Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the second volume of 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:

27 – Ji-da-daa

Pradeep’s phone buzzes. It is one of the reminders he set to repeat each year, every April 12^th. FILE TAXES. Well. That will certainly be a problem. He is surprised at himself for not anticipating this. Usually he is very detailed and obsessive when it comes to financial matters. He just hadn’t connected the fully off-the-grid nature of this project with his finances. “Fuck. Damn.” He is so poor at cursing. And now he can hate himself for that too. “Bollocks!”

He throws off his bag and pulls himself from under his pyramid tarp and stalks away barefoot onto the sand, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The camp is lit by the faintest blue light of dawn. Nobody is awake. But Maahjabeen ducks her head out, quickly scanning the silent tents before shooting him a meaningful, intimate glare.

Pradeep wants to call out, wake the whole camp, ask who else forgot to take care of their basic paperwork. But half these people aren’t even American and others, like Alonso, have had bigger problems. This is Pradeep’s alone to deal with. So he gestures uselessly at his phone and makes a plaintive face at Maahjabeen, then wanders out toward the beach. He climbs the log, the chill of the wind off the open ocean cutting through his base layers. It is far too cold to be out here without a windbreaker. Whatever. It is his punishment for being such a dumbass.

The horizon is dark, bruised nearly black. Perhaps a storm passes them to the south, heading for the coast of North America. It will slam into the waiting Pacific Northwest and cover it with rain. That unbroken stretch of green forest that runs from Alaska down to like Santa Barbara is so amazing. Fed constantly by these storms spinning outward like a reverse whirlpool, flinging wind and water and life itself out into the wide world. Lisica is like the seed of all life, right in the center of this vortex like the pearl of an oyster. The vision thrills him, reversing what he thought was surely true. In this scenario, it is the genesis point itself, using the storms to cast all kinds of embryonic potential outward. Lisica, not Eden, is the secret garden from which all life emerged.

It’s a silly notion but it takes his mind off his troubles. Another figure scrambles onto the log beside him. It is Maahjabeen in her coat and boots. “What is wrong?” Her face is intense, nearly irate.

Pradeep steps away from her, afraid for her sake they might be seen together by anyone else. But she steps closer, clasping his arm. He just shakes his head. Her passion is too great for his silly error. It makes him feel a fool. He shrugs. “It’s just. My taxes. I forgot to pay them, I mean file them, before I left. It’s nothing.”

“Ohh…” She releases his arm.

“I’m just an idiot. I’m just angry with myself.”

“That is such a relief. I mean… I thought, well, I thought you had somehow found out, I mean, from your reaction back there, I would have guessed someone in your family had died.” She casts her eyes down, her brows flickering with pain.

They haven’t yet spoken of this. They haven’t had enough time alone together to peel away the layers of grief still tormenting Maahjabeen. He has wanted to say something but he doesn’t ever want to presume. He just wants to kiss her and take her in his arms and baby her while she lets it all go.

She scowls, clearing her head with a sharp toss. “I knew there was no way you could be getting a notification. I still… I had to see. Because, you know, when I found out such a terrible thing myself, I was totally alone. For a long time. And that made it very hard.”

Pradeep is overwhelmed by longing for this goddess beside him. Casting caution to the very cold wind, he pulls on her hand and they topple forward over the far side of the log so that no others might see them. They crawl across the freezing sand into the shelter she rebuilt, unable to resist touching and tasting each other.

He’s shivering. Oh, her sweet boy is too thin to survive this ocean wind without the proper gear. She will be his blanket. Maahjabeen unzips her jacket and covers Pradeep with her warmth.

Ξ

“Anyone seen Jay this morning?”

“He’s in the sub with Triquet and Mandy,” Katrina calls out from the tables beside the bunker.

Amy enters, shaking her head. “We had a date to collect some creekside gametophytes. What are they doing in the sub?”

“Who knows?” Katrina is busy with her linguistic puzzles. “They’ve been down there since last night.”

“Crazy kids.” Amy descends through the trap door into the sub, where she finds the entire top floor empty. She lowers herself to the next level to find Triquet in the main room among their stacks. For the first time, Amy realizes Triquet hasn’t dressed with their usual flamboyance since their ordeal in the village. She hopes nothing’s wrong. “Uh. Hey there.”

Triquet looks up, a bit of a worn, sad look on their face. “Oh. Hi, Amy. Is it morning already?”

Amy nods. “My goodness, Doctor. Have you been up all night?”

