Nation

know, I’m really disappointed in those cannibal johnnies,” said Cox, right overhead. “Too much talk, too many rules, far too much mumbo jumbo. Jumbo mumbo jumbo, ha, ha. Milk-and-watery bunch, the lot of ’em. Been eating too many missionaries, if you ask me.” There was another click. Cox was reloading. He had to use two hands for that, didn’t he?
    Click…
    Mau reached down for his knife and his belt was empty…. Click.
    So he swam face upward along the underside of the trunk, his nose only a foot or so from the bark, which was covered with tiny crabs.
    That was how it would end. The best thing to do would be to leap up and get shot. That would surely be better than a shark’s teeth. And then everyone who knew about the Nation would die—
    Are you totally stupid, Mau? It was the new voice, and it said: I’m you, Mau, I’m just you. You will not die. You will win, if you pay attention !
    Click…
    The pale green weed in front of him moved and he saw something black. In a moment where time stood still, he brushed the weeds aside and saw it, wedged firmly in the trunk: a trunk that was full of little marks to show where men had helped other men.
    He had been proud of himself that day. He had hit the tree with the alaki axehead so hard that it would take all the next boy’s strength to pull it out. The next boy was him.
    Without thinking, and watching himself, somehow, from the outside, he grabbed the handle and raised his legs until they were firm against the underside of the trunk. The axe was stuck fast.
    “I can hear you wriggling about,” said a voice right above him. “You will be wriggling a whole lot faster in a moment. I can see the fins coming. Oh my giddy aunt, I wish I’d brought sandwiches.”
    Click…
    The axe came loose. Mau felt nothing. The grayness was back in his mind. Don’t think. Do the things that must be done, one after another. The axe was free. Now he had it. This was a fact. The other fact was that Cox had now loaded his pistol.
    Mau dragged himself branch by branch to the little area where he could breathe without being seen. At least, the area where he hoped he could not be seen. As he ducked his head down, a bullet went past it. Five bullets left, and Cox was losing his temper: he fired again (four bullets left; a fact), and Cox was right above him, searching for movement in the tangle of floating greenery. The bullet had come down as straight as a spear but had tumbled and lost its way. It’s hard to run through water, Mau told himself. The more you try, the harder it gets. A fact. It must be the same for bullets. A new fact.
    “Did I get you that time?” said Cox. “I hope I did for your sake, ’cause they’re getting closer. Actually, I was just saying that to be nice, ’cause I want to see you wriggling. I want to stay here until I sees the sharks burp, and then I will go back and have a nice chat with your little lady.”
    Mau’s lungs were beginning to hurt. He made the tree trunk wobble, then let himself sink. He didn’t hear what Cox shouted, but four bullets splashed into the water high above him, left trails of bubbles for a few moments, and then just tumbled away in the current.
    Six shots. Only the little pistol would be left. No, Cox would have to reload. And that needed both hands. A fact.
    Now there had to be more facts, one after the other, all falling carefully into place like little gray blocks.
    Mau rose fast, dragging the axe behind him. He grabbed the stub of a broken branch with his free hand, got a purchase with his feet on another, and, with his lungs on fire, let all the momentum of his rise and all the strength left in his body flow into his arm.
    The axe came out of the water in a great curve, moving in space but not in time, water droplets hanging in the air to mark the arc of its passage. It blocked the light of the sun, it made the stars come out, it caused thunderstorms and strange sunsets around the world (or so Pilu said later on)—and as time came back at double speed, the axe hit Cox in the chest and he went backward off the log. Mau saw him raising his pistol as he sank, and then his expression changed to an enormous grin, with blood at the corners, and he was dragged into the swirling waters.
    The sharks had arrived for dinner.
     
    Mau lay on top of the log until the commotion died down. And he thought, in those little white thoughts that scribbled their way along the redness of the pain in his lungs: That was a really