Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

Oil had been the salvation of the nation, but perhaps the ceaseless sawing of the horse-head wells spread throughout the land were pounding out her death knell, too. The money that the elite of the UAE possessed had not tempered their unyielding nature and, in fact, had fueled their ability to exercise it. Rufti’s greed might very well sever the vital artery of oil that allowed him to exist.

Khuddari had to admit that if Rufti was planning a coup, he couldn’t have selected a better time. The Crown Prince was at odds with most of the Supreme Federal Council, composed of the six rulers of the other Emirates, and with the Council of Ministers, the legislative arm of the nation. The schisms stemmed from the Americans’ announcement to phase out all oil imports within ten years. That act could cripple the money-based power structure of the Emirates, weakening the Prince’s position so that a coup might be seen as a beneficial act rather than one of naked aggression. The political climate was ripe for a change to face this new, uncertain future, and Rufti could be in the perfect place to exploit it. Khalid hoped that his thin evidence was enough to convince the Crown Prince that he and the nation were in danger, but no matter how credible Khuddari was in the Sovereign’s eyes, a lone shell casing and a deep suspicion weren’t much. He feared that his pleas would fall on deaf ears.

He craned his head as he looked out the window at the city below. This close to shore, the water of the Gulf was an iridescent aquamarine, a dazzling shade more suited for neon signs than nature. Because the water was only ten fathoms deep and nearly one hundred degrees, there was little life to cloud the sea. An empty supertanker rode high just where the Gulf turned darker and deeper, her upper deck painted a dull oxide red that matched the twenty feet of her underbelly that showed below her Plimsoll line. At this distance, Khalid couldn’t read the name on her stern, but the activity of the small boats cruising around the monstrous ship indicated that she was hove to for repairs.

He turned away, absently wondering why the vessel wasn’t at the huge new shipyard at Port Rashid near Dubai City. The Gazelle was coming in for her landing, and he didn’t give the tanker another thought.

The Richardson Highway, arguably one of the most beautiful stretches of road in the world, parallels the Tiekel River as it gouges its way through a rocky canyon. The road boasts no fewer than twenty-five scenic overviews within the first forty miles north of Valdez. At points, the valley was barely wide enough to allow the river and two lanes of traffic; other times it opened dramatically into alpine meadows and side valleys with spectacular views of the Chugach Mountains and the Worthington Glacier. The highway also traversed Thompson Pass, an area fabled for holding all three national records for snowfall — seasonally, monthly, and for a twenty-four-hour period. On a single day in 1955, more than five feet of snow had covered the top of the twenty-six-hundred-foot pass. But there would be no records tonight. A storm was dropping snow, but rain fell with it, creating a frigid slurry that squirted from under the heavy lugged tires of a fuel tanker truck as it sped north.

The beauty of the ride was lost on the driver of the eighteen-wheeled tractor trailer; the truck’s powerful headlamps couldn’t penetrate deep enough into the storm to reveal the towering cliffs over his head or the vistas to the left and right. Occasionally, one of the many waterfalls not yet frozen by the unusually frigid weather flashed by like a white smear against the black night, but he had eyes only for the dark ribbon spread before his truck.

Brock Holt was not a happy man despite the country music blaring from the cab’s eight speakers. The conditions of the road didn’t bother him too much. To a native of Prince William Sound, a storm like this was nothing but a mild nuisance. What bothered him was the full load of Petromax gasoline, nearly eight thousand gallons, in the tanker behind him. He hadn’t been scheduled to make the run from the Anchorage depot for another two days, but the influx of media had supposedly emptied the service stations around Valdez. His dispatcher had assured him the early run was necessary, yet when he arrived at the Petromax stations, he found that they hadn’t called for him. In fact, they probably wouldn’t need the gas from his regular delivery either.

The stations’ owners complained that an environmental group had targeted them for a series of protests and boycotts. While the other stations in town were doing a brisk business, collectively Petromax hadn’t sold more than fifty gallons all week. The dispatcher must have assumed that since the other stations were pumping, so was Petromax. “Snafu,” Holt cursed as he began the long haul back north, anxious to chew out his dispatcher, Hank Kelso.

Since he was missing a repeat of the Country Music Awards on cable, Holt soothed himself by selecting another disc on the ten-disc CD changer in the cab. His only consolation, thin as it was, was that traffic on a night like this was nearly nonexistent. He rolled the big diesel as fast as he dared in the vain hope that he could catch the show’s big finale just before midnight.

ON the downhill side of Thompson Pass, in a forlorn gravel turnoff overlooking the Worthington Glacier thirty miles from Valdez, a yellow Range Rover sat as quiet as the storm, its lights off and its engine idling just enough for the heaters to work. The only indication that the luxury vehicle was occupied was the frosting of the passengers’ breath that smoked the windscreen and side windows. The custom-painted Rover had been there so long that its tire tracks had been obliterated by the continuous snowfall.

Two of the three men in the vehicle had fidgeted away the past two hours, shifting constantly in the plush leather seats, sighing occasionally and staring at the cellular phone mounted under the dash in the hope that it would ring. The third man, the driver, sat calmly watching the storm, following individual drifting flakes as if they needed his permission to land. The intensity of his blue eyes was almost enough to melt snowflakes before they touched the ground.

His hands, powerful and deeply tanned, rested on the steering wheel, the occasional tap of his index finger betraying the anxiety he felt. His handsome face was as still as the glacier to their left. While the other two men sported layers of wool, nylon, and Gore-Tex, he wore only a Norwegian roll-neck fisherman’s sweater and a pair of jeans. His companions shivered in the cab of the Rover and muttered complaints, but he didn’t even feel the cold. He saw the low temperature as something to be embraced rather than warded off.

Nature, he thought, was not meant to be a struggle; it was to be enjoyed. To fight it only served to antagonize it and force it to oppose that much more. He’d often said that every time we attempt to show dominion over nature, she counters, even stronger than before. To him, it made more sense to accept its elemental life force and revel in its magnificence.

He’d tried to teach that to his people, but few really understood. True, some would join him when he swam in subarctic water or trekked through searing deserts, but they did it more out of sheer will than in communion. To them, it was a means of proving that they could endure the worst that nature possessed. They faced the elements not as its vassal but as an equal. He saw his actions as the highest form of worship. To stand before a natural force was to stand before God Himself.

The only other person who truly understood was Aggie. She saw nature as he did. The crashing waves of a winter storm on a forlorn coast or an intense rain that made it impossible to breathe were forces that she could appreciate. She saw these things as the highest expression of perfection. Let others stand in awe before a Picasso or the Sistine Chapel. These were man-made and thus inherently flawed. They paled before the perfect beauty of a tropical sunset or a coral reef. Aggie believed him when he said that humanity had changed so much from our original intentions that we had become a danger to the planet. She didn’t balk when he said that if the end of our existence was the price to pay to save the earth, then so be it.