I struck out for what I hoped was the base of the cliff, trying to get so close to the wall they couldn’t see me from above. I needed to breathe with a dire desperation that made my body shake. Instead I swam. Still the water thudded with more lines of bubbles, but somehow none of the bullets found me.
Then I hit a rock head on and bounced upward only to bump something else which danced at my touch.
Rodger.
My face broke the surface just where his neck met his shoulder. Rodger floated on his back above me, dancing in time to the bullets striking his chest.
I finally cried then, not caring whether they could hear my sobs at the top of the wall, as I cowered beneath my friend and the bullets rained down on us from above.
After a while the lead stopped falling and the water carried us away.
“We’re free, buddy,” I whispered to Rodger a few hours later. I’d dragged him to shore about a kilometer upstream from New Albion, getting us both settled in a brake of juniper and low bushes.
Rodger had nothing to say, of course, but I had no one else to talk to.
Everything had failed. I could not stop whatever plot Father Kramer was up to with the atom bombs. Papa was a traitor and a Brasilian spy. If I’d understood what the Frenchmen were saying, and what Papa’s friend had said earlier, the world was about to go to war again. Atom bombs in the Matto Grosso and Brasilian paratroopers in Teixeira.
The whole world was crazy and I couldn’t even save my best friend. No wonder the natives hated us. The Mayans and all the rest had always known us Europeans were worthless. Rather than fighting, they simply had the patience to wait us out.
I didn’t have that much patience. And I knew where some of the missiles were. Right in the heart of the shantytown.
“Rodger,” I said, whispering to the ants already crawling in his ear. “I’m going to town. I’m sorry, but I have to shoot down that jet. I know you’ll understand.”
He didn’t answer but I figured he understood.
My one advantage was that no one knew it was me who had been in and out of Father Kramer’s aeroplane, then escaped from Our Lady of American Sorrows in a hail of bullets. The Frenchmen must have thought me dead, and Father Kramer only knew me as Peter. There were fifty boys named Peter in New Albion. Surely the plotters had larger concerns than their search for me.
So I walked down the road that became Water Avenue as if I had everyday business. I walked with the ox carts and the motorcycles and the taxis and everyone else just as if it were a normal Thursday in New Albion.
No one stopped me. No one looked at me.
Soon enough I would reach the shantytown. Any of those kids tried to hassle me, I would show them what real anger was.
It was enough to make me wish I had a gun, just like Papa.
Feral cats slunk along muddy rivulets between the ragged huts. Even in hot summer, these people managed damp and sticky filth. Small children with silvered hair sucked on their hands, staring at me, while larger kids of several races whispered and followed me and sent runners onward. There were almost no adults around, which surprised me. Everyone knew the people in the shantytown were lazy. If they were willing to do honest work they could live like honest people.
I supposed that some of them must work as maids or janitors or whatever, but why did they have to live here?
The shantytown wasn’t really that large. It occupied a long, shallow triangle with the point out by the Bishop’s Head, the flat side bounded by eight or so blocks of Water Avenue. But within that small space it was complicated. Tiny alleys wound into one another, too kinked and narrow to even ride a bicycle along. Buildings seemed to spring up every way I turned, while the whispering kids followed me, giggling.
I didn’t know where the missiles were, exactly, but I knew they were here. I knew they were spread out. I couldn’t be far from one or more of them.
Stopping, I tried to think. The power of the spirit road was gone from me. I could no longer see the lances of fire. But I had seen the crates they had come in. The missiles had to be over two meters long. Not something you could just tuck under a dresser. Some of these shanties weren’t even that big.
“Hey.”
It was one of the whispering kids. He had on a ragged cotton shirt and an old pair of underwear. He was barefoot, with dark skin, waxy-colored hair and green eyes, and could have been any age up to fourteen perhaps. A small fourteen. None of his kind bothered to go to school, so no one kept track. The whispering kid had his hands open, spread wide and facing me.
“Leave me alone,” I warned. I tried to growl like Lugano, but mostly I squeaked.
