Part Six
It was a near-perfect copy. A technician from the World Weather Satellite itself could have walked in and not known the difference. They'd never have guessed they were beneath the surface of a tropical island, instead of hovering a hundred miles straight above it, any more than they'd have guessed that all this had been put together by a single man, bent on reminding the world what it owed him.
In fact, there was only one difference between this room and its counterpart on the orbiting platform far above. Villacana's fingers caressed the extra control panel and the button at its centre. He let himself fantasize about pressing this button, sending the room live and taking the weather satellite system back under his control. The fancy brought him pleasure, sending a thrill through a heart and head otherwise devoid of emotion, or almost so.
A niggle of irritation and frustration spoiled the moment, reminding him of why he'd come down here, and why it would be unwise to make his move so soon after the minor problem his test run had encountered. He pulled his hand away from the master switch, moving from the main terminal in the room to one of the lesser consoles that lined its perimeter. These data access points were always live, always tapped into the sealed, EM-shielded fibre optic cable that Villacana had laid in secrecy and at great expense. It was the one luxury he'd allowed himself when moving here, before even the concept of this room had occurred to him. The peasants, fools and illiterates on Dominga and the other islands could put their trust in wireless transmission, radio links and satellite relays if they wanted, but Villacana had been a computer programmer almost since he'd written his first word. He'd spent more than half his life immersed in the sea of meta-information, learning to manipulate it to his own ends. Even when he'd turned his back on the world and its petty vindictiveness, he hadn't been able to sever his link to that world.
He settled into the chair at the console, and within seconds, his eyes and his hands were moving in perfect unison, navigating from news site to news site, re-establishing his contact with the rest of the planet. He checked half a dozen different email addresses, and short-cutted his way through twice as many regular information sources. He could no more give this up than a drunkard could give up his last shot of liquor.
Again, the uncertain feeling that he wasn't prepared to recognise as anxiety disturbed his enjoyment of the moment. He shifted the focus of his surfing, moving it closer to home, and concentrating on the news media in this corner of the Pacific, and in the Domingan Confederation specifically.
As he'd expected, the papers based on Dominga itself were largely silent and out of date, a few of them managing to get brief text-only updates through the lingering charge affecting all atmospheric communications. Those based a little further out had updated but had little to say, commenting on the ferocity of the storm based largely on satellite pictures, and going on about the difficulty of communications with the state capital as if the government there actually had anything to say worth listening to. Satisfied, as far as he went, Villacana cast his net a little wider, searching the global media for reports on the storm. There were many, not specifically because a short-lived typhoon had battered a remote island group, but rather because the satellite malfunction causing it implied that such freak weather was possible at any time, anywhere on the planet.
He sighed, relaxing a little. There wasn't a mention of San Fernando anywhere in the meta-data plane he was probing, and nor did the discovery of a shipwrecked man and boy rate column inches, or the electronic equivalent, anywhere he could find. He'd been confident in the fishermen's greed, and in his own cunning, but even so it eased a tension he'd carried all day to realise that no one knew or cared about the yacht lost in the storm. True, the report might get out in a day or so, when Dominga came back online, but by then a couple of unimportant tourists would long since have either lived or died. It would be old news, with nothing to tie it back to Villacana or his work here.
Drawing a line under his search algorithms, he turned back to the storm reports. He indulged himself, reading the full text of several editorials, ranging from near-hysterical doom-mongering to weighty-but-worried discussion of the implications. It was almost an hour before he left the underground room. At the top of the stairs outside, he turned and locked the door firmly behind him, sealing it physically, electronically and with an electrostatic charge that would discourage even the most fool-hardy of his hirelings. Not that any would have the wits or initiative to try it. He encouraged a dull, uninspired loyalty in his workforce, buying it with abundant pay, enforcing it with chilling threats.
Despite that he double-checked the locks before turning and striding through his villa with the shadow of a scowl on his otherwise impassive face. He had run his searches. He had every reason to believe he'd got away with his test, and by the time he was ready to make his move the media would have done his work for him, whipping the global population into a frenzy of fear and uncertainty. Almost everything was going perfectly. So why was some small part of him still worrying that, just possibly, the one insignificant thing that hadn't was going to come back and bite him?
