Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) (27 page)

“And the girls?” Philby speculated.

“We tell them the girls are on their way,” Finn said. “You know girls and getting ready. Sound good?”

“Sounds real,” Philby said. All three boys laughed. It was the first laugh for Finn in some time.

“If they miss it completely, we mock them. And remember, Philby's keeping an eye out for the DHIs that attacked him, and we're all looking for Luowski.”

“We need to find that server,” the Professor said. “We take out the server, we take out their DHIs, and maybe put them into the Syndrome at the same time.”

“I like that idea,” Maybeck said.

Now they were on the pier alongside the
Dream
in a stream of passengers and Cast Members headed to the beach. A lone seagull glided along the shore far in the distance, then flew lower and landed out of sight. They were dressed in the same shorts and shirts as their in-park DHIs. They nodded politely to passengers who recognized them. Kids waved hello, and they waved back.

“Has it occurred to either of you that now that 2.0's in beta, the Imagineers will be looking for new models?”

Finn stumbled and recovered. “What?”

“We're high schoolers,” Philby reminded. “Our DHIs have been in the Magic Kingdom for a long time now. We barely look like our DHIs anymore. We haven't recorded any new lines in over a year, so our DHIs are saying the same old stuff as they always have. That's gonna change.”

“And you wait until now to bring this up?” Finn said as they walked along among hundreds of cruise passengers. “Wayne would have told me.”

“You think he's as connected as he once was?” Philby asked. “His whole attention's on the OTs. He's not in the loop on the park stuff.”

“They're going to replace us?” Finn gasped. Would Wayne do that to him?

“Then why install us in Disneyland?” Maybeck asked Philby.

“It's beta. You know how any beta program testing works. You run it for a while to get the bugs out. Then you ramp up and deploy the real thing.”

“We're guinea pigs?” Maybeck said.

“We're beta testers,” Philby answered. “They run us under 2.0 before introducing the next-generation DHIs. They won't want the new DHIs bugging out all over the parks. They'll leave that for us.”

“We're history?” Finn said. He didn't know whether to feel relief or anxiety.

“Toast,” Philby said. “It's only a matter of time.”

“What a buzzkill,” Maybeck said.

They continued onto the island amid the hordes of passengers, Finn's mind drifting for a moment. First he thought of his mother and the green eyes staring back at him in the car. It gave him chills. He wondered if Storey Ming's friend could help him determine if his mother was aboard. He'd seen her at the terminal, after all.

But he also thought about being replaced. There had certainly been times he did not want to be a DHI, but now that Philby said it was more than likely going to happen, he wanted it back. He didn't want it to stop. More than that, he didn't want some other guy to replace him. Just the thought of it ran his blood cold. Did Wayne know about it? Did he intend to do anything about it?

The Beach Blanket welcome lasted only a few minutes and was run by Cast Members who seemed not to notice the girls were missing. Typical Philby—he'd memorized the girl's lines as well; he simply recited them where they belonged in the script, and it all went off without a hitch. The entertainment director had wisely kept it all brief and amusing; it was over practically before it began. Maybeck then slipped off toward the island's Cast Members–only compound, Finn to the cabanas, and Philby back to the ship.

Once inside the Radio Studio, Philby connected to the onboard DHI server and downloaded its log. Nothing. Not a single byte of bandwidth used since his own return following the fight in the staterooms. The discovery came as a huge relief—he'd been harboring fears the girls were stuck in the Syndrome. As a precaution, he instigated a return for both girls. Checked the log: still nothing. He was about to sign off the secure session when one last thought occurred to him. He typed a command string. His fingers hesitated over the keyboard. What he was about to do was not without risk. To cross over someone unsuspecting was to throw them into a virtual nightmare that they couldn't wake up from. The shock of being crossed over when unexpected could be psychologically disturbing. But the situation offered too great a possibility not to try.

He punched the
ENTER
key. Within seconds he was out of the Radio Studio and practically flying downstairs toward the crew break room. He had to see…

* * *

Maybeck tried to see any difference.

His artist's eye gave him a distinct advantage; he could visualize things in ways others could not.

