

  Carl, smiling, shook his head. “A bigger favor even than that, Stan, and Freddie. I want to be the first guy ever to drive along the whole length of Suoyue, all the way to the Med."

  "Do we let him?” Stanley asked Freddie.

  Freddie pretended a sigh. “Can we stop him?"

  Carl Roddard shook hands with his Chief Engineer in farewell before climbing into his car. Behind them lay the first pumping station and the opening stretch of pipeline. The all-steel pipe had cathodic protection—the negative electric charge running throughout the length of the pipe. The pipeline and its associated roads stretched for over one thousand miles, covering some dangerous territory.

  Carl left Ashkabad, the capital city of Turkmenistan, early that morning. He kept himself well-armed, and tucked a revolver into the auto's front compartment. The Pipeline Road began outside Ashkabad on its long journey westward. Carl had programmed his car accordingly, and was traveling at an average of ninety miles per hour.

  With him in the car was Donna Khaddari. Donna had taken a Luckistryke and was sitting quietly, smiling to herself. Carl's secretary was ill; she had sent her sister Donna instead. A pretty girl, thought Carl, approvingly. They had passed Gifan, where they crossed the frontier between Turkmenistan and Iran.

  To the right of the speeding vehicle—to the north—the coast of the Caspian Sea was visible. Dead ships lay there aslant, stranded, beached for all time, bones merely of boats that had once sailed from Baku in Azerbaijan to Bandar-e Shah in Iran. Now the sea itself, whose waters had been siphoned off in the construction of the pipeline and its attendant highways, was wan, white, waveless, shrinking from its forsaken shore.

  To the south of the highway, the Elburz Mountains rose, their rainy slopes thickly forested, except where new roads had cut fresh scars through the trees.

  Carl, vacationing from his engagement to contractors Butterfield-Chou-Wolff, kept his eyes on the highway ahead. It curved little, it swerved little, it climbed on gentle inclines, only to dip again, always following beside the armor-plated oil pipeline. Where the pipeline went, monstrous, shining metal-black, there the road went. Where the road went, there sped Carl's auto, streamlined as a fish. And on the north side of the great pipe, there a twin road went, designed to carry traffic eastward.

  At present, though, the twin routes were empty of traffic. The great highways were not yet officially open. Only Architects-in-Chief traveled them, together with a few military vehicles. Carl concentrated on recalling details of his conversation with Coordinator Mohamed Barrak before he left Ashkabad. He had voiced a complaint that the consortium to which he belonged was filling the pockets of the dictator, Firadzov.

  He regarded Barrak as yet another corrupt native official, one of a kind with which BCW had become used to dealing. Barrak had grown distant and formal. He clasped his hands over his white jacket and his ample stomach. The vodka was getting to him.

  He spoke of historic necessity. The need of the West to draw on Central Asian oil overrode other considerations. Yes, Firadzov was rather—shall we say, overbearing?—well, dictatorial; but he controlled a country that floated on oil, and those vast reservoirs were needed to sustain the greedy West. A West, Barrak might say, also dictatorial. When the oil was flowing, the West would no longer have need of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, such as Iraq and Kuwait.

  Then Barrak had abruptly changed the subject, demanding to know why Carl Roddard suddenly needed leave to go to England.

  "My ex-wife has moved to England from Savannah. She lives with her brother in Oxford. I need to see her again."

  "You are planning to remarry?"

  "That remains to be seen.” None of your business. He disliked Barrak and his pompous manner. Barrak liked to speak of the pipeline as “this great engineering achievement,” as if he had built it himself.

  Carl Roddard had broad shoulders and a broad base. He sat hunched in a narrow chair, saying nothing. He was drinking vodka with Barrak in a more-or-less westernized tea house in the European quarter of Ashkabad. Although the Turkmen were Muslim, or faintly Muslim, their seventy years under Russian domination had taught them to drink vodka like Cossacks. Carl did not tell the other man he had two young sons wandering about somewhere in the Eastern United States, kicking up hell.

  Barrak had not inquired why Carl wished to drive the length of the pipeline road instead of flying. Everyone involved in the grandiose project desired to drive the whole length of it one day. Perhaps even Barrak felt the itch.

  The car sped ever on. Carl's great tanned face was immoveable as he half-listened to a remastered ribbon of music from the long-dead Django, cool as a dingo in December. Donna appeared to be listening. She sat close to Carl, saying nothing.

  He gazed at the landscape he had helped forge. The highway undulated over northbound rivers pouring down from the mountain slopes. It followed the great coffin of the oil pipeline, by far the strongest feature of the moribund natural scene. Haze overhead filtered sunlight down evenly, shadowlessly; as the distance-indicators flashed by; the scene resembled a computer playscene.

