Island of the Sequined Love Nun

here tomorrow."
    She looked over the fax, confused. "That's sooner than he was going to get here. What's the problem?"
    "This." The Sorcerer pushed back in his chair and pointed to the computer screen. The image looked like a blender full of green and black paint.
    "It looks like a blender full of green paint," she said. "What is it?"
    "That, my dear, is Marie."
    "Sebastian, you've been out here too long. I know you like abstract art and all…"
    "It's a satellite picture of typhoon Marie. And she's a big one." He pointed to a dot to one side of the screen. "That's Alualu."
    "So it's going to miss us."
    "We'll catch the edge of it. We'll have to put the jet in the hangar, tie everything down, but it shouldn't be too bad. The problem is that the eye will pass right over where our pilot is going to be. I can't believe he went to sea without checking the weather."
    She shrugged. "So we have to get a new pilot. Tucker Case, meet Marie." She smiled and her eyes shone like desolate stars. Too bad, she thought. The pilot would have been fun.

17 – Foul-Weather Friend
    Tuck was amazed by what the human body could achieve when pressed to its limits: lift tractors, trek a hundred miles through the tundra after being partially eviscerated by a Kodiak bear, live for months on grubs and water sucked from soak holes, and in this particular case, vomit for two hours straight after having ingested nothing but alcohol and airline peanuts for two days. The stuff coming out of him was pure bile, burning acrid and sour, and with the bull rider pitching of the boat, half of it always ended up down the front of him. And between heaves there was no respite, just constant motion and soaking spray. His stomach muscles twisted into knots.
    It started with the swells rising, first a few feet, then to ten. Kimi piloted the boat up the face of each as if climbing a hill; they were dashed by the whitecap, then a sled ride down into a trough where they were faced with the next black wall of water. Roberto climbed down into Kimi's dress and clung there like a furry tumor. The navigator cried out each time the spray washed over him as Roberto's wing claws dug into his ribs.
    "Tie down you pack. Tie you belt to the boat," Kimi shouted.
    Tuck found a coil of nylon rope and a folding knife in his pack and tied himself and the pack to the front seat. He noticed that the space under the seat was filled with dense Styrofoam. The boat was, theoretically, unsinkable. Good, someone would find their beaten, shark-eaten bodies. He threw a length of rope to Kimi, who secured it around his own waist.
    The wind came up as if someone had spooled up a jet engine, going from ten to sixty knots in an instant, dumping gallons of water into the boat with each wave, drowning out the sound of the outboard.
    Kimi screamed an order to Tuck, but it was lost in the wind. Tuck caught one word: "Bail!"
    Riding down the face of a wave, he took the time to look around the boat for a container, but found only the gallon of drinking water. He took the folding knife from his pocket and slashed the top off of the jug. He dumped the fresh water, then, with his feet braced against the inside of the bow and his spine against the seat, he began bailing between his legs, taking a full gallon with each scoop, throwing it with the wind. He bailed as if in a "run for your life" sprint and he was winded and aching after only a minute, but he couldn't seem to get ahead of the storm. The boat was riding lower in the water.
    He ventured a glance back to Kimi and saw the navigator had found a coffee can and was braced between the seat and the gas tank, bailing with one hand while steering with the other. His scarf had fallen around his neck and was trailing the blond wig behind him in the wind. The motor was cranked full-out, and Kimi was trying to keep the boat steered into the waves. If one caught them from the side, they would roll and continue to roll until the storm consumed them.
    Tuck slowed his pace and tried to fall into some kind of sustainable rhythm. It began to rain, the drops coming in almost horizontal, and as they topped the next wave Tuck realized chat half of the sky had disappeared. They were only at the edge of the storm. The navigator was screaming at him. The sea, the sky, the boat faded to black. One second he was squinting saltwater out of his eyes and staring at an obsidian wall ahead of the bow, then everything went black. Total sensory overload, total sensory