Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) (21 page)

“We have to find out,” Finn said. He pulled his Wave Phone from his shorts and held on to it to keep it dry as he slipped his hologram up to his knees in seawater. “Note to self,” he said to Charlene, “there's no reception on the Wave Phone. We can't return until we're closer to the ship.”

One of the marvels of being a hologram was moments like this: slipping into water without getting wet. Finn peered around the lifeboat at the one next to it. He ducked under the anchor line and stole a look inside the boat. Empty.

“Psst! Maybeck!”

The zipper whirred. Moments later, four holograms moved along the water's edge toward the
Dream
, which loomed like a Hollywood backdrop a half mile away. They came upon the cluster of massage cabanas via a small grove of palm trees. The sky was tinged at the edges a rich azure blue. Only a few determined planets still shone through.

“Which one?” Maybeck whispered.

“We couldn't see,” Finn replied. “We'll split up so we're not all busted at once.”

“That's optimistic of you,” Charlene said. “We're dressed as crew members, don't forget. These lifeboat workers are the worker bees. We're the honeybees. If we encounter them, we demand to know what they're doing ashore. We take their names. We can't think like ninth graders.”

“Tenth graders next September,” Maybeck said.

“Remember, 2.0,” Finn said. “We're good.” He stayed with Charlene. They moved slowly through the cluster of cabanas—small wooden cabins on three-foot stilts with wooden shutters across window holes. The eaves were open to allow circulation. The yellow of candlelight glowed through the ten-inch gap and flickered through the slatted gables. With his upgraded hearing on full alert, he noticed the holograms moving silently through the sand. Finn glanced down: his hologram feet did not displace the sand; it was as if he'd never walked here.

Suddenly, there was a murmur of conversation. Finn crouched and caught sight of Maybeck. He hand-signaled for the four of them to converge on the cabana from both sides. Maybeck nodded and signaled back two thumbs up.

As they approached the voices became clearer, and the conversation with them.

“You must come with us now.” A man.

“You I tell once more,” spoke a woman's baritone voice in a thick Jamaican accent, “;'tain't me going nowhere, mon. 'Tain't leavin' da island 'til necessary. 'Tis them's coming here, or 'tain't at all. Be your instructions as they may, 'tain't no matter to me.”

“Orders is orders,” the man said.

“Them be your orders, not mine. Is you wishing to cross me, mon?”

“No, ma'am!” The gruff man sounded strangely frightened.

“Your shoulders,” Charlene whispered to Finn. “Get down on a knee.” Finn glanced overhead at the window hole in the side wall. Charlene wanted up there. He waved his hand at the stilt holding up the cabana. The wood passed through his forearm. He concentrated and tried again. His arm bumped off the post.

“Okay,” he said.

Charlene performed the same test. It took her three tries to Finn's one, but she was solid enough to step onto his shoulder. Finn grabbed her ankle. She crawled up his back and placed her left foot on his left shoulder, and Finn stood. They were a circus act rising more than ten feet tall. Finn awkwardly moved left until Charlene was alongside the window. She placed her eye to the open-air slats in the shutter. Held up the fingers of her right hand: five, then two. Seven people. The six lifeboat crew and one other: the woman.

“I suggest,” came the sonorous female baritone, “you speak to them's givin' de orders. Ain't got much time, you know. One day is all.”

Charlene looked down at Finn, her face a mask of alarm, and mouthed something, but it was lost on him. She did not look pleased.

“We got orders is all I'm saying,” said the man. “You choose not to come with us, that's on you.”

“'Tis on me, then.”

“That's all I'm saying,” said the man.

“You say so.”

“Not making my life any easier.”

The woman said, “No life easy.”

“Okay, then. Have it your way.”

Charlene motioned for Finn to let her down. As he kneeled, the door to the cabana flew open. Finn saw Maybeck and Willa rush to hide under an adjacent cabana, but there was no time for him and Charlene. She crashed down onto the sand. They scrambled and rolled to a position directly beneath the wooden stairs as the six sailors clomped down. They lay flat in the sand facing the water.

