Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (2 page)

They passed the Sawgrass Plains, traveled through rivers, skimmed over Lake Okeechobee and then went down through the endless sloughs that snaked through the
swamp. Blur was a skilled pilot and kept the pace up; the pills had slowed his body but not his driving. Blur kept zooming ahead of Balthasar, but Cannon seemed to be enjoying the ride so Balthasar allowed it.
We’ll have to rely on Cannon to pull up the casket,
thought Balthasar.
It doesn’t hurt to have the kid in a good mood.

They traveled for two days and camped out in the open air, but the crew didn’t seem to mind. They were a tough group; Balthasar had found Blur
in the rough shantytown outside of Windhoek and had rescued Drayne from an Eastern European brothel, and though Cannon was temperamental, he could sleep anywhere. Balthasar gave them a speech about their goal the first night, but it wasn’t needed. The kids were too young to see that far ahead and didn’t really need a pep talk anyway. As far as they were concerned, there was no goal; this was their life, and sleeping in the swamp was just another evening.

An alligator had gotten onto Blur’s boat on the second night and laid there until the morning, and
the young man awoke with a shriek. Blur was fast, but only on land; the swamp pushed him out of his element. The fanboats were moored together, so Drayne snuck up behind the creature, ungloved her hand and put it on the alligator’s tail. It thrashed, nearly knocking her over, but soon appeared to lapse into a deep sleep, and a minute later it stopped breathing. Balthasar noticed that the creature’s tail had been stained a deadly necrotic white in the place that Drayne had touched him, and that stain seemed to have spread outward. Cannon pushed the creature into the water and it floated away with its stomach to the sky, and that was that.

“How close are we to our goal?” asked Balthasar.

“Two hours if you can keep up with me,” said Blur, still shaken and eager to leave the swamp.

“Let’s make it four,” said Balthasar. “No one’s after us, and Drayne will handle any more creatures that come our way. The casket’s been buried for five hundred years; it can wait
a little longer.”

/***/

They found the area four hours later, and it took another two hours to find the exact spot. On his first trip, Blur had left a small buoy marking the point of burial, but its connecting rope had been gnawed by a creature and the orange bulb now floated adrift in the water. So they paddled their boats in a methodical way, with Blur dragging the underwater metal detector that Balthasar had made. The metal detector worked, and two hours later it beeped consistently above a patch that looked indistinguishable from any other part of the swamp. They tested it to be sure, and it beeped and stopped beeping at just the right points; they were right over a metal container that was about the size of a coffin.

“Do you sense it down there?” Balthasar asked Drayne.

“What?”

“Do you sense a life force down there?” asked Balthasar. “You haven’t been trained in this yet, but your class senses sparks of life much as a shark senses blood. If anything is down there it will be extremely faint, so listen carefully.”

Drayne closed her eyes, knelt and put her hands on the water. After a few moments she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I feel something.”

Balthasar nodded and then thought for a moment.

“Let’s wait until nightfall,” said Balthasar. “For though we’re alone, we’re still digging up a body, and we can’t afford to gain attention. No one’s around here, but too much is at stake to take any chances now.”

/***/

They spent the night dredging, digging and kicking up mud, lit by the dim glow of their battery-powered work lights. Blur was still scared of
the alligators, but Drayne didn’t seem to mind them and Cannon didn’t seem to care. The boy crashed into the water whenever the dredger needed adjustment, and if a creature dared attack him, Balthasar would feel sorry for it.

So they dug and dug, and soon their machinery hit something solid. Cannon swam down into the muck to touch it, and came up smiling.

“It’s metal,” he said, “and real big.”

They sent
down a claw to pull up the casket. They came up empty twice, but it held on the third time and Cannon guided it to just the right spot, and they brought up the box and let it dangle in the air for a moment. They had attached metal rods between the fanboats and placed the claw between them so that it would be stabilized, but the sheer weight of the casket caused both boats to angle inwards as it hung in the moonlight. The box was dull and corroded from years under the soil, but it was still solid and had maintained its shape after all this time.

“We must cover the casket and get it to our van as soon as possible,” said Balthasar. “Four men carrying a body is too suspicious, even in this area.”

/***/

The next day they were driving up Interstate 75 when Blur came to the front cab to alert Balthasar.

“Sir,” he said. “He’s moving within the coffin.”

Moving,
thought Balthasar.
Five centuries later, and he still has energy to move. Our leader is truly extraordinary.

“He won’t harm you,” said Balthasar, “though we should still be cautious. He might be disoriented when he arises.”

