That’s how they’ll get us, he thought, despairing. Someone will resist, and others will join, and they’ll shoot us all.
After that, there was a long silence. Milo began listening for the sled engines, hoping, and he was still listening when three shadows crowded the door.
“Stand up!” roared the soldiers. Before Milo could move, a rifle butt cracked the side of his head.
They jabbed a rifle up under his jaw and forced him to his feet and pressed something into his hand. A whip of some kind, like a squid, with a hook at the end of each tentacle. A gun muzzle dug into his neck.
Fully amplified, the Monitors screeched, “Up! Get up! Get up, you fucker! You wanna die? You wanna die? Is that what you want, you piece of shit? Get up do it do it do it! Hit him! Hit that old moon nigger! Hit him—” And Milo saw Old Deuteronomy looking up at him with hard eyes, shouting, “Do what they tell you!”
Discipline.
Incredibly, Milo raised his arm and brought the whip down across the old man’s shoulder. Felt it catch. Felt the hooks dig in and the whip jerk to a stop and his arm jerk to a stop. Old Deuteronomy shrieked.
Milo gave the whip a flick, freeing the hooks. Blood spattered. Bits of skin stuck all over the hut.
“Do it again do it again do it again!”
Something hot stabbed him in the leg. One of the soldiers laughed.
Up and down went Milo’s arm—slash—jerk—(flick)—spatter.
They made him do it nine times.
Milo listened to Old Deuteronomy’s breathing, which was weak. The flare had begun to die, and in the fading light he watched the old man rock back and forth, just slightly.
He would hit the old man, Milo knew, as many times as he had to. He would, if necessary, kill him.
The soldiers took the whip from him and left.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Milo.
“Yes,” said the old man. “Quiet.”
—
Milo didn’t know when the cartel ships lifted off. When the sun slipped out from behind Jupiter, they were gone, and the Family Stone went through a blank, staring time.
About half of them had scars now, on top of their tumor welts and bent limbs.
He looked for Suzie.
Here she was! Looking dazed and blood-caked, part of her left ear sawed off.
“It’s okay,” she kept saying. She let Milo steady her.
Milo felt his undamaged body like a new kind of nakedness.
“They made Carver shoot Chili,” Suzie whispered. “Wrapped his hand around the gun and squeezed his hand with their hands.”
Chili, thought Milo. But it was an empty thought just yet. Just a name. Some kind of feeling would come and fill it in later. Wouldn’t it?
He walked off alone, looking for the twins.
—
He found Serene in minutes. The sea had dropped away to low tide, and she sat near the precipice with Cracklin’ Rosie, who wore a poultice over one eye.
“Hey!” Milo yelled, rushing forward.
Serene glanced his way, then went back to staring at the horizon.
Where was Carlo? Milo realized he had never seen one twin without the other.
When he drew closer, Milo realized Serene was shaking so hard, so fast, that it looked like stillness.
“Did they…?”
“They didn’t touch her,” whispered Cracklin’ Rosie, stroking the girl’s hair.
Relief.
“I don’t know how they knew,” said Rose. “We put them in two separate huts, but they went and found Carlo and brought him and made them…”
Her voice trailed off.
“Made them beat each other?” asked Milo.
Rose put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes.
“No,” she said, so quietly that Milo had to read her lips.
Minutes later, Carlo came down from the village with Number One, Rose’s brother. Slowly, self-consciously, the boys sat in the sand next to Serene.
None of them spoke. There was a terrible awkwardness between them now.
Milo sprang up and walked away before they could see him cry.
—
In the days that followed, the Family Stone was quiet and hollow-eyed. They did their work without speaking.
Milo took tsunami watch for a month. Suzie left the village with paper and charcoal, saying she was going to map the island.
Some people walked into the sea.
The cartel dumped off newcomers, who walked into the sea or stayed and became islanders and took new names. Christopher Noonguesser. Rome. Posh. Sir St. John Fotheringay. There was a whole family of crawler saboteurs: Mr. Jones, Mrs. Jones, Yoko, and Fyodor, all of whom became pump engineers.
Milo watched the water and tended the drum. He let the stone and the sand and the wind have him.
—
“Gotta show you something,” said Suzie, hiking up to the tsunami drum one morning. “It might be important.”
She kissed him on top of the head. He turned and gave her a squeeze.
Suzie had brought Christopher Noonguesser to mind the drum, and she led Milo to a distant cliff.
Pointing straight down, she said, “There.”
An iridescent patch on the water, right where the surf broke.
That’s how they found the missing cartel ship.
They climbed down and dove to the wreck. The pilot still sat in his chair, strapped in tight, bones stripped by fishes. His passengers drifted behind him, bones in party clothes, swaying in the current.
Later, back ashore, Suzie said, “We won’t tell the cartel.”
Milo nodded. He acknowledged her with burning eyes.
They told no one.
—
Ten more people walked into the sea.
They had a big, fat funeral.
Jale said the names this time.
“Hobbit,” she said, followed by, “Doris, LoJack, Gavin McLeod, Peter McPeter, and Orm. Jilly, Nathanial the Digger, Mustang Sally, Nellie and Nellie’s Husband and Nellie’s Other Husband. Michael Ben-Jonah, and Carter, and Shane.”
Instead of a bonfire, everyone made a little wooden boat and set it on fire and sent it burning out to sea. Milo thought the surf would eat the boats, but the night was eerily calm, and they burned for some time and spread out and out, like stars.
—
Milo resumed his vigil at the tsunami drum, but he didn’t sit there draining away, like before. He meditated about things he remembered. It was like watching his mind play movies.
Movies of his dad. Movies of playing with Bubbles and Frog and favorite times with Suzie. Things he was proud of, like when he dove down deep that first time, without training, and the time he had saved the Buddha from drowning.
His inner voices were much clearer suddenly. He remembered being in Vienna and having a fiftieth anniversary party and falling to his death and surfing and being a father and living in Ohio and almost being murdered in Florence, Italy.
He sat there for five weeks, remembering, and talking with his voices.
He remembered quite a bit about Suzie. She came up to bring him some redfish and hikipikiiaki berries, and he made love to her on the spot.
“You remembered,” she said afterward. “Just a guess.”
“Yeah. I remembered.”
“Took you long enough.”
And eventually the idea came. It wasn’t brilliant or complicated or new. It was just perfect for that particular place and time.
It was an idea that began with a story.
After a while, High Voltage came up to ask if he wanted a break, and Milo said, “Hell yes,” and took his story down to the village.