Scott Tracy woke with a start, struck a stray blow by his little brother's flailing arm. He was murmuring an automatic comfort before he registered which brother was huddled against him, or why his bed was so uncomfortable. Memory returned within seconds, and he reached up to stroke Gordon's hair in the moonlight, stilling the younger boy's nightmare.
The temperature had dropped, stars showing crystal-clear through an empty night sky. The cool air chilled Scott's face, but he barely felt it. Set against the previous night, there was no comparison. He was dry and sheltered from the wind, solid ground beneath him, Gordon curled like a hot water bottle against his chest rather than the shivering heat sink of the night before. Careful not to disturb his little brother, Scott pulled and prodded the pile of dry palm fronds back over them, repairing the damage done by Gordon's restless movements.
He stopped, a long, thin palm leaf slipping from his fingers, when Gordon began to stir again. The little boy was crying in his sleep, calling out for their father and Virgil with a painful urgency. Scott snuggled closer, talking quietly about Mom and John and Alan, hoping that some of what he was saying might penetrate his brother's subconscious to ease his dreams. He kept up his murmur until he was sure Gordon was deeply asleep, and then found he simply couldn't stop. He kept talking to drown out the voice in his ears reminding him that Dad and his closest brother were gone, and that he'd watched them fall and huddled in the lifeboat, too scared to do anything about it. When tears overtook the words he kept them very quiet, easing back from Gordon so that his silent sobs wouldn't shake the younger boy awake.
"I'm sorry, Virge," he whispered into the night. "I'm so sorry."
Virgil woke with the sound of his own name ringing in his ears. A familiar voice had called him, the memory of it fading with his dreams.
Warmer and more comfortable than he could remember being in far too long, Virgil paused to take an inventory. His head still felt thick and heavy, but his eyes opened when he told them to, and all ten fingers and ten toes responded when he wiggled them. His throat was dry, and his face felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to the skin, but he could also feel a cool lotion on his cheeks and the cool breeze of air conditioning wafting across them. He shifted a little, intending to roll onto his side, and stopped at the alarming pulling and stinging sensations the movement provoked. He blinked his eyes to focus them, lifting his left hand just high enough that he could see the drip attached to the back of it without having to lift his head.
Realisation dawned and he looked from side to side, taking in the long room, lined with a dozen beds. Most of them were empty, huddled forms just visible in the two beds furthest to his right. His sleeping companions, and the closed curtains on the windows above him, suggested that he'd woken in deep night. The details of the room were obscured by darkness, but there was enough light spilling from the nurse's station at the far left-hand side of the room for him to get a hint of primary colours that made his eyes ache.
He was in hospital, and for a few moments the knowledge that he was back on solid ground and safe had been enough for him. But he was in hospital alone, none of his family at his bedside, and, even in the middle of the night, that was just plain wrong.
The nurse sat at her station, unaware that he was awake. Her concentration was directed elsewhere, and Virgil squinted, trying to make out the shape of the two people having a quiet argument in the doorway of the room, wondering if either of them had been the voice that had awakened him.
"I've got to speak to him, Mina. You said he's not in any kind of danger any more." An unfamiliar man, tanned and casually dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, spoke with an urgent tone to his voice.
"He's still a sick child." That was the woman dressed in white medical robes. His doctor maybe? "He needs his sleep, and I won't have you waking him." There was a note of finality to her tone, and the man seemed first angry and then resigned to it. The woman watched his protests die away before speaking a little more gently. "Couldn't the Levans give you anything?"
"They told us what Villacana's men told them," the man shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that they're not holding anything back… now. But it's not enough. We only have two people who know what really happened, and you're not letting me talk to either of them."
"Believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to try last time one of them was awake. Concussion can be…messy." The doctor folded her arms, her long shadow moving across the walls of the ward as she shook her head. "You're not getting anything out of my patients until they're fit enough. I'm sorry, Chuck. I know you're under a lot of pressure on this, but, honestly, it's still full dark outside, the planes are grounded, and the satellite pictures are seeing nothing but static. What's waking the kid up going to achieve that won't wait 'till morning?"
