Black Sun Rising

Chapter Nine

"Welcome to Parashant!" Jefferson beamed, striding toward Sam with his heavy-looking, artfully rugged backpack held on one shoulder. "Looks like we'll have a nice cool day for building our camp! That's good. It's a lot more work getting it all set up when it's hot."

Sam, wilting in the Arizona heat, made no reply. All his energy was currently being divided between lugging his holdall and staying on his feet without dissolving into a puddle of whisky-flavored sweat. It might have been a cool day by Jefferson's standards, but at 22°C, it was far too hot for him.

After disembarking from the plane at Grand Gulch, the group had been met by a fleet of Jeeps and ferried along winding dirt roads. They had passed the signs for Parashant National Monument some time ago and were now far off the beaten track, leaving the edge of the Grand Canyon far behind. They found themselves in an expanse of parched wilderness, sparsely populated by scrub vegetation. Some way off, Sam thought he could make out the shimmer of water — he assumed that they must be close to a river, because they would need some source of water. However, he was not sure. In the blinding sunlight, with nothing to shield his eyes, the thing he took for water could just as easily have been rising heat.

The group of delegates contained a variety of people, such as Sam (clearly not use to the heat and exertion and already starting to feel dehydrated) to glossy, fit, and well-prepared individuals (looking as if they just stepped out of an air-conditioned gym). Among the latter group, Paige Daniels was clearly the leader. Her crisp cotton shirt was not white, since Labor Day had passed, but it was such a pale shade of pink that it made little difference. Navy blue shorts revealed toned, tanned legs that could just as easily have belonged to her daughter. Henley, however, had refused to shed her black attire. She was dressed in what appeared to be a partially destroyed ballet tutu and boots from Doc Martens. Her eyeliner was smudged across her left cheek.

"Dad, how far do we have to go?" she moaned. "Where's the base?"

"It'll be around here soon!" Jefferson lifted his daughter's wheeled suitcase. "Just as soon as we've built it. This wasn't the greatest choice, was it, honey? Why didn't you bring the backpack your mom gave you?"

"I'm not carrying that thing. It's butt ugly." She took the case from her father. It was a little too heavy for her, but she was determined not to concede that the backpack might have made her life easier. "So, are there going to be tents or something? Where are they?"

"Right over here, Miss Daniels," Cody called from a little way off. He was posing on a rock, well aware of the figure he cut in his stone colored shorts and white T-shirt with the clear blue sky as his backdrop. He looked like some kind of advertisement. Sam's dislike for him deepened just a little further, but he joined the delegates in moving obediently toward the pile of tent materials to which Cody was pointing. As much as Sam hated being given orders and was not keen on physical labor, he was happy to pitch in and help with anything that would afford the group some shade from the intense sun.

His attitude was shared by many of the delegates. Within minutes everyone's belongings were heaped in a pile and hands that had not touched anything less refined than a keyboard in years were gripping long wooden tent poles and wielding spikes and mallets. Sam had decided that he would prefer to stick with the devil he knew, so he had sought out Purdue and chosen to work alongside him. There were no instructions telling them how to erect these tents, but he was willing to bet that Purdue would either know, or he would be swift to work it out.

Sure enough, Purdue had assembled a small team and was busy issuing instructions. He had found Nina and Julia Rose, but he had also recruited a stocky man with close-cropped, dark hair and a man, with a long, mopey face and a slight, premature paunch, whom Sam took to be one of the programmers. There was no time for introductions, not with the sun getting increasingly hot overhead. Purdue flitted among the members of the team, working out angles and making suggestions. He seemed to have had the foresight to fill a small notebook with instructions. Sam caught glimpses of it concealed in his palm as he moved around the group.

They were not the first group to finish. That honor went to a team led by Dylan Thoreau, the CEO of a massive social media network. From what Sam had heard about him and succeeded in eavesdropping, it seemed that he had previously participated in several sweat lodges and presumably had experience in putting up these teepee-style tents. Nevertheless, it was too hot to care about finishing first. As soon as they were certain that the tent was stable, Sam dived gratefully into the shade.

Soon Cody appeared at the flap of the tent with an armful of empty waterskins. He carried out a swift head count of the little group and left a skin for each person. The stocky man, speaking in a heavy eastern European accent that Sam found difficult to place, gathered them and offered to fill them at the river.

"Anyone know who that guy is?" Sam asked in a whisper, as soon as he thought the man was out of earshot. "I haven't seen him before. Is he one of the FireStorm people?"

Purdue shook his head. "Not at all, Sam. He's my new bodyguard — well, reasonably new — no more than a couple of months. Kai is his name. Kai Gretzsky."

"Wait — your bodyguard?" Nina said. "How is it possible that I didn't realize you had a new bodyguard?" Flashes of Calisto Fernandez, his last bodyguard, seeped into Nina's mind. She briefly remembered the woman who saved her from getting shot in the face by a Norwegian henchman. She realized that Purdue was on his third bodyguard in as many years.

"I asked him to keep his distance, because you didn't get on with the first one." Purdue's tone was bright, but Nina shuddered at the memory of Ziv Blomstein, the first bodyguard to protect Purdue, some time ago during the Antarctic trip. Much taller and more physically imposing than his current successor, Blomstein had been a silent, threatening figure who had been ready to kill Nina during their time on the submarine as they escaped the ice station. Despite his eventual act of self-sacrifice that had saved them all, Nina had good reason to feel uneasy at the mention of Blomstein's name.

"We tried to find a way for him to continue protecting us from a distance while we are out here," Purdue continued, "but it simply proved too difficult. Straightforward enough in a hotel, but considerably less easy in the desert. Here, he will simply have to share my accommodations."

