UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,108

galley, all the while listening, a proverbial fly on the wall. Dagmara’s older son is off in college. To her embarrassment he’s majoring in philosophy and has shunned the family business entirely. She and her good-for-nothing husband have separated, and he wants the family’s Swiss chalet in the divorce. Malik has been expelled from yet another prep school due to bad behavior.

“It’s not my fault,” Malik whines. “They all suck.” Usually a kid like Malik could skate by on his good looks, so Argent figures he must be a real screwup.

And then Dagmara asks, “What’s behind the curtain?”

Divan smiles as if he’s been waiting for the question. “Something I acquired since your last time on board,” he tells her. “A work of art that also happens to be a musical instrument.”

That piques everyone’s curiosity.

“Skinner! Show them.”

And so Argent pulls back the curtain to reveal the Orgão Orgânico. Eighty-eight faces loom above its keyboard.

Dagmara gasps. “Is that an organ?”

“Of a kind,” Divan says. “A heavenly chorus awaiting a conductor.”

Dagmara approaches it, not horrified as Risa was, but entranced. “May I?”

“Be my guest,” Divan says.

She sits at the keyboard and begins to play.

In all the time that Argent has been on board, he’s never heard the Orgão Orgânico played, except for the time Risa touched one key, and a single voice sang. Dagmara launches right into a dark and powerful piece that is familiar even to Argent, whose grasp of classical music is about the same as his grasp of particle physics.

“ ‘Toccata and Fugue in D minor’!” says Divan. “An excellent choice.”

The Lady Lucrezia is filled with the eerie strains of the fugue voiced by the unwound chorus, mouths opening and closing to Dagmara’s touch of the keys. As it builds to a crescendo, Argent concludes that it is the most disturbing thing he has ever witnessed. Even Divan seems taken aback.

And Malik says, “Cool!”

“Play as much as you like,” Divan tells his sister. “It was purchased with you in mind.”

4 • Divan

Against his sister’s complaints, Divan holds the Dah Zey scum in a cell for most of the day. They both need to know who’s calling the shots here. This is Divan’s plane, his operation—and if he deigns to speak with the man, it will be on Divan’s terms, no one else’s.

He chooses to release the man for dinner.

“I will feed him, and listen to what he has to say, and then put him off the plane at our next stop,” he tells Dagmara.

“That is not acceptable,” Dagmara says.

“I couldn’t care less what you think is and is not acceptable.” He wonders if all siblings are like them, or if this is unique in his family. Or perhaps it’s an ailment of the wealthy: The more money a family has, the more its members despise one another. Especially when control of that money comes into play.

When Bula arrives with the Burmese man, the man does not appear disgruntled by his treatment. In fact he appears downright jovial, which Divan finds irritating.

Dagmara, the mastermind of this questionable summit, does the introductions. “Divan, I would like to present to you the honorable Mr. Sonthi, representative of the Burmese Dah Zey. Mr. Sonthi, my brother, Divan Umarov.”

“A pleasure,” Mr. Sonthi says.

Divan says nothing; he just offers his hand to shake, with a calculated shift of position at the last instant, making Sonthi’s grip awkward. It’s Divan’s way of setting an adversary off balance from the onset.

There’s a dining table in the plane’s great room, set for five. Skinner serves with the unobtrusive formality that Divan so painstakingly taught him.

“I have a valet back at my harvest camp,” Mr. Sonthi says, “but he’s all thumbs.” And then he laughs at a joke that only he seems to understand.

Dagmara slips right into talk of her marital woes, and Malik finds fault in everything. Divan has no patience for any of it.

Then, when Skinner serves the main course, Malik turns to Divan in practiced disgust. “Does he have to be here? Looking at him makes me lose my appetite.”

“Would you prefer to serve yourself?” Divan asks.

“I would prefer you hire someone with a face.”

“Malik, you must learn to be more tolerant,” Dagmara chides. “This is the very type of thing that keeps getting him expelled from school. Do you want to tell your uncle why you were thrown out of Excelsior Academy?”

Malik grabs a roll and rips off a piece with his teeth. “I unwound my math teacher’s Chihuahua.”

Sonthi laughs.

“Well, it was a nuisance, yapping all the