Chapter 44 – In The Rain
October 28, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third 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:
44 – In The Rain
“God, look at that, Jay. Actual sunlight.” It streams through the trees ahead during a break in the storm, illuminating the pillars of redwood groves, which give way to a great expanse on the far side. “Almost there now.”
Jay limps along behind Pradeep, one eye squeezed shut, a hand plastered against his left side. “One sec.” He falls to his knees and heaves up the bile in his stomach. It is empty of food. Bile is all he’s got. Oh, yeah. That definitely makes the incision scream. And now his throat is so torn up it will never be the same. Pain everywhere, inside and out.
“Are you ill, my friend? Or just…” Pradeep makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, including all Jay’s injuries.
“Just…” Jay repeats the gesture, “exhausted.” But it is too painful to speak, the acid scoring his windpipe. He hauls himself to his feet and taps his chest pocket. “Least I got my phone back. Worth it.” He forces himself to move again. They are nearly there.
Dropping down a loose slope onto a wide basin, they shuffle across the forest floor as the groves give way to open ground. The creek has dropped off somewhere to their left. The woods are silent and still, the birds and insects continuing to hide from the storm.
“Weather coming back,” Pradeep observes. “That’s why they don’t come out. They know this is just a quick break. Ugh. Look at the clouds coming. So sick of the rain.”
“Who doesn’t come out?” Jay peers around.
“The animals. The fauna. That’s why it’s so quiet in here.”
Jay slurps a trickle of cold water off a lily’s broad leaf. It leaves a floral, sticky taste in his mouth. But it soothes his throat. Now he can speak again. “Study I read right before I left. Researchers have been listening to forests. In the ultrasonic range, just above human hearing. Plants talk.”
“With a bunch of tiny high-pitched voices? It is so cold today! Like that?” Pradeep is pleased with his joke but Jay doesn’t laugh. Oh, well. This is why he doesn’t crack jokes. Nobody expects humor from him. “Well, this is what I just proved with Plexity and the mycelium networks. Chemical signals travel along immense and far-flung networks carrying data…”
“Yeah, but this is through the air. Sounds like it does underwater. At a coral reef when you dive. All those pops and clicks and trills.”
“Really?” Pradeep listens but of course he can’t hear them.
“The more stressed the plants are the more clicks they make. If we just had a bit better hearing we’d hear them all the time. Know when to water our houseplants and such. Most critters must hear the plants chattering away like constantly. But happy plants only click like once an hour.”
“Well then this is indeed a quiet forest. These trees have to be pretty happy with all this rain and now sun.”
“Wait.” Jay stops, listening intently. “I do hear something.”
Pradeep listens too. It is a voice so distant that they can only sense its tones and textures against the edges of the silence. “Okay. Come on, this way. But quiet. Who knows who it is?”
They step in that direction, finding a gully dividing the ground choked with ferns. They follow it in the general direction of the voice, finally coming to a dead stop at a sudden drop.
A line of dark stone past the vegetation falls away nearly ten meters to a deeper cut in the ground, where their gully joins a larger one. This has running water at the bottom and a sandbar with a figure crouched on it. Wetchie-ghuy. But he isn’t looking at them. He is looking at a bay tree beside the water in which Jidadaa is perched out of reach.
She is speaking Lisican to the shaman. When Pradeep and Jay arrive she doesn’t stop or acknowledge them, nor does Wetchie-ghuy. Her voice ends in a question and his answer is abrupt.
She asks another question. “Xʼoon yadyee x̱ʼaadáx̱ sá?”
“Yax̱adoosh.”
“Ai eh.” Jidadaa finally turns to the two outsiders. “Seven days. That is how long.”
“How long until what?” Jay’s voice is filled with suspicion.
“The little babies are born. The fox babies.”
“Kits.” Pradeep studies this scene. It is some kind of standoff here, where Wetchie-ghuy waits for Jidadaa to, what, surrender? Give him back his little doll? Both? “We call baby foxes kits. But what does that have to do with anything? Don’t they have like five litters a year? I’m just shocked the island isn’t overrun with them.”
Surprisingly, Jidadaa translates Pradeep’s words for Wetchie-ghuy. He only pulls his lips back over his teeth and grimaces. Then, with the compulsion of a pedagogue, he begins to lecture them all on the subject.
Jidadaa says, “Foxes are old here. First fox came with Tuzhit. First man. Lisica beautiful then. All birds, all little mice. Then foxes eat all the birds. All the mice. All the snake and lizard. Then men say, no more fox. They kill. All fox gone. Then Lisica is very bad. Very bad time and all people are unhappy. But one fox is left, hiding. They find. She has baby kits. Eight. One for each village or íx̱tʼ…” She gestures at Wetchie-ghuy. “Long time ago. But now, only three fox left. One, she is gone right now. Hiding to have baby kits. Wetchie-ghuy and Daadaxáats look and look but they don’t find. They fight, to be the one to control fox baby kits.”
Wetchie-ghuy drops into a crouch upon hearing his rival’s name spoken aloud. He mutters darkly to himself.
“Wait…” Pradeep tries to digest all this information. “This is what their argument is about? Who gets custody of the silver fox kits? That’s… bizarre. They’re like kidnapping and poisoning people over it? Bloody hell. So Wetchie-ghuy used to have a fox of his own but it died? It ran away? And now he wants another?”
“He wants all. Make the decide. To decide who get fox. When fox can have baby kits, they are spirit of village. Without fox, village die. With new fox, new life.”
“Jidadaa, watch out!”
Jay barely has the first syllable of her name out before Wetchie-ghuy twitches forward, leaping for the lowest branches of the bay tree. But Jidadaa twitches as well, and seemingly without any effort at all she is crouched on an even higher limb.
Jidadaa holds out Wetchie-ghuy’s doll as a taunt and curses him, the Lisican words coming fast and furious. She threatens to pull the doll apart and the shaman below her relents, falling away from the tree and retreating to the sandbar, where he crouches once more.
“What is that thing you stole?” Pradeep calls out. “Why does he care so much for it?”
“This is magic doll. It tells Wetchie-ghuy where to find foxes.”
“Ah.” Pradeep nods. “That makes sense.”
“It does? In what universe does that make sense?” Jay rasps. “No. What I want to know is what the fucking shamans want with us? Why do they keep after us? Shouldn’t they focus on the fox?”
But Jidadaa doesn’t need to ask Wetchie-ghuy why. She already knows the answer. “You are magic. You are koox̱.”
Jay and Pradeep frown at each other. “Unexpected,” Pradeep finally manages. “I don’t feel like magic. Nor koosh.”
Jidadaa calls out to Wetchie-ghuy, shaking the doll, indicating that if he doesn’t let her go she will throw it in the stream. Finally, he appears to give up. With a final glare over his shoulder at her, he withdraws back up the gully out of sight.
Triumphant, she smiles at Pradeep and Jay. “I will kill his doll.”
“We know you will, sister.” Jay gives her a thumbs up. “Don’t need that jackoff in charge of the foxes anyway. Not when they’re the soul of each village. That’s crazy. So the foxes showed up like three hundred years ago, wiped out all the native populations, then the people wiped out the foxes but then they realized they majorly F’d up and now they got nothing but this strict breeding program like my cousin Becky and her French Bulldogs with the AKC?”
But Jidadaa isn’t really listening. She’s peering back the way Wetchie-ghuy went.
“This makes Morska Vidra a more important figure than we knew,” Pradeep reasons. “Or at least his fox. I’m shocked Wetchie-ghuy doesn’t try to steal his.”
The rain starts again. “Welp.” Jay waves at Jidadaa. “Time to get moving on. This has been crazy, as always. Thanks, I guess, for saving our asses again. Good luck with the doll and the foxes and all that. But we got to get back to our buddies. It’s been too long.” He steps back from the edge of the stone cliff, trying to abandon Jidadaa here and find a way to the open land ahead.
“You don’t have any more questions for her?” Pradeep feels like he could ask Jidadaa questions all day. “She’s the only one who knows what is happening here and has enough English to enlighten us. Like, who are the golden childs, eh? Are they the third village? Jidadaa? The golden man and his childs?”
Finally she turns back to look at them, her face filled with worry. “Secret village. Shidl Dít. Thunderbird House. Live in trees. Hiding tribe. Nobody know them.”
Jay has run out of patience and his exhaustion is threatening to drop him where he stands. “Look, Prad. She’s a thief. I’m not even sure we should believe anything she says about the villages or the foxes or any of the—”
But Pradeep isn’t going to let this opportunity pass. “Yes, I know. But her answers are better than nothing, aren’t they?” He turns back to the girl in the tree. “And what about Lisicans in general? Are they glad we are here? Angry? Are they against us or…? I mean, do they even understand what we’re trying to do here?”
Jidadaa looks across the way to them. “People are sad. Jay is lidass. I am Jidadaa. Time is end.” And then she twitches again. The limb shivers and leaves fall. But she is gone.
“Whoa. How’d she do that? Is she…?” Pradeep tries to get a different angle on the bay tree’s crown, “…still in there somewhere? I mean, she must be, right?”
“Don’t sweat it, Prad. She’ll find us when she finds us. Come on. I think we can get down this way. Let’s hurry back home before the rain starts pouring again.”
Pradeep’s gaze lingers on the green cloud of bay leaves hiding her. “Don’t disappear! Jidadaa! Come with us!”
“Fuck that.” Jay starts without Pradeep, who reluctantly follows after a brief interval. They can’t take the chance on Wetchie-ghuy finding them separated.
“Hold on, Jay. I’m coming.”
And just a few moments later they finally win free of the trees for the first time all day. A great green meadow spreads before them, its hillocks still obscuring the creek. Jay crosses the open ground, the tall green grasses streaking his legs with water. “Okay. Back in business. Now as soon as I find the river again I can navigate us back to the village. Then it’s just a hey-how-you-doing to the villagers and then it’s straight through to the tunnels and the bunker and a hot meal and hammock. Yeah, boy. Let’s do this.”
But Jay reaches one hillock higher than the rest and stops. He turns and turns, his face filling with first confusion, then fear, then despair. He groans and nearly collapses.
Pradeep hurries to his side. “What? What is it?”
Jay is too dispirited to speak. He just makes a weak gesture with his one working arm.
Pradeep turns and turns, looking for the way out. Perhaps he’s just seeing it all wrong. “What is it? Which way, Jay?”
“I don’t know!” Jay falls to his knees, fully spent. “I’ve never been here before! This isn’t the right valley! We’ve been following the wrong creek this whole time and came out in the wrong place! I don’t have a fucking clue where we are!”
Ξ
At the top of the tunnel, Mandy finds Morska Vidra and his fox waiting at the village’s boundary. “Hi…!” she calls out, as sweetly as she can. “Your new neighbors here! Super excited to, like, move in and be part of the community!”
Her bubbly delivery usually works to disarm whoever she points it at. But Morska Vidra appears to be immune to her charms. Bummer. She was hoping to get this started on a positive note. “Here. Triquet said I shouldn’t, but I brought you a little gift.”
Mandy holds out a small package she was able to wrap in a page of a medical device’s line-drawn diagrams and decorate with a bow she painstakingly fashioned from sliced strips of colored paper. He stares at her, making no move to take her offering. His fox darts forward instead, rising up and gently pulling the little box from her hands. The little silver creature scampers away, disappearing into the gray haze of light at the tunnel’s entrance.
Mandy’s reaction is a few seconds too late. “No! Oh, no! Come back! It’s chocolate. Oh my god. I don’t know if… It might be poisonous to a fox. Like you know how dogs and cats, they can’t have chocolate?” Mandy belatedly realizes Morska Vidra has no idea what a dog or cat is. “No, come on. I’m totally serious. It’s like a liver issue or something? We have to get it back.” Mandy hurries past the old man, who still hasn’t made a move. Then she recalls the traditional greeting. “Uh… Bontiik!” She hurries back to him and chucks him under the chin.
A paternal smile creases his face now that the proper forms have been observed. “Bontiik.” His knuckle touches her own chin and he gives her a wide smile.
“Okay. Now let’s find the fox before it hurts itself. I know it’s just a pet but you don’t want it to get sick!”
Mandy exits the cave, scanning the tracks ahead. They quickly disappear in the packed earth of the village proper. She studies the walls of the cliff on either side of the cave mouth, then all the brush crowding against the nearest houses.
A pair of children peek out from a house, no more than six and four years old. They chatter at her, one’s words atop the other. Then their words run together in a shared chant. They giggle.
“Hi! There was a fox…? Have you seen it? I gave it a present. A lovely… tasty… present.” But regardless of where she looks, she can find no sign of where the fox has gone. “Shoot.” She points into the village at random spots and asks the kids, “Where…? Like where does the fox live? Like, where’s its bed?” Mandy grew up with cats. She knows how they think.
But the kids just start another chant, laughing at her.
Mandy slowly enters the wide village square, realizing that she is making a spectacle of herself. Smiling weakly, she just really doesn’t want to be responsible for making their pet sick. That would be the opposite of a positive note. That would be a disaster.
The village is busy, with a small family outside their hut grinding something green and brown in a stone bowl with a rock. Another old man faces a loom, plaiting a long sheet of textiles of black and red bands. An old woman lounges outside her house, leaning back against a pole and chewing a piece of grass. Her eyes are red-rimmed and sad, as if she’s been crying. Mandy addresses her: “You see Morska Vidra’s fox run this way? The little fox? Uh, Lisica?” Yeah, she should have been using that word all along.
The old woman lifts her hand. In it is the gift the fox stole.
“Oh, thank god.” Mandy reels away in relief. Then she circles back to the woman and the gift. “You can have it. It’s for you. I wrapped it myself.” She kneels in front of the old woman and points with excitement at the little cube, its white paper now smudged with dirt and indented with tooth marks.
The old woman only looks at Mandy with her troubled gaze.
“Aw, are you having a bad day? Here. I’ll show you. Look. It’s a present! Do you guys do presents?” Mandy reaches out and gently takes the gift back. “Look. It goes like this.” She had no tape so the paper is folded back in on itself like the origami she was taught in elementary school. Mandy pulls out the corner and unwraps the gift, handing the sheet of paper to the old woman.
She turns it over in her hands, her eyes still sad.
“But wait. There’s more.” Mandy presents the stack of gold-foil wrapped off-brand chocolate squares she’d snared in the airport right before they’d taken off. This has been her stash, a carefully-preserved secret that has kept her going through the darkest days. She has enough for two chocolates per day, three on special days when she really needs the extra love. This is five pieces of dark chocolate, two whole days of her stash, that she’s willing to sacrifice for the good vibes. Now if she can just manifest those vibes…
Carefully peeling the foil from the first chocolate, Mandy hands it to her. The old woman takes the gold wrapping and stares at it in wonder. She gently crumples it around her fingertip and releases a single ‘huh’ as an exclamation.
“Yeah, but that’s not even the best bit. This is.” Mandy breaks off a tiny bit of the chocolate and hands it out to the woman. She dutifully takes it, another inexplicable object in her cupped hands.
“Eat it. Like this.” Mandy nibbles at the corner of the chocolate. “Quick! Before it melts! Yummm! So good!” She mimes bringing the chocolate to her mouth over and over until the old woman does so too.
The old woman tastes the chocolate. She makes a face and spits it out, then hands the little nib back to Mandy. But she keeps the foil and sheet of paper.
“Mandy! What are you doing without your mask and gloves?”
Esquibel stands at the cave mouth, Morska Vidra beside her. She wears her own, the hospital blue of her mask and gloves a shocking artificial color in this brown and green village.
“Oh, right. I didn’t remember…” Mandy searches her pockets for these articles. But before she can find them, she says, “I mean, tons of times we’ve been unmasked in front of the villagers by now. If they were gonna get sick, it would have happened by now.”
