The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village

by Frank Peretti

  She gave me an impatient scowl. “Long you’ve been a mate of mine, Cap, and now you don’t remember? Been touching the rum again?”

  “Well . . .” I looked around the table, at every other set of eyes. “The food’s getting cold.”

  We acted normal, passing eggs and French toast around, enjoying it as best we could, and talking about our plans for the day. Except Daniel. As Andi the Pirate stabbed her food with her knife, chewed rudely, and drooled, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He reached for his knife—and Brenda intercepted that whole notion before he could touch it.

  But at some point I didn’t notice, Andi resorted to her fork and wiped her drool with her napkin. “How far to that coral reef?”

  Tank answered, “Just around the point, over on the west side.”

  “Gotta snorkel today. Can’t miss it.”

  Andi again?

  Brenda was ready for a retry. “What’s that on your chin?”

  Andi found the cream pitcher again and used it as a mirror. “Oh!” She laughed with embarrassment. “Sorry. I guess I got carried away this morning.” She promptly went to the head—the washroom—to wash it off.

  And so began a perfectly glorious day that ended much worse.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Kidnapped

  All day we enjoyed the pleasure of repeating the Pugh family’s vacation: snorkeling, hiking to the top of the island’s highest mountain, and exploring the closely arranged, meandering village of St. Marie to the sound of Caribbean music. We had dinner in a family-run seafood shop on the waterfront and could see the Barbee Jay through the front windows, rocking ever so slightly on the end of her anchor chain. Whether any of this had anything to do with the loss of millions in investors’ money we did not discover.

  As dusk approached and we sat on the wharf enjoying ice cream bars, Andi was restless. “Before we go back to the boat, how about walking the beach?”

  The rest of us were tired, ready to call it a day. Daniel was already asleep, his head in Brenda’s lap. Nevertheless, Andi was being herself, and anything that could help her remain in that condition suited me. I steeled myself against my own exhaustion and said, “I’ll go with you. But we have to be back before sunset.”

  She jumped up. “Come on!” Before I could reach walking speed she’d run from the wharf to the sand below, sending the tiny sand crabs scurrying. True to her plan, she kicked off and carried her shoes.

  I made my way along after her, staying close to the wet sand near the water for better firmness under my feet, and I left my shoes on, thank you. She slowed her pace, I caught up, and we walked together, stepping around tiny crab burrows and watching a pair of pelicans nabbing fish from the waves. Entirely therapeutic, or so I hoped.

  As we rounded a point, Andi reached into her pocket, drew out her oversized gold earring, and looped it through her ear.

  “Well now,” I said, “where did you get that?”

  “From Brenda’s stash of stuff.”

  Wishing to avoid any further debate on right and wrong and whether or where a basis might be found for them, I didn’t question her ethics. “But of course there’s a risk involved, as we’ve observed—”

  She abruptly stopped in her tracks and assumed a familiar roguish posture. “And from what tired old scow did you scrape that one? I’ve a right to me druthers, same’s do you!”

  I winced. Oh no.

  She swaggered in front of me like bar scum wanting a brawl. “Learn if you can, laddie. There’s no right or wrong in this world, only what a man makes for himself, you can lay to that!”

  So we were into it again—whoever we were.

  She turned her back on me and stomped away with a masculine gait. I followed, temper rising above discretion. “Andi—or whoever you are, I don’t give a hoot—that will be quite enough!”

  There was a snap and a rustle in the trees beside us. I saw something stirring, most likely an animal. But a large one.

  “What are you looking at?” Andi asked.

  “Nothing. Now you—” As I looked at her, she was Andi again. “Andi?”

  Innocently, she answered, “What?”

  “Andi?”

  She replied impatiently. “What?”

  I was stymied between three courses. What was I to be: her employer, her father, or her therapist?

  “You are acting so weird,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  I rubbed my forehead, admittedly to hide my eyes. “Wouldn’t it be fair for me to know from moment to moment to whom I’m speaking?”

  She looked around. “It’s just us, Professor.”