Triquet nods, glum, trailing long delicate fingers over a stack of files. “Couldn’t let it go. Haunted.”

“Haunted by what?” A shiver crawls up the back of Amy’s neck but she quickly suppresses it.

“The image of Katrina’s shawl. That Eyat piece. I swear I saw something similar in the files here. At some point. But I’ve checked my notes and I can’t find it. I must not have annotated it, like a big dumbbell. Or maybe I did but I used a descriptor for it I’m just not remembering. I really need a better tagging system. It’s driving me craaaaazy.”

“What was it? A photo or…?”

“I can’t remember! There’s so much material here and I’ve gone cross-eyed over the last few weeks trying to index it all. Thousands of entries. Tens of thousands to go. But I just know I saw… ugh, something. I just can’t remember what.”

Amy gives Triquet a hug. At first their body is rigid, intent on their project. But soon the warmth and human contact sinks deep. Then Triquet allows themself to be held. The two of them stand in silence, needing it. “Oh… thank you, Doctor Kubota.”

Amy steps away. “You’re welcome, Doctor Triquet. Any time.”

“People… who need people…” Triquet begins to sing, lacing their fingers in with Amy’s.

“Are the luckiest people…!” Amy joins in.

“In the world…!” They finish.

Amy laughs. “Hey now, you’re not old enough to know Barbara Streisand. That’s illegal.”

“No way. Yentl was my first crush.”

Amy sighs. “Young Babs is my kryptonite. What’s Up, Doc? Ooo baby. She’s amazing.” They share a laugh.

Triquet sags, wilting in the face of so many documents. They don’t know what to try next. This is hopeless. Finally someone actually needs an archaeologist to be of use on this crazy trip and Triquet is unable to provide.

“I didn’t even know you had such… neutral clothes.” Amy picks at the sleeve of Triquet’s khaki short-sleeve work shirt.

“It was for the Lisicans. I wanted to dress, well, I didn’t want our interaction to be about my fashion choices. I wanted it to be about that stupid display that none of them ever looked at. And the other reason is I have just loads of laundry to get done.” Triquet lifts a thick file they’ve already gone through five times and drops it again. “I swear, Amy, if I have to take another loss today I just think I might have to bring out the black veil and get maudlin.”

The words are lightly-spoken but their bitterness can’t be denied. Amy rests her head against Triquet’s shoulder. They are so much taller. Just a pale figure, standing strong and alone. Amy tilts her head back and smiles up at Triquet. “You know what, Triq? I really admire you.”

Triquet shakes off the compliment. “Wha-a-a-at? You admire that I can’t keep track of my own collections? How sweet.”

“No. I admire… who you are. The path you’ve taken in life. Sorry. Kind of out of the blue, I know. I just wanted to let you know. I know it’s not always easy. Actually, it’s never easy, is it?”

Triquet smiles gently, feeling a bit patronized. “Thank you, dear. That’s very nice, I guess. No, it isn’t ever easy, watching everyone pair off and have flings while I’m left with no one. No one but my chiffon and lace! You’re very sweet to think of me. Most people don’t. But what made you think of it? Do you… have someone like me in your life?”

“Do I…?” Amy’s brow wrinkles. “Uh, yeah. Me. I have me in my life. My whole life.”

Triquet doesn’t understand what all that pronoun wrangling is about. They just pat Amy’s hand and shake their head, a teensy mystified and bemused. “Yes. Well, we all do, don’t we?” Oh, well. It had been a nice gesture, but now Triquet is beginning to feel a bit like they’ve just been All Lives Matter-ed out of their identity. Of course everyone has their own memories of shame and ostracism. It’s just a bit different being non-binary.

But Amy won’t let it rest. “Oh my god, didn’t anybody tell you? I was sure Mandy would have told you.” She guffaws into her hands.

“Told me what, sweetie?” Triquet tries to force their attention back to the records. This conversation is getting too awkward. But they are just so tired. Maybe they should go crawl in bed.

Amy seizes Triquet’s hands and beams at them. “I was born in a male body, Triquet. I transitioned… well, half a lifetime ago now. I mean, I still transition every day. And I’ve had to deal with all of it. Lost a teaching position. Sued the university. Got hate mail. Still get hate mail. Chased out of a bathroom once, well, actually—”

“Oh, sweet child!” Triquet has no idea where the tears suddenly come from. They wrap Amy in a fierce and passionate embrace. Then they hold her out at arm’s length. “You are? Why didn’t anyone…?” But Triquet knows the answer to that before they finish asking it. Everyone handles their gender issues in their own way. Oh, but what they wouldn’t have given to know they had a real sister here this whole time! “Oh, Amy. You are the most beautiful goddess I’ve ever known!”