“It is policy. Mask use only works if it is consistent.”
With a final smile to the old woman and the kids watching her, Mandy puts the mask and gloves on and joins Esquibel at the edge of the village. “Did you say Bontiik to him?” Mandy indicates Morska Vidra, standing patiently beside Esquibel.
“Huh? Oh. Uh…” Esquibel performs the quick ceremony and allows Morska Vidra to chuck her chin in return. “Remind me to sanitize my chin when I get a chance.” Then she turns, a very large and imposing black woman in the middle of this village of little brown people. She seems not to understand how dramatic her impact is here. “So. This is the village? The outer village where they’re nice, yes? And there’s another village deeper in? And they all live in these sad little huts?” Esquibel stoops and peers in one, its occupants still and silent in the shadows.
“Esquibel. Stop.”
“Stop? Stop what?”
“You’re scaring them.”
“Scaring them?” Esquibel regards the villagers in their doorways and in the square. They all watch her with worry. “Hello. Bontiik. Didn’t I say the word properly? What is wrong with them?”
“You’re just too loud, too big…”
“Too dark?” Esquibel snaps off her glove and holds out her hand for Morska Vidra. He studies it but doesn’t touch it.
“Maybe. I don’t know if they’ve ever seen black skin.”
“Well, Morska Vidra and the Mayor have. Didn’t they tell the others about me? We don’t have time for this kind of culture shock. They need to understand that we’re here and we’re moving in. Or at least through. Where do you think we should set up camp?”
“Maybe they’ll tell us?” But the villagers are already withdrawing back into their houses, faces closed. The positive start is ruined.
“Why don’t I make everyone happy…” Esquibel decides, “and go find out myself. They obviously don’t want me here.” And with that she stalks across the village square and takes the wide path down toward the river.
“No!” Mandy calls out after her. “It’s not that! It’s just that you came in too fast and…” But Esquibel is gone. Mandy turns to the villagers and holds out the piece of unwrapped chocolate melting in her fingers. “Anyone, uh, want to try it?”
“Hello…?” Alonso’s rough voice comes from the cave entrance. He limps out, hair wild, clothes covered in mud. Gasping from the exertion of climbing the fallen tree up the tunnel shaft, he catches his breath. “Are we here? Did I make it? Eh, Morska Vidra. Good to see you again. Oh. Bontiik.” Alonso smiles at the old man as he chucks his chin, then laughs when the fox appears from within Morska Vidra’s robes and climbs on his shoulder to sniff at Alonso. “And this is the famous fox. Lisica. How are you, little friend?” Alonso extends a finger so the fox can smell it.
Evidently he smells fine. With a perfunctory sneeze, the fox makes a decision and sits, coiling its bushy tail around Morska Vidra’s neck. The old man returns the greeting to Alonso, gravely, and then evidently divining his suffering, suddenly steps beside him and supports Alonso’s weight with a strong arm.
The gesture is so unexpected Alonso laughs. It also feels good, to have someone help relieve the pain in his feet. “Gracias, muchas gracias, hermano.” Alonso has a thought that if they can’t grasp his English, he may be able to make his intent more clear in his native Spanish. But then it occurs to him they’ve heard a fair amount of English, and probably no Spanish. “Thank you, my brother. Thank you a million times.”
Morska Vidra leads Alonso to the doorway of the largest hut. The redwood bark planks covering it are black and green with age. It is an impressive structure, the only hut taller than Alonso. “Your house? Very nice. Thank you for all your kindness. Ah. Here?” Alonso grunts as he allows Morska Vidra to lower him onto a woven mat. The fox appears again, nickering in the old man’s ear. As if following its directives, Morska Vidra kneels at Alonso’s feet and pulls at his shoes, trying to take them off.
Alonso barks in pain, his hand reaching urgently for the feet he can’t reach. The sound freezes all activity in the village. Mandy finally rouses herself and hurries to Alonso’s side. “He wants your shoes off. Is that okay? Should we take them off?”
“Just gently. Gently…” Alonso pleads, leaning back, the sudden raw agony in his legs from getting yanked starting to lose its edge.
Mandy picks at the laces, pulling the right shoe wide open before slipping it off. She peels his wet sock off too. Together, she and Morska Vidra regard the swollen purple thing. It is painful merely to look at Alonso’s tortured foot. The toes bend wrong, dents run along the top. An angry red vein crosses his ankle.
The villagers gather to silently regard Alonso’s foot as Mandy gently removes his other shoe and sock. This foot is just as bad, purple as a grape. And his lower leg is scored with scars.
The villagers speak to each other, evidently trying to figure out how someone could sustain such injuries. Alonso watches them, his gaze baleful. “I hope, for your sake, that this kind of brutality is foreign to you. I hope, I pray, it shocks you.” Tears start in his eyes and he groans as Mandy puts a gentle hand on his left ankle.
The smallest of the two children Mandy met bursts into tears and turns to his mother, hiding in her arms.
The Mayor arrives and kneels, inspecting Alonso’s foot. She pokes it and he grunts. She tries to move his right heel and he barks again. Sitting back, she speaks a number of quiet commands.
Several of the young girls in the back of the crowd peel away to their own homes. They return with sheafs of herbs and black leaves and seeds in a pot.
“No no, that’s fine.” Alonso tries to wave the treatment away but he is no longer in charge of this situation. The Mayor pulls up his pant legs and inspects the scars she finds there.
She orders for the seeds to be ground into paste and for the black leaves to be separated, dripping, and placed on the mat beside him. A low hum of discourse surrounds Alonso, villagers discussing the treatment and holding forth on various points. Alonso looks around himself in wonder. He’s been in contact with primitive peoples before—a family of Mongolian nomads invited him into their yurt one night—but he’s never experienced anything like this before. The Lisican sing-song language surrounds him, each distinct voice and individual perspective made manifest. All of them are so unique, the middle-aged woman with the ear pierced with yellow bone, whose animated voice rises over all others. The nonbinary youth in a shawl who seems to dispute what she says with gentle deflections. The silly clown beside them, their hair a mat, who makes a quip that rhymes with the youth’s last words and everyone laughs. Why, it is just like any family anywhere. The crazy aunt, the know-it-all young man, the weird black sheep. And the children with their black and yellow curls, each as vocal as the others, pulling on each other’s arms and arguing in quiet and deferential tones. All do what they can not to interrupt the Mayor.
She taps Mandy’s shoulder and indicates she should get out of the way. Then the Mayor applies the brown paste to the skin of Alonso’s lower legs and feet. He feels very much like he is being spread with Nutella. It is not unpleasant and he finds he can exhale the breath he didn’t know he held. Then she carefully wraps his legs, first with the black leaves, then the green, keeping them snug with a brown cord. Finally she sits back.
“Thank you. Better already.” He can’t feel a thing but at least he isn’t suffering more damage. Alonso isn’t sure what he should do here. All he knows is he doesn’t want to move his legs at all. “Very good. Sitting is good.”
The Mayor gives him a more thorough inspection. She holds his hand and pokes at his belly, his chest, his throat. She has him open his mouth and she looks at his tongue.
“That bad, eh?” Alonso prompts the Mayor but her face remains a mask. “I know. Lose forty kilos and eat right. But don’t you dare mention my liver because I am not giving up my wine.”
Finally she kneels and puts one hand on his heart and one on his lower belly. The Mayor lowers her head and the crowd falls silent.
After a moment, Alonso feels his pulse beneath her hands. At the same instant, the fox yips and leaps from Morska Vidra’s shoulder, scampering into the nearby underbrush. Villagers exchange dark glances. Finally the Mayor sits back. She is drained.
“Ax̱dàataasdʼixʼdáakw,” she declares, and the villagers make dubious sounds, but they are unwilling to argue with her after her exertions. Now Morska Vidra and the others support the Mayor. They lift her to her feet and bring her across the square to her own house, where she is given her own measure of herbs and poultices.
“I am very sorry.” Alonso calls out his apology, watching them tend her. “I did not mean to introduce such…” and by this he means all the horrors of the modern world stitched up in his body. He leans back with a groan and confesses to the sky: “I despise spoiling innocence.”
Ξ
Triquet stages another pile of bags at the bottom of the tree trunk at the base of the tunnel shaft. Somehow they’ll eventually haul all that gear up to the top and out the cave mouth into the village. Just what the stone age Dzaadzitch villagers ever wanted, for sure.
Flavia and Maahjabeen drag muddy bins and boxes most of the way, with Triquet having to lift the containers up into a narrow passage for the last bit, requiring all their strength, again and again.
“Another.” Flavia deposits one more stack at the exchange. For a moment they both pause, breathing heavily in the cramped tunnel, staring at each other’s flushed faces.
“And this is why…” Triquet gasps, exercising their sore arm, “I reluctantly decided against manual labor as a career.”
“But think how strong you would be.” Flavia is beyond tired. Her words come out in a grunt.
“Isn’t there some Jack London quote about the value of a laborer being in his muscles? That’s his capital? But for the owners, their capital is money that increases over their lives while for the laborer their capital diminishes? Something like that? Of course, he put it better than that. Lord, that man could write.”
“I am not sure 19th century economic theory is applicable to us poor little independent contractors down here in this hole.”
“I mean, ultimately, this is a job and we’re wage slaves, I guess. I haven’t really thought about it that way but I did get a sizable honorarium. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. But this is the first day I feel like a coal miner.”
Triquet lifts their aching arms and lets them drop. “Well, all I know is that I started with less capital than most and now I’m all out. There’s been a run on this bank and all my savings are gone.”
“All I know is that I am hungry.” And with that, Flavia turns and trudges back the way she’d come, stepping aside for Maahjabeen, who drags a clutch of damp canvas sacks with one arm.
Triquet heaves Flavia’s goods up the tunnel to the base of the fallen tree. They return to find Maahjabeen depositing her sacks.
“Is there any chance…?” Maahjabeen ventures, “that we will not be able to transport all the items we selected for the move?”
“Chance? Honey, I’m about ready to crap out now. What’s in these? Anything necessary?”
“All our bedding.”
Triquet grabs the sacks. “Yeah. Necessary. Okay. But how about you go get Flavia and tell her we need a rest.”
“Sure. We will just find the tarps and come with you. I need to get out of the dark myself.” And Maahjabeen retreats down her tunnel one last time.
Triquet heaves the sacks up into the narrow passage. The bundled blankets and pillows and sleeping bags fill it completely and they have to push it through like a digestive blockage before the sacks spill out at the base of the shaft at the edge of the pile they’ve made.
Triquet squeezes past all the gear and grabs hold of the lowest branches of the fallen tree. They wrap the drawstrings of the canvas sacks around their wrist and haul them over their shoulder like a filthy misshapen Santa, then slowly scale the broken tree limbs like a ladder.
At the top their legs are shaking and their breath is coming in short gasps. They drag the sacks clear of the shaft and onto the broad floor of the cave mouth. Gray light greets them. Oh, joy. That means it’s still raining out there.
This is far enough. They can wait here until the others catch up. As long as they’re not working any more. Triquet stretches out on the gravel floor beside the muddy sacks, resting their head on one. Ah, bliss…
Moments later Katrina and Amy and Miriam arrive, arms laden, followed by Flavia and finally Maahjabeen, who carries nothing. Her face is a mask of pain, though, as she has needed her injured shoulder to haul herself up the makeshift ladder.
They all collapse with Triquet on the floor, their breaths and perspiration mingling, like they just won a rugby match—or more likely, from their dispirited depletion—badly lost.
“I’ve got the beds,” Triquet manages.
“I have tarps and tents,” Amy answers.
“All we need.” Triquet sits up. “Everything else can wait.”
Miriam hoists her containers. “I’ve got enough food for the night and the morning. And a couple liters of wine.”
“Yes, then we’re definitely all set.” Triquet pushes themself to their feet. “Now let’s see what kind of spot they’ve found for us.”
There is no one at the cave mouth to greet them. They emerge into the rain to find the village empty except for Alonso resting on a mat and the old woman with white hair leaning against her post. There is no sign of Mandy nor Esquibel.
“Yesiniy!” Katrina hurries to the old woman. “What is it? What’s wrong? Uh… šta nije u redu, bako?”
“Bako…?” The old woman peers up at Katrina with her red eyes. Then she accepts the designation, “Eh. Bako. Ua na o au dʼadalyoo ettu. Kam.”
“Ettu. Kam,” Katrina echoes, trying to commit these words to memory. She doesn’t have anything at hand to take notes. “Bako is Bosnian for grandma, yeh? I think that’s right.”
Miriam puts down her containers and hurries past the empty houses to her horizontal husband. “Alonso? What are you doing? Where is everyone?”
“I am resting. On the orders of multiple doctors. And they are all down by a creek, I understand, arguing over where we might have our camp. Esquibel is not… the calmest person right now.”
“Okay, Ames. I think we can chance it,” Miriam calls out. “Nearly empty here. It’s now or never.”
“Should I still wear the bag?” Amy’s muffled voice is anxious. “I’m gonna wear the bag. Just in case.” She slowly emerges from the cave, wearing her blue sleeping bag upside down to hide her head, with her feet sticking out of the opening, her entire body covered. Triquet leads her through the village to the far side.
Yesiniy doesn’t even look their way.
Quickly, Triquet brings Amy out of the village to the broad path heading down toward the river. “Okay. I think you’ve got to be safe here, Amy. We’re well out of the village and on more like neutral territory. At least I think it is.”
Amy pulls the bag off and looks around with worry, single strands of her black hair standing straight from the static charge. “Nobody here to yell at me? They’re all down at the river?”
“Yep. At least I hope so. And I hope we aren’t setting up camp by the loo. Too stinky. Come on, let’s go. Maybe they’ve reached an agreement.”
Katrina and Flavia join them as they walk down the path toward the broad meadow. There they find Esquibel in heated debate with the village elders. She stands, drenched by the latest deluge, at a corner of the meadow near the west treeline, as far upstream as the meadow allows. “Then, here. We will stay here. And that is final.”
“But they already said…” Mandy starts in an exasperated whine, but Esquibel immediately cuts her off.
“Yes. I heard. I heard that we cannot be here. Or there. Or there. Or there.” Esquibel points at locations across the meadow, where they have trampled the green grasses with their activity. “Or anywhere. So if we can’t be anywhere, then we will be where we want to be. And I want to be here.”
“Christ! What are you doing?” Katrina calls out, hurrying over to the congregated villagers as the rain eases and the winds pick up. “That isn’t any way to talk to the Lisicans! We’re their guests!”
“If we were their guests then they would accommodate us. But all I hear from them is ah-ah, which they have demonstrated quite clearly means no.”
“Yeh, that’s right. But did you ask them? Just ask them where we’re supposed to be?”
“What an idea? Why didn’t I think of that?” Esquibel’s temper is very short. “Oh, right. Because I don’t speak a single bloody word of their language. You think we didn’t try?”
“Here. Wait. Let me see. I might be able to stitch something together…” Katrina takes her backpack off. It holds a half dozen laptops. “Just one moment. Here. This one’s mine. And…” Flavia holds a folded tarp above her to keep the electronics dry as Katrina quickly navigates to her notes and starts scrolling through the pages of details she’s documented about the Lisican language. “Okay.” She turns to the Mayor standing beside Morska Vidra. “Uh, we need to… we are…” she encompasses her crew, “one sec here, just looking up versions of ‘to move’ and all I can find is this relational gobbledygook. Um… Oh, here we go. We duladaaw tlein. That’s ‘big move noisily,’ which is definitely us. Like all of us here need to duladaaw tlein.”
She has the attention of the villagers. “Join. Uh, join… No join. They don’t use the word ‘join?’ Uh, together. Together is vooch. Vooch, you and us. Dóode? Here? Or dóode? Where can we camp? Just for a couple weeks.”
