Mort(e) marched through the crowd to the door. He was at the foot of the steps when Wawa and the Archon caught up with him.
“Sebastian,” the Archon said.
Mort(e) stopped and stared her down. “Do you have any idea what I’m trained to do if I hear you say that name again?” he asked.
The Archon glanced at Wawa, who shook her head as if to say, Don’t ask.
“When I was still an animal,” Mort(e) said, “I swore I would kill anyone who harmed that boy. I took an oath. The only reason you’re still breathing right now is because you promised to get me to Sheba.”
“We are here to help you as much as we expect you to help us,” the Archon said.
“I’m not here to help you. I don’t need all this EMSAH nonsense. You’ve concocted some fantasy about me.”
“It’s no fantasy. Even the Queen foretold this.”
“You’ve played right into the Queen’s hands!” Mort(e) replied. “If Michael could think straight, he’d tell you. But he’s so fried that he doesn’t even remember what I did. I killed Daniel Martini.”
The Archon maintained her stony expression.
“Did you hear me?” Mort(e) asked. “I said I shot that boy’s father because of what he did to Sheba. And I didn’t make up a bunch of fairy tales so I could feel better about it.”
“Mort(e),” Wawa said, “this isn’t helping anything.”
“Oh, you want to go cuddle with these humans now?”
Mort(e) was almost ashamed of the hurt that registered on her face. “These people saved our lives,” she said.
“For what?” Mort(e) asked. “So they can start over?”
“We seek peace with all God’s children,” the Archon said.
“After you use them to finish your war,” Mort(e) said. “And what happens then? What happens when your god wants you to have pets and farm animals again?”
“That won’t happen,” the Archon said. “We tried to prove it to you earlier. Have you already forgotten that young man who gave his life to save you?”
“Of course not.”
“Neither have I,” the Archon said. “He was my son.”
A painful pause followed. Wawa let out one of her canine whines.
“So you see,” the Archon said, “we’ve sacrificed. Just like you.”
“You better pray she’s on that island,” Mort(e) said. “If she isn’t, I’m coming back here. And I will gut you in front of this whole congregation, got it?”
“She’s there,” the Archon said, pursing her lips. “Michael has never been wrong before. About anything.”
Mort(e) nodded. “Lieutenant,” he said, “you can die with these people if you want, but I’m getting my friend, and then you won’t see me again.”
“Understood, Captain,” Wawa said.
Mort(e) left them on the stairs. He wanted to sit by the fountain that the humans had built. He liked the sound of the burbling water, even if it had been poisoned with some kind of EMSAH-related significance.
From the top of the steps, he heard Wawa tell the Archon, “His name is Mort(e).”
Two of the Elders found Mort(e) by the fountain and told him that a VIP suite had been reserved for the messiah. He could wait there and settle in until he was ready to talk. The suite was on the level between the fountain and the church, where most of the humans’ quarters were located. It had a bunk and a desk, which Mort(e) supposed was for contemplating his mission of salvation for animals and humankind. But an even better tool for meditation was the window. Because his room was located at the front of the ship, the glass faced forward and curved along the wall to form part of the floor, allowing him to watch the earth scrolling under his feet. He lost track of how much time went by while he stood in this position. From this altitude, the surface appeared to be made of only colors, without any texture. The Vesuvius passed over the ocean, separated from the land by a line of yellow sand and white foam. And from that point, the dark blue spread in every direction. Mort(e) had never seen it before.
Wawa arrived with some food: a plate of roasted beetles, ants, and termites. She sat beside him so that they both faced the oncoming blue sea. People spoke outside the room, and it took a minute for Mort(e) to realize that they were repeating themselves.
“They’re praying for you,” Wawa said. “They have these little necklaces with beads on them, and they use the beads to count the prayers.”
“I’ve seen it before,” Mort(e) said.
She asked him if he was okay. He said he was fine, and repeated the question to her. She said yes.
