As he fell toward the outriggers moored below, the sun seemed to come out behind him. It was a sun full of thunder, as the shack, the wooden planks on which it sat, and a portion of the surrounding walkways erupted in a ball of white-hot flame. Screams filled the air as other shanty dwellers, explosively roused from their sleep, staggered out of their thrown-together homes to gape at the fireball that was rising in their midst.
Wahgi landed hard in an open outrigger, twisting his ankle and hitting his jaw on the side of the narrow craft. But there was nothing wrong with the rest of him. Carefully placing the briefcase in the bottom of the boat, he untied it and began stroking toward shore, toward Ela Beach. As he paddled, the phone jabbered frantically at him. He ignored it, occasionally looking back over his shoulder. Where the shack had been was a flamelined hole in the elevated walkway. The supporting stilts had been blown off right down to the water, like mangroves that had been logged. There was no sign of his interim home, of the other two men who had lived there, or of the three heavily armed intruders who had burst in on him.
They had not paused to talk or to ask questions, Wahgi reflected. They had simply shot their way in. He was sorry for Gembogl and Kuikui, and angry at what had happened to them, but he now knew one thing for certain: The briefcase and its contents were unquestionably worth a million kina.
Maybe two million, based on what had just happened.
Safely ashore on the narrow city beach, he abandoned the outrigger to the vagaries of the harbor currents. Exhausted and out of breath, his left ankle throbbing, he threw himself down under a coconut palm and opened the briefcase.
“. . . are you there, Wahgi! Can you hear—”
“What happened?” he asked von Maltzan. “What did you do?”
“Those gunmen were after the briefcase,” the foreigner explained. He did not need to do that. Of course the gunmen were after the briefcase. Did he still think Wahgi was stupid? “I used the phone to activate the grenade you threw at them. Where are you? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am all right. But my friends are not.”
“I’m sorry. Now will you listen to me and not hang up anymore? If you do, I won’t be able to help you.”
“Never mind that.” Tasting wet saltiness in his mouth, Wahgi felt for his teeth. One was missing, knocked out when he had hit the side of the outrigger, and blood was trickling over his lip and down his chin. To a Huli it was nothing more than an inconvenience. “I want my reward.”
“Yes, yes, of course, but—”
“I want it left for me in a paper-wrapped package at the main airport cargo pickup counter, with my name on it. By tomorrow morning.”
“It’ll be there, Wahgi. No problem. But please, do one thing for me. Leave this phone on in case you run into trouble again. That way I can help you. Keep it close at all times. Other people want what is in the briefcase, and as you have seen this morning—”
“It is night here.”
“All right, all right. As you have seen this night, these others are willing to kill to get it.”
“I will not turn the phone off again,” Wahgi promised.
“Good! Tomorrow morning, at the Jackson’s Airport cargo counter. Look for your package.”
The voice went away, but the green light remained on. Wahgi surmised that it indicated the line was still open to him if he needed to use it. Looking around, he sought and found a picnic bench across the street from the Ela Beach hotel. In an emergency, he could run in that direction. Port Moresby hotels always had guards on duty around the clock. They would not interfere in a fight to help him, but their presence might well discourage an attacker from using a gun in the presence of armed witnesses.
Stretching out on the warm sand beneath the table, he felt he had done all that he could until morning. Dreaming of a million kina and sorrowing for his dead kinsmen, he fell into a deep and placid sleep.
Parker put the silencer to the side of the sleeping man’s head and pulled the trigger once. There was a soft phut followed by the sound of bone splintering. Blood spurted briefly, quickly slowing to a trickle. Unscrewing the silencer, he placed it and the gun back in their respective jacket holsters.
“Poor dumb blackfella,” he murmured emotionlessly to his companion as the other man picked up the briefcase. “Never had a clue what he was dealing with.”