Amy laughs. “You said it again! Remember? When we met? You called me a goddess? And I said we were going to be best friends?”

“Ohhh it all makes sense now. You sweet sweet little…” Triquet is filled with love. Relief. Safety. A sense of belonging. They catch Amy up in another fierce hug and dot her face with kisses. “But wait. I don’t understand. Did Alonso…? I mean, when you were dating. He knew you were trans, right? He must have.”

“It was before, when I still identified as a gay man.”

“Wait. Alonso’s…? Aaaaaaaahhh! What is happening? I thought I knew who all you people were!” Triquet grips their head in their hands, reeling against the work table. “I’m always telling people not to fall victim to their own assumptions and I just—wow. I’m so sorry, Amy. I’m making more assumptions than anyone.”

“Not at all. I just wanted you to know. So you don’t have to feel so alone, Triquet. We—I mean none of us are gender-fluid—”

“Non-binary.”

“Non-binary. Right. Sorry. But the point is, we’re not the squares you think we are. Not in the least. In fact, go back a few decades the three of us were considered positively dangerous. We’re just old and tired now.”

Now Triquet thinks of a young dashing Alonso, a fierce Miriam, a brave Amy. Wow. The 80s just got a lot more interesting. These people must have been young gods. Triquet shakes their head in disbelief. “Did you come down here just to tell me that? I mean, why now? Do I look so forlorn?”

“Oh. Right. No, I’m looking for Jay. Have you seen him?”

“Yeah, he and Mandy went into the tunnels hours ago.”

“Well.” Amy steps back from Triquet with a sweet smile. “Guess I’ll go find them. Good luck with your haystack and needle and everything. But you should really get some sleep first.”

Triquet nods, the emotions draining from their limbs, leaving nothing but heavy-lidded exhaustion. But now it is a different exhaustion. Triquet feels swaddled up like a newborn. As Amy ducks through the next hatch, they call out, “Hey.” Amy stops and ducks her head back under with a querying look. “I admire you too. Goddess of the Hearth.”

Amy shakes her head and rolls her eyes in pleasure. “You always know just what to say!” She blows a kiss and returns to the dimly lit chamber ahead, still in search of Jay and Mandy. Into the last room and down the hole… The remains of Esquibel’s barricade have been neatly stacked against one wall. She sits on the edge of the metal panels and dangles her feet over. The joys of being short.

And then, at the bottom, where she has to wriggle through the long mud cave, she gains no advantage from her small stature. Because as well as being the shortest member of the team, she’s the thickest. So, if anything, she gets even more filthy than the others. The joys of being… spherical.

But Amy has long ago accepted that she will never be the girlish Liza Minelli in Cabaret of her dreams. Although she did all she could through college to learn those tap dance routines. Well. That was an unexpected encounter with Triquet, but so necessary! And now, by the light of her phone, she navigates to the left-hand tunnel and the sound of voices in the distance.

Amy pops out into the bottom of a chimney filled with a meter or more of wet ash and a slurry of cinders. Jay is crouched on a bit of solid ground above the mess on the far wall. Mandy sloshes through the stew, drenched and stained nearly black by her hours of exertions. “Hey!” Amy calls out.

Mandy screams in surprise and nearly loses her footing.

Jay gasps at Amy, then immediately starts laughing to expel the sudden shot of adrenaline. “Hey hey. What up, boss.”

“We had a date, young man.” Amy peers upward, to see the chimney arrow straight upward with a ragged hole of gray way high up at the very top. As she watches, a tiny cloud crosses the opening, proving to her what she sees. “Who-o-o-o-a…!” She looks down at them in wonder. “How high is that?”

“Thinking like 400 meters or more,” Jay shrugs. “Straight up.”

“You two are crazy!” Amy laughs at them. “That’s so high! What do you even think you can do in here?”

“Well. It’s kinda been a long process, I guess.” Jay scrubs his hair while Mandy continues wading in circles, feeling for something with her feet. “It took hours just to break the last of the big burnt pieces into little pieces so we could get in here. Then we, well, we made some silly guesses about what we were seeing until we figured it out. It’s much more clear now, with the daylight up there.”

