“They took you last night, princess. I just got here today myself.”
“So I’ve only been out one day. Then I’m sure I’m not far from home!”
“Where are you, Mandy? Just tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you. I’ll bring every policeman I can find between here and wherever you are.”
“No, Uncle Jake. I’m … I’m afraid what might happen if these people think they’ve lost their last chance to manipulate you. If they see a bunch of police cars driving up, they might move me or … they might do something else. You have to come get me by yourself, Uncle Jake. You have to try. I think you can do it. I don’t know what else to do.”
“If that’s what you think’s best, Mandy, then that’s what I’ll do. Now tell me how to get to you.”
“I can’t tell you for sure, Uncle Jake. I’m on the coast somewhere, in a bathroom three or four stories off the ground. My room faces the intercoastal waterway; you know, the ship canal? It’s a fancy room, but I don’t think it’s a hotel. I can see the water and the moon and ships moving around. There are lots of big pipes and things all over the place, and big docks with one cargo ship. It’s got to be a plant of some kind. You don’t feel very far away, Uncle Jake.”
“Neither do you, princess. Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of there. Then we’ll send the police in for these evil people, after you’re safe and away from them.”
“Be very careful, Uncle Jake.”
“I will, Mandy. They won’t be expecting me. I’ll bet they plan on contacting me in the morning, to tell me they have you and to warn me I’d better cooperate. I have to come get you now, before they find out I’m not here anymore. I’m sure they know I’m here.” He was dressing silently, pulling on worn socks, tying his shoes.
“That’s right, I almost forgot. They have the house bugged, Uncle Jake, so I’m sure they have somebody watching it, too.”
“I’ll go out the back window,” he told her. “I know that window well. You’ve helped me look out through it a lot over the past ten years.” He smiled, wondering if she was able to perceive his feelings if not his actual expression. “I’ve gotten real good at going out windows lately.”
“If you can get away from the house without anyone seeing you, you should be okay, Uncle Jake. Then you come and get me and we’ll sneak out of here and go to the police. “We’ll… we’ll have to tell them everything, Uncle Jake. About you and me, I mean, or they’ll never believe us.”
“I know, princess. I didn’t think we could keep our secret forever.”
“How are mom and dad?” Little girl thoughts and feelings now, the fear beginning to overwhelm the rational, brilliant teenager.
“Scared for you, like you’d expect,” he thought back at her. “They don’t know what’s happened to you or why, and I can hardly wake them up and tell them, can I?”
“No. Come and get me out of here, Uncle Jake, and we’ll go to the police and everything will be alright again. Even if we do have to give away our secret.”
“I can get out of the house without them seeing me,” he said as he buttoned his shirt, “but how am I going to get to you? Until they have me they’re going to be watching the bus station and the highway. I can’t take your parent’s car because they’d see me right away. And if they’re watching the roads I can’t hitch a ride. Princess, I can … I can feel where you are, but it’s much too far for me to walk.”
“I know, Uncle Jake. I’m right on the waterway. Go out behind the house and turn north. A couple of blocks up the seawall there’s a small floating dock where everybody in the neighborhood keeps their private boats. Most everybody we know has a rowboat or something to fish from. Except dad. He doesn’t like to go fishing for fun. Maybe you can find one you can start. You have to, Uncle Jake.”
“Don’t worry, little girl,” he thought. “I’ll find something. Been a lot of years since I jumped an ignition.”
“Maybe you won’t have to do that, Uncle Jake. This isn’t Los Angeles. People don’t lock things up around here the way they do in big cities.”
“I hope you’re right, princess. I’m ready now.” He stood there in the dark room, digesting her thoughts, orienting himself to something inexplicable yet terribly real. It wasn’t that difficult. He’d been orienting his mind to hers for years. She was … that way.
He stepped toward the window, the window he’d looked out of so many times while lying on his bed back in Riverside. It opened easily and he cautiously surveyed the narrow back yard and the seawall beyond. There was no one in sight. Of course, if there was someone out there who did this for a living and he didn’t want to be seen, it was unlikely Jake would be able to spot him.
