Authors: Michael Grant
The Twins for their part could now see the ship through the plexiglass canopy. It couldn’t be mistaken for any other ship, there were
few such LNG carriers: four huge spheres that looked like they’d
been dropped into an oversize canoe. Two of the spheres actually
carried liquified natural gas. This was the brilliant coup that allowed
this Doll Ship—the second vessel to carry that title—to travel the
world unsuspected and unmolested.
This Doll Ship could travel from one LNG port to the next, take
on LNG in Bontang, Indonesia, and carry it to Punta Guayanilla,
Puerto Rico, or to Kochi, India. And no one ever asked why they
were here or there. No one from customs ever asked to look inside the
tanks. Why would they? The various sensors all showed the expected
readings.
What, you want to stick your head into a vat of supercooled,
highly volatile gas?
No, you don’t.
You really don’t, Mr Customs Inspector.
“We’re going to crash,” Benjamin muttered. “Charles and Benjamin Armstrong dead trying to reach their dolls.”
“Why don’t you shut up?” Charles snapped. The helicopter was
pitching and vibrating as the rotor hit pockets of vacuum where the
blades chewed at nothing.
The helicopter landing pad was aft, behind the superstructure
where the crew lived. The crew were not all wired, in fact most were
not. It wasn’t necessary. They didn’t need to believe, not yet, they
needed only to be paid. Well paid and threatened.
Charles considered calling it off: they couldn’t very well be killed
in a fiery crash when they were so close to making major strides in
their work. Ah, that would be painful irony, wouldn’t it? To have
control, or something very like control, over the heads of the world’s
most powerful nations, and then to die because a landing skid caught
and pitched them into the sea?
Then those skids hit the deck with a frightening impact.
“Ah!” Charles cried out.
But now the whine of the rotors died, and crewmen in bright yellow slickers rushed out to attach cables even as the clouds dumped
the rain.
Two crewmen appeared with umbrellas. They opened the helicopter door. There was a gust of cold, wet air, and suddenly the noise
of the turbines and the thwap-thwap of the rotors were replaced by
the rush of the wind and the thrum of the ship’s engines.
With Min’s help, they climbed awkwardly down the steps,
dragging the almost useless third leg, swinging side to side in their
awkward way.
A crewman blanched and looked away.
“Get that man out of our sight!” Benjamin yelled.
The crewman looked relieved when the captain tapped him on
the shoulder and jerked his head to indicate that the indiscreet lad
should find somewhere else to be.
An umbrella shielded the twins’ heads, but cold rain drove
against their legs.
“Thank you for having us, Captain Gepfner,” Charles said cordially.
“We are honored.” The captain was a gray-bearded man with
haunted eyes and the red nose of an alcoholic. He managed a bow of
sorts. His first officer was indifferent, a gray-eyed American named
Osman who stared past the Twins.
The Twins sank gratefully into the golf cart. Captain Gepfner
personally fastened the clear plastic tarp that kept the rain at bay.
Ling was with them. The AmericaStrong security man, Altoona, was
not—seasickness had driven him to the railing to throw up.
Charles wondered whether the ship would be able to make contact with their assistant back on shore. It was vital to keep in touch
with New York and their many other offices and facilities around the
world. Jindal was a tool of limited use, and Burnofsky …Well, how
could you ever totally trust a degenerate genius?
But though it was important to stay in touch, it was not as important as simply being able to touch. That was what Charles craved
most. Benjamin was different: he enjoyed the sense of power. But for
Charles the vital importance of the Doll Ship was that it allowed him
to touch another human being. To be touched in return.
Hand on hand. Finger on skin. He was suddenly almost nauseous
with desire for human touch.
He had rarely touched another human being. And only on the
Doll Ship could he touch without seeing that look of terror and revulsion in her eyes.
Her eyes. In his innermost thoughts it was always a her, a woman,
who would recoil in horror. Many had.
Benjamin became enraged when that happened, when they
looked that way at him, when they swallowed hard and drew back.
Sometimes they fainted.
Sometimes they cried.
Screamed.
Vomited.
The Morgenstein twins, what beauties they had been, those two,
and yet they really hadn’t known how to behave. The vomiting, that
had been the worst of it.
That’s what had pushed Benjamin over the edge. It had been
Benjamin’s idea to have those two pitying, puking little rich girls kidnapped and taken to the first Doll Ship.
Twins. They should have been nicer. They should have had at
least some sympathy.
Well, they hadn’t been twins like him and Benjamin, had they?
No, they were the sort of twins people thought were cute. Leering
boys fantasized about them. Rich young men in expensive clothing
courted them.
But Benjamin had taught the Morgenstein twins a lesson. Charles
had tried to stop him, but there was no denying the justice in Benjamin’s plan.
Was there?
