by Rufus Offor
Yan had harboured the desire to perform in a mariachi band since he was a child and was a dab hand on the guitar.
They were found and brought before the angry captain but after looking at him for a few minutes, Yan had convinced him that they were a wandering mariachi band and would make a welcome addition to the onboard entertainment. It worried the others a little that they’d never picked up a musical instrument in their lives and would quickly be found out as fakes but Yan had another ace up his sleeve. He sat them all down one by one and stared at them, filling their minds with everything that they needed to know of the art of the Mariachi. The information trickled into their brains as Yan reprogrammed them.
It was a feat that Yan had never attempted before and it was proving to be quite difficult. He’d made plenty of people do plenty of things that they wouldn’t usually do but these things were rather straightforward. Getting people to kill themselves was easy as most people knew how to do it anyway, it was just a matter of placing the desire to want to do something that people already knew how to do. Getting people to perform complex tasks that they’d never even contemplated before was a much more intense procedure. It took hours. They were still being programmed as they were called to the stage. Yan was just finishing the programming of Dr Komodo as the curtain went up on their very first performance. Much to their surprise they all knew exactly which song to start with, how to play and all of the harmonies to Yan’s lead vocal. They went down a storm in their sombreros and ornately embroidered Mariachi uniforms and were forced into three encores.
It amazed Shoop, Dr Komodo and Jim that Yan could actually sing. Not only sing, but sing frighteningly well. For a man that hadn’t said a word for almost thirty years it sounded a little odd. They’d expected just to play a few guitar tunes and get the hell out of there, but when Yan started singing the crowd went ballistic, which was also very odd. Have you ever seen a vast room full of OAP’s throwing their underpants at a freakishly tall, sweating, bald, terrifying Russian as he smoothly tickles the ears of every person in the room with his silky tones? It’s a very odd experience. Even the men threw their boxer shorts, which only added to the freakishness of the scene.
They spent a few weeks onboard, playing their gigs and singing around tables in a variety of the many dining rooms. Yan was in heaven. Shoop actually thought he saw him smile at one point but then convinced himself that it must’ve just been a trick of the light or something. He didn’t like the idea that Yan was capable of anything other than abject misery; it rearranged the way he thought of the world and he preferred not to have his world changed in too drastic a manner. It made him feel a bit sick, or was it the incessant Mexican music that was eternally flying around the inside of his mind. Whatever it was, he couldn’t wait to get off the ship. It reeked of mothballs and overpowering perfume and aftershave. He hadn’t smelt so much Old Spice in his life.
The others felt the same. They were in a floating retirement home and they wanted to get off but Yan kept dragging them out to play their guitars and woo the throng of Wrinkle ridden panty chuckers.
Heaven for Yan, hell for the rest.
Eventually, they reached Darwin in the north of Australia and disembarked, narrowly escaping a group of desperately upset old women and a man that had a son in the music industry and wanted to get them a record deal.
As had been the case in many of the borders that they’d had to cross, they met a number of Sphere agents on the way in and only just managed to escape with there lives. Shoop was beginning to despise the crossings. Ever time they’d crossed a border or landed on an island somewhere they were attacked by Sphere agents, which meant that The Boss would have a better idea of where they were and he’d send more of his little bloodhounds to every border and landing point around the world.
Shoop and the independents had all been on the run for so long that they were beginning to forget what it was like to be able to stay still. Shoop’s life of relative comfort in Edinburgh was almost completely forgotten. The path he was on was a rough one and was showing little or no sign of ending any time soon.
Life on the run was his only choice until he found what he was looking for and the hunt was not going as well as he would’ve liked.
He usually depended on a wealth of clues and questioning to lead him to the end of his missions but had been forced to rely on little more than his senses this time. The sixth sense had been gone for so long that he’d forgotten how to trust it. He’d learned that cold hard facts and answers from tortured people were far more reliable than his flaky senses. For years the tingling that pointed him in the right direction had been absent, it was like an old friend had deserted him when he needed him most and had turned up out of the blue asking for Shoop to take him down the pub and buy him a drink to catch up on old times. Shoop hadn’t quite forgiven his sixth sense for buggering off without warning; it never even sent a post card damn-it!