Hope for the best rather than the worst, he told himself. A light breeze drifted in off the bay, cooling him. From down the hall came the light sleeping sounds of Wendy and Arriaga. He put a leg over the sill, then the other, and pushed off.
No one confronted him as he crept toward the seawall, using bushes and trees for cover. If I’d been in the army instead of the shipyards, I’d know how to do this, he thought. But there was no reason for them to bother watching the back of the house, no reason for them to expect Jake to slip out in the middle of the night.
He reached the seawall, had a last look at the house, then dropped gratefully over the rocks. So far his heart wasn’t giving him any trouble. Right now he had too much to think about to get dangerously tense. As long as he didn’t have to do any hundred-yard sprints, he should be okay. If not, his medicine rested in his breast pocket, ready to work its chemical magic on his damaged chest.
Using the seawall for cover he started northward along the yard-wide strip of sand and gravel. It hid him completely from any landward observers. Ten minutes later he reached the floating dock Amanda had described, a flat square built of old timbers and planks. Old automobile tires lined its sides and pleasure craft bobbed against it like piglets nursing a sow. The slap-slap of water against boat hulls was a relaxing sound in the night.
The first two boats he boarded were secured as tightly as any low rider you might find parked on an East Los Angeles street, but the third had keys lying on the floor in front of the pilot’s chair. He’d never driven a boat before. A careful inspection of the controls and instruments revealed nothing incomprehensible, however, and he was sure he could manage it.
Actually, he had a harder time figuring out how to untie the lines holding it to the dock than how to start the engine. He just hoped that the big house nearby wasn’t the home of the boat’s owner.
The engine rumbled to life when he turned the key in the ignition. It wasn’t much different from driving a car, though he bumped up against the dock twice before figuring out how to put the inboard into reverse. A moment more and he was crawling out into the bay. The waters were calm and the new sensation was a pleasant one. No hint of seasickness. Not yet, anyway. Experimentation with the controls and switches activated the running lights and a single bright forward-facing searchlight.
“That’s it, Uncle Jake.” Amanda had never left him completely. She’d simply thought silly nonsense thoughts while he’d worked his way to the boat. “I can feel where you are. It’s a lot easier than it was when you were in California.”
“I’m a lot closer, princess.”
“Start… start in a big circle. Head north and make a curve back southward.”
“Whatever you say, Mandy.” He turned the wheel, his confidence intensifying the longer he handled the boat. If the circumstances surrounding this nocturnal excursion weren’t so desperate, this could be fun.
“No, wait, that doesn’t feel right,” she whispered at him. “Turn north again.” Obediently he swung the inboard around, enjoying its responsiveness as it pivoted in the water. “That’s better, that’s better. You’re coming toward me, Uncle Jake. I know you are. I’ll be … I’ll be on your port… your left side.”
“I know which way port is,” he thought back at her. “Maybe I’ve never driven a boat before, but I sure built enough of them.”
She went back to the nonsense talk again, the rhymes, the monotonous reciting that served not to communicate but to guide him. Drugged, he thought. No wonder she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him these past days. The more he knew of the people who wanted to make a guinea pig out of him, the less compassion he could muster for them.
How strange to feel some genuine hate for a change! Maybe he’d been too nice all his life. He sighed. A little late to go back and change seventy years of decision-making. Now he wanted only one thing: to be rid of these people once and for all and to make sure they never bothered his grandniece or her family ever again.
He didn’t care that much about himself. If someone else wanted to run some tests on him, like the government, maybe he’d let them. But not these people, no, not after what they’d done to him and those he loved.
But he was sorry for Mandy. If they revealed their secret to the authorities, she was the one who would be subjected to a lifetime of testing. But like she’d said, there didn’t seem to be any other way.
He wanted to see some seagulls. Amanda had shown them to him many times. Sensible birds, they were fast asleep in unseen nests. Only an occasional crane flew between the bay and the moon, crying to the night. Excepting such isolated apparitions, it was quiet save for the engine’s steady hum and the splash of water against the boat’s flanks.
