Flying to Pieces

by Dean Ing

  Lovett and Chip traded jaundiced glances. Because there was no point in reminding the survivalist that his survival had depended on the instant reaction of a youth, Lovett said, "Why not 'big fucker,' Vic?" 'Cause Kei-friggin'-kano is a little fucker."

  Chip was appalled. "You're sure it was Keikano?"

  "It was somebody small enough that he couldn't lift anything bigger than about fifty pounds. Big guy would'a balanced a single rock that'd squash you like a bug. And who do we know that knows about the cement cover?

  Keikano." He lowered his head so that he had to look up to meet Chip's eye; took a pace to one side; took one to the other. He's wasting his time, thought Lovett. Chip probably never saw Perry Mason on TV. "Like Agatha Christie proved a hundred times, it's always the one guy it couldn't possibly be. And who's the last guy on earth we'd suspect?"

  "Why, uh-you are," Chip said pleasantly.

  "Get serious," said Myles.

  "Seriously then," said Lovett with some heat, "that's the silliest deduction I ever heard. You're offering drawing-room mysteries as the real world, Vic. Sure, it could've been Keikano, but somehow I doubt it."

  "Somehow he doubts it," Myles said to the sky. "Why?"

  "Because it might just as easily have been Chip who moved the cement cover," Lovett said, the implication making him unwilling to meet his grandson's gaze.

  "Yeah," Myles said, an unpleasant smile tugging at the edge of his beard. "That's a complication-maybe one he didn't think of."

  "Riiight. Okay, you just keep your eye on Keikano, Myles, but for God's sake don't let him know what you think. if you're right it puts him on guard, and if you're not it could drive away the best friend we've got here."

  "Shit, your kid couldn't drive him away with a stick-but from what I've seen, he probably ought to. Whaddaya say about that, kid?"

  "Nothing you want to hear. Let's hope these are the only traps Keikano set," Chip replied, stressing the schoolteacher's name.

  "Most sensible thing I've heard today," said Myles, who then stumped off down the interior steps alone. When he had gone, Chip glanced back at the fo iage where those stones had been balanced so perilously. "You think Keikano would've done that, Pop?"

  "Not for a second. There's a kind of paranoid logic in what Myles says, but it'd be simpler to have poisoned our food."

  "But then there'd be nobody to fly him off the island," Chip reflected.

  'Spoken like a true paranoid," Lovett said, and winked. "Let's get these ropes loose; I can see Reventlo standing down there, waiting with all the patience of Captain Bligh."

  Reventlo kept a jaundiced expression on first hearing what Myles and Chip had to say, but took the small acts of sabotage more seriously when Lovett confirmed that serious injury could have resulted. Sighing, he said that he'd thought about a rotating sentry duty, and that perhaps they should do more than just think about it. Then they fell to work on the cart path. y making the path somewhat sinuous to follow the path of least work, they saved a great deal of time, using machetes against shallow roots as they pulled a-few young trees down and cleared underbrush. Coop Gunther had decided that he would try to use that APU

  to start the Letoumeau, and loosely reattached it to the cart with two bolts. "This load only weighs about four hundred pounds. But if we get it as far as the road, we'll have a good idea whether we can do the same with that big engine," he said.

  And they found a few soft spots on the way, and left Mel Benteen to fill them in by hand, embedding flat limestone slabs in the thin soil. By midafternoon the crew had trundled the cart the ' ar enough to the road that Coop reckoned Pilau and his half-track could do the rest.

  Except that, when they puttered back to the council house leaving Reventio and Myles to off-load the APU from its cart, no one could locate Pilau around the building; nor Jeanclaude nor Merizo, for that matter. "He's probably in the village. We should've asked first," said Benteen, when the maintenance sheds proved untenanted.

  "Then we'll ask second," said Coop. "Merizo will know where he is."

  "Merizo may not be in high spirits right now," Benteen cautioned. "He should be in the village, too, and it occurs to me that we really ought to make a sympathy pall. I hope I can keep a straight face."

  "Let's give him a bottle of scotch," Chip said.

