Nirvana Effect (42 page)

“What are we going to do?” asked Seacrest.  His voice quavered a bit.

“Callista’s with them,” said Edward, as though that answered the question.

“There must be a thousand of ‘em,” said Seacrest.

“Yeah, at least a thousand.”

Seacrest’s silence arrested Edward’s attention.  He turned from watching the advancing villagers.  “What are you gonna do?” Seacrest asked.  “Shoot ‘em all in the bloody head?”

Edward opened his mouth to answer, but stopped as he caught a flash of motion in
his periphery.  He whipped his head around. 

A face hovering over a bush.  Wide eyes.  A tube in his mouth.  A dart.

The dart was practically floating in the air towards Edward.  His own body felt sluggish and unresponsive.  He was trying to make it drop but it was moving so painfully slow.

The trance. 
He was trancing without the drug. 
The danger? 
He didn’t know why.  He didn’t have time to analyze it.  He was trying to make his body drop under the path of that dart.

If I just swing around…
He rotated.  The dart passed.  His hit the ground jarringly.  He lost his concentration.  The world sped fast.  He heard the whiz of another dart and Seacrest’s body hit the ground.  Edward tried to pull himself up but the next dart hit his neck and he was out.

Edward woke up with Tomy peering over him. 
The boy
looked tired but victorious. 
Edward tried to scramble away, but he was tied. 

A club came down on his head.  He
didn’t go
unconscious, but feigned it. 
There
was no advantage
in putting up a
fight
here
.  The Onge would simply club him in the head until he was dead.  He made
his body limp and unresponsive, despite the sickening waves of pain emanating from his
crown
.

He felt
an
Onge pick him up. 

“The other?
”
asked Tomy
.

“I have him,” said another Onge voice.  Edward kept his eyes closed. 
Manassa out-
guessed
me
.
 
He must have posted sentries around the harbor, waiting for Edward to show. 
Edward
wanted to hit himself.  He
might
have spotted the trap had he been
trancing and not so damn tired.

The Onge lifted Edward’s limp form over his shoulders.  Edward
waited for an opportune moment where the
Onge’s
guard might
be
down.  There was no such moment.  They hauled him into a truck and
further
bound his hands and feet.  He didn’t
dare open
his eyes.  He didn’t want his skul
l bashed in.

“Bring him to the bonfire,” instructed Tomy.  “I will soon join you.  Hurry, now.”

Edward heard the tailgate slam shut.  A radio chattered from the front seat.  He didn’t recognize the dialect.
 
Some kind of code.

He almost rolled as the truck accelerated.  He had to force himself to stay slack and not resist the motion.  The firm hands of Onge gripped him and kept him from
shifting
around
too much
.  He knew they wanted their prize
relatively
intact
when they presented him
to their god.

He heard another truck’
s engine pull up as they sped along.

“Is that the white man?”  It was one of the leaders of an Onge clan. 
Edward
recognize
d
his
voice
.

“Yes.  We’r
e bringing him to Manassa.”

“I must have his blood,” yelled the man.  “He killed my b
rothe
r last night and stole his j
eep.  Stop the truck!
”

Edward forced himself to remain motionless.  Every part of him wanted to leap up and plunge over the side of the truck bed.  He knew there was not a chance the Onge would allow him to escape. 
T
he Onge had the lightness
and sheer numbers
, and
those factors
w
ere
more than enough to
contain Edward
. 

“No, brother.  His blood is for Manassa,” yelled the driver
.

Edward heard the click of a gun from the other truck.  “Stop the truck now.  It is my honor.”

Edward heard another click, this time from the cab in front of him.  “Back down,” screamed the driver.  “It is not worth
the anger of Manassa
.  This white man will die soon enough.”

Edward
’s mind
whirred
, figuring
on an escape plan.
His legs were tied, his hands tied
, all quite efficiently.  He
tested them out.  They had no give
.  There was no escape plan. 

“I will remember this, Jurdan.  You will
get what is destined for you!” shouted the intruder. 
Edward heard the other truck pull off.

After about half an
hour, the truck’s tires started to crunch on what sounded like gravel.  Edward could hear the lap of the surf against the shore. 
The beach. 

Once they stopped, an Onge pulled him off the truck and lowered him to the ground.  The pebbles felt cool and rough.  He kept his body limp even as the beach dug into his face. 

Edward listened.  They had turned off the truck’s engine, so it was an easier job.  Not too far away, he heard the mutterings of a crowd, their words indis
tinct but definitely Onge.  Another truck was noisily pulling up from behind him.  Under the sounds of the ocean kissing the island and the hub-bub of the villagers was the constant breath and the sporadic crackle of the bonfire.

He heard something else: the light tap of footsteps that told him another Onge was approaching him
.  He almost risked opening his eyes
, but resisted the urge
.  He felt a syringe burn into his arm, then
stop
quickly. 

The lighter footsteps…Tomy…

He was almost certain it was.  Had he given him the trance drug?  No.

Poison…

Edward popped his eyes open.  Tomy was looking past him, toward the villagers, watching for watchers. 
Edward twisted his body so he could reach the medicine bottle in his pocket.  He twisted off the cap in one smooth motion and the t-pills scattered to the ground.