The men muttered. One of them cursed the “old witch.” Too loudly, apparently. He made it only a matter of feet from the stairs before he buckled at the waist in the grips of abdominal pain.

“Be careful your choice of words,” came the baritone from the cabana. “Respect where respect is due.”

Two of the other five dragged the man across the sand, glancing back at the cabana. They moved quickly as if attempting to outrun a fire.

There was little doubt the woman in the cabana had done this to the sailor.

Magic, Finn thought. Black magic, at that.

“You know who that is in there?” Charlene whispered hotly. Not waiting for Finn to answer, she added, “Tia Dalma.”

Finn thought he knew the name, but he couldn't place it.

“The voodoo priestess.
Pirates
?”

It was as if a connecting piece to a jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place. He began to see the bigger picture, though answers and explanations escaped him. He nodded slightly.

“They're taking the boats,” Maybeck said. He and Willa had snuck up on them.

“But they…can't!” whispered Charlene.

“Tell them that,” Maybeck said.

“We're part of the program this morning.”

“We're supposed to be,” Maybeck said.

The boats motored on, backed up, and pulled away from the beach.

Finn glanced toward the ship where, in the headlights of golf carts and forklifts, he saw a dozen workers busy as ants.

“The dock is out,” he said.

“We'll have to swim,” Willa said. They all looked at her like she was crazy.

“I don't think holograms can swim,” Maybeck said. “Though I could be wrong.”

Finn didn't like being so close to Tia Dalma. He led them away from the cabana and back to the palm trees, where they gathered as a group.

“Charlene and I hit some interference out in the lifeboat. The island projectors don't cover very far out off the beach.”

“We had the same thing happen,” Willa said, looking at Maybeck.

“I'm not sure we want to try swimming in the open ocean with our holograms failing to project.”

“Doesn't sound like fun to me,” Maybeck said.

“So we stay close to shore and just beneath the surface,” Charlene said. “If we go all static, we surface.”

“If we lose 2.0,” Maybeck said, “we drown.”

The three looked to Finn for answers. Not for the first time. He lived with this weight on his shoulders. Wayne had once told him he would grow to be the leader of the group. He had never asked for that role, but he seemed stuck with it.

“We don't know that,” he said. “Besides, we won't lose 2.0. It's stable. We might lose projection, and we've never done that in 2.0. Water's not a good place to test it. So we stay close together. Just beneath the surface and close to shore, as Charlene said.” Give credit where credit is due: the first lesson of effective leadership. It wasn't about leading so much as listening and reacting. “We'll stay just inside those buoys.” The swimming areas were defined by ropes and floats.

“I'm the best swimmer,” Willa announced. “And I'm lifeguard-certified.” No one argued, not even Charlene. Willa was known as a bit of a book nerd, but every winter she swam competitively. “If anyone has trouble, I'll hang with them. The rest will get to the ship.”

“Yes,” Finn agreed. “We can cover for each other if a couple of us make it.”

“Our phones?” Maybeck said.

“We leave them here. We can pick them up later, once we're back on the island as ourselves.”

They unloaded their phones. Willa hid them beneath a large leafed plant and took note of its location.

The sky was a lighter blue, the sun only minutes from rising.

“We have to hurry,” Finn said. “You see that open door on this side of the ship? We'll head there.” There was a smaller boat tied up to a small float, but the hatch appeared empty of people.

They headed for the open water. When they reached knee depth, they slid down to their shoulders. Then their heads popped under and did not resurface.

* * *

All went swimmingly. The four stayed close. Their projections broke up occasionally as they swam just below the surface, but it was easy enough to keep track of each other. The latest modeling had included hang gliding, rock wall climbing, skiing, snowboarding, surfing, snorkeling—as well as a dozen new competitive sports, including riflery, fencing, and martial arts. The world of physical movement for the 2.0 holograms was growing exponentially; more modeling was planned for the coming months.

A shimmer to Finn's right caught his eye. Like a flash of light. He looked that way: nothing. Empty sea. Turned his head back to watching where he was going. Another wink. Another inspection. Several more flashes, like from paparazzi cameras.

