“Induction?” I asked. “You mean I can stay? You’re not booting me off here?”
“Nope,” Nike said.
I glanced at Lucy. She smiled, reached under the table and squeezed my hand. “Great,” I said. “I think.”
“You’ve done a good job reading,” Nike said. “Your navigation was excellent. And you certainly showed your stuff during the storm—I mean, even if you did lose Levi . . . even if you did fail to save the best damn navigator I’ve ever seen . . . even if you totally screwed up and made us lose the person most essential to the operation of the Wonderblimp!”
“Nike—” Lucy said, a hard edge to her voice.
Nike glared at her and she glared back and I tried to sink down into my chair. He shook his head, his face went from mad to placid, and he continued. “As I was saying, you’ve done a wonderful job, and you have proven your value to the Wonderblimp. I—we—would like you to join us. We would like you to join the Order of the Atom.”
“Why?” I asked. “For what?”
“Why?” Nike glared at me, shook his head, like he could not believe that someone like me, a lowly reader, could possibly refuse such an honor.
Well, I wasn’t going to refuse, but I knew there was a catch, and I wanted to know what it was.
“Yeah, why?” I asked.
“Why? Because . . .” he said. “Holmes, when you were a kid, didn’t you ever want to be a pirate?”
“Was,” I said, not really thinking. Vague memories came back to me of when I was young and had dressed up as a pirate: an eye patch, a scarf around my head, waving a wooden sword. “That is, I think so. When I was a kid . . . There was some party I went to—there were these glowing orange heads, carved pumpkins, I think—and we got candy. I played pirate.”
“But don’t you want to be a real pirate. Scurvy-ridden, slimy, awful human beings who prowl the skies searching for treasure, wreaking mayhem, seizing power, righting wrongs, destroying governments, shoving it up the bunghole of the established order. . . . Didn’t you ever want to be one of those?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so. . . . Every kid’s dream, right?” I smiled. What the hell was he asking?
“Right,” Nike said. “Every kid’s dream. And that’s what we are: nuclear pirates! Don’t you want to be a nuclear pirate?”
“What’s the catch, Nike?”
“The catch?” he asked. “The catch? Holmes, I am shocked.”
“The catch, Nike.”
“The catch?” Nike shook his head. “Holmes, there’s really no catch. Honest.”
“Honest?” I asked.
Nike smiled. “Tell him, Lucy.”
“No catch,” she said. “Just good, clean fun.”
“See?” said Nike. “Would she lie to you?”
“I—I guess not,” I said. But I still wasn’t sure. Something didn’t seem right. I wasn’t really wild about what they did.
Hell, maybe they didn’t really trade nukes. Maybe it was some wild con they were pulling on the Verts. Maybe they were crazy like most everyone else I’d ever met after the Zap. Maybe like those silly diggers, the people who rutted around in burnt-out cities looking for old bottles. They just had to have something to search for. I looked at Lucy, and the more I looked at her, the less what the nukers did seemed to matter.
“Christ,” I said. “How the hell else am I going to get north? I’ll join.”
“Good,” Nike said. “Wonderful.” He turned to Bron, nodded. Bron handed Nike the small box. “You’re probably wondering why we wear leather gloves,” Nike said.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I said.
“Well, it’s simple, really,” Nike said. “Hands can get cut, callused, particularly the palms. On the palms are little whorls, lines, imprints. It’s very important to keep the pattern clear, you see.”
“Uh, no, I don’t see.”
“Okay,” Nike said. “Let’s say you had, oh, some device that read palm prints. Now, you’d want that palm print to be pretty clear so the device could keep reading it. So you’d wear a glove.”
“Yeah, sure, that makes sense. But what’s this ‘device’ that reads the palm prints?”
“That,” Nike said. “The knapsack nuke.”
I rubbed the palm of my left hand. “And?”
“Well, each nuke on board is coded to a certain palm print. This nuke, for instance, belongs to me. If we wanted to fire this nuke, I’d have to put my palm on the side of the nuke, under the handle, as if I was pouring the ‘thermos’. But that wouldn’t be enough. Do you know about the football?”
