I am further surprised when I am taken, not to The Bridge, but one level higher to what must be the Captain’s private quarters.
As my escort leads me out onto a circular landing, I look up — sort of a natural when you’ve been trucking up a spiral staircase. I realize that there is yet another landing above this one. Through the stairwell I can see that, muy higher, the spiral goes up without a break, all the way to the light chamber on top.
Off the landing, there are several doors. My escort takes me to one of them and knocks. Captain Ahab answers the knock herself, signals me in, and closes the door behind us.
The room, which is sort of fan-shaped, is softly lit by candle and lamp, making everything a little fuzzy and me sort of fuzzy right along with.
The Captain is no longer wearing the velvet cat-suit. She is wearing a soft, blue, clingy gown that doesn’t close well in the front.
I win my bet about the braid. Falling over one shoulder, it ends somewhere below her hips.
I realize these things vary from culture to culture, but I have the distinct impression that the Captain is, shall we say, ready to roll. With a total stranger. I gotta wonder why.
I look at her with as much aplomb as I can muster. “You wish?”
“To talk,” she says, and motions me to a giant pillow in front of a wood stove. The door is open and cheerful flames leap about inside like circus clowns.
I sit. She sits. Then she just looks at me for a long time, playing with the end of her braid. I’m patient. I wait.
Finally, she speaks. “You said the aliens killed people in the city. Is that so, or were you just trying to scare us or get our sympathy?”
“It’s so. They killed about fourteen people — that we found.”
I remember the moment pretty intensely all of a sudden, which makes me squeeze my amulet bag. I smell Doug.
So does she. She leans closer.
“What’s that smell? Pine?”
“Doug fir. It’s sort of a talisman. Keeps me focused.”
She smiles, tilts her head. When a woman tilts her head, I know from experience, the situation is serious. “And do you need to keep focused right now?”
“Yeah. We haven’t seen death like that in Embarcadero since Lord E took the Buena Vista. I was a kid when that happened, so I guess I never really have seen death. Every time I think of that — those people — I get sucked back there.”
She backs off a little, peering into my face. “Are those tears?” She wipes one away, which gesture reminds me of Jade, which makes me real tense suddenly, ‘cause Jade is with the Mate.
I lick my lips. “Listen, Captain Ahab....”
She leans in again. “Yes?” Smells like she just had a shower, only her soap smells less like soap and more like cedar.
“About Firescape. Your Mate came and took her away just before you sent for me....“
She nods. “And you’re worried about her. Sweet. Don’t be worried. She’s fine. He’s only going to ask her some questions. Like I’m asking you. That’s all. Now, tell me some more about these aliens. Did they really cut off your food supply?”
“Yeah. They took a piece of land we call the Farm. My folks run it for produce. Train apprentice farmers, grow fruit and nuts and greens mostly. The aliens drove them off at gunpoint. Kaymart and Bags — they’re my folks — they’re real worried about the crops. All the aliens have done so far is trample on them. They’re sure not taking care of them. Kaymart — she’s sort of our all-purpose scientist — she experiments with new strains of vegetables. So we can grow more food in less space which will be seriously helpful as the population grows.” I stop myself. “Of course, if John Makepeace has his way, the Gam Saan isn’t going to have any population growth.”
“Makepeace,” she repeats and nods. “You catch any other names?”
“Yeah. Gino, Ty. There was this guy with outrageous pecs, too, but I didn’t get his name. Oh, and they had an archaeologist with them named Dr. Hollowell. Never met him, though. They captured me and Firescape. Ty helped us get away, so I guess they’re not all greedy SOBs.”
“Greedy SOBs,” Captain Ahab repeats and looks real thoughtful. “And you’re pretty sure they mean to open the area up to the outside?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s a surely. John Makepeace was real clear about that. They got Backers — people where they come from with lots of money. And if they can show them some salvaged treasures, they figure they’ll get more money and salvage more treasures and bring in more people and-“
“And then the whole cycle starts all over again,” she murmurs. Then, she changes the subject drastically. “You have to try real hard to get your woman pregnant?”
