The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village Page 9

  There, moving along a narrow corridor, she recognized a cabin, no bigger than absolutely necessary, in which there was a narrow cot, a minuscule desk, and an empty closet the size of a cupboard. She lingered at the door, inquisitive, but by now Thatch was so impressed by her that he hurried us along to another tight little space between bulkheads and decks.

  Well. After all the touring in the seventeenth century, this room was a jarring change. It was lined and filled with twenty-first-century gadgetry: computers, monitors, servers, and banks of electronic gear with a dazzling array of blinking numbers and lights. Seated before it all was a half-pirate, I would say. He wore a striped shirt, red headscarf, and even a gold earring, but he was wearing Levis and canvas running shoes.

  “This is Sparks,” said Captain Thatch.

  Sparks offered his hand—he was the first one on this ship to do so. I shook his hand, as did Andi.

  “So now we’re back in the real world,” I quipped.

  That was ill-timed. The captain grabbed a handful of my shirtfront and growled in my face, “It’s all real, old man, as real as this fist under your chin! Out here, we have it our way, and our way is where you are.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, expecting acknowledgment.

  “You’re the captain,” I replied, convinced this man was no stranger to brute force.

  Then, as if to heighten the tension, the same maniacal scream we’d heard before came through the boards below our feet, all the more terrifying for its proximity. We couldn’t ignore it. With my eyes I questioned the captain.

  “Pay it no mind,” he said even as he glared at Sparks. “It isn’t really there.”

  I was in no place to argue, but the scream did seem to bother him well enough.

  Just as it bothered Sparks. He was clearly troubled by the scream and pled with the captain. “I can fix it. I just need some time to figure out Ben’s programming.”

  Captain Thatch was more interested in watching Andi. “Look around you, lass. Seen it before?”

  Andi’s eyes were already locked on the computer screen, on the rows of numbers and code that I found undecipherable. “It looks so familiar!”

  “Have a seat,” said Thatch, nudging Sparks from his chair and offering it to Andi.

  She sat before the monitor and studied it, hands on the keyboard, scrolling down, up again, looking surprised as if she knew what she was looking at. “Well . . . no wonder!”

  The captain leaned in close, examining the monitor along with her. “Yes, my dear? What do you see?”

  “The system is scrambled. It’s . . .” She scrolled up and down, pointing at lines of code. “See here? It’s an encrypted command in the program that engages if anyone violates the entry protocol. Instead of a sequential Brain Wave Authentication, the program inverts to Brain Wave Generation and then loops back on itself and self-scrambles. Which means . . .” She shuddered at a new awareness. “The particular Writer, W-902, would have Authenticated the wearer’s brain, but then would have reloaded every brain pattern in cumulative layers of confusion. Pure madness!”

  The captain took a gold earring—Andi’s gold earring—from a hook on the wall, put on his reading glasses, and read a number from the earring’s inner surface. “W-902.” He cursed and railed at Sparks, “And you didn’t notice? You didn’t say a word before he put this on?” I caught him shooting a glance toward the hold below us.

  “How was I to know Ben would scramble the system? How could anybody know?”

  “Eh, he’s done that and more, now hasn’t he? Made sure we couldn’t track him and made sure the whole system was useless without him. A little insurance, I’ll wager.”

  “But a lot of good it did him.”

  “And us! Instead of information we get a scrambled brain! And what about this Thursday with the big fish to catch?”

  Sparks stared at the screen, wagging his head.

  Thatch was getting dangerous. “I asked you a question!”

  “I don’t know!”

  Andi piped in, “You need the entry code.” She tapped some keys and a prompt appeared on the screen. Blinking. Waiting.

  That got their attention. They halted their squabble and stared over her shoulder.

  “Let’s see . . .” she said, tapping the keys. “How about, ‘Aardvark Basil Crustacean 233 997 417709’?”

  The computer beeped, the screen went wild, lights came on, drives whirred to life, and a very attractive lady pirate appeared on the screen, presenting a menu of links and sub-pages.

