voice of Vincent. We can’t let them think that they can reach him directly.” He turned and started out of the room.
“Sebastian,” she said and the Sorcerer paused and looked over his shoulder at her. “What about the pilot? What if Malink is right about the pilot being on his way?”
“Don’t be stupid, Beth. The only way to control the faithful is to not become one of them.” He turned to leave and was struck in the back of the head by a high-velocity whiskey tumbler. He turned as he dropped to the floor grasping his head.
The High Priestess was standing by the bed wearing nothing but a fine golden chain at her hips and an animal scowl. “You ever call me stupid again and I’ll rip your fucking nuts off.”
21
How the Navigator Got from There to Here
Watching the sharks circle the boat, Tuck felt as if he was being sucked down the vortex of a huge bathroom drain.
“We need a better weapon,” Tuck said. He remembered a movie once where Spencer Tracy had battled sharks from a small boat with a knife lashed to an oar. “Don’t we have any oars?”
Kimi looked insulted. “What wrong with me?”
“Not whores. Oars!” Tucker pantomimed rowing. “For rowing.”
“How I know what you talking about? Malcolme always say oars. ‘Bloody oars,’ he say. No, we don’t have oars.”
“Bail,” Tuck said.
The navigator began scooping water with the coffee can as Tuck did his best to bail with his hands.
A half hour later the boat was only partially full of water and the sharks had moved on to easier meals. Tucker fell back onto the bow to catch his breath. The sun was still low in the morning sky, but already it burned his skin. The parts of his body not soaked with seawater were soaked with sweat. He dug into the pack and pulled out the liter bottle of water he had bought the day before. It was half-full and it was all they had.
Tuck eyed the navigator, who was bailing intently. He’d never know if Tuck drank all of the water right now. He unscrewed the cap and took a small sip. Nectar of the gods. Keeping his eye on Kimi, he a took a large gulp. He could almost feel his water-starved cells rejoicing at the relief.
As he bailed, Kimi sang softly in Spanish to Roberto, who clung to his back. Whenever he tried to hit a high note, his voice cracked
like crumpled parchment. Salt was crusted at the corners of his mouth.
“Kimi, you want a drink?” Tucker crawled onto the gas tank and held the bottle out to the navigator.
Kimi took the bottle. “Thank you,” he said. He wiped the mouth of the bottle on his dress and took a deep drink, then poured some water into his palm and held it while Roberto lapped it up. He handed the bottle back to Tucker.
“You drink the rest. You bigger.”
Tucker nodded and drained the bottle. “Who’s Malcolme?”
“Malcolme buy me from my mother. He from Sydney. He a pimp.”
“He bought you?”
“Yes. My mother very poor in Manila. She can’t feed me, so she sell me to Malcolme when I am twelve.”
“What about your father?”
“He not with us. He a navigator on Satawan. He meet my mother in Manila when he is working on a tuna boat. He marry her and take her to Satawan. She stay for ten years, but she not like it. She say women like dirt to Micronesians. So she take me and go back to Manila when I am nine. Then she sell me to Malcolme. He dress me up and I make big money for him. But he mean to me. He say I have to get rid Roberto, so I run away to find my father to finish teach me to be a navigator. They hear of him on Yap. They say he lost at sea five year ago.”
“And he was the one that taught you to navigate?” Tucker knew it was a snotty question, but he had no idea what to say to someone whose mother had sold him to a pimp.
Kimi didn’t catch the sarcasm. “He teach me some. It take long time to be navigator. Sometime twenty, thirty year. You want learn, I teach you.”
Tucker remembered how difficult it had been to learn Western navigation for his pilot’s license. And that was using sophisticated charts and instru-ments. He could imagine that learning to navigate by the stars—by memory, without charts—would take years. He said, “No, that’s okay. It’s different for airplanes. We have machines to navigate now.”
They bailed until the sun was high in the sky. Tuck could feel his skin baking. He found some sunscreen in the pack and shared it with Kimi, but it was no relief from the heat.
“We need some shade.” The tarp was gone. He rifled the pack, looking for something they could use for shade, but for once Jake Skye’s bag of tricks failed them.
By noon Tuck was cursing himself for pouring out the gallon of fresh water during the storm. Kimi sat in the bottom of the boat, stroking Roberto’s head and mumbling softly to the panting bat.
Tuck tried to pass the time by cleaning his cuts and applying the antibiotic ointment from Jake’s first-aid kit. By turning his back and crouching, he was able to create enough privacy to check on his damaged penis. He could see infection around the sutures. He imagined gangrene, amputation, and consequently suicide. Then, looking on the bright side, he realized that he would die of thirst long before the infection had gone that far.
22
Finding Spam
The octopus jetted across the bottom, over a giant head of brain coral, and tucked itself into a tiny crevice in the reef. Sarapul could see the light purple skin pulsing in the crevice three fathoms down. He took a deep breath and dove, his spear in hand.
The octopus, sensing danger, changed color to the rust brown of the coral around it and adjusted its shape to fit the crannies of its hiding place. Sarapul caught the edge of the crevice with his left hand and thrust in his spear with his right. The spear barely pierced one of the octopus’s tentacles and it turned bright red in a chromatic scream, then released its ink. The ink expanded into a smoky cloud in the water. Sarapul dropped his spear to wave the ink away before making another thrust. But his air was gone. He left his spear in the crevice and shot to the surface. The octopus sensed the opening and jetted out of the crevice to a new hiding place before Sarapul knew it was gone.
Sarapul broke the surface cursing. Only three fathoms, eighteen feet, and he couldn’t stay down long enough to tease an octopus out of its hole. As a young man, he could dive to twelve fathoms and stay down longer than any of the Shark men. He was glad that no one had been there to see him: an old man who could barely feed himself.
He pulled off his mask and spit into it, then rinsed it with seawater. He looked out to sea, checking for any sign of the sharks that lived in abund-ance off the reef. There was a boat out there, perhaps half a mile off the reef, drifting. He put on his mask and looked down to get a bearing on his spear so he could retrieve it later. Then he swam a slow crawl toward the drifting boat.
He was winded when he reached the boat and he hung on the side for a few minutes, bobbing in the swell, while he caught his breath. He made his way around to the bow and pulled himself up and in. A huge black bat flew up into his face and winged off toward the island. Sarapul cursed and said some magic words to protect himself, then took a deep breath and examined the bodies.
A man and a woman—and not long dead. There was no smell and no swelling of the bellies. The meat would still be fresh. It had been too long since he’d tasted the long pig. He pinched the man’s leg to test the fat. The man moaned. He was still alive. Even better, Sarapul thought. I can eat the dead one and keep the other one fresh!
PART TWO
Island of the Shark People