Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us on our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

11 – Balm For His Soul

Alonso launches into the ballad’s second verse, his rough voice even louder. But his vocal tone begins to clear as he shakes loose his pipes. His voice is too coarse for opera, but it is very expressive.

Pradeep begins to clear the table. Mandy collects plates from Maahjabeen, Jay, and Esquibel. Miriam drags an empty cooler on wheels down to the surf, where she fills it with seawater. This is their nightly routine. She returns to the long tables and puts a few drops of concentrated biodegradable soap in the cooler’s seawater and swirls it around until it foams. Then she starts adding the dishes as they’re handed to her.

By the time Alonso has come to the ballad’s torrid conclusion, the camp is once again crumb-clean and crab-proof for the night. He lowers his cane and opens his eyes. He is breathing heavily, his heart in his throat. Flavia applauds.

And then Katrina adds her own soft synth chords to the silence and Alonso salutes her. He is done.

Katrina leans into her mic. In an imperious voice with plenty of reverb she points at Alonso and commands: “Keep singing.”

Alonso laughs. “No no. Now it is time for the young ones.”

“Bollocks, Alonso. Keep singing.”

Flavia cat-calls in support. Miriam does too.

Alonso points at his wife. “Oh, no, you don’t get a vote. You’re even more drunk than I am.”

“Sing, Zo,” Miriam fetches Katrina’s mic and brings it to his chair. “I miss your singing.”

He takes it and, after much dithering—during which Katrina gently comps chords, suggesting different keys—launches into Me importas tú by Lucho Gatica.

Miriam and Amy sway before him, in each other’s arms, trying to sing along on the chorus. Katrina picks up bits and pieces of his voice, looping it back in echoes and strange patterns that he has trouble navigating. He keeps stopping to laugh. They all do.

After his big finish, Katrina transitions into a hard house beat and Triquet grabs the mic, putting on a Dieter from Sprockets voice and banging the track like Kraftwerk. Nonsense words spill out, scatted like a horn. After bouncing around in the sand for several minutes, everyone capable of dancing finally expels the last of their manic energy and collapses. This was the release they needed after the storm and the drama and the terror.

The music slides into a soulful groove and the mic finds its way into Jay’s hands. He gets out his phone, where he’s written a list of lyrics. He might be able to make them work with this beat.

They all lie in the sand listening to him, watching the gray rolling clouds above as evening fades into night.

“One two, one two no this is not a test.

One two, one two oh shit I already messed

up, oh there I got it I’m on it again

and now we can get all the way to the end.

“One two, one two no this is not a test

It’s an island, a placewhere you can take a rest.

On one hand it’s lonely, it’s scary, it’s cold

It ain’t for the weak here, it makes fakes fold.

“But on hand two it’s really quite divine,

We got our own Napa and we even got wine,

We got the Steller sea lions and the arctic terns on back-up

And when I can dance again then you’ll really crack up.”

Jay attempts a beatboy pose in his cot but only hurts himself. He lets their acclaim for his performance give him time to recover. Then his next verses progress onto their favorite topics, and he strives to somehow encapsulate the wonder of Lisica in his rhymes.

“One two, one two no this is not a test.

One hand is cursed and the second one’s blessed.

One place is crowded and loud and deranged

The second one’s lovely and quiet and strange.

“But strange ain’t the word that means what I want.

It’s like getting a menthol when you asked for a blunt.

It’s divine here, nowhere finer, want to die here

Just wish I could say why, when the cliffs are so sheer.”

Jay shrugs. He says into the mic, “That’s all I got.”

Katrina calls out, “Oh, I recorded every bit! We got that shit locked down forever!” And she adds two more layers of bass and strings, then happily remixes his verses for the next half hour.

Her beats compel them to move. Even those who otherwise wouldn’t join in find themselves nodding along. It is such a joyful sound, demanding celebration.

In her cot, Maahjabeen taps her feet. Alonso’s hands play along with Katrina’s chords. Miriam and Esquibel spin pirouettes around each other. Even Pradeep, who hates dancing with a passion, can’t stop rocking back and forth, bodies sliding and bumping into his at sharp angles. He wants to apologize every time it happens but he knows it will only kill the mood. So he just keeps a frozen smile on his face as he nods in time—the one simple gesture that has gotten him through so many ordeals.

