Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates

by Sean Cullen

  One must make do with reading about heroic acts and selfless sacrifice and hope that will be enough to feed the soul. On that note, let’s return to the story.

  Chapter 15

  First, they went back to the kitchen and loaded their knapsacks with the food Mrs. Francis had poached from Viggo’s private larder. Soon they had all the supplies they could carry.

  Next they went to the security centre. There, Parveen did his best to plot the course of the pirate’s airship on the radar screen. The airship was still visible as a blip.

  “They’re headed north and west, up towards the Arctic Ocean.” Parveen tore a laminated map of North America off the wall, laying it flat on the card table. “They will try to save time by going in as straight a line as possible.” He plucked the stub of pencil from behind his ear and drew a line on the map. “If they continue on this course they will be heading for this group of islands here. But please understand that it is only a guess.”

  “He said Snow Monkey Island,” Mimi said. “Ever heard of it?”

  “No.” Parveen pursed his lips, thinking. “I have never heard of monkeys inhabiting an Arctic region before. macaque monkeys live in snowy climates, but they are native to Japan. My guess is that Snow Monkey Island is one of this cluster of volcanic cones here.” His small brown finger stabbed down at the map, indicating a scattering of small black dots off the coast of Victoria Island in the Amundsen Gulf.

  “We have no time to lose,” Hamish X said. “Quick! Grab whatever you can use and we’ll start after them immediately.”

  Parveen rolled the map into a tight cylinder. He found a compass, a fancy one with Global Positioning Satellite capability. It linked up to a satellite to tell one exactly where one was on the globe. While he was doing this, Hamish X outlined the plan.

  “We’ll take the boat that’s down at the docks. The fastest way is to sail up through Hudson’s Bay and then strike west. We’ll have to assume they’re heading for that island group. There’s no reason to think Cheesebeard was lying. He didn’t know we were listening. Let’s just hope the weather’s good.”

  “But what’s the plan? What’ll we do when we git there?” Mimi asked. “Just walk right in and ask ’em fer the book?”

  “And the children, too,” Hamish X pointed out. “We can’t leave them in the hands of those nasty pirates.”

  “And Mrs. Francis,” Parveen said, polishing his glasses on his sleeve. “She’s a lovely, nice lady. They can keep Viggo for all I care. He’s a big poo.”

  “Agreed,” Hamish said.

  “Let’s review.” Mimi counted on her fingers. “We trail them pirates, find ther hideout, and make ’em give back the book, the kids, and Mrs. Francis.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell,” Hamish X smiled.

  “We ain’t got a doughnut’s chance at a police station,” Mimi declared.

  “You have to start at the beginning and take things as they come. First, we need transport.”

  Ten minutes later, after a slog through the wind, hand over hand through the deserted city, they stood on the docks. The guardhouse was a smoking ruin and, happily, no vicious dogs were in sight. One could only assume the animals had run off or succumbed during the pirate attack. On the downside, the boat that served as a supply ship for the factory rolled gently back and forth in the breakers. Keeled over on its side, a gaping hole in its hull, it wouldn’t be taking them anywhere.

  “Well, that just stinks,” Mimi announced.

  “Indeed,” Parveen agreed.

  “What now?”

  “We find alternative transport.” Hamish X turned and started back towards the factory. Parveen and Mimi followed suit.

  They checked the snowmobiles, but every one had been smashed beyond repair to foil any pursuit. With the snow swirling about them, they watched Parveen poking at the engines. “I might be able to cobble together one working machine out of the parts, but we’ll lose a lot of time. Besides, we have to cover a lot of distance fast and a snowmobile won’t do.”

  This depressed the three would-be rescuers to no end. They slogged back to the cafeteria, where Hamish X used the lockpick tool on his knife to break into Viggo’s larder. He liberated some milk, cocoa, and sugar and made hot chocolate to lift their spirits. While they sipped the delicious drink, Hamish X sat lost in thought.

  Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and leapt to his feet. “What fools we are,” he laughed. “We already have a way of going after them.”

  “What?” Parveen and Mimi looked at each other. “The kites.

