Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Malink thought fast, then grinned as if he had known this was coming all along. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said. Why hadn’t this been an-nounced by the Sorcerer? Was he still angry because Malink had not pro-duced the girl-man on demand? Was Vincent himself angry at Malink for something? Certainly Malink’s people would be angry at him for not giving them the time to prepare the drums and the bamboo rifles of Vincent’s army—and the women, oh, the women would be shitting coconuts over not having time to oil their skins and paint their faces and put on their ce-remonial grass skirts.

As Malink trudged to the airstrip he tried to formulate some explanation that would work with everyone. As if it wasn’t difficult enough being chief with no coffee to drink in the morning—he’d had a headache for two weeks from caffeine withdrawal—now his role as religious leader was giving him problems. Leading a religion is tough work when your gods start stirring for real and messing up your prophecies. And what if he did come up with an explanation, only to have the Priestess of the Sky say something that contradicted him? She was supposed to be Vincent’s voice, but that voice had been angry lately, so he didn’t dare ask her for help as he had in the past. Not in front of his people.

He came out of the jungle just in time to see the flash of the explosions. The Sky Priestess walked out of the smoke and even from

a hundred yards away, Malink could tell by her step that she was pleased. Malink breathed a sigh of relief. She was carrying magazines for them. If his people were happy with what she said, then he could use the old “will of Vincent” argument for not preparing them.

He could have never guessed the real reason the Sorcerer had not forewarned him of the appearance of the Sky Priestess. At the time when he normally called the warning, the Sorcerer had been watching through the window as the Sky Priestess pumped away on Tucker Case.

Tuck waited five minutes before he pulled up his pants and slid out the door of his bungalow, nearly running into Sebastian Curtis. The doctor, normally cool, was soaked with sweat and looked past Tuck to the clinic. “Mr. Case. I thought you’d be preparing the plane. Beth did tell you that you have a flight?”

Tuck fought the urge to bolt. He hadn’t had enough time to build up any remorse about having sex with the doctor’s wife, and he didn’t excel at remorse in the first place. “I was on my way to do the preflight. It doesn’t take long.”

The doctor didn’t make eye contact. “You’ll forgive me if I seem distracted. I have to perform major surgery in a few minutes. You should go watch Beth’s little show.”

“What’s all the music and explosions?”

“It’s how we retrieve our donors. Beth will explain her theory of religion and theater to you, I’m sure. Excuse me.” He pushed past Tucker and looked at his shoes as he walked toward the clinic.

“Aren’t you going to watch?” Tuck said.

“Thank you, but I find it nauseating.”

“Oh,” Tuck said. “Then I’ll go check out the Lear. Great game today, Doc.”

“Yes,” Curtis said. He resumed his stiff-armed walk to the clinic, his fists balled so hard at his sides that Tuck could see them shaking.

The guards were gathered at the edge of the hangar. Mato looked up quickly and made eye contact long enough for Tuck to see that he was nervous. Tuck wished he had asked him if the other guards spoke English.

“ Konichi-wa , motherfuckers,” Tuck said, covering his linguistic bases.

None of the guards responded. Except for Mato, their eyes were trained on Beth Curtis dancing across the airstrip to Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” One of the guards hit a button by the hangar and the music stopped as Beth Curtis stepped onto a small wooden platform on the far side of the runway. With the speakers silenced, Tuck could hear the drums of the Shark People. Some were marching around in formation holding lengths of bamboo painted red as rifles. Beth Curtis raised her hands, a copy of People in each, and the drums stopped.

Tuck couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was waving her arms around like a soapbox preacher, and the crowd of natives moved, and flinched, and hung on her every word. She paused at one point and handed the magazines down to Malink, who backed away from the platform with his head bowed.

Tuck didn’t find anything about her performance nauseating, but it was nothing if not strange. Why all the pomp and circumstance? You have six guys with machine guns, you can pretty much go rip a kidney out anytime you want to.

He needed to think, and he didn’t particularly want to see whom she would pick. Whoever it was, their face would be in his head all the way to Japan and back. He went into the hangar, lowered the door on the Lear, climbed into the dark plane, and lay down in the aisle between the seats. He couldn’t hear the sound of the Sky Priestess or the natives oohing and ahhhing , and here among the steel and glass and plastic and upholstery, it felt like home. Here he could hear the sound of his own mind; here in his very own Learjet, the weirdness was all outside. But for the lack of a key he would have taken the plane right then.

The guard kicked Tuck in the thigh much harder than was needed to wake him. Tuck looked up to see the face of the guard who had beaten him on the beach. He had a scar that ran up his forehead tracing a bare streak into his scalp and Tuck had started to think of him as Stripe, the evil little monster from the movie Gremlins . Tuck’s anger was immediate and white-hot. Only the Uzi stopped him from getting his ass kicked again.

The guard dangled the key to the Lear’s main power cutoff. It was time to go. Tuck limped to the cockpit and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. Stripe inserted the power key into the instrument

console, twisted it, and stepped back to watch as Tuck started the power-up procedure.

The other ninjas pulled the Lear out of the hangar by a large T-bar attached to the front wheel. When the plane was safely out of the hangar, Tuck started to spool up the jets. Stripe remained with the Uzi at port arms.

Tuck made a big show of going though the checklist, testing switches and gauges. He frowned and clicked the radar switch a couple of times. He looked back at Stripe. “Go check the nose. Something’s not right.”

The guard shook his head. Tuck mimed his instructions again and Stripe nodded, then he motioned through the window for another of the guards to join them on board. Evidently, they weren’t going to leave him un-guarded in the plane with the power key in. Stripe turned over the guard duty to the other ninja and appeared at the front of the plane. Tuck mo-tioned for him to get closer to the nose. Stripe did. Tuck turned on the radar. “And a lovely brain tumor for you, you son of a bitch.” Stripe seemed to actually feel the microwave energy and he jumped back from the plane. Tuck grinned and gave him the okay sign. “I hope your tiny little balls are boiling,” he said aloud. The guard behind him didn’t seem to understand what Tuck was saying, but he nudged him with the barrel of his Uzi and pointed. Beth Curtis, in her dark Armani, was coming across the compound with briefcase and cooler in hand.

She stepped into the plane and nodded to the guard. Instead of leaving, he took a seat back in the passenger compartment. Beth strapped herself into the copilot’s seat.

“We taking him in for shore leave?” Tuck said.

“No. He’s just along for the ride tonight.”

“Oh, right.” Tuck powered up the jets and eased the Lear out of the compound onto the runway.

Beth Curtis was silent until they were at altitude, cruising toward Japan. Tuck did not engage the autopilot, but steered the Lear gradually, perhaps a degree a minute, to the west.