The Water Wars (13 page)

“Maybe there was a person both the pirates and PELA wanted to visit,” Will said.

“Dr. Tinker?”

Will nodded slowly. “Environmentalists don’t care much for water explorers.”

“But why would they blow the dam?”

Will wrinkled his nose, but before he could respond, the hover-carrier slowed, then came to a gentle rest on something firm. I could hear the crunch of earth and rock. I looked at Will, and he signaled for me to be quiet. He stood, and with my help he inched the desalinator closer to the door. His leg was bleeding again, but he didn’t notice. Instead he flipped a switch on the machine and took a hose in his hand. The machine started humming quietly and gave off a smell like two rocks cracked together. Will and I crouched in the darkness, silent except for the sound of our breathing. We stood for what seemed like an hour. I thought my legs would give out. My toes ached, and the scratches in my hands were inflamed. I couldn’t imagine what Will must be feeling. The pain was nearly unearthly.

Then outside we heard men talking.

“They don’t care about the doctor,” said a man’s voice.

“And the children?”

“It’s good money for the mines.”

“Shame.”

“Not our problem.”

Someone fiddled with the locks, and then the door creaked open. Sunlight streamed into the cargo hold like a bouquet of sharp needles. A man stepped into the doorway, blocking the sun. It took him a moment to adjust to the darkness, and in that space, quick as a sand fly, Will sprang.

The man screamed and fell backward into the dirt.

R
un, Will, run!” I screamed.

Will stood in the open doorway of the cargo hold, shooting hot steam over the prone bodies of two guards. It was as if he were frozen, unable to move. Then he snapped out of it and let me help him out of the truck.

“Quick, they’ll be here in a second,” I said.

“I can’t run.”

“I’ll help you.”

Will shook his head. “The carrier. We can drive it.”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

“I do,” he insisted.

Even if Will could drive with his injured leg, there was a big difference between steering a rundown electric car and a hydrogen-fueled hovercraft capable of going several hundred kilometers an hour. On the other hand, I knew it was our only real chance. If we evaded the environmentalists, we still wouldn’t get far on the sand. The carrier gave us a fighting chance of escape. As for the border, we would just have to deal with it when we reached it.
If
we reached it.

I helped Will limp to the front of the carrier, averting my eyes from the burned bodies of the two guards by the rear door. There were three other carriers about two hundred meters distant, and men hustled about, unloading supplies and equipment. No one had noticed us yet, but our absence wouldn’t go undetected for long.

Will pulled himself into the driver’s seat, and I swung around to the other side of the front cab. The instrument panel was complicated, packed with levers and switches. There was no steering wheel; just two paddles thick with buttons. It didn’t look anything like our father’s car. Will flipped a switch on the front panel, but nothing happened; then he pushed another one, and the panel lit up.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

“I know,” said Will, sounding annoyed.

“They could shoot us.”

“Not if they want their desalinator.”

Will was right. If PELA destroyed the carrier, they would destroy the desalinator and all the weapons in the hold. They might be able to replace the weapons, but a portable desalinator was extremely rare and would literally keep them alive. Nasri and his men would think twice before risking its loss. They didn’t know, of course, that Will had already dismantled it.

The engine made a whirring noise that sounded promising. Then the carrier lurched forward a couple meters and stopped suddenly with a force that threw me to the floor.

“Sorry,” said Will. “Buckle up.”

I brushed myself off, and this time I buckled myself into the passenger seat. Will flipped a couple switches and gently squeezed both paddles. The hover-carrier lifted into the air, hovering about a meter above the ground.

“Now what?” I asked.

Will pulled back on one paddle while pushing the other forward, and the carrier rotated slowly in a circle. Then he reversed direction, and the carrier spun the other way. “Just like Death Racer,” he said. When he brought the paddles back to the middle, the carrier stopped spinning and hovered above the ground. “Cool,” he said.

Just then a man emerged from one of the other carriers. He was tall, with white hair that stood straight up, and he wore a scientist’s white lab coat. Nasri followed closely behind him. The two men walked about ten meters, and then Nasri withdrew something from his pocket and waved it at the man.

“He’s got a gun,” I said.

The first man stopped, and Nasri walked two steps closer to him, leveling the gun at his back. The man turned, faced Nasri, and bowed his head toward the ground.

“It’s Dr. Tinker,” I said.

“I see him.”

“They’re going to kill him!”

Nasri stood before Dr. Tinker, his gun arm extended. I couldn’t believe it, but it really did appear that Nasri was going to shoot the doctor in cold blood. “Will!” I shouted.

The hover-carrier bolted forward, pressing me back into my seat. Nasri looked up at the same time, momentarily perplexed by the carrier bearing down on him. He stumbled backward just as the carrier stopped. “Get him!” Will shouted to me.

Will had positioned us between Nasri and Dr. Tinker, with the rear cargo door facing the doctor. Through the front viewscreen I could see Nasri looking at us, his eyes turning into slits that promised violence. I knew I had only a handful of seconds before he acted.

I dashed to the back of the carrier and flung open the doors. Dr. Tinker was still looking down as if he expected to be shot. “Quick, into the truck!” I called. He looked up but didn’t move, and I extended an arm. “Get in! Get in!”

He moved as if in a daze and grasped my hand as if unsure what he was holding. When he took his first steps into the carrier, I heard a pistol shot, and then Nasri appeared around the corner. He charged at me, raising his arm to fire a second shot. I shut my eyes. But the shot never came. Instead I heard Nasri scream, and I opened my eyes to see Will spraying him with hot steam from the desalinator. “The doors, Vera!”