  The pipeline w
ould, in a sense, unite East and West. Yet it was Carl's absorption in the mighty project that had broken up his marriage to Margie. That could be put right, maybe. He would try. He regarded himself as a good fixer. Results were in the lap of the gods.

  Gigantic yellow-painted Chinese constructors toiled along in parallel with the pipeline. They were preparing to build a third lane on the westbound route. The great project was yet to be completed. High overhead, geostationary satellites saw to it that the project was not interfered with.

  The auto map was signaling fifty miles to Amol-Babol when Donna said, “I need a coffee."

  "Right behind you."

  "No, I need to stretch my legs. I have long legs, you know."

  "I have noticed."

  "Stop at Amol-Babol, please, Carl."

  Amol-Babol was the first stop after Ashkabad, the site of a big pumping station. As they had had to show their biometricards to enter the pipeline road, so they had to show their biometricards to get off it. The barriers swung up, the steel teeth sucked themselves down into the roadway and they drifted through.

  After the auto was douched with germicidal wash, it parked itself and the couple were free to walk.

  Amol-Babol was situated on the coast. Ships maneuvered in the overcrowded harbor. Tehran was no more than sixty miles away, south over the Elburz Mountains. Amol-Babol was a newly compounded city, a transitory refuge for many of the men and women of all nationalities who worked on the pipeline. They included American, Australian, French, Spanish, English, Kurdish, Japanese, and certainly Chinese. Many were soldiers, clerks, prostitutes, thieves, adventurers.

  * * * *

  The chaos of Amol-Babol was preferable to the deadness of Firadzov-ruled Ashkabad.

  At least Firadzov had cooperated with the constructors of the gigantic pipeline. The gross egotist he was regarded the pipeline as his memorial. He already had a pipeline, but it ran northward to Moscow, and Moscow paid peanuts compared with what the West would pay. Everything was a question of money.

  * * * *

  A big transporter aircraft was thundering down on the Amol-Babol airport even now, bringing in more workers, more machinery.

  The permanent civilian population consisted of a small clique of Iranian, Indian, and Chinese bureaucrats, sitting at the top of the pile, then mainly of Kurds and other Iranians, with a scattering of Afghans. These latter, the poor, had set up stalls and markets through which Carl and Donna now strolled. Here were the world's electronic gadgets, blinking, winking, chirruping, together with bright cheap Chinese-manufactured toys and clothes. Oriental music shrilly played. Donna bought a deep blue T-shirt bearing the elegantly complex Chinese symbol, Suoyue, for “Pipeline.” At another stall they sat and drank a rich Sumatra coffee. No alcohol was permitted anywhere along the course of the pipeline; it was a condition on which the Chinese had insisted.

  Carl took Donna to the Pipeline Consortium H.Q. in A-B Square, to say hello to his friend and colleague, Wang Feng Ling. Ling embraced Carl, kissed Donna's hand, and ordered tea to be brought. Ling as ever was neatly dressed in a well-tailored suit. His hair was immaculate. He wore a gold ring on one of his long artistic fingers. His smile was warm and sincere.

  "How is life in Ashkahbad, Carl, dear chap?” he asked. “Dear chap” was his favorite form of address.

  "Dull as ever. Even the camels are bored."

  "With that particular time-expired Central Asian dullness?” Ling smiled at the recollection.

  "The new dictator is slightly better than the old dictator. Firadzov accepts bribes with a better grace...."

  Ling nodded his sympathy. “Unfortunately the new dictator in Uzbekistan is not slightly better than the old dictator, dear chap. However, we maintain long and tedious talks."

  Carl gave a short laugh. “You still have hopes, then.” He had learnt to talk obliquely to Ling.

  Ling raised his cup and smiled at his friend. “Hopes? You mean plans? Certainly the Suoyue can be key to both East and West."

  Indeed, even the Westerners on the pipeline road referred to it as the “Suoyue,” the Chinese word for “Key.” Westerners were interested only in piping the oil of Central Asia to the West, bypassing the Arab states; but the Chinese were major players here, and the Chinese had plans to extend the Suoyue eastward, beyond Turkmenistan to China itself.

  As had always been the case, Chinese intentions were not clearly understood in the West.

  "Any problems on your stretch of the pipe, Ling?"

  "Your president, Julian Caesare, may cause problems, dear chap, if he continues to exacerbate Islamic problems in Iran."

  "Well, the Consortium has a century's concession on this coastal strip."

  "Religion always has contempt for any concession."

  "You're right there."

