Everfair (24 page)

The bonds restraining Leopold's spy had been removed. He still wept with his son in his arms, saying something to the boy Thomas wasn't quite sure he fully comprehended—that death was better than what the child had been saved from? Then the spy rose and ran for the lit lamp hanging by the prow. He opened its top and dashed palm oil liberally over the aircanoe's wood decking and bulwarks and touched the wick to them. They blazed up like torches.

Shrieks filled the bright air. Panicked, stampeding fighters ran to
Kalala
's stern, tilting the deck. The stability vane pedals must no longer be working. Or else they'd been abandoned.

Thomas clung to the bulwark's head-high gunwale, hauling himself forward, hand over hand. He encountered a living obstacle: Yoka, who apparently had the same thought. His metal hand took more effort to operate, but gave him a surer hold.

Side by side they inched upward. The fires grew unstoppably, unreachably. It was hopeless.

Yoka glanced overhead at the envelope of rubber-coated barkcloth. Filled with balloons holding explosive hydrogen gas. “We must cut the lines.”

“We'll die,” Thomas objected.

“No.” He reached one of the ropes tethering gondola to envelope and began to climb. “I'll open a vent first and lower us.”

The way to the deck-level vent controls was blocked by the fire. “But how will you—”

A penetrating scream rose above the general wailing, then fell further and further away. Thomas pulled himself up to sit astride the gunwale and caught sight of a man pinwheeling to earth sans jumpsheet. The trees below looked no taller than lettuces.

“That was the prisoner,” said Yoka. “The others pushed him out.”

“We'll never know why he did this, then.” He commenced shinnying along the gunwale like a child sliding up a bannister.

“I believe he had more than the one boy held hostage,” Yoka shouted.

“What?” It was becoming hard to hear Yoka as the distance between them widened. A logistical concern sprang suddenly to mind: he'd have to walk across the burning deck to cut the lines connecting it to the airbag. They were as far from reach as the vent release.

“Just before the spy set us on fire, I overheard his boy ask him where was his twin. Another boy or girl.”

A second hostage. Death was better. It seemed obvious now. “Do you have a shongun?”

“Here. Catch!” The polished brass of the knife-throwing gun slipped through Thomas's fingers. Fortunately, it landed on the deck instead of following the arsonist to earth. He retrieved it, then scrambled onto the gunwale again with the shongun clenched between his teeth. He heard Yoka yelling something but couldn't understand what he said.

Sixteen-blade magazines for Winthrop's latest model, if Thomas remembered rightly. Enough, if he didn't miss a single shot. If the shongun were fully loaded. Madness.

The heat stopped him. He leaned out to his left. A cool wind blew upward from rapidly enlarging trees and pools.

It must be time.

Thomas was an excellent shot under normal conditions. Which did not usually include wracking pain and exhaustion, but always, always, the threat of death. He aimed carefully. The first line parted. The second, third, fourth. They'd been damaged by the flames. The fifth seemed at first only to fray. Would he have to waste another blade? Seconds passed till it gave way.

The gondola lurched, and Thomas held desperately to the slick gunwale. It looked almost level now. He nodded. Naturally. The loft that had been lost because the fore end no longer hung from the airbag had been counteracted by the uneven distribution of terrified passengers and the abandoned stabilizer pedals.

He was amazed he could consider the matter so calmly.

The sixth line, exactly opposite his present seat, was obscured low down by the frontmost of the advancing flames. Thomas aimed above them. This time he did need two shots. No help for that.

He retreated to the deck and shot away the seventh line. Half done. Almost. He'd never finish soon enough. They were going to crash burning into the swamp. His ship, his crew, his command.

He took aim at the eighth line, but an Oo-Gandah fighter got in the way, smiling and brandishing a spear. Stupid woman! “Go!
Mwanamke!
Go!” He flourished the shongun, indicating she should move aft, but she only grinned and began sawing away at the line with her weapon.