They managed to get their hands on a cheap camper van, using some of their mariachi earnings, and set out for Melbourne. The plan was to get to Hobart in Tasmania. Hobart, in centuries past, had taken in many of the ships heading for mainland Australia. The ships would stop in Hobart to pick up supplies before heading northwest to Melbourne. There would be ships manifests available for the time that the vessel was supposed to have reached Australia in Melbourne, but the more complete ones would be in Hobart. Many people didn’t move on from Hobart, leaving their ships there and wandering off into the Tasmanian wilds to set up farms.
The plan was to find manifests and find out where the item called the vessel from the map they’d retrieved from Jeeves’ vaults had gone. It wasn’t a very good plan as far as plans go. In fact it was damn awful. There was little or no chance of them finding anything. For a start, they didn’t even know exactly what this vessel thing was. There were some clues to suggest that it might have been a person but there was nothing concrete. For all they knew it might be some sort ornate vase, or a cup of some sort and the odds of finding a mug on a ship’s manifest were less than slim, they were non-existent. They were looking for a piece of hay in a warehouse full of needles and morale was slipping lower with every mile that went by. When they had been on the rickety boats they were distracted by trying to stay afloat and didn’t really think about where they were going and why, and when they were on the cruise ship they had their work to keep them busy, as rancid as it was for some of them but now they had nothing but desert, vast expanses of nothingness and the oblivion of their own thoughts to keep them going.
Their tinny rust bucket slogged on through the days of endless nothingness, heading for a place that held no clear hope of them finding anything other than another mass of Sphere agents. Every time they’d encountered them they’d become more numerous with more weapons. They hadn’t been as much of a threat as the three mercenaries, Cat, The Satellite and Tim in Singapore but still represented a clear danger to their mission.
The dust bowl they edged through gave them time to think, to reflect, which was exactly what they didn’t need.
It gave Shoop time to worry about the point of it all, the reason why they were trapped on this seemingly aimless course and why he didn’t just vanish into some wild jungle never to return; it gave the questions in Dr Komodo’s mind time to claw their way to the front, why were they on this wild goose chase? Why was he being so damn loyal to a man that didn’t seem to know why and where they were going, who was showing clear signs of doubt, it gave Jim time for the woman in the red dress to speak to him at length inside his mind, to tempt him, to spread doubt like a plague.
Yan didn’t question anything; he just sat back and dreamed of mariachi glory.
Tempers became frayed; they were all decidedly edgy and the immensity of the baron landscape was doing little to bring their minds under control. It was a constant battle to keep sane and focused on the task that they had to perform. It didn’t help that the mission they were supposed to be completing was as vague as a scientologist’s sense of reality.
&nb
sp; They all felt like they were chess pieces in someone else’s game and the players weren’t known to them. It was very frustrating. They were wound up tighter than an obsessive compulsive without cleaning equipment.
It was all looking hopeless; until Shoop was attacked by his sixth sense, his bones rattling around inside his body. The onslaught was so sudden and so intense that he winced and gritted his teeth against the discomfort.
‘Pull over!’ he demanded, doubling over as his bones felt like they were trying to make a break for freedom. ‘Pull the bloody van over! NOW!’
Jim, who’d been driving and caught in a daydream, came around as Shoop yelled. He’d been a thousand miles away inside his own mind, naked and stroking the woman in the red dress’ muscular and sensual thighs. Shoop’s pain brought him crashing back to the dusty hell of reality with a heavy thud. He slammed the brakes down hard, which would’ve been unnerving had they been travelling in something that was capable of speeds above 45mph, but they weren’t, so they just got a little bit of a shunting.
The van came to a stop and Shoop fumbled for the door handle, senses overpowered with the thumping inside his bones and skull. He staggered out of the van and faltered onto the vacant highway, swaying this way and that as he tried to get the sensations under control. Eventually he stopped on the opposite side of the road, his throbbing under control, and stood staring into the wilderness.