Chuck leaned back against the doorframe, throwing a guilty glance in Virgil's direction before running a hand through his hair. "God, Mina, I don't know. I just feel like I'm climbing a mountain blindfold. We don't even have decent photos of these kids to show around. The ones the mother tried to send through look like they were taken in a snowstorm, and their ID pictures make them look like anaemic zombies, not to mention being years out of date."
There was a long pause before the doctor, Mina, sighed. "Do you really think they're still out there to be found? After this long?" she asked sadly.
Her friend threw up an arm in a frustrated gesture. "Who knows? Anything could have happened to them! Literally!"
Mina reached out to lay a hand on his arm. "Look, Chuck, you need to get some sleep. Your chief can keep everyone off your back for a few hours, surely?"
"I don't need anyone's permission to sleep, Tasmin," the man snapped. The doctor laughed softly, not offended.
"Just to persuade your own conscience to let up on you for a bit. Sleep deprivation is making you tetchy, Inspector."
"God, I'm sorry, Mina. You're right. It's just… I guess I'd just feel better if I could talk to the kid first."
Virgil had been letting the unfamiliar voices and names roll over him, only half-following the conversation. He still felt lethargic, but something in the man's persistence was getting through to him. He pushed up a little in the bed before his chest tightened, his entire rib cage lighting up with agony. Deciding it was too much effort, he dropped back onto the mattress.
"Hello?" he called softly, mindful of the other children sleeping at the far end of the ward.
Man and woman both dropped their discussion instantly. The doctor waved the duty nurse back, but Chuck followed her to Virgil's bedside despite her glare. Perversely, it was harder to see them as they came closer, leaving the corridor light behind, but Virgil blinked up at them nonetheless.
"Hey there." The woman's voice was soft. He pushed up again, fighting past the pain, and she helped him, raising the head of the bed and tucking a pillow behind him so he wouldn't struggle or strain his bruised ribs. "How are you feeling?"
"I'd like a little water, please?" Virgil asked politely, trying to keep the pleading out of his tone. He looked at the woman as her companion poured from a water jug, trying to place his curious sense of déjà vu. "Is my Dad okay?" he asked softly, taking the glass in both hands and a little surprised to see its surface trembling. The doctor smiled at him.
"You asked us that last time," she told him, shaking her head when he frowned in confusion. "He'll be fine, Virgil. He's feeling a bit poorly at the moment, but he's going to be just fine. Just like you."
Virgil took a sip of the water, still frowning. The news about Dad was a huge relief that pulled tears to the corner of his eyes, but the feeling persisted that something was very wrong, stopping him from relaxing.
"Scott?" he said simply, not quite sure what question he was asking.
The doctor hesitated, and her companion moved forward, perching on a chair he pulled up to the bedside.
"Virgil, I'm a policeman, Inspector Travis."
Virgil looked at him in weary confusion. "She called you Chuck," he pointed out irrelevantly.
The man smiled gently, but there was a worried expression beneath the façade. "You can call me Chuck too if you like, Virgil," he said smoothly. Virgil gave him a level look. There was enough condescension in the man's tone to irritate even his sleepy mind. He was eleven, not a kid like Alan or Gordy. The thought of his younger brothers pulled him back to the here and now, and he finally pinned down the idea that was bothering him.
"Someone's hurt," he whispered, looking from face to face for confirmation and an explanation.
Doctor Mina stroked his hair, her other hand on his shoulder as she tried to persuade him to calm down. "What makes you think that, Virgil?"
Virgil glanced at her before looking at the policeman with worried eyes. "If they were both okay, Scott would be here. So either Scott's hurt, or Gordy is. What happened? Where are they?"
Virgil's voice was rising, and the doctor tried to soothe him, glancing past him at the other children in the room. Inspector Travis sighed.
"Virgil, we don't know where your brothers are. Can you tell me what happened to them?"
"Don't know?" All trace of sleep gone, Virgil stared at him incredulously. "But… but they have to be here! They've got to be okay. They were in the lifeboat. That's what the lifeboat is for!"