Triquet spins Pradeep around, their face flush with wine. Then with a yelp they stumble and crash into Pradeep’s legs. His heart twists, feeling embarrassed on their behalf, as he helps them back up. But Triquet thinks nothing of it.

“Got to start doing my dancing in gowns with a slit to the hip.” They guffaw, crossing a vertiginous threshold with these fine folks. So far none of them have given any sign that Triquet is unwelcome or disapproved of in the least. Of course, the Muslim still remains an unknown. But she isn’t actively dangerous. If she thinks Triquet is an abomination she’s keeping that opinion to herself. Triquet eases open, becoming more trusting for the first time in a good long while, setting aside the layers of armor and masks and personas that are a normal part of each day. The relief of putting down these burdens is nearly electric. And to do so with a younger man, of all people! Although Triquet is beginning to think that Pradeep might just be asexual, perhaps genderless.

But really there is no reason not to dance, and that is the kind of calculus Triquet loves to live by. In the absence of reasons not to, always dance. Always. Blanket rule. And Katrina would keep going all night if they let her. The girl is like some avatar of sound and movement. She stands on her platform, pumping her fist into the air, sucking on a lollipop.

Late at night many end up in a pile, laughing atop each other. Mandy and Esquibel braid Triquet’s green hair. Amy gives Jay a gentle massage. Miriam falls asleep curled up in Alonso’s lap. Maahjabeen snores soundly in her cot. Pradeep is nowhere to be found. Finally, Katrina’s music deflates to long droning notes and she steps from the platform, swooning. She kisses each of them on the forehead and stumbles off to the dark bushes to relieve herself. Then she drains Alonso’s forgotten glass of wine and takes herself to bed.

Ξ

The drone can be programmed to follow a pre-selected route. In the morning, Katrina leans over Pradeep’s shoulder, squinting through her hangover, and watches the footage of the first flight. “There.” She points at the closest valley. “Let’s just drop in there the first time as a kind of test run. Put the waypoints… Exactly. And there at that outcrop. Just make sure it stays above the treetops.”

“It has automatic collision-avoidance.” Pradeep charts a course along the winding course of the valley.

“Of course. But let’s not give it any ideas.”

Pradeep looks sidelong at her. “Are you one of those people who has to anthropomorphize every tool or gadget?”

Katrina pets the drone resting on the table before them. “Why not? It’s cute. In a big black menacing beetle kind of way. Carbon fiber is the weirdest stuff. It looks totally fake. But it’s just so strong. I love the stuff. Soon we’ll build everything out of it.”

“Soon? Is there some new carbon fiber revolution I’m unaware of?” Pradeep doesn’t like when people become pollyannas about the latest tech developments. These things take time. “Carbon fiber is still extremely labor intensive and expensive, is it not? Or is this some other government black lab thing I don’t know about?”

“No. But wouldn’t that be cool? Put all that DARPA money to good use for once. My idea…” Katrina declares, “is that we figure out a way to extract carbon directly from the air and water. Like a manufactured enzyme cocktail we send into the clouds as an aerosol. They break the hydrocarbon chains at the molecular level and black rain falls out of the sky. We harvest the dust. Use it as feedstock for our new carbon fiber factories. Costs plummet.”

Pradeep gives her a strange smile. This is too audacious and relies on far too many unproven assumptions and developments. “Yes, harnessing the power of markets is definitely the best way to defeat harmful pollution. And I like your idea of monetizing the feedstock and making it so important to an industry that they are incentivized to remove the carbon from the atmosphere. Having it fall as rain. Eh, I am not sure that will be the most efficient way.”

“Efficient? No. But black rain would make for a fire music video. Put me in white. Bleach my hair. Slow-mo shot of the supermodel walk toward the camera through black rain. That’s tight. Maybe I’ve got a sword. Seriously, have you been tracking the work in industrial enzymes? I swear they’re going to save us all.”

Pradeep laughs at her hectic thought process. He shakes his head in wonder. “Okay, but my money is still in mushroom remediation and green beaches. We need to get started on them now.”

