Kingdom Keepers V(67)

“We have to find out,” Finn said. He pulled his Wave Phone from his shorts and held on to it to keep it dry as he slipped his hologram up to his knees in seawater. “Note to self,” he said to Charlene, “there’s no reception on the Wave Phone. We can’t return until we’re closer to the ship.”

One of the marvels of being a hologram was moments like this: slipping into water without getting wet. Finn peered around the lifeboat at the one next to it. He ducked under the anchor line and stole a look inside the boat. Empty.

“Psst! Maybeck!”

The zipper whirred. Moments later, four holograms moved along the water’s edge toward the Dream, which loomed like a Hollywood backdrop a half mile away. They came upon the cluster of massage cabanas via a small grove of palm trees. The sky was tinged at the edges a rich azure blue. Only a few determined planets still shone through.

“Which one?” Maybeck whispered.

“We couldn’t see,” Finn replied. “We’ll split up so we’re not all busted at once.”

“That’s optimistic of you,” Charlene said. “We’re dressed as crew members, don’t forget. These lifeboat workers are the worker bees. We’re the honeybees. If we encounter them, we demand to know what they’re doing ashore. We take their names. We can’t think like ninth graders.”

“Tenth graders next September,” Maybeck said.

“Remember, 2.0,” Finn said. “We’re good.” He stayed with Charlene. They moved slowly through the cluster of cabanas—small wooden cabins on three-foot stilts with wooden shutters across window holes. The eaves were open to allow circulation. The yellow of candlelight glowed through the ten-inch gap and flickered through the slatted gables. With his upgraded hearing on full alert, he noticed the holograms moving silently through the sand. Finn glanced down: his hologram feet did not displace the sand; it was as if he’d never walked here.

Suddenly, there was a murmur of conversation. Finn crouched and caught sight of Maybeck. He hand-signaled for the four of them to converge on the cabana from both sides. Maybeck nodded and signaled back two thumbs up.

As they approached the voices became clearer, and the conversation with them.

“You must come with us now.” A man.

“You I tell once more,” spoke a woman’s baritone voice in a thick Jamaican accent, “;’tain’t me going nowhere, mon. ’Tain’t leavin’ da island ’til necessary. ’Tis them’s coming here, or ’tain’t at all. Be your instructions as they may, ’tain’t no matter to me.”

“Orders is orders,” the man said.

“Them be your orders, not mine. Is you wishing to cross me, mon?”

“No, ma’am!” The gruff man sounded strangely frightened.

“Your shoulders,” Charlene whispered to Finn. “Get down on a knee.” Finn glanced overhead at the window hole in the side wall. Charlene wanted up there. He waved his hand at the stilt holding up the cabana. The wood passed through his forearm. He concentrated and tried again. His arm bumped off the post.

“Okay,” he said.

Charlene performed the same test. It took her three tries to Finn’s one, but she was solid enough to step onto his shoulder. Finn grabbed her ankle. She crawled up his back and placed her left foot on his left shoulder, and Finn stood. They were a circus act rising more than ten feet tall. Finn awkwardly moved left until Charlene was alongside the window. She placed her eye to the open-air slats in the shutter. Held up the fingers of her right hand: five, then two. Seven people. The six lifeboat crew and one other: the woman.

“I suggest,” came the sonorous female baritone, “you speak to them’s givin’ de orders. Ain’t got much time, you know. One day is all.”

Charlene looked down at Finn, her face a mask of alarm, and mouthed something, but it was lost on him. She did not look pleased.

“We got orders is all I’m saying,” said the man. “You choose not to come with us, that’s on you.”

“’Tis on me, then.”

“That’s all I’m saying,” said the man.

“You say so.”

“Not making my life any easier.”

The woman said, “No life easy.”

“Okay, then. Have it your way.”

Charlene motioned for Finn to let her down. As he kneeled, the door to the cabana flew open. Finn saw Maybeck and Willa rush to hide under an adjacent cabana, but there was no time for him and Charlene. She crashed down onto the sand. They scrambled and rolled to a position directly beneath the wooden stairs as the six sailors clomped down. They lay flat in the sand facing the water.