“They tried those a hundred years back,” he said, “and they were a disaster. If you thought a pileup on the Tube was bad, you should see one in a skyscraper. All it took was one person to go a bit slow on the brakes and you had the whole airway piled up halfway through Montesano Tower.”
“Then what kind of world do they want?”
Sparky stared at the floating island of New Texas in the water behind us. “Phoenix wants a revolution. He wants to start over. He wants the Federation to fall.”
I was right—the Lost Boys weren’t just stealing Indigo. It wasn’t about the Indigo at all—it was about war. A war Phoenix was determined to start.
“And Captain Vern?” I asked.
“Vern wants to run. He doesn’t know where, and he doesn’t know how far from Federal waters they could even make it. They can only grow so much food, and the rest of the rations they have to steal from Federal ships or fish from Federal waters. You know what would happen if they fished outside Federal waters…”
I nodded. The gnashing teeth of hungry megalodons were unforgettable.
“But he knows they have to do something. They’ve gotten too big, stolen too much. They’re no longer just a freckle on Chancellor Hackner’s face, but a mole. And moles turn into cancer.”
“What about Bugsy?” I asked. “What was Vern getting at with Bugsy?”
Sparky leaned his head into his hand as Tim yawned, crawled over his shoulder, and seated himself on his lap. “Bugsy joined us three months ago. He was a year younger than you. He wore this pair of brown glasses all the time—called them his spectacles, thought they made him seem more distinguished. And he was always waking up early to watch the sunrise, before going back to sleep. His parents died in a car crash—the Feds told him it was suicide, but he knew better. He met Mila on one of her raids a couple months after their death. He’d been living with an aunt on one of the Suburban Islands, but he’d begged Mila to take him. Said he had to get away from it all.”
People passed on the platform behind us, jumping from boat to boat as they headed to their own lofts for the night. Sadie had told us that the Caravites went to bed earlier than most in the Federation; she said they didn’t want to have to waste the energy on lights after dark. Better to rise and fall with the sun instead.
Sparky stood. “It’s getting late.”
“Did Bugsy ever come on the Caravan?”
Sparky nodded. “Affirmative.”
“And did he have to polish the plates?”
“The first and only time he came, he did. Polished them all by himself, and Captain Vern had a fit. He didn’t want Phoenix taking in any more kids. He thought the Lost Boys were big enough.” Sparky glanced in both directions and then whispered. “I think he figured if we got too big, Phoenix would start the war himself. Vern liked us at the size we were.”
“And then I came along,” I finished.
“Affirmative. You came along, KB. Like clockwork, Bugsy was out and you were in.”
“Tick, tock,” I said, smiling weakly, but feeling sick to my stomach.
We headed back toward the pastry shops—we’d been set up in bunks above them. I was surprised to see Sparky heading for his loft.
“I thought you didn’t sleep? Not with all your Cafetamines…”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but sometimes it’s nice to close my eyes and lie down. Gives the mind a minute to slow down.”
There wasn’t room for us all to bunk together. At least that’s what they told us. I guessed Vern just didn’t want us congregating—probably saw it as scheming in his very midst. So they put us in separate boat lofts, in separate bunks, two by two. Sparky was with Dove, Kindred was with Mila, and I got stuck with Bertha.
She slept with a red mask plastered across her eyes, and her snoring was so loud that, at some points, I could have sworn she’d swallowed a chainsaw.
I wrapped a pillow around my ears, which dulled the snoring to a quiet roar, but it remained a roar nonetheless. At last I gave up on the possibility of sleep, and crawled from my bed and down the stairs.
The cabin’s sole light was cast by a waxing moon’s white tendrils, peeking out from behind a curtain of black clouds. The boat’s wooden floors creaked as I stepped, but the sound was lost beneath the thunder of Bertha’s snores.
I hopped from boat to boat—it was lucky the Caravites left their doors unlocked—jumping through the bakery and then the bazaar. Farther ahead, I saw a stout cylinder standing like a tower—the Captain’s quarters, I guessed, and the Caravan’s locomotive engine of sorts. I wondered if that was where Phoenix slept. It made sense when I thought about it. There, Vern could keep a closer eye on him.
I continued to leap from boat to boat, and as I moved up the line, the rooms grew stranger, the halls wider, the ceilings higher. Wood paneling now ran along the walls. As on the rear boats, the halls here were lined with doors, but these boats lacked windows: there were no pastries or garments on display.
I stopped to examine a door dressed with a beautiful velvet tapestry. Veritas vos liberabit, it declared in gold. I ran my fingers along its letters, and the velvet fabric felt soft beneath my fingers like peach fuzz.
I opened the door, and wandered into a library lined with mahogany shelves too similar to Madam Revleon’s to be a coincidence. Now that I thought about it, the tapestry, too, had seemed familiar—a twin. A lone chair had been pulled from an old desk’s grip, and a narrow slit in the wall—it could hardly be called a window—let in the soft glow of moonlight. My eyes flashed to books sprawled across the desk on their spines. It was beginning to feel like an unattended library was a prerequisite for plotting conspiracies. I grabbed a book from the desk and held it in the thin beam of moonlight.
The cover read: “The Megalodon: a Magnificent, Marvelous, Malevolent Mutation of the Great White” by Bill & Mary Bradbury. Dad’s name had been crossed out with black ink, and Mom’s had been circled in red.
My heart grew tight in my chest, and I leaned against the desk, my head woozy. They’d done something to Mom. They’d circled her name.
Where was I? Who were the Caravites? And what had they done to Mom?
She could be on the boat, I told myself. She could be staying here, on this very boat. The Feds had Charlie—that much I knew for sure—but the Caravites could have Mom. They could’ve gotten to her before the Feds did. That could explain why Phoenix was so eager to have me think her dead: he didn’t want me to find her.
I returned to the hallway, and began opening other doors. Behind one I found a room filled with filing cabinets, behind another I found a public restroom. I opened door after door, and they fluttered on their frames like the heart that beat in my chest.
Then I saw a soft white light, eerily similar to the Daisies in Club 49, slipping from behind a door at the hall’s end. Entering the room, I saw a lone bulb lighting stacks of square packages. I grabbed a package, gently peeled back its wrapper, and found a plastic bubble filled with fluid. I held it up to the bulb; inside the bubble was a small, thin, curved piece of plastic with a blue iris printed on it.
I covered my mouth to stop the screams that swelled in my throat. What was this? Who were these people? What were they trying to do?
The floors creaked—someone was in the hall. I slid shut the door and pressed an ear against it. It looked ornate, but its wood was thin, built light to lessen the weight of a fast ship.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” said a voice I recognized as Vern’s. “There’s certainly no denying there’s a chance—but that’s all it is, a chance and nothing more.”