The Apprentices (34 page)

“It’s so beautiful here,” she’d said, after examining the red welts on her shin. “It’s paradise.”

“Paradise is boring!” Pip said.

“No, it’s not.”

So Pip had turned his focus to her father. First he disabled
his hotel room ceiling fan. Mr. Lowell was a big man, quick to sweat, and he complained at breakfast, hot and groggy. Pip replaced the sunscreen in his bottle with ordinary hand lotion, and watched him fall asleep on the beach. By afternoon he was the color of a cooked lobster.

At dinner that night in a Chinese restaurant, Mr. Lowell ordered his kung pao chicken extra spicy, and Pip slipped the waiter a dollar to triple the chili. Mr. Lowell was too proud to admit that the heat was too much, and turned purple. Pip almost started to feel sorry for the guy.

Back at the hotel, maintenance had fixed Mr. Lowell’s ceiling fan, so Pip blew the fuse for his room.

In the morning, Mr. Lowell gave in. “We’re going home,” he said.

“No!” Angelica wailed.

“In the villa
I
want to go to,” Pip offered, “all the rooms are air-conditioned.”

Mr. Lowell brightened through his crimson sunburn. “What do you say, sweetheart? A compromise?”

“I want to stay
here,
” Angelica said.

“That’s not an option,” her father said. It was the first time Pip had heard him defy his daughter, and it was a sweet, sweet sound.

* * *

As they drew closer to the island, Pip saw a grand white house at the southern end, with a green tower attached to one side of it. Pip had never seen a tower like that. Was it a
giant hedge? There was also a sparkling blue swimming pool, a few small white cottages, a lagoon, and a grass landing strip.

At the northern end, there was a cluster of tiny, identical houses, a warehouse, and a pier. A boat was approaching the pier. It looked like a landing craft with a flat-nosed bow. Pip had been enjoying the triumph of arrival, but now he felt apprehensive. His old itching feeling was back.

Angelica’s father made an expert landing, rumbled down the grass runway, and cut the engine. As the propellers slowed, the island seemed unsettlingly quiet. Even the insects were startled mute by the plane’s arrival.

Pip climbed warily out, looking for signs of life. He walked with Angelica and her father up the road past a beach and the lagoon, and toward the big white house. The gate hung open. If anyone noticed the gaily dressed newcomers in Hawaiian prints, they ignored them. Pip felt like a ghost—like a party of ghosts all killed at a luau, coming back to haunt the living, only to find that the living couldn’t spare the time to be haunted.

“I want to go for a swim,” Angelica said, her voice ringing out in the stillness.

“Shh!” Pip whispered.

“What?” she said. “I’m hot. I’m going to find the pool.”

Her father followed her, and Pip headed for the tower of vines. Its top was higher than the house, and there was a man in a green uniform stuck in the branches, twenty feet in the air.

“Get me down!” the man said.

Pip heard a rustle of branches lower down. “Hullo?” he called. “Anyone in there?”

There was a surprised silence, and then a girl’s voice said,
“Pip?”

“Janie!”

“We heard a plane! Was that you?”

“It was,” Pip said. “Are you expecting a boat?”

There was a brief silence behind the green wall, and then he heard Benjamin’s voice. “What kind of boat?”

“Some kind of landing craft, you know, where the front folds open.”

“You’re sure it was coming here?”

“Think so.”

Benjamin’s voice was urgent. “Pip, listen. We need an ax or—a saw. Anything like that. Quickly!”

Pip ran round the side of the house. Where would he be if he were an ax? He tried a door that opened: an entryway to a big kitchen. He heard a noise and crept closer. Sitting on the floor against the cupboards was a blond woman with her knees drawn up and her shoes kicked off. Beside her on the floor was a pistol with a fat silencer. She had her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobbing. There might be knives in the kitchen, but they weren’t worth getting past
that.
Pip let himself silently back outside.

He ran down to the white cottages and found an equipment shed. Hanging on the wall were two pruning saws. He grabbed them both and turned to see a man in a green uniform crouching against the wall.

“You scared me,” Pip said.

“Are they still growing?” the man asked.

“What?”

“The plants!”

“I think they’ve stopped.”

“They grabbed my friend!” the man said.

“The one up in the air?”

“Is he dead?”

“No, he’s all right,” Pip said. “Chin up.”

He ran back toward the house and set to work with one of the pruning saws, ignoring the pleas of the man in the air, until he had a hole big enough to pass the other saw through to Benjamin. It was faster when they worked from both sides. Finally the gap was big enough for a smallish person to climb through. Janie squeezed out first, the branches grabbing at her clothes. She hugged Pip. “I can’t believe you came all this way!” she said.

“It was nothing,” he said, suddenly bashful.

Benjamin squeezed out next, shook Pip’s hand gratefully, and said, “Now show us that boat.”

B
enjamin, Pip, and Janie raced toward the north end of the island in a golf cart. Benjamin drove, not particularly well, and tried not to think the worst thoughts:
A boat arriving—Danby escaping—Danby gone.

When they got to the pier, Magnusson’s motorboat was scuttled and sinking beside the pier, useless, the bow and the radio mast still sticking up out of the water.

“There!” Pip said, and he pointed out to sea. “That’s it!”

Benjamin saw the landing craft heading away, already half a mile off. On the deck, something white caught his eye. He shaded his eyes to look.

The flash of white looked like a flag of truce, or a girl’s handkerchief waving from an ocean liner. But it wasn’t either of those. It was a tall, straight figure, looking back at the island from the stern. The sunlight caught his shock of white hair. Danby. Benjamin felt disappointment hit him hard, like a blow to the ribs. It took a moment before he could breathe again.

“Maybe we could follow in Pip’s airplane,” Janie said.

“And then what?”

