Artifact

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Whatever option he attempted to exercise, the real problem was that he would get very thirsty with the hot sun bearing down on him. What was that cliché line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” that they had taught him in English class back home in Venezuela? Water, water, every where…

  Like hooking a billfish, his mind latched onto the answer. The rig would have an emergency radio. He could simply climb out of the water and call Frikkie. He almost laughed into his regulator. She was not so clever after all, little Miss Peta.

  His watch told him that it was time to get to the surface. Once there, he shed his tanks, fins, and BCV, and dragged them to the rig’s docking platform.

  On the long climb, he thought he could see his boat heading north through the Dragon’s Mouth. It looked like Peta had decided to go all the way home to Grenada, rather than take a chance of running into Frik in Port of Spain.

  Reaching the main deck of the rig, he was happy to discover that while vandals had thrown rocks and fired guns at the windows, they had lacked the courage to board the platform for robbery. The emergency radio was intact, and he soon contacted Oilstar’s main dispatcher, who agreed to send a helicopter for him.

  Having done that, he called Frik to let him know that Peta was fine. Then, satisfied that he had handled the crisis as well as he could, he reached into his shorts, pulled out the specimen bag, and examined the bizarre object that Frik apparently considered to be worth the life of Simon Brousseau and Abdul, and heaven knew how many others.

  The boat rode the choppy sea giddily, a child’s toy bouncing in a giant bathtub. Peta glanced over her shoulder at the rock spires piercing the water behind her.

  As soon as she’d passed through the Dragon’s Mouth and moved away from the sheltering effects of Trinidad, the sea had turned rough. She had ridden tramp freighters between Grenada and its southern neighbor many times as a girl, and she recalled how rough the journey could be, even in those relatively large boats. The passage would last more than three hours, even in Blaine’s fast little craft. If she spent the time focused on the ups and downs of the sea, she would soon be leaning over the rail like some land-loving tourist on her first voyage.

  To take her mind off of the bumpy ride, she tried to understand what she had just been through and to guess at what made the pieces of that weirdly shaped object so precious that people had to be killed.

  She thought of the artifact she had hidden away in the bank vault. It was a match to the one she believed was the reason Arthur had been blown up, and to the one Simon had died to recover. All of the pieces had come from that undersea cavern with its Daliesque wall mural.

  What the hell was that place? What made the artifact important enough to Frikkie that he would send his supposed friends to their deaths so that he could get the pieces?

  Why? What did he know?

  All Manny had been able to tell her was that Paul had said it would change the nature of energy production around the world. Perhaps it could put not just Frikkie but all of OPEC out of business, changing the balance of power around the world practically overnight.

  Was that important enough to have her killed?

  Obviously, Frik thought so. She had to remember that: he wanted her dead. When he found out she had survived, he’d try again. Which also meant she would have to be prepared to kill to protect herself.

  The sunlight disappeared. Looking up, she saw a lone gray cloud, but when she looked east, she saw a dark line following the first, like an army arrayed behind a single scout. How long, she wondered, before the whole battalion reached her? Open ocean in a tiny boat was not a good place to be with a storm coming on.

  Behind her, the island of Trinidad was just a memory. If she headed for Tobago, she’d be steering straight into the oncoming storm, but Grenada was a long way away.

  A childhood recollection bubbled into her brain. She had been six, spending a week with her grandparents in Carriacou. Her grandfather decided to take her fishing in his little Gouyave sloop, a tiny single-masted sailboat hand-built in Grenada’s famed fishing village.

  The day started out sunny and bright. They sailed easily out of Tyrrel Bay and around the southern tip of the island, heading west into the deeper waters on the Atlantic side. As they cruised along, she trailed her fingers in the beautiful blue water. It had felt like magic to her.