McMurray murmured something into the telephone in the briefcase before turning it off and closing the case. “Probably thought he was safe, he did. Wouldn’t have understood if you’d taken the time to try explaining it to him.” After a quick look around to ensure that they had not been observed at work, they headed for the car parked in the nearby beach lot. “Tracked the phone’s location via satellite search from Zurich, and its internal GPS pinpointed it for us. There was never any place for the sorry bugger to hide.”
“Not as long as he left the phone on active sending.” Parker opened the door on the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, nodding at the briefcase as he did so. “The bonds still in there?”
His colleague nodded. “Doesn’t look like they’ve been touched. A hundred and sixty million Swiss francs’ worth of convertible paper.” His eyes gleamed. “It’s bloody tempting, you know.”
“Now mate, none o’ that.” The engine on the rented car coughed to life. “You know they’d send blokes like us after us if we were to try and disappear with that.”
“It was just a thought, Eddie.”
“Well, blow it out your arse. Let’s get back to the hotel. First Qantas out of this shithole tomorrow, we’re on it.”
Gembogl watched the men drive away. When he was sure they had left, he ran to the picnic table. He saw instantly that Wahgi was dead. The car had stopped at the petrol station across the street, and he hurried across the road toward it. While one of the men pumped fuel, he slipped inside the station and in a frantic, hushed stream of words began relating what had happened to the silent attendant. The man was a Huli and therefore, however distant, a kinsman.
The knock at the hotel door the following morning prompted McMurray to grab his pistol and station himself flat against the wall to one side of the portal. Nodding to his partner, Parker approached cautiously and without a word put his eye to the peephole set in the door. The tiny Fresnel lens showed a small black woman clad entirely in white standing on the other side. She was holding an empty laundry basket.
“Who is it?” McMurray asked tightly.
Making a disgusted face, Parker whispered to his colleague. “It’s a maid.” Nodding sourly, McMurray put his automatic pistol back in its shoulder holster.
The woman on the other side spoke matter-of-factly when Parker cracked the door. “You are checking out this morning, sir. We have a big tour group coming in, and I need to take away your dirty linen.”
“But we’re not ready to—oh, all right!” He slipped the door’s security latch. “But be bloody quick about it!” To McMurray he muttered, “We don’t need any of the help complaining to management that we’re keeping them from doing their job.” Curtly, he pulled the door inward.
The maid came in. Calling her diminutive would have flattered her. She was maybe four foot six, but perfectly formed. Cradling her basket, she headed toward the beds as Parker closed the door behind her, enjoying the sight of her compact ass twitching from side to side beneath the tight white maid’s uniform.
A dozen very short, very muscular men burst through the half-open door like circus midgets shot from a single cannon. They had wild kinky hair that spread out from the sides of their heads, skin dark as bittersweet chocolate, and physiques like miniature linebackers. They also wielded knives and machetes like the exploded components of a berserk threshing machine.
Parker was hacked to bits before he could react. McMurray went down with his hand on the stock of his machine pistol, but before he could find the trigger a bamboo arrow caught him in the throat and went completely through his neck. A foot of fire-hardened shaft emerged from the back. He had
time enough to marvel at the incongruity of it. A bloody great arrow! In this day and age!
“Who . . . ?” he gasped before the blood welling up in his throat choked off any further speech.
He did not recognize the young man who came forward to stand over him.
“You killed my friends. Wahgi and Kuikui.” He gestured at the watching coterie of small but ferocious men who filled the room. The maid had left to stand watch outside. “This is payback for what you did to them. A friend who worked at the petrol station where you stopped last night after doing your killing owed my village some old payback. We got on his motorbike and followed you here. Madani who works for the hotel is an Engan, not Huli, so we now owe her tribe big payback. For compensation we will give her village ten pigs for her help this morning in sneaking us into the hotel.”
“Ten—pigs . . . ?” McMurray choked. He was fast bleeding to death.