She seems to be making headway. The villagers argue with each other, trying to solve Katrina’s problems. But the way they go about it is as mystifying as anything else. They consult the sky, they talk about the meadow, as if representing it at trial, possessively stroking the grasses. One woman appears to be listening to a tree. Finally, Morska Vidra places his fox on the ground and everyone watches it bound from one spot to another. Eventually, it goes into the trees on a slope near the spot Esquibel had just claimed.
The villagers move under the trees and inspect the spot. It is a wide open patch beneath pine trees, their fallen needles a brown carpet preventing much undergrowth. The slope is shallow here and the wind is tamed by the high canopy.
The fox bounds back onto Morska Vidra’s shoulder. By that, they all understand that the deal has been struck.
“I love it!” Triquet calls out. “Thank you so much. Promise we’ll take care of it. You guys are the best.”
Esquibel frowns at the spot. “Not defensible in the slightest.” But she realizes this is the best she can get. “Well. At least it is out of the weather. Why was that so hard to understand? That is why I wanted to be on this side of the meadow.”
“Take your win,” Mandy counsels her, clutching Esquibel by the elbow. “And say something nice.”
Esquibel gives the Mayor a glassy smile. “Something nice.”
Amy and Flavia advance, poking around at the base of a few trees to see where they might build their platforms. The Mayor watches the scene, evidently unmoved by Esquibel’s apology or the tantrum that came before.
“Lucky for you, they’re used to loudmouths and hotheads.” Mandy claps her hands. “Yay. We’re all friends again.”
Several of the villagers answer her claps with their own burst of applause. Mandy and Katrina clap back. This delights them. Soon nearly everyone in the camp is applauding each other, with the exception of Esquibel. She has no time for this nonsense. A clean room needs to be built, and this time it will need to be on one of the platforms. There isn’t an inch of level ground in this entire camp. And these villagers will probably wander everywhere. “And no one is wearing a mask!” she belatedly cries out. But nobody listens. They’re all intermingling now, clapping and chanting and repeating each other’s words and moves, laughing in each other’s faces and touching each other, all laughing, so carefree…
The scene finally overwhelms Esquibel with its charm. These villagers are so genuine when they laugh and copy and tease. Their eyes are so sharp. But they have a gentleness, a tenderness she hadn’t seen in the brief visits from the Mayor and Morska Vidra. These Lisicans are actual people filled with joy and curiosity and love, not just columns of figures on a Navy spreadsheet. And they are worth protecting. Silently, Esquibel adds them to her mission objectives and increases her defensible perimeter to include them and their village. She shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with them. “I am sorry,” she tells the closest ones, who are laughing and playing with Mandy. “I should have been more patient but…”
Yet they are not listening. A young girl catches Esquibel by the hand and trills like a bird. Oh, Esquibel can do this one. It is a sound the Kikuyu make in their traditional songs. She trills right back and the girl screams with pleasure. Now they are all laughing, every single one.
“What is it? What did we miss?” Miriam leads Alonso into the new camp, his feet and calves still wrapped in black leaves and twine with his unlaced shoes over it all.
Triquet reaches out to them, buoyed by the villagers and their applause. “And here they are! Welcome to your new home, Doctor one and Doctor two. Your loan has been approved! Please sign the lease agreeement on the kitchen table and I’ll leave the keys on the mantle. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” Then Triquet claps. Everyone claps.
Alonso and Miriam clap and laugh with all the others in the rain.
Chapter 43 – I Miss Him So
October 21, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third 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:
43 – I Miss Him So
Flavia sits alone in the warrant officer’s cabin on a single pillow, her laptop balanced on her crossed legs. Its pale blue light is the room’s only illumination. She is deep inside a logic chain, a basic structure from which she will create another Plexity module.
A knock on the closed door interrupts her work. “Pronto,” she calls out absently. Maybe she can persuade whoever it is to set up her machine down here in the sub and make her an espresso.
Alonso enters with Katrina. “There she is. Come. Let’s tell Flavia our good news.”
“You have good news? We can leave? It is safe?” Flavia’s head snaps up so quickly she’s afraid she strained something in her neck. She rubs it, then stretches. “What time is it?”
“No no.” Alonso tempers her expectations with his soothing tone. “Nothing so exciting. Well. Actually, I think you will find this more exciting. It is almost 8 am. The good news is that I am giving up.”
Flavia frowns. “To the… Russians?”
Alonso’s mouth hangs open. He is so deep in the implications of his decision that it takes a moment for the emotional shockwave to hit him. Giving up to the Russians. The images run through his flesh like ice and he waits for them to pass before continuing. “No. To you. I surrender.” And he puts his hand to his heart and bows, like an old patrician handing over his saber.
Flavia frowns. “What is this all about, you two?”
“Plexity,” Katrina answers. “This is Alonso like surrendering to your wisdom and expertise.”
But Flavia is too cynical for this. “What the hell are you on about now? And why do I feel like I am about to be blamed for it?”
Katrina and Alonso both laugh, leaning against the wall and doorframe. Their presence crowds the tiny room. And they don’t smell great, especially their ripe exhalations when they laugh.
“Yes, I suppose I deserve that. No. No blame. I set an impossible goal so I cannot blame you for not reaching it. I am surrendering to the idea that we will not be able to characterize the entire island on this first, initial trip. We must focus only on the lagoon.”
“Oh thank god.” Flavia kisses her own fingertips. “You were making me crazy.”
“I was making myself crazy. But now we have to think about what comes next: a streamlined Plexity with harder bounds, a few more loose ends. But it is what it is. And we must also figure out our conception for the new grant proposal that will come, yes? We need to frame the data in such a way that any board will have to say yes. So our new puzzle is how can we optimize our pitch with the findings we already have? That is what we need to do now. Start putting it all in a package. Now I am not saying that we need to have a polished presentation ready to go when they pick us up on the beach, but we would be fooling ourselves if they didn’t start interrogating us pretty much immediately. And we really need to put our best foot forward.”
“Oh.” Flavia nods, looking down at the columns of data that will become a flow chart. “Well, I don’t even know if we will need this at all, then. This is… a big waste of time.”
“Why? What is it?” Alonso wheels around and bends down, stiff-legged, to peer at Flavia’s laptop.
“Oh, well, an adaptive filter. Plexity is having trouble placing a spectrum of samples among the Cnidarians and Ctenophores. I did a bit of research with your offline Wikipedia and learned a bit. You see, years ago, they used to be grouped together but now—”
“Pretty sure the ‘C’ is silent, mate. Nidarians and Tenophores.”
“Really?” Flavia makes a note of it. “I have never said the words aloud, so… I mean, why even put the Cs in front if they will just be silent anyway? Okay. Today, they are separate phyla but—”
“Plexity does not use phyla.” Alonso frowns at the screen. “What are you up to this time, Flavia, and what will it break?”
She waves his accusation away. “Of course. We are classifying connections, not organisms, but it is the connections that Plexity is having trouble with. And in certain historical examples, it was those connections that kept them from being classified properly. I mean there is one group called Myxozoa. They used to be like jellyfish but then they evolved into parasites you can find on other creatures. Pradeep would love them. Some are only one cell big now. Simple, tiny creatures. Say you have a Cnidarian like an anemone and a Ctenophore comb jelly and they are both feeding on the same phytoplankton, which ends up exchanging a cloud of proteins and acids in the water, which they both take up. And they are both infested with Myxozoa. It is nearly impossible to describe using maths, but these kind of edge cases will now be…” She lifts her shoulders and makes a face. “Too bad.”
“Why, this is all very necessary, if we are staying by the lagoon, my dear. All these marine interactions are very sexy.” Alonso pats Flavia’s shoulder. “You know, perhaps it is in the interaction of the water and the land that we can make our best pitch. Por su puesto, of course it is. What do you think, Katrina? Maybe we put a special focus on the tide line, the creekside, the waterfall? It will make for nice images at least.” A brittle irritation inside Alonso threatens to break out. He smiles even more widely instead. This isn’t their fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault but his own, for dreaming too big.
But Flavia isn’t willing to let Alonso so easily off the hook. “So… wait. Now you are saying that you can make a reasonable version of Plexity with just this initial shoreline data? Because according to you that was impossible. That is what—”
“Yes, well, perhaps I didn’t understand exactly how closed off the interior of the island was until I came down here and looked into that long dark tunnel Pradeep and Jay took. It is really something, isn’t it? Just how disconnected the edge of the island is from the rest of it. A perfect hermetically-sealed biome for us to—”
“Oh, now it’s perfect. I’m not sure I like this side of you, Alonso.”
“What? Which side?”
“The hustler. I like the data scientist better.”
Alonso’s laugh is a short cynical bark. “Yes. Well. I do too. But it is time we start thinking of the outside world again, and in that world, I am absolutely a hustler. Katrina, take note. If you want to advance in academia or, well, anything really. It is all politics and marketing, yes?”
“Oh, for sure. That’s why I don’t go by my first name.”
“Your first name?” Alonso raises his eyebrows. “It isn’t Katrina?”
“Olga.”
Ξ
“Miriam, are you working?”
Miriam stares at her screen. She hasn’t written a word in perhaps fifteen minutes. Instead, she’s gone off on a mental tangent about her subject here, the stratigraphy of that immense shaft that Mandy burned clear. It’s a real shame that the walls are covered in soot. And Katrina won’t let them fly the drone in there. Maybe the rains are washing the faces clean. It would be such a perfect use of the drone as a remote sampling tool, especially for geology. Unlike the biologists, her samples don’t fight back. It would save her countless days of work. Wait. Somebody spoke to her. She blinks at the dim shadows of the bunkbed frames. “Aye?”
“Then I will not bother you.” Maahjabeen lowers herself stiffly on the cot that has been placed in one of the old frames. All their gear is piled precariously in corners but the beds are empty. The others have moved on, to different corners of the boat.
Miriam shakes her head clear. “Sorry, love. I meant, ‘Aye, what is it?’ not ‘Yes, I am working.’ So what is it? Are you okay?”
“I am just waking up with a very sore shoulder. It will not move. And it is making me very angry. Would you please get Mandy?”
But instead, Miriam levers herself to her feet and hurries to her, kneeling at Maahjabeen’s side. “This one?” And she clasps both sides of Maahjabeen’s shoulder in her hands, compressing them.
“Ah. Yes. It… Ah… Yes, that is what it needed.” Maahjabeen settles once more on her back, Miriam’s warm hands holding the angry ball joint in place. She does not move her hands, she only holds it intimately, like a mother embracing her child.
“And breathe.” Miriam smiles down at Maahjabeen, whose wrinkled brow still holds back a storm. “Breathe…” There was a time in the 90s when Miriam had almost given it all up after a visit to the Tibetan Plateau. She’d been a yoga fanatic just like everyone else in those days and she became fluent in its language of physical metaphors. Now she imagines her own breath releasing through the bottom of her feet into the earth and her chakras opening.
Tears leak from Maahjabeen’s dark eyes.
“Do you still want me to get Mandy?”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. She takes a deep ragged breath and settles even more deeply into Miriam’s grasp, allowing herself to be held. But the jagged images from her restless sleep still haunt her. “I do not think I can do this any more. I need… I can’t be shut off from the ocean like this. Not now. Not will all these threats around. The open ocean is where I always escape the threats. But now I can’t. The ocean is where the greatest threat is coming from. And sure I can get to the sea cave from here, but I can’t fit my boat through the mud tunnel. And there’s no point being in the cave without a boat. From in there I can’t even see the sky…” Her sob shuts off any more words.
“Shh shh. There there.” Miriam just holds on, letting the fierce woman find her own way through it.
They stay like that for a long time. Up until they hear a noise from the chamber behind them. Footsteps.
Miriam turns, hoping it might be Mandy. Why, she could put her hands on Maahjabeen too and together they might make a difference. But it isn’t Mandy. It’s a bedraggled figure in a yellow rainsuit, covered in dirt and soaked to the skin, their fair face now deathly white. “Triquet!”
“They’re gone,” Triquet croaks. “You can come out now.”
Upon hearing this, Maahjabeen finally releases all her tension with a ragged sigh and sags against the cot.
Miriam withdraws her hands and claps them. Then she gets up and hurries to Triquet to care for them, suppressing a random flash of irritation at finding herself in such a maternal role today. “Here, dear one.” She picks at the zipper of their sodden yellow raincoat and pulls it open. The undergarments are all wet. “Oh, my days. You must be frozen.”
“Hug.” Triquet begins shivering uncontrollably, open to the air for the first time in ages. The stress of what they’ve endured now rattles through them.
But first, Miriam pulls the rest of Triquet’s layers off and scrubs their skin dry with a blanket, careful of the angry red welt on their upper arm. Then she wraps their hairless body in a sleeping bag. She zips it up around them and only then does she hold them in a deep clasp, breathing warmth into the crook of Triquet’s neck. Finally she leans back and makes a prim line with her mouth. “Now. Sit. Or lie down. I’ll go get everyone. You’re sure? It’s safe out there? There was… someone in camp and now they’re gone?”
Triquet nods, weary. “Good plan. Yes. Get everyone, so I can only tell this once.”
Miriam nods. “Of course, darling.” She presses a hand against Triquet’s cheek. “So very glad to have you back.” Then she ducks through the far hatch, deeper into the sub.
Only then does Triquet register Maahjabeen in her cot across the room. “Oh. Hi. How are you?”
“My shoulder hurts.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Otherwise I would get you a cup of tea.”
“Sounds lovely. You don’t have to. But where would I find such a thing?” Triquet considers crawling like a cocooned worm in the sleeping bag to anywhere hot water might be.
“I thought it was in that first room, where you just were. Did you see any stoves in there?”
“Ah. Right.” Triquet recalls that last moment again, that final excruciating moment of being alone, after they had finally cleared the bunker’s floor and opened the hatch and hurried down the narrow stairs they know so well, relishing the fact that they’d survived this latest ordeal. Triquet hadn’t even really looked at the contents of the first room. They’d only seen it was empty of people. Did they walk right past a pot of hot water?
Maahjabeen lifts her head. “Pradeep is not back yet. I am very worried. So the bad men are gone? We can go back upstairs and I can finally get back out on the water? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know about that. For one thing, it’s raining again. And, I mean, who knows how far they went. Men with guns, maybe right over the horizon?” The sleeping bag is finally starting to warm Triquet up. Their shivers subside. “I do not know how Milo does it, day in and day out.”
“Who’s Milo? One of the soldiers?”
“No. Good grief. I didn’t talk to any of them. Or who knows what they’d have done to me. No, Milo is one of the golden childs. Kept me alive last night. Ugh. That was definitely the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had at a Best Western. Zero stars. And the breakfast buffet was cold.”
“You were actually out there in the storm? All night?”
“Yeah. I just couldn’t bring myself to come back in, because then we’d never know what was happening out there. You know?”
Maahjabeen slowly nods, understanding the logic of it and profoundly impressed by the sacrifice Triquet has made. “You did that for us? What a good person you are. I do not know if I could have done the same.”
“There you are.” Alonso swings himself through the hatch with only a little groan, then hobbles his way over to Triquet. “Oh, dear one, we are so glad you are back. Pobrecito. You look like a kitten who got drowned in the rain.”
“I’ll get them some tea.” Amy pushes past Alonso to the stoves in the first room. But she comes back a moment later as the others pile in behind Alonso. Alarmed, Amy says, “Guys… The hatch is open. The first hatch. Leading up to the bunker.”
“Aye, that’s where Triquet came down from.” Miriam sits at the foot of Triquet’s cot and chafes their feet through the bag.
Amy frowns. “And you left it open? Is that… wise?”
Triquet shrugs. “They’re gone.”
“They? Who, they?” Alonso sits at the cot’s side and pulls the plastered hairs away from Triquet’s splotched face.