She cocks her head at him. “Green beaches? What’s that about?”

Pradeep claps his hands in geeky excitement. “Oh, I love this idea! Check out Project Vesta. See, most carbon capture on the planet is done at the mineral level, with chemical reactions turning carbon into calcides, among other things, and burying them where they belong. We should talk to Miriam about this. See if she has any insights. One of the most common rocks on the planet, green olivine, happens to be super alkaline and has a wonderful ability to absorb carbonic acid and trap it forever in its…”

“Yes, the organic lattices. I’ve got a masters in crystallography. Our lab ran a similar experiment with shale. The problem is the olivine oxidizes over time and creates a silicate shell. Then it won’t absorb any more.”

“Yeah, well the clever solution there is to put the olivine grains on beaches with strong tides, so that the mechanical forces of the waves constantly polish them and keep the olivine from forming those shells. The chemicals precipitate into precursor building blocks for corals and diatoms, healing the oceans instead of destroying them. It is really an elegant solution. Only two percent of the world’s tropical beaches would need to have olivine covering them in order to remove all the excess carbon from the planet’s oceans. See? Things aren’t quite as hopeless as they seem.”

Katrina beams, imagining the entire east coast of Queensland covered in green sand and the Great Barrier Reef rescued from doom. “That’s fantastic. Why hasn’t it happened?”

“Money.”

Miriam finds them. She carries a tangle of cords and a small box. “Look. I have some extra batteries for you. If anyone is clever with a soldering iron or has any spare electronic parts lying about we can maybe extend your range.”

“Unfortunately not,” Katrina frowns. “But thanks for thinking of us. Batteries are the heaviest thing a drone can carry. So having more just dramatically reduces its flight time. There might be a way to squeeze more range out of them but I’m not sure any of us have the expertise or tools necessary to make significant changes to the drone here. They already design them for the sweet spot of weight and power.”

“There are new polymer batteries coming,” Pradeep mentions, “that might carry enough charge to be viable. And they hardly weigh more than the carbon fiber. But that’s like next year.”

“Bright days ahead.” Katrina smiles at Miriam. “And first we need to get Mandy’s weather station up there before we run this route. Did I hear you want to use the drone, Miriam, as a remote geologist tool? Fuck yeah. I should teach you how to fly it.”

“Eventually, yes. But I should get back to my own project before I get any more deeply in yours. Ah, well. Mission failed.” And with that, Miriam picks up her box and retreats to the bunker.

Pradeep finishes charting the flight-path. “I don’t think we should plan a further route than this. It will already be expending eighty-eight percent of the battery just to do that much. Explore that one side canyon to the north and come right back. Recharge the batteries and send it down the next side canyon. Repeat.”

Katrina wants to send the drone across the entire island. Maybe with the onboard camera alone and an extra battery somehow strapped to the top she could manage it. But engineering has never been her strong suit so she decides to focus on what she can achieve right now. “Yeh, we should be able to investigate a lot of what’s closest, that’s for sure. Brilliant, Pradeep. High five. Come on, up top. Now down low. Yeh, bro. This is going to kick ass.”

He sighs, nervous again from all the touching. “I hope so.”

Ξ

Another storm arrives this evening. This one is wet and warm with gentle winds. Its heavy clouds tarry over the island, sheeting it with fresh water that originally sailed up from the tropical Asian coast to deliver showers after this to Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

Mandy sets up her weather station on the beach. She comes back in thoroughly soaked. But she is pleased. There is more than enough happening on the shore to learn about this storm from here. She doesn’t miss the opportunity to have it perched on the highest cliff at all.

“Pineapple Express!” she shouts, banging Amy’s new door shut.

“Thanks I’d love some!” Jay answers from his cot.

“No, you stoner. Atmospheric river that started in the tropical West Pacific! Pretty late in the season though. That’s why it’s so warm and wet. These things literally carry a river’s worth of water across the entire ocean! We might even get some amazing electrical activity at the tail end of it. This could be another three days.”