Then, at once, a wall of silver, like a curtain dropping.

A battery of barracuda.

Charlene blew bubbles as her eyes went wide. She'd slipped out of her hologram.

Several hundred fish. The fish turned direction and vanished again. Finn understood intuitively the change was the result of one of two possibilities: the fish were heading away from them, or the fish were heading for them. This explained the wall of silver disappearing—they were no longer seeing the fish from the side.

Charlene popped her head above the water's surface, gasping. Her hands splashed and her feet treaded water. Willa paused and surfaced to help, attempting to determine if it was a bug in 2.0 and, if so, what could be done about it.

Willa swiped her hand at Charlene's back. Her hand passed through her friend.

“You're okay,” she said over the roar of Charlene's frantic splashing. “You're stable. This is 2.0.”

“I hate fish!”

The most significant improvement of the 2.0 upgrade was its resistance to fear; prior to the upgrade the slightest tremor of terror made one's DHI more solid. That Charlene had lost some of her DHI was both troubling and unexpected.

“You're freaked out,” Willa said. “You need to calm down, Charlie.” If Charlene didn't return to full hologram the fish would have something to bite.

Maybeck, swimming out ahead, missed the entire Charlene and Willa event. Finn saw the fish coming at them and Charlene slapping on the surface, indicating her hands were flesh.

Some fish attack their prey mouth open, like in cartoons—the big fish after the little fish. Other fish hunt in schools. Finn found this out the hard way. When the wall of silver reappeared, it surrounded him and the two girls. It arrived all at once, like a net being dropped. And not just silver: silver with small black eyes, staring at them. The circle of fish was tightening.

As Finn stopped, he treaded water. Without being consciously aware of it, he'd made his hands and feet 2.0-solid.

The spinning school was incredibly close. Close enough for Finn to see their teeth. Their mouths were long, like the rest of them, so there were plenty of teeth. If Finn had known his fish better he would have realized they weren't barracuda, but needlefish. Though this realization wouldn't have helped him any; the truth was that needlefish were much more likely to attack humans than barracuda, much more likely to do harm—as in tearing a chunk of flesh away. Fish that attack in schools operate under a mob mentality. One chunk of missing flesh turns into many. This tends to be detrimental to the prey.

Finn waved his arms threateningly and the school scattered. The swirling wall of silver vanished, then reappeared instantly like the flash of a bullfighter's cape. In the blink of their disappearance, Finn saw past the curtain to Maybeck, who was swimming back toward Finn and the girls. Maybeck, with his powerful arms and wide eyes and a look of heroic intentions. But the swirl of fish continued to close upon Finn and the girls. It was quickly approaching snack time for the needlefish, and though Maybeck's intentions might have been noble, his arrival would only offer the fish additional food.

Four legs and feet kicked furiously just above Finn's head. He kicked to the surface, his last underwater image a few brave needlefish taking aim at one of the girls' feet and toes. He spooked them with another wave of his arms.

On the surface, Charlene was panicked, Willa unable to calm her down.

“Here's the bug,” Willa said to Finn as he broke the surface. “In order to tread water, we seem to make our hands and feet solid.” She lifted her hands out of the water and clapped for him.

He tried it and also clapped. “Uh-oh.”

“We need to calm her down, and we need to get swimming again.”

The lifeboats were a good distance away, nearly to the ship.

Finn moved in front of Charlene. “Okay,” Finn said calmly, “I want you to float on your back. Arms out to the side.”

“Isn't that the dead man's float?” Charlene asked.

“No, that's when you float facedown,” said Finn.

“Oh,” said Charlene.

“Lay back and arch your spine,” he said. He was thinking of the needlefish's proximity to all their toes.

He too was treading water, but he saw that sometimes his hands pushed against the water, sometimes they passed through it without effect. Yet he was able to keep himself on the surface. Take
that
, Philby!

“Look!” he said to Willa.

She saw the two states of his hands and concentrated. She too was then able to alternate between hologram hands and physical hands. “You gotta love 2.0,” she said.