The children watched, calling excitedly as she formed the baobab vessel for them. Some of them were even laughing, as if this were a new game. They seemed to sense how close they were to safety. “Okay,” she told Cesar. “Tell them to get aboard. Anyone who can swim, get on those longer branches so you can kick and push us. Hurry!”
She waded into the water—colder than she remembered, as if there was nothing on her body to keep away the chill—and helped them as much as she could with her injured and crudely bandaged arm, watching each of them clamber into the water-slick trunk, helping those who the wild card had rendered less mobile.
Finally, she pushed with what little strength she had left and pulled herself up. Cesar and several of the children were kicking, white water splashing around their legs, but their improvised craft was making little headway, and the water was now too deep for Jerusha to stand in.
“Bibbi Jerusha.” She heard the call: Eason, still in his stretcher. His fish tail flapped on the canvas. “You carried me,” he said in halting French, “now it’s my turn. . . .”
Jerusha nodded to Cesar, to Gamila. They lifted the stretcher, let Eason tumble into the water.
Eason swam, his tail churning the water white behind him. He went to the rear of the baobab, grabbing the largest root with his hand, and his tail kicked.
Their baobab raft began to move steadily out into the deeper water.
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Those fuckers,” Joey muttered. “Those fuckers.”
Michelle didn’t reply. She’d stopped talking to Joey earlier in the day. Nothing she said helped. The closer they got to Kisangani, the angrier Hoodoo Mama became.
It had started with the first grave.
“They’re here,” Joey said. “They’re down there in the dark. The fuckers just left them there.”
“Show me where.”
Joey plunged through the forest. Michelle followed. They came upon a small clearing. To one side there was a large boxy trailer. In the center of the clearing was a large mound of newly turned dirt. Michelle stared at it, her stomach doing nauseated flip-flops. Then a strange coldness came over her. “Are they in there?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“A lot. I want whoever did this,” Joey said in a calm, soft voice.
“I do, too,” Michelle replied.
“I’m going to raise them.”
“No,” Michelle said. “Do you want to find whoever did this? Fast? We have to keep going.”
“God damn it!” Joey screamed, spittle flying from her mouth. “You’re just going to leave them down there in the dark? You fucking bitch.”
Michelle didn’t answer, but went to the trailer and carefully opened the door. She poked her head in, but the trailer was empty except for an old desk and a couple of stainless-steel medical tables. There was a medicinal odor inside. In the trash can in the corner she found empty bottles of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol.
Frustrated, she threw the empties back into the can. The disinfectant would have helped some with Joey’s leg, which was swollen and angry-looking. She looked around again, and noticed for the first time the colorful cutout pictures on the walls. Pictures from children’s books. They were full of smiling happy animals and smiling happy children.
Slowly, she made her way around the trailer. With the exception of the bottles in the trash and the pictures on the walls, it seemed to have been stripped clean. She sat at the desk and started opening drawers. They were empty except for paper clips. She felt under the desk, but there was nothing there.
Then she pulled the desk away from the wall, and she heard a snick as a file slid down to the floor. She reached behind the desk and grabbed it.
Unfortunately, it was written in French. Michelle’s French wasn’t good enough for her to translate it all, but she did see Alicia Nshombo’s name more than once as she paged through the paperwork. But in the bottom of the file there were photos.
The pictures were of dead children, each with a series of notes clipped to the photo. Most looked like jokers and had been shot in the head. The rest were black queens. Some hardly looked human anymore. Michelle thought she might throw up.
“What’s that?”
Michelle looked up. Joey was standing in the doorway. “I’m not sure. I don’t read French.”
“You talked to Gaetan and Kengo just fine.”
“That was simple conversation. This is reading. And it has all sorts of stuff that I just don’t understand.”
“Let me see.”
Michelle closed the file. “There’s nothing here.”
“Let me see the cocksucking file, Bubbles.” Her voice was smaller than usual.