  They worked fine, didn’t they? So we make more kites! Or, better yet, one big one! That’s it. We have all the sheets we need. We can use the maintenance shop and all the guards’ tools. It’s perfect.”

  Parveen took out a pencil and dropped to his hands and knees, sketching on the floor of the cafeteria. He drew feverishly, pressing hard with his pencil. The tip broke. “Bother!’ Parveen shouted. “Hamish, may I use your knife, please. I must sharpen this.”

  “I think I saw a pen in the kitchen. I’ll go get it …” Hamish X stood. Parveen shook his head. “NO PENS!”

  Mimi and Hamish X were shocked by the little boy’s vehemence. “What’s the matter, Parv?” Mimi asked gently.

  Parveen shook his head. “My name is not Parv.” He held out his hand to Hamish X. “Please, your knife.” Hamish X nodded and dipped his fingers into his boot, extracting the pocketknife. He handed it to Parveen, who folded out a short, sharp blade and whittled his stub of pencil to a point. He handed the knife back and bent over his drawing again. Mimi and Hamish X exchanged a questioning look and watched as he finished his plan.

  Five minutes later he looked up, pushing his glasses back up on his nose.

  “We will need a lot of sheets,” he said, “but I believe it is possible.” Mimi and Hamish X wasted no time and ran to the dormitory.

  They worked through the night, making the cafeteria their workroom. Parveen was in charge. He told them what to do, with what and where. Beds were stripped and the sheets gathered in a heap. Hamish X found aluminum poles and rope in a storage shed. Following Parveen’s instructions, he assembled a light but strong frame for the kite.

  Mimi discovered an ancient sewing machine in Mrs. Francis’s room. It was the kind of sewing machine that had a table attached, the kind you could imagine someone being chained to day in and day out, sewing pants for wealthy bank officials. She hauled it out into the cafeteria and set to work sewing the sheets into a large square sail. She wasn’t a natural sewer, and spent a lot of time kicking the machine, threatening it, and complaining to the others. “Why do I have to do the sewin’? ’Cause I’m the girl? Is that it? It ain’t fair, I tell ya!”

  Parveen was deaf to her complaints. He was too busy with his welding tools. He scavenged bits and pieces from all kinds of different machines—cogs, belts, tubes, chains. When he had assembled enough junk, he lit an acetylene torch and began welding it all together. Sparks cascaded on the linoleum floor, scorching the yellowed surface and causing minor fires that Hamish X quickly extinguished with buckets of water. Parveen never noticed the danger. His focus on the task at hand was phenomenal. He drank only when Hamish stuck a straw between his lips, gulping absently like a machine drawing fuel from a hose.

  When the larger pieces of the frame were assembled, Hamish and Mimi carried them into the Orphan Processing Room. Next, they brought in the kite sail rolled like a carpet. It was heavy, but they managed to drag and unroll it. They assembled the frame and stretched the sail over it, securing it to the poles with pieces of stout rope. When they were done they stood back and surveyed their handiwork.

  The sail was the shape of a flattened triangle, about ten metres from wingtip to wingtip and three metres from nose to tail. When the large door opened the sail would fit through it, but barely.

  “Nice sewing,” Hamish X said.

  “Ha! Ha!” Mimi bit her lip. “I hope it holds together.”

  A clatter of metal drew
their attention to the doorway. Parveen was pushing a strange object into the room. It was metallic and bathtub-shaped. It took a moment for him to recognize it but when he did, Hamish X laughed out loud.

  “Ha! The porridge vat!” He clapped his hands.

  “Command gondola,” Parveen corrected. He rolled the vat on its metal casters over to the middle of the floor. Mimi and Hamish X gathered around to look at the thing.

  The vat had undergone some changes. First of all, a number of instruments were mounted at one end. Parveen pointed at them and listed their functions. “Radar. I stole it from the security centre. It has a range of fifty kilometres. Farther in good weather. Geosynchronous Compass. Radio transmitter. Steering controls. And a little stove. It will be cold in the upper air.” Parveen didn’t smile, but he looked very proud of himself. “Help me attach the gondola to the frame.”