  Sparks was stunned. “We’re in! We’re operational!”

  “Almost there,” said the captain. “Well done, lass! Well done!”

  The way these men whooped and high-fived each other, you’d think all wars had ceased for now and forever. Did this give us any bargaining leverage? I wondered. “I take it you’re pleased?”

  “Break out some grog,” said the captain to Rock, “and let’s have our dinner.” He looked at me and Andi, and even patted Andi on the shoulder. “And two more places for our special guests!”

  Well, we seemed to be on their good side, something I hoped to use to our advantage. Andi ventured a quick look at me, and with a similar look I agreed with her: Whatever else we didn’t yet know, we could be sure we’d stumbled upon the very thing we’d been sent to find. We were right in the middle of it.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Prisoners

  Brenda, Tank, and Daniel soon found that St. Jacob was not a good place for their friends to be kidnapped. There was no 9-1-1 system; there wasn’t even cell service. The police station was a tight little cube of concrete with a dented Volkswagen beetle for a squad car, and no one was there. They finally found the local police chief in his squat little abode next door. Tank and Brenda spilled their story in urgent fashion as he listened, absentmindedly wiping his mouth.

  “So,” Tank said, “we need help. We need cops and marshals and SWAT teams and stuff.”

  He weighed everything a moment. “You need to file a complaint.”

  He took a blank sheet of paper, took down all the pertinent information, then added his phone number. Having completed this single page to his satisfaction, he took a fresh piece of paper and began scribbling out a copy of the first.

  “What are you doin’, man?” Brenda asked.

  He answered matter-of-factly, “I have to make posters to spread around.”

  “You don’t have a copy machine?” Tank asked incredulously.

  “Do I look like I’d have a copy machine?”

  Brenda was flustered, to put it mildly. “Come on, there’s got to be a better way than that!”

  He finished making his first copy and began copying again. “You might try the TV station.”

  “You have a TV station?”

  The police chief looked insulted. “Yeah. Channel Five. Sometimes the other islands can pick up the signal, depending on the wind.”

  “That’ll work,” said Tank.

  “If you throw in some advertising,” the chief added.

  “What?” said Brenda.

  He motioned for her to calm down. “Hey, no sweat. Margarita’s owns the station. Cut a deal.”

  Andi and I had had our dinner shortly before being kidnapped, but under the circumstances we determined to enjoy the hospitality of our “hosts” and joined Captain Thatch, Sparks, Rock, and Scalarag for dinner in the Captain’s Quarters. We raved about the beef, garlic potatoes, and broccoli, and even managed to choke down some kind of grog, all to keep things warm and humane.

  The conversation trended toward the pirate life in a modern world, and so I asked offhandedly, “So it seems you’ve chosen a seventeenth-century reality over a modern one?”

  Captain Thatch took a gulp of grog and replied, “Why not? Who’s to say what’s true but what there is on the Predator? No right, no wrong, no present, no past—just what is, and how we like it.”

  I gave Andi a side glance. “We were on this very subject not long ago, Andi and I.”


  “Of a certain. It’s the talk these days. No truth, no shame, no God to draw the line.”

  I glanced at Andi again. “Yes, that is, after all, what it comes down to, and so here you are.”

  “And so here you are. Can’t say we’ve done you wrong, now can we?”

  Now Andi shot me a glance.

  “Well . . .” I could hardly agree, but as Andi’s eyes were telling me, what reason could I provide for disagreement? “That could depend on the recipient of the action, I suppose, whether the action would be in their best interests.”

  The captain laughed. “Their best interests? So now you’ve come up with a rule.” Then he looked at me craftily, like a spider at a fly. “But them that makes the rules has their own interests, you can lay to that.” He nodded toward Andi. “Like the pretty lass you have here, old man. Some real opportunity, I’d say, when it’s you that pays her.”

  I hoped he was only pressing a point. “That would be unthinkable, of course.”

  “Unthinkable? I thought of it.” He gestured with his fork. “So I’ll wager so have you.”

  “If I were one to violate trust and honor!”