“We sort of had to reverse-engineer… No! I’ve already been here! Ugh.” Mandy reverses course. “So I mean yeah, Jay and I argued, and I now admit that we might not be able to get to the top this way ourselves but we started thinking, well, how the fuck did the military ever get up and down this shaft?”

“Elevator?” Amy guesses. “Honey, you got to get out of that water, your teeth are chattering.”

“In a minute. Right. An elevator. Must have been. Ain’t nobody climbing a ladder for hundreds of meters. So if I can just find the old metal connections down here… Not here… Oh, my feet are so numb I’m not sure I’d even feel them if I did. Like pulleys we think? Or at least some kind of anchor points…”

“And Mandy won’t let it drain any more before she checks.” Jay gave up an hour ago. “Sorry. Forgot about the date, Amy. Or, I mean, I actually didn’t, I just didn’t know it was already dawn.”

“It’s like 8:30. You two have been down here for like ten hours.”

“F-fine.” Mandy has waded over toward Amy and now holds her trembling arms upward like a child asking to be picked up. “We can come back in an hour.”

“Ha.” Amy pulls the waifish girl from the water and drags her up the slope of the passage floor to a dry spot before letting go. “You can come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Mandy wails, but she doesn’t resist as Amy pulls her close and briskly rubs her back with a strong hand.

“Yes, Mandy. Tomorrow.” Amy shares a perplexed glance with Jay. What is wrong with Mandy? Her obsessive behavior is going to give her pneumonia.

Jay slides back into the slurry, wincing at the cold as he wades across. He is so done with freezing water. Even his bones are cold. “I know, but what was I gonna do, leave her?”

Ξ

Now that Plexity is mostly up and running, Flavia has taken a break from all the bug reports its users are generating to work a bit on the atmospheric modeling Katrina suggested they do for Mandy. First, they need to build a model of the lagoon and cliff faces in a virtual environment, then they should be able to start running processes.

It seemed like an impossible task at first. But Flavia discovered that the drone captures its flight path down to the closest meter. It also has collision-avoidance that doesn’t allow it to get closer than three meters to an object. So she and Katrina have spent all morning criss-crossing the lagoon, beach, creek, grove, and cliffs up to about a hundred meters, all at a three meter distance from said objects. Now their batteries are re-charging.

She has downloaded the flight data and created a plot of 1m² resolution. It’s nearly a square kilometer so at a hundred meter height she has one hundred million data points. She can already feel her poor CPU crying. Katrina says she’ll build a beautiful visual representation of the wind current data but Flavia needs no such graphical user interface. She is happy with the columns of raw data. It is a nearly randomly-generated testbed, like a Minecraft seed. But it still follows organic principles of fractal erosion and Fibonacci propagation. The record in this dataset for vertical change between one square meter node and the next is on the cliffs, where there is a thirty-one meter differential. Amazing. They should also skin these tiles. Then she can assign friction values to each and perhaps, who knows, heat and humidity values? Well. Flavia will create the template and Mandy can hang whatever values she likes on them. Assuming they don’t melt their processors. But there will be shortcuts aplenty once it is up and running. Algorithms will automate nearly all of it once it is properly characterized. This will be fun! Of course it remains useless until they get proper readings for wind currents in the higher atmosphere but it is a good start.

Triquet emerges from a cell wearing their fanciest evening gown, dark blue satin adorned with costume jewels. They sashay around the bunker, dark red lipstick making their mouth a voluptuous heart. Without a word they approach each person and kiss them soundly on the cheek before discreetly re-applying the lipstick and moving on to the next. Soon, Flavia, Esquibel, and Maahjabeen are all kissed. And they are each given small gifts, chocolates wrapped with a tiny hand-written-and-decorated invitation.

Flavia cackles when Triquet kisses her. She needed someone to brighten her mood and here they are. She opens the invitation. It says, “Something special is in the air!” Bells and stars adorn the card. “Lunch outside at 1pm sharp, please.”

There is something about this day where everything feels settled. Flavia’s past life in Torino and Bergamo seems a faded dream now. This is her daily routine. She has adapted to squatting over the stinking trenches and casting handfuls of sand on her feces. Cold showers under the waterfall have become a thrilling treat and her little cell makes her imagine herself a nun in a convent, devoted in contemplation to the grand mysteries of life. And the beauty of the island can’t be denied. It is filling her with something deep and green, like the ancient Roman alabaster statues that grow moss on their lower fringes. She is ancient now like them, integrated into the world in ways she has never been, or ever wanted to be.