I slammed the cargo doors shut while Will scrambled back into the driver’s seat. We took off with a jolt that sent both Dr. Tinker and me to the floor. But I didn’t mind. We weren’t dead. In the bulletproof hover-carrier, moving at two hundred kilometers an hour, it would be difficult for Nasri to hurt us.

I helped Dr. Tinker into his seat. He let me fasten his buckle and adjust the headrest.

“Who are you?” he asked when I was seated.

“Who are
you?
” asked Will, turning slightly from the driver’s seat.

“Doctor Augustus Tinker. Hydrologist.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’m Vera. And this is my brother, Will.”

Dr. Tinker looked at us as if I had just told him Will and I were Martians come down to perform experiments on his brain.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” I added.

The hover-carrier dipped suddenly in the air, and Dr. Tinker’s head jerked forward then banged backward against the headrest.

“Sorry,” said Will.

“My brother’s never driven a hover-carrier,” I explained.

“I’m doing a pretty good job.” said Will sullenly. “Considering.”

“But
who
are you?” Dr. Tinker repeated.

I told him our names again, and said we had been kidnapped by pirates, then by PELA, taken to Minnesota and then into Canada, and had escaped when Will rewired the portable desalinator. “We were trying to find Kai,” I explained.

“Kai?”

“You know, the boy whose father works with you. The driller.”

“Rikkai Smith?”

Will raised an eyebrow. “
Rikkai?
” he repeated.

“Tall, blond hair, about Will’s age?” I asked.

The doctor nodded. “His father Driesen and I have been friends since before the Great Panic. But what made you think he was with me?”

“It’s what the pirates said. They were coming to find you.”

Dr. Tinker sniffed. “Instead those PELA thugs found me first.”

I considered this. “What did they want from you?”

“The same thing the pirates wanted.”

“Water,” I said.

“Yes. Everyone wants water.”

“But not everyone knows where to find it.”

“Driesen has a special talent,” said Tinker.

“Kai told us.”

Dr. Tinker looked at me with a puzzled expression, as if he didn’t understand what I had said. But his mouth was a thin, grim line, like a man who knew exactly what I meant. “What did he tell you?” he asked.

“A secret river with plenty of water, and no one has to get sick or fight anymore.”

“Is it true?” asked Will.

But the doctor was silent and wouldn’t say anything else. The hover-carrier sped over the ground, leaving the environmentalists behind. Will was getting the hang of driving now, and the ride was smooth and quick. Outside, the desert zipped past in a blur of sand and rock, with no green to be seen. Whatever water the Canadians owned, they had diverted it from this rocky and forlorn area.

“Do you have a plan to cross the border?” asked Dr. Tinker.

“Of course we do,” I said. I looked at Will, wondering if he did. The hover-carrier was fast, but I doubted it could outrace border interceptors. For the first time, I also noted the fuel gauge was dangerously close to empty. This explained why the environmentalists had stopped before reaching their destination. But Will drove like it didn’t matter.

“Those environmentalists were going to kill you,” I said to Dr. Tinker.

“Yes,” he said.

“You’re lucky we found you.”

“If we get across the border, I will see to it that you are adequately compensated.”

“We’ll get across,” Will interjected.

Dr. Tinker did not sound like a man who was grateful his life had been saved. He seemed weary and slightly peeved, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a game or favorite wi-cast.

“Did you work at the dam?” I asked.

“I worked at the laboratory powered by the dam.” He explained that the research lab was in a different location than the turbines. It reduced the chances of sabotage.

“A lot of good that did,” said Will.

The doctor nodded. “We knew it was vulnerable. But we thought security was adequate.”

“Is that where you met Kai?” I asked.

“I’ve known Driesen for years, as I’ve explained.”

“Were they visiting you?”

Dr. Tinker allowed himself a smile. He looked a little bit like a gnome, his hooked nose splitting his grin in half. “You’ll not get any more information from me. These days even children are spies.”

“Uh-oh,” said Will. “Trouble.”

“What?”

“We’re out of fuel.”

Indeed the carrier was slowing, and the ride was getting bumpier. One of the engines had quit, and the carrier listed to the right.

“Was this part of your plan too?” asked Dr. Tinker.

Will fought for control as we veered off the road. “Hold on,” he said.

The carrier hit the ground with a bone-rattling thump. It threw me hard against the seat, then snapped my head back against the headrest. But it was nothing next to the earsplitting shriek as the carrier’s bottom raked against the rocks.

“Wheels down, Will!” I shouted.

“They
are
down!”

We spun in a grinding arc, the shredding, screeching sound of metal against rock like a cacophonous symphony. Finally we came to a halt. There was a ragged gash where a side panel had been ripped open. Dust motes danced in the shards of sunlight that streamed through the gap.

“Well, I don’t think we’ll be doing much more driving,” Dr. Tinker muttered.

Will looked at him sourly, then unbuckled his seat belt.

“Where do you think we can find some fuel?” I asked.

“I don’t know!” Will snapped angrily. “What do I look like, a hydrogen diviner?”

“Now children,” said Dr. Tinker.

Will slammed shut the carrier door, leaving me behind with Dr. Tinker.

“He’s not really angry,” I explained. “We’ve been through a lot.”

“Remarkable. Did your parents recruit you?”

I wasn’t going to waste breath trying to convince Dr. Tinker we weren’t spies. He didn’t intend to give us more information anyway, and I liked thinking of myself as a spy.

The door banged open, and Will jumped backed into the driver’s seat. “They’re coming!”