Flavia groans. Another three days stuck in here with everyone? Ah, well. Best to shut out the outside world and dig more deeply into Plexity. She finds her headphones and puts on a saved lofi playlist to drown them out. There. Now she can focus. Flavia is getting steady streams of data now, especially from Pradeep and Miriam. She wonders how she will weave it all in with Mandy’s weather station readings but that will be a challenge for another day. Right now she is trying to create meta-values for every natural language descriptor in their notes. She uses a module from a previous project that is great at lifting keywords out and utilizing them. She will just need to adapt it to Plexity’s idiosyncratic code.

But this storm turns out to be just an echo of the great winter atmospheric rivers. Mandy shows them satellite photos of similar storms, that send preposterous white filaments like a bacterium’s proboscis all the way from Indonesia across the Pacific, deep into the North American continent.

Yet this one fades early, pushed eastward by convection behind and the rising sun before it. As the night progresses the rains fade. The day dawns crystal clear. The morning sky is so blue it is painful to behold. They all wake squinting, trying to locate sunglasses none of them usually have to wear here.

Katrina and Mandy modify the weather station on the beach and finally, after so many days of waiting, they are able to carry it aloft. From the images they had recorded during the drone’s first flight, they were able to identify a relatively flat exposed shelf near the top that faces the open ocean on three sides. Now they’ve programmed a whole script for the drone to perform.

Katrina launches the drone. Its onboard camera that Katrina follows on her display is its eyes. It really isn’t bad quality. Like a GoPro. The manual says if they forego the gimbal and cinema camera it usually carries the flight time goes from twelve to twenty-two minutes. Resolution of imagery drops and focal quality and all that. But it will lead to a lot more missions, that’s for sure.

She doesn’t drive the drone. She lets it follow its script, her thumbs hovering over the joysticks in case something goes wrong. But so far, so good. Mandy squeezes her shoulder in anticipation. “How exciting!”

“I know, right?” The drone ascends and soon hovers over the selected spot. It isn’t quite as flat as it looked on the previous video, but there are a few patches that might be suitable. Katrina takes manual control and nudges it toward the likeliest spot, where the weather station’s base will be wedged in a shallow rill. Then she lets it execute the next pre-arranged maneuver, dropping the drone three meters and lowering the noose from the gimbal, which when tilted slips free and drops the weather station ten centimeters. It lands with a rock and a tilt, nearly topples, then settles in place, canted but secure.

“Well that’s a little high. We can adjust it.” Katrina high-fives Mandy. “But success is ours! We’ll pull it down tomorrow morning and all the freshest datas will be yours.”

“I can’t wait. Thank you so much, Katrina. You’re the best.”

“Sure thing, doll. Glad to help. I’ll do anything for anyone who dances to my music.”

“Oh my god you’re such a party girl.”

They slip easily into familiar banter. Mandy realizes that Katrina might be offering the chance at making a long-term friend. She’s certainly worth pursuing. “So where do you live? Like Sydney?”

“Well. We did. But we’ve been moving around the last few years. Real estate is nuts. Honestly, I’m kind of ready to move on. Pavel said he doesn’t need me as much any more. And our mom is ready to take a turn. I’m ready to try living on my own.”

“That’s your brother? He was in the gulag with Alonso? Where would you go?”

“Well… That’s the trouble, isn’t it? I like Taiwan right now. But Oslo calls to me too. There are some interesting things happening in Israel. I don’t know. Where are you? LA?”

“Yeah, in the hills. I like it. Not the crowds and everything but it’s really nice. There’s some good people there doing good things too. Real strong institutions and just all the money in the world.” She realizes as she says these things that Mandy is listing things Katrina might not care about. “Um, there’s a real party scene too, that’s for sure. Lots of dancing. Night clubs.”

“Yeh, there’s a superfresh DJ community in East LA I’ve been following for years.” Katrina watches the drone drop down to land lightly before her with a final skitter and a cloud of sand. “I could come visit and go hit them up.”

“Ooo.” Mandy wrinkles her nose. “East LA can be rough.”

“That’s cool. I like rough.” Katrina smiles impishly and takes the drone back to camp.

Mandy follows in her wake, an intrigued look on her face, mind alive with possibilities.

Ξ

Maahjabeen sits on the beach, watching the tides. Esquibel helped her down here and dug out a very comfy seat for her in the sand and she should be fine here until high tide in another couple hours.