  "Jean-Claude will only take it away from him," Benteen objected.

  "So? Not our problem, and we get two good-guy points instead of one,"

  Chip said. When Lovett grinned and nodded the youth trotted away toward the C-47.

  Hands on hips, Benteen watched him enter the aircraft "There goes a buddiiig diplomat," she murmured at length.

  "Careful how you talk about my grandson," Lovett joked "You could use some of his subtlety," she said, with sidelong glance.

  "Meaning?"

  "Oh-he knows how to intuit how people will react. Cal it a sensitive nature."

  Thinking of his concern over Chip's odd relationship, Lov. ett bristled.

  "Bullshit! I'm sensitive. Jesus Christ, Benteen I'm sensitive as hell!"

  "Toss in a few more ear-burners while you're at it, Wade,' called Coop, who'd been standing nearby quietly. "That'l convince 'er real good."

  Lovett turned to his old buddy. "Benteen wrote the grea international dictionary of curses," he said hotly.

  Her reply was soft: "Do as I say, not as I do."

  "If I want to be a goddamn diplomat?"

  "If you'd like to be more-attractive to people," Benteei replied so gently that Coop could not have heard, then wave( as Chip came in view again.

  Thunderstruck by all that this might possibly imply, Lovet did not say another word until the four of them had scootere( to the village, and the festive changes in the place made hin forget Benteen for the moment.

  Everyone, including the children, seemed to have an appointed job in turning the village's central plaza into a show. place like a primitive county fair. Lovett realized that, as ar annual event, it had developed its traditions: a huge tree truni brought in for some unknown purpose; a circular area the siz( of a large room with a rim of stones that were being white. washed by children; even sets of steep bleacher seats flankin@ the plaza, made from poles lashed to more poles.

  "I hope Jean-Claude doesn't expect people to climb up, it those things without footrests or seatbacks," Coop said, indicating the bleachers.

  "Jean-Claude expects his villagers to do whatever he wants," Benteen said. "If be wants them to stand balanced on one foot atop those stupid poles, then they'd better learn. Ah, there's Merizo, with those women braiding cordage." They left the Cushmans and, taking the bottle from Chip, Lovett cradled it in his arm. He even remembered to put a concerned look on his face as they approached the frog voiced little man. Sensitive, that's me, he thought.

  The village women sat beside piles of brown bark fiber, twisting the stuff into skeins of thick rope that lay in their laps. Merizo was inspecting the work of each, greatly hampered by the fact that his right forearm was swollen to the size of Popeye's, cradled in a mat slung from his neck. If Merizo was sepia, his arm was polychrome. He'd picked up a few scabs on his cheek and chin as well. The hand of his good arm looked as if it had lost three rounds against a rotary gnnder.

  After seating herself cross4egged in approved fashion, Benteen looked up at Lovett. Very fast, she said, "Tell me something to say, oh glorious male. I'm only a poor female vessel, remember."

  Lovett nodded at Merizo and said, in sepulchral tones, 'Twas brilliant, and the slithy toves did somethingorother and gimbal on the whatzis, and I forget what the borograves did but it was probably a felony."

  She gave him an adoring look and said, "Thank you, W. Sensitivity. Make me laugh now and I will dice your cojones." Then she put on a long face and to Merizo she began, "Me fella stop long house belong Jean-Claude, lookoutim Merizo. Savvy Merizo bigbig hurt." There was more, most of it gibberish to Lovett, but he understood her final, "You awright?"

  Merizo was not all right by a
damned sight, and told her so for minutes, full of gestures with his good arm.

  "He says he hurts like hell. That Cushman was out to get him and only his mana, big spirit medicine, saved him. Says you must paint the bad machine with evil dots-could be an old reference to smallpox-so he'll know which one to avoid," she finished.

  "Tell him okay, but they all have the same evil tendencies, and that we've brought our own medicine for him, out of the goodness of our sensitive hearts," Lovett said, and offered up the scotch.

