Chapter Five
He stumbled down the hillside, careening into trees, snagging himself in vines and branches. The blackness of the night turned everything into a menacing unknown. Gusts of wind swayed the bushes, so that he could not tell if the things reaching for him were branches or hands. He slapped and shoved his way through the thicket, aware that he’d lost the trail and not caring. His ears strained behind him for sounds of pursuit, but his own crashing progress and the rumble of thunder overhead drowned other noises out.
Lightning flashed, a jagged bolt of blue-white energy that speared the ground a few meters ahead of Noel. The crackling bang nearly deafened him. Instinctively he threw himself flat, his heart in his mouth, his ears ringing. A tree snapped mortally and caught fire, and the backlash of energy prickled across Noel’s skin, vibrating his teeth and making his hair stand on end.
Slowly, appalled at how close it had come, he picked himself up. The air reeked of burned ozone and fire. The orange flames rose skyward, like a beacon.
Noel dragged in a couple of unsteady breaths, trying to calm his whamming heart, and veered away in a new direction.
Lightning flashed again, making him flinch. But this bolt missed the island. He envisioned it striking the churning seas, hissing steam rising in a cloud. Thunder rumbled ominously.
He had lost his sense of direction, but he wasn’t worried. The island was small, maybe a mile in length. He couldn’t get very lost. In a pinch he could always home in on the beach with the LOC, but right now he was reluctant to activate it in case the bocor was still on his trail.
But Mondoun didn’t seem to be following him. Gradually Noel slowed his pace and finally dropped to one knee to catch his breath. It began to rain pounding sheets of water that flattened the vegetation and drenched him in seconds. Noel crawled under a bush with enormous leaves the size of his torso and huddled there.
Irrationally, the pouring rain made him feel safer. Shoving his dripping hair back from his face, he said, “LOC, activate.”
The computer shimmered on, casting a soft light diffused by the rain.
“Scan data banks for Baba Mondoun.”
The LOC pulsed and hummed for a long time. “No entry found.”
“Cross-index search. Reference voodoo. Reference Tortuga. Reference piracy, circa late seventeenth century. Scan.”
“Negative entry,” the LOC responded.
Noel sighed. No matter how many billions of facts were stored in its miniature data banks, the LOC still remained vulnerable to how complete its sources of information were. If there were no birth records, no death certificates, no recorded trial or prison entries, then there was no way to pin down a person. It seemed Baba Mondoun had not made any impact on history.
“LOC, scan data banks for Black Lonigan, pirate captain of the ship Medusa, circa late seventeenth century.”
“Scanning…Lonigan…legendary privateer for Charles II of England. Born in Dublin, Ireland, 1612. Started career in Royal Navy as cabin boy, age fourteen, then deserted and joined pirate ship. Later received letter of marque from King Charles, commissioning his ship as a naval vessel during the war with Spain.”
“Stop,” Noel said in annoyance. “You’ve got the wrong pirate.”
“Data has been entered incorrectly?” asked the LOC.
“I don’t know,” he replied, shifting to avoid water running down his neck. “This man couldn’t have been born in 1612. He’s not old enough. Scan again.”
“Scanning…Lonigan, Red…born in Dublin, Ireland, 1612.”
“Stop. Red Lonigan is the wrong man. I asked about Black Lonigan.”
“Correction noted. Please give specific instructions.”
“I did,” snapped Noel.
The LOC waited.
Curbing the urge to shake it, Noel said, “Scan for data regarding Black Lonigan, late seventeenth century.”
“Scanning…Lonigan, Black…birthdate unknown…birthplace Cuba. Father Red Lonigan. Mother Spanish noblewoman kidnapped and held hostage off coast of Florida. Made cabin boy, later elected sailing master. Successful buccaneer until Treaty of America between Spain and England. During 1690s preyed on coast of North America, chiefly along the Carolinas but with occasional forays into Louisiana.”
“And now he’s come back to the Caribbean,” Noel said.