Balthasar put the truck in park and went in the back to be sure. Cannon was listening nervously, and Balthasar wiped mud off a section of the coffin and placed his ear against it. There was no moving, but he heard a faint whisper.

“
Ayúdame
.
…”

He’s pleading for help,
thought Balthasar,
and he’s still conscious.
Balthasar took a lock from his pocket and placed it on one of the coffin’s clasps, just to be sure that none of the kids would give their leader “help.” After securing the lock, he stood and once again addressed the crew.

“I know you’re excited for this,” said Balthasar. “I am too. To you it’s an arrival, to me it’s a return, but for all of us it’s the first step of a new era; one that requires a tremendous amount of patience. So please resi
st the urge to open this coffin, because he’s waited too long to arrive prematurely.

/***/

They arrived at their mansion at midnight, and after checking for snooping neighbors, Cannon brought the coffin into the building. Blur went to help, but Cannon had placed the casket on his shoulder as if it were a bag of dirt, nearly a foot above Blur’s head. Cannon walked into the mansion and brought the metal box downstairs, dropping it on the ground with a
thud
.

Balthasar
took the lock off and motioned for Cannon to get a sledgehammer from the side of the room, and the boy grabbed it and banged the side of the coffin until it opened. They took off the top slowly to reveal their leader, or at least what was left of him: his body had atrophied severely, and he looked like a corpse. But he was intact, and judging from his shallow breaths, quivering jaw and faint moans, he was alive.

Balthasar smiled at the group and then kneeled down in front of their leader, whispering so that he could hear them.

“You are saved,”
said Balthasar, careful to use fifteenth-century Spanish.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, but you are saved. I can’t imagine the horrors you experienced down there; punishment for immortal spanners is quite cruel, unfortunately.

“It’s been some time since you disappeared at the hands of the devil Adam Parr, and I assure you that we’ve spent every minute since then searching for you. It took until now for technology to improve to the point where you could be located and exhumed, but you are here with us, and you are safe.

“Though it will take months for you to recover, you will recover. And once you’re healthy, you will once again lead us.”

Their leader made a faint wheezing sound, but Balthasar couldn’t understand it.

He could be asking who, what or any number of things,
thought Balthasar.
I’ll answer it all. He deserves the truth.

“I am your steward, Balthasar, whom you gave immortality five centuries ago, and these young ones are your new crew,”
said Balthasar.
“Together we will complete the quest that you started so long ago, the one you had almost accomplished before burial prevented you from doing so.”

Balthasar stood up and spoke in a louder voice,
this time in English, addressing the crew more than their leader.

“Your name is Captain Juan Ponce de León,” said Balthasar. “And when you are healthy, you are going to lead us to the
Fountain of Youth.
”

ADAM

Kolkata, India
—Ten Years Later

As he had done every night for the past 8,000 years, Adam Parr dreamt that he was buried alive. His nightmare had him clawing at a coffin’s ceiling and he woke up with his hands in the air, sweating and breathing heavily. Burial was his worst fear; it was the fear of most immortal spanners. You can’t kill an immortal, so if someone ever wanted one gone, they’d bury them instead. Adam’s enemies had vowed to do just that, and though he was smarter than most of them
, all it would take would be for one of them to get lucky once, and he’d be trapped under the ground forever.

After he calmed down
, he ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and tried to remember another dream he’d had before his nightmare.

I was dreaming of blonde hair,
he thought,
and of glowing orange eyes.

He was dreaming of Phoe, his sister. She was a
phoenix
-class spanner, and their kind got reincarnated. Adam had always taken care of her in each of her lifetimes; sometimes he called her his sister, sometimes he raised her as his daughter. It didn’t matter; each time she died and came back, she would always come back to him.

Until her last lifetime
, thought Adam.
She didn’t die like she normally did, and she didn’t come back to me.

Adam knew Phoe had to be alive; her class of spanner always came back
. Always.

I can’t worry about this now,
he thought.
There’s too much at stake.

He shook off his thoughts and got up. He washed his face and looked in his hotel room’s scratched mirror.
He had a square jaw, and though his tan face was completely free of wrinkles, he felt old; he had felt old every day of his life as far back as he could remember. He rubbed a thin towel over his face and noticed that his eyes were still glowing green, so he waited a moment until they faded. Now he could face the day and walk amongst normal humans unnoticed.

/***/

Adam came down the stairs and put his keys on the concierge’s table. The hotel owners were a nice old married couple named Anuj and Puja Patel, but Adam hadn’t said a word to them all week.