So pretty? So cute? Having fun being a pretty, rich twin, are you,
Sylvie and Sophie? Well, welcome to our world, girls. It’s amazing
what a motivated surgeon can do.
“You’re thinking of them, aren’t you?” Benjamin asked suddenly.
It would be silly to deny it. Charles said nothing.
“Remember how they cried when they woke up?” Benjamin
asked.
Charles remembered. “None of that will be necessary now, Benjamin,” Charles said. “That was all left behind when the first Doll
Ship went down. There will be women here who want us. Who will
be honored—”
“That McLure girl,” Benjamin interrupted. “She heard our cries.
It would be only justice if we heard hers.”
“None of that,” Charles repeated sharply. “These are our people
aboard this ship. We must treat them well. You know that. They are
one with us.”
The golf cart was driven by one of the ship’s crew. It wasn’t a long
ride, but out here on a cold, pitching deck there was no chance that
the Twins could manage the walk without falling.
They passed along the starboard side of the ship heading aft.
They traveled to the second sphere. From the outside it was nothing
but a giant white-painted beach ball, but Charles and Benjamin knew
what was inside.
A set of metal steps ascended from the deck up to the catwalk that
went along the tops of the domes. Pipes ran alongside, connecting
the tanks for loading and unloading, for drawing away the boiled-off
LNG that powered the ship’s engines.
A motorized chair lift ascended alongside the stairs. It was a
specialized piece of equipment, a sort of cagelike metal bench that
climbed—a bit like the first rise of a roller coaster, with an audible
whir and clank.
It stayed level as they rose and afforded them a view of the wide,
white-topped sea. Unfortunately the tarp cover wasn’t very effective
at keeping out the rain, and they were fairly drenched by the time
they reached the top.
Up there, at the top, two ship’s officers waited, wearing slickers,
inured to the cold and wet, rolling easily with the swell.
Mr Armstrong, and Mr Armstrong,” the second mate, Dragoslav
said. He offered both his hands to shake, and each took one, awkwardly.
Human touch.
The top of the dome was a cunningly concealed hatch raised by
motors from within. A gust of warm air, smelling of human bodies
and the singed smell of metal, rose as the lid came off.
Through the hatch then appeared a sort of elevator, though it was
open and really little more than a bare-bones balcony. The Twins hobbled aboard it. Ling guided them but then stepped back: their grand
arrival must be by themselves alone. It swayed a little under their feet,
and when the ship hit a trough, Benjamin yelped out a curse.
The platform began to descend, running down the central pillar,
down into Benjaminia.
They would appear to those below to be descending from the
painted sky.
Charles could not see his brother’s face, but he sensed he was at
last relaxing. The chafed skin that connected their faces was drawn
tight by Benjamin’s growing grin.
The whole of it came into view as they slowly, majestically,
descended from the sky. The platforms that ran around the inside of
the sphere were bedecked with hand-made and thus authentic banners welcoming the Great Ones.
welcome to benjaminia!
you are home!
thanks you, charles and benjamin!
The English on that last one was a bit off, maybe, but it was a
very international assortment of people. You could hear it in the odd
inflections as voices rose up from below them, singing. Singing the
official song of Benjaminia.
It was a perkier, more upbeat version of the old Beatles song,
“Julia.”
All of what I say is magical.
But I say it for I love you . . .
Ben-ja-min.
There were people on each level waving Nexus Humanus flags and
yelling their lungs out. It brought a tear to Charles’s eye. Men, women,
young women, all looking at the Twins with acceptance. And more
than acceptance: wonder, joy. Like teenagers gazing at rock stars.
Now Charles’s own smile broke out. “Hah,” he said. Then again,
a chuckle. “Hah.”
He was looking at other people, face-to-face, albeit from a distance. Seeing them and being seen in return. Not cowed employees,
not the hired AmericaStrong thugs whose tolerance and impassivity
was bought with dollars and pounds and euros. Not the disdain of the
twitchers, or the seething, barely concealed contempt of Burnofsky.
Here was true acceptance. Here was adoration.
Here was love.
They descended, and at last the platform was nearing the commons floor, where the bulk of Benjaminia’s happy residents waited,
arms upraised, waving.
Charles searched each face, winked at some he recognized, raised
a hand slightly to old friends. Or at least people who thought of themselves as old friends, though none of the villagers on this second Doll
Ship had been here longer than two years, and in that time the Twins
had been able to visit on only three occasions.
Then… a new face. A girl. Tall, but obviously young. Pretty. A
beauty, even, maybe, though the freckles across her nose made him
think of . . .
And then her eyes widened.
Her mouth formed an O, and the girl with Sadie McLure’s freckles screamed.
“We’re going,” Nijinsky announced as soon as Plath walked in and
tossed him his ChapStick. “Pack up.”
