In the morning, sure enough, a whole cartel fleet came burning down through the atmosphere.
One of the smaller sleds roared overhead, thrusters blowing, and settled on the beach. The Hall of Famers dropped what they were doing and formed a double line just uphill, like a bunch of naked soldiers.
Milo was on his way up to the pump, almost to the woods. Raymond Carver, who seemed to have replaced Boone, shouted at him.
“Milo! Get down here and get in line!”
Milo opened his mouth to say something rude.
“Just do it!” bellowed Carver, jogging toward the Hall of Famers himself. “?’Splain later!”
Milo lined up. So did everyone who wasn’t already on duty up at the pump.
Milo took a spot next to Carver as the sled opened and three Monitors marched out.
“It’s what they want,” Carver whispered. “You don’t line up, you could get shot or kneecapped or blinded or—”
“Quiet,” the commander boomed.
“We need fruit,” said one of his deputies. “Those of you not on shift, go get whatever you have stored, and gather half a ton more.”
The Hall of Famers broke ranks and headed for the trees.
“A half ton?” said Milo.
Carver walked off, pretending not to hear.
“Is that a problem?” crackled the deputy, leveling his burp gun.
Milo didn’t answer. He just walked away. Lazily. Insultingly, he hoped.
When he got to the trees, though, he gathered fruit alongside the others.
“Has anyone thought,” he asked, “what we’re going to eat, the next month or so?”
No one answered him.
—
Piling fruit on the beach later, Milo saw that the cartel fleet had been busy, too.
They weren’t just there to eat fruit. Something big was happening.
Enormous ships had descended on skyhooks and sat over the waves many miles out, forming a distant semicircle.
“They’re testing again,” said Carver.
“Testing what?” asked Suzie.
“A weapon. I heard scuttlebutt about it before they took away my lab.”
“Atomics?” asked Milo.
“Worse,” said Carver. “It pulls space through itself, like a needle going through its own eye. They call it the inside-out bomb.”
The Monitors over by the sled took notice of the conversation.
“Work!” they all boomed simultaneously. One of them started walking over.
The Hall of Famers bent low, arranging the gathered fruit.
“So,” said Suzie, “whatever’s in the affected area just disappears?”
“That would be great for mining,” said Milo, “if you could control it.”
“No,” whispered Carver as the Monitor approached. “It’s for getting rid of lots of people without a trace. Without evidence.”
“There’s an awful lot of nothing going on here,” crackled the Monitor, pushing his way between Milo and Carver.
They gave him their best dumb looks and dispersed.
—
They tested the bomb early the next afternoon.
Milo was clambering around on the pump when it happened. Something up on the submarine was leaking oil. They were going to have a fire sooner or later if it wasn’t stopped. So he happened to be looking at hose fixtures, and not out to sea, when the bomb went off.
Still, he was momentarily blinded.
The flash penetrated everything, as if they’d been cast into the sun. Milo cursed, throwing his arm across his face. The rest of the day shift did the same.
Except for one, a kid named Christmas Break, who had been looking due south when the thing exploded. He screamed horribly and wouldn’t stop.
Milo found the boy by sound, stumbling around in a universe of kaleidoscope-like spots. He grabbed the boy and held him close, restraining him. Christmas Break wanted to poke and claw at his eyes, but Milo held him until he calmed down, his screaming reduced to a steady moan.
In the meantime, Milo’s own eyes cleared, and he looked seaward. He couldn’t look away.
Out beyond the cartel ships, a crater had formed in the ocean. A perfect half dome, as if a bowling ball the size of a small world had been sitting there and had vanished. Above this impossible emptiness, a dome of clouds formed and whirled to fill empty space.
Wind rushed in from behind Milo, from everywhere, pulling waves and sand and clouds and birds toward the ball of…nothing…out there.
Water and wind smashed in from all points, booming and roaring.
Milo’s jaw hung loose. The spectacle was something on the scale of gods or giants, something human eyes and minds weren’t ready for.
The storm settled, leaving something like a wobbly star hanging in the air, a scar left by the bomb’s quantum arm-twisting.
Christmas Break whimpered.
“You’ll be all right,” Milo told him (lying?). “Your eyes should get back to normal before the day is out. Let’s get you to your family. Why’d you pick the name ‘Christmas,’ by the way?”
“Because my parents named me Melissa,” said the boy. “They wanted a girl.”
Milo kept him talking and not rubbing his eyes until they all got downhill.
—
The star hung pulsing over the ocean until the next morning. When it finally burned out, the cartel ships headed for the island.
The fleet, Milo sensed, was in the mood to party. And his stomach went dark and sour.
“Will they leave us alone?” he asked Carver, when they lined up on the beach.
Carver didn’t say.
The first of the big ships hovered overhead, eclipsing Jupiter and the sun. Other ships, big and small, followed it like a pack of wolves.
—
Sleds and cargo heavies landed. Soldiers spilled out. Not just armored Monitors, but soldiers in jumpsuits. The soldiers seemed amused by the naked islanders lined up on the sand.
“Go about your business!” hollered some kind of command figure, dismissing them. “We need you, we’ll call.”
The Hall of Famers broke away and headed for their huts, for the woods, anywhere but that beach.
Milo and Suzie watched from the edge of the woods as the soldiers set up tents and generators. More sleds arrived, spilling cartel people ashore. People in all sorts of uniforms. Military, engineering, corporate types in suits.
Voices grew rowdy. Glass shattered. Music wailed.
Now and then, soldiers marched into the village and forced islanders to go pick fruit or narcotic froojii leaves or “some of that colorful firewood shit.”
A knot of Monitors broke away from the party and found Jale at her tent.
“Where’s your redfish?” asked the tallest of them. “Show us what you’ve got, and bring sacks to carry it.”
Milo and Suzie, two huts down, listened without breathing.
“We haven’t gone out lately,” Jale replied. “We’ve been fixing leaks up at your pump. There’s no fresh.”
“Dried, then,” said the Monitor. “We know you’ve got dried.”
“We need the dried,” Jale said. “You’ve got our month’s fruit. The trees are picked over.”
A hard sound, as if someone was getting hit.
Milo and Suzie got up and walked over, without discussion.
Jale lay on the sand in front of her hut, cupping a bloody lip with her hand. Chili Pepper crouched over her.
“Can we help?” asked Milo.
The Monitors said, “Fish.”