“Oh, we are.” He snickered, sounding for a moment just like Rodger.
I hated him for that.
“You looking for those Frenchies?” the kid asked.
Ah. The false priests had not made friends here. I woke from my stumbling rage, a little. “Yeah.”
The kid shrugged. “They spread money around.”
I’ll bet they did. “Don’t got no money,” I said.
The kid shrugged again. “Some folks took it. Some turned away.” He looked defensive for a moment, as if ready to fight at his own words. “We’re New Albion, too.”
“And the Pope is our—” Friend, I started to say, but I of all people knew that wasn’t true. No friend of New Albion would have sent us such terrible trouble.
“Pope’s a long way from here,” said the kid. “Frenchies, they ain’t so nice to us. Money ain’t everything.”
I was starting to understand how he thought. It seemed weird to say, even to myself, but I wasn’t so different from this kid. “They leave something here?” I asked cautiously.
The kid nodded. “What you going to do?”
“Stop their crap.”
“How?”
A good question. Smart kid. I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t thought beyond finding one or more of the missiles. I couldn’t even see the airfield from here. Whatever the plot—and I still didn’t understand it, exactly, but surely Father Kramer didn’t plan to die—someone shooting at the Comète from here had to wait until it took off.
Up on the rooftop of, say, my house, you could see the landing field just fine.
I took the plunge. Everyone I’d depended on in life had betrayed me, so I would trust this kid, my casual enemy, instead. “Rondo Street,” I told the kid.
“We know who you are. Meet you at the mills in the alley in an hour.”
Because he was who he was, I asked the question I had to ask. “What do you want for it?”
The kid stared at me for a little while then laughed. “We are not beggars. Whatever you can do. Maybe just don’t forget about us later.”
These kids were going to steal missiles from the false priests for love of the city?
“I’ll make it right,” I said, flushing with shame.
I ran all the way home. Still no one looked at me. There were Civil Guard jitneys cruising the streets, but there was no shooting today. People clustered around newspapers or wireless sets, talking about war. No one but me seemed to know what was in the hold of the jet aeroplane down at the landing field.
As I ran I saw flashes of green in the corner of my eye, as if the sorcerer’s spirit road were following me. Or perhaps just a bright tropical bird on the wing.
I burst into the house to find Mama cooking stew.
“Peter Ignacio Fallworth,” she shrieked, “where have you been!”
I cannoned into her, hugging. “Mama.” My voice was almost a sob. “Don’t…don’t…” I stepped back.
She looked at me. “My God, you’ve been, what, beaten? Did the Civil Guard do this to you?”
Looking down at myself, I realized that my clothes were muddy, bloody and torn. Mostly Rodger’s blood, but still… “Mama. Listen. This is life and death. Make as much stew as you can. People are coming. We need to feed them, treat them like guests. I am going to give them my books, my lesson books and the others. My whole li
brary. Please, please, if we have money in the house, we need to give them that, too.”
“Have you lost your—” she began, but I interrupted her.
“Please,” I said. “You must listen to me, Mama. I cannot explain now, but Papa is in trouble. New Albion is in trouble. The world is in trouble. I might be able to stop some of it. If I do nothing, it will all happen anyway.” I took her shoulders. “Rodger is dead, Mama. I almost died. There are plots all over the city.”
She screamed then, bringing her towel to her face. She quickly calmed herself and dropped her hands to her sides. “I would believe that you are mad,” Mama said, “but I’ve heard that they found Brother Lazare in the river yesterday. And your father…I do not know how you knew of his troubles, but your father has been arrested.”
Traitor. Did he deserve it? Had he been a jailor, or a prisoner all along? Or did this mean Papa was innocent? “Listen to what is happening in town, Mama. If you want New Albion back, do as I ask.”
I ran into my room, leaving her to think. That is always best with Mama. She does not like to be pushed.
There I changed my clothes then grabbed all my books, even my treasured science fictions, and hauled them out to the dining table. I stacked them there and went back to my closet. I owned four pairs of shoes. I could give two away.
