Century #4: Dragon of Seas (29 page)

Still staring at Harvey, Heremit collapses into the boy’s strong arms.

“Maybe this is the answer you were looking for,” Harvey says, holding him up with very little effort. Heremit Devil’s body is light, like a child’s. It’s fragile, without experience, scratches, grazes. A body that’s never touched anything. That’s never been lashed by the rain, by the icy winter wind. A body that’s never been scorched by sunlight or parched with salty seawater. It hasn’t sweated. It hasn’t been licked by a dog, scratched by a cat, thrown from a horse’s saddle. It hasn’t danced, jumped, rejoiced. It’s never felt anything.

“Yes,” the lord of the black skyscraper whispers. “That is the answer.”

With this, he dies, a strange smile of satisfaction on his lips.

* * *

Four figures climb the twelve stairs leading out of the grotto and step outside. They look around, stare at the island, an empty shell of black rock. The helicopter is a tiny white dot, a fly far away on the horizon.

The sea crashes down onto the rocky shores.

And apart from the roaring, churning waves, there’s nothing and no one.

Just perfect silence.

W
HEN THE PHONE CALL ARRIVES
, P
ROFESSOR
M
ILLER IS HUNCHED
over the documents he’s been studying for months now. According to the data from the astronomical observatory in Pasadena, the most catastrophic theory of the location of a hypothetical Planet X headed through the solar system predicts the arrival somewhere between the years 2050 and 2110. Far enough in the future to not be his problem, Professor Miller thinks, but not far enough not to deal with it seriously.

But with every phone call he’s made to his various astronomer colleagues, George Miller has received only sarcastic, vague or annoyed responses. No one is willing to believe that the statistical irregularities detected in the Atlantic Ocean might be due to an anomalous gravitational attraction. Like one caused by a large black body in the outer solar system heading our way. But where, exactly?

Professor Miller has calculated an angle between Planet X’s orbit and Earth’s ecliptic orbit at around seventeen degrees … the same inclination as Pluto, the outermost planet in the solar system. And all this for what? To prove something to his colleagues?
Namely, that the climatic disturbances they’ve been encountering are nothing compared to what’s in store for them?

A planet capable of changing the data on the tides of the Pacific when it’s sixty years away from Earth could cause a serious catastrophe when it finally arrived.

“Arrived or returned?” Professor Miller wonders, slipping the tip of his pen between his lips.

As he’s brooding over the possible sightings of this planet by scientists in ancient times, there’s a knock on Professor Miller’s door.

It’s Paul Magareva, his colleague from the Polynesian Oceanographic Institute, who, as always, is in a good mood. “What if it’s an island?” he asks, appearing in the doorway.

“If it’s an island doing what?”

“An island popping up right in the middle of the Yellow Sea, or the Bohai.”

“Volcanic eruption?”

“Maybe.”

“Possible, but it would have to be a relatively large island.”

“But the data would fit. No remote planet, no stellar phenomenon.”

Professor Miller slumps back in his chair. Fascinating theory, but … “What kinds of seafloors are there in the area you’re talking about?”

“Seafloors that no damn island could ever surface from, if you ask me.”

George Miller looks at his colleague, grinning. “Then why are you telling me about it?”

“Maybe to make you worry less about some ghost planet heading
our way.” The man smiles. “Or maybe because there’s a guy on the phone telling me I’ve got to believe him.”

Paul Magareva holds the phone out to his colleague. “A guy with pretty lousy English … says he wants to talk to you.”

Professor Miller frowns.

“Says he’s a friend of your son’s,” Paul Magareva adds.

When Professor Miller hears Harvey’s name, he bolts upright in his chair. He’s been expecting him for two days now.

“Harvey? Finally!” he exclaims into the receiver. “We’ve contacted consulates halfway around the world!”

“It isn’t Harvey!” someone says on the other end of the line.

“Who is this? Who’s speaking?”

“Professor Miller! It’s Ermete De Panfilis!”

The name is almost completely unknown to Professor Miller’s analytic mind.
Almost
completely. The man glances at his colleague, who’s still standing in the doorway. “Jog my memory.…”

“Are you still in Shanghai? On the ship?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Then you’ve absolutely got to head for the Yellow Sea, sir! Don’t wait a minute longer! You need to go get your son! I’ll explain everything on your way there.”

“I
T MIGHT NOT BE MUCH OF A CONTRIBUTION,
” M
ISTRAL TELLS
the others, looking at her notebooks, which are lined up on the ground right after the last engraved panel, the one in Spanish. “They aren’t written in stone … but it’s better than nothing.”

Leaving Mistral’s notebooks behind, they calmly climb out of the chamber for the last time. They’ve put the stellar stone back in its place and dragged Nik Knife and Heremit Devil’s bodies outside. They left them in a hollow in the rocks so they won’t have to see them whenever they look around. Sheng wanted to throw them into the sea, but Elettra was against it. “When the island sinks down again, the sea will take them anyway.”