“Watch where Danby goes?”

“It was hard enough to get the plane
here,
” Pip said. “No way they’re leaving already.”

When they got back to the villa, a girl in a lavender bikini appeared from the direction of the pool and put her hands on her hips. “This is
not
a resort hotel,” she said. “And there is
no
royalty here.”

Benjamin stared at her, confused. She looked very clean, with blue-gray eyes and long brown hair.

“Angelica, can we use your plane?” Pip asked. “It’s important.”

“No!” she said. “We just got here!”

Pip shrugged at Benjamin and Janie. “May I present Angelica Lowell?”

The girl smiled at Janie’s filthy pajamas. “You must be Janie,” she said, her tone false and slighting. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Benjamin hadn’t heard anyone talk like that since he left school, two years earlier, and it was so ridiculous that it made him want to laugh.

Then Jin Lo emerged from the direction of the overgrown garden. “Benjamin,” she said, ignoring the newcomers. Her hair was coming out of her braid, and the breeze whipped it across her face. She pushed it away. Tears had left dirty tracks on her face.

“What is it?” Benjamin asked.

Jin Lo’s eyes were desolate. “You should come.”

M
arcus Burrows felt a hand take his, and he opened his eyes to see his son beside him. He closed his eyes again.
Like an ostrich,
he thought, with his diminished strength.
With my head in the sand.
Did he think he could hide from his son, at the last moment? Now was the moment he must not hide. The pain in his chest was sharp, and there was a dark cloud in his mind. It chased his thoughts in all directions. He forced himself to look at his son, whose eyes were so like Susan’s—like his mother’s.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He had so little breath.

“Don’t leave me!” Benjamin said.

“I meant what I said. You’ve surpassed me. You’ll do great things.”

“Not without you!” Benjamin said. “There’s too much I don’t know.”

“You’ll learn.”

“How?” Benjamin asked.

“You’ll have the book.”

His son shook his head, looking wretched.

“And listen, Benjamin. This is important. The work—” He took a gasping breath that raked his lungs. The dark cloud loomed, but he had things to say first.

“Yes?” Benjamin wiped his eyes.

“We don’t originate it. The work is being done by the universe. We are the instrument, the vessel through which it flows. You understand?”

“No,” Benjamin said.

He wished for more eloquence. He wished for more strength. “You are the vessel. You can’t be collapsed by grief, or anger—by bitterness, or guilt, or revenge. What happened here was not your fault.”

“It was!”

“Please,”
he said. Another rasping breath. “You are my hope. What you’ve done on your own—sometimes I think that no one has ever needed a mentor less than you.”

His son was crying openly now. He wished he could protect Benjamin from this pain, but that was impossible, when it was the pain of losing him. He felt himself chasing the tail of his own thought. He hadn’t been a perfect father. He had wanted to protect Benjamin, and let him be a child while he still could. And then he had wanted to prepare him to be a man. But he wasn’t sure he had done either of those things. He saw that the American girl was here—Janie—even as white spots seemed to invade his vision. She looked distraught.

“Take care of him, Janie,” he said. His son would be an orphan now, but the girl loved him. “Will you? Will you take him home?”

She nodded, tears running down her cheeks.

“That would be good,” he said.

But there was still the thing he didn’t want to think about, scattering his thoughts. He had to face it. He had been working to save Benjamin, in the mill, but that had not been the right act, for the end of his life. “Benjamin, the uranium,” he said. An antic dwarf came into his mind—but why? He was growing confused. “I turned straw into gold. Not much, not even a barrel, but that could be enough. A seed. Don’t let it get away.”

It was so important to explain, but so difficult. He couldn’t even hold on to consciousness. He seemed unable to push enough air out of his lungs to make room for another breath. He had succeeded. He had turned straw into gold, at the wicked king’s command. He had let the work flow through him for the wrong purpose. Benjamin’s face, with his mother’s worried eyes, vanished. The bright spots closed in.

T
he distant tops of the grape and vanilla vines swayed in the tropical breeze, but inside the garden, the air was still and warm. Janie sat with Benjamin at his father’s side. The apothecary looked like a wax figure on the ground, so unnaturally still. His chest no longer rose and fell with his labored breaths. Janie felt a sharp pain in her own chest—but if that was true, then how must it be for Benjamin?

He shouted at Jin Lo, “Can’t you do
anything
?”

Jin Lo looked crumpled and streaked with tears. She shook her head.

“How could he say it wasn’t my fault?” Benjamin was hoarse with anger. “It’s
entirely
my fault.”

“I’m the reason you’re on the island,” Janie said. “It’s my fault.”

Benjamin whirled on her. “But I wasn’t supposed to contact you!” he said. “He told me it wasn’t safe! And I ignored him!”

“He said you can’t give in to anger and guilt.”

“I did what
I
wanted to do,” he said. “Magnusson only kidnapped you because you were in contact with
me
!” He
pressed his palms against his eyes as if he could push the tears back inside his skull. Janie put her hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off. “Don’t,” he said. “Just—don’t.”

She looked around the green cave for help and caught Pip’s eye, in his incongruously cheerful shirt with palm trees on it. Pip pointed in the air.

“Listen,” he said.

There were two distinct, distant noises, coming from two different directions. They blended together, but one seemed to be a whine from the sea, and the other a thudding from the sky. Pip disappeared through the hole in the green wall, and Janie followed.

She looked into the slanting afternoon light and saw a helicopter approaching the island. It was painted a yellow gold.
As it banked, Janie saw an elaborate design on the side, a dragon curled in a circle, and she recognized the insignia: Opal had it embossed on creamy white stationery. It was her grandfather the sultan’s crest.

The whine from the sea grew louder. A black motorboat cut daggerlike through the water. It eased up as it approached, the engine growling to protest the slowness.