Nation (29 page)

The ball had splashed in the middle, capsizing three boats. Figures were in the water. She smiled and turned back to the cannon. Wordless though she was, she’d
begged
to be allowed to fire it. Hadn’t she gathered all the papervine? Hadn’t she woven it into ropes from dawn to dust, tangling into it the inexhaustible hatred in her heart? Hadn’t Mau seen her helping Pilu shaping metal plates over the cracks in the cannon? Hadn’t he seen how she had taken care to wrap the ropes around the cannon, layer after layer, every one as strong as her longing for revenge?

And he had, and they had held; thin little blades of papervine had bound the red thunder in.

She went back to the tree, took up her baby from his cradle made from papervine, and kissed him, and wept.

“We will fire again,” Pilu yelled, in the confusion. “We will destroy your big canoes. We have made the challenge of single combat. You must accept! Or do you want to swim home?”

Raiders clustered around Cox, who was swearing at them.

“What have we got to lose, Mr. Cox?” Daphne shouted above the hubbub. “Don’t you think you’ll win?” And then in the island tongue she hissed: “We will sink every canoe! Our guns are well guarded!” Mau whispered to her and she added, “If you raise a weapon in the Kahana circle, they will kill you, Mr. Cox. It’s against all the rules!”

There was a heavy thudding that turned out to be Milo thumping his chest. “Who will fight?” he yelled. “Who will fight?”

“All right! I’ll fight!” Cox snarled. He pushed away a few hangers-on and dusted off his shirt. “Huh, and I’m supposed to be king in this vicinity,” he complained. “You wouldn’t find the Brigade of Guards coming over all treasonable like this, my word, no!” He glared at Milo. “I’ll fight the big one,” he said. “It’s not like he’ll be easy to miss.”

“You have a plan, don’t you?” Daphne hissed to Mau. “You’re not going to let him shoot Milo dead, are you?”

“Yes, I have a plan. No, he’s not going to shoot Milo. We’d say Milo is chief if one of the Raiders was fighting, because he’d win. But I can’t let Cox shoot Milo. He’s so big, so easy to sho—”

Daphne’s expression went solid as understanding came. “It’s you, isn’t it…? You are going to fight him.”

She was jostled out of the way as Milo dropped his huge hand on the boy’s shoulder, causing him to stand a bit lopsidedly.

“Listen to me!” he declared to the Raiders. “I am not the chief!
Mau
is the chief. He has risen from the country of Locaha. He set the dead men free. The gods hid from him in a cave, but he found them, and they told him the secret of the world! And he has no soul.”

Cor blimey! thought Daphne. One of the footmen had been sacked for saying that when she was eight, and until she’d sailed on the
Sweet Judy
she’d thought it was the worst swear word in the world. It still felt as if it was.

Cor blimey! That was the most words Milo had ever said in a
day
! They might have been said by his brother, because they were the truth disguised as lies, and there was something about that fact that made them echo in the head. They seemed to be doing so in the heads of the warriors. They stared at Mau in astonishment.

A heavy hand landed on Daphne’s shoulder too, and Cox said, “Missie? I’m going to have to shoot the little bugger, right?”

She spun around and shoved his arm away. But he caught her tightly by the wrist.

“I could shoot
you
, Cox, whatever you say!”

Cox laughed. “Oh, you’ve got the taste for killing, missie?” he said, his face a few inches from hers. “Mind you, poisoning don’t really count, I always think. Did he gurgle? Did he go green? But well done for bashin’ two of Polegrave’s teeth right out, the evil little monkey…. He didn’t try to mess you up, did he? I’d shoot him if he tried anything unsavory. Oh, but in point of fact I shot him yesterday, ’cause he really was a pain in the arse, excuse my French—”

Daphne managed to pull her arm free. “Don’t touch me again! Don’t you even
suggest
that I’m like you! Don’t you—”

“Stop.” Mau didn’t shout. His spear shouted for him. It was aimed at Cox’s heart.

No one moved for several seconds, and then Cox said, slowly and carefully, “Ah, is this your beau? What
will
dear Daddy say? Oh my word! An’ you taught him how to talk, too.”

The cannibal twin of the prime minister stepped between them with his hands raised, and suddenly a lot of spears and clubs were being shaken.

“No fight yet!” he said to Cox in broken English, and turned to Daphne. “The boy has no soul?” he asked in the island tongue.

“The wave took away his soul, but he has made himself a new one,” she said.

“Wrong. No man can make a soul!” But he’s worried, Daphne thought.