“Well, I never got a formal introduction. But… Miriam, could you find my phone? It was in my coat.”
“Doctor Daine? Can you reach it? It’s the yellow one right behind you.”
Esquibel lifts the coat and unzips a pocket. “Here is the phone.”
Triquet’s arms emerge from the sleeping bag and they tap at the screen to cue up a video. “Yeah. Just watch this.”
It is a close-up video of the beach, at the edge of the lagoon. Triquet’s blue boots can be seen at the bottom of the frame, the phone’s camera tilted down. Right at the narrow surfline, text has been scrawled in the dark sand. It is already being washed away by the lagoon’s gentle waves. But the words are not in English.
Alonso squints. “Is that Cyrillic? Katrina?”
Katrina grabs the phone and starts the video again. She reads the words aloud and translates them. “My znayem, ‘chto… We know that… We know that you are here… Uvidimsya snova… cherez dve nedeli… See you again in two weeks.”
“Oh my god, they really are gone and it really is over.” Alonso presses his hands together. “You are sure? No sign of them left?”
“All empty. Land and sea. Except for the golden childs. They came back out of hiding, right when the rain started up again.”
“Perfect. So they also think it’s clear. They should know. Well. Sounds like we can at least get back up in the bunker, yes?”
“That is all it says?” Esquibel frowns. “That is a threat, no? It is nothing but an explicit threat.”
“Or some kind of…” Miriam waves a hand, “…misdirection? Like they want us to think we’ve got the whole beach to ourselves for the next two weeks then they sneak up on us one night.”
“Who were they?” Esquibel asks Triquet. “Who did you see?”
“I heard a whistle and I realized that these like, kind of short fat silhouettes, I swear that’s all I was able to see, maybe soldiers I guess, gathered back on the beach. Maybe four? Maybe five? Then by the time I saw them next it was just a little gray boat on the far side of the breakers heading out to the open ocean.”
“Not back to a larger vessel?” If Esquibel could get Triquet to describe a blue water ship or craft, important clues might give her an idea of exactly which Russians she’s dealing with here.
“Not that I could see.”
“Maybe they are a sub crew. During my mission briefings there was never any mention made of possible new Russian interference. Not that it is impossible. Contact with the Soviets on this island had been documented since the 60s. Things got particularly bad in the 70s, with a number of murders and disappearances on both sides that remain classified, but the return of the Russian Navy is certainly a valuable intelligence data point.” Esquibel’s laugh is bitter. “Assuming we survive to communicate it.”
“But why is it in Russian?” Katrina frowns at the words in the video, watching the tide wash them away.
Esquibel shrugs. “It’s the only language their sailors knew.”
“Or they weren’t writing to us.” Katrina shrugs. “Maybe they think there’s some Russians here. I mean, how would they know we’d even understand it? Or maybe it’s some kind of crazy double-feint and they weren’t even Russians.”
“Now, wait. You were the one who said the golden man called them Russians, Katrina.” Esquibel can’t keep the accusation out of her voice, nor does she try very hard.
“He did. But maybe he was lying. Or maybe he doesn’t know the difference. It may be that they come back in two weeks and surprise us all. What do you think?”
“That is very unlikely. I think that if it is the Russians,” Esquibel frowns, “we cannot take any chances. All we know for certain is that a military squad was here and will be back in two weeks.”
“How did they know we’re here?” Mandy pinches her features together, the stress making her ill. “Are they just playing with us?”
“It’s a big ocean,” Maahjabeen says. “Maybe they needed some supplies. Fresh water. This will get them back to wherever they are based. Then they can recharge and come back again.”
“Well, not if they are any Navy I’ve served with.” Esquibel doesn’t like contradicting Maahjabeen but this is her field. “This isn’t like Magellan. This is the 21st century. They aren’t facing scurvy and spoiled water. At least they shouldn’t be.”
“And how did that golden man know,” Mandy asks, her voice rising, “that soldiers were coming? Have the Lisicans been spying on us? Do they have like a radio in those golden masks?”
“Or maybe,” Flavia says, “the Russians always come at this time of year. I think that is more likely, no?”
“Jay said Kula had a radio,” Katrina adds. “But he wasn’t sure if it worked.”
“Well.” Flavia stands. “I for one am looking forward to a shower in the waterfall. Anyone join me?”
“We can’t.”
A silent displeasure greets Esquibel’s words.
“No. Think about it. The soldiers can come back any moment. We now have proof, documented proof, that they were here. Good job, Triquet, capturing that message before it vanished.”
“Yes, but Doctor Daine…” Alonso needs to get back upstairs as much as anyone. “These bad guys, if they are bad guys, already know we are here. They could have come after us at any moment. But they didn’t.”
“Because maybe they couldn’t find us.”
“Then how did they know we’re here at all?” Mandy isn’t ready to hear all the reasons why they must still be under threat. She can’t handle any more. “I mean, we got to just, you know, trust the golden childs. If they’re out of hiding, then I’m out.”
“No…” Esquibel once again finds herself set against the entire rest of the crew. She raises her hands. “That is not how it works. Just because they were right about one thing does not mean they are right about everything. Katrina was just arguing that the golden childs can’t even tell the difference between us and the Russians. They are not the experts we need here.”
“So what are you saying?” Maahjabeen sits up, grimacing. “That we have to spend the next two bloody weeks in this—this coffin?”
“It is probably the most defensible structure we have left.”
Maahjabeen’s face drains of color. “I cannot. I am sorry. But you cannot expect me to—”
“What if we go further in?” Miriam catches up Maahjabeen’s hand, who snatches it away again.
“Further in? Like into the tunnels?” Maahjabeen can’t think of anything worse.
“No, please, Miriam,” Alonso shakes his head in displeasure. “Perhaps a geologist can spend two weeks underground, but…”
“I don’t mean the tunnels, Alonso. I mean the interior. Like a camp beside the Dzaadzitch village. It’s time. We’ve been on this bloody island for six weeks and we still haven’t gotten more than a few peeks at it.”
“No no no. Have you forgotten,” Flavia asks, “about the crazy shamans in there who are trying to take us as slaves?”
“Well, they already know exactly where we are, and the golden childs will just have to keep protecting us.”
“Yes.” Mandy likes this plan. She can set up weather stations wherever she wants, dependent upon no one. “Miriam’s right. We got stuck on the beach for too long. It was too comfortable.”
“Forgive me,” Maahjabeen scowls, “but I did not get ‘stuck’ on the beach and if you propose to take the oceanographer away from the ocean then I can’t even say what I am doing here any more.”
“Finding Pradeep.” Miriam says it quietly but it prompts bright tears in Maahjabeen’s eyes. “Just help us find him, love. Then all this madness will pass and the two of you can go back to romantic sunset paddles again, eh?”
Maahjabeen silently nods.
“No.” Flavia stands. “We just decided. We can’t leave the lagoon now. Plexity needs us to stay. Alonso realized… Tell them.”
But Alonso is spooked by this conversation. It feels as though the whole world is passing him by. “Yes, there are many problems with your plan, Miriam. I was about to… I mean, that is a different conversation, for sure. But for the sake of the science, yes, it would be best if we kept our focus for the time being on the beach. It is the only way to make use of Plexity in the short time we have left. And also, personally… I would just have to say that from the way you talk about these tunnels I am certain you would have to leave me behind. Which,” he holds up a hand to forestall their protests, “I understand. If that is what will keep my team safe, then that is what will happen. I am just not sure if that is what will happen.”
Esquibel stands. “It is, Doctor Alonso. It is what will happen. Doctor Truitt is right. We cannot stay down here. We have to move to the interior of Lisica. And we will find a way to get you through those tunnels. It will be possible, right?”
“Oh, right,” Triquet says. “Esquibel doesn’t know either. Both of you haven’t gone through, have you? Well, there’s a tight fit in one spot and a lot of climbing at the end. I mean, it isn’t easy. But you’ll be fine, Alonso.”
“Eh,” he pats his solid belly. “This fat man doesn’t like hearing anything about a tight fit.”
“Then this is what I shall do.” Maahjabeen sits up, ignoring the stiffness in her shoulder. “I will paddle my boats out of the lagoon and down the coast into the sea cave and leave them there. That is where you will find me. Then I will be able to join you when you need me through the tunnels. Yes?”
“I’ll paddle with you,” Amy volunteers. “Nobody should run that gauntlet alone. First break in the storm.”
“Fine.”
“But, Alonso…” Flavia turns to him, isolated now. “We can’t, right? We have to stay on the beach. We just decided.”
“It is not even a decision,” Alonso mutters, his insides queasy. “We are being forced by the demands of the project to remain on the beach. If Plexity will work at all we do need to focus our efforts there. But if it is the Russians…” He falls silent.
“Come on, Flavia,” Miriam tries. “Don’t make Alonso…”
“But it isn’t safe in the interior! I am telling you! I was the first one they attacked! And they aren’t done with us yet!”
“The problem, mate,” Katrina says, “is that nowhere is safe. It’s all danger. So we just got to pick our poisons.”
“Then I will stay in here. This will be my poison. I will stay in the sub with some crackers and energy bars and pee in a bottle!”
And nothing anyone says can change Flavia’s mind.
Ξ
“Come on, Jay. Quickly. This way.” Pradeep grabs Jay by the arm and hauls him through the brush. His only thought is that if he can get Jay back to the village before Wetchie-ghuy attacks again they might make it out.
“Fuck this…” Jay’s voice is muzzy, thick with concussion. Why’s he got to be in so much pain all the time? Now it’s his right ear, which stings so bad his eyes water. And the base of his skull where he like wrenched his neck.
“Oh god…” Pradeep pulls up short at a slick chute of gray rock pouring a tributary of water from the cliff on their right straight down into a cluster of dark broadleafs obscuring where it joins the wider creek. There is no clear way across it.
Over the hiss of the water and the drumming of the rain in the canopy above, a distant piercing giggle reaches them. It is manic and wild, a predator on the hunt careless if his prey hears him.
“That him?” Jay turns back and blinks at the steep slope and shadowed understory. “The fuck’s his deal, anyway?”
“He went crazy. He struck you.”
“He did? When?”
Pradeep has already told Jay this. Now he will need to tell him again. “When you got him high. And it made him… insane. Like a wild beast. What was in that joint you gave him?”
“Just some Sour Diesel, my dude. Why’d he hit me?”
“Gah. We need to get across here. Nowhere better. Come on, Jay. Do you think you can jump?”
“Sure…” Jay sways, the earth tilting under him like he’s at sea. “It’s just the landing part I’m not so sure about.”
“I’m afraid he really rang your bell. If we can just get across this part we might be able to put some distance between us. Here.”
Jay squares up at a cluster of gray boulders crowned with purple-dark lichen. “We should collect some of this for Plexity.”
“No, bhenchod! Not now! He is coming!” Pradeep pushes his mate up onto the rocks. “Jump across! I am right with you!”
Jay’s many years of experience with impaired movement serve him well here. He doesn’t struggle against the kaleidoscopic pain of the concussion. He rolls with it. It seems to have deadened a nerve circuit that runs all the way down his right side. So his arm and leg are just dead weight. He’ll have to somehow swing himself around that weight up over the gap. Just a couple meters…
Jay hurls himself through the air and lands heavily on the rocks on the far side, knocking his breath from his body and crunching his incision scar. The multipoint agony blanks his mind. He is nothing but pain.
Pradeep lands lightly beside him and pulls him to his feet. “Come on, Jay. We’ve got to keep running.”
“Running.” Merely moving is like stabbing himself with knives and this asshole wants him to start running? Pradeep grabs his wrist and pulls him ahead. “Wasn’t I just like… on acid?”
“Focus, Jay. I can’t do this alone.”
“But why aren’t we dead?” Jay stumbles down the sliding slope, his feet catching on roots and stalks. “He came at me so fast.”
“Somebody saved us.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see. It all happened in a blur. A dark blur. And then you were just crumpled at my feet and they were gone.” Pradeep slows. “Oh, no…” There is an outcrop here blocking their way, a sheer cliff that thrusts outward from the ridge above to drop in a vertical line to the rushing water below. “Can’t traverse. No way. We got to go back up. Fuck. That’s like a hundred meters.”
But Jay isn’t listening to Pradeep. He’s watching Wetchie-ghuy coalesce out of the shadows above. The shaman is playing with them, just toying with their sorry asses. Whoever got in his way back on the flat land is gone now and he’s ready for the kill. The old man looks hardly capable of such agile speed. His barrel body and short legs are full of terrifying power, though. After he held out that joint, Jay never even saw him coming. “This is heinous.”
But Pradeep and Jay aren’t alone. “Stand back.” Rushing silently up beside them, Jidadaa puts herself in front. She holds a warding hand up to Wetchie-ghuy and speaks a forceful incantation of some kind. It makes him blanch and turn his head to the side, but it doesn’t dislodge him from his position blocking their way.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay squawks as Wetchie-ghuy steps forward. But she pulls a cluster of twigs and feathers from the folds of her clothing and waves it at the shaman, calling out in a mocking voice, “Tu dah-ne, at udéine!”
The shaman pulls up short, his hand going to his belt, his actions indicating that she stole whatever that is from him and he’s just finding out now. He snarls, her name coming out as a curse, and leaps at her.
But she has already slipped away from him back in the shadows, retreating deeper into the ferns behind. Jidadaa leads him away.
“Now! We have to climb!” Pradeep churns at the loose soil that spills down beneath his soles to the creek far below. “She gave us a chance!” And he pushes Jay, who is still caught in a moment of stark terror.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay repeats, the only thing he can think to say or do for her. Then he starts to climb.
It is a motherfucker of an ascent. His legs are already dead and this is like scaling a wall of loose soil and thorns. And he has no adrenaline left. It’s all just tremors and gasping now, chased by the fear of an iron grip on a trailing ankle or a hand clamping his shoulder. But nothing like that happens. They both win free and swing up onto the rocky mount of the outcrop to catch their breaths before they continue their way down the canyon.
From up here they can see over the treetops of the canyon floor. It is a dense winding carpet of redwood for another five hundred meters or so, then they can barely see the beginning of a more open valley ahead. “That’s it, Prad. That’s the spot. Gotta be. Where I first saw golden childs. First time ever. Where I crossed the river. Super close now. We got this. Come on, brother.”
Ξ
“So many things…” Amy gasps, working hard, “…we can’t bring to the… the interior…”
“Alonso’s cask of wine.” Miriam stands straight, cheeks pink with exertion, pulling a stray curl from her face. “Maahjabeen’s boats. What else?” They work in the control room, Miriam stacking bags and containers, Amy’s head poking above the gap in the floor. She hauls another heavy load down to the lower level of the sub.
Esquibel hears them as she enters. “Bins. All our food. Medicine. I’ve been re-packaging what I can but we don’t have enough small containers to protect everything that needs to be protected.”
“All my lovely stacks,” Triquet sighs, entering with an armful of papers. They set it carefully down and wipe the perspiration from their brow. “Back to their original places belowdecks.”
“That is a big load. How is your arm doing?” Esquibel grabs it and pulls Triquet’s sleeve up without asking.
“Oh, frankly, I haven’t thought about it in…” Triquet falls silent and Esquibel goes still. The hardened resin that had covered the wound for the last few days is gone now. All that remains is a long red patch of irritated skin. There is no sign of the eagle bite. The incision has vanished as if it never was.
“Impossible.” Esquibel rolls Triquet’s arm back and forth. “We worked on this wound site for—for… It was so long! You had a deep cut in the flesh of your arm!”
“Yeah. I did.” Triquet is filled with disquiet. With a convulsive impulse, they drop to the deck and pull their sock and shoe from their left foot. “Oh, god… Look!” They hold out their foot, so all can see the dark dots of tattoo between each knuckle. “That’s like assault, isn’t it? Tattooing someone against their will?”
