The Click

The entire village, men, women, and children, were digging ditches and building

barricades under Hitch’s direction. He was in his element and actually enjoying it, temporarily oblivious to the fact that Christopher was deteriorating rapidly at that moment. He would learn soon enough. In the meantime, he and the others watched an Indian helicopter and two from Israel land within the shadows of the mountains. According to Meta, the White House had leaned heavily on India’s prime minister. As for the Israeli helicopters, apparently no leaning was necessary. Many DanShebans secretly lived in Israel, as they did in most other areas of the world, but in Israel many of them occupied high positions in government and in the military.

While Hitch watched the Indian and Israeli troops unload weapons, he continued to dig trenches alongside the villagers. As he was explaining where to dig next, his scud RANG. It was Barnaby. He had just left Christopher and Kathy and thought Oliver should get to the hospital right away.

With his shovel gripped in one hand, Hitch raced up the hill toward the square, trying to keep up with the beating of his heart. He passed dozens of DanShebans lined up in front of the hospital waiting to donate blood. As soon as he entered, Barnaby grabbed hold of his arm and led him into a large futuristic scientific lab where he and Elana were working with vials of blood and fancy equipment.

“Oliver, before you see them, you should know that Christopher is failing fast. The CLICKS are increasing in both intensity and speed and Kathy’s state of mind is not helping him. You need to calm her down.”

“Calm her down?” Hitch dropped the shovel. He was having trouble processing the words.

“And tell her we are still hopeful,” Elana added. “No, tell her we will get him the antidote.”

Hitch merely nodded then practically flew down the hall and into the hospital wing. Christopher was in the room on the right and Kathy was standing vigil outside the opened door biting her nails with chattering teeth. As he rushed over to her she quickly shut the door behind her.

“No, I won’t let you see him. We wouldn’t be in this … this place if it weren’t for

Damn it, Dad.” She clutched on to him and bawled. “He’s going to die just like OJ. He’s going to …”

Hitch held her tight and whispered in her ear. “No he’s not. As God is my …” She broke away and stepped back with pain oozing from her eyes. “You don’t

believe in God. How dare you …” She left him standing there as she marched back into her son’s room and slammed the door behind her.

For a moment he froze, then followed her in. The oxygen, the IV tubes, the monitors hit him even harder than the verbal slap across the face he had just received.

Yennie Tawahada sat in his office waiting to talk to Dillon Burber about scheduling a meeting between the Ecclesian ambassador to the United States and President Wainwright. The president planned to show the ambassador the Smotecal Decretum before going public in hopes of thwarting an all-out invasion of DanSheba, but first she needed to know as a matter of fact that the Click was a fraud.

About the time he looked up at the clock wondering where Dillon was, he received a text message on his scud. Dillon was going to be late. The television had been on but muted all the time Yennie was waiting. What he observed was one pro-Cūtocracy march after another in Rome, Beijing, London, and right there in Washington DC. He paid little attention to the orchestrated show of support until UN Secretary General Heinrich Flum of Germany filled the entire screen. Yennie knew him as a devout Ecclesian who managed somehow to stay loyal to both the Church and the Cūtocracy.

Yennie unmuted the TV and listened to the Secretary General blab about how the disillusioned left was attempting to destroy their beloved institutions using all types of

baseless allegations. The member nations were united, he insisted, and ready to march into DanSheba and inoculate the heathens. He went on to describe what he claimed was a real-time buildup in troops on the east coast of Mumbai and then displayed camera shots from there. It surely looked to Yennie like a major invasion was eminent.

That was enough for one day. He turned the TV off altogether and began thinking. At that moment he would have preferred more than anything else to be in Dan Sheba with his family and friends … with Meta and the others. Just as that yearning seemed to build, Dillon strolled in as if he had all the time in the world, as if the world wasn’t coming to an end.

“We’re still waiting to hear from his Eminence, the ambassador, I’m afraid,” Dillon said sarcastically. “Have we got the verification team lined up?”

“Yes, believe it or not. My contact at the UN told me they have selected three so-called experts that were blessed by the Secretary General himself … secretly.”

“Do we know anything about them?”

“A young woman from Boston, no doubt tied to the Church there. From what I’ve been told she’s about the same age as Elana Wu, and may in fact know her. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. The second expert is from Frankfurt, in his late sixties, quite possibly a friend of Herr Flum, and that surely isn’t good.”

“And the third member?”

“The most problematic one if I had to guess. A Chinese man, also around Elana Wu’s age and said to be brilliant, and highly conservative religiously, whatever that means in China.”

Dillon shrugged. “Let’s hope it all works out, and tell your people it has to be unanimous.” He disappeared before Yennie could process that last comment or ask him anything else about the meeting with the ambassador.

General Rosewall arrived in Mumbai and convened a meeting in Rousseau’s hotel room. He brought with him two of his trusted lieutenants, Grozier and Reebert, both

younger than Rousseau and both highly unappealing. The four of them sat around the table in her suite. Grozier, sporting a beard without a mustache and dangling earrings in both ears, constantly chewed enough gum to glue an elephant to the floor. Reebert, who was cross-eyed and clearly didn’t realize his fly was down, started to light up a black market cigar and that’s when she put her foot down.

“You want to smoke that fucking phallus hang yourself out the balcony … and for Christ’s sake zip up your fly.”

“Enough,” Rosewall snapped. “We have work to do.”

He then proceeded to describe how they, a small band of carefully selected warriors, were going to preempt McGivney and the UN by taking a battle-ready barge and a small flatbed carrier to DanSheba. Grozier stopped chewing long enough to ask whether they had anyone inside in DanSheba. Rosewall nodded toward Rousseau who smiled.