Thief (16 page)

Logically, it wasn’t, yet he was going, and that was the paradox he lived with. He had to do this. On a level that couldn’t be denied he knew he had to go through with it, no matter how insane. Partly it was the fear of letting down Sherial, and partly the thought of abandoning the prisoners to their hell. But there was also something else there. Somewhere deep in his thoughts, there was the certainty that what he was doing was what he had always been meant to do. It was not a choice situation.

Reaching the dock he sat down on one of the rails and stared at the flying boat anchored nearby, his thoughts everywhere and nowhere at once.

The Catalina was a replica built thirty years after the end of WW II by an enthusiast, who having completed his great project passed away suddenly. Mikel liked to think he had been well pleased with his craft and died satisfied. Certainly he’d only flown her twice, but she would have outperformed her ancestors in every way. Surely he would have been proud.

Mikel particularly loved the way her maker had imbued her with his own touches. Proper leather couches, sound proofing on the walls, perfectly machined controls; it was as though he’d decided the plane was surely a Rolls Royce instead of a working seaplane. Soon after his passing Mikel had purchased the plane and kept her in mint condition ever since.

From the outside she complied in every detail with the original flying boats, but on the inside she had been substantially altered. Instead of the ancient engines the original boats had been built with she had relatively new turboprop engines, with more than twice the horsepower. Her skin was glass fibre and magnesium weave stretched over a high tensile steel frame, while her avionics were state of the art for a commercial plane of her day.

The plane too had been an impulsive purchase for him. He could have justified her purchase in any number of ways, but the reality was that he’d seen her and knew immediately that she was for him. Not logical, but something he was occasionally prone to do. Then again, in the twenty years he’d had her she’d never let him down, so perhaps there was something in his instincts after all.

The Catalina rolled gently in the slight swell of his little harbour, tiny splashes coming from under her hull. Even now, with Sherial far from him, he had the terrible feeling the plane was smiling at him, as would a friend, and laughing gently at his confusion. He decided against tying her down on the pad. She would be safe here he decided, even if they were away for a few days. There were no storms forecast, and in the harbour she could survive anything short of a force ten gale anyway. Besides, he got the feeling that the plane wanted to be free, not locked up in a dark hanger. How weird was that?

As he sat and watched her gently pitch and roll, he found himself drifting gently away, his thoughts so long under rigid control, moved into a passive peaceful mode. The sun was gentle on his skin, the air cooling and the sound of the water lapping against the keel, soothing. Of their own accord his eyes closed, eyelids finally too heavy to stay open.

**********

It had been so long since he’d seen her that he almost didn’t recognize her as she approached, walking easily across the smooth water. And then he did and could do naught but smile.

It was Samantha, his Samantha, for so long missing, gone away, now suddenly here in front of him as if she had never left. He wanted to call out, to wave, but instead just watched and enjoyed. He had always loved to watch her walk, that graceful movement with just the faintest flick of her hips to call to him, urging him to come hither.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was wrong, that it was impossible. Samantha was dead so many years before. But he couldn’t make himself listen to that voice in his overwhelming joy. He just watched and welcomed her with his heart. Somehow, Samantha was returning to him.

She strolled directly to him and then stood before him, hands on hips as she had always been so prone to do, usually just before she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him all the way to the ground. He had always loved that stance of hers.

But this time was different, for neither of them seemed to have that desperate need in them. Instead it was more as though there was a distance between them, a chasm of sadness. She still looked to his eyes as beautiful, as sexy and curvaceous as she always had in those thin jeans and tee-shirt, but somehow still failed to move him. Nor, he realized, was she wanting what they had once had.

Instead of loving him as she once would have, she smiled that crooked smile of hers that always warmed the bottom of his heart and then kissed him on the cheek. It was a kiss of farewell, and he knew with a dreadful chill in his bones, he never wanted to say goodbye.

She was leaving him.

Before he could react she turned and walked back the way she had come. Immediately he tried to give chase. But no sooner had his feet hit the water then he sank out of sight, faster than a lead brick, heading swiftly down for the murky depths. He tried desperately to swim, to reach the surface, but for some reason he couldn’t even slow his plummet through the depths, and ended up watching her feet disappearing away from him from at least thirty feet down.

And then the already murky water became dark. Very dark and very cold.

In seconds he was too far down to see the surface and shivering with the chill, and still he had not reached the bottom. Nor, he suddenly realized, had he breathed. And the fear took him as he thought of drowning so far from everyone and everything he knew. Yet there was nothing he could do. No matter how he struggled he simply sank further and faster, while the water got colder and darker.

Far too soon he was blind. Blind and beginning to feel the desperate need to breath. But there was nothing to breath, only the dark murky water that froze him to the bone. He couldn’t even call out for there was no one to call out to. He lived alone, and now he realized, he would die alone. For the first time in his entire life, he suddenly feared that. He knew a fear of dying alone.