“How did your arm heal so quickly?” Esquibel is astounded. She knows of nothing that can heal like that. It must be the sap, that burning sap… Somehow it heals and doesn’t even leave behind scar tissue. Why, every surgery incision, every bullet wound, every dog bite… This is how researchers and doctors become rich. If she can find what bioactive compound that shaman used and patent it before anyone else even knows about it, she’ll become the richest woman in the world. No. This is too wild. Her eyes narrow and she takes a step back. Life is never so easy. There must be some cost. Those tattoos? What are they doing to Triquet? “Why did you check your foot? Could you feel the tattoo?”
“No!” Triquet is near tears. “That’s the problem! I can’t feel anything wrong at all! My arm! My foot! Whatever Sherman did, it’s all inside me now. Ugghh. Doctor Daine, you’ve got to get it out of me. Now.”
“I would very much like to.” Esquibel is torn. Did she preserve any of that resin? After all the packing and moving she can’t recall. She wants to inspect Triquet more closely but she knows this isn’t the place. What is that sap? The implications of its use whirl through her head, making her dizzy.
“Come on, Triquet.” Miriam kneels beside them, helping to put the sock and shoe back on. “We need to find new laces for your shoe. I’m surprised it isn’t falling off. That’s it, darling. All will be well. We’ll just get it all moved first and then we’ll take care of you. Just a few more hours of the drudgery.”
Her calm words help, if only a little. “Yes, Miriam.” Triquet is miserable. Claimed. Experimented upon. This is the nightmare they had always managed to avoid.
“Come on, everyone!” Mandy’s voice, too bright, breaks the mood. She enters carrying a stack of bins, happy about this plan and eager to put it into action. “Got to keep moving! Time to go inland!”
“That’s it. Just a few more paces and you’re there.” Katrina leads Alonso through the passage opening into the sea cave.
He stops, wiping the mud from his hands, taking in the luminous water and walls shimmering with refracted daylight. He shakes his head in wonder. “I am an idiot.”
“What? No.” Katrina’s laugh echoes in the cavern. “Why do you say that?”
“That waterfall…” Alonso traces its route upward. “That is our creek, no? This is where it drops into. Miriam was right.”
Katrina waits patiently for Alonso to take it all in.
“I thought…” Alonso lifts his hands and lets them drop. “I saw the map that Colonel Baitgie shared and… it was like a cartoon. Just a little drawing. And I thought the island was the perfect size. I actually worried that it might be too small and wouldn’t hold our attention for eight whole weeks. But of course that simple map didn’t show all the cliffs or canyons or the tunnels or the villages or the caves. What a fool I am, Katrina. An arrogant fool.”
“Nah, mate. There was no way to tell until we got here. In order to measure something you got to interact with it.”
“Well, like my dear friend Arthur Limas the quantum physics professor is fond of saying, measuring something changes it. Always. So not only did we blunder into this place with little to no idea of what we are doing, we stained everything we touched with our own essence. I thought we would study Lisica as objective and empirical scientists, but instead we are ruining it.”
The guilt is unbearable. Alonso shuffles to the water’s edge, where the rusted remains of the pier rock in the waves. He grabs one of the remaining pylons, cold and unforgiving in his grip. Iron. This is how he has to be. If he is going to survive he needs to be iron. No, not only survive… If he is going to lead.
It had been an appalling amount of pain and effort to get him to this point. He had barely pushed his way through the mud tunnel and now he is filthy. But his ordeal is not over. There is more crawling and climbing ahead and his feet and legs are already burning. “Do any of your party drugs do anything for pain?” He sits at the edge of the rock shelf and pulls his shoes and socks off. With a sigh he drops his feet into the water.
“That’d be something, wouldn’t it? An anaesthetic party drug. Well. I guess that’s what ketamine is but I didn’t bring any of it. Or like any of the opiates. That shit’s nasty. Ruins your life. But yeh. I think about designing my own drugs all the time and I could never think of an effect better than sex with gods, but that’s just cause I’m young and carefree, innit? I can see that now. After a little more life lived there’s nothing better than pain relief and a clear mind. Maybe that’s what I should spend my time on.”
Alonso hardly hears Katrina’s chatter. As the pain subsides he begins to gain another sensation, one that surprises him. It is pride. He did it. He overcame his broken body and made it down through the sub and past the worst of their obstacles. He really didn’t think he’d be able to squeeze through but Katrina had been right, he had lost more weight than he knew. And there was more strength in his arms and back than he remembered. It had been ages since he’d tried to do anything with his muscles. He’d thought he’d be as weak as a baby, but accumulating mass appears to be what middle age is all about. He is still strong.
“Eh! See?” Maahjabeen enters the sea cave. She is wincing and working on her shoulder, but her face is relieved. “Isn’t it so nice in here? Better than being inland and away from the water. I do not trust the native people, either.”
“Yes, it is very nice.” Alonso gasps as a splash runs further up his leg than he wanted. “A bit cold, but a nice spot out of the rain.”
“You got to give the islanders a chance,” Katrina says. “Most of them are totally fine. It’s like anywhere else. There’s always a couple assholes ruining things for everyone.”
“As a matter of fact,” Maahjabeen declares, “I don’t have to give them a chance. Not if I am living in here. And it is probably a good idea for us to have at least one or two of us out of their clutches.”
“Two. Yes.” Alonso turns, worried at the misanthropic edge in Maahjabeen’s voice. He would rather appeal to her humanity. “You and Pradeep. Together again.”
A brief sob escapes before Maahjabeen can suppress it. “Yes. My Mahbub. I miss him so.”
Chapter 42 – A Basketball Game
October 14, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third 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:
42 – A Basketball Game
“Jay. Jay, stop…” Pradeep has been repeating the words for a long time now but this time they work. Jay stumbles to a halt in front of him, seeing it too. Silver light shines indirectly into their tunnel. “We did it. We got out.”
Jay’s breathing is ragged. Holy hell. He took one look at those demon eyes and got the F out of there. Who knows how long he’s been charging forward, dragging Pradeep behind him? But now he can smell the plants and the soil and the fresh air leaking in from ahead. “Jeee-zus, this acid is sooo strong. It’s been like a seventeen hour trip so far. Thanks a fucking bunch, Katrina.”
“Let us stop, please.” Pradeep removes his hand from Jay’s belt, where he held on for dear life. The webbing has cut into his palm and it is a burning pain that keeps him from otherwise thinking clearly. “Why are you so crazed? What did you see, anyway?”
Jay turns back to regard the darkness. Yep, the demons are still lurking back there, staring malevolently at the two escapees. The tunnel’s darkness encompasses one of their infernal hells, with tiers upon tiers of crypts in the pit’s walls, countless fiends staring out. How did he and Pradeep ever survive that? “Uh, there’s, uh, something down here. But we got away. Lots of somethings.”
“What, like… badgers?”
The question is so random and ludicrous Jay can’t help but wheeze with laughter. Oh, yeah. He feels that in his ribs. “The fuck? Badgers? There’s no badgers on this island. Dude. Don’t be dense. We’d have seen sign or spoor by now. No. Demons. Now come on. Maybe there’s some water out here.”
Jay continues forward. Pradeep stands there, dumbstruck, feeling a fool for running around all night fleeing Jay’s acid trip. Damn. Well at least he didn’t lose the bloody moron. And they did finally find a way out. But where are they?
They emerge from a natural crevice on a nearly vertical slope, the opening almost completely obscured by fern fronds. Nearby redwoods are gigantic black columns against an empty sky. Framed between two of the largest is a nearly full moon. Its harsh light bathes this narrow canyon in monochrome light and shadow.
Jay blinks. He’s been underground so long his eyes are super sensitive. This moonlight is like full daylight to him. “I can’t even remember… the last time I saw the moon.” The cloud cover of Lisica hadn’t been getting to him. He hadn’t thought it had, at least. But seeing the full clear night sky again, with the vaulting Milky Way and planets shining in all their brilliant hues… It rocks him. He stumbles from the crevice, wisps of black demon smoke dispersing in the crystal air around his head like bats winging away from their cave. Free. He groans aloud and raises his hands to the shimmering sky. “Free!”
Pradeep claps his hands over his mouth. The shining face of the moon is a profound sight, so bright he can’t look directly at it. The ground falls away before him, purple and black, with dazzling patches of silver that catch the light. He can’t navigate through that. Finding a solid foothold and handhold where he stands, he carefully leans out and looks upslope. No, that is even worse, a massive stone overhang disappearing out of sight above. He’s a climber but he isn’t a reckless fool. That would be like five dynos in a row just to get up what he can see, and his arms are already blown from wrestling all night with Jay. “So… down?”
“Down?” Jay shakes his head and frowns at the sudden motion. His thoughts are clear again but a massive headache is starting up. Oh, fuck. Not now. Not here. Owww! He’s gonna kill Katrina when he sees her again. Absently, his fingers find a fresh joint and his lighter. Soon he is sparking up.
Pradeep exclaims at the sudden flare of light then hisses in disapproval. “Put that away. No idea who might see us here.”
“Good point.” Jay takes a huge hit and rubs the space between his brows with a knuckle. Now he needs water more than ever. His throat is like made of sand and the hot smoke goes down like fire. “Well, water is always down.” And with no more consideration, he drops onto a shelf he can barely see about three meters below.
Pradeep mutters anxiously, his legs trembling. Then he grits his teeth and follows with a halfhearted crouching leap.
Now the weed finally does its job and Jay’s poor brain unlocks. He is able to escape his mind for the first time in ages and reside in his body. Drop. Scramble. Swing. This is real exercise again, the good kind. Not that claustrophobic hell with Pradeep. This is bouldering by moonlight, yo. Not the first time he’s done such a thing. Come on, demons. See if you can catch me now. He patrols the edge of the shelf, then finds a bit of a route on a more shallow slope to his left. Down he goes, his shoes filling with sandy soil.
The ferns are thick. They give way to rhododendron. This is a wet canyon. Jay can tell just by the plant life. More redwoods tower above, stabilizing the cliff walls with their immense roots. They are so slippery, though, and Jay falls from one network into the duff below, sliding into a blackberry bush, where he’s pierced by a hundred thorns. “Oww. Watch that, Prad. It… Fuck! Ow!”
Pradeep perches on the redwood roots above, listening to Jay crash and bellow in the underbrush, all attempts at stealth forgotten. The last thing he wants is to continue this descent. “Shouldn’t there be a traverse across somewhere? Are you sure we want to get to the bottom?”
“Ah. Ahh…” Jay groans as a dozen thorns or more break off in his skin. But he’s still got to push through. He’s past the thick of it now. Just a few more sliding steps, with a few more thorns in his calf, then he’s free. He calls back up to Pradeep. “Yeah, dude. The bottom’s where the water is. Wouldn’t even be a canyon here without water. ” He tilts his gaze back down into the darkness below, the trees obscuring the way down from the moon, and mutters to himself, “And I need a drink bad.”
“But then how will we ever get back up?”
Pradeep’s voice is distant. Jay stops and struggles to find his patience. Can’t lose his buddy now. “No getting back up, homie. Down and out. We’ll have to find another way back.”
“Ugh. I do not like that answer.”
“Come on, Prad. Swing yourself over this way. You can avoid the blackberries if you drop over here. Just watch out for rocks.”
Jay takes another drag on his joint. Even though it majorly tears up his throat it sure does good things to his mental state. He’s back in business now. And if he strains to listen he can hear the gurgle of a creek. “Fuck yeah, there’s a creek. This is a deep canyon and that was a big storm.” Jay drops onto a boulder and hurries down a broadening slope into a dark grove. Finally. The redwoods hold the soil here on a forest floor that is flattening out. Mossy banks and ferns are barely visible in the tiny bit of light that penetrates.
Jay worms his way forward, using the toes of one foot to sense his path forward. There is no path, just a jumble of fallen logs covered with moss and clumps of ferns. But the water is closer now, a full liquid gargle that promises an end of thirst. It urges him forward until he is at its side hanging over the wide creek, the dangling roots of the redwoods an impassable barrier above the rushing water. He needs to find a sandbar or something. Unless he fully throws himself in the creek he can’t reach it from here. And he isn’t willing to do that yet. He just got his phone back, for fuck’s sake.
But he’s so thirsty.
Jay pulls back and picks his way further downstream, the thorns in the heels of his hand and the skin of his calf stabbing him with every move. But finally he finds a spot where the dirt slopes steeply to the water. By holding onto a root and lowering himself headfirst he’s able to dip his chin into the frigid stream and gulp down some of the best water he’s ever tasted. Drenching his front, the cold sobers him further. Finally he has to pull away, even though he feels like he could drink forever.
When Jay regains his balance he finds Pradeep above, navigating down to him with his phone light. “Water,” Jay calls out, perhaps unnecessarily. But it is the only thing that matters.
Pradeep pauses, his head whirling. This precipitous slope is nearly as bad as being in the tunnels. At least in there he had no chance of pitching himself forward and drowning in a rain-swollen creek. “Where are we?” he demands. “Which way should we go?”
“You think I know?” Jay’s answer is querulous, followed by a sharp laugh that verges on hysterics. “Feels like I’ve spent half my waking moments on this fucking island lost in the dark.”
“Yes. Well. We need to make a choice, and I am not going to drop down any further to you until…”
“You ain’t thirsty? Damn. Well, it’s a simple call. Downstream. Duh. That’s where we’ll eventually like get back to where we once belonged.”
“Okay. Which way is that?”
“To the right.”
“And what is upstream?”
“Well, come on, don’t stop using your brain here. That must be the high country, right? The ridgeline that collected all this water.”
“No… I am asking… Wasn’t it on a hill top that Triquet escaped from? And Flavia? The shamans are above somewhere.”
“All the more reason to go down. Oh, fuck. I soaked the last of my joint. Goddamnit. Now I’m gonna have to roll a new one. Shine your light—”
“No! I will not!” In response, Pradeep turns off his light. “There is only two percent battery left. I was just getting very angry about how you made me use more to come down here. We can’t use the last on your drug habit. It’s the drugs that got us into this mess!”
“Fine. I’ll just suffer in silence then. At least until we find a patch of moonlight. Come on.”
They follow the course of the creek as well as they can from the slope above, about ten meters up. But the canyon walls are cut by endless rills and streams of side canyons that bring water down to add to the larger creek. It is in the second of these that Pradeep finds a spot where he can drink. And Jay is right. It is amazingly restorative. Now the prospect of hiking the entire rest of the night doesn’t seem quite so daunting. And the moonlight certainly helps.
Jay certainly thinks so. He’s crouched down and balanced his kit on his knee. After carefully rolling a pair of joints, one for energy and one for relaxation, he slides them into a dry pocket. Then with the last of the dust he makes a little binger that he smokes to ash. “We might want to find a spot to hole up for the rest of the night.”
Pradeep shrugs. “Let us walk while we can.”
The canyon eventually opens onto a wider valley. The trees do not cover the entire forest floor, leaving wide patches of silver light they pick their way through. The creek has flooded here, filling the flat ground with pools and puddles, making progress difficult. Eventually they have to give up trying to keep their shoes and pants dry, and start wading along its verge in the icy water.
Finally, a solid rise clears the floodwaters ahead like an island, featuring a pair of giant bay trees and little more. Pradeep throws himself down onto its dry banks, panting from the exertion and the anxiety, needing a break from banging his shins against submerged logs and squinting into the dark. Now he’s got a headache too.
Jay’s is also getting worse. He worries about the return of his headaches. This would be the worst place for them, by far. “At least it’s dark,” he grunts, kneading the back of his neck.
“What is wrong?”
“Migraines are worse in bright light. So at least I got that going for me, which is nice.”