  “So . . . Andi. May we talk about that earring?”

  Her hand went nervously to her ear. “Okay, okay. Brenda’s gonna be ticked off at me.”

  “You’re quite right.”

  “But . . .” A slight sneer curled her lip. “I been through heavier storms than what she can bring, and I’ll weather this one, too! Besides, didn’t I tell ya there’s no right or wrong in this world, no true or false, and that’s the way of it?”

  Since when did Andi agree with me on that subject? “Ben, I presume?”

  A hushed voice came from the trees. “Aye, that’s her!”

  I saw no one, but someone was there. “We have company,” I whispered urgently.

  She pulled in close to me, crouching and wary. “Aye,” she replied in a stealthy whisper, “and it’s more than a creature afoot. I might know that voice.”

  I shot her a sideways glance. “You know who it is?”

  Andi looked back at me. “Who who is?”

  I gave up trying to talk to her. I just grabbed her hand. “We’re getting out of here!”

  With a barbaric scream, a filthy band of hairy, sweating scoundrels with muscular arms, sashes, pistols, scarved heads, flashing cutlasses, and grinning teeth burst from the jungle and hemmed us in against the sea, closing upon us like vultures upon carrion.

  Pirates! At least a dozen. It was unreal. It was frightening.

  Of course, I reminded myself, it had to be a paid prank—a bonus feature of the St. Clemens pirate show. Perhaps someone had put them up to this. I managed to fake a good-humored smile.

  Andi didn’t smile at all—she snarled, facing down an oversized caricature in a black leather vest and three-cornered pirate hat. “Rock, if it’s a meeting the cap wants, he coulda sent a note!”

  The caricature pointed at the earring and exchanged a nod with a bare-chested monster of superfluous muscle. “Aye, that’s her!”

  “Let’s take her!” said the monster.

  The other pirates burst into laughter and closed in on us like collapsing sandcastle walls.

  Andi reached for a sword she was no longer wearing, found nothing, and looked at me, awakened. “What’s happening?”

  The pirate Rock grabbed her. Three more pirates took hold of her arms and legs while a fifth threw a blanket over her. I spun about as pirates closed in, ready to inflict injury any way I could, but it was useless. The last I saw of Andi, she was writhing and kicking, wrapped in a blanket and tied with rope, carried by two laughing pirates. That was a millisecond before a blanket swallowed me and I, too, was helpless in a woolen cocoon and borne aloft.

  I could still hear Andi’s muffled screaming.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The Predator

  When our captors untied our bonds and lifted away the blankets, it was only because we were in a wooden boat and there was nowhere for Andi and me to run without the ability to walk on miles and miles of open water. Dead ahead, in silhouette against the red sky, lay our destination: a three-masted, square-rigged pirate ship right out of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel—or the pirate show on St. Clemens. Andi, now herself and immersed in the fantasy, drank in the sight. I could only hope Tank and Brenda had arranged all this. If not, they would have no idea where we were, and worse yet, these ruffians, whatever their game, weren’t kidding.

  Rowing with precision, our s
urly hosts brought the boat alongside. Andi scurried up the rope ladder and over the bulwark with no help. I climbed well enough, motivated by my preference for a larger boat over a smaller one.

  The ship smelled of oak and tar and creaked with the swells in deep wooden tones. The rigging was stretched with spiderlike precision, and the masts, yards, and sails, now furled, were worthy of a tour in themselves, but we were granted no time to gawk. Still prisoners, and treated as such, we were hurried along toward a door below the quarterdeck—the portal, I supposed, that led to the Captain’s Quarters.

  I was right. Inside, under the low-beamed ceiling, sitting at a map table under lamplight, was the captain, a steely-eyed character from another age who had black curls down to his shoulders and a beard to his breast. I came within an inch of laughing, but thought better of it. He gestured with his hand and his men placed us firmly in two chairs facing him across the table.

  He studied us a moment—mostly Andi—and then, of all things, began to sing what I guessed was an old sea shanty.

  “Haul on the bowlin’, the fore and maintop bowlin’ . . .”

