scavengers at me.”
Cap said nothing.
“I know I’ve killed people,” he continued. “But so have you, Anger. I’m sure you claim to kill for the sake of some floating abstraction such as ‘Good’ or ‘Justice.’ That’s funny, because those are the names I give to my reasons for killing. That’s the great thing about abstractions—they can mean anything you want.”
Cap, in a low, even tone, said, “I don’t kill people for sport, or to gain power over others, or to shock the world with terror. When I must kill, it is to defend the innocent against the aggressor. Justice takes care of itself. And Good will triumph with or without my help, because—and you must face this, Dandridge, if you want to survive on this earth—good people far outnumber the likes of you. And for every evil genius that some chance wiring of the brain creates against all odds, there are a dozen—a hundred—good genii in the world to oppose you.”
Dandridge sounded mystified. “You believe in genies and magic lamps?”
Cap smiled a smile unseen by his captive. “I believe you’re a genius who doesn’t know the real plural of the word ‘genius.’”
Away from Pacific shipping lanes lay a mysterious volcanic island. On ocean charts, its coordinates—near 141° W latitude, 28° N
longitude—revealed nothing, yet it existed nonetheless.
Cap circled around the island once as a precaution. Since he had raced the sun westward at nearly 900 miles per hour, it was still just shortly after dawn one time-zone away from Los Angeles. The long shadow of the steep lava cone reached miles westward. Clouds ringed the summit, and the slopes that reached to the shore supported only a few patches of greenery. He saw nothing alarming, so he throttled back to descent speed and extended the hydro-ski. Within moments, he touched down feather-lightly onto the shimmering surface of the sea. He idled the engine and the SeaDart slowed and settled into the water, floating on its belly, nose slightly up, slender conformal wingtip floats keeping the sea-jet steady.
The swells topped out at less than two feet in the calm morning hour. The two men sat a thousand yards offshore. Cap opened the canopy, removed his helmet, and took a deep breath of clean ocean air. It smelled of salt and sun.
Unstrapping, he stood and stretched. “Say hello to your new home, Dandridge. It’s a little more hospitable than your fractal island, and I’m sure you and the other guests will have a lot to talk about.”
With that, he removed Dandridge’s helmet and set it on his own seat, then flipped a protective cover up from a red switch. The eyes of his prisoner widened in terror.
“I’m tied down!” he shrieked. “I’ll drown!”
Cap smiled. “Your bonds are water soluble. Whether you make it to shore or not is a function of your will to live.” He lay his finger on the switch and covered his face with his arm.
Angrily, Dandridge cried out, “You’re just as much a cold-blooded ki—”
Cap pressed the switch and the rear ejection seat blasted into the morning air, shoving Dandridge upward at hundreds of feet per second. Specially designed by the Anger Institute to cause minimal damage to the aircraft, the low-flame rocket exhaust barely warmed the pilot as he shielded himself, then turned to gaze upward at the soaring scientist.
At the zenith of the flying chair’s arc toward the island, a parachute shot upward, assisted by an even smaller rocket. It bloomed instantly into full expansion and lowered the seat— and Dandridge—to the waves. He hit the drink halfway to shore: about five hundred yards. Like a popcorn kernel dropped into hot oil, the chair instantly sprouted six bright yellow flotation bags. The parachute settled to the surface in the still morning
air.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and Cap suspected that the g-force of ejection had driven his foe unconscious as it had several previous recipients of Cap’s largesse. Pulling ultra-compact binoculars from his flight suit, Cap stood astride the seat of the gently bobbing SeaDart and watched.
It took the bonds about thirty seconds to dissolve in water; a little longer if merely damp. Within a minute or two, Dandridge freed first his legs, then his right arm and then his left.
Unfastening the five-point harness that also kept him safely strapped in for flight, he clumsily splashed into the water and swam frantically toward the beach in a manic dog paddle.
Out of curiosity, Cap scanned the black lava sands for signs of life. He counted seven figures in all standing on the beach. The sound of the SeaDart doubtless roused them. They did not gather together in a group, but stood apart from one another, scheming megalomaniacs ever suspicious of the motives of others. Around them lay the scattered and burnt remains of attempts to build one-man boats, one-man huts, one-man gardens. The polished white bones of several skeletons reflected the morning light like hideous ceramic artworks.
Cap had marooned eleven men there after discovering the new island. Aspiring or actual tyrants all, they were stranded there without henchmen, underlings, toadies, or sycophants: no one to act as their muscle; no one to protect them from one another. Violent, aberrant genii, the concept of cooperation among equals failed to occur to them. So they remained on their barren island without the hallmarks of civilization: trust, exchange, division of labor, or even mutual respect.
Cap lowered his binoculars and smiled. “If you only knew, Professor Dandridge, how little indeed we differ, you would have the answer to all your suffering. You all would. If you knew the one main difference between us, you would discover the way off your island.” With that, he sat down, strapped in, closed the canopy and fired up the jet.
Airborne within moments, he accelerated to a mere 200 mph, staying so close to the water that the wide, triangular wing supported the aircraft on ground effect, the same phenomenon seagulls use to conserve energy flying. The wings cruised so close to the surface—about six feet above the swells—that induced drag between the wings and the water slowed the air enough to create added lift. In this way, Captain Anger flew away from the island at a leisurely pace (for him).
Twenty-five miles west of the island—too far for one of them to swim, but close enough for a team-built raft to reach—floated a surplus oil rig. It served as a refueling stop for the SeaDart, which could only carry enough fuel to fly out to the island with a few gallons reserve.
Cap taxied to the center of one side, far from the thick pillars that provided flotation and stability. Connecting the long fuel line to the jet’s tank, he turned the nozzle on and filled up.
During moments such as this—quiet, solitary moments on the sea—Captain Anger belied his name. Calm and confident, Cap gazed at the horizon and saw a world bigger than the one envisioned by Dandridge and his ilk. After a moment, he shut of the fuel line, let it retract, and sealed up the tank. Gazing up at the retired oil rig, he pondered its significance.
Onboard, in a comfortable crew building half the size of a football field, lay stores of food, water, and a library of books hand-picked by Captain Anger. He intended it solely for the solace and education of anyone who might finally acquire the human genius necessary to escape from the island to this place that he fondly thought of as The Last Resort.
It had not happened yet, and the proof of that lay in pieces on the island’s shore. None of them could be satisfied simply to succeed; each had to ensure that the others fail.
Captain Anger fired up the Pratt and Whitney engine, donned his helmet, and lifted off into the sky like a rocket punching through the stratosphere. With a thundering sonic boom that rattled the island and all upon it— including its drenched and wheezing newest inhabitant—Captain Anger vanished into the golden sun like an avenging angel heading homeward.
Epilogue
One True Thing