Reluctantly, Michelle handed the file over. Joey opened it and glanced at the papers inside. She looked puzzled, then she saw the photos.
“I’ll kill them all,” she said, but there was little strength in her voice.
“I’ll help you,” Michelle said. “But first we need to find them.”
“I can do that. We’ll just follow the trail of dead.” Joey glowered at Michelle; her eyes were glassy and she was swaying a little. “Hoodoo Mama is handy.”
Lake Tanganyika
Tanzania
The Baobab Raft was spotted when they were halfway across, and Denys Finch was on the Tanzanian patrol boat that responded. “Hey!” The rhinoceros horn on his snouted face gleamed in the sun. He looked at the baobab boat, at the children filling its branches like dark human fruit. His eyebrows raised. “Need a ride?”
Jerusha hugged the joker as the crew brought her and the children aboard. “How . . . ?” she asked, too exhausted to say more, her belly rumbling with hunger. She was famished; she burned with it.
“Been taking the plane up looking for you two since you left, couple times a day. Was about to give up on it, too, if you didn’t show in a day or two. I saw the baobab and radioed to these blokes. Where’s your metal fellow?”
“He’s not here.”
“Oh.” Finch looked as if he wanted to ask more, then evidently changed his mind. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week or eaten anything in a month.”
“We could all use food,” she told him. “It seems like so long since . . .” She stopped. Shook her head to rid it of the images of food rising in her. “Is there a satellite phone on this boat? One that works?”
Finch called out to one of the uniformed men. A few moments later, he was handing her a largish rectangle of black plastic. “All yours,” he said.
Jerusha peered at the phone. She entered in the number she’d wanted to call for days now. There was a crackle of static, a hiss, then a distant, clear ring she could hear through the steady churning of the patrol boat’s twin engines.
“United Nations,” someone said on the other end. “Committee for Extraordinary Interventions.”
“This is Jerusha Carter,” she said. “Gardener. I need to speak to either Lohengrin or Babel. It’s extremely urgent. No, I’m sorry, it can’t take hours. I don’t have hours. . . .”
Bahr al-Ghazal Base
The Sudd, South Sudan
The Caliphate of Arabia
Tom stood beside the mess tent and watched as the sun fell into the endless sea of washed-out green reeds, turning them to dark thin shadows that made intricate patterns as they slow-danced to the music of a sluggish breeze. Somewhere to the north a battle murmured, rattled, occasionally boomed with a flash that lit the orange and indigo sky a startling yellow-white.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the swollen red sun. It felt as if the inside of his eyelids were lined with sandpaper. His arms and legs felt like cloth bags filled with powdered lead. His brain felt as if his skull were stuffed with cotton balls. He couldn’t remember when he’d had his last decent night’s sleep.
Do I even fucking dare to sleep now? he wondered. That prick Meadows almost got me for good last time. He actually managed to steal control of
my fucking body.
All over Tom felt the sick rush of violation. It wasn’t theft. It was soul-rape. And he’d stolen some of Tom’s most potent powers.
Tom feared no one on Earth. But he lived in increasing terror of the hippie in his own head.
Despite feeling the fatigue thicker than the heat and heavier than the humid turgid swamp air; despite being so tired he felt as sick as if he’d been caught by some awful tropical disease himself, the very thought of sleep filled him with a terror that almost blanked his mind.
“Fuck it,” he said. He turned about on one Converse knock-off tennis shoe and walked back into the dimness of the tent. It was time to load up on coffee.
I just won’t sleep, he decided. Until I’m strong enough not even Meadows can challenge me anymore.
It was coming. He felt it.
Soon I’ll be invincible.
Robert Cumming’s Apartment
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago did have good pizza. Cumming’s apartment reeked of pepperoni, garlic, and tomato sauce. The tall joker sucked down Coke after Coke. Jaako and Mollie drank beer. Noel and Mathias sipped a heavy, rich Chianti.
