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Duncan MacLeod and Brianna Belmont were walking on a rocky beach along
the Lake Ontario shore. To their right lay the water, illuminated by the slanting rays of the
sun. Tiny sailboats dotted the horizon, which was a rich blue fading into purple. To their
left was the parkland of The Beaches neighborhood, rich in early spring foliage. It was
very quiet -- it was a little too late in the day, and the air was a little too chilly, for the
usual seaside revelry.
The Immortals had left Eaton Centre in silence, and headed out to Duncan's
neighborhood. Now, they were in a restful spot, and Duncan stopped their progress,
pausing by the railings of a nearby boardwalk. Brianna leaned against the rail. Duncan
stood, his hands in his pockets. His brow was furrowed, and he was restless. He looked
westward, from whence they'd come, back at Toronto's distant spires. The CN Tower
was visible even from here.
"Duncan..." Brianna said gently. "I know this must be hard for you." Inside
her head, the tiny Queen music was playing the plaintive strains of "Who Wants to Live
Forever." This would be a sad tale indeed.
The Highlander took a deep breath. He didn't look back at her -- his eyes
were still fixed to the west, to the setting sun. "I might as well start at the beginning. It
was 1964. In New York. At the World's Fair."
Brianna nodded. "I've been to that World's Fair." She followed his gaze, and
saw the CN Tower, and somehow in her mind, it transformed to a scene from another age...
June 1964, New York World's Fair, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens
Duncan MacLeod approached the New York Pavilion. Its three towers
clustered together, and at the top of each one was a circular observation platform; the
array resembled flying saucers on stalks. They presided over a great round roofed plaza
dubbed the "Tent of Tomorrow." It was as big as a football field, encircled by pillars
supporting a flat awning. This was made of orange, red, and yellow fiberglass panels set
in a radial design. As MacLeod stepped into its cooling shelter, the bright summer
sunlight streaked through the panels, casting colorful patterns on the space below. At
his feet, the floor was dominated by a mammoth map of New York State done in tile.
Various exhibits and attractions beckoned from the perimeter.
MacLeod straightened his narrow black tie, and jammed his hands into the
pockets of his black suit. He ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. A few years ago,
he would have been in need of a haircut, but now it was fashionable to wear it longer,
just past his ears. The Highlander leaned against a support pole, watching the crowd
intently. A couple of teenage girls walked by, listening to one of those portable transistor
radios. He caught a few strains of the bouncy music -- something by that new band...the
Bugs or the Beetles or something. "I wanna hold your haa-aand..." The music faded as
the girls grew distant.
He was working Security for the Fair, as he had twenty-five years earlier at the
1939 World's Fair, in the very same park. It still astounded MacLeod how so many of
the futuristic predictions of the 1939-40 Fair had come true by now. In '39, there had
been an exhibit called the Futurama -- it was a model of a gleaming city of the 1960's, with
vast networks of superhighways and steel-and-glass towers. Today, that very network of
highways wove through this park and the city's five boroughs, and, visible on the horizon,
the steel skyscrapers of Manhattan embodied that vision. The promise of industrial
automation, the dawn of television -- those wonders of the '39 Fair were commonplace
today. Even more amazing, the Flash Gordon dreams of man traveling through space
were coming true as well. From where MacLeod stood, he could see the rockets on
display at the U.S. Space Park, beside the undulating facade of the Hall of Science. It
appeared that we would truly reach the moon by the end of the decade. It astonished
him, for he remembered how barely over half-a-century ago, mankind could hardly even
fly through the sky!
Then again, there were things the '39 Fair had not predicted. The Second
Great War, whose rumblings had just begun back then, had swept across the world like
a wall of fire. Empires had fallen in its wake. Today, two upstart nations, both of which
had been founded within his lifetime, fought their uneasy Cold War, with the nuclear Sword
of Damocles over everyone's heads. A mere two years ago, when Kennedy, Kruschev,
and Castro had danced their deadly missile fandango, the whole world could have been
destroyed. And now Kennedy was dead, and hostilities were beginning to escalate in
French Indochina (now they called it Viet Nam)...and this very day, he recalled uneasily,
there was a looming threat to the serenity of this World's Fair.
He decided to check in with Socorro.
MacLeod extracted his walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. In Spanish, he
asked, "Mac here. How are things looking over there? Over."