The orcas are gone. The rollers are back at the mouth of the lagoon, closing off access to the open ocean once more. The sea shines in the soft light like polished glass, every shade of gray.

The lagoon has been transformed since the storm. A giant log—the fallen remnant of some ancient redwood that floated in the sea for who knows how long—has foundered across the barrier rocks directly across from her. The green wreckage of the storm has collected at the log’s intersection with the water, a huge tangle of branches and leaves that she longs to clear. But otters have already begun to prowl around it. Perhaps they have found a new nest.

A clay mudslide from the point to her left now fouls the closest dark blue waters of the lagoon with a tan miasma. And there are more flies than before, suddenly appearing as if they had just been waiting in hiding for the chaos to happen. She waves them away from her face.

These are all bad signs, and point to an unpleasant season ahead. She wonders what this place is like in summer. Does it get hot? Is that when the beach will smell rotten and the flies will fill the air in intolerable black clouds?

She cranes her neck backward to study the black bulk of the dead sea lion a hundred meters away. That’s where the flies got started. They should bury the carcass before it gets too bad.

But just as she thinks that, she realizes Pradeep is at the corpse, studying it with fascination. He wields a scalpel and tweezers like a surgeon, pulling parasites from the rotten flesh. Yuck. What an odd fellow. But, eh, it takes all types. And Pradeep is definitely a type she has not seen before.

And Tunisia has every type. It’s been a crossroads of civilization since the dawn of time. They collect in the souks, the strange ones like Pradeep, and share their outcast views with the only others who will listen. In earlier times his morbid curiosities and general oddness would have probably gotten him stoned for witchcraft. But who knows? He might have managed to save himself, this one. It’s that inborn grace he has and the quick brilliant smile. Yet he is so modest about his looks. Never once has he flirted with any of them. The most excited she has seen him is when he found a flatworm attached to a maggot inside a dead fish. Now Pradeep must be in proper paradise, mucking about in the stinking innards of the sea lion. She shivers in disgust. People are so strange.

The orcas taught her the route back in and she hasn’t forgotten it. There are so many shelves under those waves there is really only one channel. The seas are so shallow that they can be exposed at low tide. But they aren’t everywhere. The orcas showed her. Their path also revealed currents she can’t see from here and a nasty rip leading to the lagoon’s mouth from the west she will have to avoid. But she thinks she can use it, under the right conditions, to get back out there. She just needs to wait for those conditions.

Maahjabeen laughs to herself. The calm before another storm? No, Allah save her, never again. Maybe if a strong south wind came in and knocked the tops of those waves down. But then she would be paddling into that strong wind, while trying to overcome what surf still remained. No… It will some day be a more complex host of variables that will finally unlock this prison again.

The ocean falls away—if the official maps that don’t even include this island can be believed—up to two kilometers to an abyssal sea floor in all directions. There are no known shelves or seamounts anywhere near here to affect the currents. These waves have been shaped by the Aleutian and Alaskan coasts a dozen degrees of latitude or more to the north, and by the forbidding Kamchatka peninsula thousands of kilometers to the west. They rolled across the great Northern Pacific expanse unchanged, bringing the shape of their last brush with land with them. This is how Polynesian wayfarers first sailed across the open Pacific over a thousand years ago. They could read in these currents and waves the interference of solid land far away. They could read the skies for coming wind and storm and follow the stars to stay on course. With her modern technical gear—half of which doesn’t even work out here because it’s off the grid—she still can’t match the ability she’s heard they possessed to read the Pacific like a book.

Well. She’s had nobody to teach her.

Maahjabeen doesn’t like to dwell on the dark moments in her life. Amal, the abusive ex-boyfriend. The big fight at her sister’s wedding. The loss of her mother. So, apart from the wonder she still feels about the orcas, she has already built a nice compartment deep in her mind for the ordeal of the storm to occupy and she will happily lock its door and throw away the key and never think about it again.