Tomy reacted by trying to pull him away, trying to hit him, but Edward weighed more than Tomy and was so low to the ground.  His arms and legs were still tied, but he was able gyrated until his mouth could reach one of the pills.  He got it along with a few pebbles; he held them all under his tongue. 

Tomy got in a good blow to Edward’s head.  Edward rolled with it, managing to get another handful of rocks and pills.  Tomy kicked him in the gut.  He kept rolling, shaking his hand until only a pill remained.  He tucked it into the back of his pant waist and stopped his struggle.  Tomy kicked him again for good measure, but it didn’t matter: Edward’s trance had already begun.

He
felt
the poison
in his body, foreign and deadly.  He
reacted instantly with his trance control
, momentarily willing the ci
rculation to stop in his right
arm.  Then he eased the circulation back,
having his blood
avoid the dangerous area
as best he could.  He was lucky Tomy had only stabbed his arm, rather than taking the time to inject it intravenous
. 
Maybe he wanted Edward to last a while.  Managing the poison
took some atten
tion, but Edward figured he would be fine so long as he
was trancing.  He felt the cells dying near the injection. 
Maybe the same drug used
against Tien
.

Tomy gathered the t-pills off the ground and
returned them to
their bottle.  He rustled through Edward’s pockets for any more surprises.

“Bring him to Manassa,” said Tomy.  A couple Onge got out of the truck cab and hefted Edward up by his arms.  He couldn’t really walk with his legs tied but he bounced here and there to keep the weight off his shoulder
blades.

Dawn still hadn’t broken on the coast, but the Onge had erected their own sun on the beach.  The bonfire was massive, framed of three whole tree trunks.  Edward didn’t understand it.  If he were Manassa, he would do nothing to leave a trail.  And yet here was a fire that burned bright as day.  Its remains would serve as a marker for anyone attempting to track them.

No one will try to track them.  No one has a clue.

The villagers were all watching him.  They were turned from the fire and squinting and pointing at him.  Above them all hovered Man
assa, seated at an elevated throne on wooden stilts.

As Edward was carried into the crowd, he couldn’t help but notice the Onge giving him a wide berth.  They backed around and away as he was moved towards Manassa
.

The Onge dumped him face-first before the throne.  He had to twist and take the blow on his shoulder to avoid gashing his face.

He lay with his face in the dirt in an oval of Onge onlookers.  There were hundreds o
f them, the whole tribe watching by the brilliant light of the bonfire
.  Warriors
armed with guns
fo
rmed a wall between the tribe and Edward
.  This was no tribal challenge.  Edward was an enemy.  There would be no chances taken.

Manassa ceremoniously glided down the makeshift stairs of his throne.  Edward took the moment to eye the crowd.  Two pale faces caught his eye.

Callista and Seacrest stood bound behind Manassa’s throne.  Four huge Onge held them them, one posted at each elbow.

Edward studied
Callista
.  Her clothes were ripped.  It
was
blood on her forehead
when he caught glimpse of her at the warehouse, but that was
dried now.  He only glanced at her for a moment, but in the trance it may as well have been an eternity. 

He smiled at her.  It was worth it to get this far.

She
’
d be safe if it weren’t for me. 
She would be dead soon, too - or worse.  That was quite clear
from the way
the
Manassaa
loom
ed
over him.
  His smile evaporated.

He looked for Nockwe. 
The chieftain
was nowhere to be seen.

“A pill,” mused Manassa.
 
“
I suppose you did something to it to make it work
orally, purified it
, perhaps?  I know you’ve been trancing quite a bit in the past
two days.”

Edward needed to wrest control of the situation.  That seemed impossible with hundreds of hostile Onge encircling, but he refused to play on Manassa’s terms.  Manassa
intended
an execution for him, and Edward had to move to change the game.

“No Jesuits?  I didn’t think you’d come alone,” said Manassa.

“Mahanta!” yelled Edward in Onge
.  The crowd hushed.  All that
could be heard was the lap of the ocean against the shore.  It was too quiet, as though the air had been sucked out of the open space and all that was left was vacuum.  “End this.  You know as well as I do that the nectar will only destroy your people.”

Manassa laughed. 
He would milk this public appearance.  It was clear to Edward that if he was willing to create a spectacle, Manassa would
gladly take the opportunity
. 
“You live in the past, my traitorous white servant.  Mahanta is dead.  I no longer inhabit such a corporal form.  And the nectar - you are a snake who speaks lies with forked tongue to send my people to their death.  You care for nothing but your white men, as you have proven with your treachery.  Your word means nothing.  You have taken the blood of my people, white man. 
And you have even tried to steal my powers. 
For that you must die.”

Edward looked
once more
at Callista.  She didn’t look frightened, but rather, determined.

He drew on her strength.

“I CHALLENGE YOU, MANASSA!” Edward shouted
with all his might
.  The
ground
muffled his mouth.  He wasn’t able to pull his head all the way up.  Still, the tribe heard.  There was murmuring, and then silence.  “You are a liar,
” said Edward, adopting the cadence that he’d seen Nockwe use so many times with the Onge crowds,
“
and only Mahanta, a little boy afraid of a white man.”