New shouts died on his lips. She understood! Turning to the line directly behind him, he shot it. Three times, but he had ammunition to spare now. The Oo-Gandahn finished and went on to the next starboard line. This one took her longer. Evidently her spear's point was dulling. She called out something and took a long machete from the man who answered her. He didn't seem to favor the idea. Thomas lost sight of the disagreement as he dashed to his next target. One shot only this time.

But now he was in among the crowd of passengers. None of them spoke English. Why should they? Confused and angry babbling greeted him on all sides. What had happened to his men? He caught a brief glimpse of a couple of them stationed roughly where
Kalala
's steering wheel ought to be. The twelfth line—thirteenth if his assistant had succeeded—was right there. A clear shot. He raised the shongun. A blow to his back threw off his aim—he barely maintained his hold on the gun. He pushed his way to the bulwark and braced himself, tried again. Bingo!

Shoving hard, he got through to the last of the port lines. Here were the slave children, huddled together, so tightly packed there was no path between. The only road was up. Thomas climbed the line with cramping arms and legs. He craned his neck to look for Yoka. No luck.

Kalala
's gondola dropped precipitously. The deck lay at a sharp slant. All lines to the envelope but this one and the stern's were loose. Cries of horror, wordless screeching—bodies tumbled down into the relentless fire or over the gunwales into the green and black swamp.

Thomas pointed and shot anyway. The knife hit. The gondola jerked again and more passengers fell.

Two knives left. Thomas aimed down and pulled the trigger. Its last tie to the gondola severed,
Kalala
's envelope rushed skyward, whipping him around furiously at the end of the cut line. From below came an enormous hissing splash. Thomas dared to look down. The gondola was in a single half-charred piece. People moved on it, swam and waded around it. They sank further and further away. Or rather, he and the envelope rose—and Yoka also, spidered across the ropes of the envelope's net.

The higher one went, the colder and thinner the air. Without the gondola's weight he'd—they'd—fly too high to breathe. Thomas attempted for a few moments to slow his twisting and spinning, to steady himself by wrapping the line's slack around his wrist. He gave up. The envelope was big; how could he miss? Praying not to hit Yoka, he shot his last blade.

Falling, falling—yet the envelope acted like a giant jumpsheet. What went up must come down, but at least at a survivable speed. Dizzy, ill, aghast at the deaths he knew were his responsibility, Thomas still clung to the hope something would go right. Something had to.

Something did.

Leopold lost. He had been doing so for more than a season. Thomas and Yoka, drifting eastward on prevailing winds, witnessed much of the final rout. From the net around the punctured envelope, Yoka tossed Thomas a makeshift sling. Gliding lower and lower, they saw soldiers and policemen running in every direction. They saw massive disorder and piles of surrendered rifles. They saw King Mwenda's fighters herding captive overseers back the way they'd come, uphill, toward the rendezvous at Lutshi. And they saw many dying, many dead. Most wore the Belgian tyrant's uniform.

At last they landed gently on a hillside on the swamp's far side. Against all likelihood, they were alive.

So, too, was almost everyone else who'd been aboard
Kalala
.

When Yoka told Thomas this, he refused to believe it. He sat, at the Bah-Sangah priests' insistence, underneath a length of undyed cotton. Apparently his dream of the dog-headed blacksmith—which he had related to Yoka—decreed the immediate completion of Thomas's initiation. So far these culminating steps had involved bathing and fasting. And isolation. He wasn't even sure where the two of them were, since he'd been blindfolded before being led there and could see nothing now but the white cloth over his head.

The air around Thomas was cool and musty and still. Yoka's impossible words echoed very slightly as he relayed the news he'd gathered while others laved Thomas in chalk-whitened water.

The crew and passengers of the
Kalala
had suffered no casualties.

“But they fell!” Thomas objected.

“Not far,” Yoka responded.

“Into the
fire
!”

“And out again.”

“And the waters of the swamp—”

“All shallow.”

“No one was bitten by poisonous serpents? Eaten by crocodiles?”

“No. We were protected.”

“Protected by whom?” asked Thomas.

A moment of silence. Under the white cloth it seemed long to him.

“Protected by him to whom you have promised yourself. The god Loango.”

“I didn't—”

“You did. Or else you would be dead. Others, too.”