"Remind me to stay near you," the young man chimed in. "Oh, right. I haven't introduced myself. Sorry. I'm Hunter Sherwood. I'm a programmer for Kari. You've probably seen my boss, Sakura, around."

"Sakura Ito?" Julia Rose asked. "Oh, my god, she's amazing! I was so excited when I saw she was here. How come you're with us? No offense, but if I had a connection to Sakura Ito, I'd be right there trying to impress her."

Hunter grimaced and shifted a little closer to the door, fanning himself with the flap of the tent. "Hmm. She's ok, but I'm avoiding her right now. If she'd picked one of the people who actually wanted to be here instead of doing random selection, I'd be at home right now. Sorry. I know you probably really want to be here. I'm just not really into this kind of stuff."

As Kai returned with the waterskins and everyone proceeded to quench their thirsts, Hunter held forth. He quizzed the others about what they knew of the organization and was delighted to hear that none of them knew anything that had not come straight from Sara, Cody, or Jefferson. Sam shot a questioning look at Julia Rose, wondering why she was not telling Hunter about her research, but she replied with an almost imperceptible shake of the head and he did not push it further.

It seemed that Hunter was extremely skeptical about the claims that FireStorm was making about "bringing the world together." He believed that there was nothing to the organization but marketing — packaging spirituality and wisdom in fancy ways so that they could be marketed as luxury goods.

"It's bullshit," he stated flatly. "These people who buy into it, they're the ones with a ton of time and money, right? They've got time to sit around worrying about whether they're connected to other people's unique special snowflakeness, or whatever it is. The rest of us… do we care? I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have time to care. And if being spiritually connected is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars, I can't afford it. I'll just have to settle for being disconnected.

"But you know the worst thing? It's not even about that. People have been selling this togetherness stuff for years, ever since the hippies, maybe even earlier, but these people have taken it to the next level! Word is that they're trying to get people to integrate or some shit, and you have to get all their software and products to do it. I've never before heard of any religion that needed an app."

"But plenty of religious apps exist, don't they?" Nina was constitutionally incapable of letting a badly formulated argument slip by. "When I set my phone up, the most popular free apps available were the Bible and the Quran."

Hunter's pudgy face rounded into a smug smile. "They exist," he said, oblivious as Nina bristled at his condescending tone. "Of course, they exist. But they're not mandatory. You can be a Christian and not have a Bible app on your phone. But you can't join FireStorm without using the company app, which means going through the complete sign up. And yeah, it's free… but did nobody ever tell you that if you're not the paying customer, you're the product?"

It was clear from Hunter's tone that he believed that he had just delivered the slam dunk that would leave Nina with no possible retort, but before he could bask in his victory, Purdue gave a gentle chuckle.

"That might be true of certain types of apps," he said, pushing his round glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Indeed, there are many that serve no other purpose. But I think you are mistaken where FireStorm is concerned, Hunter. If there is a mandatory app to which all members are expected to subscribe, it is certainly a small part of a larger package, and you will find that its users are paying for it in other ways. To run such a large operation as this, simply in order to mine data… I simply can't see how it would be financially viable."

"Dude, do you even know how much people are willing to pay for that kind of data?"

Sam couldn't help himself. He laughed aloud. Hunter looked deeply offended and started to pull himself up onto his knees, preparing to leave in search of a more sympathetic tent.

"Sorry, pal," Sam said, laying a conciliatory hand on Hunter's arm. "No need to go. I'm not laughing at you. It's just that if you knew this man, you'd know that he's probably the one person who knows the exact retail price on people's data, because he's the one who pays it. He's a mad bastard who likes to know everything about everyone, and he's probably done his homework on you too."

Julia Rose looked shocked. A couple of days in Las Vegas had not been sufficient for her to figure out the dynamics between Sam, Nina, and Purdue. She did not yet know how they worked, or how far Sam could go without provoking Purdue's ire. If truth be told, Sam himself did not know — but he was interested to find out.

Not a flicker of discomposure showed on Purdue's face. He merely nodded in acknowledgment. "Sam is quite correct," he said. "When I require information about someone, I pay well for it."

Hunter looked as though he did not want to believe that he was sharing his space with someone who would perpetuate data mining. Sam had never seen anyone look at Purdue with such evident judgment. "Well, at least you won't have much on me," Hunter spoke with absolute certainty. "I dedicate a lot of time to making sure my online footprint is minimal. So if you've been paying someone for information about me, you've been wasting your money. Now I'm going to go and find out what's happening next. Excuse me."

With as much dignity as he could muster while dressed in Bermuda shorts that should have been left in the 1980s, Hunter ducked through the flap of the tent and disappeared in search of Cody. "Oh dear," said Sam. "I don't think that's the response he was expecting."

"What was he expecting?" Nina wondered. "You can't come to a place like this and expect to find a sympathetic ear for stuff like that. I mean, he's probably right, there probably is something incredibly cynical about all of this. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't an attempt to fleece people, to be quite honest. But still, I wouldn't have thought that being quite so loose-lipped about the idea that it's some kind of conspiracy is a great idea."

"As far as I can tell, what we just saw was the latest in a long line of ill-advised choices made by Mr. Sherwood," Purdue said, consulting what Sam had thought was a notebook. Instead, it turned out to be a small device resembling a tiny tablet computer, but extremely thin and capable of being folded.

When Purdue produced it from his pocket it was the size of a matchbook, but he deftly unfolded it until it was the length of his hand. His strokes on its surface as he searched for information were more of a caress than a swipe. "Hmm. Yes. If Hunter's everyday intelligence were equal to his programming ability, he might be a dangerous man. Certainly he would be running KNCT in Ms. Ito's place. And he would surely realize that refusing to use Facebook is considerably more effective if you don't spend a great deal of time blogging about how you don't use Facebook."