He stood on the sand-covered asphalt roadbed leading into the island's maintenance compound, his eye comparing what he saw now to what he'd seen only hours earlier. It was like a game to him: spot the difference. Two Pargos had moved; another was gone from its charging spot. Three bicycles were now parked outside the concrete-block administrative building where he'd met Tim. A garden hose that had been neatly coiled was now uncoiled and had been left in a tangled mess. What else?

Some plants had been watered, the soil darker. The recycling and garbage bins were now brimming; they'd been empty before.

More? The sun was fading; it had been bright sunshine earlier. Shadows were at different angles and stretched longer. A window on the side of the Quonset hut was now open.

It drew him, this window. Pulled him toward it to peer inside and uncover mysteries he was certain lay on the other side. Ten yards away and closing, he passed a corrugated-tin maintenance shed and stopped. Its padlock hung unlocked.

He hesitated, unsure how to proceed. He had no business being backstage. The island Cast Members handled a hundred tasks at once; he could not interrupt them without drawing attention to himself. But with the Beach Blanket Barbecue under way, the island headquarters appeared deserted, everyone off doing something, so why would a shed be left unlocked? If there was any time to lock a shed it was when guests were on the island; certainly when there was no ship docked the rules changed on Castaway Cay. The hanging padlock intrigued him, as did the open window on the Quonset hut.

With the window easier to check out, he hurried over and carefully peered into the dark hut. He could make out a tractor and other large machinery packed in neatly at the far end. Closest to him was a machine shop containing an industrial drill, a band saw, and grinders. No light. No activity. Only the strong odor of paint—the open window suddenly explaining itself: ventilation.

He crossed back to the small tin shed. It had no windows, but there was a large gap between the top of the wall and the eave of the roof allowing for airflow in the tropical climate. Standing perfectly still, he heard faint sounds from inside. They might be explained by an animal, he thought. Or a person. The more he listened, the more the sounds seemed less random and more ordered. A keyboard? Valves?

Maybeck slipped around front and put his eye to the door. He could see inside, but only a sliver of the shed's grayish interior was visible. Not enough to see what was going on. Maybeck lacked the urgency of some of the other Keepers, but he possessed a wily cunning that served him well. He was in no hurry.

A minute passed. Two…five. A leg appeared—a human leg, from the knee down. A man's hairy leg, or a grown boy's. Dark shorts. A black flip-flop. Sight of the leg confirmed his earlier suspicion, but it was neither the leg nor the shorts (which should have been khaki if worn by a Cast Member) nor the flip-flop (which should have been a canvas deck shoe if worn by a Cast Member) that sounded the alarm in Maybeck's head. It was the lack of tan—the pale, reddish skin that revealed itself even through the limited light. There was no way—no way—that a resident of this island could have skin so pale.

Pale reddish skin…Maybeck knew whose leg it was. He studied the door's rust-colored hinges. Any metal on the salt-wind island was in a constant state of decay. He knew the hinges would squeal when he opened the door. He licked his finger and applied spit to each of the three hinges. He tugged the door gently, moving the hinges only slightly, and worked his spit into them. Then he eased the door open and slipped inside.

He recognized him immediately: Greg Luowski.

* * *

New Age music—wood xylophones, a bamboo flute, and brass bells—floated in the air along with the scent of jasmine, cinnamon, and musk oil. Finn crouched among the wide elephant's ear plants outside the first of the dozen massage cabanas. With the shutter open, candlelight flickered through the open-air window. A shadow swept past on the sand. On all fours, Finn crawled beneath the occupied cabana, paused, and scurried across moonlit sand to the next. It was occupied as well, and the soft music suggested a massage session here as well.

Finn kept moving and was squarely beneath the fifth cabana before he identified it as the one from the night before—Tia Dalma's cabana. He'd moved too quickly—been in too much of a hurry.

A rope was coiled around the cabana's stilt. Finn moved to examine it, but too late. It began moving as he turned his head. Uncoiling like a snake. It slithered into the sand, stood up, and became rigid. A staff with a cobra's head. Its eyes flamed red and glowed hypnotically. Jafar's staff.