But even though that is what the emotional side of her wants to do—and is used to doing because most of the tragedies in her life had only ever had emotional components, resisting all attempts to reason or answer why such terrible things happen—there is more than heartbreak here. The night she spent in that bunker contained not only emotional damage but puzzles for her intellect. She hadn’t been able to process them at the time. She hadn’t cared about the writing on the walls or the bones she’d found or what they might mean. She was only concerned about her survival.

Now she allows herself to think of them. They gleamed, wet and blue in the stormlight. A long bone like a femur rose above the others. And two others. So three. Now with hindsight she realizes those weren’t like human femurs. They were human femurs. So that was the remains of two dead human bodies. Maahjabeen slowly shakes her head, the realization only now dawning. She’d spent the night right next to them. How disgusting. But what were they doing there? Had they been buried in there? Who were they?

Maahjabeen takes out her phone again. She scrolls through the pictures she took of the interior of the small bunker. None of the bones for some reason. She can’t remember what she was thinking when she took these shots. Probably nothing. Maybe she avoided them out of a respect for the dead. She’s always been a bit squeamish. She probably just didn’t want to look at them.

Were they the Soviets or the Japanese who had last been there? No, that made no sense. If there had still been Japanese here when the Soviets arrived, they wouldn’t have killed them and left their corpses in the only building they possessed. So these are the last Soviets? The ones who said that the bunker was a shit hole? Just a poor pair of soldiers far from home? They died of starvation maybe and the crabs ate their flesh? She shivers again. Yes, she supposes that is the most likely explanation. How disgusting. At least they were long dead. Like forty years. The bones had been picked clean.

“I will have to tell Triquet,” Maahjabeen says aloud in English. Her internal monologue is a mix of folk Tunisian, Arabic, French, and English. But she has only spoken English aloud since leaving home last year. “They will know what it means.”

But not yet. Her poor shoulders and back still need more rest. Mandy’s strong hands had torn her to pieces last night and she feels bruised and sore, but perhaps less stiff. Maahjabeen needs to shake these injuries off so she can get back on the water soon. She wants to see the orcas again.

Ξ

What Amy misses the least are crowds. She loves her solitude. And living in Monterey had just been a steadily rising tide of newcomers now for decades. All of her favorite spots have become social media discoveries, each with their own communities and updates and blog posts. If she isn’t hiking Asilomar at dawn she might as well not bother going.

It has driven her to search farther afield for weekends of quiet contemplation. Her entire life is now about identifying where the crowds are not and going there. She adores a vacuum.

Lisica is the ultimate antidote to this modern toxin. Twenty steps outside camp she might as well be the only person on the planet. After the storm, the wind has died to a murmur and it is so quiet, apart from the distant white noise of a jet flying above their protective maritime shell. Amy has transited countless times from North America to Japan and Hong Kong. How many of them had flown her over this innocuous cloud bank down here? It had certainly never occurred to her that two months of her life would be spent under its mantle.

She pushes through the wet fronds of a wide-leafed tryphylla variant at the edge of the grove, dragging their cold lines across her bare legs. But the day remains warm and they do not chill her.

Amy stops and croons in surprise. She drops to her haunches and studies a slug. It is like the banana slugs of California but this one is smaller and pinkish instead of yellow or brown. Still as long as her middle finger, its black eyes perch atop purple stalks, and a faint network of violet lines runs along its sides. How have they not seen any slugs until now? And why is it pink?

She pushes a wide fallen leaf, brown and stiff, beneath the slug and lifts it. She should show this to Pradeep before going any further. But she has already bothered him three times this morning and she can tell he needs his own break from human contact. Ah well. She puts the leaf back down. If the slug is still there when she returns then it was meant to be. If not, she’ll find another later.

She pushes through the grove’s edge shrubs of aster and mallow, which seem to have grown more thick since the last two storms have watered the island. But the waterfall is her goal. Its tenor has changed, grown louder and deeper. Amy is eager to see how much water it is evacuating from the interior of the island.

She can’t get close to where they normally stand beside the pool. The waterfall has increased dramatically in volume, and heavy spattering drops hit the vegetation beside the pool with such force numerous branches have snapped from the onslaught.

The fall is a thundering column, tinged brown with mud. It carries bracken and long dark splinters from above. Its new arc has pulled it away from the slick black wall behind it and in these gaps Amy can spy tall and narrow openings like cathedral windows, where the rock has worn away to hidden chambers behind.

