Authors: Ernest Hebert
“The collar,” I whispered.
“Now you know why Royal gave it to you. To detonate the bomb, press the red button three times and the black button once.” $#$@! nuzzled opened the pack so I could see my other treasures—food in a water-proofed container, enough for several days, a sleeping bag, and a flashlight.
“So there you have it,” said the Director. “The mission: rescue your blood brother from the MZ, and get him back to America. Do you accept?”
The Director’s words stirred me. My life had begun the day I’d come out of the muck. Since then my mind had filled with people-clutter—Nurse Wilder, the Doctors, Royal, Father, Mother, the Autodidact, the River Rats, the Shadows, the Souvz, Mary Jane, Sally, Grandma, Ike, Siena, Marla, not to mention non-people such as the three-headed God, the Alien, Langdon, Xiphi, and the Director, who may or may not have been a person. At this moment, all of them lost the weight of meaning; what mattered was one thing: the mission.
“I accept,” I said.
THIRD WORLD THEATER
$#$@! led me back to the elevator. We descended into Luck and took the moving sidewalk to Hydrohead Hill. Water poured down a long slide in sharp curves. It was a dangerous place, and Xi developers had put up a ten-foot-high chain-link fence between the rushing waters and the mall floor. My orders were to climb the fence, leap into the water, and ride the swirl right into the drain. I had to trust in the Director to reduce the water flow. I had no idea whether he was telling me the truth, or whether I’d imagined it all. Maybe I’d perish. I didn’t care. My hostility toward my mother made me brave.
I had adjusted my pack on my shoulders and started to climb the fence when I suddenly remembered the cigarette Siena had given me. I stuck it in my mouth.
“Got a light?” I said to $#$@!
He left and came back a minute later with a book of matches in his mouth. He dropped it at my feet and with a good-bye bark padded off. It was the last time I saw $#$@!. I lit my cigarette and watched the smoke. It didn’t make a ring or a string or a cloud. It just vanished into Xi’s air-circulation system.
Cigarette between my lips, I climbed the fence and perched for a moment on top. A security guard yelled something at me. I took a last drag on the cigarette, flicked the butt into the stream, and jumped. I’m not sure exactly what happened after that. I rode down the water slide at a furious rate on the seat of my pants until I was dumped into the swirl. It was as if hands—yes, human hands—were pushing my head under water. I held my breath for the longest time. I thrashed and thrashed until I found myself free of those imaginary hands on my back. A second later I surfaced in a dark air pocket. Finally, I could take a breath. The air was dank, smelly. I may have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was in a narrow, twisting limestone cave carved out by the river. Man-made lights high up allowed me to see; the cave itself was no holograph. I was wet; the walls were wet and slippery, and there was an odd smell, too, like nothing else I’ve ever smelled, the stink of dead rocks. It was as if all the living things that went into making of this cavern, the millions and millions of wiggly creatures long extinct, had now come back to a rotting half-life as river-soaked rocks.
Some of the passages were so narrow and dark I had to crawl to get through, finding my way by flashlight. Others opened into caverns of varying sizes, although none was as big as the Home of the Grateful Dead. Lights high up sensed my presence and turned on as I passed under them. No doubt there’d be a camera up there, too, watching me.
I was going along all right, not thinking too much, just working to keep my feet on the slippery rock when I stopped short at a grisly sight. Up ahead was a bloated human body on its back, wedged between a couple of purple-gray, ice-cream-cone-shaped rocks. I dropped to my belly, as if the thing could see me. I peered at it from about fifty feet away and then inched forward. For a second, I was back on the yacht eying Terry’s brother/sister with the purple strangle marks on his/her throat. The collar around my own neck seemed to get hot. The tap sound of a pebble falling from the ceiling brought me back to the world of dripping water, dampness, sweat, and bloated body.
