The last night on Mu, they gathered in the indoor park of section three. All the castaways who lived near Tony were there, even some of the new Chinese who had begun to acclimate to life in Peshtigo in the seven weeks since the crash. Nine of them, engineers from a Beijing tech firm, were designing a more efficient bookbinding machine for section eleven. Great canvas tents were set up by the pond, their sides rolled and tied so that the artificial breeze of the hidden AC units could find its way through. They hung electric lanterns on poles. From a distance, it looked like a grand wedding.
It was actually a feast in honor of Jack and his crew. Pigs from the jungle and dodoes from the beach were roasted on spits over electric grills. Corn and squash and a vegetable called rune, a root that resembled a purple carrot, were brought out on platters. Young girls danced for the assembled crowd on a stage by the tunnels leading to the dome. Two men played a happy song on a washboard and a jug.
At eventide, two women in white gowns escorted the group to the head table: Jack, Sam, Tony, Cole, the Captain, Nils, Zaharie, Becky, and her father, D. B. Cooper. A man named Frank Morris, an ex-con who’d escaped from one island prison only to find himself on this one, stepped forward to address the crowd. He was a solemn man with a weathered face and a fine thatch of yellow hair above his ears.
“There’s a saying on Mu,” he said, loud enough so that the children in the back could hear. “‘You don’t find Mu. Mu finds you.’ If that’s true, I’m sure as hell glad Mu found the men and women of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.” A round of applause interrupted his speech and he nodded until they quieted. “This city is a haven. The last truly free place on Earth. These people have pledged to preserve it and to restore the true history of our world before it is completely forgotten. What we have here, I believe, can still be taught to those we left behind. Imagine if the entire world could be as peaceful as Mu.”
“Hear, hear!” a man called out.
“We send with them one of our most legendary citizens, Dan Cooper, who, I believe, returns at great peril, as there remain several outstanding warrants for his arrest.”
The crowd laughed. D.B. lifted his hand in mock salute, smiling, gray himself now, far from the arrogant confidence man who’d pulled off one of history’s most brazen heists.
Morris lifted his glass and the crowd did likewise, lifting arms to the skylights, one by one. “To Jack and his crew,” he said. “Godspeed and good luck!”
“Here, here!” they shouted. “To Jack!” they shouted. “To Dr. Sanders! To Cooper!”
And finally they were fed. Ceramic dishes filled with meat and potatoes and veggies were passed around. When the platters were emptied, they were promptly filled again by a staff of eager young men in dark tunics. They drank from never-ending mugs of wine and beer.
“Dude, check it,” said Nils, leaning his seat back to talk to Jack. He was holding a leg of roasted fowl. “Fuckin’ dodo, man!” He bit into it and talked with a full mouth. “Tastes like chicken.”
Sam squeezed Jack’s hand under the table. Tomorrow they would fly home. And the morning after that, they would separate into pairs for the coordinated attack.
“I can’t pilot with you,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you gotta pair with someone else.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you’re going with me.”
“No, Jack,” she said, and her tone caused him to set down his drink and look at her. “If something happens to you, I wouldn’t be any use to anybody.”
“Nothing’s gonna go wrong.”
“You can’t say that. Don’t promise me that.”
“Well, what if something does?” said Jack. “I’d want to be with you.”
“You mean if I died?” said Sam. “You’d want to die with me?”
“I’m not saying die. Nobody’s saying that. If you got hurt or something. I’d want to be there.”
“I’m talking about dying. It’s a real possibility.”
“Jesus, Sam…”
“Did none of you think about this?” And right away she knew they hadn’t. Not one of them. “Jesus. Why can’t you think ahead? Why can’t you imagine repercussions?”
“Shh.”
“I can’t be with you that day,” she said. “You have to switch with someone.”
“Okay,” he said. Though there was a very real part of him, instinctual, that desperately wanted to command her to obey him, that wanted to tell her to just shut the hell up and do what he said. Everything could be so smooth, so simple. There was such a thing as thinking too much. Sometimes you just had to take action even if you couldn’t foresee the outcome, if only to make something happen.
“Okay?”
“I said okay,” said Jack, a little too harshly. “I’ll fly with Tony. You can copilot on Nils’s flight. Now would you just shut up and kiss me?” He pulled her to him and she smiled as she closed her eyes and parted her lips.
Pushing away from his empty plate, D.B. pulled a pipe from the inside pocket of his coat and packed it with dried green leaves he kept in a pouch tied to a loop in his jeans.
“What’s that? Mu tobacco?” asked Nils, dislodging a bit of dodo gristle from his front teeth with a thumbnail.
“Nah, brother,” said D.B. “It’s Peshtigo gungi.” He struck a match, brought it to the green, and inhaled deeply. He held it like a champ and exhaled a cloud of brown. Then he passed it to the Viking.
Nils took the pipe and inhaled. His body immediately warmed, a welcome rush of fire throughout his chest. It tasted like the earth after an August rain. In the dimness around him, the edges slaked off the world, rounding away every sharp corner there ever was. It was a world waiting to be touched.
“Good shit,” he said, passing it back.
“Before Mu was given to the Seven Tribes, it was occupied by the Nazis,” said D.B. “And before the Nazis, Mu belonged to the Mayans. I knew the Voice, Constance, when she was young and she told me some of their stories. She said there were people here even before the Mayans. A race of people called the Mestie-Belles.”
Cole leaned toward them, listening intently. Under the table, Becky held his hand. He let her.
“During the time of the Mestie-Belles,” D.B. continued, “Mu was invaded by a fierce warrior-king from a faraway land who came to the island on a great wooden ship, a square of lumber fifty miles wide. He brought a whole city with him. They called this warrior-king Tsar Niev. He challenged the Mesties and won control of Mu. But even ruling an entire continent did not make Niev content. He was jealous of the powers the Mesties possessed. He wanted to see sound like they could, to taste color, to hear the music of the sunset. So Niev commanded the Mesties to teach him their tricks. But they could no more teach him what the color blue feels like than a bird could have taught him how to fly. Niev became furious. If he could not possess this knowledge, then no one could. And so he forbade the Mesties to speak of these powers. And he burned the great library at the center of Peshtigo, where the stories of the Mesties’ culture were stored. In less than a century, the Mestie-Belles forgot themselves, what they were. And soon they died out altogether and their magic abandoned this world.” D.B. looked at them, one by one, in turn. “We have one last chance to keep that from happening again.”
Nils sighed. “I’d like another hit now,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
Dessert was served—fruit from the jungles in heavy cream. Everyone ate their fill and more. When they finished, a rotund man with a gray pompadour and thick white sideburns took a seat in front of the great table and strummed old tunes on a battered guitar. His voice was low and full of bass, a black man’s voice in a white man’s body. His hips jiggled atop his perch and he remembered how he used to dance.
And there was dancing. Jack and Sam. Cole and Becky. The Captain, too. It was a fine send-off.