“Oh, Miriam is going to lose her mind.” Amy giggles, taking pictures that can’t seem to capture the dark entrances in the black wall. As she does so, a large portion of a shattered trunk separates itself from the waterfall above and spins through the air to land with a crash in the trees on the far shore of the pool. Amy belatedly realizes how dangerous it is here. But before she retreats she takes one last picture of the transformed scene.

The pool itself foams and swirls, unrecognizable. Amy tries to conceive how she can return here with a Dyson reader and get a representative sample of this ecosystem while it is in such dramatic flux. First, she’d need some kind of shield over her head to protect her from flying debris. But even then, how could she get close enough to the waterfall to sample it before it enters the pool? Or at the exact point it enters it? Here is where Alonso’s grand vision gets rocked by reality. How will they characterize this pool when it changes so dramatically every few weeks? Ah, well. She is just a soldier in this Army. A data collector. It’s up to the smart ones to figure out what to do with it.

She retreats from the pool and follows the stream toward the lagoon. Where it normally disappears in the sand before it reaches the saltwater, it has now overtopped this subterranean tunnel and has carved a fresh channel through the beach, where it transports loads of wreckage from the island into the lagoon.

Amy spies Maahjabeen sitting in the sand halfway up the strand. She hails her. Maahjabeen turns her head, shading her eyes with a hand. Amy waves and points at the channel. “Here’s where the freshwater is pouring into the lagoon.”

Maahjabeen holds her thumb up in agreement.

“Crazy! And it’s undercutting this bank and clay is getting everywhere. Can you see that from there?”

“Yes.” Maahjabeen is not happy to have her attention pulled back from the far horizon. But she does have a favor to ask. “Amy, maybe you can help me.”

“Of course!” Amy’s first instinct is to jog over to Maahjabeen’s side to see what she may need but the scientist in her hesitates. She points at the channel once more. “I bet if we dropped down from this point to the lagoon floor we’d find the normal exit point for the stream. When it covers up with sand again and you’re better we should schedule a dive!” But Maahjabeen isn’t listening, just waiting for Amy to finish. “Oh. Sorry. What do you need?”

“I think I am ready to—”

“Amy! Amy…!” Miriam calls out from the edge of the beach. She waves at them urgently from under the trees.

“Hold on, Maahjabeen.” Amy hurries toward Miriam. “What is it, Mirrie? Everyone okay?”

“There’s openings behind the waterfall! Come see! Just as my models predicted!”

Amy starts running, eager to share this with her. “I know! I just saw them and took pictures for you! But be careful over there! I almost got brained by a falling log!”

They disappear into the greenery together.

Maahjabeen, who had raised her arms in hopes of getting Amy’s help up out her hole, has been abandoned. She hisses in pain and aggravation, her shoulders acting up again. She can’t find the leverage to get herself out of the sand. “Hello?” Maahjabeen finally sets aside her pride and calls out, realizing she is actually trapped here. “Anyone…?”

Ξ

Alonso wakes up long after everyone else. He had been sleeping and dreaming in deep comfort. He can’t remember the last time that had happened. The specifics of his last dream have already faded but he had been floating somewhere warm. In an amniotic sac, still unready to birth. But now he is awake and the fresh air against his skin is nearly unbearable. With a contented groan he scrubs his face and rolls onto his side.

“No, he’s up! It’s fine! Bring her in here!” Miriam’s voice rings in the hush like a bird call. The sound of his beloved’s voice is like a balm on Alonso’s soul. He still can’t believe he has escaped the gulag and started his life over again. Too unreal. It’s like he’s in a Borges novel jumping dimensions or something. There are literally two realities on this crazy planet. Two Alonsos.

The platform creaks. Pradeep carries Maahjabeen up the ramp and into the Love Palace like a newlywed groom with his bride. But her face is anything but pleased. She wears a silent grimace of agony. He ducks into the bedroom enclosure, grunting with effort.