He did not get the opportunity to do so. The oldest man in the group—short, white-haired, but straight as an arrow—approached and with a single swing of his bloody machete, cut the European’s head half off. He apologized to his companions for not making a better job of it. He was not as strong in the arms as he used to be, he explained.
As they were making preparations to leave, something began beeping within the briefcase. Opening it, Gembogl removed the strange telephone. Remembering how Wahgi had used it, he pushed the appropriate button.
“Parker?” a voice inquired. “You should be departing with the case in an hour or so. Don’t leave any tracks. I know you’re not in London or New York, but there’s no reason to make things easy for the local police, no matter how primitive they might be, verstehen? You never know—one of them might even know how to spell Interpol. I’ll be expecting you tomorrow at the airport.” The voice paused briefly. “Parker, are you there?”
“It looks valuable.” Curious, the wiry elder examined the phone.
“Who said that?” The voice on the other end grew alarmed. “Parker, who’s in there with you and McMurray?”
“What should we do with it?” Another man was using a bedsheet to wipe blood from his machete.
“It may be valuable, but it killed Wahgi and Kuikui.” Raising his arm and ignoring the sudden stream of frantic babble that spouted from the device, Gembogl brought his own blade down sharply. State-of-the-art it might be, but the satellite phone was no match for a honed machete. It splintered into fragments of metal and plastic.
As they were about to leave, Gembogl picked up the briefcase. “And this, what should we do with this? Destroy it also?”
The old man regarded it narrowly. “It killed Wahgi and Kuikui too—but you said it was worth a million kina?” The young man nodded. “Then we will keep it, and hide it until we can understand how to make it work for us. Just like we are learning to make other things from the outside world work for us.” Turning, he shook his woolly white head as he walked toward the door. “These white people make many magical things work for them, but between you and me, man to man, I will still take a good machete over a device that talks through the air any day.”
SUZY Q
“Oh Suzy Q. Oh Suzy Q. Oh Suzy Q, yes I love you, oh Suzy Q.”
Puccini it’s not, but certain song lyrics stick in the mind like gum under the desk in front of you in high school. Transcending lyricism, they become mnemonics. Ask anyone of my generation to sing you the words to “The Mickey Mouse Club Song” and see how many on the verge of senility can spout the entire rhythmic banality—hopefully with a proper modicum of embarrassment.
What does this have to do with Alien Abductions, which was the anthology this story was written for? An alien abduction, like everything else, is often so much a matter of perspective. I hesitate to call it a shaggy dog story . . .
She felt that she understood them fairly well. Under the circumstances, that was as much as could have been expected. Whether they understood her was another matter entirely.
It had been difficult at first. They did not look or sound like anything she had ever encountered before, and they had a unique, utterly distinctive smell: a cross between the pink roses in the garden and old man Charlie Woods, who lived next door and with whom she enjoyed an ongoing relationship that Joe had tacitly assented to for years. Yet in spite of their strangeness, she had found herself oddly drawn to them. But then, she had always suffered from an excess of interest in the new and exotic.
She knew she shouldn’t have gone after them. No one had the slightest idea where she was headed at the time, and now it was very likely that no one knew where she was. Her evident interest seemed to puzzle them. Whether they would have ignored her or not she did not know, but at the last minute, just as she had decided that she had seen enough and had better start back home, they had scooped her in as easily as she would have picked up a baby rabbit, and taken her with them.
Doubtless she ought to have resisted. Joe would have—but she wasn’t Joe. Deep within herself she knew that it was wrong, that she should have put up a fight, or at least called out. That she did none of those things seemed to surprise them. In their peculiar way they were as taken with her as she was with them.
Others were not so amenable.