“The code thing?” I guessed.
“Right,” Nike said. “The football is the code that allows the nuke to be armed. And the football—”
“—is in someone’s heart,” I finished.
“Very good, Holmes. That’s right. Now, these sort of secret agents of the USA military—we don’t know who they were—well, they wandered around the USA before the Zap, and they put footballs in the hearts of people, like the first-born child of a country sheriff. See, these army people would give nukes to the sheriff or some official like that, but no one really knows who had the nukes or who the quarterbacks are. So the quarterbacks, the people carrying the footballs, could be dead. But now and then we find nukes, or we hear of people—like the Verts—who find nukes. We have to make new codes, new footballs, for them to work. Fortunately,”— Nike smiled at Lucy— “Lucy knows how to do this.”
“Swell,” I said. “Just what the hell are you driving at?”
“Patience, patience.” He raised his hand, nodded at Bron and Doc North. They moved up behind me. “Now, this nuke is my nuke, but there’s one teensy little problem with it.” I squirmed around, felt Bron put his hand on my shoulder. “You see, we don’t have a football for this nuke. It’s a long story, but, well, Levi had the football. And Levi . . . you know what happened to Levi.”
I rubbed the healing cut on my right hand. Oh yeah, I knew what happened to Levi. I could still hear his screams. “Levi died,” I said.
“Yes,” Nike said, “You let poor Levi die.”
“His cable broke, damn it!” I screamed. “I tried.”
“You didn’t try hard enough, Holmes,” Nike said. “And you will have to pay for your failure. You see, we need a new quarterback. Now, who are we going to get to carry the football? I couldn’t ask Lucy or Doc North to do it. The operation is a little tricky, and Doc couldn’t do it on himself. Bron and Ruby have all carried the football before. Fair is fair, Holmes. You failed. You will carry the new football.”
“Me!” I looked at Lucy. She had her head down, her braid partially hiding her face. “You said there wasn’t a catch! Lucy, you said, ‘No catch!’ ”
“It’s not a catch, Holmes,” she whispered.
“Duty,” Nike said. “Your sacred duty. Payment, if you will, for Levi’s life.”
“In my book it’s a catch,” I said. I shook my head. “I won’t do it, Nike. You can leave me here.” I glared at Lucy. She. She had gotten me into this. Suddenly she looked a little less attractive. I stood up. “I’ll get my things.” Bron laid his hand on my shoulder, and gently but firmly pushed me back down in my chair.
“Holmes, Holmes, Holmes,” Nike said. “I really think you should take the nuke.” He pushed the thermos toward me. Bron took my left hand, shoved it toward the handle. “Please?”
“Go ahead,” Lucy said. She smiled. “Doc’s a good cutter. And I’ll nurse you back to health.” Her braid flicked around her neck.
“Do it,” Bron said through his teeth.
“Ah, crap,” I said, and grasped the nuke with my left hand. Did I have a choice? I didn’t think so. My palm stung, the way it stings if you slap it against cold steel, and then I smelled the acrid smell of burning flesh. I pulled my hand back, stared at my numb palm. Fine gray powder dusted the surface.
“Good,” said Nike. “Don’t worry, your hand will heal. That’s fried skin. Heating coils inside the nuke ‘r
ead’ the pattern of your palm print. That’s the new palm code. All we have to do is make a new football, put it in your heart, and the nuke’s all yours.”
Bron grasped an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me to my feet. Lucy stood by my side, and helped Bron take me back to the stern, back to the operating room, back to where I would go under Doc North’s knife.
I’m not ashamed to admit it. Halfway there, I fainted. And when I came to, there was a big long bandage on my chest and a throbbing in my thigh, and I hurt like hell.
CHAPTER 5
A gray-haired woman hovered by my bed. She seemed to hover; I glanced down and could see no feet sticking out from her silver robe, and the hem of the robe fell short inches from the deck of sick bay. I stared at her face, an incongruous face. Though she had dry silver-gray hair the texture of corn silk, no wrinkles ravaged her face. The shoulder-length hair framed a smooth face, a young face, a face that could be no more than thirty-three. Only fine wrinkles around her eyes matched the age of her hair.