“Affirmative. Lonigan was hanged in August, 1697, following trial in Port Royal, Jamaica. His crew disbanded. No one found his treasure, supposedly buried on an unnamed island.”
“Like this one?” Noel asked idly.
“Insufficient data to form a hypothesis.”
“So where does this voodoo stuff come in?” wondered Noel aloud.
“Insufficient data to form a hypothesis. Please rephrase question.”
“He keeps a tame witch doctor on his ship.” Noel blinked and tapped the LOC with his fingertip. “I guess Mondoun really is a witch doctor. Or, he appears to be gifted with strong telekinetic abilities similar to what the Institute’s documented in nineteenth-century rituals in the Belgian Congo. Too bad I can’t forward this data to Antoine back home. It would correlate with his research in Africa. Mondoun also knows some hypnotic techniques. Where did he learn those?”
“No data available.”
“Big help you are.”
The LOC pulsed silently.
“Emphasize parameter programming,” Noel said sternly. “Emphasize isomorphic control isolation.”
“Working.”
“You respond only to my voice commands.”
“Affirmative.”
“You offer data only in response to my direct questions.”
“Affirmative.”
“Don’t forget that,” Noel said, wishing he had a better way to scold the computer. All he could do, however, was run the LOC’s diagnostic and emphasis commands. “LOC? I said, don’t forget that. Respond.”
“Parameters are functioning.”
No, they’re not, Noel wanted to say, but he dropped it. He had other questions to ask.
“Scan for anomalies in time stream,” he said, yawning. The rain drummed steadily around him, and he was growing chilled from sitting in the mud. “Has Leon changed history yet?”
“Scanning…negative.”
“Have I changed history?”
“Qualification. Captain Miller of Plentitude died by drowning, not by gunshot, in original time stream. No significant change to history.”
“No consequences, you mean.”
“Affirmative.”
Noel let out his breath. The longer he remained trapped in the past, the greater the odds were that he would really tamper—however inadvertently—with history enough to alter the future. So far, he’d managed to correct his and Leon’s interference, but sooner or later one of them was bound to make a big mistake that couldn’t be fixed.
At least he was thinking more clearly now than he had been in the voodoo cave. Noel was ashamed that he’d been deliberately plotting ways to have Lady Pamela survive drowning instead of the little boy. Personal feelings could not be allowed to affect the set path of history. His job was to not interfere, not tamper, not change anything to suit himself. He was only an observer, a recorder, and an analyst of events. If he ever succumbed to the temptation to determine individual fates according to his own whims, then he would indeed unleash chaos on the future. That was exactly what the anarchists of his own century had wanted him to do when they sabotaged his LOC and trapped him here in the past. He must not lose his perspective. He must not help them succeed in destroying his own time.
“LOC,” he said, “since Leon and I haven’t changed history this time, how long do we have remaining before recall programming pulls us out?”
“Unknown,” said the LOC.
He frowned. “What do you mean, unknown? You have a precise running counter.”
“Is that a question?”
“Yes.”
“Unknown.”
Worried, Noel ran his fingers through his
wet hair and thought hard. Travel operated on a forty-nine to one ratio, meaning a normal research mission lasted over two thousand minutes, or about one and a half days in travel time. In real time, he was gone forty-nine minutes, give or take four or five minutes, depending on the dimensional curve and point of entry. Noel had arrived here two and a half days ago. If neither he nor Leon had changed history, then they should have already been yanked out by the standard recall programming.
Until now he hadn’t given it much thought, assuming instead that one of them had inadvertently tampered with events. In the two previous travels, their very arrival had changed things and delayed their departure.
“Is safety-chain programming running?” Noel asked.
“Affirmative.”
“Why?” Noel asked. “I don’t understand this. Safety chain is supposed to kick on only if we’ve created a change or anomaly in the time stream. You’re saying there isn’t one.”
“No anomaly.”
“Then why is safety chain going? How long are we going to be here? A week? Longer? Are you malfunctioning?”
