Kavika swung down the rigging and onto the deck of a Chinese fishing boat that floated on the edge of the lagoon. Fishing lines stitched the water from the rails of the sixty foot yacht. The water was sludgy and laced with iridescent whirlpools. A wizened crone pulled a shad from the water and slapped it against the deck, knocking it out. She added it to a pile of sickly-looking fish, probably bound for a pot or to be reduced to fish paste. She glanced at the Pali Boy and grinned a single-toothed smile. Kavika returned the greeting, but bit back a comment. These were the kind of people bringing Minimata Disease to the rest of the city, but where else were they to fish? How else would they get their food? It was ironic that in the shadow of opulence, they had to eat mercury-riddled fish and play the Minimata lottery. The same lottery his sister had played and lost.
A slim Chinese youth carrying a gaff blocked Kavika’s way. He wore black pants and had a tattoo of a Chinese Earth Dragon curving around his torso. He wore his hair long and wild.
Kavika tried to dodge to the left.
The youth swung the gaff hard, in a short arc that just missed Kavika’s ear.
Kavika’s anger flared. The youth swung again, but this time Kavika caught the gaff on the descent, redirecting it into the deck. The hook sunk into the wood and caught. Before the youth could jerk it free, Kavika caught him in the elbow with a palm slap. The gaff fell free as the nerves in the boy’s arm deadened, and Kavika kicked the side of the youth’s left knee, sending him to the deck in a sickening crunch.
Kavika felt his nostrils flaring, but he allowed the fallen boy mercy. He stepped over him, leapt onto the rail, and went on his way. He almost slipped into the water when he hit a deck covered in fish scales, but at the last minute he was able to keep his balance by bending his knees and going into a slide. When he hit the opposite deck rail, he propelled himself up and over, with a half flip that left him able to continue running.
A few moments later he was running across the flat deck of a barge, dodging lines of clothes from those who used the wide open space as a fresh air laundry. On the other side rested the old Soviet Alpha-class submarine. It was there that Kavika drew himself to a stop.
Four Vitamin Vs stood on the deck of the submarine, each holding a corner of a net. Ivanov waved from atop the wide metal mast, pointing towards the undulating net on the deck. Beneath the net, caught like a fly beneath a swatter, was the living dead girl. She cursed and spat, more like a Freedom Ship bilge rat than a living dead girl.
Ivanov put his hands to the side of his mouth and yelled, “Is this what you were after?”
“I was chasing her,” Kavika called back. He ran down an edge, then leaped aboard the submarine. The submarine’s mast was a good four meters above the deck.
“Finders keepers,” said Egor. Kavika knew him from the snake tattooed around his bald, tanned skull.
The way his eyes flashed, Kavika had no doubt what Egor would do to the girl once he and his companions got her belowdecks. Normally the Pali Boy wouldn’t care, but he felt his own heat rise as he watched the undulations of the girl, her brown skin beneath the grid-patterned net.
“She’s mine,” he heard himself say.
“What? Little Pali shit,” Egor growled.
“A little Pali Boy doesn’t order us around,” said one of the men, who had arms as big around as Wu. His skin was covered with tattoos of the before time. White hairs coiled like wire, against skin baked to a nut brown.
“She has something of mine,” Kavika said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He didn’t know if she’d taken anything or not... that is, if she had a hiding place he couldn’t see. Considering he could see virtually every part of her body, he knew he was reaching, but what the hell.
“Scat, boy,” said a third Russian. “You don’t want to get hurt over this little shark.” Hunched, thin and mean, the man strained at his section of rope, but kept a hungry leer working beneath a hooked nose.
Kavika leaned back to see if Ivanov was watching, but the old man was no longer at the mast. He’d probably gone below. Not that it mattered. What did matter was that Kavika had to talk to the girl first. She was one of their few leads, and if he was going to be able to get back with the Pali Boys, he had to solve the mystery of Akamu’s death. And looking at this band of rapists and criminals, Kavika knew that if the girl was taken below, she’d never be seen again.
“Listen,” he began, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Whoa, Little Bird,” came a fatherly voice. Ivanov had opened up a hatch in the decking and was stepping out. “That’s a good way to get yourself killed. Don’t you know that it’s suicidal to take a catch away from a wild animal?”