  Passing the big rock called Saline Island, her grandfather told her to check the gear and bait the hooks on the two fishing rods he’d brought along—a big one for him, a small one for her. She remembered it because it was the first time he had let her ready the lines. From the bucket of small silver fish called jacks she pulled one out, and hooked it just ahead of its dorsal fin, then repeated the process with the other pole.

  After her grandfather had brought down the sail, the boat rocked in the current. They cast their lines and, as if God had been smiling on them, were soon catching fish. She remembered that she hadn’t wanted to stop, not even after they had a half dozen in the boat.

  “This be plenty,” her grandfather said, chuckling.

  She had been so fascinated by the process of casting and reeling and pulling the fish into the boat that she hadn’t noticed how much the little craft had begun to rock. What she recalled most clearly was the feeling when the sun had vanished. It wasn’t like the times when the thin skittering clouds would cut the glare. That time the sun had disappeared and she’d felt the chill of a strong wind on her neck.

  “We done with fishing now, little one,” her grandfather had said. She remembered as if the image had been burned into her mind: the way his face looked; the twinkle gone, the fun vanished. “We been too long at sea and Mother getting mad.”

  Standing at the wheel of Blaine’s boat, she could remember with her whole body the feel of that little sloop as the growing waves tossed it around.

  Her grandfather had struggled with the sail, having to keep it partly furled in the strong wind that had arrived with the clouds. She had wanted to say “Can we go home, Grandpa?” but she sat silently. He obviously wished to get home too.

  When the first drop of rain hit her arm, she thought that she had never seen such a large drop of water. It was soon followed by another and another.

  As their tiny craft rounded Mushroom Island and her grandfather eased them into a turn toward Southwest Point, they were hit by one large wave that nearly knocked her into the sea. His large hands grabbed her and shoved her into the growing puddle at the bottom of the boat.

  She remembered that he’d smiled again. “We be home soon.” His eyes narrowed as another wave broke over the railing, drenching both of their faces. “You not gotta swim for it. You know everything gonna be fine, Peta.”

  She had nodded, though she hadn’t known that at all.

  “Grandpa—I’m scared.”

  The little boat had passed Southwest Point and the rocking eased a little. Her grandfather hugged the coastline to stay in the lee of the island. “I know, little one,” he’d said, leaning forward. “But I tell you, when you not alone, you not ever be afraid, okay?”

  In that moment, it hadn’t mattered that the sun was gone, or that their faces were wet with the streaming rainwater, or that the ocean wanted to come into the boat. They were together, and there was nothing to be afraid of.

  Alone in Blaine’s boat, Peta looked to the east and saw the line of rain approaching. A bright silver flash in the sky ahead of her heralded the arrival of an airplane at Point Saline Airport.

  Today, she would stay ahead of the storm.

  She would make it back to St. George’s and watch the storm from the safety of her own home.

  The image of the strange mural on the wall of the cavern rose in her mind and she knew there was a much bigger storm brewing than the little squall that was blowing in from the Atlantic.

  Who am I kidding? she thought.

  Her grandfather had been dead for over twenty years and she still missed him; would always miss him, the way she would always miss her f
ather and Arthur.

  No matter how much she missed them, though, they were gone and they weren’t coming back. She was alone now. And she was afraid.

  27

  Joshua Keene sat up gingerly, as if his body might be rigged to explode. Slowly, he captured a few memories. He recalled flashes: fighting the terrorists onboard theYucatán; seeing Terris McKendry shot in the chest two, maybe three times, impacts that knocked the big man backward, as if missiles had been launched into his body’s core. He saw battered bicycles, heard them clattering to the oil tanker’s deck, felt as much as heard the bamboosnap of a terrorist’s neck under his own grip.

  After that, the explosion, fire, his body flung backward as if he had been kicked in the chest by Bruce Lee. He remembered the night and the smoke and the long, long fall to the dark water that cushioned him about as softly as a concrete parking lot. He recalled the water closing over his head, a vision of sharks, and then…nothing.

