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going to the meat market with the Shark People until the village was empty.
Tuck typed in SEPIE in the FIND field. An X had been placed in all the
organ categories except kidney. There he found an H and a date. H? Har-
vested. The date was the day they harvested it.
He typed in PARDEE, JEFFERSON. No  x s in any of the columns, but two
H s under heart and lungs. Of course the other organs weren t marked.
They d been donated to the sharks and were no longer available. There
was nothing under SOMMERS, JAMES. That too made sense. How would
they get the organs to Japan without a pilot. Tuck wished he d gotten the
little blind boy s name. He couldn t take the time to scroll though all three
hundred or so names looking for missing corneas. He typed in CASE,
TUCKER. There were H s marked under the heart and lung category. The
harvest date was today.
 You fuckers, he said. There was a shuffling in the back room and he
stood so quickly the chair rolled back and banged into a cabinet on the
other side of the office. The database was still up on
Island of the Sequined Love Nun / 269
the screen. Tuck reached out and punched the button on the monitor. It
clicked off as Mato came through the door.
 What are you guys doing here? Tuck said.
Mato pulled up. He seemed confused. He was supposed to be doing the
yelling.
 We re flying tonight, Tuck said.  Do you guys have the plane fueled
up?
Mato shook his head.  Then get on it. I wondered where you were.
Mato just looked at him.
 Go! Tuck said.  Now!
Mato started to slink toward the door, obviously not comfortable with
leaving Tuck in the clinic. Another guard came into the office and when
Mato looked up, Tuck snatched his paper and pencil from the desk. He
dropped the pencil and when he bent to pick it up, he hit the main power
switch on the computer. The computer would reboot when turned on and
the doctor would only know that it had been turned off. He d never suspect
that someone had been into the donor files.
 Let s go, you guys.
Tuck pushed past Mato out the office door, shoving the paper in his
pocket as he went.
Tuck made quite a show of the preflight on the Lear, demanding three
times that the guard with access to the key to the main power cutoff turn
it on so he could check out the plane. The guard wasn t buying it. He walked
away from Tuck snickering. Tuck checked under the instrument panel.
Maybe there would be some obvious way to hot-wire the switch. He d
been lucky with the computer. The switch and all the wires leading into it
were covered by a steel case. He couldn t get into it with a blowtorch, and
frankly, he had no idea which wires did what. It probably wasn t even a
simple switch, but a relay that lead to another switch. There d be no way
to wire around it.
He left the hangar and went back to his bungalow. Unless he found some
way to get off the island, he was going to be short a couple of lungs and a
heart come midnight. Beth would have at least one guard on the plane with
her, probably two, given the circumstances. And he had no doubt that
she d shoot him in the crotch and
270 / Christopher Moore
make him fly to Japan anyway. There had to be another way. Like a boat.
Kimi s boat. Didn t these guys travel thousands of miles over the Pacific
in canoes like that? What could the doc do? He d been so careful about
safeguarding the island that the guards didn t even have a boat to chase
him with.
Tuck put on his shorts and took his fins and mask to the bathroom. He
knotted the ends of his trouser legs and started filling them with supplies.
A shirt, a light jacket, some disinfectant, sunscreen, a short kitchen knife.
He found a small jar of sugar in the kitchen, dumped the sugar into the
sink, and filled the jar with matches and Band-Aids. When he was ready
to seal it, he saw the slip of paper he d written on in the office sticking from
the pocket of the trousers and shoved it into the jar as an afterthought. He
topped off the pants bag with a pair of sneakers, then pulled the webbed
belt tight to cinch it all up. He could swim with the pants legs like water
wings. The wet clothing would get heavy, but not until he hit the beach on
the far side of the minefield. To Tuck s way of thinking, once he was past
the minefield he was halfway there. Then all he had to do was convince
the old cannibal to give him the canoe, enough food and water to get
somewhere, and Kimi to navigate. Where in the hell would they go? Yap?
Guam?
One step at a time. First he had to get out of the compound. He checked
the guards positions. Leaning out the window, he could see three no,
four at the hangar. He waited. He d never tried to make the swim while
it was still light. They d be able to see him in the water from as far away [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]