The pictures that Noel had snapped with the tiny cuff-link camera were strewn across the coffee table. Red fingerprints dotted more than a few of them. “What do we think those might be?” Noel pointed at the grooves in the floor and ceiling.
“In a world where people can teleport and walk through walls you want a nasty surprise inside,” Mathias said with a shrug. “I’m betting metal walls run back and forth across the vault. Cut you in half if they hit you.”
“So, can you figure out the pattern?”
Cumming shook his head. “They wouldn’t be that stupid. They’d let the computer randomize the movement of the walls. I think we just need to turn them off. Otherwise you guys going in are going to be hopping around like fleas moving from dog to dog. I’ll control the cameras so everything in the room will look normal. But you’ll need to work fast because my movement of the walls will start to look like a pattern. If the guards are sharp they’ll spot it.”
“And you can do all that?” Noel asked.
“Yeah, if the security computer at the bank gets set to port 950 I can control everything in those rooms that’s controlled by a computer.”
“And how do we do that?” Mathias asked.
Cumming shrugged. “Somebody’s got to go into the security office and reset the computers.”
“And who does that?” Mathias asked, his tone pugnacious.
“Moi,” said Jaako, and pointed to his chest.
“And won’t the security guards notice when this guy comes crawling out of the computer screen?” Mollie asked.
“The guards are going to be occupied elsewhere,” Noel said. “There might be one left behind, but I’m confident Jaako can handle him.”
“So let me give you the information you need to make the switch,” Cumming said. “I’ve poked around, and the bank’s firewall is running Redhat. We still need the root password, but every office I’ve ever seen has it written down and Scotch-taped inside a drawer. So here’s what you do. First go to / etc/sisconfig su to root. Once you’re at root . . . vi space IP-tables and add this line . . . minus A space RH-firewall F-1-INPUT space. . . .” Cumming was writing while Jaako pulled his lower lip and frowned at the ever-expanding lines of gobbledygook.
Mathias pulled Noel’s attention away when his blunt finger thrust down on one of the embedded nozzles high in the wall. “I want a respirator just in case those fire off. And we must expect that the floor is rigged to sense an increase in weight. That will not be controlled by a computer.”
“How do we get around that?” Mollie asked rather shrilly.
“As you teleport, Mathias is going to have to make you weightless.” Noel looked over at the little man. “Please don’t cock up the timing.” The Hungarian nodded and lit another cigarette. Noel hoped he sounded unperturbed and confident, but the level of complexity was daunting, even for him.
Well, at least he knew he could get out fast if the whole thing went pear-shaped. His biggest worry was making sure Weathers somehow made the connection between the missing gold and the Nshombos. He didn’t have that one figured out just yet.
Jaako’s rather nasal voice pulled him back to the conversation. “You’re going to look a pretty bunch of fools floating around and bouncing off the safety deposit boxes.”
“Hey!” Cumming said. “Pay attention. You got the 950 space minus J, ACCEPT, right?”
“You know I don’t have any fucking idea what you’re talking about,” Jaako said.
“You don’t have to. You just have to follow instructions and not have a typo. You have a cell phone. If you get confused you can call me.”
“How are we going to maneuver in there?” Mollie asked.
“There’s equipment for that,” Noel said. “And Jaako, you understand that you’re going to be part of this party in the vault, right? Mathias can make the gold weightless, but it will still have mass. It will take all four of you to control the pallets and guide them through the door that Mollie will open.”
This time the use of the word “you” elicited a response. “What do you mean you, kemosabe?” Mollie asked. “Aren’t you going to be with us?”
“You better fucking be with us,” Jaako said.
“I’m going to be getting guards out of the bank. I have an . . . associate who will handle the teleport.”
“Wait just a damn minute. This is the first time we’ve heard about another person,” Mathias said. “I’m not sharing with another person.”
“You won’t need to.” Noel took his time lighting up a cigarette. Cumming made a big point of waving his hand in front of his face and coughing. Both Noel and Mathias ignored him. “She’s my girlfriend. She’ll share in my share . . . so to speak.”