Katrina spins down the narrow hall between the cells, as pretty as a doll in Triquet’s borrowed finery. Her arms are above her head like she is some kind of calypso dancer and she is adorned with shiny bells and bands of gold. Her slender body is wrapped in tight layers of gold and silver lamé. A lion’s face has been artfully painted upon hers, with whiskers above hollows in her furred cheeks and a golden brow. “You are absolutely a vision!” Flavia catches her hand as she passes and kisses it.

Katrina purrs, “You think I don’t know?” She bumps her hip into Flavia’s shoulder then bends and kisses her other cheek.

“What is happening here? What is so special? Is it Carnaval?”

“No idea, love.” Katrina giggles. “But when Triquet tells you it’s open season on their wardrobe you don’t ask questions.” With a flourish, Katrina passes through the door to the camp outside.

Flavia hasn’t been on many field expeditions. In her experience, a career in mathematics has generally led to a lot of solitude with workstations and socially-inept conferences in sterile work spaces. But are life sciences expeditions all like this? Flavia turns to Maahjabeen. “Eh, sorellina, is today a holiday and I didn’t know?”

Maahjabeen is staring at her phone, hypnotized by the display options Plexity is offering her as she inputs tidal data from various points on the lagoon. Katrina has really outdone herself in offering ways to present, annotate, and track data. She is so impressed she doesn’t see Katrina’s costume and can’t tear her eyes from her screen. “Eh, Flavia…? What did you call me? What is a sorellina?”

“Ah. Little sister. No. Listen. I feel like I have been missing out. Are all biologist field trips like this such a party all the time?”

“What? No. Never.” Maahjabeen grimaces at the door and dismisses it all with a backward wave of her hand. “These people are weird. It is because of Alonso, I think. He is the first weird one. And he got Amy and Miriam to bring all their other weird people here. Then there is Katrina with her music and that drug addict Jay. These are not normal scientists. Not by any means.”

“Oh, good. I felt like I was taking the crazy pills. How do these people ever get any work done? I mean, not that I mind. I don’t always need it to be so formal…” And as if to prove her point, Katrina’s music blares from the camp, a lively Brazilian festival tune with a cheering chorus and lots of horns and drums.

At that moment, Jay and Mandy climb the stairs to the trap door and emerge from the rear of the bunker, shaking with cold and covered head to foot in ash and mud. But the music immediately grabs Jay and he shuffles stiffly forward. “What’s that I hear? The song of my peeps. All right. Hold on, DJ Bubblegum. On my way.”

His filthy appearance and joyous reaction are so preposterous that the initial shock Esquibel, Maahjabeen, and Flavia had upon seeing Jay and Mandy is released as gales of laughter. Jay waddles out the door, whooping like a cowboy. But Mandy is in more dire need. She collapses in Esquibel’s arms.

“Oh my god, Mands. You’re a mess. What have you done?”

“I’ve been…” Mandy releases a shuddering breath, “doing real work. Finally. After all these weeks. I’ve been working.”

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Esquibel begins peeling clothes from Mandy’s soaked body.

Amy appears with two large towels, wiping her own clothes clean. “Wait. Where’s the boy?”

Flavia leans forward and peers out the door. “Dancing. Poorly.”

“What a loon. Oh, wow. What’s the big celebration here?”

Flavia shrugs. “Nobody knows but Triquet.”

Triquet, dancing a fair bit better than Jay, reappears in the door and hands out more invitations. They kiss Amy soundly on the cheek and crow, “This party is for Doctor Kubota! Goddess of the Hearth!” Then they hand Mandy an invitation but Esquibel fends off their ritual kiss until she can scrub Mandy’s cheek clean.

“There.”

Triquet leans in and kisses the clean cheek presented. “Oh, dear one. You’re freezing!” Triquet breathes into the hollow of Mandy’s neck and holds her icy hands as Esquibel scrubs her back.

Flavia realizes she will get no more work done this day. With a sigh she saves her work one last time and puts her laptop to sleep. Well, she is hungry anyway. And if there is drinking in the future she needs to have something in her empty belly first.

The day outside is eerily beautiful. The marine layer that nearly always covers the sky now only rests atop the island, like a dark gray hat that protects it from prying eyes. But the surrounding sea is luminous green with sunlight. And the wind is warm. Ahh. She could get used to a warm wind. It feels like such a luxury.

Katrina is up on her platform, swaying in time to her beats. Flavia is struck once again by the vision. This lively sprite… she deserves a better nickname than DJ Bubblegum. It occurs to Flavia that she must actually have one. She is a real DJ in Australia. She must have like a professional stage name. She crosses to Katrina and shouts up at her, “You are fabulous. What is your real name?”

