I told him he was right and explained why. I hadn't thought about the oxygen bottles. I bundled them off to bed and made them give me their chocolate stash for safe keeping until the morning. Then I had the pleasure of listening to the two of them communicating back in forth in the dark in their private code and seeing who could make the most realistic fart noises.
The last morning, I figured we were nearing land and said that we didn't have enough time for more contests. But the horizon was still clear, so Lucas challenged me to a final contest: who could sail the furthest at a particular altitude. I was assigned to go first – again because I was a moldy oldie. I thought that I had him beat.
Lucas stepped up to the controls, threw an additional pinky ring onto the grid, and left me in the dust.
"No fair," I said.
"Yes fair," Lucas said. "There's nothing in the rules that says that I can't add more pinky power."
I had to agree on that. So I showed them how they could run a scientific experiment. We'd measure the distance at one pinky power, at two pinky power, and last on three pinky power. Then, we'd predict what it would be like at ten. They thought that was a great idea and pulled out paper and pencil to make their predictions. I wouldn't let them use their pinky computers.
Both had predicted high while I was pretty much dead on. They hadn't taken into account the higher vibrations of the ship as it struggled through the atmosphere.
"No fair," they said.
"Yes fair," I said. "There's nothing in the rules that says I can't use my brain," and they had to agree on that.
They wanted to see what would happen at 11 pinky rings, so we started a final trial. That's when the vibrations hit and I took off the extra rings and lowered the altitude immediately. I put the boys to work searching the ship for signs of distress but they didn't find anything. I noticed that they didn't take shortcuts. We spotted land soon after that.
I met the two owners of the export companies with no difficulty. Both spoke enough English for us to understand each other. Neither owner objected to sending their shipment out at night in a barge to a remote location in the ocean. The dye man said something interesting though. "I have gived you our entirety stores of emerald green dye, and because you have boughted so much of our production, I agree to never sell this dye to nobody elses. You tell Mr. Wizard, yes?"
Once again, we dropped down to the floating barges in the dead of night. It took longer to palletize them this time and send them on their way home because Wizard had ordered so much. However as per instructions, each of us was going to take one cloth packet and one packed of emerald green dye in our slings with us. Wizard needed these fast. I anchored the Wilizy/Asia over the Sea of Japan as planned, and readied the slings for the trip home. Lucas and Theo wanted to see who could reach home first, but I said, No. We'd have a contest on naming stars on the way home instead. However I had to agree to let them have one more contest on the ship since naming stars was going to be so boring. They named their contest Knockwill.
Back home, it took me about two days to recover my energy. That gave me time to think. I had been playing with Winnie whenever I could and she was a lot of fun. She giggled, screeched, and wriggled around when I tickled her and wrestled her onto my shoulder and pretended to be a horse. She hugged me when I brought her home. I had decided that after Izzy and I were married, I wouldn't mind having a girl. Girls were more huggy. Boys wouldn't hug. They'd prefer to play Knock Will on his Butt, which is the Knockwill game they had invented and suckered me into playing. In this game, Lucas and Theo got to run at me and try to knock me on my butt by launching their bodies at me simultaneously. It was an easy game to play so long as your name wasn't Will. I wouldn't mind having some boys too after Izzy and I are married.
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Chapter 23
Five large transport copters began flying across the Saskatchewan border during the morning of February 1st. Izzy had warned the DPS about the flights beforehand, but the Wilizy's sling warriors were there to protect their newly leased Saskatchewan copters just in case. Five copters, five invisible sling warriors, five destinations. DPS copters showed up quickly after the Saskatchewan transports crossed the border, but seemed content to conduct a long range visual inspection of each copter's load and trail it to its destination.
Years ago, Saskatchewan's air force had decided that they couldn't match Zzyk's air force for quantity, but they could make up for that by quality. They had purchased heavily shielded and heavily powered monster copters. They argued that a copter that could carry a big payload of explosives and drop it onto a building in Edmonton posed more of a threat than a dozen single-seaters that could fire machine guns. Saskatchewan was never seriously threatened by Zzyk – not because of those copters but because Zzyk wasn't interested in owning a lot of grass. Saskatchewan's copter fleet had sat idle until Wizard called and asked about short term leases.