Papa’s lectures on colonialism were finally making sense to me. We had made a colony of part of our town. If I was going to free the world from the Pope’s atom bombs and Father Kramer’s madness, I might as well start by freeing the poor of New Albion.
Rodger. I stopped, my breath shuddering. He would have been laughing alongside me right now. Clothes, then, and my Easter money, and my second-best ruler and protractor.
Back in the kitchen Mama had three stew pots going. “You are a man now, Peter, and I will trust you,” she said without turning around. “See that my trust is not misplaced.”
About an hour later a rubber-tired cart pulled by two mules trundled up the alley with a bulky tarp in back. The same silver-haired kid was driving. Three more kids from the shantytown rode with him on the board.
“Heavy,” he said with a grin. “The mules, they are slow.”
“Can we get the cargo up on the roof?” I asked.
The kid shrugged.
When the cart stopped, he carefully set the brake, then tugged the tarp free. There was a heap of trash in the bed. I opened my mouth to protest just as the trash cascaded off. Half a dozen more kids stood and stretched. They were all smaller than me, but as I looked at their faces, I realized they were my age or older.
Mayans? No, they were pale. Europeans, just as my family was. Just not enough food, like a dog raised half starving.
I was glad I could smell Mama’s stew even from here.
The kids tugged ladders from their wagon, swarmed the wall of our house, and quickly brought the missiles out one by one.
This was the first time I had seen the weapons up close. Each had legs folded beneath it and sat in a sort of sleeve. They looked simple to operate. I hoped they were.
“Up, up, up,” shouted the silver-haired kid. Within minutes all four missiles were out of sight.
“Tie your mules by the mills,” I said. “We have a meal for you inside.”
The silver-haired kid looked at me funny. “We don’t eat up here.”
“You do now.”
They unset the brakes, moved the cart up the loading dock of one of the old mills, and set the mules by the horse trough. One of the kids filled the trough with water from the hand pump while I led the others inside.
Mama had every bowl in the house set out, the stew pots bubbling on her stove. “Welcome,” she said with a fixed smile.
I was embarrassed, for everyone. What had I been thinking?
“Ma’am,” said the silver-haired kid. He looked at me.
I nodded. I knew my smile was as tight as Mama’s.
He took a bowl and dished out a few spoonfuls of stew.
“Fill it,” said Mama. “There’s plenty.” Her smile was more natural now, perhaps at our guest’s shyness.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He paused. “Uh, I’m Reg.”
“And I’m Mrs. Fallworth,” said Mama. “Your friends are welcome to eat, too.”
The kids from the shantytown fell to the stew like they had been starving. Which they had, I supposed. While they ate, I showed them my books, my clothes, everything I wanted to give them. “These are from Rodger,” I said.
Reg looked at me over his emptying bowl. Around him the other kids, none of whom had said their names, slurped and spooned away at their stew. They stared at the two of us.
“Don’t know no Rodger,” Reg said.
“And you never will.” The thought made me terribly sad.
“Can’t take your stuff.”
“Why not?”
“People will say we stole it.”
I looked at the pile while spoons clinked. “But I’m giving it to you.”
“Still say we stole it.”
I was frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. “I have to help you,” I said. “You helped me.”
“Don’t forget us,” said Reg.
“Peter,” Mama said, her tone sharp.
Then Reg set down his bowl. “Roof time,” he said.
They all set down their bowls, empty or not, and scrambled out of the house. I looked at Mama, who was picking up her rosary and shawl. She nodded at me, such small blessing as she could give.
I followed the little crowd out the door in time to see Reg fly backward off the roof and land hard in the alley. He sat back up and groaned.
Crud, I thought even as I scrambled up the ladder.
Lugano was up there with the missiles. This time he didn’t have a pistol in his fist, but somehow he seemed bigger than ever. He also had a swollen nose and stitches on his lip.
“Pietro.” His voice was thicker, too, as if he’d bitten his tongue.