Katrina isn’t sure she heard Flavia right so she pulls her headphones all the way off and laughs. “Repeat that?”

“We call you DJ Bubblegum. But what is your real DJ name?”

“Oh. Ha. I’ve had several. When I was fifteen me and my mates just took silly names. I was Seventy-heaven and I spun J-pop and house. Then when I was really into dark techno and gabber they called me Lamassu. But for the last few years I’ve been on this lush electro thing and I’m known as haiku triplet.”

“Haiku triplet? That’s what people call you?”

“It’s my slogan, a haiku with a little extra on the end:

First I will measure

the breadth of my life

and then I will cut to its depth.”

Flavia nods, appreciating the rule-breaking rhythmic triplet of the last line. Katrina hops back to her decks for a transition into a disco beat. Flavia turns away, recalling her mission to get food, but Jay grabs her by the hands and gets her dancing with him. She does all she can to avoid his mud and ash but within moments they mark her clothes. Ah well. Not that this top was clean anyway.

She finally disentangles herself and slips away to the kitchen tables, where she locates a clean plate and fork. Peeking under several pot lids rewards her with beans and rice. Topped with some of this horrible American parmesan and olive oil it isn’t half bad.

Flavia sits on the edge of Alonso’s platform beside him in his camp chair. She puts a hand on his shoulder, to ask if she can get him anything, but before words can issue from her open mouth he gasps. They all do. A troop of young Lisicans has issued from the door of the bunker. They are bare-chested, carrying nets and double-pronged fishing spears. They had been chattering but when the door opens they fall silent and goggle at Katrina’s music and the details of the camp.

“Uh oh. Wait. Hey.” Amy doesn’t know what to say. She stands and waves her hands ineffectually in both warning and welcome.

Katrina cuts the volume by half and grimaces in apology. She doesn’t know how bizarre that looks through her lion makeup. Jay, dancing with his eyes closed, raises his arms when the volume drops and bawls, “Aw, c’mon!” Then he opens his eyes and sees the villagers huddled by the door. “Ah. Oh. Hey, what’s up, my brothers and sisters? Fuck yeah. Little bit of dancing, little bit of fishing. This day’s looking up!” He claps his hands softly to the beat as he approaches the Lisicans, waddling on stiff legs. “Hey, gang. How they runnin’?”

The boldest of the Lisicans, a young woman they have seen before up in the village, steps into the camp. She speaks a long string of words to Jay, then points at him with the tip of her thumb, as if she is identifying him. “Ya-assa-ghay.”

Katrina mimics that last word into her mic, “Ya-assa-ghay,” looping the phrase over and over again in an echo. The Lisicans turn toward the sound in wonder as it skirls up a major scale and shatters like glass. “Okay. Sorry, that was a bit much. But check it out, peeps. Uh… ‘Lisica,’” she breathes, making it echo gently in a soothing refrain, fading like waves on the shore.

The villagers talk energetically to each other, recognizing the word. Katrina squeals with pleasure, jumping from her platform and bringing the microphone with her. She stands in front of the young woman with her friendliest smile. “Good morning.”

The young woman points at her own face with the tip of her thumb and says, “G̱óo-n-aa.”

“G̱óo-n-aa? That’s your name?” But the rising inflection of the question is obviously wrong. Katrina repeats it as a musician, not a linguist, getting the pace and intonation right. “G̱óo-n-aa.”

G̱óo-n-aa smiles when Katrina speaks her name into the mic.

“I’m Katrina. Uh. Bontiik. Listen up. G̱óo-n-aa…” She sings it, a long pretty croon that maintains the tonal profile but elongates the vowels. Katrina retreats to her platform where she records another loop and mixes the name into a violin arpeggio. G̱óo-n-aa cries out in a register that’s alien to the researchers. They can’t tell if it’s pleasure or outrage or terror. The other Lisicans start calling out G̱óo-n-aa as well, layering their voices in with the dance track. It is soon a discordant wreck, but everyone seems merry about it except for G̱óo-n-aa.

She steps through the camp, gaze turning from the laptop to the kitchen tables to the parachute hanging above. Then her eyes drop to the beach. She is alarmed to see the huge fallen redwood trunk, and calls out to the other villagers, making it clear that she hasn’t seen the beach since the tree fell a couple weeks before.

“Who wants to hear their name next?” Katrina asks into the mic.