“You have a migraine? Shit. I didn’t know you got migraines.” Pradeep makes a worried face. His mother has this curse. He learned early on what to do for her. “Here. Turn a bit. Now breathe.” Pradeep buries his knuckles in the straps of muscle connecting Jay’s back and neck. He certainly has a lot more mass than Pradeep’s mom but hopefully the principle is the same. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Pradeep’s strong fingers are like fangs piercing his flesh. But Jay knows to keep still and relaxed if it’s going to be helpful. He’s just got to breathe through the added pain. “Yeah,” he grunts. “Got them pretty much under control. Except I guess when I wrestle with demons on acid.”
“Underground. In the cold and dark.”
“With no food or water.”
“It does make sense. Jay, I’m worried.”
“Not now, chief. Trying to clear my mind of worry.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep has no such avenue for himself. “My mind is primarily composed of worry, perhaps 98% by weight. I’m only thinking about this creek. If we are on the right bank, and it is eventually the same river that divides the two warring villages, then which bank do we want to be on?”
“Oh, man, are you trying to break my brain?” But Jay knows this is a valid concern. There’s no point in fighting their way through hours of forest only to throw themselves on the spearpoints of the Katóok tribe, after Jay had sworn to never return to their territory. “Yeah, let’s see. Downstream is like this… We stay on this side. Yeah, we’re on the correct bank. The good side, the west side where they won’t kill us. Pretty sure.”
“Good. Because I don’t think we can cross that creek anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s like the whole idea about it, for sure. No crossing allowed. And I guess that holds true all the way up to the top of the island. Fucking weirdos.”
“So hungry.” Pradeep finds a fallen log that would make a good chair. He sits and takes off his shoes, clearing them of all the debris.
“For sure. You think I can get a pizza delivered?” Jay decides if he can’t eat he’ll smoke more weed. Sativa it is. Bolster his energy.
“Oh. No.” Pradeep’s words are so harrowed that they interrupt Jay, mid-inhalation. “It’s him.”
“Him? Who him?” Then Jay’s eyes adjust from the flare of the lighter to spy the dim hulking figure here on this rise with them, just a few paces away. “Oh, is it that Wetchie-ghuy fucker? What up, dude? You sure been causing us a metric fuck-ton of trouble.” With force, Jay blows the remainder of his smoke at the distant figure, who remains still, watching them.
Pradeep groans. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand… How could I know what he looked like in my mind if I’d never seen him in real life? And now when I see him, he looks the same? How did he get inside my mind?”
“Don’t let him fool you, Prad. This dude’s got tricks.”
“No. It is no trick. A bargain has been made. Somehow. He knows it as well as I. And now he is coming to collect.”
“The fuck he is. Sit down, Prad. Dude doesn’t get to just roll up and claim people. It doesn’t work like that. The only reason you needed any help in the first place is because his buddy tried to kill you with poison. Fuck both of them. You owe him nothing.”
Now Wetchie-ghuy holds out a loop of braided leather. They both know what that is for. Pradeep’s shoulders slump, accepting his fate. He knew Maahjabeen and his exciting new career were too good to be true. He just knew it, deep inside. And there is a gleam in that old man’s eye, a curious little opening into a larger truth. This is the siren song Pradeep heard in the darkness last night that originally made him leave the sub. It is here, in this shaman’s knowledge, the universal truths Pradeep has always sought. See? This transaction has further benefits for him. He will only sit at his new master’s feet and take in whatever crumbs and morsels Wetchie-ghuy cares to share. It will be worth it…
“Prad! I said sit the fuck back down.” Jay pulls on Pradeep, who has risen again to go to the awful old man. But Jay has another idea. “No. Wait. Let’s make a deal, Wetchie-ghuy. You want my boy but you can’t have him. You can’t have either of us. But I got something even better. Bigger juju, dude. Look.” And Jay gets between the shaman and the man he has claimed, blowing another billow of smoke at Wetchie-ghuy.
The shaman coughs, waving his hand in front of his face, then he mutters something in reaction and cocks his head.
“Yeah, smells good, don’t it? Here’s the deal. You can have the joint. But I get to keep Pradeep. Right? Fair and final, yeah?”
Wetchie-ghuy lifts a gnarled hand. Jay puts the joint in it. “That’s it. Smoke up, bro. Like you saw me do. Then we’re square.”
Wetchie-ghuy inhales, the end of the joint crackling cherry red. He does not exhale.
Ξ
Katrina is in a febrile dream. She is so thirsty. There’s a park of red sandstone near her house she’s been going to as a child but now it’s drought season and all its pools are dusty dry, like the inside of her poor wretched mouth.
Someone wakes her. She gratefully pulls herself out of the vision. It was absolutely no fun, filled with loops of thought she’s been around and around so many times they’ve worn grooves in her brain. And now she’s awake, the curving shadows of the sub’s hull over her head, waking in the Captain’s bed with Alonso sitting at her side. He looks at her with paternal care, holding water.
“Here.”
He feeds it to her like a bottle to a baby. She slurps greedily, a rivulet running down her chin and pooling in the hollow of her neck. Finally she breaks away. “Thanks, mate. Glorious.”
“You were muttering for water and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeh. Brilliant. What time is it?”
“It is near morning. And we are still alive. So.” He pats her head and gives her a pitying smile. “How is the come down? Bad?”
“The worst. Usually I have a lot more control of how my trips end. Lots of hot water and vitamins and meditation. Not… Well. Whatever the fuck that was.”
Alonso’s response is a full belly laugh. He smooths the fine strands of blonde hair away from her forehead. “Yes. The bugout. The big bugout of May Second. It will go down in history.”
“And somehow you’re in a good mood about it?” Katrina sits up, somewhat resentful of Alonso’s tone. Then she remembers how irritable she will be today and remembers to keep it to herself.
“Yes, well… I have always, during crisis, you know, at least before the last crisis, the big one, the long one, the five years…” He shrugs, re-setting himself. “I was always at my best in a crisis. I can put my feelings away and take care of all the problems and needs of others. So. My colleague asks for water, I get water. My Doctor tells me to hide in a sub, I hide in a sub. And I take care of people. It is one of the things I do best. You wouldn’t know it from meeting me now, but I assure you it is true. Is there anything else I can get you?”
Katrina shakes her head no. “Any sign of… you know, anyone? Jay and Pradeep? The golden man? Russian Marines?”
“No one. Maahjabeen and Flavia convinced Esquibel to move her barrier further up the tunnel so they could visit the sea cave. So they were gone for like an hour. But they’re back now. Everyone else is still asleep.”
“He was real, you know. It wasn’t the drugs. We really did see the golden man and he really did tell us the Russians were coming. I mean, Pradeep and Jay didn’t just vanish for fun.”
“We know. And we know which way our two wayward sons went. But nobody is allowed to follow them. It’s a new tunnel.”
“New tunnel. Fucking fantastic.” Katrina groans and falls back against the wall, bumping her head. “Yeh. Coming back online now. Ah, sobriety. You were not missed. Any coffee anywhere?”
“Not yet. But I can start a pot. Just not in here. The ventilation is not so good.”
“So like no boots tramping around above? No gunfire or…?”
Alonso shrugs. “The bunker’s concrete floor is too solid.”
Katrina looks more closely at his silhouette. “Are you sure I was just out for a few hours? Not like… days?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just skip this whole unpleasant episode and wake up when it’s safe again. Why? What is it?”
“You’re… I mean, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but you look really good, Doctor Alonso. I think you’ve lost some weight.”
“This is quite the time to turn into a flatterer.” Alonso stands straighter, sucking in his belly. “Well, a man can only drink so much wine. Really? You think so?”
“I really do.” The transformation is fairly striking. His hair is growing out as well, a leonine mane of silver and black sweeping back from his forehead. And his jawline has returned.
“You are so sweet. Let me just get the water going and I will be right back for more compliments.” With a soft chuckle he turns and vanishes, leaving Katrina alone with her chaotic thoughts.
He returns a moment later, bearing a bag of dried fruit and a handful of supplements. “Here. Electrolytes for what you lost. And more water. Your coffee is coming.” He makes sure she swallows the pills and drinks more water and eats a handful of fruit. “Now. Tell me more nice things about how I look.”
Katrina laughs for his sake, her insides made of sand. She doesn’t think she can sleep any more but she also can’t offer much more in the way of social niceties. “You do look fab. I love your hair.”
Alonso passes a self-conscious hand over his curls. “You are such a doll. You have no idea how vain I am.”
Katrina pauses, mid-sip. She lowers the water bottle and looks at him. “Now I’m remembering my last great insight from last night. And it’s a real doozy. Are you ready?”
Alonso isn’t sure he likes the strange look in Katrina’s eyes. “Yes, I suppose, if it has merit.”
“Well, not much, but it’s still interesting regardless. So… I guess in the back of my mind I was chewing on our data collection issues and how the clock is really ticking down and we’re no closer to getting what we need for Plexity.”
Alonso leans back. “Yes, I have been thinking very much about the same thing. And my solutions so far are not very good. Mostly about hiding here when they come to pick us up so I have enough time to finish my initial assay of the island. What is your solution?”
“Well, it’s really just kind of a philosophical word game my brain was playing while tripping. Semantics. But, I mean, remember how the basis of Plexity is the interconnectedness of all life?”
“Certainly.”
“And how we’ve been working our asses off trying to get as many samples of life and examples of that interconnection as we can? Well, what I started thinking… Right! It started as a way to extend the deadline, like what you’re saying. And in my cracked-out state I was tripping on the possibility of a terrarium, you know those glass bowls with all the plants and a bit of sand and water and—?”
“Yes, I know what a terrarium is.”
“So on acid, you can get really obsessive. And I was imagining stuffing my own terrarium with all the samples we couldn’t get to on Lisica, so that when we left we’d still have a tiny little replica of the island we could work on. You know? Not that it would be representative or accurate or…”
“Well, yes, that is the thing, isn’t it? You have forty species in your little glass globe and that can’t replicate the richness—or, rather, by the choice of which species we bring we could absolutely misrepresent the baseline activity for everything in the bowl and also misrepresent the profile for life on the island.”
“Yes. Of course. That’s why I said it has little worth… Anyway. It’s really nothing more than a thought experiment but what if we lean a little bit more into that interconnectedness concept?”
“What do you mean? How?”
“Well, like,” Katrina grabs Alonso’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his. “Think about, I don’t know, the seagulls.”
“You can’t fit a seagull in a terrarium.”
“Yeh, that’s kinda what I’m getting at. So maybe we don’t need to. The seagull eats what, fish? Then it discards the carcass and flies away. But the fish guts give rise to bacteria in the water. So then we come along and harvest the bacteria and find proteins in it that came from fish blood. We also find traces of seagull saliva. But we only have the bacteria.”
“I don’t think even the Dyson readers are this powerful.”
“No, mate. No chance. But gentle reminder: I was tripping balls. And like I said, this may not have much merit. But here’s another word we should be looking at more closely: life.”
“Okay. Life. Are you saying expand the definition?”
“Well, sort of. I mean that we keep talking about life on Lisica but we keep forgetting to add a whole new component: us. We are life on Lisica. You and me and the whole gang. And we are making impacts on it and it is making impacts on us. Maahjabeen and Pradeep getting poisoned. I mean, now that we’re fishing the lagoon we’re consuming all the local bugs.” Katrina has been speaking to her own toes, her legs stuck straight out before her on the bed. She hazards a glance at Alonso and finds that his gaze is troubled. “So then I realized we don’t need no stinkin’ terarria. We are the fragile glass globes containing all the bits and bobs of Lisica within us. The bacteria, the proteins, the dynamic interactions. They’re already all inside us. It’s just a shame we didn’t like start with bloodtest baseline records or something. That would make it much easier at the end to compare one result with the other…”
“Yes, now that is something that would be very interesting. I wonder if any of the military hospitals I stayed in have kept any of my many blood samples? Probably not. Because I could get a blood draw taken when we get back and I would be very curious about the results. Not your results, with the thirdhand bacteria and proteins. There is just… I think you are dramatically overestimating the specificity and sensitivity of modern instruments—”
“Yeh, that’s why I agreed there wouldn’t be very many merits.” Katrina clamps her mouth shut and puts a leash on her irritation. But it’s too late. Alonso registers it. And now she’s embarrassed. Doing drugs around squares, or even just a bunch of sober people, is hard work. You can’t put any of the downsides onto them, not like if you were actually sick or heartbroken. This was your choice and now the resulting shit is all your own to handle, haiku triplet. Just keep your mouth shut until you can be nice again.
Yet Katrina’s next impulse is to carry on. “Sorry. I mean, it’s definitely science fiction, but it really is the ultimate goal of Plexity, eh? That we’re not just interconnected, we’re like intershot with all the matter and the interactions that wash through us. Collisions like galaxies in my bones and blood. But the work we’re doing here will someday allow it. The specificity will be there. The sensitivity to detect quantum fluctuations that happened in a faraway star system but eventually flutter my heart. Linear thinkers like talking about the butterfly effect but nobody wants to discuss the billion butterflies effect, the billion-butterflies-every-second-since-the-big-bang-effect. They think it all just dissolves into noise but—”
“No!” Alonso halts her train of thought with an upraised finger. “It dissolves into life! That is the nature of life, all those interactions hitting us from a million different angles at all times, enriching us and mutating us and giving complexity to every subatomic unit and all the higher-order processes they create. Yes. I have nibbled around the edges of those thoughts. And I am glad you’re the one who took the acid and had the experience yourself so now I will not need to. It does not seem to have made you happier.”
“It just makes me wonder what we’re doing here. It’s really easy to lose the thread of our work when we collect and record and all data just kind of generalizes out to an infinite number of bits, none more interesting than the other. But, oh well. Just thought I should share the vision before I lost it. Thought it might help.”
Alonso’s eyes are dark, introspective. “It does, actually. I have been having trouble with this deadline in a couple weeks, for sure, but I have also been having an equal amount of trouble with the suggestion Flavia made that we only characterize the life of the lagoon and beach and, as Miriam agreed with her, that the rest should be a grant proposal to return as soon as possible with more teams and greater resources and maybe a fucking helicopter so we can actually get inland for once. And I think your idea… It is wild and crazy and impossible, and will most likely remain impossible forever barring the revocation of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, at which point we might as well free ourselves from causality entirely and start time-traveling, forget about just finding the record of an entire island in a drop of blood. But no. No… Your idea does not need to be possible for it to have merit. And the merit it has is the prospect that Flavia is right, and that we can legitimately gain an accurate snapshot of the wider island in the samples of the lagoon.”
“Oh.” Katrina doesn’t know if she’s helped or hurt him with this line of thought. He doesn’t seem very pleased with it. “I’m sorry, Doctor Alonso. Plexity and Lisica is for sure the most thrilling thing I’ve ever been involved with and I don’t want it to end. Except this scary part, where all our lives keep getting threatened. But barring that, I’d stay here for ages working on this with you.”
“Thank you. I have no idea if we will have the chance, later.”
“You know, people get this idea that just because you do certain drugs, it must mean that you’re stupid, but I’ve had the most—”
“No.” Again Alonso interrupts Katrina. “It doesn’t make you stupid. Obviously. But it makes you unreliable. Like my wine. And Jay’s weed. As long as you understand that, then you are having a more honest relationship with whatever is the vice of your choice.”
“I’m just in it for the visions.” Katrina shrugs. “Which makes me even more unreliable. Just this mad woman of Sydney. But I guess in the long run I’m not really looking for anyone’s approval.”
Alonso stands and pats her leg. “No. No, you certainly are not.”
Ξ
Triquet crouches in a bush. Milo is in front of him, seated on the ground with his feet planted on either side, knees as high as a frog. The youth’s legs are thin to the point of malnutrition, the muscles like cords along each femur. Yes, there is something paleolithic about these golden childs. Triquet wonders if they’re perhaps nomadic. Maybe that’s the difference between them and the people of Morska Vidra’s village.