  He tried to focus his eyes to see where he was, but all he could see was the foggy image of a beautiful tanned woman with a haze of red-brown hair that looked like a halo.

  An angel, he thought. I’m dead. And passed back into semiconsciousness.

  The next time he awoke, his vision was clear. The same woman stood beside him. “I’m Selene Trujold,” she said. She poured a finger of scotch into a white enamel cup and inhaled its aroma. “Here. Drink this and then we’ll talk.”

  He took the cup from her, remembering the brief glimpse he had caught of her before all hell broke loose. “How long have I been out? Hours? Days?”

  “You’ve been here for a couple of days. I had you fished out of the water after the explosion on the tanker.”

  “Why?”

  “There were helicopters coming, a lot of chaos. I couldn’t be sure you weren’t one of us.”

  “You could have tossed me back to the sharks when you found out that I wasn’t.”

  “You’re right. I could have done that. I still can, if you don’t prove useful to us.”

  Sheis a piece of work, Keene thought, remembering his assessment of her when he’d first spotted her on theYucatán . “I had a friend with me,” he said. “He was fighting one of your people. Somebody shot him—one of your goons.”

  “None of us are goons, Mr. Rip Van Winkle or whoever you are.” Her tone, acrid at first, softened. “But Iam sorry about your friend.” To Keene’s surprise, she sounded sincere. He sipped at the scotch, then drained the glass. The whiskey burned in his chest.

  “More?” She took the cup from him.

  “Not yet. I want to keep my head clear.”

  She smiled. “That’ll be a switch. You haven’t been conscious, not to mention compos mentis, since we hauled you into the Zodiac and cruised away from the tanker.”

  “Did you achieve your objective?”

  “We thought so—at the time. I expected a much larger explosion, but I’ll accept any victory. If nothing else, I’m sure we called some attention to Oilstar’s activities.”

  “And your own,” Keene said.

  She shrugged. “For better or for worse.” She poured some of the scotch into the same cup for herself. “Scotch and coffee, two of the greatest amenities of Venezuelan civilization.” She looked contemplatively into the honey brown liquid and raised the cup. “Even out here in the jungle, I wouldn’t do without them.”

  Antagonism crawled down Keene’s spine. He looked at her angrily, started to say something, and passed out. He woke up with a pounding head and a throbbing body hinting at more wounds than he wanted to know about. His skin felt oily with perspiration, but he could not determine whether the sweat was from jungle humidity or a severe fever.

  He’d been having the most bizarre dreams he’d ever remembered. First he was making love to a woman with velvet skin, short cinnamon hair, a coffee-with-too-much-milk complexion, large intent eyes, a small nose, and a delicate chin. In the midst of their lovemaking, she ripped off her face as if it were a mask and he was catapulted into fiery nightmares filled with terrible visions that pounded inside his skull.

  He pressed his fingertips to his chest and found bandages and pain. He touched the patchwork of injuries, pressing down hard because the pain reminded him that he was still alive. His mind was full of questions. Where was he?

  He heard jungle crickets, the belching music of small frogs and of trickling water, the crackle and whisper of dried leaves woven into a fragrant roof over his head.

  “You awake now?”

  Keene turned his head and groaned as even the small movement set a series of pains in motion.

  Selene sat on the ground, her back against the inner wall of the hut. She gave him an odd smile, an expression that surprised him more than the amazing fact of finding himself alive. He tried to talk, but his voice came out in a squeak that embarrassed him. “What…happened?”

  “You’ve been dried, fed, and nursed back to life. Now it’s time for some payback.”

  “Payback?”

  She laughed. “Nothing too strenuous, I promise you. First you tell me who you are.”

  “Joshua Keene.”

  “I assume that since you and your friend were on theYucatán, you work for Frik Van Alman. Is that correct?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “Then what, precisely, were you doing on the tanker?”