"Socorro here," a female voice told him in the same tongue. "Everything is
quiet.."
"Things are calm here. Over," Mac replied. Socorro was his partner, working
Security with him. Her full name was Maria Socorro Cruz Martinez. She had escaped
from Castro's Cuba just a few years ago, and could barely speak English. She was a new
Immortal, chronologically in her early twenties. She had died her First Death about two
years ago, in a car accident in Miami. Mac was training her in the ways of swordplay and
the Rules of the Immortal Game.
The young Cuban's voice crackled back at him. There was a hint of a whine in
her tone. "Are you sure your friend was right about the time and the place? Over?"
"Kastagir wasn't sure about anything, Socorro. All he knew was that he'd heard
from the Immortal grapevine in East Africa that something was going to go down at the
World's Fair. Over."
"And you trust this Kastagir guy?" There was silence for a few seconds.
"You didn't say 'Over,' Socorro. Over."
He heard her exasperated sigh as she repeated. "Do you trust this Kastagir guy,
OVER?"
"Kastagir is a dear friend of my kinsman Connor. Connor, who taught me the
ways of our people the way I am teaching them to you. Anyone Connor trusts, I trust." A
few seconds passed before Mac himself remembered to say, "Over."
Socorro wouldn't let up. It was amazing, Duncan observed, how the trumpet-like
quality of the Cuban voice could carry even over a crackly walkie-talkie. "So, where did
that revolution happen again? That place with all the 'z's? Over."
"Zanzibar, Socorro. The place is called Zanzibar. Over."
"I've never heard of this Zanzibar....Over."
"A hundred years ago, no one had heard of Cuba, either."
She harrumphed indignantly.
MacLeod smiled to himself. She was a spitfire, all right. "We'll talk later. Get
back to work. Over and Out." He pocketed the walkie-talkie and returned to scanning the
crowd.
He sighed and mopped his brow with a wilted handkerchief. It was hot enough
today for Cuba. Or Zanzibar. He'd been there once, in the 17th Century. An island off
the coast of East Africa, it had been an exotic Arabian Nights port-of-call, source of
spices and a hub of the slave trade. Two hundred years later, it was a British colony. Six
months ago, the British had granted it its independence, with a new sultan in charge. One
month later, there was a revolution -- the native African population had risen up against
the resident Arabs, Indians and other Asians. There had been a massacre of thousands,
an exodus of refugees, the sultan deposed and exiled. The unrest had spread to
Tanganyika, the neighboring mainland nation where Kastagir had been living. British
troops had been called in to quell the disturbance, and when the dust settled, just a couple
of months ago, the leaders of Zanzibar and Tanganyika had agreed to merge into one
independent nation, Tanzania.
But there were factions not happy with the arrangement: royalists backing the
Sultan; nationalists who wanted to retain Zanzibar's independence. And, according to
Kastagir, Immortals were meddling in these mortal affairs, looking to a gathering of the
world to make a statement of some kind.
MacLeod had decided to stake out the most prominent landmarks of the Fair,
such as the New York State Pavilion (visible for miles around) and the iconic Unisphere
sculpture. If there were any Immortals sniffing around these monuments, he wanted to
know about it. He had Socorro patrolling the Unisphere and its surrounding pavilions.
No sooner had he thought these thoughts than the walkie-talkie crackled again.
"Socorro here!" came the Spanish cry.
"Mac here. Over."
"There's something going on by the Big Globe. You have to get over here!"
"What is it? Over!" His heart began to pound.
"Immortals. A bunch of them."
"I'm on it. Over and Out!" MacLeod cursed, pocketed the walkie-talkie, and
headed for Socorro's position.
To get there, he emerged from under the Tent of Tomorrow and stepped onto
the Court of Nations, one of the many pretentiously-named thoroughfares in the park.
(His favorite was the Court of the Universe, which faced the Fountain of the Planets,
elsewhere in the park.) MacLeod hustled along, passing landscaped lawns with buildings
cast in fanciful organic shapes. The vast array of forms seemed to defy the laws of
nature. There were geodesic domes, oddly-shaped towers, round buildings, undulating
roofs, hyperbolic paraboloids, all brightly colored and decoratively illuminated. Every
pavilion tried to outdo the others in stretching the limits of architectural technology. It
was an exuberance very different from the Art Deco neo-classicism of the '39 Fair.