Triquet is tired of sitting here. Their brain is far too active to fall into this kind of endless pre-modern reverie that people like Milo can effortlessly achieve. And it’s been, what, all night and into the morning now? Fifteen hours? Something like that? And their eagle bite is throbbing.
Milo had scared the hell out of them in the dark, finding Triquet by touch, who was only comforted when their own fingers found the golden mask. Then they had roughly clasped each other in the dark and the cold, both bodies shivering, and finally fallen asleep.
It was upon waking that Triquet decided this golden childs needed a name. It was a longstanding policy to know at least the first name of those Triquet had slept with and they didn’t want to break it now. So. The little man had become Milo.
It hadn’t gotten any drier or warmer but Triquet had finally disentangled themself from the warm embrace to crawl forward and peer out from under the thick eaves of the underbrush. Its small, almond-shaped leaves with serrated edges drip endless drops onto the black earth, which sheets with water.
“Well, Milo.” Triquet now addresses his back. “Moment of truth and all that. How’s your Russian?” Then they fall forward stiffly on all fours and stifle a groan. They are so stiff and sore. Crawling forward, they lower their chin to the dead leaves, which prickle, and peer out. There’s some dark vertical surface out there, covered in networks of lichen and algae. From a slightly different vantage it resolves into a wall—the back of the bunker, stained and blackened by time. Oh, well. That’s good. The bushes back here are a nice safe place to be, for sure. Just miserable-as-can-be is all.
On the far side of that wall was their home for the last few weeks, now returned to an unassuming bare ruin. It had been filled with their cute little cells and the kitchen and all the laptops at the work tables in a row. It had been nice. And the hatch leading to the sub must be just a few meters away. If Triquet could somehow get to it and slip down there with the others, dry and safe and hidden… It seems like the greatest possible luxury. Maybe they can just start with the dirt beneath their feet and dig straight down, hoping the sub runs under here. But they know it doesn’t. It starts at the bottom of the stairs, ten meters off to Triquet’s left and down another eight, before heading off under the beach at an angle. Not a passage they can scrape away with their hands. And then there’s the matter of the concrete and the steel hull. No getting through them with just like elbow grease and fingernails. They’re still trapped out here. So close and yet so far.
Well. Then it is a matter of being a scout again. Be optimistic. There’s a strong chance that no Russian soldiers ever arrived here. That’s what we call the reality-based chance. And if Triquet can confirm that now, then hooray, we can all resume our daily lives and just like lock Katrina and Jay in the warrant officer’s cabin for the remainder of the stay.
Triquet recalls the placement of the window in the back, and how they’d heard that a fox jumped out it when they first arrived. That fox probably had a trail… Triquet pulls back and scans the forest floor for any sign of one. There: an unsteady depression running generally in the right direction, thin as thread.
Triquet crawls carefully along this game trail, finding that it ends at a woody bush whose main limb serves as a springboard to the empty window ahead. Triquet can see claw marks and dirty paw prints on the limb, clear as day. They are pleased that for once an educated guess actually turns out to be true.
Triquet looks back at Milo, who seems to be watching them from behind the blankness of the golden mask. “Just going to take a peek,” Triquet silently mouths to him, pointing at the window. Then they slowly rise…
Thunk. Triquet stops. Something heavy bumped against another object in the bunker. Just on the other side of the wall, not even their own body’s length away. Then they hear breathing, a heavy snuffling, and an indistinct muttering. Somebody is in there. Unmistakably. It isn’t a fox. It’s a man. A Russian? Triquet can’t hear enough of the words. Whoever it is, they are obviously alone, muttering to themself with idle observations. Could it be one of the Lisicans? It doesn’t really sound like them. This person is less… healthy? Or maybe it’s one of the shamans. It could very well be. Talking to themselves is very on brand for them, poking around in the bunker after getting their golden mask buddies to spook the researchers away for whatever malevolent reason. Yes, paranoia argues that this has all just been a game to them. Or, like some complex side tactic in their great argument. Those assholes.
Or maybe it’s a Russian soldier after all and if Triquet pops their head up to see, it gets blown off. No real way to tell.
The body shifts within. Steps are taken, dried ferns brushing against the floor. Yes, there is a heaviness to the steps, perhaps a bit of a waddle or limp. They only take like three so it’s hard to tell. Then a long exhalation and a word that sounds like shivyit.
The figure moves through the bunker and out the door, their movement tapering to silence. Now Triquet doesn’t know what to do. Should they try to confirm the person’s identity? How are they supposed to do that when any movement will likely be too much?
A gout of rain solves that issue. It suddenly falls with such force that Triquet is easily able to withdraw deeper into the bushes without fear of being heard. It really pounds down, a trickle of cold water worming its way around the collar of their coat and down their neck. Their feet are already made of ice, probably as blue as the boots they wear. And the rain doesn’t let up.
Emboldened, Triquet uses the downpour to crawl around the building counter-clockwise, still staying in the bushes close to the ground. They ease wide so their sightline is clear of the corner of the building. There is no one there. Well, obviously. Who in their right mind would stand in the middle of this deluge if there’s a building right there beside them? They must have gone back inside and Triquet couldn’t hear it over the battering the corrugated steel roof endures.
Too many unknowns. What will prove that camp is unsafe? Well. A mental checklist appears in Triquet’s mind. If they find out it’s a Russian. Check. If they find more than one person. That means it isn’t a shaman so therefore it has to be soldiers. Check. If they hear any metal sounds. Lisicans don’t wear metal. Check. If their feet leave tread like the lugs of boot soles. Check. If Triquet can figure out what the fuck shivyit means. Check.
And what would prove that camp is safe? Prove? That is much harder, proving a negative. Hard to prove an absence of threat when there’s obviously someone in there prowling around. And there’s very little chance it’s someone who looks on Alonso and his crew kindly, either way. So no checklist there.
And what if it’s just one of the golden childs in the bunker? Maybe they didn’t know Triquet was close and let their guard down a bit, dropping the whole silent mask routine? Maybe they’re still just patrolling the empty camp because they wouldn’t go into the sub? That prospect suddenly seems the most likely and Triquet pushes forward, eager to catch sight of a gold mask in the bunker’s door. But they can’t see anyone out there and moving forward any more would take them out of the bushes entirely and that’s a big no thank you from Triquet.
Triquet schools themself to patience and pulls back to the window to peek within. The bunker is empty, rain pouring in shining columns through the gaps in the roof. It looks so cozy. They are sorely tempted to crawl through and hide. Perhaps if they covered themself with some dead ferns and just kept still? They could happily sleep the day away.
But that would never do.
The rain eases. A break in the sky suddenly appears above the cliffs and an eerie golden light filters through the drizzle. The wind picks up and the trees shed their soaked dead leaves. And in the cathedral light that slants down into the bushes, Triquet can now see a wider path through the thicket behind them leading away from camp, back toward the cliffs. This must be one of the paths to the secret tunnels. They slept like not two steps away from it and they’re only just seeing it now.
Fabulous.
Well, no time like the present. Bye bye bunker. They can retreat from these dangers and dive down into the dark now to find their way back to the sub and the loving embrace of Miriam and Alonso and all the others.
But can they? It is still an open question if it is safe for the others to come out. And without Triquet’s eyes and ears out here, they’ll never know if it gets any safer. No, they can’t retreat and put that burden on someone else. They need to figure this out once and for all. So no tunnel for them. Yet.
Triquet rocks back on their heels and tries to think strategically. Okay. The storm is breaking up and the beach is getting a patch or two of sun. Gusts of wind chase clouds from the sky. Sneaking off to the right, toward the trenches and Tenure Grove, will provide good cover but take Triquet further from camp, and maybe make it harder for them to see what might be occurring out there. But if they go the other way, alongside the creek to the left, staying in that deep underbrush and peeking out every few minutes to see, they could probably get a good survey from the door of the bunker all the way to camp and down to the beach.
And that’s when they hear the whistle, faintly from the lagoon. Three short blasts. Not a bird whistle, but the sound made from a small metal object, like a referee uses at a basketball game.h1 { color: #000000; letter-spacing: 2.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-align: center; page-break-inside: avoid; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; border: none; padding: 0in; direction: ltr; background: transparent; text-decoration: underline; page-break-after: avoid }h1.western { font-family: “Wallington”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.cjk { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.ctl { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }p { color: #000000; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; background: transparent }p.western { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt }p.ctl { font-family: “Times New Roman”, serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: ar-SA }em { font-style: italic }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text
Chapter 41 – To The Sub
October 7, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third 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:
41 – To The Sub
Pradeep descends the narrow set of concrete stairs. Jay’s back, silhouetted by the light coming from the sub below, bends nearly double before vanishing through the hatch. Well. Pradeep has mostly done a good job avoiding the sub and the tunnels and the entire bloody interior of the island but now his help is needed. His clarity. His common sense. Pradeep takes a deep breath to calm himself but the growing knot of anxiety in his guts can’t be so easily released. It is beyond his control.
Yes. So is everything. Lisica has robbed him entirely of self-rule. And some of that is fantastic. He will happily worship Maahjabeen for the rest of his days. He is thrilled to be working with Doctor Alonso, the luminary. But the rest of it… Actually living out these fearsome experiences might be too much for his faint heart.
“There it is!” Jay crows from within. Heartened, Pradeep ducks through the hatch and straightens in the cramped chamber, its curving walls tapering together near his head, increasing his claustrophobia, sepia and yellow light everywhere. Jay stands proudly, holding the remains of a dead roach. He searches his pockets for his lighter. Nope, no lighter. But ah! There it is on the ground, red and chrome, like a child’s forgotten toy.
He sparks up, hoping the weed can ground him a bit. Having to do actual real-world shit while peaking on acid fucking sucks.
Jay realizes Pradeep is talking to him. And the weed isn’t hitting at all, it just got yeeted straight out of his brain by the stronger drug. Fuck. “What’s that, Prad?” Oh, weird. Did he actually say those words out loud or imagine them?
“So where is it?”
“Huh?” Jay notices the way Pradeep purses his lips when he’s upset. He sure is a stress case. “Oh! Uh… I just had it.” With a triumphant smile he presents the lighter to Pradeep. “Ta-daa.”
“No, abe saale,” Pradeep snatches the lighter from Jay’s hand and shoves it back into his front pockets. “The evidence. Where is the evidence?” Jay only looks at him, stupefied. Pradeep shakes him by the shoulders. “No no no. You have to stay here with me. You have to tell me. This golden man. Where did you see him?”
“Right! The golden man!” Jay grabs Pradeep by the elbows, his face filled with revelation. “Dude! It was right here! I was sitting here buzzing. And Katrina wanted to go down on me but I said, hold up. We’re like not alone in here. So she—”
“Wait. She what?” Pradeep is scandalized. “Is that what you two were doing down here? Isn’t she like seventeen?”
“Aw, come on, Prad. She’s twenty-two. She’s only like nineteen months younger than me. Why’s everybody gotta disrespect the one and only DJ Bubblegum?”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t know you were…” Pradeep makes a vague back-and-forth gesture with his hands, “into each other.”
“Are we?” The overwhelmed look on Jay’s face indicates that this is a calculation that is way beyond his abilities at the moment.
“So anyway…” Pradeep hauls his friend back to the here and now. “Where did you see the golden man?”
“I was here. Katrina was here. Golden man was here.”
“Okay. Did he ever come into this room or did he stay in that doorway there? That hatch?”
“He stayed in the hatch. Oh, shit. That’s right, Prad. The Russians. They’re on their way. We got to hide.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep can’t think how to finish that sentence. He supposes it is within the realm of possibility that Russian military forces still visit the island. Katrina had detected Slavic words in Lisican speech. They must have gotten it somewhere. But he dreads the notion. Armed soldiers prowling through camp, with orders to shoot anyone they find there. It’s terrifying. They are so utterly alone and defenseless here, so far from any help at all. “What exactly did he say?”
“Uhh…” Jay scrubs his forehead. Visual memories turn into words and back again, forming some abstract orthogonal space in his head that refuses to resolve into speech. “You know, he was speaking Russian. And I don’t understand Russian.”
“Right. So Katrina was translating. And how did that go? Was he nice? Was he angry? Did he threaten you?”
Jay giggles. “Show me on the doll where he touched you.”
Pradeep claps his hands. “Jay. Let us be serious here. They are upstairs waiting for us.”
“Be vewy vewy quiet. We’re hunting wabbits!” Jay falls forward onto all fours and Pradeep is afraid he’s lost him again. But no. Jay crawls slowly forward, scanning the deck. All things considered, it’s probably what they should both be doing. Pradeep inspects the walls instead. Triquet has done a nice job, putting up a gallery of portraits in a row here, the uniformed men in black and white who served on this sub and perhaps buried it here. Their postwar faces look so simple, the light in their eyes so certain. Well. Life was far more straightforward back then, that’s for sure.
Jay crawls through the hatch, still not looking up. It is dark on the far side, something Pradeep isn’t yet willing to encounter. He takes out his phone and lights the chamber beyond. Then he closely inspects the frame of the hatch. But the frame is clear of pollen. Pradeep fights his impatience down. Careful, now. Don’t jump to any conclusions yet. Frankly, he hadn’t believed Jay’s story of the golden childs and their strange rituals at first until he was shocked to find them surrounding the camp a few nights ago. All kinds of bizarre things happen here. This might be one of them. “You must understand. Because of your condition, we can’t just take your word for it. It is too important. We need to know.”
Jay rolls over, nodding. “Knowledge. Not just like opinions but…” He wants to make a speech on the value of true knowledge but an ire blazes in Pradeep’s shadowed face that makes him hesitate. “What? What did I do?”
“Just stay on task. The golden man. We need to find him.”
“Yeah. But we don’t speak Russian. We should have brought Katrina. She could have—”
“Not on your life. I’m having enough trouble with one of you.” Pradeep scans the dark chamber. Lit by just his narrow white beam, it seems far more spooky. “Come on. Figure it out!”
“Will do. I think he went this way.”
Pradeep follows Jay through the next hatch into the narrow corridor and its three doors. It is only getting more dark and scary. Each of the offices and ward rooms are empty. In the Captain’s cabin a twisted blanket still lies on the mattress. That was where Alonso was when Pradeep found him. Also on drugs. He came on to Pradeep quite hard… That was awkward. What is it with these crazy people? For the first time he’s happy about Maahjabeen’s strict temperance. He needs at least one stable person in his life.
They creep through the corridor, Jay scouring the grate of the deck and the stained walls of the hallway. The end of the passage is lit by an indirect light. Pradeep recalls that Triquet leaves work lights on down here quite a lot.
They step through into the control room. Jay is quite pleased with himself. He’s been able to stay on task for a whole five minutes now. Perhaps the peak is already passing. Then he’ll just have to deal with coming down, which is horrible. But hopefully they’ll be back up in the bunker by then.
The work light in the corner is tilted upward, making crazy shadows that expand the higher they go. The shadows all converge on the ceiling, which troubles him. It seems significant somehow. Malevolent. “Shit.” The last thing Jay needs while hallucinating his nuts off is an actual confrontation with one of the evil spirits of the island. He’s sure they’re here. It’s almost like he can sense them. The acid gives him a second sight. But, thankfully, the control room is clear. And there’s no sign that anyone went down the hole in the deck in the corner onto the jumble of stacked furniture below. “If there’s gonna be pollen anywhere, it’d be here…”
They both inspect the ragged hole, the rusted edges of expanded steel clean of anything resembling gold dust. “Can we say this is proof, then?” Pradeep studies Jay’s bleary face. “Will you accept that this golden man wasn’t real? That it was the drugs and only the drugs?”