The Independents remained in the van, passing each other quizzical glances.
‘Maybe we should just leave him’ said Jim half joking, half serious. Instantly Dr Komodo’s doubts melted away. He had been unsure about their course but when faced with the decision to up and leave the mission his choice became clear. He was with Shoop all the way and part of him thanked Jim for making his mind up for him, the other half of him hated himself for ever entertaining the mildest thought of mutiny. He put all the anger at himself in a glare that went straight through Jim, cutting him as it went. Yan’s frozen stare did much the same.
‘Alright! Alright! I was only joking!’ said Jim.
‘Thin ice Jim,’ Hissed Komodo threateningly, ‘Very thin ice! Just watch yourself!’
Jim kept quiet, realising that his darker intentions had been recognised for what they were. The woman in the red dress inside his mind chastised him for acting too soon, telling him that the right time would come, ‘just be patient my darling!’
Shoop stood, his sixth sense gyrating like a male stripper on speed but the discomfort had become controllable. He stood stock still suddenly aware that he was supposed to be waiting for something, looking for something. He didn’t know what it was but knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was there. He took a drink from his hipflask and lit a cigarette and waited.
‘What’s going on?’ called Jim.
‘Be quiet!’ barked Shoop.
Time crawled by and Shoop remained, rooted to the spot like a petrified tree, staring off into the distance while Yan, Jim and Dr Komodo lounged around, enjoying the chance to stretch their legs and playing a game called “shoot the lizard with a crossbow”.
A full packet of cigarettes later, as the sun crawled to its pinnacle in the sky, Shoop piped up.
‘Some one’s coming!’ The others stopped shooting lizards and crossed the road to where Shoop was planted to see what was going on.
‘Where?’ asked Jim.
‘Over there.’ Shoop nodded at the horizon and they all squinted in the direction that he’d indicated, all of them except Yan that is, who’s eyes never did anything other than glower, wide open like a fish, never blinking. Their eyes darted along the horizon.
‘I can’t see anything!’ said Jim.
‘You will in a minute!’
The heat of the day bounced off the landscape and warped the wilderness. They remained standing, static as a moron’s opinion for a while, the heat playing games with their vision.
‘Is that a giraffe over there?’ said Jim.
‘Don’t be so bloody daft!’ spat Shoop.
They stood in silence for a while, the independents desperately trying to find anything out of the ordinary in the desolate expanse and not doing very well.
Suddenly Shoop piped up.
‘He’s here!’ said Shoop, much to the amazement of his comrades who were still unable to see anyone.
‘Where?’ asked Komodo pulling out a gun in alarm, Jim followed suit while Yan thought about composing a new Mexican song.
‘You won’t need those.’ Said Shoop, motioning toward their exposed weaponry, ‘put them away, NOW!’
They obeyed the order.
Then, to a small collection of rocks not fifteen feet away from them, he said, ‘You can come out now!’
Jim and Komodo were visually unnerved as an aborigine stepped out from the cover of the rocks, they couldn’t understand how the man had managed to get so close without any of them seeing the slightest bit of movement in the desert except for Shoop. It occurred to them that they were nothing more than workhorses in a greater plan. Even Jim noticed a stab of doubt in his desire for mutiny. ‘Shoop knows more than I realise!’ came the epiphany and the voice of the woman in the red dress was pushed back a little. He felt the slight relief, like a weight being lifted, but the woman in red hung on to his mind.
‘Jesus,’ said Komodo, ‘Where the bloody hell did he come from!’
The man was as black as a pessimist’s bad mood. He wore a pair of frayed denim shorts and nothing else, standing on toughened bare feet; the skin on the bottom of them as thick, hard and pliable as old leather. His face was shallowly lined, soft and blunt yet gristly and tough as rhino hide. His eyes emotionless yet warm and deep; dark like a lake at night, carrying an air of peace that spewed from his hard years of desert living. The wisdom seeped from him in rivulets like steam from a hot pool in winter.
He carried a simple yet very tall spear, using it as a walking stick
He made them all feel distinctly uncomfortable.