Now each of those five solar-powered monsters was hauling a very large, funnel-ended storage container beneath it. These were heavy loads as evident by the low altitude and slow progress that they made across the Albertan prairie. Then, hovering low over the center of a Wilizy-owned plot of Alberta land, the funnel would open and out would pour ... dirt. Heavy, dark dirt.
By late afternoon, each of the five plots of Wilizy land had a series of high mounds of soil stretching down the one kilometer middle of the plot. By this time, of course, the public was well aware of the activity over these parcels of land. At five p.m., workers were released from their buildings and a steady stream of onlookers congregated in the area, all of them wondering what was up with all this dirt. More informed pedestrians would comment that the WZBN had posted a schedule of its copter flights and that there'd be more deliveries tomorrow. Most pedestrians also saw the signage along one of the lengths of the property. Barter area: bring your own blankets.
Saskatchewan's copters returned the next day and deposited their loads – again in the middle of the property, but adjacent to the mounds of soil. This time the payload was pea-sized gravel. New signage appeared as well. Danger: please stay off the property. As befitting a brain-banded population that always did what they were told, the citizens stayed off the Wilizy's property, except for the section reserved for barter blankets. A few had appeared and had quickly been bartered out of goods.
For the first week of February, only that one side of the Wilizy land saw any activity. As to what was going to happen in the center of the land, most citizens had concluded that, They're going to grow something, but nobody had any idea what the gravel was for.
# # # # # # # #
In the second week of February, the big copters delivered a load of rakes, hoes, shovels, wheel barrows, and canvas gloves, among other things. In addition, a large sign appeared on each property – A Wilizy Public Garden is opening this summer. Please stay out for now.
If you'll pardon the pun, interest in the idea of a garden took root in each community. The speculation was that corn would be best but they weren't sure if the soil was deep enough. Radishes were more likely, but not popular. There were plenty of radishes around as it is. Farmers looked at how close the property was to water and nodded approvingly. Nobody knew what the gravel was for yet.
At mid-week, a man or woman showed up at each site wearing an emerald green and white vest that had Wilizy Agent printed on the back. (Wizard had asked Will to bring those packs of cloth and dye back quickly so that he could have those vests made.) The agent took a table and stool from the pile of equipment that had been dumped earlier that week, wrote Now Hiring on some cardboard and sat down and waited. Work clearing out the weeds in the designated spots on the property started in earnest the next night.
The Wilizy agent had clear expectations, as had been dictated to him by Hank. During the week, people started work at 6 p.m. so that they'd have time after work to eat. They worked until dusk. On the weekends, work could begin at 8:00 a.m. but work always stopped at 4 p.m.
Each worker would be given a thin strip of emerald green cloth to wear around his neck. At the end of the day/evening, the agent would attach a small emerald green square to the neck band that showed the number of hours worked that day. Workers could accumulate as many green squares as they wished before asking for their pay. The rate was 5 cents for each hour worked. Once the worker was paid, the agent would remove the green squares and the worker could start collecting squares again if he wished. No worker was ever pressured to work longer or more often than he wished. The long green neck ribbons were theirs to keep. Soon people worked up the nerve to wear the ribbons when they moved around the community and even to their daytime job.
Before readers howl in anger at the miserly salary the Wilizy paid for what was fairly hard labour, I should remind you that the Alberta government and the people themselves had no money at the time. Plus nobody in Alberta received wages. People worked for Zzyk's government who gave them accounts at government grocery stores. Anything else that a citizen might want had to be bartered. Besides nothing new could be bought anyway. Five cents an hour was something that was attractive as it was five cents more than most Albertans had to their name. For a while, the emerald squares served as a form of currency along with British Columbian pennies, nickels, and dimes, which are what the Wilizy used to pay its workers.