  “Ha! Honor! Hardly a useful sentiment!”

  “Quite useful in holding a ship together, I would think.” I recalled a quote from C. S. Lewis. “‘We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.’”

  He scoffed at that, so of course I had to challenge him, and while we bickered over where such things as honor could come from and whether they existed outside of human choice and how they could be found in the absence of God—which was a moot point because, I argued, there was no God—I noticed Andi picking up a banana and peeling it, gawking at it as if seeing a vision, oblivious to the debate.

  “If there be no trust and no honor,” said the captain, who was also watching Andi, “then there be left only the animal we are. . . . Am I right, Ben?”

  Andi snapped out of her preoccupation and answered without pause, “Aye, Captain!”

  The captain laughed and slapped the table in victory as his crewmen marveled. Andi was surprised, and then, I think, afraid for herself.

  “So we’re talking truth, are we?” said the captain, peering over the table at her as he spoke to me. “Well, for your truth you have a lovely assistant with joys to offer, but for my truth . . .” He pointed with his fork. “I think I might be talking to an old friend of mine.” He addressed Andi. “Ben? You’re looking a lot prettier these days!”

  Andi shrank into her chair.

  Sparks eyed her as if she were one of his computers. “The system’s back online. We could try another download.”

  Thatch had to think about that.

  “We’ll just check for a signal, that’s all,” said Sparks.

  Finally, the captain nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Rock produced the same hat they’d placed on her head before and placed it on her head again as Sparks went out the door and then below decks.

  The same eerie space of time passed—last time, it ended with a scream. I was afraid for Andi, angry with myself. Just when I thought Captain Thatch and I were, well, compatriots in opinion, I found I’d been foolishly letting him play a game with me, and now what would become of Andi?

  The intercom warbled as before and the captain answered, “Well?”

  “Nothing, Captain” came Sparks’s voice over the speaker. “We can only load firsthand memory, not secondhand.”

  Thatch roared and pounded the table, his face contorted with a bestial anger I’d not yet seen. He bolted around the table, his hands going for Andi’s neck. I reacted without hesitation, but had come only an inch out of my chair when Rock and Scalarag shoved me down with all their weight and held me there.

  The captain’s hands trembled around Andi’s neck as if he longed to wring it but dared not. “You’re . . . you’re in there, aren’t you? Hiding from an old friend. A friend!” He turned away, so angry he couldn’t choose how to conduct himself; surely it was not with any dignity. “You turned on me, didn’t you?” He turned and faced her again. “You sold me out!”

  Andi was at a total loss. “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She broke into tears. “I don’t know what’s happening to me!”

  He took a moment to contain himself, then smirked at her. “Well I do, lass, I do, so we’ll be keeping you a while.” He let his cold, angry gaze dart between the two of us. “And give no mind to leaving the ship. Try to escape, and we’ll sever the tendons behind your knees, roll you up in squid guts, and throw you to the sharks!” He looked at me as if looks could spit and ordered Rock and Scalarag, “Put this man in irons! Perhaps the lass will act in his . . . best interests!”

  CHAPTER

  9

  The Search Begins

  Margarita’s, favored drinking establishment of St. Jacob, opened its doors at ten the next morning. The police chief, wielding a palm-sized handycam, waved Tank and Brenda to their marks on the beachside veranda, got some drinks in their hands—a margarita for Brenda, a grapefruit juice for Tank—and coached the customers to yuk it up in the background. “Okay, rolling.”

  As a TV personality, Tank was, well, a good athlete. He didn’t know what else in the world to do than stare a hole through the camera. “Hi, I’m Tank.”

  Brenda, replete in fruit-basket hat and flowered halter top, blossomed as the finest of Caribbean beach bimbos, wielding her drink and swiveling her shoulders. “Hey, mon! I’m Brennnda! You lika me? I lika you! We got friends, you know?” She held up drawings she’d made of myself and Andi—quite good, actually. “They are missing. Gone poof! You help us find them, no? They were on St. Jacob just last night, but where they are now, nobody knows! You know? You call us here at . . .”—she gave a grand airheaded flourish—“MARGARITA’S! The happiest place on St. Jacob!”