Before going outside, Harvey took four seeds from one of the vases decorated with stylized trees. He figured he still needs the two he has left, to plant them in Shanghai and Rome, and he’ll need four more seeds to set up the next Pact.

If they ever find a way to get off the island, that is.

Then the kids closed the base leading into the underground chamber, picked up the seven tops, distractedly looked at the one
with the skull, which belonged first to Hi-Nau and later to Heremit Devil, and put back the copper disk protecting the old lock.

Only then did they sit down outside, in silence.

Their first thought is for Ermete.

“Who knows what happened to him,” Elettra whispers.

“I say they didn’t kill him,” Sheng replies, hopeful. “And now that Heremit’s dead …”

It’s a nice thought, but nobody believes it.

Harvey gets some provisions from Nik Knife’s backpack and hands them out to the others. Nobody’s hungry, but they force themselves to eat anyway. Then they take out the Ring of Fire, the Star of Stone, the Veil of Isis and the Pearl of the Sea Dragon. They pass them around.

When he sees the Ring of Fire, Sheng laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” the boy replies. “Remember Ermete, the first time we rang the bell at his place?”

The image of the engineer’s bewildered face at the Regno del Dado flashes vividly through their minds. Only Mistral says nothing, staring at them. She wasn’t there then.

“What about his disguises?”

Now even Mistral laughs wistfully.

They’re laughing, but it’s a bitter, pained laugh. Then Sheng stands up, grabs hold of imaginary handlebars and asks Elettra, “Who am I?
Vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom!
”

Elettra nudges his ankle with her foot. “Cut it out!” Then she turns to the others. “Did you know Sheng has never driven a motor scooter in his whole life?”

They talk about silly things, but they’re all thinking of painful things. Ermete, the island, which sooner or later is going to sink, the secret of the planet that sooner or later will make its way back into the solar system.

“Harvey?” Elettra says.

“What?”

“Down there, when you took your hand off the wall,” the girl continues, “we asked when the mysterious planet would come back.…”

Harvey nods. “Yeah.”

“When will it?”

“Soon,” he replies.

“Meaning?” Sheng says.

Harvey shrugs. “It’ll pass by when we need to choose our successors.”

“You mean a hundred years from now?”

“Sometime around then, yeah.”

“So we’ve only got a hundred years to make the Earth dream again,” Sheng says, turning to look at Mistral.

But she isn’t beside him anymore.

The French girl has gotten up without making a noise and is walking over to the edge of the rocks.

Sheng mumbles something and follows her.

When he hears that the girl is singing softly, he slows down. Mistral notices him coming her way and stops.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Sheng says, embarrassed.

“You aren’t bothering me.”

“Keep singing,” he encourages her. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll
stay here and listen. Because back there, well … you know what it’s like.…”

They turn around. Elettra and Harvey are kissing.

“No,” Mistral says. She smiles, looking at Sheng, unusually sassy. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what it’s like.”

“You mean … you mean that …”

“I mean you and I could kiss,” Mistral says.

Sheng faces her, standing as straight as he can, but he still barely comes up to her shoulders. Mistral closes her eyes. Centimeters away from her face, Sheng keeps his open. Wide open. He stares at the French girl’s graceful features, her small, thin nose, her bobbed hair blowing in the wind, her long cat-like eyelashes, her slender lips. If he’s ever doubted he could really see other people’s dreams, right now Sheng is absolutely positive: his big dream is right here in front of him. In flesh and blood.

But a second before he brushes his lips against Mistral’s, Sheng freezes, as if paralyzed. Having kept his eyes open, he’s spotted something moving on the horizon. A little dot. A little dot that’s puffing out smoke.

“Hao!”
he whispers.

Mistral opens her eyes, disappointed. “Hao what, Sheng?”

He takes her hand, turns her around and points at the little dot. “There’s a ship down there.”

I
T
’
S A STRANGE
O
CTOBER IN
R
OME
. T
HERE HASN
’
T BEEN A SINGLE
day of rain yet.

Unpredictable climatic changes caused by the greenhouse effect, or mere coincidence? After the snow on New Year’s, when a few journalists talked about a theoretical ice age, nobody knows what side to take anymore.

Sprawled out in a leather armchair he ordered through an Internet auction, Ermete De Panfilis switches off the television, disgusted. He’s fed up with people who are all talk and no action.

If they really want to make a change, they need facts.

The Regno del Dado is closed. The roller shutter pulled down. The plastic tables still covered with board games full of colorful playing pieces.

Ermete yawns. Then he realizes it’s time to leave. He stretches, picks up the keys to his motorcycle and hurries out.

He’s thrilled it isn’t raining in October. The motorcycle zips through the hot autumn air going at its top speed of ninety kilometers an hour, leaving the capital behind him. Then he makes
his way along the Grande Raccordo Anulare heading toward Fiumicino Airport.

When he parks on the sidewalk outside the international arrivals area and steps inside, he sees that the flight from Shanghai has arrived right on time.