  As usual—thought Carl, shaking hands on leaving—Ling was so frequently right. Staunch nationalist though he was, he had begun to believe that the Chinese were actually a superior race. The superior race.

  He did not say as much to Donna when they reentered the bazaar. Or when they climbed into their auto. Or when they were once again traveling on their way westward on the Suoyue. The great pipeline in its protective casing appeared to go on forever. Every so often, a pumping station straddled the pipe. Dominating the stations were small strongholds, bristling with masts and fully manned, fortified against those enemies of the West who would seek to block the flow of oil.

  Carl remembered he had visited Hadrian's Wall in the North of England, stretching from East coast to West coast, where he studied how the Romans had attempted to keep out the barbarians. The Suoyue might bear a Chinese name, but the essential elements of its design lay in the West, and had their links with ancient Rome.

  The Caspian fell away, leaving its lassitudes behind them. Climbing, they crossed the forty-ninth line of latitude. Kurd patrols were in evidence here, driving U.S. army vehicles with Kurdish flags attached to their aerials. The aerials whipped in the wind. The Kurds had been paid off; the patrol now fired their Kalashnikovs into the air by way of greeting to the speeding car.

  The weather became colder and an inclement wind blew. Clouds were torn to shreds. The climate remained mild inside the auto. Carl and Donna sat close, elbows all but touching. Pilotless planes, controlled from Diyarbakir, screamed overhead, low to the ground. Higher overhead, they occasionally saw the heavyweight BWA, the Broad Wing Aircraft that also kept up a continuous patrol.

  "It's like living in a sci-fi dream,” Carl remarked to Donna.

  They passed the ruins of a village that had been demolished to make way for the pipeline. Only a minaret remained standing, a sentinel to a vanished way of life.

  As the landscape grew wilder, dusk became thicker. When night encompassed the solitary vehicle, Carl followed an old life-saving habit, lowered his seat, opaqued the windows and went to sleep.

  Once he was soundly asleep, Donna deopaqued the windows again to watch an electric storm over the mountains ahead. No thunder accompanied the flashes. Great sheets of lightning appeared and disappeared silently, ghosts of the stratosphere. Their reflected light ran off the sides of the pipeline armor like water spray.

  She too slept, waking when the hitherto unnoticed tone of the auto changed. The car traveled on electromagnetic force; although it was without wheels, a new resonance suggested new conditions.

  From the windows, Donna saw a glitter of water on both sides far below them. The sky had cleared. The night was now comparatively cloudless, and a crescent moon shone on the water. She woke Carl.

  "Where are we? What's this?"

  He glanced at the auto map to confirm his understanding.

  "We're crossing Lake Urmia. It's a lovely spot, about forty miles wide in places. Lots of geese and water birds here."

  "We're crossing on a bridge, are we?"

  He heard the nervousness in her voice, and was surprised.

  "Yes, we've just avoided a high mountain. I forget its name. Some people would say we
were in the middle of nowhere."

  "But I can see lights down below. A long way down there!” She was half-standing, to peer below the bridge.

  "The people down there are also in the middle of nowhere, even if they don't realize it. There are quite a few islands in the lake. Relax, Donna!"

  To calm her, he said, “I went fishing with Ling off one of the islands, once, in the early stages of construction. The supports of this bridge are founded on some of those islands. The people got paid for the disruption to their lives. They went and built a new mosque with the money, instead of a new hospital. They think like that."

  "So we are still in Iran, or where?"

  He was looking down at the village lights, small below, remembering the immense pike he and Ling had caught. They had spitted it, cooked it over their fire, and ate it. He remembered the taste of it.

  "We're traveling a dramatic stretch of northern Iran. Some way to our north there's Azerbaijan and Armenia. It's earthquake country. The Suoyue runs on shock absorbers over this stretch."

  Donna remarked that for once she could see the ribbon of the parallel road running eastward.

  He said that the roads here were built on separate bridges for safety reasons.

  She fell silent, perhaps awed by the magnitude of the engineering feat that had built Suoyue. Nor was she unaware of the years of political discussion, contrivance, and bribery that had gone into the groundwork before building started. The pipeline project had ruined her life and her family's. Only when China had signed on to play a major role in the construction had the consortium Butterfield-Chou-Wolff gained the financial incentive to function.

  Her family had been one of those that lost out in the wheeler-dealing. Donna's father, Awal al-Khaddari, had lost his home and his business and had committed suicide. Donna had had to work for the negotiators throughout the desperate years, and had gone to bed with some of them, in order to keep her family in bread.

  The structure, despite furious Arab protests, was hailed as a great advance in world trade. It was touted as a unifying force, whatever had happened to Donna's and other families. Still the West remained worried about Chinese motives. Some things never changed.