  And to my surprise, Andi gave the musical answer:

  “Haul on the bowlin’, the bowlin’ haul!”

  The captain rose to his feet for the next line.

  “Haul on the bowlin’, the packet is a-rollin’ . . .”

  And Andi, eyes widening at her own knowledge, sang the response,

  “Haul on the bowlin’, the bowlin’ haul!”

  The captain cocked an eyebrow and exchanged a look with his men.

  To which Andi took on a scowl that wasn’t hers. “And what of it, Cap? Set your course with tremblin’ or you’ll stay in irons. The wind only blows when I whistle.” Then she marveled and looked at me. “What did I say?”

  “By the powers, it’s Ben!” rumbled the monster, and the room filled with a tension that even I could feel.

  The captain stared at Andi’s gold earring, and then at her. “So, might you tell me where you are?”

  She answered as if she’d known it all her life. “Aboard the Predator.” She gasped, stunned. She looked around the room at the costumed cutthroats, and I saw recognition in her eyes.

  So did the captain. “So you been here before, lass. You know these faces.”

  Of course, she had to have seen some of these thugs as characters in the pirate show, but we never heard their names. Even so . . .

  She looked up at the oversized caricature in leather vest and three-cornered pirate hat. “Rock.”

  Rock snorted a chuckle and nodded.

  “And . . .” She recognized the muscular monster. “Scalarag.”

  He gave a mocking bow. “M’lady!”

  She stared, then pointed at the ship’s token bald guy, the one with the bushy mustache and oversized saber. “Norwig . . . the Bean!”

  Norwig cocked an equally bushy eyebrow and looked at the captain.

  She named the other three: the mousy little raisin was Spikenose—he served as the ship’s purser and cook; the morose man with the scar across his face was, naturally, Harry the Scar; the flamboyant Doug Fairbanks throwback was Jean-Pierre DuBois.

  As for the captain: “And you’re . . . Captain Thatch.” She looked at me. “How . . . how did I know that?”

  As if I had an answer. “I’m sure we’d all like to know.”

  “You bought that earring,” said the captain. “We were missing it, and there was talk around St. Clemens about you. The rest we tried guessing, and we guessed right.” The captain extended his hand. “I’ll take that earring now.”

  She shied back.

  “Let him have it!” I advised, touching her shoulder to steady her.

  She removed it from her ear and handed it over.

  He smiled, a glint of gold in his teeth, and touched a button on an incongruous intercom. “We have it. We’ll see if it talks.” He tried putting the earring on his own ear but only grew impatient. “Here,” he said, handing it to DuBois. “You and Sparks make an inquiry.”

  DuBois hurried out the door.

  The captain gestured to Rock, who produced a three-cornered hat from a cabinet. “You want to be a pirate, lass, you need to look the part,” said Rock. “See how this suits you.” He placed it on her head.

  A little big. She started to take it off—

  The captain cautioned her with a wiggle of his finger to keep it on.

  There followed an odd space of time, a silence as if we were all waiting for something.

  It finally came, though clearly unexpected: the horrible scream of a soul in agony from somewhere in the hull of the ship. It made us all start. The sounds of a commotion followed: shouts, pounding, more screaming. I could plainly read fear and consternation in the eyes of the men as they looked to the captain.

  An electronic warble sounded from the captain’s desk. He reached, pressed a button on the intercom. “Yes?”

  “Captain!” came a voice. “You’d better get down here!”

  With a muffled curse, the captain dashed out of the room. Through the door he left open we could see him dropping through the companion to the decks below.

  I eyed the intercom. “Interesting device you have there . . . for the seventeenth century.”

  Any attempt at levity was lost on these men. They responded by tightening their circle around Andi and me, fingering their knives, swords, pistols.

  We could hear no small row between the captain and someone else down below. That someone would soon be walking the plank, it seemed . . . or keelhauled, or flogged, or hung from the yardarm . . . or given a pink slip and a severance package, depending on the century.