“Unknown. Unknown. Negative.”
Noel snapped the thing off. “Damn!” he said furiously.
Maybe nothing about the LOC was working correctly. Its ocean immersion could have completely scrambled its circuits, maybe even shorted its biochip network. Maybe it no longer had the ability to run accurate diagnostic checks and didn’t know it was malfunctioning.
He was tempted to chuck the thing into the bushes and leave it, but of course his implant wouldn’t allow that. And he had no intention of leaving it for Mondoun to find.
“Activate,” Noel said. “Prepare to run intensive diagnostics across all—”
“Warning,” the LOC broke in, flashing insistently. “Warning. Message channel open. Message channel open.”
It took Noel a moment to understand what that meant. Then he jumped to his feet, heedless of the rain still pelting down. Hope and relief surged through him. At last, the folks at the Time Institute had figured out he was in trouble and tracked him down. If they could give him instructions, they could help him get home.
“Receive message!” he said eagerly.
The LOC flickered as though its power supply was running low. That was impossible. Its tiny radium power pack had a half-life of two thousand years. Noel shook his wrist and thumped the LOC with his forefinger.
“Receive message!”
Nothing happened. Agonized, Noel shook it again. The last time the Institute had tried to send him a message, Leon’s hijinks had caused the message transfer to fail. He couldn’t bear to miss them again.
“Scan forward to origin point,” he said urgently. “Receive the damned message.”
The LOC flickered again, its light so dim it seemed almost extinguished. Then a voice issued forth from it, a deep resonant voice that made icy prickles run along the back of Noel’s neck.
“You are mine,” the voice intoned. “I have named you so before the dark gods. Come to Baba. Come.”
Noel’s blood turned to cold slush. His legs felt like someone was stabbing them with ice picks. For an instant he swayed forward as though he would obey the command, then he jerked himself back.
This was no cave full of drugged smoke. He didn’t know how the hell Mondoun had tapped into the LOC’s message array, but he’d had enough of this mumbo-jumbo nonsense.
“Hey, Mondoun!” he said savagely. “Get the hell off this frequency before I kick your butt back to Africa. The only one I belong to is myself. Got it?”
Angrily he tapped the LOC. “Deactivate.”
The LOC shut down, and Noel set off through the rain, striding fast, his breath jerking with anger. He’d had it with these weird games. As soon as the storm abated, he was grabbing a dinghy and leaving this island. He could just float out there, with weevily bread and stale water until the recall yanked him to another time and place. And Leon was going with him.
Something approximately the size of his head flew at him without warning, looming out of the darkness and rain. It struck him in the face. Startled by the touch of wet fur, a fetid stench, and angry squeaks and chitters coming from the animal, Noel yelled and flailed at it instinctively. He drove it off, but it flew back, beating him in the face and chest with its leathery wings, its tiny claws scratching his skin as it fought for purchase.
Revolted, Noel grabbed the bat to fling it away. Its needle-sharp teeth sank into the meaty part of his palm. He could sense the thing’s greed, could feel it sucking eagerly at his blood. Desperately he swung his arm and crashed the bat into a tree trunk. He managed to dislodge it, and shook his hand—throbbing now. Drops of blood splattered.
Uncontrollable shudders ran through him. He turned about in the darkness, looking for it, straining to see through the rain that battered his face. Maybe he’d killed it. God, he hoped so. It was horrible, nasty. He felt unclean, contaminated. He hoped the damned thing wasn’t rabid. And the size of it…must be a fruit bat or a vampire bat. He shuddered again.
After a few seconds he walked on, shouldering his way through vines and undergrowth. He had just started to relax, to look around him in hopes of finding his bearings, when he stepped knee-deep in water.
Startled, he jumped back, tripped over a root, and floundered a bit until he got back on solid ground. Squinting, he peered ahead at the snarled thicket of trees. He could hear the rain falling on water. The place smelled swampy—dank and stagnant. Some kind of animal screamed in the distance.