  Keene hesitated, confused by his pain and wondering how the beautiful woman questioning him could be the enemy. “It’s complicated. Terris and I are…were in a group with Frik. He asked us to look for you,” he said at last.

  “What sort of group? Why would you just blindly follow Frik’s orders?”

  Keene felt the fuzz returning to his brain. He tried to shake it off. “It’s called the Daredevils Club. It’s like a brotherhood of adventurers. Frik asked for our help, and we saw the opportunity for some action. He wanted something he said your father stole from him and sent to you.”

  “Frikkie Van Alman is a sorry excuse for a human being. I know the things Van Alman says about Green Impact. He’s a liar. A killer. A megalomaniac.” Her whole demeanor hardened. “My father is dead. Van Alman killed him because he knew too much about Oilstar’s operations and their intent.”

  “I had nothing to do with that. Neither did Terris, and he’s dead too.”

  Selene turned to walk back to a small camp stove where she was heating some water. The tail of her shirt rode up and he saw smooth skin.

  “You need to listen, Joshua. Green Impact is not a bunch of wild dogs trying to cause senseless destruction. Not my people, and not me. We’re doing this to stop Frik from destroying our future.”

  “Are you sure you’re not as deluded as he is?” Joshua’s throat was dry, his voice hoarse. She moved toward the doorway. “I’ve got some things to take care of.” She tucked her shirt back into her khaki shorts. “We’ll talk more when I get back.”

  Yet one more time, Keene drifted off into a restless sleep. He awoke in pain and filled with sadness, but less confused. This time he knew where he was and what he was doing there, though there were still plenty of gaps in the past…what was it? A week? Two? He had heard about temporary trauma-induced amnesia and knew that it wasn’t likely to last. The memories would return in bits and pieces, like misrouted mail.

  He struggled off the mildewed canvas cot where he’d been lying and made it outside onto a small verandah. Sitting down on one of two handmade chairs, he surveyed his surroundings.

  The verandah overlooked a tiny tributary in the lush labyrinth of the Orinoco Delta. He could see some of the remaining members of Green Impact gathering food, preparing supplies, practicing skills. One man, probably a guard who had remained awake through the previous night’s shift, slept in a mesh hammock. Tall trees filled with colorful tropical birds flanked the stream. Dwellings clustered together in what appeared to be an encampment, raised on poles above the marshy ground and constructed of thin stripped logs with roofs thatched with heavy dried palm fronds.

  “I
’m glad to see you up,” Selene said, appearing from behind and taking the chair next to him. She was holding the same white enamel mug, only this time he could smell coffee.

  “Here.” She handed him the cup. “It’s strong.”

  Keene took it from her and placed it on a rickety little table that separated the chairs. “Do you know for sure that Terris McKendry is dead?”

  “There were many casualties that night,” Selene said, looking away. “Five of my people, the skeleton crew on the tanker, and, yes, I suppose your friend, too.”

  Her expression serious, she reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a strangely shaped object. She tapped it on the table with a dull-sounding click.

  “That’s what Frik’s so hot to have? That’s the reason Terris died?” Keene could hear the rising fury in his own voice.

  “Yes. It may not look like much, but this one piece could change the world. Frik doesn’t understand much about it, but he wants to possess it badly enough that when my father tried to keep it from him, Frik killed him.”

  “How do you know?” Keene asked her. “We were told it was a lab accident.”

  “Right! Funny that it happened the day after he and Frik had a confrontation about this very thing. Frik shouted at him, threatened him.” She held up the odd fragment, turning it so that the jungle light was reflected in skewed patterns. “My father wrote me a letter explaining where this thing came from. He was so frightened of what Frik would do that he separated the pieces of the artifact, sent this one to me for safekeeping, and sent another to himself. I’m not sure what happened to the rest. I think Arthur Marryshow might have another one.”

  “Arthur’s dead too. Killed in an explosion on New Year’s Eve not long after your father died.”

  Selene looked astonished, then even angrier. “See what I mean?”