Try real hard? My pants tighten. “We just, uh, did the usual things and she got pregnant.”
“I been trying to get pregnant,” she confides. “But no luck. Don’t know whether it’s the First Mate or me. The Islanders, they expect me to have an heir. Problem is, if I pick another Islander to be Number One, I’ll have to give up this Mate, ‘cause that’s how it is when you’re Captain, and that would be a pretty tough thing for me to do.”
She smiles. Even her smile’s got ovaries.
“Mate’s a hell of a guy.” She fingers the collar of my coat. “You wear an awful lot of clothes, Taco Del. Why don’t you take some of them off?”
She tugs the coat off my shoulder and it rattles. “What was that?”
Here we go again. “My spirit rattle.” I pull it out and show it to her right up front. “I gotta get this rattle and a ceremonial pipe and a vest to the sacred Mountain real soon, or all hell is gonna break loose in the Gam Saan.”
“What’s this got to do with the aliens?”
“The aliens want to throw the moldering bones of 5,000 Ohlone Indians into the Bay. Only if they do this, the Ohlone spirits will just disappear — poof! And then there’s this Red Dragon Wizard named Chen who wants to grab the Ohlone magics — that’s this stuff — and use them to lord it over everybody — living or dead. I got one chance of stopping any of this and that’s to get these magics to the sacred Mountain they came from. It’s the only way to stop Chen from getting his hands on them and save the Ohlone spirits from Ultimate Annihilation. The longer I stay here, the closer Chen gets to becoming an Immortal and the closer John Makepeace gets to rolling the bones.”
Ahab sits back and gives me this long look.
While she is doing this, I try to assess the situation. I’d have to be totally jingbing not to see where all that stuff about getting pregnant and Islander expectations and too much clothes is going. I am facing a decision of scriptural proportions, which is — what am I willing to sacrifice for this muy righteous quest?
I return Ahab’s long look. I gotta admit, there are ways in which "sacrifice" isn’t quite the right word.
Then I think of Jade. Maybe "betrayal" is the right word.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” she asks.
I nod.
She leans toward me again and looks right into my eyes. My hair stands on end. A bit more than that stands on end when she kisses me full on the mouth.
This is it, Taco, I think. You got one big decision to make, here.
Ahab pulls away and smiles again, sultry and slow. “You know, you’re real cute, and I’m willing to bet making a baby with you would be a hoot, but I gotta have a mind for the gene pool, honey, and you’re just plain crazy.”
She gets up then and goes and opens her door. There are two guards right outside, waiting to escort me back to the holding pen.
“I hope my Number One has better luck with your lady friend,” she says, as I’m led away.
Her Number One, as I recall through my haze of stunned relief, was going to ask Firescape a few questions just like Ahab was going to ask me a few questions. The very thought makes me more crazy than Captain Ahab thinks I already am. Crazy enough to try something. So, as my escort escorts me down the spiral stair with me in front and them behind, I do somethin
g muy loco. I turn, give the foremost escort a good shove, then grab the inside railing and swing on over.
It’s a ten foot drop before I land on a lower portion of the spiral with a loud clang. Adrenaline pushes me down the stairs as fast as my miraculously unbroken legs will carry me. Faster, even — I’m leaping stairs by the time I hit bottom.
First thing I see is a door to the outside, which I kick open. Second, I see the dark corridor that leads into the lighthouse annex, where the holding room is. I disappear into it. Lastly, I tuck myself into an even darker recess and begin to Chouyan.
The escort hits bottom about five seconds later. They see the open door and barge out into the darkening fog without so much as a glance at the corridor. With them gone, I dart out and take a quick peek into The Bridge. No luck. I go back into the annex and try the holding room, next, praying, among other things, that the Mate has already taken Firescape back there.
One prayer is answered; there’s no guard. The door has an iron throw-bolt on the outside, I notice, though there’s not so much as a knob on the inside. Definitely a room of Limited Purpose.