Kavika felt relief wash through him. “Uncle Evil,” he said, using the name for the man he first learned on his father’s knee. “I wouldn’t exactly call your men wild animals.”
“First of all, realize that they are my men, which means I know them better than anyone. Second, never forget that an animal can walk on two legs as easily as four.”
“I won’t forget. Thanks, Uncle.” He embraced the man who had been his father’s best friend. “I thought you’d gone below.”
“And miss this? Not for the world. It’s not often my men are able to catch a shark with the net meant for birds. At least not with those—”
“Violation! You are violators, all of you! You’ll be lucky if I don’t turn you over to the Corpers!”
Ivanov turned and rested a tired gaze on Kavika before he addressed Spike.
“Water Dogs should stay in the water. What are you doing out here, sniffing in corners that aren’t yours?”
Spike had lost her heels somewhere in her struggle to keep up. Strands of hair had fallen across her forehead, one covering her left eye. Her chest heaved, and she rested both hands on her hips. “It’s my business that you have a net.”
“We use it to catch birds.” Ivanov winked at his men.
“Looks like you used it to catch a shark.”
Ivanov shrugged. “If the shark is going to pretend to be a bird, how can I help this?”
Two Water Dogs swam to the edge of the sub and pulled themselves up to stand beside Spike. Each held hand gaffs with hooks long enough to rip out a lung. They were heeled, but looked ready to attack if Spike were to flex so much as a finger.
Ivanov saw this too and held up his hands. “Okay, okay. We don’t really need any trouble, do we?”
“We are not giving her back,” said the biggest Russian.
Ivanov spun and spat a long stream of Russian at the man. Kavika couldn’t understand the words, but there was no doubt what they meant. Then Ivanov pointed. He had to do it twice, but Kavika gave the men credit. They didn’t make the old man do it a third time. They left, grumbling and dragging their now-empty net with them.
Ivanov turned back, the world’s greatest fake smile playing across his face. He held out his hands. “There. You see? No problem.”
Kavika heard a foot slap against the metal deck. “Hey.” The shark was on her feet. Bruised and battered, the fire still burning in her eyes.
He dove for her, but missed her ankle by an inch. He crashed hard to the deck, his elbow and chin taking his weight, pain singing from the dense metal of the submarine.
She glanced back once, a slight grin tugging at one corner of her lips. Then she was off and running, a brown-skinned shark with breasts swinging free.
Kavika leaped to his feet and shook his head. “Damn—see you later, Uncle Evil!”
Then he was on the chase again.
Far above, he heard Pali Boy laughter.
Kavika got as far as the old nudist charter when he gave up. There was no sign of the girl. Above him, several Pali Boys continued to laugh. He could always ask them. They knew. But to ask would be to acknowledge defeat, and he wasn’t prepared to do that yet.
So he loped back to the submarine. Spike was still there, arguing with Ivanov not only about his ownership of a net, but about the propriety of having one. To the old man’s credit, he stood and listened. He could have gone back aboard his sub and closed the hatch and there was nothing anyone could do. After all, the city’s entire power came from the nuclear batteries aboard the submarine.
Kavika appreciated the old man’s patience. He and Spike were his two favorite people in the world. To have them against each other would split his heart.
“Hey Uncle!” Kavika shouted as he approached. “Why don’t you just admit you catch fish with that net and be done with it?”
“Where would be the fun in that, Little Bird?”
Spike gave both of them the stinkeye, then shook her head and cursed in Tagalog. She bent and strapped her heels back on.
Ivanov smelled of diesel and cigars; Kavika had always found it comforting. He’d broken his ankle the year after his father died, and blood poisoning ended up threatening his foot, making more than one midwife want to amputate. But it was Ivanov who had taken Kavika into the submarine’s med unit and had sat with him, making sure the foot was elevated, arranging for medicine from
Los Tiburones
, and ensuring that his mother and sister were fed. Kavika never consciously remembered that time except in brief lightning-flashes, but the smell of diesel and cigars had made him feel safe and cared-for ever since then.
“So what gives, Uncle Evil?”