“I trust your stay was good
, Dr. Parr?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like to keep the room for a week at least, perhaps longer. I can pay for a month in advance, but there’s a chance it could be more. I’ll keep my things there, but if you need more than a month—”

“Can you leave a credit card?” asked Puja.

“No,” said Adam. “I don’t have one.”

“Do you have a bank?”

“No.”

“Cellular phone?”

“No,” said Adam, “I can’t figure them out—”

“Really?”

“They aren’t my thing,” said Adam. “If you’d like me to pay
for two months in advance or more, that’s not a problem.”

“
One month is fine,”
said her husband Anuj from the back, in Sanskrit.
“He looks familiar. I think he’s been here before.”

“
He does look familiar,”
said Puja in their tongue.
“He’s good-looking. I think he’s a movie star.”

“
I’m no one,”
said Adam in Sanskrit.
“I’ve just been here a few times before.”

Puja
and Anuj looked at each other and laughed.

“You speak
this language, Dr. Parr?” said Puja. “Impressive!”

“I’ve been here a few times,” said Adam.

“But it’s not an active language in India,” said Puja. “There are only a few Sanskrit speakers left.”

“There used to be quite a bit more,” said Adam.

He smiled again and left the hotel, walking into the scorching Kolkata heat.

/***/

Adam hailed a three-wheeled auto rickshaw, and the taxi driver sped off with him as Adam chided himself. Speaking the near-dead language of Sanskrit was a foolish maneuver at any time, especially now; his duties were too important to do anything that would make him stand out. Still, he couldn’t help it; Adam had visited Anuj Patel sixty years ago, when Adam was helped by the man’s grandfather, Dinesh Patel. Dinesh was a
pandit
who spoke Sanskrit and taught the language to his son, because it was in Dinesh’s nature to protect vulnerable things. He had protected Adam too after Adam had survived an execution at the hands of the Axis. The Nazis were desperate to take him alive so that they could study his powers, and German spies had spread word throughout Kolkata that anyone giving Adam up would be given more gold than they could dream of. Adam waited out the war in one of Dinesh’s hidden rooms, and the man told no one and asked for nothing in return.

And Anuj is just like his grandfather was,
thought Adam,
kind, generous, and trusting. Those types never end up with the gold, but they always seem to fall on the right side of history.

“The place … where?” asked the driver in severely broken English.

“
Up ahead
,” said Adam in Hindi. “
I’ll show you
.”

As they traveled down the streets of Kolkata, Adam’s thoughts drifted to all the other times he had lived in this city over the years. He had first heard of it when he traveled with Marco Polo, and had later come here to
escape the Inquisition. Kolkata was hot, crowded and had so many languages that it was a miracle it stayed together. But Adam felt safe in multicultural cities like this. Areas with one language and one ruler were easier to understand perhaps, but when history turned against you, there was no safe haven. In a place like this, if someone was hunting for your kind, you only needed a short ride to wind up in an area of people who didn’t care. There was always a place to hide in Kolkata.

Don’t succumb to nostalgia now,
thought Adam.
Your task is too important.

“
Three blocks up there, to the left,” said Adam to the rickshaw driver.

The driver parked in front of the building, Adam paid him and the driver left. Adam looked up at the sign:

MANOJ DANDEKAR TRAVEL

WE WILL GET YOU THERE

NO EXCEPTIONS

/***/

Manoj Dandekar sat behind the desk, a fan blowing hot air in his emotionless face. He noticed Adam come in, but pretended not to. Adam knew Manoj’s kind and knew that there was only one way to make a real impression, so he took out five thousand US dollars and put it on the table. Manoj took a look at the money and then took a look at Adam, but he didn’t take the stack and sat detached as if the cash were a sack of rocks.

“So
, who are you?” said Manoj. “A fortune hunter? An explorer? A PhD candidate with a thesis?”

“None of those,” said Adam. “I’m just a man. And
I want to go to the Sentinel Islands.”

“Surely you know that even I can’t—”

“You can, you have, and so can others,” said Adam, “but I prefer your services.”

Adam put another wad of cash onto the desk, but averted his eyes from
Manoj. He was angry and didn’t want Manoj to notice his eyes flashing green.

/***/

In Manoj Dandekar’s back office, the stone-faced Kolkata man spread out a picture of a windburnt, brown-skinned woman and a group of short black Africans.

“The Tungus live in Siberia
, where temperatures can drop to fifty degrees below freezing,” said Dandekar. “These Aka pygmies live behind two war zones. Through me, you can visit both. But you cannot visit the Sentinelese, Dr. Parr. It’s not allowed.”

