Jerusha tried to put that last bit out of her mind as she watched Finch’s body dwindle into the distance and mist.
Thirty miles across-that’s what Finch said it was-a trip that would take at least three hours, according to Hamisi, who didn’t understand English but could converse-haltingly-in Jerusha’s French. The Congo had always used French as an official, tribally neutral official language, a practice retained by the PPA, and Hamisi had originally come from the PPA, long ago. Three hours…
The lake water seemed to drift slowly past the hull as the mist lifted in the rising sun, but there was no sign of the other side of the lake. She could see other boats out on the water: schooners with white sails, distant fishing boats with their snarls of nets, pleasure craft lifting bows high out of the water. The horizon ahead of them was unbroken water seeming eternally fixed despite their own movement. The landscape was beautiful, though: the deep lake, the walls of green mountains behind them and parading off into the distance, a rain squall spreading darkness well to the north, and thunderheads looming in the distance. It reminded her of the wild beauty of Conrad’s description of the Congo.
Wally didn’t glance around at the scenery. He sat in the exact middle of the boat, staying very still and looking out at the water apprehensively. “Wally, you okay?”
He gave a shrug and worked his steam-shovel mouth. “All this water,” he said. “Cripes, I used to love swimming, back before my card turned. But now…” He tapped his chest with his fist, a sound like a trash can colliding with a Dumpster. “Can’t swim. Don’t like water.”
“It’ll be over soon. Just hang on.” She rubbed at the back of her neck with her hand, kneading the ache that threatened to become a headache. And then there’s the jungle, and the rains, and the rivers we’ll probably have to cross there, and getting across Lake Tanganyika again afterward…
After a time, Jerusha realized that she could finally see the smudge of the PPA coastline. The blue-hazed humps there crawled toward them, far too slowly for Jerusha’s comfort, but reachable now. The boat puttered steadily forward, and Jerusha was beginning to think that the crossing was, despite Finch’s pessimism, to be uneventful.
“Hey, what’s that?” Wally said.
He was pointing northward. A black dot was slicing through the water: a patrol boat, with a white wake tracing its path. At about the same time that they noticed it, the boat shifted course toward them. Hamisi, at the wheel, cursed.
“Can’t you beat them to the shore?” Wally asked hopefully. He pointed to where the trees reached the lake. Hamisi scowled. He spat a long, loud harangue in what Jerusha assumed was Kiswahili. “What’d he say?” Wally asked Jerusha. She could only shake her head.
Someone on the patrol gunboat was shouting through a megaphone in French. “Shut off your engine!”
Hamisi looked at Jerusha. She didn’t know what to tell the man. The command was repeated, and this time the machine gun mounted on the craft sent a long white line spattering into the lake just ahead of them. White smoke drifted away from the muzzle, the noise echoing back at them belatedly from the shore. Hamisi slapped at the key; the engine went silent as the waves swayed the boat from side to side.
Wally grabbed at the gunwale for balance as the patrol boat circled them at twenty yards or so. “Jerusha,” he said, “just stay behind me if they start firing, and I’ll… I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Swim over to get to them?” The crestfallen apology on his face made her regret the words even as she said them. Her hands slid over her seed belt, her fingers slipping into the enclosures to touch the seeds there. Out here, there was nowhere to hide. If they wanted them dead, all they need do was pepper their sorry little craft with holes and watch them sink. They could capture them just as easily.
Jerusha had no intention of seeing what a PPA prison might be like. Wally’s strength meant little here, if there was no ground on which to stand. Hamisi was already backing away from the wheel of the boat, his hands up.
“Wally,” Jerusha said. “Hands up.”
He looked surprised at that. “We can’t just give up.”
“ They have to think we will,” she told him, nodding toward the gunboat. She lifted her own hands. “Go on,” she said, and reluctantly Wally raised his own huge arms; there were large orange spots on his underarms.
The gunboat circled once more, then moved in toward them. When it passed in front of Jerusha, only an arm’s length from their boat, she threw the seeds in her hand and opened her mind to her wild card power.
Kudzu vines were already sprouting wildly from the seeds before they even hit the gunboat’s deck and the water near the hull. Some curled rapidly around the crew members as they tried to draw guns, while others fouled the twin propellers of the craft. Jerusha could hear the groan of the patrol boat’s engine as it tried to force the props to turn. Then-with a whine and a cloud of white smoke-the engine cut off entirely.
“Hamisi!” Jerusha shouted in French. “Let’s go! Hate! ”
Hamisi pressed the starter and water gurgled as they started to move, slowly, along the length of the patrol boat. The crew members were shouting, tearing kudzu from around themselves. Jerusha had been unable to toss the small seeds far enough to reach the machine-gun mount-it swung around to follow them and she heard the man ratchet a slide back. She took a baobab seed from her pouch: she wasn’t certain she could toss it that far. “Rusty!” she said. “Here. Throw this onto the boat.”
Wally took the seed from her, tossed it high and long. The seed rang on the deck as the baobab sprouted roots and its strange crown-a dozen years’ growth done in a breath. The deck plates groaned metallically as the thick roots plunged downward seeking water and earth. One branch tipped the machine gun’s barrel up, and tracers laced the sky as it chattered.
Jerusha bent the tree with her mind, tilting it so that the gunboat began to lean. Water suddenly burst around the new baobab’s girth. The gunboat listed over entirely in the space of a few breaths, the half-dozen crew members beginning to scream. Jerusha had the vines fling them overboard, releasing them at the same time.
“Go!” she shouted to Hamisi. “Allez! Au rivage! Rapidement!” She pushed him toward the cabin of their boat as the gunboat crew flailed at the water, grasping for the baobab’s branches even as the gunboat turned entirely on its side, the hull now facing them. The baobab floated low in the water as Hamisi’s engine coughed and roared. They moved away from the men, who were waving their arms and calling out to them.
“Good toss,” Jerusha told Rusty.
He grinned. She thought that if he could have blushed, he would have. “It was nothin’,” Wally said. “But cripes, that was pretty terrific, Jerusha.”
She gave him a quick, fading smile. She could feel the baobab dying in the water, drowning without earth to sustain it. The crew of the gunboat was still shouting, their voices fainter now; the tree would serve as a raft until someone noticed them. I’m sorry, she whispered to it. I’m sorry. “Let’s get to the shore before reinforcements show up.” She stared at the slopes there, pointing to the nearest point of land. “There,” she told Hamisi. “Take us there.
…”
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
For once, Michelle isn’t in the pit.
This is a nice looking place. But she’s still afraid. No, Michelle thinks. Adesina is afraid.
There are small buildings in a circular layout. They’re nicer than any of the houses in Adesina’s village. These are sturdy, built from concrete blocks and are painted in bright primary colors and all the roofs are brick red. They have glass in the windows and she sees power lines running from generators to each building. There’s gravel laid out on the ground so the walkways won’t turn to mud when it rains. There’s even a pretty painted sign: Kisa… something Hospital for Children. Michelle can’t quite make it out.
Even though she’s frightened, Adesina is awed by this place. She’s never been anywhere so nice before. A woman comes out of the red building. She wears a white coat and carries a clipboard. Something about her frightens Adesina and she cowers with the other children. The woman walks by each child, pointing at each one, then gesturing to one side of the path or the other.
After the children are divided, they’re taken to different buildings. Adesina goes into the green building. She likes the color green, but not today. Today she hates it. She’s crying and she wants her mother and father. One of the other children pinches her and tells her to stop being such a baby. But Adesina doesn’t care. She doesn’t mind being a baby now.