"They were in your lifeboat?" Inspector Travis repeated. "Why didn't you get into the boat with them, Virgil?"
"I did. There was a wave. I fell in." Virgil blurted out the short sentences, his pulse quickening as he remembered. "Dad came after me, but he got hurt. The storm was blowing really hard, and there was so much wind and the rain, and all I could do was try and hold on to Dad. Then the boat was gone and I couldn't see Scott and Gordon any more, but they have to be out there, and you have to find them!"
"We're going to," Inspector Travis assured him, resting a hand on his arm reassuringly. "It's going to be all right, Virgil. We'll find Scott and Gordon, but it would help if you knew where you were when the storm came up. Did your Dad mention where you were going? Or did you go past any islands maybe?"
Virgil nodded, numbly. His father had sat all three boys down every evening for the past week, challenging them to figure out how far they had travelled and where they were before checking their answer against the yacht's GPS. The first fringes of the storm had started to rock the boat when they were in the middle of the task. By the time they'd argued out their solution and came to Jeff to ask him for the right coordinates, he'd been hunched over the public schedule page from Uncle Jim's weather satellite, looking worried and trying not to show it. That was when everything had started to go wrong.
Frowning, Virgil tried to remember the figures, but the numbers had never really registered in the first place. Instead the image of the sea chart swam in front of his eyes, Scott's firm ruler lines and pencil marks overlaying it. He waved a hand vaguely in the air, trying to think of a way to describe the picture in his head. The drip shunt pulled on the back of his hand and he stifled a hiss of pain, staring down at his hands.
"Paper," he said quietly. "Can I have some paper?" he clarified at their bemused faces. "So I can show you the chart?"
The doctor sighed, leaning forward in the chair beside his bed and stroking his hair back. "Virgil, you ought to be sleeping. I don't want you tiring yourself out now."
Nodding distractedly, the boy ignored her, eyes instead on the police officer raiding the children's play table for paper and a pencil. He held his arms out for them as Travis approached, and bent over the notepad immediately, aware of the two adults exchanging worried looks. Sighing, the doctor leaned across him, adjusting the position of his drip stand so he could move his hand a little more freely.
"He's just eleven, Chuck," Doctor Mina murmured, as if Virgil were not present. "How could…?"
Virgil ignored her, angry with her for being right, and with himself for the tiredness that made his hands clumsy. He sketched in the shapes of the islands, measuring the ratio of their sizes and the distances between them with his fingers, determined to reproduce the long-gone chart accurately. He'd always been able to do this – take something he'd seen once and make it real again on paper. Usually though he was capturing a beautiful scene, or the expression on one of his brother's faces. It wasn't often he wanted to reproduce a flat picture.
There was a rustle of curtains as Inspector Travis drew them part-closed around Virgil's bed, turning it into a cubicle. Then the tired boy found himself blinking in the yellow glow of a desk-light, squinting with the effort of stopping his eyes watering. He shook his head to clear it, and focused again on his paper. Right, there was Dominga, and there were the handful of other islands large enough to have recognisable outlines on his Dad's chart. He drew fuzzy dots in for the scattering of smaller islets, confounded by his blurred vision and the blunt pencil. Finally satisfied with the accuracy of his crude rendering of the Domingan archipelago, if not with his own numb-fingered penmanship, Virgil sketched on the lines he'd seen his brother draw the night before, and marked the position of the Santa Anna with a cross. He tore the page out of the pad, not bothered for once by the untidiness of the jagged edge. Turning to the detective, he pressed it into the man's hand.
"There."
Inspector Travis was staring incredulously at the chart, and then up at the boy who'd produced it from memory with just a couple of minutes work.
"We were there. Scott and Gordon were there. Are there. You've got to find them."
Virgil yawned, and then flushed, angry with himself. His hands were already moving the pencil over the second page on the note-pad, putting in some outline strokes, when he felt someone trying to tug his drawing implements away. The doctor was standing over him, one hand poised on the lever to lower the head of his bed, while the second tried to relieve him of his paper. He resisted, holding tight.
"Virgil, I need you to get some sleep. Your father's going to want to see you when he wakes up. You want to be awake to see him, don't you?"
