Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Curtis stood. “An hour.” He turned and walked away.

Malink ambled along behind him. “Maybe he is right. Maybe the man drown or something.”

“Find him, Malink. I meant it about the guards. I want this man in an hour.”

“He is gone,” Sarapul said. “You can come out.”

Kimi dropped out of the rafters of Sarapul’s little house. “What is he talking about—guards?”

“Ha!” Sarapul said. “He knows nothing. He didn’t even know I had this.” Sarapul reached down and pulled out a headless chicken he had been sitting on. “He is no sorcerer.”

“He said there were guards.” Kimi said.

Sarapul laid his chicken on the ground. “If you are afraid, you should go.”

“I have to find Roberto.”

“Then let them send the guards,” Sarapul said, brandishing his machete. “They can die just like this chicken.”

Kimi stepped back from the old cannibal, who was on the verge of foaming at the mouth. “We friends, right?”

“Build a fire,” Sarapul said. “I want to eat my chicken.”

Jefferson Pardee was trying desperately not to look like a sea turtle. He’d managed to find the surface, catch his breath, and put his mask on. Blood from his nose was now swishing around inside it like brandy in a snifter. After locating the floating garbage bag that contained his clothes and propping it under his chest as a life preserver, his main focus was not to look like a turtle. To a shark living in the warm Pacific waters off Alualu, sea turtles were food. Not that there was any real danger of a shark making that particular mistake. Even a mentally challenged shark would figure out that sea turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no turtle would be yattering streams of obscenities between chain-smoker gasps of breath. Still, a couple of harmless white-tipped reef sharks smelled blood in the water and cruised by to check out the source, only to retreat, regret-ting that in one hundred and twenty million years on the planet they had never evolved the equipment to laugh.

The surf was calm and the tide low, and considering Pardee’s buoyancy, the swim should have been easy. But when Pardee saw the two black shadows cruise by below him, his heart started playing a sternum-rattling drum solo that kept up until he barked his knees on the reef. An antler of coral caught the plastic bag, stopping Pardee’s progress long enough for him to notice that here on the reef the water was only two feet deep. He flipped over on his back, then sat on the coral, not really caring that it was cutting into his bottom. Waves lapped around him as he fought to catch his breath. He lifted his mask and let the blood run down his face and over his chest to expand into a rusty stain in the water. Tiny blue and yellow reef fish

rose around him looking for food and nipping at his skin, tickling him like teasing children.

He looked toward the beach, perhaps two hundred yards away. Inside the reef the danger of sharks was minimal—minimal enough that he would sit here and rest for a while. He watched the waves breaking softly around him, lapping against his back, and realized, with horror, that he was going to have to do this again in a few hours, against the waves and probably the tide. He’d have to find someone with a boat; that was all there was to it.

Ten minutes passed before his heart slowed down and he was able to steel his courage enough to swim the final leg. He picked out a stand of coconut palms above a small beach and slid across the reef toward the is-land. He kicked slowly, scanning the water around him for any sign of sharks. Except for a moment of temporary terror when a manta ray with a seven-foot wingspan flew out of the blue and passed below him, the swim to the beach was safe and easy. If manta rays are going to be harmless, they should look more harmless, Pardee thought. Fuckers look like aquatic Draculas.

He sat in the wash at the water’s edge and was tearing the tape that held the fins on his feet when he heard a sharp mechanical click behind him. He turned to see two men in black pointing Uzis at his head. Pardee grinned. “ Konichi-wa ,” he said. “You guys have a dry cigarette? I seem to have torn my garbage bag.”

A seven iron, Tuck, thought. After all these years I need a seven iron.

Tucker Case did not play golf. He’d tried it once, and although he’d en-joyed the drinking and driving the little electric car into the lake, he just didn’t get the appeal. It seemed—and he’d examined the game closely be-cause his father had loved it—an awful lot like a bunch of rich white guys in goofy clothing walking around on an absurdly large lawn hitting ab-surdly small white balls with crooked sticks. If the greens were at opposite ends of the same fairway and foursomes had to play against each other, defending their own green while assaulting the opponents’ and risking getting hit with a ball or a club at close quarters, well, then you’d have a game. If the game was scored on how quickly one got through the eighteen holes instead of the fewest strokes and they dropped small-block Chevys into the little carts, why, then you’d have yourself a game. (Maybe

put those little Ben-Hur food processors on the wheels and make it legal to hamstring competitors.) But traditional golf, as it was, had always left Tuck cold. Strange, then, that he absolutely yearned for a seven iron, or maybe a shotgun.

Tuck had been up since before dawn, awakened rudely and kept awake by what seemed like eight million roosters. It was now ten o’clock and they were still going strong. What joy to feel the thwack of a seven iron on red feathers, the satisfying impact of balanced metal on poultry (suddenly si-lenced and somewhat tenderized for your trouble). He saw himself wading into a bucket of roosters, swinging his seven iron madly (but always keeping his head down and his left arm straight), dealing death and de-struction like the Colonel’s own avenging angel. Welcome to Tucker Case’s chicken death camp, my little feathered friends. Now, kindly prepare to have your nuggets knocked off.

Tucker Case was not a morning person.

He decided that he’d give them five more minutes to shut up, then he was going to get dressed and go borrow a seven iron from the doc. Five minutes later he was preparing to leave when Beth Curtis knocked and opened his door without waiting for an answer. She was wearing disposable surgical blues and a hairnet; she wore no makeup and the vapid housewife smile was gone from her eyes.

“Mr. Case, we need you to be ready to fly in two hours. Can you do it?”

“Uh, sure. I guess. Where are we going?”

“Japan. The navigational settings should already be programmed into the plane’s computer. I need you to have your preflight finished and the Lear fueled and on the runway, ready to go.”

Tucker felt as if he was talking to a different person than the one he had seen for the last week. There was no hint of the soft femininity, just hard business.

“I haven’t had time to go over the controls for the Lear.”

“You took the job, didn’t you? Can you fly it?”

Tuck nodded.

“Then be ready in two hours.” She turned and marched toward the hospital building. Tuck started to follow her, then noticed movement through the trees, down by the beach: men unloading fuel drums from a longboat onto the pier. He could see a white freighter anchored outside the reef.

“Mrs. Curtis!” he called.

She turned and regarded him like an annoying insect. “Yes, Mr. Case.”

“That ship. You didn’t tell me there was a ship.”

“It doesn’t concern you. They are simply delivering some supplies. Now please, prepare the plane.”