  Hamish X grabbed him by the arm and looked into his eyes. “Great work, Parv.”

  Parveen blinked once and sniffed. “My name is Parveen. Not Parv. The gondola attaches to the frame via these chains.”

  They set to work. While Hamish X and Mimi fastened the frame to the gondola, Parveen disappeared again. He returned a few minutes later towing a small cart. On it were two small engines.

  “Snowmobile engines,” he explained. “They will help us navigate if we must fly against the direction of the wind. We won’t be able to carry much fuel, so we must use them only in great emergencies.” He took a wrench out of his tool belt and bolted the first engine to a plate mounted halfway up one wing.

  Soon the entire vehicle was assembled, loaded, and fuelled. The bizarre creation rested on three small wheels, one in front and two in back. A discarded propeller (of which Windcity had plenty) was mounted on the front of the gondola. Parveen had rigged it to a generator that could supply electricity for the onboard instruments.

  Finally, after twenty-six hours of hard work, they were ready to set off after the pirates. On the bright side, the snow had ceased to fall. On the dark side, they didn’t know if the thing they’d built would fly.

  Parveen climbed into the gondola and manned the controls. Hamish X pushed the button and the big door began to rise. Instantly, the wind began to churn through the open door. Tiny bits of ice and snow scoured their faces.

  Hamish X shook his head. “I just realized,” he said ruefully. “We want to go northwest to get to Snow Monkey Island.”

  “Yeah? So?” Mimi demanded.

  “Well, that wind is blowing southeast. We can’t steer into the wind.”

  Parveen looked at his watch. “Correct. That would be a problem on most days of the year, but not today.”

  “Why not today?” Hamish X asked.

  Parveen continued to stare at his watch for a few more seconds, then held up his hand. As if by magic, the wind died, suddenly and completely.

  “Today,” Parveen announced to his astonished friends, “is Flip Day.”

  Mimi and Hamish X looked at each other and smiled. “Flip Day!” they crowed.

  “Enough of that,” Parveen said crossly. “We have to get this thing out in the right position when the wind picks up again.”

  Mimi and Hamish X each got behind a wing and quickly pushed the strange vessel out into the early morning light. Without any wind, the day was eerily quiet. All around them houses popped and creaked in their release from the constant pressure, as if a great weight had been lifted. The sun shone down, faint and watery yellow. The oddest sight of all was the clouds drifting to a halt. The three children marvelled at the sky and the clouds and the silence, revelling in the wonder of being outside in the morning light. Parveen called them back to business.

  “We have to align the vehicle on the right trajectory to take advantage of the wind when it comes. Hurry.”

  Mimi and Hamish X got behind the wings and pushed the little flyer until it aimed more or less down the road towards the docks. They had barely managed to get the craft out onto the concrete apron in front of the factory when the wind began to stir.

  “Look!” Mimi shouted, pointing up at the sky. The clouds were now streaming to the northwest. And from the southeast a sound began to grow, a rumbling, howling whoosh that filled the horizon.

  “Get ready,” Parveen shouted just as the wind picked up.

  The little vessel began lifting in short hops that left Mimi and Hamish X suspended in the air, their feet churning. They heaved as hard as they could, trying to keep the wings level. “I’m starting the engines!” Parveen shouted. First one, then the other sputtered, coughed, and finally caught. The forward push of the motors drove the aircraft forward with growing speed. Soon, Hamish X and Mimi were holding on for dear life, dragging behind the wings.

  With a chorus of ear-splitting creaks, pops, and moans, all the houses in Windcity slowly tilted from one side to the other in the new prevailing wind. It was an awesome spectacle to see the entire town shift steadily in the opposite direction.

  The children didn’t have the leisure to appreciate the sight. Their craft picked up speed as it headed down the wide main street that led to the docks. The slanted houses whirred by as the dock approached alarmingly fast. Hamish X clutched the metal frame, pulling himself up and clinging like a monkey under the wing. He looked over to see how Mimi was doing.

  She was having trouble holding on. She couldn’t manage to pull her long legs up high enough to hook them over the wing strut. As he watched, one of her hands ripped free.