She encountered her fellow captives inside the ship. A man was fighting and screaming as they secured him to a bench or table. The process was interesting to observe. One of the creatures held a device from which spewed what appeared to be tightly restrained ropes of light. It reminded her of the way Joe liked to eat Cheez Whiz right from the can. Friends of theirs thought it a disgusting habit, but when the two of them were playing and laughing and Cheez Whiz was flying all over the house, manners didn’t seem to matter. It had struck Suzy on more than one occasion that most people not only didn’t have much fun, they did not even know how to have fun. If one thing could be said to characterize her long relationship with Joe, it was that the two of them always knew how to have a good time.
The unknown man presently being light-strapped to the table-bench certainly wasn’t having fun. He was crying. This disturbed Suzy, and she tried to remonstrate with the busy creatures on the man’s behalf, but they ignored her. Or perhaps they simply didn’t understand. Certainly their language was entirely alien. When they crowded close around the man his blubbering dropped to a nervous whimper. Though she could sympathize with his position, his distress made no sense to Suzy. Sure, these strange beings were odd-looking, with their imposing, bloated heads and multiple arms and leprous skin. They also had very big teeth and exceptionally large, penetrating eyes. Four apiece.
So what? She knew plenty of people who were equally strange-looking, and she didn’t break down in their presence. As far as she could see, the visitors were not hurting the man. So why was he so distraught? Still, the urge to try to comfort him was strong. She felt it was up to her to share what reassurance she could from within the serenity of her own self. It was something she was very good at. Many of her and Joe’s friends had remarked on it.
When she called out to him, his moaning stopped and he looked sharply in her direction. Seeing her standing there, he looked first startled, then confused. When one of the creatures started toward her, the man began shouting at it. Unafraid, Suzy remained calm at the approach of the lumbering, toothy alien, tracking its progress from behind bright brown eyes. Finally it halted, towering over her, those sharp teeth very close. Dealing as she did with strangers every day (though none quite so strange as these), she met its quadruple gaze without flinching. One of several multiple limbs reached for her.
It urged her, gently but firmly, toward the bench. Relaxing, she allowed herself to be guided, not resisting at all. These beings had done her no harm, and she therefore saw no reason to be afraid of them. Her natural curiosity overrode any sense of fear. The compelling digits pressing against the back of her neck were warm and strong. If necessary, she could try to break free of the firm, clinging grasp—but to what end? Like the man, she was trapped inside the alien craft.
> She found herself right up next to the bench. The limb that had been pushing her steadily toward it now relaxed. She was free to step away if she wished, but instead she remained by the side of the bound man. He was watching her intently, pleading with his eyes as if he thought she might somehow be able to come to his aid. She studied his face. He looked to be older than Joe, but not by very much. A taller, slimmer version of Charlie Woods.
Though the illumination in the room was dim, with a distinct bluish tint, she found she could see clearly. In any event, it would have been impossible to miss the large, complex device that was hovering above the table. In the shadowy, accented light, two of the aliens began to make adjustments to mechanisms whose design and purpose were unfamiliar to her. Emitting a soft whine, the hovering machine began to descend. The indirect lighting suffused its surface with a dull silvery patina. His eyes drawn to the movement, the man on the bench started screaming again. Suzy failed to comprehend any reason for his profound agitation.
The device halted about a foot above the heaving, twisting chest. A bright purplish beam emerged from a small cone to strike him in the face. Almost immediately, his screaming stopped, for which Suzy was grateful. The unceasing shrieks of despair had begun to get on her nerves.
Instruments emerged from the underside of the machine, glistening and delicate. Some were made of metal, some were transparent, and the substance of others she was unable to identify. They reminded her of the tools at the garage where Joe worked. Unsurprisingly, their purpose was as unknown to her as their composition. Their functions were soon demonstrated, however, as they dipped down to swiftly and efficiently crack the recumbent man’s chest cavity. As the operation unfolded, the alien next to her, the one that had impelled her to move to the side of the bench, rarely took its multiple eyes off her. When she reacted with nothing more than quiet, polite interest to the procedure that was being performed on the table, it turned and conversed in a low rumble with the alien on its left.
Impossible Places Page 21