“Did she ask you to talk to me?” he said.
“Of course. But I would have, anyway.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me your thoughts on all this. What’s bothering you?”
“They’re all nuts.”
She laughed.
“Must be the lack of oxygen up here,” he said. “They think that death is an illusion. Their leader thinks she’s going to see her son again after he was ripped to pieces.”
“You have to admire their sense of purpose, though. They’re like the ants in a way. And like you.”
“No, not like me. I’m trying to find Sheba because there is no death-life.”
“So you’re going through with this, despite the risk to everyone?”
“Oh, yes,” Mort(e) said. “I meant what I said. I said the same thing to the Queen when she asked.”
“You mean, with the translator?”
“Or a dream,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure anymore. But I told her right to her face that I’d still do it, no matter what. Don’t you admire my sense of purpose?”
“I admire you, Mort(e),” she said. “Culdesac chose his second-in-command well.”
“On more than one occasion,” Mort(e) said.
He placed his hand on top of hers, where it remained for a few moments. A memory crept into his mind, something from his experience with the device. Something about Wawa, the pup in the cage. Mort(e) squinted as he tried to retrieve the memory. A whisper in his mind said, She lost someone. No goodbyefarewell. No pack. No pack. No pack.
The memory disintegrated. Only the feeling of solidarity remained. She stayed with him until long after the sun went down. They talked about the war and their homes. She told him about Cyrus and Tracksuit and all the others. He told her about Sheba and Tiberius and the Martinis. They shared stories of Culdesac, both the ones that scared them as well as the ones that made them laugh. Mort(e) was glad she was there. She made him feel like a normal person. She forgave him for who he was.
IN THE MORNING, someone knocked on his door. When Mort(e) opened it, he found the Archon standing with Wawa and two of the Elders, the same men who had directed him to his room. They were pasty middle-aged white men. One was bald; the other wore his stringy gray hair in a ponytail. Like the Archon, they were both physically fit—the bug-and-organic-vegetable diet appeared to be working. They wore a similar robe and collar, but the cloth was a navy blue rather than black. As they walked through a gauntlet of the faithful, heads bowed on either side, but no hands reached out this time. Mort(e) could still feel their gaze focusing on his St. Jude medal, which made it pulse with energy like a second heart.
They gathered around a square metal table in the Archon’s quarters. There were several maps splayed out, all depicting the Island. The rising sun lit up the humans’ faces and exposed their wrinkles, revealing that they had lived longer than most. The men introduced themselves as Elder Pius (the bald one) and Elder Gregory (with the ponytail). Pius was some sort of military officer, always speaking in terse militaristic jargon. He said negative when he meant no. Gregory, on the other hand, revealed everything Mort(e) needed to know about him in one sentence: “Do you mind if I hold your St. Jude medal?”
Mort(e) leaned forward so that the man could touch the medallion. Gregory held it between his thumb and index finger. He sighed and let go.
The Archon explained that Gre
gory was in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Vesuvius. He would coordinate the attack from the air, while Pius led the troops on the ground.
“Are you afraid of the water?” Pius asked. “I mean, you are a cat.”
“No.”
Gregory began to tell a story of how he used to discipline his pet cat with a squirt gun. Pius cut him off.
“You won’t get wet,” Pius said. “But what we have in mind will be a little disconcerting.”
He leafed through the maps of the Island until he came across one that gave a three-dimensional view of what the ants had constructed. The false Jerusalem resembled a mushroom cloud sprouting from the ocean floor. A shaft made of earth and stone rose from the bottom of the sea before spreading out into the landmass that broke the surface of the water. This shaft was a tunnel through which the Colony could transport supplies. The humans had attempted an assault on it once but failed. Now the submarines of the old human fleets were scattered or sunken, and the resistance had only a small strike force and a few allies on the ground.
“The goal,” he said, “is to cut off the Colony’s head.”
“Take out the Queen,” Gregory said.