Noel jumped, then forced himself to calm down. It was a mangrove swamp, nothing more. All he had to do was skirt it, and he’d be fine. The jungle, after all, was relatively safe. He knew the islands sported little in the way of wildlife other than a few iguanas, some bats, numerous kinds of birds, and an occasional boa constrictor.
Backing up, he turned to his right and started forward. Something hit the back of his neck forcefully, nearly knocking him down. He heard the twittering of a bat, and yelled, twisting and slapping at it to drive it away. The bat continued to attack. Off balance, Noel staggered around and slammed his shoulder against a tree. He flailed with his hands, slapping the creature that twittered angrily and dived at him again. He couldn’t fend this one off no matter how he twisted and struggled. He didn’t know if it was the same one or another. All he knew was that it was big, and it stank of dead things. Hysteria burned in him, an irrational panic threatening to burst out of control. He wanted it off, wanted it off now, but he knew if he lost his head, then he wouldn’t be able to help himself at all.
Then it grabbed the back of his shirt, and its fangs sank into his neck. He felt it suck at him obscenely, felt it drawing his blood, his life.
He yelled again and yanked it off, throwing it forward over his head. Its leathery wings flapped rapidly. Catching a wind current, it swooped and came at him again. Noel plunged into the densest thicket he could find, trying to find refuge. The thing followed him, twittering, its wings rattling against the pounding raindrops. It almost seemed to have more intelligence than normal, as though no easier prey would satisfy its hunger, as though it had sought him out in the jungle.
Had Mondoun sent it?
That was crazy. Noel shoved the thought away. He was letting this place get to him, and that was foolish. If he could get away from this damned bat he’d be fine.
Winded, Noel scrambled faster, scratching his face and hands. He burst from the thicket, dodged the creature that swooped and dived at him, picked up a stick and swung it at the bat.
He connected with a small thud, and the thing shrilled in pain. It sailed into a bush and did not emerge.
Noel slowly lowered the stick. He was breathing hard. Sweat poured off him despite the rain. Gulping for air, he touched the back of his neck, seeking the wound. His fingertip found the two small punctures.
“Damn,” he said angrily.
More twittering. A rush of leathery wings through the rain.
Noel looked up, disbelieving, t
hen ducked as a shape swooped at him, then another, then another. More were coming, their twitters and squeaks angry.
He swung the stick, but there were too many bats swirling around him now. Panic broke through. Tossing down the stick, he fled as fast as his weary legs could carry him.
For a few seconds he thought he could outrun them, but they streamed after him, wings swishing in the rain, squeaking and diving ahead of him, right into his face as though to cut him off.
Noel skidded to a stop, tried to dodge, and lost his footing in the mud. He slipped and fell. His head thudded against something hard, like a tree root.
Blackness rushed at him, but he fought it off, fought to stay conscious, knowing that if he failed they would kill him.
But his senses were spinning. He tried to get up, tried to back away from that whirlpool of darkness, tried to make it. But the bats were on him, crowding and fighting among themselves. Their hot damp furry bodies jostled each other with furious squeaks. The bites were the last thing he felt.
Bad dreams…dreams of fire and drowning…dreams of blood.
Choking for air, Leon jerked awake and nearly fell from his hammock. Around him dozens of snoring men hung suspended in hammocks. The ship’s timbers groaned and creaked softly as the restless, storm-tossed seas shifted her.
Leon was safe. All was well.
Why then did he feel so breathless, so frightened? He sat up and rubbed his face, trying to pull himself together.
When the storm first hit, the drunken pirates abandoned the beach and took shelter back on the Medusa. The big, shallow-hulled ship was battened down, her masts bare, and both anchors moored her well enough. The bay offered good protection, and even if she was swept out to open sea, she was not likely to come to harm. The sailing master had checked the direction of the wind. They had fifty miles between this island and the next. They could ride out a small storm with that much room.
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