  Merizo, who knew from experience what was in that bottle, brightened considerably as he took it while Benteen translated. He made as if to open it with his teeth while Lovett, with gestures, made him understand that it was exclusively for Merizo and his arm. Soon Merizo had taken a healthy gulp, and then another, eyes watering from the sting.

  "Coo-wull," Chip murmured. "This is one bottle that the big guy won't get."

  "Give him a little time for it to take hold," Coop Gunther said. "Ask him how the big annual belly rub is coming along."

  This she did, and translated the answers. "It might help put him in a better frame of mind," Chip said presently, "if you told him Mr.

  Gunther's putting their big earthmover back in shape." Which Benteen did, earning a faint smile from Merizo who vented a subterranean belch and swigged again.

  It did not take long, Lovett saw, to fill a guy of Merizo's size to the scuppers. He turned as if to leave and then said abruptly to Benteen,

  "Okay, now I have my sudden afterthought. Tell him we intend to salvage some of those old airplane parts, stuff we found in the jungle, but we must transfer some heavy parts to the sheds to make the, what is it, bigbig machine, to run. We need the half-track and Pilau to7 drive it,"

  he urged.

  Benteen managed to convey their wants. Merizo waved vaguely toward the jungle and used Pilau's name in his reply, then stoppered the scotch bottle and shoved it into his waistband. When he reached down to grasp a length of cordage, he missed it twice.

  "He's a busy man, he says," Benteen reported. "Let's go before he falls on his face and decides to have spots painted on you, Wade."

  As they strode off Coop asked, "All I wanta know is, do we get the floggin' half-track?"

  "We get it if we can find it," she said. "Pilau's with a work crew up the creek a ways, cleaning the pond."

  Soon, proceeding on the scooters, they noticed fresh tread marks in the rutted track near the creek. It wasn't long before they found Pilau by the pond, tinkering with the half-track's engine. To Lovett it was transparently obvious that Pilau was working hard to keep from working.

  Four villagers pulled, shoveled, and carried an assortment of branches and muck from chest-deep water to be deposited in the jungle. Though smeared with yuchh they'did not seem to begrudge Pilau his apartheid; perhaps, thought Lovett, because he was gaining a certain status from helping Coop in the sheds.

  Benteen explained their mission. Pilau did not show much enthusiasm until she mentioned that Minister Merizo, cradling a bottle of firewater, had blessed the idea. Suddenly, then, he began with a right good will to prepare his crew for the new location. The natives washed themselves down happily enough before piling into the big vehicle which, compared to its previous condition, was now running like Deion Sanders.

  "What Pilau told them," Benteen said to Lovett as they led the half-track on their scooters, "was that Merizo's on the sauce, and the farther they can get from that, the better."

  "I take it there were no dissenters," Lovett said.

  "Not one. I believe they understand their honchos pretty well."

  "Bunch of new-age sensitive guys, huh," Lovett teased.

  "Screw you, Wade," she said.

  "First let me find some bumps to ride over," he said. "It worked for Mefizo."

  "Watch the road," she commanded, but she was laughing nonetheless, those fine breasts pressing against his back in a most satisfactory way.

  They found Coop and Reventlo taking a break, having disconnected a man's weight of engine accessories from the aft face of that big Nakajima engine. They'd covered the gaping orifices with tatters of old aircraft fabric from what they referred to as the jungle junk piles. A generator removed from an engine was one you could carry away later, Coop observed. When Pilau backed his brutish vehicle to the cart, Lovett saw an excited exchange between his friends and hurried to them, wondering what their elation was all about.

  "Five more guys, Wade," Coop beamed. "I've already unbolted the APU. If somebody'll keep 'em here 'til we can haul the cart back, we c ' an get that flakin' engine aboard now. I mean right forkin' now!"

  The APU was not much of a load for four stalwart Fundaborans, another who took one look into Lovett's face and decided menial chores were the better part of valor, and the always-energized Chip. Once she understood the drill, Benteen set the Fundaborans to dragging felled trees into deeper jungle so that they wouldn't follow the men with the cart. The Boffs hauled that little cart away at a virtual trot, Chip carrying their tiedown ropes. Because the path was twisted, there was no immediate view of the cliff or its new openings.

