Island of the Sequined Love Nun

who tended the tobacco patch for the Shark People.
    "Roll one," Malink said. Abo began filling the paper with tobacco from his basket.
    Malink opened the magazine on the sand in front of him and squinted at the pages in the moonlight. Everyone in the circle leaned forward to look at the pictures.
    "Oprah's skinny again," Malink pronounced.
    Sarapul scoffed and the men angrily looked up, the young ones looking away quickly when they saw who had made the noise. Abo finished rolling the cigarette and held it out to Malink. The chief gestured to Sarapul and Abo gave the smoke to the old cannibal. Their hands brushed lightly in the exchange and Sarapul held the young man's gaze as he licked his finger as if tasting a sweet sauce. Abo shuddered and backed to the outside of the circle.
    Malink lit the cigarette with the sacred Zippo, then he returned to his magazine. "There will be no more People for a while, not with the Sky Priestess mad at us."
    A communal moan rose up from the men and the drinking cup was filled and passed.
    "We are cut off," Malink added.
    Sarapul shrugged. "All the people in this book, they shit. It does not matter. They die. It does not matter. If we put chem all in a big boat and sank it, you would not even know for six months when the Sky Priestess gives you her old copy, and it still would not matter. This is stupid."
    "But look!" Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears. "This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted."
    Sarapul scrunched up his face, his wrinkles folding over each other like venetian blinds, while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, "I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then."
    "You have never been a tampon," Malink stated, although he couldn't be sure. "Only a king may be a tampon. And now, without People, we will never know if this man who would be a tampon succeeded. It has been a dark day."
    The cup had come around again to Sarapul and he drained it before answering. "Tell me of this dream you had."
    "I should not speak of it." Malink pretended to be engaged in the magazine.
    Sarapul pushed on. "The Sky Priestess said that Vincent spoke to you of a pilot. Is that true?"
    Malink nodded. "It is true. But it is only a dream or the Sorcerer would have known."
    Sarapul was torn now. This was his chance to discredit the Sorcerer and his white bitch, but if he told Malink about the man in the tree, then he would lose his chance to taste the long pig again. Then again, he found them first, and he was willing to share the meat. "What if your dream was true?"
    "It was just a dream. Vincent speaks to us only through the Sky Priestess now. She has spoken."
    "Vincent smoked and she says smoking is bad. Vincent was an enemy of the Japanese and now she has Japanese guards inside the fence. She lies."
    Some of the men moved away from the circle. It was one thing to drink with a cannibal, but it was quite another to tolerate a heretic. (Of the twenty men in the circle, three of the elders were named John, four who had been born during Father Rodriquez's tenure were named Jesus [Hey-zeus], and three of the younger men were named Vincent.) They were a group that honored the gods, whoever the gods might be that week.
    "The Sky Priestess does not lie," Malink said calmly. "She speaks for Vincent."
    Sarapul pinched the flame of his cigarette with his ashy fingers, then popped the stub into his mouth and began to chew as he grinned. "Your dream was true, Malink. I have seen the pilot. He is on Alualu and he is alive."
    "You are old and you drink too much."
    "I'll show you." Sarapul leaped to his feet to show that he was not drunk, and in doing so scared the hell out of the younger men. "Come with me," he said.

26 – Swing Time
    Kimi had freed his hands and feet with the knife, only to find that he could not reach the rope suspending him from the middle of his back. Now he was forced to follow Tuck's plan of swinging like a human pendulum until he could grab the pilot's rope and cut him down. Roberto hung upside down from a nearby branch, wondering why his friends were behaving like fighting spiders.
    Tucker found he could only hold his head up for a few seconds at a time before dizziness set in, so he watched the navigator's swinging shadow to gauge his distance. "One more time, Kimi. Then grab the rope." It bothered him some that when he was cut loose