“This one did. He made it outside himself. You are walking on it,” she said. “
And don’t try to shuffle away sideways.
It covers the whole island, every leaf and pebble!”

“They call you a woman of power, ghost girl.” The man took a step backward. “Is this true? What is the color of birds in the land of Locaha?”

“There are no colors. There are no birds. The fish are silver, and as fast as thought.” The words were just there, ready, in her head. Great Heavens, she thought, I
know
this!

“What is the length of time you may stay in the land of Locaha?”

“The fall of a drop of water,” said Daphne’s lips before she had finished hearing the question.

“And the soul who makes his own soul…he was in Locaha’s land?”

“Yes. He ran faster than Locaha, though.”

The dark, piercing eyes stayed fixed on her for a while, and then it seemed that she had passed some test.

“You are very clever,” said the old man shyly. “I would like to eat your brains, one day.”

For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne’s grandmother had forced on her didn’t quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, “You’re so sweet I could gobble you all up!” but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for “It’s very kind of you to say so.”

He nodded and headed back to his fellows, who had clustered around Cox.

Mau approached her, smiling. “Their priest likes you,” he said.

“Only for my brains, Mau, and even if he had them for lunch, I’d still have more than you! Didn’t you see that gun he’s got now? It’s a Pepperbox. One of Father’s friends had one! It has six barrels. That’s six shots without reloading!
And
he’s got an ordinary pistol, too!”

“I shall move fast.”

“You can’t run faster than bullets!”

“I shall stay out of their way,” said Mau with infuriating calmness.

“Look, don’t you understand? He’s got two guns and you’ve got one spear. You’ll run out of spear before he runs out of gun!”

“Yes, but his gun will run out of bang before my knife runs out of sharp,” said Mau.

“Mau, I don’t want you to die!” Daphne shouted. The words echoed back off the cliffs, and she blushed crimson.

“Then who should die? Milo? Pilu? Who? No. If anyone is going to die, it should be me. I’ve died before. I know how it’s done. No more discussion!”

B
EHIND THEM THE HUBBUB
of the meeting had stopped.

Silence fell over the war canoes lined with faces; the cluster of Raider chiefs on the shoreline; the people who had crept out to watch from the cliff. The sun was too bright to look at and was already boiling all the color out of the landscape. The world was holding its breath.

There would be no count, no signal. There were no rules, either. But there was tradition. The fight would start when the first man picked up his weapon. Mau’s spear and knife were on the sand in front of him. Ten feet away, Cox had laid down his guns only after a lot of argument.

Now it was just a case of watching the other man’s eyes.

Cox grinned at him.

Hadn’t every boy dreamed of this? To stand in front of the enemy? And they were all here together, under the white-hot sun, all the lies, all the fears, all the terrors, all the horrors that the wave had brought, all here and in mortal form. Here he could beat them.

And all that mattered was this:
If you don’t dare to think you might, you won’t.

Mau’s eyes creaked with staring. He was nearly blinded by the fierce sunlight, but at least there were no more voices in his head—

Except…

It is a good day to die
, said the voice of Locaha.

Mau’s arm shot out, hurling the handful of sand into Cox’s eyes. He didn’t wait—he just grabbed his knife and ran, listening to the cursing behind him. But you can’t cheat when there are no rules. He’d picked up his weapon when he’d put his spear down. He didn’t have to
say
he’d chosen the sand itself. It was a good weapon, too.

Don’t stop. Don’t look back, just keep running.

There wasn’t a plan. There had never been a plan. All there was was hope, but there was little enough of that, and there was something the ghost girl had taught him on the very first day they met: Guns did not like water.

The lagoon was where he belonged right now, and he fled for it, dodging and weaving as much as he dared. The water was his world. Cox was a big, heavy man, and water would drag at his clothes. Yes!

He heard a shot fired, and a bullet sang past his head. But here was the lagoon and he dived in when the water was hardly above his knees. He would have to come up for air, but surely the man would not dare to come in after him?

Out toward the middle of the lagoon, where the damaged canoes were drifting, he stopped and made use of their cover to grab some more air. Then he peered around the canoe to find Cox—and he was right there on the shoreline, already sighting on him.

Mau dived, but Cox had expected that. Perhaps it was true. The man
could
see into people’s heads.

Mau turned to look back. He couldn’t help it. Men face their enemy, just once….

