The Water Wars (17 page)

The shadow of the jet moved swiftly across the ground. It bore down on us before I saw it in the air. There was a puff of smoke from beneath one of its wings and a missile flew at us with deadly accuracy.

“Ulysses!” I screamed this time.

There was no time even to blink. The missile exploded in a ball of fire just one hundred meters from the nose of the helicopter. It knocked us sideways and threw Will and me to the floor, but the copter remained in the air.

“A warning shot,” said Ulysses. Then to the pilot: “Take us down before they straighten their aim.”

We scrambled back into our seats, and this time we buckled ourselves in securely. If there was a place to land, I didn’t see it. But the pilot hurried to the ground as if he did. Too fast! We were coming in too fast! We couldn’t land at this speed!

There was a terrific ripping noise and a spine-shattering crash. The windows blew out, and everything inside flew outside. The safety harnesses cut deeply into our shoulders, and the backs of the seats were like hard rubber mallets against our heads.

The hush that followed was the stillness of death. Ulysses was the first to speak. “Vera? Will? Roland?”

Will’s voice was soft but clear. My head hurt, but as far as I could tell, nothing was broken or bleeding. The pilot, however, was silent.

“Roland?” Ulysses repeated.

The pilot’s body was not in the helicopter—or what was left of the metal wreckage. I craned my head to see that Will was still strapped into his seat, although the steel trusses on which the seat had been fastened were ripped from the bottom of the helicopter’s frame. Ulysses was pinned between the door and the roof and struggling to free himself. But there was no sign of Roland.

Then I saw him, lying in the geno-soy about twenty meters from the left door. His head was snapped back at an unnatural angle, and one arm was twisted beneath him. I knew he was dead before I even noticed the bright red pool that stained the brown plants. Bile rose in my throat, and I forced down a strangled cry.

“What is it?” asked Ulysses.

“He’s dead,” I sputtered.

“No time for mourning,” he said. “Help me out of here.”

Will slipped from his safety harness and climbed through the twisted debris to help Ulysses. “He needs a proper burial!” Will exclaimed.

“Can’t wait for that.”

As if to punctuate his words, the jet roared overhead. White contrails in the sky; a light mist like rain.

“Have to get moving,” said Ulysses. “They won’t leave us alone for long.”

I released my seat beat and felt a stabbing, electric pain through my shoulder. Before I could stand, I fell to the ground.

Will was next to me, and then Ulysses. His brisk and indifferent demeanor suddenly melted. “What is it, little sister?” he asked.

“My shoulder,” I managed.

Ulysses gently manipulated my arm. The pain was like a thousand knives in an open wound. “Dislocated,” he concluded. “I can fix it, but it will hurt worse first.”

“How much worse?”

“Like stretching the muscle until it tears.”

“And then it will feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Do it.”

Ulysses looked at me long and hard, as if he were weighing the pain against his ability to inflict it.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

He took my good arm and gripped it tightly. The hard calluses on his palm scratched my skin. His other hand was on my shoulder. His chest was pressed close up against me. I could see every line in his face, the fine hairs on his cheeks above his beard where no beard grew. I could feel the thumping of his heart, the hard steady rhythm that matched mine. He steadied himself with a deep breath and turned away. Then he pulled.

The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was as if every fiber in my arm cried out at once, then was ripped from its anchor. A swirl of violent colors washed over my eyes, and my face burned as if on fire. Then something slipped and fell back into place, and just like that the pain subsided. I was left dizzy and nauseated, covered in a cool, clammy perspiration.

“It’s done,” said Ulysses.

Then I did vomit, in a wrenching spasm that doubled me over. Nothing but a thin stream of spittle emerged, however, and once it was gone the nausea passed. I wiped my mouth and sat up straight. “I’m okay,” I said.

Ulysses tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and tied a makeshift sling from my neck to my wrist. “It’s not what the doctor ordered, but it will hold your arm.”

Will was staring at me with something like awe. “Did it hurt?”

“Not that much,” I lied.

The jet thundered again overhead and dropped two flares into the geno-soy. Plumes of red smoke rose toward the sky.

“They’re flagging us,” said Ulysses. “Let’s get moving.” He put an arm around me and helped me stand, then beat a path through the soy with his free hand. The plants were thick and hard to bend, but Ulysses held them down until we could pass. The stalks reached higher than my head. I kept looking up to make sure the sky was above me, but it only made me lose my step, and I still felt trapped and claustrophobic.

After a few minutes, I noticed Ulysses had slowed and was limping.

“You’re hurt,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

But his leg was dark red with blood. It had soaked through his pants and the wound appeared to still be bleeding. I insisted we rest, but Ulysses refused. “In about five minutes, they’ll be here with robo-sniffers and guns,” he said. “They won’t stop until they’ve caught us. They’ll leave the bodies in the fields.”

His tone was calm, but there was something in his voice that betrayed him. It took me a moment, but I realized he was frightened, and his fear made me more nervous than anything he could have said.

“These are not ordinary people,” he continued. “Pirates steal, and we’ll cheat if we need to, but we do it to survive and because our enemies do the same. Even PELA has a code, though they don’t always live by it. But Bluewater cares only about money. They don’t even care about the water, really. They have no loyalty and don’t look out for their own. It’s greed, pure and simple. Nothing will stand in their way. Not laws, not governments, and not any pirate with a gun.”

“How do we know they haven’t killed Kai?” asked Will.

“No. They’ll keep him as long as it suits their purposes. The boy is a diviner. That’s worth
a lot
of money. He can tell them where water is, and they can keep him from telling others. They won’t kill him as long as there’s use for that.”