The face didn’t look human. It was puffed out, busted up but bloodless. It had no eyes. The teeth showed through a lipless mouth. I crept closer. It was a man dressed in an olive-drab uniform. The feet had swollen and burst through army boots. I reasoned out what had happened. A government soldier had worked his way up the channel while it was at low water. Xi must have picked up a signal from the TV monitor, and the power-generator officials had let out water when he was in a narrow passage. Goodbye, soldier. The same thing could happen to me, and it would be good-bye, Web. But the rest of my trip was uneventful, if tiring. It took me almost three hours before I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I came out of the mountain and threw a kiss to Mister Sun, even though he hurt my eyes.
I started walking along the dry stream bed. High above, VRN camera blimps patrolled. Half an hour later, I heard a noise. I turned around and saw a trickle of water coming toward me. The water gates in Xi had been opened. I scampered up out of the stream bed and onto the land. Minutes later the river was a river again.
I reached the village of Sorrows maybe an hour before dark. Crouched in some bushes, I peeked at it across the river. The place looked shabbier in real life than than it had on the video. It was a one-dirt-street town, consisting mainly of shacks of wood and straw. Armed soldiers stood gabbing in clusters. A civilian or two would scurry from one shack to another. I saw chickens, a couple of mules, a military truck. The pigs I’d seen earlier in the video ambled to and fro as if they owned the place. Other than the milling about of soldiers and pigs, there was little activity.
I waited until nightfall before crossing the river. When I reached the hut where Ike was being held (or so my map said), I could see that I would not be able to rescue him according to the plan. Half a dozen guards were stationed around the building. They marched, they argued, they laughed. A generator supplied power for lights that lit up the area. I couldn’t see any way to sneak in and plant my bomb. I stayed in the trees, watching, hoping the lights would go out and the soldiers would leave. Next thing I knew, it was dawn. I’d fallen asleep.
I started moving away from the village. Thanks to Father and my familiarity with the woods of New Hampshire, I had a pretty good sense of how to find my way in this pine forest. I noticed that some mosses grew mainly on the north sides of the pine trunks, and that the hill rose up from the west. So I knew what the directions were without a compass. I kept track of distance by counting my footsteps.
Taking a break under the shade of a pine, I asked myself the only question that came to mind: now what? I had followed the Director’s plan without ever really thinking about what I’d do if it failed. I had no experience in warfare, unless you count daydreaming as experience. What kept me going was my love for Ike and my hate for my mother. I was afraid of nothing, but fearlessness wasn’t going to set Ike free. I hauled out my map and pondered it. The only thing I could think of was to go to the school. Maybe Ike would be there. Maybe somehow I’d find a way to break him out.
The school was the last building in town. It was no more than a shack, kindling nailed together to form an enclosure. From my spot in the trees I could hear the teacher through the open window. I had no idea if Ike was inside or not. Stationed outside the school were a couple of guards. They both carried automatic rifles with banana clips, but they were pretty relaxed. They laughed and joked in the Souvien language. Once again, I was stymied. The soldiers didn’t do anything interesting, and soon I was bored. It occurred to me to praise the Lord/Lords, but I didn’t do it. Instead, I ate lunch, a veggie sandwich.
No sooner had I finished my meal than all hell broke loose. A burst of machine-gun fire mowed down the two soldiers, and a mortar shell exploded on the front steps of the school. A soldier and a boy poured out the door. The soldier and a boy were shot. I heard screams. A squeal of anguish told me one of the village pigs had been hit. At the same time, another hut in town was hit by a shell and burst into flames.
In less than a minute, the air had been filled with the sounds of gunshots, explosions, yellow-black smoke, and hollers and screams of both people and animals. I smelled fire, petroleum, gunpowder. The rebels were attacking the village. With the smoke, the fire, the noise, and the confusion, it was hard to see and impossible to figure out what was going on. I wished I were watching on a monitor so I could tell what was happening. I was beginning to understand the wisdom behind the Third World Theater and VRN. Editing of the tapes along with analysis by experts would tell more about what actually happened in the battle than the people who’d experienced it could ever know. All I knew for sure was that it was time for me to get out of here.
Moving from my position in the trees was the mistake that got me caught. If I’d stayed still, I wouldn’t have been spotted. As it was, I retreated right into the lines of the rebels. I almost got shot. Bullets whistled passed me, and I hit the dirt. When I looked up, a skinny, brown-skinned man with a pointy chin beard was staring at me. I stared back, not at him but at his gun. He said something to me in the Souvien language. I had no idea what his words were, but I got the drift of his meaning. I stood and raised my hands to the sky. He frisked me, taking away my pack and my bomb.