Alonso holds up a hand. “Katrina. It’s too much.”

She smiles, abashed, knowing it’s true. With a sigh she steps back, shaking her head in rueful surrender. She just couldn’t switch gears fast enough and now she’s spooked them. Not that there was going to be a chance they’d meet in the middle today, not when her enthusiasm was already so high. “Good call, Alonso. I was about to offer them some LSD.”

“Katrina! How could you—?” Mandy sputters, outraged that she could ever consider such a thing.

“Joking. Just joking here.” Katrina holds up her hands. “Sorry. I like cracking jokes in inappropriate settings. I thought we’d already discovered that about me.”

The Lisicans, unburdened for a moment by the attention of the researchers, take the opportunity to slip out onto the beach. They climb the trunk and disappear on the far side, Jay not too far behind. The others only watch as he clambers stiffly over the log and calls out to the Lisicans before dropping out of view.

The others stand, watching, the forgotten music still pumping out a disco beat. Finally, Pradeep rouses himself. “So this lagoon is a regular fishing resource for them. We should have registered that when they came through last time. So that changes our approach here doesn’t it? This lagoon and beach isn’t any kind of pristine ecological environment, Alonso. It is being harvested and most likely cultivated by this, uh, this civilization here. This is a garden, not a wild forest. We can’t properly characterize the life on Lisica without…” He trails away, knowing Alonso doesn’t want to hear it.

But Alonso is a scientist, and this is where the data leads. Human presence and all that it implies. He sighs in acceptance. Regardless of the headaches it will cause, Lisicans fishing in the lagoon is what life on the island is actually about. Now he just wishes he’d thought to bring his friend Alastair Brock, a wonderful anthropologist. He would have known just what to do with these villagers. But none of the rest of them really do. “We will need to figure out how to handle these interactions. Like Esquibel said, we need some kind of protocol. We should work on developing that, team. Until then… Eh… Just keep the locals safe and treat them with respect. That is our first priority.”

“Yes, we should all be wearing masks, people.” Esquibel hurries to the kitchen tables and opens one of the plastic bins beneath, where she finds a box of unopened masks. She hands them out. “Ugh. And we should definitely be getting one to Jay.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if they really have any effect.” Miriam holds hers in her hands, not yet putting it on.

“Oh, Doctor Truitt,” Esquibel begins. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those. People who think masks don’t work aren’t—”

“Nay, I’m not an idiot. I know a properly-fitted medical-grade mask does its job. I’m just saying we’ve been afraid this whole time that we’d get these islanders sick. But so far our hygiene has been… not great, and we keep having contacts with them where they have long exposures to us when we’re not wearing masks, I mean, like that one time when the kids had Katrina for hours in the rain down here? And as far as we know none of them have gotten sick. Has anyone seen any signs of illness in the Lisicans since we’ve made contact?”

They all shake their heads no, sharing frowns.

“No no no. That is very bad news,” Pradeep stands and crosses his arms. “Because I can only think of a couple scenarios where that is possible and one of them isn’t possible at all, that they have some kind of super-universal immunity to all the diseases that we have stored in us.”

“Yes, there is no way that is true.” Esquibel is at a loss. “That would be a medical miracle that has never been seen yet it is impossible. But it has only been a couple weeks. Perhaps many of the diseases we have infected them with are still incubating?” Her voice trails off even as she says it, the likelihood of that being true of every strain of herpes and rhinovirus that they carry as a matter of course can’t be true either.

“So then what’s your other scenario, Pradeep?” Flavia demands. “The one that is making you so nervous?”

He blanches. “The other, likely, possibility we may have to consider here is that the Lisicans have enough regular contact with others in the modern world that they’ve already had their plagues and adaptations and gained enough immunity to global diseases. And if that is the case, then that means we may not be as alone here as we think we are…”

“Ehhh… No, I do not like that idea,” Esquibel exclaims. “Like who are we talking? Like—like spies?”

“Shouldn’t you be the one who knows?” Miriam shakes her head with worry. “But getting back to my original point, let me be clear: I’m not saying we should stop using masks. I’m just disturbed by the lack of, uh, medical issues that have been caused so far.”

“Who else could it be?” Flavia wonders. “There was that Chinese plane wing that Maahjabeen discovered.”

“Maybe the Japanese? How long have they been gone from that other bunker you discovered during the storm, Maahjabeen?”

