Still, he did not blame Malink for banishing him or for clinging to Vincent’s promises. Vincent was the god of Malink’s childhood, and Malink clung to him in the same way that Sarapul clung to the old ways. Faith grew stronger when planted in a child. Sarapul knew that. He was mad, but he was not stupid.

Until now he had never put an ounce of faith in Vincent, but this dream of Malink’s vexed him. He would have to figure things out before he ate the man in his breadfruit tree. He had to talk to Malink now.

The cannibal took the path that led into the village. He crept between the houses where the sweet rasp of snoring children wafted through the woven grass walls like the sizzle of frying pork, through the smoke of dying cook fires, past the bachelors’ house, the men’s house, and finally to the beach, where the men sat in a circle, drinking and talking softly, the moon spraying their shoulders with a cold blue light.

The men continued to talk as Sarapul joined the circle, politely ignoring the creak and crackle of his old joints as he sat in the sand. Some of the younger men, those who had grown up with the disciplinary specter of the cannibal, subtly changed position so they could reach their knives quickly. Malink greeted Sarapul with a nod, then filled the coconut shell cup from the big glass jug and handed it to him.

“No coffee or sugar for a month,” Malink said. “Vincent is angry.”

Sarapul drained the cup and handed it back. “How about cigarettes?”

“The Sorcerer says that cigarettes are bad.”

“Vincent smoked cigarettes,” Sarapul pointed out. “He gave you the lighter.”

The young men fidgeted at the firsthand reference to Vincent. It disturbed them when the old men spoke of Vincent as if he was a person. Malink reached inside the long flat basket where he kept the lighter along with his other personal belongings. He touched the Zippo that Vincent had given him.

“Cigarettes aren’t good for us,” he repeated.

“Then they should give us cigarettes for punishment,” Sarapul insisted.

Malink pulled a copy of People magazine from his basket, drawing everyone’s attention away from the cannibal. The old chief tore a small square from the masthead page and handed it to Abo, a

muscular young man who tended the tobacco patch for the Shark People.

“Roll one,” Malink said. Abo began filling the paper with tobacco from his basket.

Malink opened the magazine on the sand in front of him and squinted at the pages in the moonlight. Everyone in the circle leaned forward to look at the pictures.

“Oprah’s skinny again,” Malink pronounced.

Sarapul scoffed and the men angrily looked up, the young ones looking away quickly when they saw who had made the noise. Abo finished rolling the cigarette and held it out to Malink. The chief gestured to Sarapul and Abo gave the smoke to the old cannibal. Their hands brushed lightly in the exchange and Sarapul held the young man’s gaze as he licked his finger as if tasting a sweet sauce. Abo shuddered and backed to the outside of the circle.

Malink lit the cigarette with the sacred Zippo, then he returned to his magazine. “There will be no more People for a while, not with the Sky Priestess mad at us.”

A communal moan rose up from the men and the drinking cup was filled and passed.

“We are cut off,” Malink added.

Sarapul shrugged. “All the people in this book, they shit. It does not matter. They die. It does not matter. If we put them all in a big boat and sank it, you would not even know for six months when the Sky Priestess gives you her old copy, and it still would not matter. This is stupid.”

“But look!” Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears, “This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted.”

Sarapul scrunched up his face, his wrinkles folding over each other like venetian blinds, while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, “I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then.”

“You have never been a tampon,” Malink stated, although he couldn’t be sure. “Only a king may be a tampon. And now, without People, we will never know if this man who would be a tampon succeeded. It has been a dark day.”

The cup had come around again to Sarapul and he drained it before answering. “Tell me of this dream you had.”

“I should not speak of it.” Malink pretended to be engaged in the magazine.

Sarapul pushed on. “The Sky Priestess said that Vincent spoke to you of a pilot. Is that true?”

Malink nodded. “It is true. But it is only a dream or the Sorcerer would have known.”

Sarapul was torn now. This was his chance to discredit the Sorcerer and his white bitch, but if he told Malink about the man in the tree, then he would lose his chance to taste the long pig again. Then again, he found them first, and he was willing to share the meat. “What if your dream was true?”

“It was just a dream. Vincent speaks to us only through the Sky Priestess now. She has spoken.”

“Vincent smoked and she says smoking is bad. Vincent was an enemy of the Japanese and now she has Japanese guards inside the fence. She lies.”

Some of the men moved away from the circle. It was one thing to drink with a cannibal, but it was quite another to tolerate a heretic. (Of the twenty men in the circle, three of the elders were named John, four who had been born during Father Rodriquez’s tenure were named Jesus [Hey-zeus], and three of the younger men were named Vincent.) They were a group that honored the gods, whoever the gods might be that week.

“The Sky Priestess does not lie,” Malink said calmly. “She speaks for Vincent.”

Sarapul pinched the flame of his cigarette with his ashy fingers, then popped the stub into his mouth and began to chew as he grinned. “Your dream was true, Malink. I have seen the pilot. He is on Alualu and he is alive.”

“You are old and you drink too much.”

“I’ll show you.” Sarapul leaped to his feet to show that he was not drunk, and in doing so scared the hell out of the younger men. “Come with me,” he said.

Kimi had freed his hands and feet with the knife, only to find that he could not reach the rope suspending him from the middle of his back. Now he was forced to follow Tuck’s plan of swinging like a human pendulum until he could grab the pilot’s rope and cut him down. Roberto hung upside down from a nearby branch, wondering why his friends were behaving like fighting spiders.

Tucker found he could only hold his head up for a few seconds at a time before dizziness set in, so he watched the navigator’s swinging shadow to gauge his distance. “One more time, Kimi. Then grab the rope.” It bothered him some that when he was cut loose he would fall six feet and land face-first in the coral gravel, but he was learning to take things as they came and figured he would deal with that on the way down.

“I hear someone,” Kimi said. On the apex of his arc, he grabbed for Tuck’s rope, missed, and accidentally raked the knife across the pilot’s scalp.

“Ouch! Shit, Kimi. Watch what you’re doing.” Tuck braced himself for the next attack, which never came. He looked up to see that Kimi’s arc had been stopped in mid-swing. A rotund gray-haired native had caught the navigator around the waist and was prying the knife out of his hand.

Tuck felt the hope drain out of him. The leathery old cannibal stood amid a group of twenty men. All of them seemed to be waiting for the fat guy to say something. It was time for a last-ditch effort.

“Look, you motherfuckers, people are expecting me. I’m supposed to be flying medical supplies for a big-time doctor, so if you

fuck with me you’re all going to die of the tropical creeping crud and I won’t give you so much as a fucking aspirin.”