“I need to see them,” said Adam. “This won’t get back to you.”

“The Sentinelese are the last uncontacted people on earth—”

“You got an anthropologist there five years ago,” said Adam. “You learned how to do it from your mentor, Sandeep Shukla, who set up trips there for a wealthy hunter. Shukla used that money to retire.”

Adam had Dandekar’s full attention now.

“If you mean to blackmail me, Dr. Parr—” said Dandekar.

“I have no intention of blackmailing you,” said Adam. “I just know you have a price.”

Dandekar thought for a moment and then spoke.

“If you’ve come this far I’m sure you know the risks, but I must repeat the full truth,” said Dandekar. “The Sentinelese are uncontacted for a reason. They’re extremely violent to outsiders and kill anyone that comes upon their shores. Fisherman have been killed just for approaching the islands.”

“I know,” said Adam. “I know the hunter didn’t make it back, and neither did the anthropologist. That’s why I’m paying half my fee
up front.”

“The UN has no jurisdiction there,” said Dandekar. “If they’re to attack you, there will be no one to save you. No one will pursue your killers because it’s not illegal for them to murder you, and they
will
murder you; I guarantee this.”

“I’ll take my chances,” said Adam. “I need passage there, which I’ll pay you for. Then double that if the boat comes and picks me up again.”

Dandekar looked at the money, and then sighed.

“I never ask my clients’ intentions,” said Dandekar, “but I question your sanity, Dr. Parr. Why a
re you going to the Sentinel Islands of all places? What is there?”

Adam smiled; he could do many things, but he had never learned to lie well. He thought for a moment about how to best respond to Dandekar without sounding crazy.

“I have a theory that something miraculous happened there long ago,” said Adam. “And I must go there to find out for myself, firsthand.”

“Sounds like you too are an anthropologist,” said Dandekar. “Is that what the
Dr.
in front of your name is for?”

“I’
m an anthropologist of sorts,” said Adam with a smile, “but an amateur only.”

“What are you going to study there, Dr. Parr?”

“Survival,” said Adam, but he was no longer smiling.

/***/

The trawler was called
Malvina
; it was Russian, but the crew was Indonesian. They took their time getting to the Sentinel Islands, which was fine with Adam. He didn’t want to risk being stopped by any authorities. They slept during the day but turned on their lights and dropped their nets at night, capturing tiger shrimp by the ton, and the crew crept slowly towards the islands because the shrimp haul was so good. Adam didn’t mind waiting; if there was one thing he was good at, it was waiting. He had a hard time pretending that he didn’t understand them, though. Manoj told the fishermen that Adam was simply a Western thrill-seeker, and if they heard him understanding their rare Indonesian dialect, it would bring attention to him. So he just sat there as they spoke about him, time and time again.

“
How long until we throw this carcass to the sharks?”
asked a young crewman.

“
We’ll drop him off tomorrow,”
said the captain.
“Dandekar says we have to return in a week’s time.”

“
He’ll be dead as soon as he sets foot on shore,”
said the crewman.

“
I know,” said the captain, “but we get a bonus if we send our coordinates to Dandekar through GPS, one week from today. That’s all we need to do.”

Adam smiled to himself; Dandekar might not follow the law, but he wasn’t unscrupulous.

/***/

Darkness fell and a full moon shone through a cloudless sky. Adam saw the islands in the distance; they were barely visible above
the horizon.
If these oceans were to rise
, thought Adam,
it would be the end of times for these people.

Adam also
saw that the island was dotted with small bits of orange.

They have fire,
thought Adam.
The Sentinelese aren’t supposed to have fire, at least not yet.

Adam sensed a presence behind him, and turned around to see the Indonesian captain carrying a shotgun.

“Whoah,” said Adam, holding up his hands. “No need to—”

“
This gun
for
you, not for shoot you,” said the captain, pointing the gun at the island. “You take gun, shoot them. You take this.”

“It’s still ok
ay,” said Adam. “They won’t—”

“You go now,” said the c
aptain.

“Here?”

Adam noticed that they were a few kilometers from shore. He turned around and saw the rest of the crew; they were terrified. All the lights in the trawler were off; they didn’t want to be boarded by any Sentinelese in canoes.

“Closer,” said Adam. “Can you get closer?”

“Now!” said the captain, offering the shotgun to Adam.

“All right, I’ll go
,” said Adam. “You keep the shotgun.”