“Yeah, I got that,” Mort(e) replied. “How? We don’t even know where she is.”
“Yes, we do,” Pius said, tracing his finger along the Island’s main tunnel. “Her chamber is right here.”
“Don’t tell me that your prophet is a GPS, too,” Mort(e) said.
“He speaks as God wills him to,” she said. “In riddles and parables and allegory. But we were able to … extract this information from him.”
Extract, Mort(e) thought. He imagined a human hand—Janet’s—grinding half an orange against a plastic juicer.
“Hypnosis?” Wawa asked.
“We did what we had to do,” the Archon said.
Mort(e) pictured another preposterous ceremony, a séance, in which a hypnotized Michael spoke in tongues while the humans clutched their prayer necklaces and howled and shook and danced.
“There will be three phases,” Pius said. “We begin tomorrow morning. First, you will take out the Queen. Second, the Archon will fly her section of the ship to lead the attack. Third, we will mount an amphibious assault at the northern end of the island.”
“What do you mean her section?” Mort(e) asked.
They explained that the top part of the Vesuvius—the balloon that rested above the other two—could detach and fly on its own. They named it the Golgotha.
“Sort of like the saucer section of the Enterprise from Star Trek,” Gregory said. This prompted bewildered expressions from Mort(e) and Wawa. Gregory’s follow-up—“You know, The Next Generation?”—did not clarify anything.
“Okay, let’s stick with part one,” Mort(e) said. “How do I get in?”
Pius fumbled through the maps again until he came across a schematic for some kind of missile, showing a side view of the projectile and a diagram of its working parts. Once Pius flattened out the paper, Mort(e) realized that it was not a missile. It was a torpedo.
“Do you mean to tell me—”
“We’ve modified it,” Pius said. “We can deploy it from the Vesuvius. There’s a chamber inside that’s big enough to fit a human. Or a really big cat.”
The torpedo, Pius explained, had a parachute to ensure a soft landing so that it would not “break every damn bone” in Mort(e)’s body. The front, meanwhile, was equipped with a cannon that would inject molten metal upon impact, allowing it to drill through the rock. The hatch would automatically burst open once the infiltration was complete. While Pius bragged about the ingenuity that went into the “catpedo,” Mort(e) and Wawa tried to communicate with facial expressions. This is crazy, Mort(e) signaled. What did you expect? she asked with a tip of her head. Mort(e) imagined himself in the torpedo, a metal sperm swimming through the water on its way to fertilize an egg.
“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts,” the Archon said. “You were so eager you threatened to kill me, remember?”
“You’ll be armed,” Pius said. “Don’t worry about that. And we have a few weapons that the ants haven’t seen yet.”
They tried to give Mort(e) an idea of what he would see on the inside. Chances were that the chamber would have some light in it if Sheba was held prisoner there. They could not confirm Sheba’s condition. Mort(e) would have to carry her out if she was incapacitated. No one had the nerve to suggest that Sheba would not wish to go along with him.
They moved on to the attack itself: the Archon’s ship would bombard the Colonial army, and then paratroopers would join with a D-day force comprised of loyal animals using old human boats. The Archon said that these animals had “converted” and were awaiting orders from the Vesuvius. When Mort(e) asked how many there were, the Archon said there would be more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow than today.
The Archon concluded the meeting by asking that they pray. Gregory and Pius faced her and bowed their heads. Wawa joined them. Her mouth moved while they talked about God watching over them, delivering them from evil. Mort(e) nudged her. He wanted her to see him roll his eyes at this ritual. But she kept her head bowed and continued praying.