Finn felt the movement of sand against his knees and shins. He tried to look down to confirm he was being dragged toward the staff, but couldn't take his eyes off the cobra. It had some kind of grip on him, physically and mentally. The murmur of voices came from above. A man and a woman speaking. Jafar and Tia Dalma. Overtakers. Jafar's staff had been left to keep watch.

Long ruts in the sand behind Finn. He'd slid five…now six…seven feet closer to the rigid staff. He fought to break eye contact, but it was little use—the cobra owned him. He struggled to open his fingers, and he scooped up sand as the thing drew him closer. The spinning eyes grew larger and their effect more powerful; the gravitational force increased, and he sped up as he moved across the sand. The voices above him sounded as if they were arguing.

Flexing his arms felt as if he were trying to curl an impossible amount of weight in the school gym. He slid closer still, the glowing eyes now the size of the sun. There was a universe in there—he wanted to travel inside.

Using every ounce of his strength, Finn brought his arm up and threw the sand into the cobra's eyes. The creature's eyes squinted shut.

The spell broke.

Finn dove forward, grabbed hold of the staff, and swung it like a baseball bat against the stilt. As it connected, it softened. Rather than break, or make a sound, it wrapped around the stilt, and the cobra's face was suddenly an inch in front of Finn's. Finn let go and fell back. The staff tried to unwrap, but Finn saw it coming, grabbed hold a second time, and slammed it against the stilt again, soundlessly, as it turned fluid and coiled around the wood. But this time Finn reached with his left hand and took hold beneath the cobra's hood, brought his left and right hands together, and, without thinking, tied the snake into a knot. It was a like a pro wrestling move: the Whitman Whip Knot. The cobra struggled to untie itself, but only expended energy unnecessarily. Then, as Finn moved to choke it, the creature took the form of wood again: a wooden staff, wrapped around a post and carved in a granny knot. Finn grabbed some dried seaweed from the sand and draped it over the staff, covering the snake's dangerous eyes.

Irritated conversation continued overhead. Tia Dalma spoke sonorously and calmly in a lilting rhythm; the man Finn took to be Jafar had a singsong, melodic voice, higher than the woman's. His muffled words came out rapidly, a man upset.

Finn sat up taller and put an eye to the cracks in the flooring. Pitch black. Under a mat. He moved slat to slat, board to board, until the glimmer of candlelight revealed itself. He could see through the gap and up into the bamboo rafters that supported the cabana's thatched roof. But it wasn't only his vision that improved. So did the sound quality.

“…is unacceptable.” Jafar.

“All things given time,” Tia Dalma said. “There is but one cause.”

“Promises were made.”

“Not by me.”

“You know who I mean,” he said.

“The green one does not break such promises.”

“She has not kept them, either.”

“She will.”

“I am owed the lamp. My purpose in joining this journey is the fulfillment of years of effort. Any delays like this—”

“—are necessary or they would not happen. You must trust the one cause.”

“I trust no one. Not my own shadow.”

“We all want what you want, if for different reasons. The 'chive is important to every one of us. Every one. Do not think yourself alone in this endeavor. The 'chive is my destination as well. But unlike you, apparently, it is evident I am willing to do what is asked of me.”

“You conjure this and that. It is very different for you than for me.”

“You must role-play. What is so very difficult?”

“Children! Gooey-eyed, wet-lipped little spoiled brats all begging for an autograph. It is an insult to my dignity.”

“It is not so very difficult, I think. Two weeks, and then the answer to your dreams. How many of us live with such a luxury?”

Silence.

A gruff chuckle. “Perhaps you are right.”

“I am never anything but,” said Tia Dalma, adding a chortle of her own. “If I could lie, even with great difficulty, how much easier my existence. But the one cause does not permit it. This is my curse. This is my legacy. So be it.”

Another long silence. “Go in peace,” he said.

“And you.”

The board creaked. Sand spilled into Finn's ear. He scurried out from beneath the cabana, tore the seaweed off the cobra staff, crossed the moonbeams, and lay down flat in the shadow of the adjacent hut. His feet faced Tia Dalma's cabana; his face, toward the ship. If Jafar spotted him, if the man came for him, Finn would have no warning.