  “Yeah,” said Tank.

  “Dos Equis on tap. Happy Hour at four!”

  “Yeah,” said Tank.

  “And . . . cut!” said the police chief.

  Brenda tossed the fruit-basket hat on a table and shook out her dreadlocks. “Okay, cool, we’re on TV, and the cops are in the loop. Now let’s get workin’.”

  Daniel, being a minor, was waiting outside.

  He was wearing a Margarita’s pirate hat. Brenda was about to ask—

  “Part of the deal,” said Margarita herself. “Cute kid.”

  Daniel held the hat on his head and met their eyes like it was something important. Brenda got it. “Pirates,” she said. “It’s got something to do with pirates. Andi had pirates on the brain.”

  Tank nodded, reading Daniel’s eyes. “Ever since that pirate show on St. Clemens.”

  They came to the same conclusion: “We’ve got to get back there!”

  But in the Barbee Jay? A sailboat was slow, and they were novices at sailing.

  “Hey, mon” came a voice. “Need a lift to St. Clemens?”

  A jovial-looking fellow stood on the dock below Margarita’s. He was . . . Jamaican? Native? Hispanic? Under that straw hat and behind that mustache he bore a remarkable resemblance to a cabby they’d met in Rome and another cabby Brenda had met in Florida. This guy had one foot on the dock and the other on a speedboat with not one, but two oversized outboards.

  “How much?” Tank asked.

  And there was that same grin they’d seen before. “Part of the deal.”

  The ship did have leg irons bolted to the mainmast where the recalcitrant could be bound in the sight of all, but a man so shackled would be unfit for swabbing the deck and so, free of chains and mop in hand, I labored under watchful eyes. Rock, perched on the forecastle and holding a crude leather flail, supervised. Norwig the Bean hauled up buckets of seawater to rinse.

  “Move along, old man!” Rock hollered. “And work as fit as the young or feel the lash!”

  I worked with “youthful” vigor while Norwig kept the deck awash before my mop. We were getting results—until the little raisin Spikenose came up
from the galley with a pail of kitchen waste and faked a stumble, spilling the sour contents where I had just cleaned.

  “Oops,” he said, then turned and left.

  “Ya scum!” Rock hollered at me. “Is that what you call a clean deck?” He hopped down, scooped up a sizable handful of fats and fruit peelings, and hurled them at me. I could have ducked, I suppose, but that wasn’t the object, was it? They were out to humiliate me, and I thought it best to let them.

  “What’s that slop on the front of you?” asked Norwig as he promptly doused me with a bucket of seawater.

  They laughed. Of course.

  Temper, McKinney, I thought as I felt my face burn. Master your temper!

  “Behold the man of great words!” Rock shouted, then looked at me with disdain. “But you can’t talk the dirt off this deck, now can you? On this ship it’s not words but work, and a man holds his own if he’s a man.”

  “Aye, sir!” I replied, and with a bit of show I mopped the foul residue from the deck as Norwig splashed it along the bulwark and over the side.

  Rock nodded, the mollified taskmaster. “So what were you back home, old man?”

  He asked me in past tense, and so I answered from the past. “A priest.”

  His eyes grew wide—mockingly.

  Before I saw it coming, a blow from his flail landed on the side of my face. I don’t remember hitting the deck I’d just cleaned; I was too stunned to feel it.

  I do remember him standing over me, flail in hand, delighted at the wretch he’d made of me. “So let’s see you turn the other cheek!”

  I was fearful for Andi, as she was for me, but we’d set our strategy with eye contact, expressions, planted phrases: we must cooperate, try to please, get things “human,” and hopefully draw any information we could from our captors.

  So, while I was up on deck getting humiliated and clobbered, she was in the cabin she’d seen earlier, desperate to recall anything the captain might find useful, trying to be of value. He was, after all, alone with her down there, and as he’d said, there was no truth or shame, no God aboard this ship to draw the line.