The next few days were a blur. I was herded in with other captives, mainly boys aged eleven to fifteen, but also some women and young children and a couple of government soldiers. We were marched through the puckerbrush deep into the woods. When we finally stopped, I heard a lot of muffled Souvien talk from the rebels. A minute later, the women and children were released to find their way back. As for the government soldiers, their hands were tied behind their backs and they were forced to kneel on the ground.
Ike and I were kept away from each other. Ike tried to say something to me, but a rebel kicked his legs out from under him. Another kid started talking real fast in Souvien, and a rebel slugged him. Blood jetted from his nose. We all got the message.
My wrists were tied in front of me, and the end of the rope was wrapped around the waist of another boy. The rope from the boy behind me was tied to my own waist. A rebel soldier gave a command, and the boy in the lead started walking. And so we trudged, a string of boys. A few minutes later, I heard gunshots. The captive government soldiers had been executed.
We were given cold rice and water to be consumed as we moved. Every couple of hours we stopped for a piss, but nobody was allowed to sit or lie down. The rebel troops said practically nothing to us. Once in a while a boy would start to cry, and a rebel soldier would crack him one across the face. After a couple of those lessons, nobody cried. By late afternoon of the first day, we were all walking stiff-gaited as grown-ups. When we finally stopped to bed down, I collapsed on the ground and slept as if in a trance.
The next day was more of the same. By watching the trees, I could tell that we weren’t moving all that far from the village, just snaking back and forth through the forest and moving generally west and up slope. We reached the main rebel camp around noon of the third day. The camp wasn’t much—tents, a fire, a slit trench for a toilet, and a bunch of guys with guns. I liked it.
We boys were brought in a circle where we were allowed to sit Indian style and relax. All of a sudden our captors were nice to us. They laughed and joked with the village boys. Although I didn’t understand what they were saying, I couldn’t miss the fact that they were being especially nice to me. They brought me water, untied me, smiled, and nodded at me like tippy birds on drugs. It wasn’t until days later that I figured out that my tracking collar made me special.
I finally got to talk to Ike. Which was nice for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that he was the only one I could understand. I asked him if he’d been tortured by the government troops.
“Not really,” he said. “They were only protecting me from the rebels. I made a friend, and he told me that the rebels would kill anything and anybody just for the sake of aggravation. I had to stay put until the government could find a safe way to get me back to America.”
“One of your captors was your friend?”
“Oh, sure. His name was Zando. He was a captain in the Souvien army. He wanted to be president some day. In his country, the way you get to be a president is to join the army. He was good to me. He was my, I don’t know how to describe him.” Ike stopped to ponder for a second, and he cracked his knuckles, and I cracked mine to show I could out-crack him, and he cracked his thumbs and his toes until he had nothing left to crack, and I cracked until I had nothing left and we calculated that he had won by two cracks except that mine were louder so I got honorable mention, and then he said, “He was my guardian angel.”
I wondered if Langdon was really Zando; if maybe there was only one guardian angel and he went wherever he was needed most.
“I know this sounds incredible,” Ike said, “but back home in Souvien, Zando was a rancher. He had a boy about my age. He told me all about life on the island. They believe in freedom, work, responsibility, and property. Just like here. His people have been ranching for a hundred years, just like my people. The difference is they can’t ranch in peace. Some of their local folk are dirty, ignorant, mean, lazy, profane. And they shoot back.”
“You’re talking about the rebels,” I whispered.
“They’re standing in the way of progress,” Ike said. He didn’t exactly whisper, but he spoke real low in his soft, serious voice. “They’re evil. Do you think they’ll stop in Souvien?” I shook my head no. Ike went on, his voice getting softer and softer so that I could barely hear him. “There’ll be another island. And another. Pretty soon, all the islands will be theirs. Pretty soon, they’ll be on the mainland. Taking over our cities. Pretty soon. Pretty soon.” He paused.