“What do you mean we’re—” Plath demanded.
“We’re out of here, Washington cell was wiped out yesterday.
Killed. Lear just told me, or maybe he just found out, in any case …
There’s a single survivor.” His face was the color of cigarette ashes.
“Grab whatever gear you have. You two are on a plane. I’m going to
drive down with Wilkes and Anya.”
Keats walked into the room, and Plath handed him a Snickers bar
she’d picked up at the drugstore. He took it, made a dubious face, and
stuck it in his jacket pocket. “What about Vincent?” he asked Nijinsky. “You’re not leaving him . . .” A terrible thought occurred to him.
“Tell me Caligula is not coming for Vincent.”
Nijinsky wiped his mouth with his hand, a nervous gesture. He
was a wreck; that was plain to see. “No. Lear has left that decision up
to me.”
“Up to you?” Plath asked, not meaning to sound incredulous.
“Up to me, that’s right, up to me,” Nijinsky snapped. “I’m taking
Vincent with us. We’re going to grow some new-generation biots and
try a deep wire on Vincent. If that works . . .”
“If it works he lives …and if it doesn’t?”
“Do me a favor,” Nijinsky interrupted. “Don’t lecture me. And
don’t give me your outrage, I have no time for your outrage. Pack.
Now. This place could be hit next.”
Keats said, “If this deep-wire thing works on Vincent, it could
work on Al …on Kerouac. My brother.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Nijinsky said. “Let’s just get out
of here alive.”
“He means don’t start hoping,” Wilkes said sourly. “We’re BZRK.
We don’t do hope. You know who had hope?”
Nijinsky gritted his teeth. Wilkes came right up to him, her face
up next to his neck. “Ophelia. She had hope.”
“I didn’t order that, goddamnit, Wilkes!”
“Nah, but you would, right? Because you’ll do whatever it takes to
impress Lear. Right?”
But Plath had a different take. She wondered why Lear would
have let Nijinksy decide Vincent’s fate, but not Ophelia’s. Was Nijinsky lying?
It would also be forgotten. The story was horrific. Ghastly. It would
have been unbelievable but for the missing arm and the terrible scars.
What the Armstrongs had done to that girl . . .
Sophie Morgenstein confirmed that the Doll Ship had indeed
sunk in the South Atlantic, and that her sister had died. She herself
had almost bled to death.
Valquist used a mapping app to lay out what she had gathered from Morgenstein’s account of her fellow passengers. Thus far
Valquist had correlated five coastline kidnappings or disappearances.
Sincheng, Taiwan. Funakoshi Bay, Japan. Pismo Beach, California.
Ensenada, Mexico. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
But of course in reality there were probably far more. Sophie
Morgenstein estimated the captive population of the Doll Ship as over
a hundred, not counting crew, guards, and the despicable medical
personnel who used drugs and even lobotomization to create a docile
population.
Her recitation had left Pia shaken. She was not unaware of human
cruelty and depravity, but this was monstrous. Even now her hands
trembled with suppressed fury.
Pia entered the data into the map and calculated the cruise times
between her five known points. Yes, a ship moving at, say, fourteen
knots, could do it quite handily.
Then she noticed something. The number of unexplained coastal
disappearances did not appear to decline following the sinking of the
Doll Ship.
Valquist frowned and then rubbed the frown away with her fingertips. She took the short walk to the coffee room, made a cup of
Nespresso, and came back to her data.
Two women missing from Freeport, Texas. A girl missing near
Cameron Parrish, Louisiana. Panama City, Florida. Punta Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, a teenager. Pampa Melchorita, Peru. Alaska.
Vladivostok. Northern Japan, quite recently.
Okinawa just a little over a week ago, a Japanese American girl.
Fighting down a growing excitement, Valquist began plotting the
places out on Google Earth. Yes, sailing times worked if you assumed
a slightly greater speed of fifteen knots.
She paused, looking at the satellite imagery of Point Lookout.
Something just north of there: a series of white dots.
She zoomed in closer. Tanks of some kind.
She checked the location of the tanks: Dominion Cove, it was
called. A liquified natural gas port.
She immediately Googled all the more recent kidnapping reports
that fit the profile. She had eleven in all. Of those, six were within
close range of a liquified natural gas facility.
A chill went up her spine.
That was not coincidence.
There was a second Doll Ship.
She rechecked her data, took a deep breath, and burst into the
office of her supervisor, Georg Gronholm.
“I need Naval Intelligence.”
Georg shrugged. “I can introduce you to—”
“Not ours. I need NATO. I have a friend with the Royal Navy.”
“So? Call this friend.”
Valquist shook her head. “It’s not the sort of thing for a phone
call. He happens to be in Hong Kong. I need to fly there. Immediately.
On the next flight. Now.”