  The next thing we heard was the captain’s boots thundering on the deck below and up the wooden stairs of the companion. He crossed the deck like an approaching thunderstorm, burst through the cabin doorway, and went directly to Andi, snatching the hat from her head and dashing it to the floor. “Seems it don’t become you!”

  Another volley of screams, this time muffled by a few more bulkheads, found its way through the door.

  “Close that door!” the captain hollered.

  Spikenose slammed it shut.

  The captain fumed, paced, looked at his men, looked at us, and finally, with only slight control of his temper, told Andi, “Lassie, it looks like you and your father are going to be with us a while!”

  “Uh, well, I’m not—” I stopped. At this moment, what could be less important? “If I may ask, just what do you want with us? I don’t understand any of this, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  The captain sat on the edge of the table and took a dagger from his belt. He played with it, stabbing it into the table and giving it a wicked twist. “Memory, Mr. . . .”

  “McKinney. James McKinney, PhD.”

  He looked at Andi.

  “Andrea Goldstein, assistant to Professor McKinney,” she said.

  The captain looked down the blade of his dagger as he continued to auger its tip into the tabletop. “Well, it matters little now who you are. What matters is what the lass remembers, and you’ll be staying here, looking around, seeing our faces and seeing our ship until she does remember.”

  “Remember what?” I asked.

  He gave the dagger a flip and caught it again by its handle. “Everything.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  The Techno-Lair

  By the time Tank, Brenda, and Daniel grew concerned, borrowed flashlights from the seafood restaurant, and found the site of our abduction, the darkness had closed in and the tide would soon follow. Hurriedly, they examined the signs left in the sand even as the waves were steadily licking them up.

  Brenda tried to count the different prints. “Man, I dunno . . . looks like six, maybe.”

  “This might be number seven,” said Tank, pointing with his light. “Looks a bit smaller. It’s got a different tread, you see that?”

  “I see enough. We’re in deep”—she noticed young Daniel nearby—“poop. Whatev
er we were lookin’ for, it found us.”

  “So why’d they only grab Andi and the professor?”

  Brenda shined her light in a nervous circle. “Who says they aren’t after us, too? Daniel! Stay close!” Her beam landed on a clear trail of tracks leading from and back into the jungle.

  “Hoo boy . . .” said Tank.

  Brenda used the word she avoided the last time, and they all went in together, crossing the sand and stepping into the trees and the tangle, ducking under limbs, pushing aside vines. The dark under the jungle canopy was nearly total.

  It was just as they began to question the wisdom of this exploration that they emerged on the other side of what was a narrow isthmus and found themselves on another beach.

  Now Daniel, like a hound catching a scent, hurried over the sand, tracing the tracks toward the surf. Brenda kept her light on Daniel as they ran after; Tank beamed his light up and down the beach, knowing they were wide open and vulnerable.

  “Tank!” Brenda called. “He’s on it! He’s found it!”

  They hurried to where the child had halted, and there, in the beam of their lights, was a clear groove in the sand formed by the keel of a boat that was once there. Their lights would only reach so far over the surf, lighting up the closest waves breaking, and beyond that, nothing.

  In a way, we got our tour of the Predator. With Captain Thatch, Rock, and Scalarag as tour guides—to put it kindly—we walked the upper decks by the light of carried lamps and learned the locations and names of the forecastle, poop deck, and quarterdeck, the functions of the foremast, mainmast, and mizzenmast, and the sails affixed to each mast with their respective yards, the main, top, and topgallant. All of this was undoubtedly interesting, but Captain Thatch’s main interest was Andi and trying to draw out what, by whatever means, she knew.

  Which was a lot. She could already tell Thatch the names of the decks, the masts, the blocks, and rigging. She could name the cannons by the size of the balls they fired: twelve, twenty-four, and sixty-eight pounders. She blithely referred to the sixty-eight-pounders by their nickname—“smashers”—and when Thatch said the orlop deck was our next stop, she knew how to get there, leading the way down the companion steps, through several decks, and to the deck immediately above the hold, a dark, low-ceilinged space below the ship’s waterline.