“No… Take me…” Maahjabeen grates, “to my own bed. I do not need… to make a mess of—”

Miriam calls out, “Maahjabeen. Please. Mandy needs more room to work on you and you’re not going to find a more comfortable spot here than the nest of a fifty year old woman.”

Maahjabeen rolls her eyes on a stiff neck toward Alonso. “I am sorry… to disturb you. Ah!” She gasps as Pradeep gently lowers her to Miriam’s tousled blankets. Amy darts in and straightens them as Maahjabeen lies in a locked arch on her back, bent forward, legs in the air, shoulders frozen.

“Oh no.” Alonso sits up. “What happened to you?”

“We left her out there,” Esquibel calls out as she hurries from the bunker carrying supplies, “too long. The cold sand and everything. Here. Pedialyte. That is what you need first.”

“Ohh… it’s my fault,” Mandy hurries up the ramp rolling up her sleeves. “I got distracted by my work. Sorry, Maahjabeen! Now you need heat more than anything! Lots of heat!”

Amy drapes a blanket over Maahjabeen’s cramped form. “No no. I was the one who saw her last. And I just left her there. Oh, sorry!” The weight of the blanket on Maahjabeen’s locked arms makes her gasp. Amy gently pulls the blanket off and starts tucking it gently in around her torso where she can. The poor woman’s elbows are at angles to her head. Her back is locked as if she still sits in the sand. She looks like some kind of twisted crab.

Maahjabeen is panting, little ah, ah, ah gasps that match her racing heartbeat.

Mandy kneels beside her, placing calm hands on her right shoulder. “The best thing you can do right now is breathe.”

“I am breathing.” Maahjabeen blows air out her pursed lips like she’s in labor. “Are you deaf? Can’t you hear me breathe?”

“No, deep breaths. I mean, when you can. Your diaphragm is totally contracted. You’re holding on to the pain.”

“Oh, again it is my fault. Ah! What does that even mean?”

“Like this.” Mandy sits back, posture perfect, and takes a deep breath. “They had a yoga class in my high school growing up on the Big Island. I didn’t even know that was weird until I moved to the mainland. What you need to do is try to control your breath. Right now it controls you. So reach down to your toes—”

“Don’t give me this hippie nonsense! Doctor Daine! Help me!What does a medical doctor say about my—ah! My pain?”

Esquibel kneels at Maahjabeen’s feet. “Well, if you feel Mandy’s mechanical manipulations will be too much right now I can give you a muscle relaxant. Perhaps intramuscular if you want it fast.”

“Fast, yes. Fast would be good. And something for the pain.”

Esquibel shakes her head no. “No no. Not with Lorazepam. Not if we want your heart to keep beating. At least the opiates I have with me here. I’ll check in my bins if I have anything that won’t be contraindicated. But I don’t think so.”

Maahjabeen groans, stabbed by a dozen knives. “Of course not.”

Mandy still sits in her yoga pose holding Maahjabeen’s shoulder. Her patient still fights to breathe properly, the corners of her mouth pulled wide.

Esquibel pulls down the waistband of Maahjabeen’s black tights to reveal a patch of golden-brown hip. She wipes it with an alcohol pad and places the tip of the syringe on the site. “Okay. Ready? A little pinch.”

It is probably as much a placebo effect as a biochemical reaction, Esquibel estimates, but Maahjabeen instantly drops her arms a fraction of their height and her breath steadies a bit. Within a few moments she is able to lower her head onto the pillows and release her neck. Her back begins to bend. She shivers.

“More blankets!” Amy leans in, covering Maahjabeen with Miriam’s sleeping bag. She tenderly tucks the thick black curls back under the headscarf framing the young woman’s face.

Now Mandy starts to gently move her hands on Maahjabeen’s shoulder and she sighs, settling back, easing into the bed. Her eyelids flutter and then close. But her breath keeps catching, and even though progress is slow, the women tending her are patient.

Alonso watches it all, on his side. At first their urgency had upset him and Maahjabeen’s pain had only reminded him of his own. But the ministrations of the others have soothed him as much as Maahjabeen. This here is the ultimate remedy to the visions of torture that still dance in his head. Nothing could be more opposite than these gentle and kind women setting aside their own days to provide comfort to one of their own.

Here is another balm for his soul.