I throw the bolt and slip in. The knighties are immediately on their feet. No Firescape — my heart does a Titanic.
Lou gets up grinning. “Good timing, Taco,” he says. “We were jutht trying to come up with a plan. You got one?”
The only plan I got for yours truly is to find Firescape. I say as much. “The rest of you try to lay hands on some kind of weapons and find Hoot, although, most likely, he’ll find you. We need to get the Vespas and zhou the hell out of this place.”
“What about Rollerskate and Mushu?” asks one of Firescape’s girls — her name’s Fresca.
“Try to find where the doctor hangs and get them out, if you can, but if we get the rest of us together and can’t find them....”
“Understood,” says Fresca, and looks grim.
We split up. They go outside, where the sky has gone from pewter to leaden gray. I stay in. I decide pretty quickly I can’t do this alone, so I take a moment to get down on my knees on the floor of the holding room. I pray like I have never prayed before in my whole life. I pray for smarts, for wisdom, for intuition, for divine intervention. And while I pray, I break a whole bunch of Doug needles under my nose.
What I get is a nose vision of Ahab’s rooms. It tells me something I don’t expect. I been thinking that since the Mate is, well, a mate, he’d most likely share quarters with his Captain. But when I envision Ahab’s rooms, I realize that there is nothing remotely male in there, at least not permanently. The Captain’s quarters, says my nose vision, are the Captain’s quarters.
The vision takes me out of there, onto the landing and back to the spiral stair. My brain wants to look down, but my nose says to look up, ‘cause there’s that whole other floor just above the Captain’s.
And that’s where I go, following my vision back into the lighthouse and up the spiral stair, past The Bridge, past the floor where Captain Ahab is. Before I can quiver myself into a puddle, I manage to make it up to the third floor landing and step off. Like the Captain’s level, this one has a circular gallery with a series of doors. These rooms will be smaller than the ones down on the Captain’s level, but probably the same odd shape.
I pick a door and go to it and listen. Nada. I go to the next. Zero. I go to the third. I hear the murmur of voices from within. Shaking like the Regency Palace in a 4.8 temblor, I try the door. It’s not locked. I open it as quick as I can and step inside.
I find myself looking right at Jade. She is sitting on a trunk facing me, her face golden in the lamp light, her eyes raised to the First Mate, who is standing over her, flexing his pecs. He’s talking, but I don’t wait around to hear what he’s saying. I grab the first heavy object in reach and go for him with it.
The heavy object happens to be a foot stool (at least, I think it’s a foot stool — it’s got three legs which are too short to qualify it to be anything else). It’s a very heavy object, as it happens, and throws me way off balance so that it, and not me, is leading the attack on the Mate.
He turns just as I reach him and the foot stool catches him in the chest, which is a good deal lower than where I’d meant it to catch him. He makes a good, satisfying oof! anyway, loses his balance and goes down against the trunk, which Jade has hastily vacated.
“Del!” she cries and starts toward me, but the Mate grabs her ankle and drops her. She flips over and starts kicking at him, but he’s every bit as strong as he looks. Her feet don’t get anywhere near their target.
It’s up to me this time.
I glance around the room, panicking and trying not to. I know that in a moment like this, I really gotta see what I’m looking at. What I see is that this place has a wood stove, too, and that next to the wood stove is a box of, well, wood.
I lay both hands on a piece of this and go for the Mate. He is bent half over, Jade kicking and squirming in his arms as he tries to straighten up. He’s fumbling with something in his belt and I realize with a cold shot of terror that it’s a knife.
I got no time left and no options, ‘cause in the next second, he’s got it out of his belt. I charge, split log in my hands. The knife whispers past Jade’s neck and she cries out, which wreaks havoc on my nerve endings. The knife comes up, but the hilt is caught in Jade’s hair. She screams and I take a swing.
I connect. The Mate roars, the knife flies and I swing again, this time at his head.