And what Mau saw was the bullet coming. It hit the water a few feet in front of him, trailing bubbles—and stopped inches from his face. He gently picked it out of the water as it started to fall, and then let it go and watched in wonder as it dropped to the sand.

How had that happened? Bullets really
didn’t
like water….

He climbed up to the surface for a mouthful of air and heard another bang as he dived again. He turned to watch the trail of bubbles head toward him, and the bullet bounced off his arm. Bounced! He hardly felt it!

He struck out for the gap into the deep water, which was half blocked with floating weeds today. At least it gave him some cover. But what had happened to the bullets? A bullet certainly hadn’t bounced off Ataba. It had made a big hole, and there had been a lot of blood.

He would have to surface again, because Cox was probably even more dangerous when you couldn’t see where he was.

He grabbed the edge of the coral, steadied himself on a root of an old tree that had wedged in the gap. Very cautiously, he pulled himself up.

And there was Cox, running, running along the spit of old coral that led from the shore around to Little Nation and the new gap. Mau heard his boots crunch on the coral as he ran, speeding up while the watching Raiders scuttled out of the way.

The man glanced up, raised his gun, and, still pounding over the coral, fired twice.

A bullet went through Mau’s ear. The first thought as he dropped back through the water was about the pain. The second thought was about the pain, too, because there was so much of it. The water was turning pink. He reached up to his ear and most of it was not there. His third thought was: Sharks. And the next thought, happening in some little world of its own, said: He has fired five shots. When he has fired all the bullets he has, he will have to load the guns again. But if I was him, I would wait until I’d had one last shot with the big pistol and then reload it, keeping the little pistol ready to hand in case the darkie suddenly came out of the water.

It was a strange, chilling thought, dancing across his mind like a white thread against the terrible red background. It went on: He can think like you. You must think like him.

But if I think like him, he wins, he thought back.

And his new thought replied: Why? To think like him is not to be him! The hunter learns the ways of the hog, but he is not bacon. He learns the way of the weather, but he is not a cloud. And when the venomous beast charges at him, he remembers who is the hunter, and who the hunted!
Dive now! Dive right now!

He dived. The tree half wedged in the gap was tangled up in a mass of seaweed and palm fronds, twisting everything together as the tides rolled it. He ducked into its shadow.

Already the tree had become a world of its own. Many of its branches had been ripped off, but the trailing weeds had colonized it, and little fish darted in and out of the forests of green. But better than that, if he tucked himself up between the tree and the edge of the gap, he could just get his face out of the water and be lost in the mass of vegetation.

He dropped back under the surface; the water around him was going pink. How much blood could one ear contain? Enough to attract sharks, that’s how much.

There was a thump, and the whole of the tree shook.

“I’ve got you now, my little chappie,” said the voice of Cox. He sounded as though he was right above Mau. “Nowhere to go now, eh?” The tree rocked again as the man walked up and down in his heavy boots. “And I won’t fall off, don’t you worry about that. This piece of wood is as wide as bloody Bond Street to a sailor!”

There was another thump. Cox was jumping up and down, making the tree rock. It rolled slightly, and a bullet went past Mau’s face before he pulled himself back into the shadows.

“Uh-oh. We’re bloody bleeding,” said Cox. “Well done. All I’m going to have to do is wait for the sharks to turn up. I always like to see a shark having his dinner.”

Mau worked his way along the bottom of the log, hand over hand. The trail of pinkness followed him.

There had been six shots. He raised his head in the shelter of a clump of weeds and heard a click.

“Y’ know, I’m really disappointed in those cannibal johnnies,” said Cox, right overhead. “Too much talk, too many rules, far too much mumbo jumbo.
Jumbo
mumbo jumbo, ha, ha. Milk-and-watery bunch, the lot of ’em. Been eating too many missionaries, if you ask me.” There was another click. Cox was reloading. He had to use two hands for that, didn’t he?

Click…

Mau reached down for his knife and his belt was empty….
Click.

So he swam face upward along the underside of the trunk, his nose only a foot or so from the bark, which was covered with tiny crabs.

That was how it would end. The best thing to do would be to leap up and get shot. That would surely be better than a shark’s teeth. And then everyone who knew about the Nation would die—

Are you totally stupid, Mau? It was the new voice, and it said: I’m you, Mau, I’m just you. You will not die. You will win,
if you pay attention
!

Click…

The pale green weed in front of him moved and he saw something black. In a moment where time stood still, he brushed the weeds aside and saw it, wedged firmly in the trunk: a trunk that was full of little marks to show where men had helped other men.