“Actually, the boys were out on the deck repairing the net.” He pulled out a cigar and began preparing it. “We might occasionally use it for fish, but only out of sheer desperation when the Water Dogs fail to pay us for the energy they use.”
“Hey!” Spike protested. “We’re never late.”
“Keep your wig on, sweetie. Your boys are always late. Everyone is late. They take the power for granted because it’s always on.” He paused to light the cigar and puff out several clouds of rich tobacco smoke. “Anyway, my boys were on the deck when the girl, bosoms flying everywhere, bounded onto my boat like it was a sidewalk in downtown Moscow and she was some escaped stripper from the Circ de Soleil. Didn’t take much. One minute she was running, the next she was caught, twisted and held.”
“Do you know her?” Kavika asked.
“Her? No. Do I know the Sharks? Sure. I deal with some of them occasionally, but never with her.”
“Any chance of finding out who she is?”
“Why do you want to know? Looking for a date? I wouldn’t trust a Shark if I were you.”
Kavika told him about Akamu and the botched blood rape. He also told him about his conversation with old Donnie Wu and the proclamation made by Kaja, ending with the discovery of the young
Tiburón
skulking around the morgue ship.
“Knowing why she was there could help us figure out what Akamu was doing.”
Ivanov stared at Kavika for a long minute. Occasionally he’d glance at Spike. When he spoke next, his mouth formed the words as if they tasted bad. “Listen. I can’t help you there. I don’t know her and I don’t know what, if anything, she and your Pali Boy were involved in. Remember, there’s still very little proof they were even tied together. For all you know she could have been stealing from the Water Dogs, or perhaps trying to collect a debt.”
Spike rose on her toes to argue, but Ivanov wouldn’t let her. “But be that as it may, I do have some ideas about the Boxers, probably the same ones who killed Akamu. You do want to get back at them, don’t you?”
Kavika hesitated. The Boxers were part of the circle of possibility for a cure for Minimata Disease. They had always been a necessary evil. Still, it was their only chance, especially if Ivanov was right about the living dead girl knowing Akamu.
“Friend of mine had the same problem,” continued Ivanov, “only his kids were monkey-backed.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Spike said. “Getting monkey-backed or getting dead.”
“Dead is always worse, sweetie.” To Kavika he said, “His name is Pak. He’s one of the People of the Sun.”
Both Kavika and Spike exchanged a worried look. But before they could say anything, Ivanov hastened to add, “Don’t believe everything you hear. Pak’s a good man. He’s a father who loves his children. Everything else is in the wind.”
CHAPTER SIX
“A
BLIZZARD OF
black” is what his father had called them. Birds.
So many of them.
Always circling.
Waiting.
Hungry.
Sometimes resting in the upper reaches of the rigging, but always waiting. Always there. Pali Boys avoided them. They carried disease. They marked their rookeries and protected them with their sharp claws and beaks. And the way they looked at you, with their heads cocked sideways, it was as if they were reading you from the inside out. The sky was only truly free of them when the wind was up.
What’s a blizzard, papa?
When the rain turns so cold it’s the color of a cloud.
How can it be that cold? Like an ice chest? Like the ice the
Corpers
sometimes give us?
Like the whole world is an ice chest. Like the look in the eyes of the birds if you get too close.
Kavika dragged his gaze away from the circle of birds and let the webs of his memory drift in the breeze. Ever-present, the birds were thicker above the ships the People of the Sun called home. The demarcation from general public to their territory was marked by red-painted railings. If he were a bird, he could probably see the shape of it.
They stood just on the other side of the
line
.
“Where’d you go?” Spike asked.
“Thinking about my father.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
Kavika lifted his chin. “He never liked birds. Said that they were bringers of everything bad.”
“Do you think they brought the plague? That’s what people are saying.”
“Pele brought the plague. She was tired of the terrible things we were doing to the planet.”
Spike regarded Kavika. “Do you really believe that?”
“No, not really. But it’s as good a reason as any, I suppose. You can say it comes from the sea. Or the air. Or the rain. We’ll never know where it came from. All the scientists are dead, or up there in that Corper ship. Ain’t none of them gonna come down here and explain it.”