“I have a message for you,” she said.
I looked down at the bandage on my chest, a long strip of gauze taped vertically from my navel up to almost my throat. A spot of brick-red blood had dried in the center of the bandage. My chest felt like ants had crawled inside my lungs and peed formic acid.
“How long?” I asked.
She shrugged and said, “Who knows the whence or why of messages?”
“No,” I said. “How long have I been out?”
“Days, perhaps. It is not my knowing. To me a traveler delivered a message saying, ‘This is for Holmes on the Wonderblimp.’ Are you Holmes?”
I nodded.
“Then this message is for you.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
She smiled, a smile that showed clean, unyellowed teeth and deep pink gums. “Khim some call me, and Khim I am called,” she said.
“You’re a memor?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, a memor.”
“But why not Ruby?”
Khim shrugged. “It was not for Ruby to deliver this message. To me falls this role.”
“Okay,” I said. “What is the message?”
Khim squinted her eyes, her face relaxed, and in a voice void of emotion, she said,
From the Great Mountain
Big Mac offers you great riches
If you will seek him.
She opened her eyes.
“Who sends this message?” I asked. I’d never heard of someone known as Big Mac, but the Great Mountain had to be Denali.
“I cannot say because they did not say,” Khim said.
“Hmmmm,” I said. “Well, thanks for the message.”
She smiled. “To give thanks is not difficult.” Khim stood by my bed, not leaving.
I sighed. Ah, the code of the post-Zap world. Everything has its price. “You ask payment?”
“No payment is asked, but a service is,” she said. “If you be a reader, then so read this.”
She reached inside her robes and pulled out a leather-covered volume. HOLY BIBLE, words stamped in flaking gold leaf said on the cover. A word Bible . . . “One chapter thus of the book of books.”
“As you ask,” I said. “But not now.” I felt numbness creep under my lids. “I must sleep . . .”
Khim nodded, and I saw the memor float out of the room, not even sure I had seen her at all. But I had the message. And I had no idea what it meant.
* * *
My body healed. Lucy pampered me, feeding me, changing my dressings, bathing my wounds. The cut in my chest seemed deep, but it was only a shallow groove, no more than a quarter-inch. It closed from the inside out, first a great crevasse, then a valley, then only a thin ditch in my skin. In three weeks I had a long knot of scabs down the center of my chest, and the pain inside had subsided to a small ache.
My thigh still throbbed, and when I got brave enough to look, I could see why. Someone had cut into the femoral artery, and a bruise up my leg showed where someone had stuck something up inside the artery. What they had done I did not know, but it hurt like hell.
Lucy had moved me into my room, and forced me to take walks three times a day on the promenade deck. In three weeks Doc pronounced me fit enough “to see the town.” I didn’t feel like seeing the town, but Nike had other plans.
Nike, Bron, and Doc North were waiting for me in the lounge. Lucy helped me hobble up to the table, got me seated. My knapsack nuke was on the table, next to a battered green thermos. The Verts’ new nuke?
“You’re looking lots better, Holmes,” Nike said.
I scratched my chest. “Feels like you left your scalpel in here, Doc.”
Doc smiled. “I count them. You only have the football.”
“What is the football, exactly?” I asked.
“A code,” he said. “A brand, really. The nuke writes a code on a piece of copper. We put the copper at the tip of a tube, and through a hole in an artery in your thigh, feed the tube up into your heart. In one of the main heart arteries a little balloon is pumped up, pressing the piece of copper against the artery wall. A slight electrical charge burns the design of the code into the artery wall, and then the tube and brand are removed. So you see, your heart is the football.”
“What do you do with the brand?”
“It falls apart when it’s exposed to air for more than a minute,” he said.
“So why’d you cut my chest open?”
“Had to double check,” he said, “make sure the brand worked. You can see it on the outside of the artery. And the scar is like a sign, so people know you have the football.”
“Sure,” I said. It still felt like he’d left his scalpel in there. I pointed at the green thermos next to the orange thermos. “That a nuke, too?”