THE HUMANS HELD another church service that night. Wawa told him he should attend, if only as a diplomatic courtesy. Mort(e) agreed, but insisted on sitting in the last pew. There he cringed at the many things that he found disturbing: a choir of children singing songs about drinking someone’s blood; Elder Gregory announcing that they were slaves for God while casually flipping his ponytail off his shoulder; grown men and women weeping and shouting in incomprehensible dialects. Mercifully, Michael and his nurse did not attend. A child in his condition could not be trotted out for every religious service. Mort(e) tried to think of the boy as he had first met him, lying on a towel on Daniel’s bed. Instead, Mort(e) kept picturing the translator fastened to Michael’s head, poisoning his brain.
Later, the Archon blessed the soldiers who would be leading the assault. They were barely adults, and each wore the flag of the defunct country from which they came. Most had American flags, but there were others that Mort(e) recognized: Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, some Caribbean nations. They did not strike him as soldiers so much as wide-eyed converts only a few years removed from performing plays in Miss Teter’s class. The Archon assured them that they would either be victorious in the morning, or they would go to heaven. One by one, she went before the soldiers, placing her hands on each pair of shoulders and whispering a prayer.
The children sang again. Mort(e) realized that Wawa had left her pew.
It did not take long to find her walking up the center aisle. The congregants, who had been warned about gawking at the two mutated visitors, turned their heads as she passed by each row. One pew at a time, the singing came to a stop. With her back to the crowd, the Archon noticed the song dying out. She turned to see Wawa stepping forward. This great warrior, second-in-command of the Red Sphinx, wept like a human child.
“Yes, my friend?” the Archon said.
“I wish to join with you in the battle tomorrow,” Wawa said.
“You wish to join this church?” the Archon asked.
“I want to be a part of your pack,” Wawa said, her voice breaking.
The Archon ran to Wawa and embraced her. People applauded, wiped their eyes, laughed, raised their arms in the air, and shouted that their god was great. A new soul had joined them. Miss Teter had the children sing the song from the day before:
Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing pow’r?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
The soldiers formed a circle around Waw
a, each giving her a hug. They cried and laughed at the same time. Soon all the humans left their seats to get closer to their newest member, all while singing the atrocious song. At one point, a little girl from Miss Teter’s class left her place in the choir and wormed her way through the legs of the adults. She pulled on Wawa’s tail and giggled. An adult scolded her, but the lieutenant gave the girl a hug. They spoke for a moment. Then the girl pointed at Mort(e) and said something that he could not hear.
He got up and left. When he returned to his quarters, he sat by the great window again. He could still hear the singing from downstairs, a low grumble through the floor.
MORT(E) BARELY SLEPT. It made little sense to do so, now that his life could be measured in hours rather than years. He drank some water and ate a bag of dried beetles that had been left in his quarters. A soldier came for him in the morning, a boy of seventeen or eighteen. He handed Mort(e) a backpack containing all the supplies he would need. Inside, Mort(e) found a submachine gun, a grenade, a small canister of oleic acid, a digital watch, a canteen of water, and some food. The young soldier led him to the promenade area, where once again the civilians onboard were gathered. This time, they prayed in whispers, their eyes on the ground. Some even covered their faces with their hands, their voices indistinguishable from the babbling fountain.
Mort(e) followed the soldier to a fluorescent-lit room at the rear of the ship. Shelves filled with the torpedoes from the schematics lined either side. The “catpedo” prototype was mounted on a small platform, facing a metal tube that presumably exited at the bottom of the ship. The Archon, Gregory, Pius, and Wawa stood solemnly alongside it, like pallbearers next to a coffin.
The Archon broke the oppressive silence. “The fleet is on its way,” she said. “Everything is in place.”
“Good cloud cover, too,” Gregory said. “God is shielding us.”
“Right,” Mort(e) said.
He approached the torpedo. The hatch was open, revealing the small space where he would sit, upholstered with white cloth and fitted with a harness in order to lessen the impact. Mort(e) would have to curl up in order to fit. Pius had assured him in the meeting the day before that the entire trip would take about twelve minutes. There would be no windows for him to see the Island, so he would have to rely on his watch. Its glowing face would be the only source of light inside the capsule.
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