Antonio whimpered. “What going to happen to me now?”
“Nanny don’t find no extenuating circumstances, Master. Is up to the Provincial Mocambo. Life imprisonment or exile.”
“Daddy? What going to happen?”
“Me nah know! Me nah know! Mama Nanny, you going to lock me away for true?”
“You a danger, Master,” said the building eshu. “Is so the law go.”
Antonio’s face crumpled, horrifyingly, into tears. Her daddy wasn’t supposed to cry. He wasn’t supposed to be frightened. What could scare him? Terrified, Tan-Tan clung to him and started to wail too. Antonio rocked and rocked, clinging to her so hard she could feel his fingertips bruising her arm. She didn’t care.
Something was hurting her chest where it was pressed against Daddy’s body. The package the man had given her. She pulled it out of her pocket. Never in her born days had she seen datastock like that. It was dirty, and stayed crumpled. She pulled off the box, uncrumpled it, tried to flatten it against her thigh.
“A-what that, pickney?”
They weren’t supposed to talk about it in words. She put a finger to her lips so Daddy would know to stay quiet. Then she handed the box and the datastock to him. His eyes opened big when he saw the writing on the paper. He read it. His tears dried. He sniffed snot back into his nose, swallowed. “Bumbo cloth! You mean that will work for real? I did swear say was only drunkenness talking when Maka tell me that thing.”
“What, Daddy?”
He didn’t reply, just looked right through her as though his mind were somewhere else. “Freedom…” he whispered. Then he grabbed her, hugged her tight. “I have to do it, girl.”
“Do what, Daddy?”
“You ever hear people say the only way out is through?”
“No.” She didn’t understand.
Antonio stood, a dithery energy animating his body. “Freedom is the thing, eh? Is freedom me don’t want to lose.” Something lit his face, like relief, like hope. He stood up, squared his shoulders. He activated the box. Tan-Tan heard a burst of too-fast nannysong; a soft, high-pitched whine in her ears, then a fading static. The cell door swung open. “Koo ya! It work! Fooling a house eshu is one thing, but the shift tower? Bless you, Maka.” He reached for Tan-Tan’s hand. “Come. Time for we to do we business.”
They headed briskly down the corridor. “Daddy, where we going?”
“To freedom, child. We going where nobody could tell we what to do. Maka say he will come after, and what the two of we could do in that world, with all we know! You want to come with me, right?”
“Yes, Daddy.” She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t going to make him leave her again. “Mummy could come with we too?”
“Probably later, doux-doux. Hurry now.”
Antonio took them into Courtroom A. Inside it was row after row of uncomfortable-looking seats. They all faced a big chair with a desk. There were two other chairs on either side of the desk.
“That is where the judge does sit,” Antonio said, hustling them past a big chair. “When he pass sentence, the people to deport does go through here.”
Behind the judge’s seat was a door marked TO SHIFT TOWER. DEPORTEES AND DETENTION OFFICERS ONLY BEYOND THIS DOOR. They went through.
“Daddy, let we go home, nuh?”
“Can’t do, sweetness. Quashee dead. Me try to go home and them will pop me. Maka saving my ass, darling. Can’t get out, but I can get through.”
They were in a long, dark cement corridor. Their footsteps rang on the concrete floor like the dead-gong in Cockpit County.
“Daddy, what ‘deportee’ mean?”
“When people do bad things, we does send them away so they can’t hurt nobody else. Killers, rapists… people we don’t know what to do with, and like so.”
“And is which part New Half-Way Tree is?”
Antonio gave a small, tight laugh. “Where? You know what, doux-doux? It right here.” He explained about the dimensional shift, how there were more Toussaints than they could count, existing simultaneously, but each one a little bit different. “We going to a next Toussaint, one we can’t come back from again, nobody know how. It going to be hard to live, no comforts. But I think we can survive. Is a big chance I taking for you, doux-doux.”
All Tan-Tan heard was can’t come back. She imagined deportees walking down this same corridor, hearing their footsteps echoing in this world for the last time, and knowing they would never see home again.
They reached a room marked SHIFT TOWER. They went inside. The room was tall and narrow and the ceiling was so high that it disappeared in the shadows above. In the middle of the room was a tall-tall column with four doors all around it.
“That is how we going,” Antonio said. “That is the half-way tree. You see the four pods?” He pointed to the doors. “We go get inside that one there—just like peas in a pod, right?” He tickled her to make her laugh, but it didn’t work this time. “It will take we in, and point we at New Half-Way Tree, and fling we there like boulderstones from a slingshot.”
Tears started to run down Tan-Tan’s face; she had promised Daddy to be good, but she was scared.
“Don’t frighten, sweetheart; it going to be a nice ride.” His voice shook. He picked her up, took her over to one of the pods, stepped inside. “This is it, Tan-Tan. Pray that it going to work.” Daddy activated the box again. Came another burst of song.
The door to the pod slid soundlessly closed. It was bare inside; just one dim light in the ceiling. Antonio had barely set Tan-Tan down when a wave of nausea swept through her. “Daddy!”
Antonio sat down hard beside her. Tan-Tan felt like a big hand was pressing her down onto the floor of the pod, its fingers stirring up her insides. “My ears block up,” she complained.
“Hold your nose and blow hard,” Antonio said. His voice was trembly. Tan-Tan looked at him. His face was grey with fear. He looked like he wanted to vomit. Her daddy wasn’t supposed to ’fraid nothing.
The first shift wave hit them. For Tan-Tan it was as though her belly was turning inside out, like wearing all her insides on the outside. The air smelt wrong. She clutched Antonio’s hand. A curtain of fog was passing through the pod, rearranging sight, sound. Daddy’s hand felt wrong. Too many fingers, too many joints. Antonio coughed nervously. The wave passed through them and went. Daddy’s hand felt all right again. “We climbing into the Tree for true,” he said.
A next veil swept through them, slow like molasses. Tan-Tan felt as though her tailbone could elongate into a tail, long and bald like a manicou rat’s. Her cries of distress came out like hyena giggles. The tail-tip twitched. She could feel how unfamiliar muscles would move the unfamiliar limb. The thing standing beside her looked more like a man-sized mongoose than her father. He smelt like food, but food she wasn’t supposed to eat. Family. Tan-Tan sobbed and tried to wrap her tail tightly around herself.
But the veil was gone. She had only thought she was a big manicou. Antonio was a man again. He made a little noise in his throat, like a whimper. He skinned up his teeth at her in one big false grin. “That wasn’t so bad, eh, doux-doux?” His voice was high. “We going to a good place.” But under his breath he started to sing,
“That one is a old sailor song,” he mumbled, almost as though he wasn’t talking to Tan-Tan, but just to hear his own voice. “Itanami was a river rapids. People in ships would go through it like we going through dimension veils. Itanami break up plenty vessels, but them long ago people never see power like this half-way tree.”