Island of the Sequined Love Nun

right either. Malink didn't want to, but he believed the pilot. The Sky Priestess and the Sorcerer were going to hurt his people. He was too old for this. He was too old to fight. And how do you fight machine guns with spears and machetes?
    He paused by a giant mahogany tree and put the basket down while he caught his breath. He saw smoke drifting in streams over the ferns and looked in the direction it was coming from. Someone was there, obscured by a tall stand of taro leaves as big as elephant ears.
    There was a rustling there. Malink crouched.
    "You're not scared, are you, squirt?"
    Malink recognized the voice from his childhood and he wasn't scared. But he knew he didn't have to say so. "I am not a squirt. I am old man now."
    Vincent swaggered out of the taro. His flight suit and bomber jacket looked exactly as Malink remembered. "You're always gonna be a squirt, kid. You still got that lighter I gave you?"
    Malink nodded.
    "That was my lucky Zippo, kid. I shoulda hung on to it. Fuck it. Spilt milk." Vincent waved his cigarette in dismissal. "Look, I need you to build some ladders. You know what a ladder is, right?"
    "Yes," Malink said.
    "Of course you do, smart kid like you. So I am needing you to build, oh, say six ladders, thirty feet long, strong and light. Use bamboo. Are you getting this, kid?"
    Malink nodded. He was grinning from ear to ear. Vincent was speaking to him again.
    "You're talkie' my ear off, kid. So, anyway, I need you to build these ladders, see, as I am having big plans for you and the Shark People. Large plans, kid. Hugely large. I'm talking about substantial fuckin' plans I am having. Okay?"
    Malink nodded.
    "Good, build the ladders and stand by for further orders." The flyer began to back away into the taro patch.
    "You said you would come back," Malink said. "You said you would come back and bring cargo."
    "You don't look like you been shorted on the feedbag, kid. You got your cargo in spades."
    "You said you would come back."
    Vincent threw up his hands. "So what the fuck's this? Western Union? Don't go screwy on me, kid. I need you." The pilot started to fade, going as translucent as his cigarette smoke.
    Malink stepped forward. "The Sky Priestess will tell us orders?"
    "The Sky Priestess took a powder fifty years ago, kid. This dame doing the bump and grind on my runway is paste."
    "Paste?"
    "She's a fake, squirt. A boneable feast to be sure, but she's running a game on you."
    "She is not Sky Priestess?"
    "No, but don't piss her off." With that the pilot faded to nothing.
    Malink leaned back against the mahogany tree and looked up through the canopy to the sky. His skin tingled and his breath was coming easy and deep. The ache in his knees was gone. He was light and strong and full, and every birdcall or rustle of leaves or distant crash of a wave seemed part of a great and wonderful song.

59 – Call in the Cavalry
    They had missed Guam and Saipan (passing at night) and all the Northern Mariana Islands (drifting in fog) and Johnston Island and all ships at sea (no reason, they just missed). The sunscreen had run out on the seventh day. The drinking coconuts ran out on the fourteenth.
    They still had some shark meat that had been smoked and dried, but Tuck couldn't choke down a bite of it without water. They had had nothing to drink for a full day.
    They were at sea for three days before Sepie came out of her catatonia, and after a day of sobbing, she started to talk.
    "I miss him," she said. "He listen to me. He like me even when I am being mean."
    "Me too. I treated him badly sometimes too. He was a good guy. A good friend."
    "He love you very much," Sepie said. She was crying again.
    Tuck looked down, shielding his face so she couldn't see his eyes. "I'm sorry, Sepie. I know you loved him. I didn't mean to put him in danger. I didn't mean to put you in danger."
    She crawled to his end of the canoe and into his arms. He held her there for a long time, rocking her until she stopped crying. He said, "You'll be okay."
    "Kimi say he would sail me to America someday. You will take me?"
    "Sure. You'll like it there."
    "Tell me," she said.
    She grilled Tuck about all things American, making him explain everything from television to tampons. Tuck learned about men, about how simple they were, about how easily they could be manipulated, about how good they could make a woman feel when they were nice, and how much they could hurt a woman by dying. Telling the things that they knew made