Creations by William Mitchell Page B

have to level every mountain, drain every ocean, and grow rice there for years, and even then you would not have enough to pay him off.’ And he looked again at the sixty-four little squares in front of him and knew how clever Buddhiram really had been. So you see?”
    Victor beamed at her, obviously impressed with his own storytelling skills. Tess forced a smile in return. “I’m glad I asked,” she said.

Chapter 4
    “So you’re the guys who are going to make us all millionaires, right?”
    “I don’t know who told you that,” Max said. “Is that really what people think?”
    “Ha! No, but there’s a few people who wish it was true. Here, mind your head.”
    Max ducked into the cabin of the helicopter and strapped himself in. Garrett Gentry checked the harness was fastened, then walked round to the other door. The tall, heavily built pilot almost had to bend double to squeeze through, but once inside he got the rotors spinning and the machine in the air in no time.
    Max took a few moments to enjoy the view once they were up. The colours were what stood out most. Last time he’d seen the island from the air it had been almost night-time, the night of their arrival, but this time the sun was right above them. The rich green of the vegetation, with the rust red of the dirt roads cutting through it, contrasted sharply with the bright white beaches and the pale grey cliff faces. Max couldn’t take his eyes off it; as an example of what nature could produce, it was breathtaking. Then there was the sea itself, thick bands of colour going from clear to turquoise to green, then suddenly turning dark blue as the seabed dropped away into the Pacific depths. Max looked into the blue, trying to see the underwater canyon he knew to be running there right under their flight path. It was invisible, lost in the murk and oceanic solutes which had become a feature of tropical seas over the last two decades.
    Once the island was behind them Max turned back into the cabin. Now all that surrounded them was featureless ocean. He switched on the microphone on his headset and spoke to Garrett.
    “So how much have they told you about what’s going on here?”
    “Just that there’s gold in them thar waters,” Garrett said. He didn’t have to change his Western States accent much to make the line sound right. “And you guys are gonna dig it out for us.”
    “Yeah, that’s the plan. I guess you weren’t brought here just for this bit of work then.”
    “No, I’ve worked for Victor’s little outfit for a few years now. I was here when this place was built.”
    Most of the people that Max and the others were working with had been there from the start, working on the manganese mining project that had seen ESOS first arrive on the island. Some of them still got called away when that project needed them, sometimes for days at a time.
    “What did you do before then?”
    “I was in the military for ten years,” he said. “That’s where I learned to fly. Then I did a couple of years in Southeast Asia, and then I came here.”
    “Which part of Asia were you in?”
    “Singapore and the floating cities, mainly. But I got tired ferrying tourists around between the islands so I took this job instead.”
    “And now you’re ferrying us around.”
    Garrett looked over at Max and grinned. “That’s right,” he said.
    They carried on in silence for another five minutes, then one of the other islands came into view. It was tiny, no more than a barren rock sticking up out of the sea.
    “What do you want me to do?” Garrett said. “Just follow the boundary at low level?”
    “Yeah, that’s right. I want to make sure the boats have laid the buoys out in the right places. And that none of the gaps are too large.”
    “Okay, no problem.”
    The flight lasted about fifty minutes as they took in all the small islands and reefs that formed the boundary inside whichthe Prospectors would be operating. Their almost ring-shaped