“He needs medicine,” I said.

“They’ll give him that too.”

The jet had disappeared now, but there came another sound in the distance, harsh and braying.

“Sniffers,” said Ulysses. “Move!”

The three of us were battered, two of us bleeding, but we ran as quickly as we could. Will winced with every step, his leg healing but not healed. Ulysses showed no pain, but his pale face betrayed his injury. My shoulder had begun to throb, and every plant that brushed me was like a whipping.

We were deep in the soy fields. I had never seen so much vegetation. I could practically feel the plants pulsating, exhaling moisture like breathing. Without any protection from the sun or the sky, they flaunted the great wealth of their growers. Even with their genetic alterations, they still wasted enough water to quench the thirst of a large town. But their growers didn’t seem to care. They had resources to burn, and the food not only tasted better, it was a potent reminder of their enormous power.

“Run, Vera!” Will urged me forward.

The braying grew louder. We followed Ulysses, who beat at the plants with his powerful arms. The pain in my shoulder was nothing compared to the burning in my lungs, the aching in my sides, and a terrible, drill-like pulsing in my skull.

And then suddenly, without warning, Ulysses collapsed.

For a moment time stood still. It was not possible that the great pirate king could fall. Even when I thought Ulysses had drowned, I never saw his body, and I had refused to accept he might actually be gone. But now there he was, splayed out before us, his pants leg soaked and his face white.

I grabbed his hand. “Ulysses,” I begged. “Ulysses.”

He looked up at me, and his eyes fluttered slightly.

“You remind me of her,” he said.

“Who?” I asked, although I knew.

“She was skinny, like you. She used to call me Poppy.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Please. We’ll get you help. I promise.”

And then the sniffers were upon us.

T
he prison cell was no larger than the back of a flatbed truck. I leaned up against one wall, a dull banging in my head like the headache that comes after a beating. It started low, at the base of the skull, and then worked its way up to the temples and the forehead until it threatened to explode.

“Open the door,” commanded a voice from beyond the walls.

The banging stopped, and the great steel door swung open. A nearly hairless man walked into the prison cell. He was as tall as Ulysses but with no eyebrows, eyelashes, or beard. His eyes were a pale gray-blue, and he might have been albino, except his skin was a sun-ripened brown. Behind him, hopping on one foot, his face scarred and ravaged, was Nasri. He seemed as excited to see us as we were surprised to see him.

“That’s them,” said Nasri. “The pirate and his spawn.”

The hairless man practically filled the room. Although he was the most unusual man I had ever seen, the most curious thing about him was his shiny fingernails. It looked as if he painted them with polish. There was no trace of dirt, and there were no scabs or other visible injuries on any of his fingers. In fact, as I observed him, I noticed how clean his entire body appeared, and as he approached, I smelled a scent that reminded me of flowers—the real ones grown in hydro-vaults, not the fake chemo ones planted about the town.

With one foot the hairless man pushed at Ulysses’s prostrate body. Ulysses moaned slightly but did not move.

“This one is injured,” he said in a voice liquid and smooth. “Get the medic.”

“But Torq,” protested Nasri, “he’s a pirate.”

“And now he’s our prisoner. We will not let him die quietly.”

Nasri hopped from foot to foot but did not protest. Torq obviously frightened him as much as he frightened me. Nasri’s mouth worked silently, as if he were chewing over something. He glared at Will, and his hand went involuntarily to the scar on his face. Then he backed from the cell, never letting us out of his sight until the door closed behind him.

In his absence the room seemed to grow smaller. Torq moved closer.

“Why are you here?” Torq directed his question to Will.

“You brought us here,” said Will.

“Where did you get the rotorcraft?”

“Where did you get the jet?”

Torq slammed the wall behind Will’s head with such force that I was certain he would break something. He picked Will up by the hair and held him ten centimeters off the ground.

“I. Ask. The. Questions.” He spat out each word, then dropped Will back to the ground. “You answer!”

Will stammered out a partial version of the truth: We had been rescued by Ulysses from a drill site and were flying back to a pirate camp.

“Pirates don’t rescue children,” said Torq, raising one hand as if he might yank Will’s hair again.

“We’re his children!” I blurted.

Torq looked at me for the first time. I held his gaze. His eyes were like pools of dirty gray water—flat and dangerous.

“That may be useful,” said Torq.

Nasri arrived with the medic. He was a small man, skittery and nervous. There was dirt or dried blood on the front of his white tunic. He examined Ulysses quickly and gave him two injections. Ulysses did not stir. The medic cut away his bloody trouser leg with a scalpel. I averted my eyes. The sight of all that blood made me feel faint again. I heard the medic murmuring about
sepsis
and
shock
, but I put my head in my hands and blocked the sound.

There was some more cutting, and then some stitching. Another shot. Bloodied medi-pads discarded on the floor. A second medic wheeled a gurney into the room. Both men heaved Ulysses onto the bed.

“Where are you taking him?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry,” said Torq. “He’ll be better in no time. Then we’ll stick pins in him until he bleeds again.” Torq and Nasri laughed, and the medics wheeled Ulysses out of the cell. Nasri gave us a last violent look, then the steel door clanged shut behind both men, and Will and I were alone in the tiny cell.

“They’re going to torture him!” I cried.

“No, they won’t,” said Will. “Not right away. Didn’t you hear them? They need him awake.”

“So they can torture him!”

“That gives us time,” said Will. “Wherever they’ve taken him, I’ll bet that’s where they’ve got Kai. If we can find one, we can save the other.”

“But we’re trapped. It’s hopeless.”

“You told me not to say that!” Will snapped.