“And we can trust her . . . why?” Jaako asked.
“Because I say you can.”
“This isn’t cool,” Cumming said. “We should at least meet her. Make up our own minds.”
“And do what? You can’t pull off this heist without a teleport. She is a teleport. We either abort or you accept my judgment.”
There was a long silence while the other four looked at each other. “Yeah, well, okay,” Jaako finally said. “He’s got a reputation for pulling off the impossible.”
“And you know this, how?” Cumming asked.
“We’ve crossed paths in our other lives.”
Mathias grunted, and ground out his cigarette in a piece of cold pizza. “Since none of us seem to be ready to quit—what happens then?”
“The gold goes to the warehouse you rented. Shares will be allocated, then Mollie will open another doorway into the yacht and you’ll shove it through.”
“Seems a shame to go through all of this and not keep it all,” Jaako sighed.
“And that wasn’t the deal and you knew it going in,” Noel said, his voice low and a little dangerous.
“There are four of us and one of you. We could change the terms,” Mathias said.
“And his girlfriend,” Jaako added.
“Yes, but she’s not here,” Mathias said, and the deep wrinkles in his face made him look like an angry old turtle.
“Hey!” Cumming blurted out. “I’m doing this because the Nshombos are dictators. And this thing about the kids is . . . is . . . monstrous.” He paused, his jaw worked, and he added lamely, “And I’m not a crook.”
Noel looked over at Mollie. She was bright red and looked distressed. “Mollie?” he said softly.
She stepped closer to him. Noel gave Jaako and Mathias a teeth-baring smile. “Jaako. You know who I am and what I was. You might want to let Mathias know.”
Cumming tugged at Jaako’s sleeve. “Let’s finish this. Once you’ve typed in all that you save the file and exit and then at the command line type service space IPtables space restart.”
Restart. That’s what I’d like. Restart my life on
ce and for all so I never have to do this kind of thing again.
His cell phone vibrated. Noel stepped aside to answer while the nerdish whine continued as Cumming went over everything with Jaako one more time. It was Lohengrin.
He didn’t mince words. “Gardener has escaped from the People’s Paradise with a group of children. They’re starving, some of them are sick. Many of them are jokers. We need to get them to a hospital. Preferably the Jokertown Clinic.”
“And you’re calling me because . . . ?”
“Because the UN cannot be formally involved, so I cannot send a plane. And you’re much faster than a plane anyway. And because I hoped there might be a human being hiding in you somewhere.”
Oddly enough it hurt, an actual physical grip in the gut. “All right. I’ll see what I can do. E-mail me their location so I can bring up a satellite image.”
A few moments later his iPhone chimed.
Katimba, Tanzania.
Thursday,
December 24
Katimba, Tanzania
Lohengrin hadn’t known how many children were with Gardener. It turned out to be a lot. Noel counted more than forty.
They lay in the shade provided by a large tree and the overhang of a corrugated tin hut. Gardener had her back against the tree. The girl looked terrible, wasted, gaunt.
A cold fist closed down on his gut. Noel had seen this before—in a hospital in Khartoum.
Five kids slept around her, their heads resting on her lap and thighs. Using a large leaf as a fan, Gardener kept the flies from their faces. Some of those faces weren’t very human. As Lohengrin had reported most of the children were jokers.
Gardener’s eyes widened as he appeared, and she reached a clawlike hand into her seed pouch.
She didn’t know him in his Etienne form. He quickly shifted back to Noel. The children who were awake cried out in terror as his body reshaped itself. Their cries woke the others, and the air was filled with wails, sobs, and cries.
Gardener relaxed when she realized who he was. “Hush, hush,” she soothed. “He’s a friend. He’s here to help us. In the blink of an eye he can have us in a city where there’s food and beds. Hush, hush.” Her voice had the quality of a song.