“But I—” Thomas remembered.
If I give you your life back you will owe it to me.
“I have dedicated my life to my lord, Jesus Christ.”

“Yes? When was this?”

“What? What does it matter when?”

“If it was before you met your new lord, you must take it back.”

Take it back. Be forsworn. He couldn't do that.

Could he?

“You will remain here overnight. Alone. Considering. In the morning I will come for you, for your final decision.”

“I can say no?” His voice sounded weak, even to his own ears.

“You can. So think well. Think what that will mean.

“When I am gone, remove the cloth. You will see you have been provided with water, food, a candle, a pot into which you may relieve yourself, and one more thing: an object to help you make your choice.”

The sound of footsteps leaving.

Thomas lifted the cloth and looked around at a small cave. The food, water, candle, and chamber pot were all present as described.

The only other thing there was a mirror.

Thomas removed his clothing. He looked at himself as long as the candle's light lasted, using the reflective surface to examine sides he would normally be unable to see. He stared at the healed bullet wound hard and often.

He had faced death. Now he must face the choice he had made to live. Must decide whether to pledge explicitly the new allegiance he had earlier and implicitly given.

The candle burnt out. He couldn't use the mirror anymore, so he used his mind.

All he had was his life. It was all that was wanted.

The sound of footsteps coming back.

 

Part Two

 

Kalima, Everfair, May 1914

Hissing gently as if to attract the sky's attention,
Okondo
turned in the evening air with loverlike deliberation. Lisette watched from the new warehouse's loading dock as it left her. Up there the sun still shone, flashing brightly on the gondola's rear window, gilding the balloon's purple sides. A gigantic cacao pod, rubber-backed barkcloth molded over aluminum girders and rings: when first she came to live in Everfair, way back in the nineteenth century, the existence of such an apparatus was not much more than a dream. But now it was a matter of course to ride one.

Away down the Ulindi River's long, lush valley the aircanoe floated, freshly loaded with tin and tea, cocoa and hemp, the region's produce. Belgium's guns posed it only the slightest danger; officially, they were out of commission. The flight to Angola's ports would likely be as uneventful as her voyage here. This was 1914. The tyrant Leopold had been vanquished for almost ten years.

Lisette need have no concern. Yet she yearned after the departing aircanoe till it became indistinguishable from the periwinkle dusk. Or did she yearn for another?

A cool wind fell upon her, descending out of the Mitumba Mountains. Someone wrapped a soft shawl over her shoulders. It was Fwendi—her brass hand glinting in the lamplight spilling from the warehouse door. With the faintest of ratcheting whirs, Fwendi's hand released the woven cashmere to settle against Lisette's still-smooth neck. “Merci, mon ami.”

“Pas du tout,” Fwendi replied. Though they'd traveled extensively—Europe, Middle Asia, and the United States—French remained their shared tongue, serving as their secret language. As it had served with Daisy in Lisette's vanished youth.

“You ought to come inside,” Fwendi scolded, continuing in French. “Come to the hotel.” Lisette wanted to rebel against this bullying nursemaidery, but in truth there was nothing left to see, the sky darkening so swiftly here, mere kilometers from the Equator.

Nonetheless, she affected an injured air. “As you desire, Maman,” she replied—a jest, since she had fifteen years more than Fwendi, according to the best reckoning the refugee had been able to provide. She bowed her head and stalked inside.

Fwendi ignored Lisette's playacting with the practice of years. Unfussed, she contrived to be first to reach the lamp and remove it from the long chain dangling off the high rafter. Her own cloak she looped over one arm—the one of flesh.

Neither had ever before come to Kalima, not even when they'd last lived in Everfair: fourteen years ago for Lisette, eleven for Fwendi. The younger woman assumed the lead, taking them down the bluff and into town, past the homes of farmers and mechanics, by workshops that on the women's way to the warehouse had been loud with the clang of hammers on hot metals or heavy with the reek of rubber, vertiginous with the incense of volatile chemicals. Now all these establishments sat silent, doors shut but windows open, airing out in preparation for the morning.