He walked casually over to Shoop from his previous apparent invisibility and stood in front of him, calmly locking eyes with him; a feet that very few people would be able to pull off without feeling utter dread, but he remained unshaken by Shoop’s horror inducing grimaces. They stood for a while staring at each other, the others couldn’t believe what they were seeing. There wasn’t one of them who would have dreamt of trying to stare at Shoop for an extended period of time, it was something that was quite simply unthinkable and yet here was a man, calm as Christmas, gazing into his eyes like some tame and fearless wild animal. Not a sliver of concern crossed his face.
Shoop blew smoke in the man’s face. He didn’t flinch. His expression was almost ethereal in its lack of reaction.
They stood looking at each other for a while until Shoop said, ‘Have you got something you want to tell me?’
The independents had no idea how Shoop had come to that conclusion. All they’d seen was a crazy old black fella appear out of the wilds and do some staring. Clearly they were all out of their depth and they felt it very distinctly. Shoop and the man were on a different plain of realisation from them and all they could do was watch and wait. Something was happening with Shoop’s sixth sense and they dared not interrupt it for fear of reprisals from their leader.
‘The ancestors said to tell the miserable white fella something,’ said the man, ‘they said to tell ‘im “She’s gone to Nazca!”
‘Is that all?’ asked Jim, ‘I mean… it just seems that we might need a little bit more information than that!’ he looked disgruntled. The man’s gaze slowly slipped over to Jim.
‘Don’t know anything else mate!’
‘Who are the ancestors?’ asked Komodo.
‘Not for you to know!’ said the man bluntly but with a calmness that ended any further questions. ‘I’ve done me job, I’m off!’ He turned and started trudging off into the desert.
‘Oi!’ Yelled Jim after him but the man ignored him and marched on doggedly. ‘Get back here, we’re not finishe
d with you!’ He drew his gun and started moving after him. Shoop’s arm swung out and restrained him.
‘Leave it!’
‘But…’
‘I said leave it,’ Shoop nodded to the open desert and said, ‘He’s not the only one out there!’ Shoop’s eyes could see what the others weren’t able to, dozens of shadowy figures hiding in the rocks, waiting to slaughter the stupid white fellas if they made a wrong move. He didn’t feel the need to do anything else though as the words from the aborigine had set of a new tingling in his bones. It was as if his sixth sense had been redirected by the words; Nazca was the next destination. He knew it like he knew he had legs. It was fact. He didn’t quite know what they would find there though, Nazca was a remote area in Peru that housed little more that a series of puzzling images etched on the barren plain.
‘So what?’ said Jim, ‘We’ve got guns, they’ve got sticks, it’ll take five minutes to bat whoever it is out there into submission!’
‘Are you questioning me again?’ spat Shoop through clenched teeth and down-turned mouth.
‘It’s just that…’
‘Shut up!’ The poison in Shoop’s words was palpable. It was enough to halt any further rebellion. In fact, had a normal man heard it, it would’ve been enough to make him cry like a smacked child. ‘We’re going to Peru!’ said Shoop.
Doubt still pulsed through Jim’s mind though; the woman in the red dress drilled through his brain saying things like “your time will come, be patient.” and, “This is a wild goose chase! Come and find me, you know how!” He clutched a piece of paper in his pocket that he hadn’t been aware he was keeping. The paper felt precious to him but he didn’t know why until the woman in his mind said “it’s a number, its how you’ll find me, I can take you away from all this, I can make you safe, I can make you feel good! You know I’m telling the truth!”
As he’d been travelling around inside his own mind he had completely forgotten about the others. Apparently, he’d seemed so distant that it’d been enough to cause concern in Shoop and the independents. As Jim came back down to Earth he looked up and saw them all scowling at him with murder in their eyes. They knew that something was wrong. Jim forced the voice into the back of his mind and gated all his doubts in a safe place, they would come out again later but he needed to hide them for the moment. He realised that if he didn’t pull himself together that he would never make it out of the desert alive. That couldn’t happen, he needed to see her at least one more time before he died, to rest his eyes on hers and touch her. The need consumed him.