Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

A few feet away was a very large man in an expensive suit that was four sizes too small. Like the crew, he had that bloated look, but instead of being flushed, his face was a pallid shade of green.

Winston indicated her twin studs. “I see you’re into matching lug­gage these days.”

“Only way to travel.” Lourdes ate another shrimp. The fat man in the fancy suit moaned.

“Lourdes, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m on vacation,” she said, coldly. “Is that so hard to grasp?”

“And when does this ‘vacation’ end?”

“That’s the best part, Winston; it doesn’t.” And then she gestured to the pained man in the bulging suit. “Meet Mr. Peter Marquez,” she said. “Monarch Cruise Line’s Vice-President of Operations. He just joined us yesterday.”

The man seemed only able to move a pair of pleading eyeballs set deep within his porcine face.

“What did you do to him?”

“We’re in the middle of negotiations,” Lourdes said. “After test-driving the Blue Horizon these past few months, I’ve decided to buy it, and redeem my outlaw status.”

“And how can you afford a cruise ship?”

“We’re negotiating a steep markdown.” Her shrimp boy hung another cocktail shrimp before her and she took it in her mouth, chew­ing slowly. “Very steep.”

The cruise executive moaned. “Please,” he said. “No more.” His voice came from deep in his throat, sounding as Lourdes’ voice had once sounded in the throes of her own obesity.

Lourdes licked her lips. “Recently, I’ve found a depth to my ap­petites I never knew I had.”

“And yet it’s the crew that gets fat,” observed Winston. “Not you.”

Lourdes shrugged. “I eat quite a lot; all that fat has to go some­where.”

Winston shuddered. There was no end to the way they could abuse their powers, when they chose to—here was the proof. First it was just Lourdes’s ability to control metabolisms; put people to sleep, change the pace of their body functions. Then she found she could manipulate their muscles, as if they were puppets. And now this; she stayed slim by imposing her weight on others. A perverse conservation of matter. Winston wondered how many times her own body weight she consumed in food a day. Did she ever stop eating?

“What happened to you, Lourdes?”

She sat up, pushing away the hand of her shrimp boy. “I grew up, Winston. I finally realized that the only person I owe in this world is me.

“What about Dillon?”

“To hell with Dillon! He’s the one who screwed things up. Whether he meant to or not, he set the world on auto-destruct, and if the world is falling apart, I intend to suck every last drop out of it.”

Winston regarded her pretty-boy twins. The dark hair and wan expression on their faces was uneasily familiar. “Your matching luggage both look like Michael,” he goaded. “Should I ask what that’s about? Or do I already know?”

Her tanned cheeks began to flush at having been so easily read. He could feel her anger, and perhaps a hint of shame, charging the air between them. Her feelings for Michael had been no secret—but en­listing these surrogates into her harem was a desecration of Michael’s memory, and she knew it.

She stood suddenly, and like a petulant child grabbed the platter of shrimp and hurled it at Winston. It bounced off his chest and clat­tered to the ground, rolling down the steps to the pool deck.

“This is MY ship!” she screamed. “MY life, and MY reward for the hell I’ve been through!” On the dance floor, the music stopped and all eyes turned to Lourdes. “And if you had half the brains you claim to have, you’d stop taking your marching orders from Dillon, or it’ll kill you like it killed the others!”

Then her eyes darted around to the spectators, as she realized she was, as always, the center of attention, but this time in an unflattering light. As if to add to her embarrassment, several gulls winging high over the ship cawed in the silence like mocking laughter from above. Lourdes turned her eyes to the sky, the birds’ wings went limp, and they plunged, dead, into the sea. Then she turned to her profligate partiers.

“Dance!” she ordered. Suddenly their arms began to jerk and their bodies undulate, involuntarily pulled by their puppeteer’s unseen strings. Flustered, the band quickly kicked into another number. Sat­isfied, she released the dancers with the slightest flick of her head, and although their steps missed a couple of beats, they quickly took over for themselves, regaining the rhythm, and not daring to leave the dance floor for fear of what Lourdes might do.

“Don’t look at me like, like I’m a monster,” she told him. “All of my guests are here by choice, because they appreciate me, and the pleasures I have to offer.”

“What about the crew?”

She hesitated before answering. “They know their place.” Then she turned and walked to an open-air bar further back on her private deck, while her Michaelesque boys both hurried to clean the shellfish scattered on the ground. Even before she arrived at the counter, the bartender had mixed her a red and white “Miami Vice,” heavy on the Bacardi.

“Aqui tiene, Seňorita Lourdes,” said the bartender, stuffing a paper parasol and a pineapple wedge into the drink. He took a quick glance at Winston, “ ¿ Uno para su compaňero?”

“No—apenas es un niňo,” Lourdes said, irrespective of the fact that she, too, was underage. She sat on a stool, ignoring him as she sucked down her drink, its daiquiri head flowing like blood into the Pina Colada beneath.

What troubled Winston most was how easily Lourdes had seized control of her guests’ bodies on the dance floor. Used to be it took incredible concentration for her to control such a large group of peo­ple, but, like himself and Dillon, her powers were still exponentiating toward an end he still didn’t know. It frightened Winston to think what Lourdes might do if she ever really got angry.

Maybe it was best after all for her to be queen of her own little ship, her dominion limited to the souls on board, slaves and followers who were resigned to subjugating their will to hers. Let her have her ship, so that she might be satisfied, and extend her grasp no further.

Leaving her to vanish again to the horizon would certainly be the easiest thing to do, but for the Shards, the path of least resistance always led to disaster. Winston knew that if Lourdes slipped off of his radar again, it would be a dangerous step backwards.

He came up behind her, waiting for her to turn around, but she didn’t, so he sat beside her at the bar. “There is something we need to do, Lourdes. You, me and Dillon. I’m not sure what it is, but it keeps me awake at night, and when I do sleep, I dream about it. You have to be feeling it as much as I am.”

She slurped down the bottom of her drink. “I don’t feel a thing.”

“You’re lying.”

She turned to the bartender. “Gerardo, una mas, por favor.” Winston dimly recalled that she had a brother named Gerardo, and Winston found himself not wanting to know if she had put her whole family to work here. The bartender mixed her another drink, but by the time he slid it onto the counter, Lourdes had lost interest. She sauntered past Winston to the railing, looking out at the Ensenada shoreline.

“You’ve been dreaming, too, haven’t you Lourdes? About some­one in a purple chair. And three figures on the ledge of a building.”

Lourdes sighed. “It’s not a ledge, it’s a stage. Three performers taking bows at the edge of a stage, surrounded by the flowers thrown by the audience. I can smell them. And the chair’s not purple, it’s lavender.”