Nike nodded. “Verts brought it in today. They delivered the fuel, too. Now it’s our turn. But first”—he tapped the orange thermos—“the Verts get this nuke.”
“Okay,” I said. Something was up, though. “When are you delivering it?”
“Today,” Nike said. “You know time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Had a watch once, but the batteries went out.”
“Well, we got you another watch.” Nike handed me a big watch with a dial around the edges that turned. I squinted at the plate. The word ROLEX was printed above the center of the dial. “It’s a diver’s watch,” Nike said. “The watch winds, so it doesn’t need batteries. You can twist the dial around so the arrow points to a particular time. When the hand hits the time, you know how long has passed.”
“Pretty neat,” I said. I slipped the watch on my wrist. It felt like a manacle, but smooth and cold.
“You’re kind of our timekeeper now,” Nike said. “Take the nuke and squeeze the handle.” He pushed the orange nuke across to me.
“Why? Didn’t I squeeze this thing before?”
“Just squeeze the damn handle, Holmes.”
I looked up at Bron, saw him smile. Lucy stood next to me, her braid twitching. I’d taken the nuke before, the orange nuke. And now I was touching it again. But if I took it again, would something similarly nasty happen? On the other hand, maybe I could give up the nuke? Bron moved closer. I reached for the nuke.
“With your left hand, Holmes,” Nike said. “Take your glove off and squeeze.”
With my right hand I peeled the leather glove off my left hand. The palms looked the same, both soft and pink. Hell, I hadn’t exactly been doing a lot of heavy labor lately. I took the nuke, squeezed.
The orange thermos burped, something went whir inside, and then I heard a faint clicking. I jerked my hand back, stared at the damn thing. “What’s it doing?” I asked.
“It’s on,” Nike said. “The nuke is armed. It should go off in two hours.”
I looked at the nuke, stared at it, contemplated it exploding. My nuke: armed and ready to go. “But—” I said. “But, how could that be? You haven’t put a football in!”
Nike smiled. “But we did.”
He turned the nuke over, pulled a thin piece of copper out of the nuke. “See?” He crumpled the copper like tin foil. “With the football removed, you can’t turn the nuke off.”
“Um, isn’t that kind of a stupid idea?” I asked.
“Not if we want Myers to take the nuke,” Lucy said. “There’s only one way to stop it. See, we programmed it to disarm with Myers’s palm print. Myers has to put his palm on the nuke. Only Myers’s palm print will stop the bomb. In the meantime, this baby is yours.”
I put my glove back on, pulled it over my left hand. Bron handed me a knapsack, and I put the orange nuke in it. Two hours. I set the watch for two hours. I had the nuke for two hours, or until Myers took the bomb. But there was just one tiny little nagging thought that bothered me.
What if Myers didn’t take the bomb?
* * *
I went back to my cabin and sat there for a while, contemplating my nuke. It’s not often a punk kid like me gets his own nuke, even if it’s only his for a few hours, and I wanted to savor the privilege. Christ, I wanted to chuck that nuke into Kachemak Bay and start walking north. Why did they do this to me? I’d be rid of the nuke soon enough, but why did I have to hang onto the damn thing for two hours?
Some things occurred to me while I sat there watching the nuke, listening to it hum, watching it tick away. (There was a little plate on the handle, and if you pushed it back you could see little numbers clicking their way down to zero-zero-zero-zero.) The first thing that occurred to me was why, if Nike could so blithely stick a coded slip into the nuke, they had stuck a football in me in the first place? The second thing, far more pressing, was how Myers was going to react when I told him—yes, I had to tell him—that he would have to cut the heart out of his kid (or whoever) in order to use his nuke. How was he going to react when I told him that in order to keep the nuke from going off he’d have to willingly hand the kid over to Doc North and let the doc put a football in the kid’s chest? These things bothered me. A lot.
Lucy had said it would be no sweat. “They always take the nuke, Holmes. No one wants to get fried.” That made nice sense, but what if Myers got, well, perverse? What if he didn’t give a damn? What if he thought it was all a joke? It was my nuke, and I’d be there explaining it to him, and if he balked . . . I didn’t want to think about it if he balked.
After the Zap Page 6