Her voice was soft and persuasive, but she was underestimating the force of Virgil Tracy's will, and the training his brothers had given him. He held tight, but slumped his shoulders pathetically, widening his eyes the way Alan did when he wanted something and adopting the quivering voice that Gordy had explained to him in a rash moment of honesty. "Please," he begged, letting his voice hitch on the word. "Please, just ten minutes? Ten minutes more and I'll try to sleep, I promise."
Scott would tear strips out of him for trying this, before doubling up with laughter. It wouldn't have worked for a second at home. Lucille Tracy wouldn't have survived five strong-minded sons if she'd been so easily swayed. Even their occasional baby-sitters had become wary of such begging, although Gordon and Alan were still cute enough to pull it off, particularly when they tag-teamed their appeals.
Virgil had no such back-up, but then Mina didn't have the training. Her eyes softened, her movements becoming a little flustered as she fussed with his bed-covers. "Ten minutes," she agreed, her tone making it somewhere between a promise and a warning. "And then you'll close your eyes for me?"
Virgil nodded, his expression still tragic, but his pencil already moving again across the paper. The doctor sighed, stepping away from the bedside and calling the detective, paper chart in hand, after her with a jerk of her head.
Travis followed her, the two adults once again stopping just inside the doorway and dropping their voices so they were barely audible over the scratching of Virgil's pencil. They underestimated though how sound could carry in a near-silent ward.
"Manipulative little bastard, isn't he?" Travis commented with a grin.
"Language!" Mina snapped, offended more by the implication she'd been duped than by what her friend had said. "He'll probably fall asleep in a minute or two, paper or no paper."
No way. Virgil's eyes were drifting closed, but he drew deeply on a genetic reservoir of stubbornness, concentrating on his rapid but precise strokes. The pencil Travis had brought him was more of a black crayon. Its core, softer than graphite, made it difficult to keep the lines narrow. He flipped over to the back of the pad, rubbing the pencil against the paper, rotating as he went to wear the sides down and leave a point. Flipping back to the front sheet, he added a few finer features to his sketch before tuning back in on the adults' conversation.
"This will help," Travis was saying, looking down at the chart in admiration. "Give us somewhere to start."
"Assuming it's accurate," Mina pointed out. "And that the typhoon didn't blow them to the other side of the world." She paused, her voice soft and worried. "Do you honestly think there's any chance they're still alive?"
Travis sighed heavily. "They were in a boat, and that's better than in the water, but, honestly?" He shook his head. "I'd almost rather they had been snatched by pirates. That storm did for a well-equipped, modern sailing yacht. Its dinghy of a lifeboat hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell."
The splatter of a teardrop on the bottom corner of his paper startled Virgil. He blinked back its fellows, hard. Scott and Gordon couldn't be gone. The world just didn't make sense without his eldest brother in it. Dipping a finger in the drop of moisture, Virgil used it to smear and soften some of the lines he'd drawn, getting the image just right.
Finally, with just a few seconds of his self-imposed time limit remaining, Virgil lowered his pencil. Another tear rolled down his cheek, and he carefully moved the pad a little further away, not wanting to damage his sketches. Mina glanced his way, said something Virgil didn't make out, and nodded as the detective turned to leave.
"Inspector!" Virgil stopped him with a quiet but urgent call. Angrily, he dashed the tears away with one hand, and held out the pad with his other as the two adults approached. His two brothers looked out of the paper at him, Scott's expression bold and confident, Gordon's angelic with just a hint of mischief lurking in his eyes. Travis had rolled up the chart-drawing into a tight tube, now he tucked it into a jacket pocket and took the notepad reverentially in both hands, staring down at the two sketched faces. He'd recognise them from the ID photos, Virgil was sure, but the boy knew he'd captured his brothers in a way no formal, over-exposed photograph could. "You wanted pictures of my brothers," he said simply, dropping back against his pillows.
This time he didn't resist when Doctor Mina pulled the supportive pillow out from behind his back and dropped the head of his bed. She reached for the desk-lamp. Tear-streaked, and finally giving in to the exhaustion that had been pulling at him, Virgil was asleep before she touched it.