“Lugano.” I couldn’t think what to say. “Welcome to my home.”
“Grazie.”
He didn’t seem moved to attack me. There was no way I could fight him anyway. He did seem willing to listen. I had to try. “What Father Kramer is doing…he’s wrong, Lugano, very wrong.”
“È il mio padre. Devo seguirlo.”
I almost understood that. “You don’t have to do what he says, Lugano. Would God want what is being done here?”
“Il Papa lo ha indotto ad essere. Il Papa has made it be.”
“This is beyond even the Pope, Lugano,” I said softly. “Why would Father Kramer shoot down his own aeroplane? Who was going to be on it?”
Lugano stared at his feet, wearing the same pointy alligator shoes with which he had pushed me back into my little hole on the aeroplane. “Lugano.”
Had he not known about the missiles?
He looked up at me again, his eyes smoldering. “Padre Kramer, he beat me, lo ha battuto, when you fled.” Lugano touched the stitches on his lip. “He said I done it. Regolili liberi. Set you to free.”
I tried to imagine Father Kramer setting on Lugano with a stick or the butt of a pistol. Lugano was three times the priest’s size.
“I’m sorr—”
“He told me find you,” Lugano interrupted. “But before, when we first have you, he told me non ci è necessità di danneggiarlo. To not-a hurt you.” The huge man smiled. “So I find you. Still I no hurt you.”
I glanced at the missiles. “Now what?”
“They think I am beast, big Lugano,” Lugano said. “They talk before me. Il Papa, there is a…a…conspirazione…a plot. Not strong enough before the Turk, they say. Not stand up to the Russian. A man more powerful is-a needed. We make-a changes. Il Papa order Padre Kramer here with the big bombs to scare Brasil and the Turk. Padre Kramer say this is the time for change. He take the big bombs away from Il Papa, make himself the new Papa.” Lugano stared down again. “It is wrong.”
“That’s what I said.” The coup wasn’t agai
nst New Albion, I realized. It was against Avignon, against the Pope himself, using the nuclear weapons as a lever of some sort. There were plots and more plots afoot. No wonder the Brasilians had moved against Teixeira—they must have gotten word about the atom bombs being here. Despite the cold fear in my heart, I kept my voice soft. “You don’t have to do this. Any of it. This is wrong, wrong enough to kill the world.”
“I will not. But you no hurt Padre Kramer. This Lugano cannot do.”
I walked over to the missiles, glanced back to see Reg and the other kids at the edge of the roof. They watched Lugano nervously.
The Comète was visible, right where I expected to see it. One shot, maybe two. The false priests—Father Kramer’s men—had more missiles at Our Lady of American Sorrows. They still had their plot, shooting down the departing aeroplane to cover Father Kramer’s tracks. Everything would be blamed on us here in New Albion, or perhaps the Brasilians.
A perfect excuse for a war, I realized, and confusion for that coup against the Pope. Father Kramer would be hidden here at Our Lady of American Sorrows, with his terrible weapons ready to be used.
But I had missiles too. Father Kramer and the atom bombs were still on board. I only had to get around Lugano and I could destroy—
Then I realized what I was thinking. Just as the pistol at Papa’s belt had done to him, these missiles were making me into someone I didn’t wish to be. The Mayan had wanted me to solve this problem, but surely he had not wanted a battle.
The bells struck the hour across town, at St. Cipriano’s and the other churches and down at the Civil Palace. It was three in the afternoon.
Bells.
“Reg,” I said. “Lugano and I are going to the middle of town. There will be a disturbance. When the Civil Guard is busy with that, take as many people as you can find and mob the landing field. Stand close to the jet, don’t let it leave. Don’t fight them. You will just be shot. Can you do that?”
The silver-haired kid nodded at me, suspicious. “Yes. Can you?”
“I think so, but I’ll need your cart. I must take a missile.”
Lugano walked over to the weapons, leaned down and picked one up. The strain made the tendons of his neck stand out, but he managed it. “I carry one. Enough?”