Then he realized there was one he could call, Sherial. For surely she could come for him, could save him from this watery grave. Yet even as he thought of her, and knew the sweetness of the thought of her coming to him, he rejected the concept with his every cell. What terrible price would he pay for her saving him? He’d already lost so much, his privacy, his secrecy his security and his self-respect. Everything he was she had already destroyed, and the rest was under attack. Now there was only his own skill left to him. Whatever the outcome, he had to do this himself.

He kicked and paddled frantically, trying to go back up, but for some reason he could do nothing more than sink and suffocate. And the harder he struggled, the greater became the need to breath. The last of the light vanished as he entered water too deep to see. He panicked in the blackness.

With no air at all to his name, he started screaming insanely, the last of his air rushing out in the panicked words, while foul water flooded back in his throat and lungs. Immediately he started choking, a desperate attempt by his body to cough the water back out. But it was doomed to failure, he had no more air in his lungs to do it with, and instead ever more entered. After that came the true horror of drowning. The intense ache from his every single cell to breath and the inability to take in any air. It may look peaceful to the observer, but he discovered it’s the most horrible way to die he’d ever imagined.

Finally the blackness began to overtake his mind, and he knew he was doomed. He could not save himself. He wanted to, he needed to, and there was a way. But even as oblivion overtook him he knew he would not pay the price. He couldn’t. Sometimes death is preferable. Regardless, he still found himself crying out anyway. Not for Sherial, for anyone. Once more, death didn’t scare him, but that terrifying choking did.

No one heard as he choked his last, and the blackness moved through him. Not even him.

*************

Sometime later he awoke, if that was the word. He felt warmth, he saw light and he heard music, but most wonderful of all he knew he was alive. He knew nothing else but he knew he was alive, and that was enough.

Safe! He suddenly knew he was safe too. Someone had told him so, someone that didn’t lie, though how he knew that, he had no idea. But for once that didn’t bother him. It was enough to know he was safe.

His vision was as fuzzy and flawed as a TV without an aerial, the remnants of that cold dark water from which he had so recently been plucked still in his eyes. But he knew, was told, his sight would return.

Distantly he could see shapes moving, light shapes moving against a light greyness that was his entire world, and he knew they were angels. Yet they weren’t Sherial. He could make out nothing about them, no face, no body. They were nothing more than smudges of light, yet he knew not one of them was Sherial.

Somewhere deep within he knew sadness at that, sadness that she should not be here with him, wherever here was. But he also knew relief. The weight of some great burden, a terrible battle, had lifted off his shoulders and he was free. Was that wrong?

Then the shapes approached, and he suddenly knew he wasn’t free after all. He felt their disapproval of him. They were unhappy, disappointed, in him, and suddenly he knew fear. He knew their power, felt their upset, and knew fear. They would never, could never harm him. It ran against everything they were, and yet still he felt terror.

As they approached he expected somehow to make out more of their forms, but it wasn’t so. Instead they just became larger smudges, almost close enough to touch, but never to see.

Soon they surrounded him and he knew even more fear. For though they were surely angels, good beyond his understanding, their power, their nearness and the fact that they completely surrounded him, unnerved him. Worse still was the realization that he couldn’t move, for when he tried it was as if his body had lost the ability to even twitch. He was paralysed. And still they came closer.

The nearer they came, the more he felt their disappointment in him, and the more he wanted to crawl into a corner and die. The more he wanted to dig a hole, jump in and cover himself over. The more he ached to flee. But there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. Too soon they hemmed him in on every side, holding him almost like a prison cell. And they wanted to come closer still.

Their very presence began making it harder and harder for him to breath. It was as if his lungs no longer wanted to open and close, regardless of his body’s need for air. He wanted to, he need to, but he had lost the ability to breathe.

Once again he found himself drowning, this time in open air. And it was every bit as horrible as before. As his body and chest started burning a second time, his every cell crying out again for oxygen, he found himself wondering how he could be with them, hear them telling him he was safe, know the truth of their message, and still be being suffocated to death by them. It made no sense.

Yet still it happened, and once again he went kicking and screaming down into that darkness knowing nothing more than fear and doom, while surrounded by only fresh air and heaven.

“Ouch!” A bramble snagged Mikel’s arm drawing a couple of specks of blood, and he jumped, then quickly clutched his arm to him, inspecting his latest wound. There had been more than a few. He cursed the bramble emptily, knowing it wasn’t really the plant he was angry at.

The journey through the woods was proving far longer than he had anticipated, and Mikel was becoming worried by it. Or actually he was more worried about what was happening back in his world while he was gaily following Sherial to heaven alone knew where. Every hour that passed was another in which a clever policeman or worse still, mobster could be locating clues to his identity. And there was nothing he could do about it while he was out here, wherever here was. Who knew what messes he might return to find?

But even that wasn’t as scary a thought as what lay ahead, the great unknown. One way or another it should have all been over by now, but instead this interminable walking just put off the inevitable and left him more and more edgy.

Already they had spent too many nights in the forest and not even come near to their destination, which he’d thought originally of in terms of only hours or a day or two at most. Strange that. For some reason he’d assumed Sherial would take them directly there, and let him get immediately down to work. He’d not even considered the possibility of walking for perhaps hundreds of miles through wilderness. An alien wilderness at that.