He had been proud of himself that day. He had hit the tree with the
alaki
axehead so hard that it would take all the next boy’s strength to pull it out. The next boy was him.

Without thinking, and watching himself, somehow, from the outside, he grabbed the handle and raised his legs until they were firm against the underside of the trunk. The axe was stuck fast.

“I can hear you wriggling about,” said a voice right above him. “You will be wriggling a whole lot faster in a moment. I can see the fins coming. Oh my giddy aunt, I wish I’d brought sandwiches.”

Click…

The axe came loose. Mau felt nothing. The grayness was back in his mind. Don’t think. Do the things that must be done, one after another. The axe was free. Now he had it. This was a fact. The other fact was that Cox had now loaded his pistol.

Mau dragged himself branch by branch to the little area where he could breathe without being seen. At least, the area where he
hoped
he could not be seen. As he ducked his head down, a bullet went past it. Five bullets left, and Cox was losing his temper: he fired again (four bullets left; a fact), and Cox was right above him, searching for movement in the tangle of floating greenery. The bullet had come down as straight as a spear but had tumbled and lost its way. It’s hard to run through water, Mau told himself. The more you try, the harder it gets. A fact. It must be the same for bullets. A new fact.

“Did I get you that time?” said Cox. “I hope I did for your sake, ’cause they’re getting closer. Actually, I was just saying that to be nice, ’cause I want to see you wriggling. I want to stay here until I sees the sharks burp, and then I will go back and have a nice chat with your little lady.”

Mau’s lungs were beginning to hurt. He made the tree trunk wobble, then let himself sink. He didn’t hear what Cox shouted, but four bullets splashed into the water high above him, left trails of bubbles for a few moments, and then just tumbled away in the current.

Six shots. Only the little pistol would be left. No, Cox would have to reload. And that needed both hands. A fact.

Now there had to be more facts, one after the other, all falling carefully into place like little gray blocks.

Mau rose fast, dragging the axe behind him. He grabbed the stub of a broken branch with his free hand, got a purchase with his feet on another, and, with his lungs on fire, let all the momentum of his rise and all the strength left in his body flow into his arm.

The axe came out of the water in a great curve, moving in space but not in time, water droplets hanging in the air to mark the arc of its passage. It blocked the light of the sun, it made the stars come out, it caused thunderstorms and strange sunsets around the world (or so Pilu said later on)—and as time came back at double speed, the axe hit Cox in the chest and he went backward off the log. Mau saw him raising his pistol as he sank, and then his expression changed to an enormous grin, with blood at the corners, and he was dragged into the swirling waters.

The sharks had arrived for dinner.

Mau lay on top of the log until the commotion died down. And he thought, in those little white thoughts that scribbled their way along the redness of the pain in his lungs: That was a really good axe. I wonder if I’ll be able to find it again.

He pushed himself onto his knees and blinked, not quite certain who he was. And then he looked down and saw the gray shadow.

I will walk in
your
steps for a while
, said a voice just above his head.

Mau pulled himself onto his feet, not an unbruised thought in his head, walked to the far end of the log, and stepped onto the path across the broken coral. Grayness filled the air around him as he walked, and on either side the great wings of Locaha beat gently. He felt like…metal, hard and sharp and cold.

They reached the first of the big war canoes, and he stepped onto it. The few warriors who hadn’t already jumped into the water fell to their knees, terrified. He looked into their eyes.

They can see me. They worship me,
Locaha said.
Belief is a hard thing to believe, is it not? For now, at this time, here in this moment under these stars—you have the gift. You can kill them with a touch, a word, by the passing of your shadow. You have earned this. How would you like them to die?

“Take your captives to the shore and leave them there,” Mau said to the nearest men. “Pass this command along and then go. If you stay here, I will close my wings over you.”

That is all?
said Locaha.

Thoughts pieced themselves together in the chill on Mau’s mind as he turned and headed across the coral.

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

I would have acted differently,
said the voice of death.

“
And I would not, Locaha
. I’m not you. I have choices.”

Mau plodded on, in silence and gray shadow.

This day turned out well for you,
said the voice of Locaha.

Mau still said nothing. Behind them the Raiders’ fleet was boiling with terrified activity. There will be so many new mouths to feed, he thought. So much to do. Always so much to do.

I am not often surprised
, said Locaha,
and you are wrong. There is one choice I can make, in the circumstances….

The sand under Mau’s feet turned black, and there was darkness on every side. But in front was a pathway of glittering stars.