Wally grabbed at the gunwale for balance as the patrol boat circled them at twenty yards or so. “Jerusha,” he said, “just stay behind me if they start firing, and I’ll… I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Swim over to get to them?” The crestfallen apology on his face made her regret the words even as she said them. Her hands slid over her seed belt, her fingers slipping into the enclosures to touch the seeds there. Out here, there was nowhere to hide. If they wanted them dead, all they need do was pepper their sorry little craft with holes and watch them sink. They could capture them just as easily.
Jerusha had no intention of seeing what a PPA prison might be like. Wally’s strength meant little here, if there was no ground on which to stand. Hamisi was already backing away from the wheel of the boat, his hands up.
“Wally,” Jerusha said. “Hands up.”
He looked surprised at that. “We can’t just give up.”
“ They have to think we will,” she told him, nodding toward the gunboat. She lifted her own hands. “Go on,” she said, and reluctantly Wally raised his own huge arms; there were large orange spots on his underarms.
The gunboat circled once more, then moved in toward them. When it passed in front of Jerusha, only an arm’s length from their boat, she threw the seeds in her hand and opened her mind to her wild card power.
Kudzu vines were already sprouting wildly from the seeds before they even hit the gunboat’s deck and the water near the hull. Some curled rapidly around the crew members as they tried to draw guns, while others fouled the twin propellers of the craft. Jerusha could hear the groan of the patrol boat’s engine as it tried to force the props to turn. Then-with a whine and a cloud of white smoke-the engine cut off entirely.
“Hamisi!” Jerusha shouted in French. “Let’s go! Hate! ”
Hamisi pressed the starter and water gurgled as they started to move, slowly, along the length of the patrol boat. The crew members were shouting, tearing kudzu from around themselves. Jerusha had been unable to toss the small seeds far enough to reach the machine-gun mount-it swung around to follow them and she heard the man ratchet a slide back. She took a baobab seed from her pouch: she wasn’t certain she could toss it that far. “Rusty!” she said. “Here. Throw this onto the boat.”
Wally took the seed from her, tossed it high and long. The seed rang on the deck as the baobab sprouted roots and its strange crown-a dozen years’ growth done in a breath. The deck plates groaned metallically as the thick roots plunged downward seeking water and earth. One branch tipped the machine gun’s barrel up, and tracers laced the sky as it chattered.
Jerusha bent the tree with her mind, tilting it so that the gunboat began to lean. Water suddenly burst around the new baobab’s girth. The gunboat listed over entirely in the space of a few breaths, the half-dozen crew members beginning to scream. Jerusha had the vines fling them overboard, releasing them at the same time.
“Go!” she shouted to Hamisi. “Allez! Au rivage! Rapidement!” She pushed him toward the cabin of their boat as the gunboat crew flailed at the water, grasping for the baobab’s branches even as the gunboat turned entirely on its side, the hull now facing them. The baobab floated low in the water as Hamisi’s engine coughed and roared. They moved away from the men, who were waving their arms and calling out to them.
“Good toss,” Jerusha told Rusty.
He grinned. She thought that if he could have blushed, he would have. “It was nothin’,” Wally said. “But cripes, that was pretty terrific, Jerusha.”
She gave him a quick, fading smile. She could feel the baobab dying in the water, drowning without earth to sustain it. The crew of the gunboat was still shouting, their voices fainter now; the tree would serve as a raft until someone noticed them. I’m sorry, she whispered to it. I’m sorry. “Let’s get to the shore before reinforcements show up.” She stared at the slopes there, pointing to the nearest point of land. “There,” she told Hamisi. “Take us there.
…”
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
For once, Michelle isn’t in the pit.
This is a nice looking place. But she’s still afraid. No, Michelle thinks. Adesina is afraid.
There are small buildings in a circular layout. They’re nicer than any of the houses in Adesina’s village. These are sturdy, built from concrete blocks and are painted in bright primary colors and all the roofs are brick red. They have glass in the windows and she sees power lines running from generators to each building. There’s gravel laid out on the ground so the walkways won’t turn to mud when it rains. There’s even a pretty painted sign: Kisa… something Hospital for Children. Michelle can’t quite make it out.
Even though she’s frightened, Adesina is awed by this place. She’s never been anywhere so nice before. A woman comes out of the red building. She wears a white coat and carries a clipboard. Something about her frightens Adesina and she cowers with the other children. The woman walks by each child, pointing at each one, then gesturing to one side of the path or the other.
After the children are divided, they’re taken to different buildings. Adesina goes into the green building. She likes the color green, but not today. Today she hates it. She’s crying and she wants her mother and father. One of the other children pinches her and tells her to stop being such a baby. But Adesina doesn’t care. She doesn’t mind being a baby now.
Another woman in a white coat comes into the room. She carries a tray covered by a white cloth. Adesina cries harder, and soon all the children are crying. The woman ignores their tears.
The woman opens the door to another room and then steps inside. Before she closes the door, she makes a quick gesture to one of the children’s captors. He grabs the boy who pinched Adesina and drags him inside.
One by one, the children are taken into the small back room. The children don’t come out again. When Adesina’s turn finally comes, she sees why. There’s a door leading out the back of the building.
The woman in the white coat speaks sharply to Adesina. Michelle doesn’t understand the words, but she grasps the intent. Adesina stops crying, but snuffles as she tries to contain herself.
The woman pulls the cloth back from the silver tray. There’s a row of needles. Adesina doesn’t know what they’re for, but they look sharp and hurty. She starts crying again. The woman grabs her arm and before Adesina can squirm away, the needle sinks into her flesh.
For a moment, nothing happens. Adesina’s so surprised she stops crying. Then the fire roars through her. It tears at her mind and pulls her apart. She looks down at her hands and sees that they’re changing. And that’s when she begins to scream. Then the world goes dark.
Khartoum, Sudan
The Caliphate of Arabia
The little girl was unnaturally still in his arms as they hung for a breathless instant in orbit. The bandages wrapped around her wizened little body felt rough. Tom took quick stock: for once his objective was marked by a terrain feature-the confluence of the Blue Nile from Ethiopia and the White Nile from Uganda, becoming then just the plain old Nile everybody knew. Supposedly the ancients thought it looked like an elephant’s trunk. How they could tell, given that the country here was every bit as stomped-down flat as the Sudd not so far south, he had no clue. But the alleged resemblance had given the place its name: al-Khartum, the Elephant’s Trunk.
Khartoum. Capital of the former Republic of Sudan. Now just the capital of the newest province of the Caliphate.
They called the girl the Mummy, for the bandages that covered her whole little body and big head to protect her sensitive skin from the blistering African sun. The docs said she was eleven, though she was the size of a four-year-old, and a none too healthy one at that. The Simbas had found her wandering in drought-stricken northeast Uganda during that country’s recent liberation.