Ahead of MacLeod, at the end of a wide promenade lined by flagpoles
(whose bright banners lay limp in the still summer air) waited the Unisphere. It was
the centerpiece of the Fair, its main symbol. The sculpture was a tremendous steel globe
formed by an open latticework of latitude and longitude lines. Great metal sheets
comprised the continents, sculpted in layers to simulate the mountain ranges. Encircling
it were three metal rings representing the orbits of the man-made satellites. It loomed
ahead, in the center of a shallow, round fountain. The upward-streaming jets of water
looked refreshing in the summer heat, but MacLeod had other things on his mind.
He sensed Socorro's Immortal Buzz. He found her, a small, stocky figure in
white Capri pants, flat pumps, and a simple white blouse. Her skin was cafe-au-lait
colored, her raven hair in short, unruly curls. She was standing by the Africa Pavilion,
a collection of stylized modernistic fiberglass huts. Socorro looked imploringly to him
with large, black eyes, then to the Unisphere in its Fountain of the Continents.
MacLeod stood beside her and sensed the other Immortals -- then he espied
a group of three. They were standing by the fountain, a few yards away, doing a very bad
job of pretending to be tourists taking pictures of each other. There was something about
their forced merriment and their carriage that suggested they were anything but carefree
visitors.
"Duncan, I don't like their looks," Socorro said. "They have the faces of bad
guys."
MacLeod had learned the colorful Cuban expression from her. ("Tienen caras
de malos") as well as others, which didn't exist in the 19th Century Castilian and Mexican
dialects he already knew. He agreed with her observation. One of the men was swarthy,
with sharp features and a prominent nose; he had a goatee that made him look devilish.
The other was a Negro, with skin so dark it was almost blue. Skin that dark was rare
with Americans -- he was probably African. The third man was a nondescript brown-
haired Caucasian. They were dressed casually in slacks and shirts, and seemed unruffled
by the heat, except for the white man, who might have come from a cold Northern clime.
"I don't like their looks, either, Socorro," Mac replied. He especially didn't like
the bearded one. Something about him, an arrogance in his bearing, told him he was
probably the oldest and most powerful of the three.
Socorro whispered, "Do you think the Vatican Pavilion counts as Holy Ground?"
"I think so...but those goons won't fight us here. Too many people."
At that moment, the bearded Immortal looked to MacLeod, catching him squarely
in the eye. Of course, the other Immortals could sense him and Socorro.
They locked gazes. MacLeod tried to keep his expression carefully neutral, but
he knew Socorro was broadcasting fear on her face. He wanted to put his arm
reassuringly around her, but he didn't want to give away anything about his relationship
with her that could be used against him.
The bearded Immortal nodded to him, then turned to his colleagues and left with
them. MacLeod gave them a head start, then followed them down the Avenue of the
States. He watched the Immortals leave the park.
He returned a few minutes later to the African Pavilion, where Socorro still stood,
leaning against a tree with her arms crossed and frowning.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked him, having recovered her bravado.
"I don't like the looks of this at all," he said. "It's too perfect. The Unisphere, the
African Pavilion right in front of it, trumpeting the freshly formed nation of Tanzania..."
His voice trailed off as he realized something. He walked over to the entrance of the
Pavilion, where a sign advertising the schedule of events.
Socorro joined his side and her jaw dropped.
"Tomorrow, at noon, the Tanzanian Ambassador to the United Nations will be
visiting this Pavilion, then giving a speech at the Unisphere," she read carefully.
MacLeod knit his brows. "Whatever they're up to -- it'll be tonight, no doubt,"
he declared.
"But they know you're onto them!"
"I can take them on."
"There are at least three of them. You need me!"
"Socorro, you're not ready. You've never been in a challenge before!"
"Even if you take one of them, there will be two more who can take your head
before you recover from your Quickening!"
"I've fought multiples before. I know how to do it. Socorro, trust me -- this is
too much for you."
The Cuban scowled and crossed her arms again, then stamped her foot. "Fine,"
she said. "You're only going to get yourself killed."
"The mortal authorities can't handle this. It's up to me to take care of things."
She said nothing and began to stalk off.
"Socorro! Where are you going?"
"I'm going to get one of those fancy waffles at the Belgian Pavilion! I don't feel
like arguing with you!"
Duncan sighed. She was quite a handful. But they were going settle this before
that evening. There was too much at stake for him to indulge her.
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