Within a couple of weeks, all the areas of the garden that the contractor wanted weeded had been cleared. Then they began covering those bare patches with enough soil to reach the top of the little sticks that the agent had hammered into the ground. This took a lot of time, and at one point, the green and white copters had to make return visits to bring more soil.
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Chapter 24
The Stop the Brain-Bands committee was having its second meeting – the first not having gone very well. At that first meeting, they had produced only one semi-possible idea of stopping the brain-bands from leaving the North Korean factory – cause the factory to have an accident. They had discarded that idea by the end of the meeting. An inexplicable accident would have been too suspicious to slip past Zzyk. They didn't want Zzyk beginning to wonder if the Wilizy had been responsible. That would have lead to questions like: How did they find the factory? How did they get to North Korea? How did they break into the factory without anyone knowing?
Today's meeting was to look at the next possible point of attack – the ship that was carrying the brain-bands. At the meeting were Izzy, Wolf, TG, and Lucas. Doc was also in the community hall, but had declined to join them at the table. He'd prefer to listen from a comfortable chair. Wolf asked if Doc would like him to bring in the whittle bucket - a sort of standing ash tray that Yolanda had said would keep the floor clean. Doc turned down the offer; he had been whittling that morning and his hands were sore.
"What about taking control of the ship's rudder from below and steering it into some rocks?" Izzy posed. "It would look like an accident."
The group pondered on that some, but decided that rocks meant shallow water and that meant the ship might jam itself onto the rocks and the cargo could be salvaged. If the rudder mishap were suspicious, the next freighter would be guarded.
"What about finding a non-suspicious way to sink the ship in deep water," Izzy suggested.
"Couldn't have any signs of weaponry," Wolf reacted.
"They'd avoid storms, or hunker down until it passed," TG mused out loud.
"What about you, Lucas. Do you have any ideas?" This from Izzy who was trying to involve Lucas in the discussion. He had been quiet in the first meeting.
Lucas wasn't paying attention. He didn't like the talking part of battles; he liked the battling part of battles. When Izzy had broken into his day dream, he had been thinking about the game that he and Theo would be playing that evening.
"Pirates," he blurted when he saw everyone looking at him. That was what he and Theo were going to play.
Wolf was going to admonish his younger brother for not being serious about the meeting, but he was stopped by Izzy's hand on his sleeve. "Lucas, tell me how a pirate ship would go about sinking a freighter. Would it be in deep water?"
Now this was something that Lucas did know. After Mac had mentioned something about a book on pirates at their bonfire, Lucas had found some books on the topic and had downloaded them. "Pirates might sink ships in deep water," Lucas said. "First they force everyone on the ship to climb into life boats and go away. Then they board it and take all the stuff they want. They'll sink the ship if the crew had fought back; if the crew had abandoned the ship, the pirates will leave the ship anchored safely. They want the ship to be available to carry more loads that they can steal. Ship owners usually have insurance against cargo being stolen, so they tell their crews not to resist. They don't want their ships to be sunk because then they won't earn any more money from shipping things."
"How come you know so much about pirates," TG asked.
"Theo and I want to have a pirate battle so we've been reading up on the rules first."
Will, do you have a minute? Izzy mind-messaged.
"Pirate ships have to be very scary," Lucas said. "Otherwise it doesn't work. Also, the navies of the countries in the area always chase the pirates, so their ships have to be really fast. They need a secret pirate port that they can hide in too."
"We could do all of that," Izzy said.
# # # # # # # #
The dreaded pirate ship Wilizy/Asia was ready for its first raid by the third week of February. Will had spent a week adding special equipment to their big, gun-laden 3-deck man-of-war. The ship now had solar panels that could be converted from white to black by flipping a switch in the command center. The ship also had gun ports that would supposedly fire cannon balls accompanied by thunderous explosions and white smoke. The explosions and smoke were adopted from the thunder and lightning illusions that they had used when they rescued Izzy from Zzyk's child care center in Edmonton. The Wilizy's cannons didn't shoot old fashioned iron balls; they had electronics inside the muzzles that would fire laser strikes that would look like cannon fire if the victim ship were ever examined.