He ducks, but Jade kicks his shin. When his head comes up, I swing a third time. Third time, as they say, is a charm. The wood catches him in the side of the head and he sags. In two shakes, Jade is out from underneath him and in my arms.
“Mi Corazon,” I whisper in her shell-like ear and she sighs and trembles a little. “Are you alright?” I ask.
“Dui. You?”
I wonder if she knows anything about my brief encounter with Captain Ahab. I look down into her face, but don’t see anything but relief and love. Naturally, I kiss her.
We have little time for this sort of thing, however. Unlike in the videos, where you can count on your adversary being out long enough for a tender and passionate reunion, reality’s got no such perks. Already, Number One is groaning and merely groggy.
We flee.
“He bribed his way over,” Firescape pants, as we scamper down the stairs. “Makepeace. He gave them clothes and food and all kinds of stuff to let him squat on the backside of the Island long enough to repair the Bridge. He made all kinds of promises, too, about what he’d bring next time. He passed himself off as some sort of trader. That’s why all the questions — they didn’t want to hear that their windfall was going to backfire on 'em.”
An interesting mix of metaphors. Through which one thing is clear: the Islanders don’t think of Makepeace as an enemy... yet.
We hit the bottom of the staircase at a dead run. The bottom landing is a pool of light, which we dash across straight through the Doorway to Freedom. We do this without thinking, ni dong. Especially without thinking that there might be someone waiting for us when we come out into the dark of another night.
There is someone, though, and we are both yanked to a sudden stop to find gun muzzles in our backs.
“Move,” rasps a voice in my ear and we do.
I glance at Firescape. She glances back, looking more defeated than I’ve ever seen her.
There are two of them, both dressed in the thick, fisher coats of the Captain’s rabble-guard. They nudge us back into the lighthouse where we take a left turn and enter the annex. Back to the holding room with us, I guess.
Only I’m wrong. We go right past the holding room and out a door at the very end of the annex. We’re on a cliff-side walk now, with a line of trees to our left and a railing to our right. Below is roaring surf. I wonder if that’s where our escort intends us to end up.
But we keep on walking, moving away from the shoreline eventually. We pass a number of Islanders who give us no more than an interest
ed glance, or in Firescape’s case, an interested leer. Even in the semi-dark, she is a sunrise. Wherever we’re going, I’m glad we go there together.
We come to a long, low building that was white once upon a time. Our escort nudges us up a short, rickety flight of stairs and into what feels like a warehouse or a barracks. There’s no light at first; we wait while our guards fire up an oil lamp.
While one of them fumbles with the lamp, I try to make conversation.
“Look,” I say, “could you at least tell us where you’re taking us? What you’re going to do with us?”
The one with the lamp makes a sudden chopping gesture and his partner grunts out, “Face front ‘n move,” and spins me about with the muzzle of his gun. The lamp flares and we are prodded forward again to an inner door.
“Open it,” says the talkative one.
I do. On the other side of the door is an open warehouse room. In the middle of the room, beneath a dim light, are nine Vespas and six Embarcadero knighties.
I am speechless. The door closes behind us.
“Your carriage awaits, Chickpea,” Hoot says in my ear, then, “Let’s roll!” to everyone else.
He’s on his way to the scooters already, stripping off the Islander garb. I look at our other guard. Creepy Lou grins back at me from inside the hood.
Will the real merlin please stand up?
We quickly determine that Mushu and Rollerskate will head back to Embar while the rest of us go on to the Mountain. Then we mount up, Hoot riding double with me until such moment as we can retrieve his scooter, which is hidden just uphill from the mouth of the Tunnel. We open the warehouse door only enough to let out one of us at a time, then roll, single file, out into the rainy night.
It’s Hoot who leads us now; I’m just driving the bike.
The road slopes and winds most of the way down to where it meets the Bridge, so we won’t have to fire our engines until we’re almost there — unless we’re spotted. I think we’re all holding our breath during that endless roll. Every scrape and squeak our battered Vespas make sounds like thunder.
Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny Page 26
