Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Vincent's airstrip."
    "Good boys. You go eat breakfast now."
    Malink went to a stand of ferns behind his house, pulled aside his thu, and waited to relieve himself. This took longer every day it seemed. The Sorcerer had told Malink that he had angered the prostate monster and the only way to appease him was to quit drinking coffee and tuba and to eat the bitter root of the saw palmetto. Malink had tried these things for almost two full days before giving up, but it was too hard to wake up without coffee, too hard to go to sleep without tuba, saw palmetto made his stomach hurt, and he seemed to have a headache all the time. The prostate monster would just have to remain angry. Sometimes the Sorcerer was wrong.
    He finished and straightened his thu, passed a thundering cannonade of gas, then went back to the sitting spot on the porch to get his cigarettes. The women had made a fire to boil water for coffee; the smoke from the burning coconut husks wafted out of the corrugated tin cookhouse and hung like blue fog under the canopy of breadfruit, mahogany, and palm trees.
    Malink lit a cigarette and looked up to see the Sorcerer coming down the coral path, his white lab coat stark against the browns and greens of the village.
    "Saswitch" (good morning), Malink said. The Sorcerer spoke their language.
    "Saswitch, Malink," the Sorcerer said. At the sound of his voice Malink's wife and daughters ran out of the cookhouse and disappeared down the paths of the village.
    "Coffee?" Malink asked in English.
    "No, Malink, there is no time today."
    Malink frowned. It was rude for anyone to turn down an offer of food or drink, even the Sorcerer. "We have little Tang. You want Tang? Spacemen drink it."
    The Sorcerer shook his head. "Malink, there was another man here with the pilot you found. I need to find him."
    Malink looked at the ground. "I no see any other man." The Sorcerer didn't seem angry, but just the same, Malink didn't like Lying to him. He didn't want to anger Vincent.
    "I won't punish anyone if something happened to him, if he was hurt or drowned, but I need to know where he is. Vincent has asked me to find him, Malink."
    Malink could feel the Sorcerer staring a hole in the top of his head. "Maybe I see another man. I will ask at the men's house today. What he look like?"
    "You know what he looks like. I need to find him now. The Sky Priestess will give back the coffee and sugar if we can find him today."
    Malink stood. "Come, we find him." He led the Sorcerer through the village, which appeared deserted except for a few chickens and dogs, but Malink could see eyes peeking out from the doorways. How would he explain this when they asked why the Sorcerer had come? They passed out of the village, went past the abandoned church, the graveyard, where great slabs of coral rock kept the bodies from floating up through the soil during the rainy season, and down the overgrown path to Sarapul's little house.
    The old cannibal was sitting in his doorway sharpening his machete.
    Malink fumed to the Sorcerer and whispered, "He rude sometime. He very old. Don't be mad."
    The Sorcerer nodded.
    "Saswitch, Sarapul. The Sorcerer has come to see you."
    Sarapul looked up and glared at them. He had red chicken feathers stuck in his hair, two severed chicken feet hung from a cord above his head. "All the sorcerers are dead," Sarapul said. "He is just a white doctor."
    Malink looked at the Sorcerer apologetically, then fumed back to Sarapul. "He wants to see the man you found with the pilot."
    Sarapul ran his thumb over the edge of his machete. "I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he went swimming and a shark got him. Maybe someone eat him."
    Sebastian Curtis stepped forward. "He won't be hurt," he said. "We are going to send him out on the ship."
    "I want to go to the ship," Sarapul said. "I want to buy things. Why can't we go to the ship?"
    "That's not the issue here, old man. Vincent wants this man found. If he's dead, I need to know."
    "Vincent is dead."
    The Sorcerer crouched down until he was eye-to-eye with the old cannibal. "You've seen the guards at the compound, Sarapul. If the man isn't at the gate in an hour, I'm going to have the guards tear the island apart until they find him."
    Sarapul grinned. "The Japanese? Good. You send them here." He swung his machete in front of the sorcerer's face. "I have a present for them."
    Curtis stood. "An hour." He turned and walked away.
    Malink ambled along behind him. "Maybe he is right.