  There was then only the small problem of loading a halfton of engine in close quarters onto a metal cart scarcely larger than a wheelbarrow.

  They managed finally by rolling the entire crate onto its side, and onto the cart in the process. "This is one tippy bitch," Coop said, affixing both ends of two ropes to the top of the crate. "Let's see if we can get it out of here without killin' somebody."

  The shadows were long and tempers frayed before they strained and cursed the overloaded cart two hundred yards down the path. The engine swayed horrendously, though steadied by the ropes, and finally began to tip despite men fighting its inertia. It fetched up against a small palm, and heeled over at a perilous angle, the cart with two wheels in the air, the other two now bent.

  "That does it," Coop said in disgust. "It'll take hours to fix those axles."

  "We're more than halfway there. I'll get Pilau's guys; they can't see where we started from here," Chip panted, looking back up the path.

  I-oveu complained that as a dead lift, that load would be too much even for their ten men. Reventlo said he'd seen astonishing weights carried by islanders, as long as they could somehow take that load on a pole over a shoulder, and asked Chip to bring in Pilau's reserves.

  They succeeded, at last, by cutting five sapling trunks for I poles and lashing the poles beneath that crate. Pilau's crew showed no misgivings, but squatted below their poles and, with cadence called by one of them, began to stand erect while the Boff crew helped all they could. Then the ten men slowly centipeded forward down the path, muscles knotted, taking small steps. I "I'm not a lotta help," Coop muttered to Lovett. The neither," Lovett managed. He noted that all the gasping and grunting seemed to be from the visitors; the damned cadence-counter did not shut up or vary the pace until they had reached Pilau's half-track.

  Engine, accessories, cart, and APU all fitted easily into the half-track's open cargo bay and Pilau's men stood watching as Coop roped the engine in place. Lovett's exhaustion faded I the instant he turned from his Cushman seat to see the old vehicle chum forward behind him. Chip was grinning, Reventlo was grinning; even the face of the surly Myles glowed with elation.

  Dusk came as they waved Pilau back toward the C-47, their prized antique engine lurching against its lashings like a petrified sumo wrestler, Reventio swinging the cargo door wide in anticipation. They imagined that their little problem in transportation was solved until after Pilau, having backed within inches of the plane's tender hide, helped pass engine accessories to Lovett and Chip who now stood in the C-47.

  Then he got his men to tip the big engine so that one end of its crate lay inside the plane. At that point, Pilau explained to Benteen why their job was complete.

  His crew would not be of any further help in this enterprise, he told her. Jean-Claude Pelele had invoked terrible punishment for any villager who so much as touched the big
aero canoe, and that was that. His expression said, "game over."

  Male curses and Benteen's most piteous imploring did no good. The only way to get further help would be through the orders of Jean-Claude himself; and this, Reventlo would not hear of. "It's borrowing trouble,"

  he said, "and I want no further complications."

  Then, despite a few inches of upslope: "We can do it," said Coop, who flung himself hard against the crate. Reventio and the others, including Benteen, followed suit. Crate boards creaked; an inch was gained.

  "No, we bloody-well can't," Reventlo wheezed at last, as his boot soles skidded along the half-track's flooring.

  Coop looked around him, breathing heavily. "Any ideas?"

  Pilau did not understand the words, but he understood the situation. And while he was far from the fox of fable who knew many things, he was the hedgehog who knew one very, very important thing. Smiling shyly, he produced a beer bottle full of used crankcase oil from beneath the driver's seat; mimed smearing it on the floorplates and the crate's wooden skids.

  Coop Gunther slapped a palm against his forehead with the clap of a gunshot. "I've done that a hundred times," he cried, snatching the bottle, patting Pilau's shoulder.

  "You'd have thought of it," Reventlo surmised. "Tomorrow."

  The crate went in as though on wheels, proceeding more slowly as they oiled floor plates and hauled the engine further forward, still upslope, at Reventlo's urging. Lovett understood perfectly; a C-47 was a forgiving airplane but a half-ton mass far to its rear during flight would not make it happy.