“No no.” She dismisses the idea. “The Japanese have been gone since the end of the war. The Russians were in there after. Maybe it is them. Maybe there are still Russians who come in. Or maybe it’s more American military types. There is no reason to believe, well, anything they have told us about the history of the island. It has been nothing but surprises since we came here.”

“Or… somebody private…?” Katrina thinks back to the Jules Verne book she read when she was like twelve about an island in the Pacific and the evil genius who lived in the sea caves beneath. “Wait. Wasn’t that Captain Nemo? In the story?” But she can tell she’s lost them all. “Or maybe like a James Bond villain somewhere down there. We could’ve been drinking martinis this whole time.”

Esquibel shakes her head. “No, please no fantasy stories right now. It makes no sense. But Pradeep is correct. With the amount of contact we’ve had, we should have seen at least a common cold or two by now. But I don’t know how to actually plan for that. We just don’t have evidence for other, eh, modern people being here. Yet another security concern for us. I wish you would let me at least fortify the bunker. We must remain vigilant.”

The music stops. Katrina scurries off to the bunker, to return with her laptop and its list of Eyat phrases. Triquet sighs, sad. “Apparently so. Mother mercy it’s hard getting you people in a proper party mood and when I finally do, the locals show up and ruin all our fun. Colonial tourism just isn’t the glory it used to be.”

“What is this party anyway, Triquet? What is it about a lunch?” Alonso is glad the subject has been changed. He is never happy to have geopolitics and paranoia dominate his science mission.

“Oh. Well. Just a little celebration I wanted to have. Not that I did any cooking. You’re all on your own for that. But I just wanted to… I’ve been feeling… very alone here… But I had a marvelous little gabfest with Doctor Goddess Kubota here and found out I’m not quite the special little pony here that I thought I was.”

“What are they talking about, Amy?” Alonso turns to her, helpless with confusion.

“Triquet didn’t know you and I were gay lovers.”

“Ah! Yes. The good old days.” Alonso chuckles.

“Wait. What?” Maahjabeen looks from face to knowing face. Evidently she is the last one to not know this. Gay lovers? Is she not understanding some weird American slang? How could that even be true between Alonso and Amy? She is missing something here. She studies Pradeep’s face. He appears unsurprised. What is this, an inside joke? She will ask him when they are alone together.

“Bless. Amy’s old news is worth celebrating?” Miriam laughs. “What if I told you I once made out with Sinead O’Connor?”

Katrina’s head snaps up. “Fuck off. No way.”

Triquet squeals and throws themself into Miriam’s lap. “Details! Details! Was she still bald? What did she smell like?”

But Miriam is laughing too hard to answer.

“See. Here’s the problem.” Katrina slams her laptop closed and gestures at it as if it’s misbehaving. “There’s no Bontiik in this Eyat list. And no Ya-assa-ghay or Wetchie-ghuy. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re from a different language group entirely. And I just can’t wrap my head around some of this phrasing.” She opens her laptop again and reads out, “A ee- ⁓ a- (postpositional pronoun) her; him; to | to her/him (a non-main character of a narrative or event) | third person obviate postpositional • used in certain verbs where something is going towards the object (literally or figuratively).” She screws her face up in consternation. “I mean, there’s this whole weird way of looking at the world they have that is just so alien to us. Like their homeland is an object toward which the sea is directed. But the movement of the sea is the important part. Not the object, the homeland itself. Or it is so modified by activity and motion upon it that it becomes something else.”

This dense info-dump stuns them into silence. In the distance they can hear Jay whoop with joy but they still can’t see him.

Triquet dusts off their skirt and smirks at everyone. “Great party, no? I only throw the best. But anyway. Before I lose the spotlight completely here, I just wanted to share one other little thought about things. Amy, you know how I was down in the sub looking all night for an image I’d seen that reminded me of Katrina’s textile artifact?”

“Oh my god.” Amy sits up. “Did you find it?”

“I did. I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it because it was just a fragment of one of the torn-up photos. And I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing when I sorted them. But now I’ve put it back together.” Triquet crosses to their platform and lifts a manila folder. Opening it carefully, they show everyone the photo they have painstakingly re-assembled.

“What is that word?” Alonso squints at the letters written above the wall in the grainy black and white photo. It displays an altar with an ancient Eastern Orthodox cross, a battered lacquer reliquary box, a fishing spear made of bone, and a tapestry like the one Katrina photographed. “I think the letters are in Cyrillic.”

Triquet shows the photo to Katrina. Phonetically, she sounds out a word unknown to them all: “Ji-da-daa.”