The pirate captain could fire the cannons on one, two, or three decks simultaneously or in sequence. A full broadside would destroy anything currently on the ocean. A bow chaser was installed that could reach distances of more than a kilometer. Pirates used these long guns, mounted on the bow of their ship, to intimidate. Will used real cannon balls for this gun because he wanted the freighter crew to see the ball flying through the air at them. He did add laser sighting to ensure that the cannon balls fell where he aimed them. They also had a real skull and cross bones jolly roger, which was the flag that pirates have always used to disclose that the captain of the ship wasn't coming by to chat about the weather.
Most of the Wilizy family had decided to be part of the pirate ship's test run – the allure of pretending to be a pirate apparently crossed all ages and genders. Only Stu, Mac, Yollie, TG and Liset had stayed behind. Izzy wanted there to be a history of a big black pirate ship plying the Asian waters before using it on the North Korean freighter. To establish that history, they were sailing in the air above the South China Sea where the sea traffic was heaviest. All they needed now was a victim. Preferably two. Word of a pirate strike here would spread quickly and it would not be suspicious if the black pirate ship ventured north for its third victim.
Izzy was struggling with not wanting to attack an honest merchant ship when Lucas spotted the flashes and smoke below. "Shots ahoy," he called down from the crow's nest where he had assigned himself to keep watch. The sensors in the belly of the ship already gave them all the information they needed.
"It's ship ahoy, stupid" Theo called from the second mast. "There's no such thing as shots ahoy."
"There is now," Lucas yelled back. "We have ourselves a real live pirate ship. Hoist the jolly roger," Lucas called out exuberantly.
The attack on the pirate ship went exactly as Beardles
s Wolf the Pirate, the scourge of the seven seas, had planned. The crew of the bad pirate ship looked up in the pre-dawn light to find a big black ship sailing abreast of them, cannon ports open for a broadside. The good pirate's bow chaser made a big hole in the bad pirate's jib, which is the sail at the very front of the ship. The bad pirate captain wisely hove to (screeched to a stop) and advised the crew to abandon ship (dive off the decks and swim like crazy). Since no other ships were around them at the time, Beardless Wolf ordered the entire cargo of the bad pirate ship to be liberated, palletized, and sent off to Alberta.
After the successful pirating endeavour, Hank had to return to Alberta to manage the next stage of the Wilizy's land development and Yolanda said that she'd go with him. Izzy had promised that she and Will would give some awards for a contest that Mac had arranged. Will looked surprised at that and said that he preferred to stay with the pirate ship. They left shortly afterwards. That left Wolf and all his brothers, Winnie and Patella, Granny, and Doc to carry on the fight against piracy. Granny wanted to lead the second attack, so she made Beardless Wolf, the former scourge of the seven seas, walk the plank (she actually did!) and took over the ship. Before they could lift into the sky, they saw another pirate ship attacking a merchantman and she took chase. The pirate captain ignored the cannon ball warning, so Granny added some solar powered ooomph to their speed and gave a final warning before firing off a single deck broadside aimed at their waterline. "I'm going to send all pirates to Davy Jones' locker," she was heard to say which was somewhat weird because she had an eye patch and a pirate skull cap on when she said it. She also sprinkled her orders with such gems as Shiver my timbers, Avast my hearties, and Hang him from the yardarm, but nobody knew what she was saying.
The Wilizy made no attempt to recover what was going to be a water-logged cargo since other ships were in the vicinity and at least one of them was going to have electronic communications to call for help. They hightailed it out of the area as quickly as they could in a northward direction, found a handy fog bank, and lifted into invisibility. With only about a week left before the Wilizy/Asia was scheduled to make a real pirate attack, Granny put Wolf back in charge of the operations as he was supposed to be. Granny 1, Pirates 0. Not bad for a scurvy landlubber.