  “I’m gonna fall!” she shouted, desperately trying to swing her free hand up to catch the frame.

  Parveen had enough to worry about. He was hauling back on the stick, trying to get the craft off the ground. They were running out of road: the dock was only a couple of hundred metres away. It was up to Hamish X to help Mimi.

  He started pulling himself hand over hand down the wing until he got to the gondola. He dropped easily in behind Parveen.

  “I don’t know if we’re going to make it,” Parveen called.

  Hamish X thumped him on the back. “I know you can do it.” He scanned the floor of the gondola and found what he was looking for: a length of rope. Quickly, he tied one end of it to the handle of the gondola and knotted the other end as tightly as he could around his waist.

  The machine was bouncing along the dock now. Parveen gritted his teeth and hauled back on the stick for all he was worth.

  “Help!” Mimi shouted. She still dangled from one hand, but now she was barely hanging on. Hamish X stepped up on the edge of the gondola and tensed to spring.

  Mimi’s fingers finally gave out. She let go just as the kite lifted into the air off the end of the dock, rising up over the cold grey water of the bay like a gull. Hamish X launched himself into space, extending his arms as far as they would reach. He managed to grab a fistful of Mimi’s parka hood as she fell past him. Holding on for dear life, he braced himself as he reached the end of the rope. But despite its wicked snap when it went taut, Hamish X didn’t lose his grip. The kite rose gently on the stiff wind with Hamish X dangling beneath it and Mimi dangling below Hamish X.

  They swung, the rope creaking gently and the wind rushing past. Hamish X grinned down at Mimi and Mimi grinned up at him.

  “It’s the only way to fly,” he said and began to haul her up.

  Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet

  Thousands of kilometres away, in a small white clapboard46 house in East Providence, Rhode Island, Mr. Sweet and Mr. Candy sat drinking tea. East Providence is the oldest neighbourhood in a very old city. The tiny house stood on a quiet, leafy street, cupped in the hand of pleasantness and normality.

  Mr. Sweet and Mr. Candy sat in an old-fashioned kitchen with chintz curtains and Formica countertops and gleaming chrome appliances: a toaster, a blender, an automatic mixer. They faced each other at a black and white kitchen table on black and chrome chairs, sipping tea that was thick and black from white china cups. The only things that looked out of place were Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet, who were dressed in long
grey coats, gloves, fedoras, and goggles despite the warmth of an early spring day.

  A chime sounded, causing the two agents to lower their cups and cock their heads. A lovely female voice filled the kitchen.

  “Subject Hamish X is moving north on vector 718. Speed 257 kilometres per hour.” The voice was rich and beautiful, feminine and kind.

  “Give us a visual please,” said Mr. Candy.

  A three-dimensional map of the northern hemisphere flickered into existence on the tabletop, resting like an overturned bowl on the Formica surface. The image rotated slightly, mimicking the rotation of the Earth. The map, for such it was, held every possible feature of the Earth’s surface—cities, rivers, mountains. All were picked out in perfect detail. A tiny amber dot blinked and crawled northward from the tiny dot that represented Windcity.

  The two agents leaned in like hungry children around a birthday cake.

  “Mr. Candy, it has begun again.”

  “Indeed. For the last time.”

  “Shall we go?”

  “Let’s!”

  They put down their cups of tea and walked out the back door.

  Moments later, a black helicopter rose above East Providence, sweeping out to sea and then heading north.

  Chapter 16

  The kite sped northwest, driven by the powerful tailwind. The small engines were switched off to conserve fuel. Parveen stood at the controls, angling the rudder so that they sped at a forty-five degree angle to the gust due north. He kept one eye on the radar screen, the other on a bank of black clouds lowering in the distance.

  “That storm front is keeping its distance so far, but heaven help us if it decides to move across our path.” He tapped the face of a dial on the console. “According to the GPS, we are now a thousand kilometres to the northwest of Windcity.”

  Hamish X and Mimi huddled near the stove. Hamish X had fallen asleep, his head lolling gently with the swaying of the gondola. Mimi watched his face for a moment. He mumbled something that sounded like “Mother,” frowned, and shifted slightly. He didn’t wake up.