“They’re supposed to wait a half mile from here.” Jawbone pointed. “Out on the mud flats is where we hand the people over.”
“Maybe it’s the rain,” I offered. “Maybe they don’t want everyone getting wet.”
She glowered at me. “If your work’s done, tree builder, then you’re free to go.”
“I reckon,” I said. Beneath us, the brown water was rising as the rain bounced upon it. I had to get Sal out of that pit. And soon. “Just thought I’d stay through the trade.”
Jawbone shook her head. “Not part of the deal. You should cut out while you still can.”
“He can’t leave in this,” Alpha said, pointing as the storm clouds sank and swelled.
Thunder rolled in the distance, farther now, sparking up some lightning before fading away and leaving nothing but the downpour. The huge transport just sat cold and silent. As if it were empty. Or chock-full of ghosts.
We scrambled up the city walls so we were level with the deck of the ship and about twenty feet from the guardrail that ran its length. At the far end of the deck rose a cockpit, black with windows and crowned with guns. The weaponry dwarfed any I’d seen. Made the pirate trucks look like toys. We stood there, waiting on someone to show.
Until finally somebody did.
Took me all of two seconds to place him. The smooth white skin and jagged bones.
It was the man from the Rasta’s vision, the floating face from the Tripnotyst’s screen.
The King, the old Rasta had called him. The King.
“That’s him?” I said. “Harvest?”
“That’s him,” Alpha muttered, hands on her hips.
Jawbone just stood with her arms crossed and the face of someone ready to cut any deal she needed. Something about her eyes told me she’d spent a long time counting on the worst that could happen.
“It’s good to see you again, Captain.” The man strolled up to the edge of the deck and leaned against the guardrail as if he was just checking out the view. He wore a gray plastic jacket with the hood left down, and water dribbled all over him. Like he was made out of rain.
“Is it?” Jawbone called back.
“But of course.” The man spoke all fancy, like a rich freak from Vega. “A year is far too long to go without seeing something as charming as you lovely ladies.”
Jawbone leaned and spat in the rain. “Then what’s taken you so long to get out here?”
“Running numbers, my dear. Calculating how many we still need.” He gestured down at the hull. “And how much space we still have.”
“Been busy, have you?” It was Alpha who spoke.
“Yes.” He gave a wink. “It’s been quite the season. I’m sad to see it come to an end. But who’s your young friend? Someone ready to be traded?”
I returned the man’s stare. If this face had been in the Rasta’s vision, then it had something to do with where the Rasta had been taken. And that meant Harvest had something to do with my father being chained to those trees.
“This is our tree builder,” Jawbone said. “And he’s not for sale.”
“My dear, everyone’s for sale.” The pale man chuckled. “But if he’s been working in your forest, then you must have him come aboard. I’ve something I imagine he’d very much like to see.”
I felt Alpha go tense beside me.
“Come, my young Captain,” King Harvest called, stretching out his hands, rain bouncing on his fingers. “We’ve much to talk about.”
“Lower the plank,” said Jawbone.
“No,” Alpha whispered. “I don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry,” Jawbone said. “Your boyfriend’s coming with me.”
“You don’t have to,” Alpha said, turning to me.
“Yeah I do.”
“Why?”
“I think that man took my father.”
“Join the club,” she said. “He took my mother. Ten years to the day.”
I followed Jawbone across the warped metal plank, our feet slipping in the rain. “What does he do with them?” I said, muffling my mouth close behind her. “With his slaves?”
“Turns a profit, I suppose.” Jawbone shrugged. “What else?”
Harvest was still alone when we reached the deck, and he made a big deal of smiling and shaking our hands. “Come, come,” he said, gesturing across to the cockpit. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”
I stomped across the giant puddled platform, glancing back at where Alpha was still stood on the wall of the city. But she seemed so far already. Out of reach.
Inside the cockpit, you could barely hear the storm, the roar of water silenced to a hush. The room was full of plastic charts and gadgets, lights blinking on control panels. Whatever the guy was doing, he was squeezing some serious cash.
“Superfood?” Harvest said, showing us a steaming bowl of popcorn. I took a handful and munched on it, staring around the cockpit and wondering where Harvest had hidden his crew.
“So where do you head next?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“Come along,” he said. “This way.” He led us deeper into the transport, winding down dim corridors until we reached the top of a ladder that went nowhere but down.
“What are we doing here?” Jawbone snapped, her voice echoing along the tunnel.
“Bear with me,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see.”
We descended the ladder, down into the vast hull of the transport, where the walls had been smeared in green phosphorescent, the insides of the ship painted in an oozing glow. And as we got lower, I began to hear voices. Muted at first, then growing spiky and loud as we sank deeper among them.
The ladder ended on another steel walkway. But this one was surrounded by cells.
Jawbone stood close to me, her arms tight and her face showing the first strains of fear. Guess she didn’t like being on this side of the slaving business.
People were pressed at the bars and groping at us, fingers scratching in the air. The moans and wails reminded me of being in the back of the pirate truck. The smell, too. I studied the thin faces between the steel bars, the dirty hair and blank eyes. I thought about the Rasta, his skin spliced with bark. And I wondered if my old man had once been stuck down here somewhere.
Was this it? The boat across the ocean? Didn’t look much like a passage to the Promised Land. Looked about as far from the Promised Land as you could get.
“I don’t believe you’ve ever seen the holding level.” Harvest grinned at Jawbone, his pale skin stained green by the phosphorescence. “And yet you’ve sentenced so many to its depths.”
“Show us what you want us to see,” I said.
“Oh, yes, tree builder. With pleasure.”
We walked narrow and hunched, avoiding the grip of the fingers that stretched through the bars toward us. And I practically slumped into Harvest when he pulled up short at a cell door.
“Here we are,” he said, working a combination lock till the door pinged free. I stood in the doorway, studying the faces that hung suspended in the dark.
Then I leaned into the cell, shuffling forward, hardly believing my eyes.
“Banyan,” a voice called. “Banyan?”
I rushed forward and all of a sudden Zee was embracing me, her body reeking of piss and metal, her eyes wet against my cheek.
“Someone you know, builder?” Harvest called from the doorway. “How touching.”
“Who is it?” said Jawbone. She came up behind me. “Banyan, what’s going on?”
“And there was me thinking it’s the other one you’d want. The one like the statue. The one with the tree.” Harvest cranked on a flashlight and scoured the cell with it, illuminating the sorry pieces of flesh, one body at a time.
I spotted her in the corner. Bundled in filthy rags and all the sparkles plucked from her hair and skin. She raised her face up to meet the torch beam, and it looked to me like Hina had fallen from everything that statue had come to mean.