An immense weariness washes through Jay. He recalls that his side was slashed open. That was a real thing. The pain he still feels in his skin is a real thing. Maybe the golden man was not? Who even knows any more? The last few hours are nothing but a jumble in his fatigued brain. Perhaps he doesn’t know anything about anything at all. “Sure, man. Whatever you say.”
Pradeep nods, pleased with Jay’s mumbled concession. “Fine. Good. Then let’s get back and tell them before…”
And that’s when they both see the far hatch in the control room, the one that had been welded shut and convinced them in the days early on that this was the end of the sub, is now cracked open.
“What in the world…?” Pradeep edges up to it. “But how…?” He runs his light along the edges of its door. It is still welded shut. Yet there is a seam outside the door frame that has been broken open. It may not even be on a hinge. The entire bulkhead is just a giant heavy panel made of rusted steel that has now been heaved aside, with a gap wide enough for a man to pass through.
“Oh, shit. I knew it…” All Jay’s fears become manifest, coalescing in the darkness on the other side of this hatch. “I fucking knew it. This is too freaky, bro. We got to pull back and come at this with a little more…”
But Pradeep is absorbed by something he sees through the gap. He peers more closely, listens more intently. “Hang on.”
Then he steps through, into darkness.
Ξ
Triquet wakes with a start. Then a deep shiver. Oh, that’s right. Here they are. Alone and lost. At their lowest point yet.
It is dark, maybe already dawn. They lie face down in the mud outside the bunker beneath a bush somewhere by the creek and the pool. The waterfall is a steady rushing white noise beside them, with the slap of falling water on flat stones nearby.
They’re soaking wet and freezing, eagle bite throbbing, wrapped imperfectly in their rain suit. How did they manage to actually fall asleep out here? Oh. Right. They are utterly exhausted.
It had been a race to break down the camp and the bunker, some kind of awful marathon filled with rising anxiety and shouting matches and Esquibel’s outrageous threats. At least they’d already done half the work, back when the rains had started. They’d already struck the tents and hammock and lowered the camp tarps and stowed the solar panels. If those things had still been up last night, there was no way they could have finished in time.
They’d begged the golden childs to help them, Katrina even haranguing them all in Russian, using the exact same phrases the golden man had said to her. But the childs remained unmoved. They evidently had their orders and were sticking to them.
Then there had been the bunker. Amy’s reed panels had all been pulled apart and carried down into the sub, where they’d decided they could hide. The clean room had taken a godawful amount of time to disassemble, as did the kitchens and all their food. But then finally the bunker had stood bare, the holes in the roof once again uncovered, and rain had poured in.
Then they’d had the final argument.
They all realized that if they just pulled the trap door shut behind them, it would stick out like a sore thumb to anyone who came looking. One of them needed to remain behind and cover their tracks so that the trap door wouldn’t be discovered. And after an argument, a few rounds of rochambeau, and another yelling match that had gotten painfully personal, Triquet had been selected as the lucky one to be left behind.
At 4:45 am they had closed the trap door on every other person they knew on this island and scattered a sheaf of rotting fern leaves atop it. Perhaps the coconut crabs would even move back in.
Then, as a final task, Triquet had gone out to the trenches and done their best to fill them in. The trenches themselves would be hard to find, but the smell definitely needed to be controlled, or all their concealment would go to waste.
And how much work it had been. A whirlwind of activity. Their hands are cut and bloody, with bone bruises in their wrists and knees from wrestling heavy objects, all fueled by adrenaline and rising terror….
Then it had been up to Triquet to find their own way back into the tunnels from the hidden openings in the base of the cliff. But it had been such a long struggle. And it was so wet and dark that they soon got lost in the maze of narrow trails beneath the underbrush.
At a certain point they’d given up, closing their eyes to conserve energy. Now they’re waking up, who knows how much time later. It might be well after dawn. There might be soldiers patrolling the trail beside their head. If they take out their phone to check on the time, one of them might see the glowing screen and open fire.
Triquet strains to listen. There is nothing but the unbroken white noise of the waterfall. No other sound can break through. Shoot, so much for stealth. Triquet could sing an entire Depeche Mode album at the top of their lungs and nobody would hear them.
And then they strain to see. Afraid to move, they slowly roll their head to the side and peer along the length of the forest floor. It is all black, but after a while they can see a variegated pattern of gray and deep purple. Either moonlight or dawnlight. But with this rain it can’t be the moon. It must be morning. And the Russians must already be here.
Where did the golden childs go? Do any still watch over Triquet? Or is that whole psychotic shaman game called off until the even more psychotic Russians leave? Maybe one or more of the childs hide nearby, silently watching over Triquet. Wouldn’t that be nice?
But now what do they do? Can they move? Do they have to stay here? For how long? There’s no end date on this Russian visit. Nobody said if they’re staying for an hour or a month. How will Triquet know when it’s over if all they’re doing is squeezing their eyes shut, face down in the mud?
Triquet realizes their fate isn’t to escape into the tunnels and find their way back up into the sub with the others. It is to be their scout while they safely hide. Well, crap on a stick. This is turning out to be a much worse bargain than expected. Amy and Miriam had both volunteered to be the one left behind, but Triquet’s youth and experience with these tunnels out near the waterfall had won the argument. At the time, they had felt so gallant.
Now they just feel wretched. What exactly do they think they can accomplish here? They’re no soldier. They’re hardly an athlete. All their physical reserves were blown breaking down the camp. They need a good forty-eight hours of nothing but hot cocoa and a full season of Househunters. But instead they somehow have to turn into a ninja.
That’s where it always starts with Triquet. If they ever need to transform themself for any reason, it begins with the costume. But they have no access to yards of black silk so their imagination will just have to do. They will swath their entire body in it, with one of those ninja headbands and a black kerchief covering everything but their eyes. Their hands and feet will be covered in those cute little traditional Japanese gloves and shoes with soft leather soles. And they’ll carry nothing but a short sword and a blowgun. Then they’ll run along rooftops on their way to assassinate the Shogun…
Okay. Well, the mindset is there. Now they’re ready to strike out, back toward camp, stealthy as a cat. Too bad they’re actually wearing a yellow vinyl rainsuit and blue patent leather boots. They’ll get spotted the instant they come out from under cover.
So the answer must be to stay under cover. These little fox trails that wind every which way must provide for routes around the back of the camp. They appear to be everywhere else.
“No time to be frightened. Just do it.” Triquet mouths the words out loud, then slips off to their left, down a dark tunnel of bare branches under brown leaves.
Ξ
“Where does this go?” Pradeep’s light fades to black past twenty meters or so, and yet the low and narrow hand-carved tunnel continues straight on, its walls sandstone, its floor pale sand.
“No way…” Jay is astounded by what he sees, even though it’s just a forced perspective of rough walls disappearing into the dark. He’s still firmly in his peak so lights shimmer along the length, first outward in a wavy rainbow pattern, then back to him, crawling up his feet and legs, suffusing him with warmth and certainty. It’s like being in a birth canal, and he’s reliving his own delivery. He shivers. “No fucking way.”
Pradeep peers ahead as far as he can. “I mean, I figure it has to go under the cliffs to the island’s interior. Obviously. Yet another of the many ways the Lisicans access the beach here. But so much work! And it can’t be too stable…” Pradeep stops, convinced. “Yes. This is enough. We can go back, as you said, and tell the others. This is the evidence we needed.” Pradeep listens to the patter of water draining through the tunnel. Right, the storm is soaking the ground above. This thing could collapse at any moment. And yet… despite his rising anxiety, something alluring beckons to him in the heart of that darkness. There is some great intellectual itch to be scratched through there. He can tell, that if he continued on, that he would be able to delve into the greater secrets of this island and maybe even life itself…
Pradeep shakes himself, breaking the reverie. “Yes, well, but that would be foolish. And say what you like of Pradeep Chakrabarti, no one can call him a fool.”
“Okay.” Jay has no idea what Pradeep is talking about. He just realized that he suddenly needs to piss like a race horse. How’s he going to accomplish that down here?
Pradeep turns away from the darkness and pushes past Jay. “Come on. Let’s get back to Maahjabeen and the others. We can explore this more later.”
“Yeah. Good call.” Jay can hustle back to the surface and empty himself out and maybe crash in his hammock for a bit. He turns, swaying, and then stampedes forward with urgency, his bladder his only thought. Once he gets past Pradeep he pushes on into the darkness back to the sub. The light swings up once behind him, offering a glimpse of the tunnel ahead, and then it swings to the floor so Pradeep can light his own footsteps.
Jay charges forward, breaths short, doing all he can to keep from wetting himself. The way back to the sub is just a few steps ahead now. And then it’s just a bunch of rooms and stairs til he can finally get outside and water a bush. Ugh! Don’t think about it! Just move!
“Jay! Slow down!” Pradeep is more uncertain in the tunnel. He hadn’t realized how wet it was in here on the way in. The clay of the tunnel floor sucks at his feet. “You don’t have a light! Stupid hophead. You can’t just blunder off into the dark.”
Pradeep trudges behind, cursing Jay. Then he realizes he’s gone more than a hundred paces on his way back to the sub. There is no chance that they walked more than a hundred paces into this tunnel at the outset. Far less. And now they’ve done far more. “Wait. Jay?”
“I come from the land down under…” Jay’s song lyrics are nearly grunted aloud from far ahead.
“Jay, we have to stop.”
“Can’t really do that right now, homie.” And with that apology, Jay redoubles his efforts and hurries ahead, about to burst.
Pradeep yelps, hearing Jay disappear into the distance. “Jay, stop! Please! You can’t…” Pradeep stops moving. They went the wrong way. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There must have been a branch in the tunnel they didn’t see on the way in. And Jay went down it, continues to go down it, away from the sub. And the last thing Pradeep wants to do is go further in after him. But he also can’t go back alone. For one, he doesn’t know which way they turned wrong. He could easily get even more lost, and then it’d just be him alone wandering under the surface of the island along a separate path until he dies of starvation. Pradeep shivers. No, he can’t go back alone. “Jay, wait!” He hurries down the tunnel.
After a long timeless ordeal, during which the tunnel grows more ragged and small, dropping and rising in the clay and gravel and forcing Pradeep to twist himself through the constricted passage, he finally comes upon Jay leaning against a wall, pissing into a small pool. “Oh. Yuck. Do you have to, Jay? We might step in it and—”
“As a matter of fact,” Jay answers loudly, “I do. Very much. Have to. Sorry.” And the stream continues, a shocking amount. Jay sags with relief against the wall. Finally he finishes, putting himself away and groaning in relief. “Yeah, we’re lost. But at least with this smell we’ll be able to tell if we ever come back this way. Come on, Prad.” And Jay steps past the puddle to continue on.
“Wait. Why are you still going that way? We should go back.”
“I am going back.”
“Oh, no no no. Don’t do that to me, Jay. We came from this way. I just came from this direction. I am sure of it. You were leaning against that wall. Making a puddle right there.”
“Really? I would have sworn it’s the other side. I just stepped away from the wall. Look. The puddle’s already gone in the sand.”
“It’s this way, Jay. Please. Don’t make us even more lost. This is a big island.”
“Don’t I know it. But are you sure…?” Jay studies their footprints in the clay. There are tracks in both directions. Many of them. “Aw, hell. Look, Prad. They’re everywhere. We’re boned.”
“What? How? I thought I had the only other footprints here. Maybe these are the tracks of your golden man.” Pradeep tries to make out whether the tracks have the imprint of modern soles or if they are from bare feet or whatever the hell the man must be wearing. “But I am still telling you, our way back is this way. Do not make me go any further in.”
Jay knows Pradeep is wrong but he also knows he won’t win the fight. Ah, well. People don’t just build tunnels to nowhere. They must all eventually head somewhere. So it doesn’t really matter. He’ll just have to see where this one pops out. Dutifully, he falls in behind and lets Pradeep lead.
They walk in silence for a long time. Pradeep consults the time. It’s 10:51pm. They’ve been out for over an hour. The others back in the bunker must be getting worried. I am so sorry, babi! Pradeep silently mouths, sending his love to Maahjabeen.
For Jay, an outcrop of rock under his hand sends him spinning into the deepest revelations he’s ever had. That rock has formed down here, unseen by any eyes, for millions of years. Then busy little men had formed this channel in the mud, revealing it. And now there are tunnels shot through the mud and rock everywhere. They’re like the wrinkled passageways of a brain. God’s brain. He is walking through the mind of a deity. And what makes God so all-powerful is how ancient God is. Formed of the earth’s living crust, the thoughts that arise and coalesce in the divine mind are these rocks, which form over eons, millions upon millions of years. This is what God’s speech looks like, these mineral accretions. And that’s why humans will never understand the language of divinity. Because God speaks so slow. Little humans live and die in a flash, just as God is forming the beginning of a syllable that leads to a word that someday will be a sentence, a profound statement about the nature of the universe. But humans will never hear it. “Dude. We can only ever hear the briefest little snippet.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep can make no sense of the non sequitur. “Don’t worry, Jay. I think we’re nearly back now. The tunnel is straightening out.”
But Jay is satisfied to be here now, crawling around in the mind of the immortal. It doesn’t matter if he’s above ground or below any more. All of it is within God’s loving embrace. “Hey. Man. I just wanted to tell you… I think it’s cool your girlfriend is so religious. It’s like, I never really thought about it much before, but I get it. Now I get it.”
“She will not want to hear that you equate your drug trip to her faith. But I’m, uh, I guess I’m glad you like her.”
“Oh, sure. She’s awesome. I just wish she liked me.”
Pradeep searches for a way to refute that statement but can’t think of one. Jay is right. Poor bastard. He sure seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Even Pradeep can’t wait to separate from him and get back to Maahjabeen. She is still recovering from her poisoning. She needs him by her side.
And that is when he realizes he’s been walking down this straight passage for too long. Again. He stops. This isn’t the way back to the sub? He is somehow getting further from it. And now they have been gone for almost ninety minutes. And his phone battery is only half-full. Pradeep turns and turns again. Now what?
“Hey, man.” Jay stumbles to a stop and gives him a sleepy grin. “You as thirsty as me?”
“Improbable. You just lost half your bodyweight in urine.”
“I did?” Then Jay remembers. “Oh yeah. Highlight of my night.” Jay pushes past Pradeep, who is entirely at a loss. “Then let’s get going, homie. I need a drink.”
“But Jay, I don’t…” And that’s when they see the golden man, bent nearly double, coming toward them from the darkness ahead. The gleaming pollen of his mask refracts in the phone’s harsh light.
“Well, shit. There he is. See? We told you…” Jay shakes his head, confounded. “Now what? You speak any Russian?”
“No.” Pradeep speaks in a hush, spooked by the appearance of the figure. It appears that he really will have to trust Jay’s wild statements more than he has. That doesn’t make him happy. It opens up an entire psychedelic kaleidoscope of realities that he would prefer to keep unreal. “Hello. Uh. Sir. Nice to meet you.”
The golden man’s muffled voice, deep and guttural, fills the tunnel. Yep. Russian. Crazy. All of this is intolerably crazy.
“Can’t understand, dude.” Jay jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Katrina’s back at the sub. That way? Yeah, how do we get out of here, anyway?”
“That’s it,” Pradeep encourages Jay. “Have him lead us out of here. He must know…”
But the golden man only speaks more Russian, heavily, as if reciting a long unhappy speech. He points at Jay with the tip of his thumb and makes another statement. Then, when the two young men before him seem to lack understanding, the golden man switches to Lisican. Jay hears the words Wetchie-ghuy and lidass but registers nothing more. “Whoa. Hold on, hold on there, big fella. We don’t… We can’t—Hey! That’s my phone!” The golden man holds out Jay’s phone to him and he snatches it. “Aw, damn! She cracked the screen! Look at that, Prad! Fucking Kula. And now that it’s broken, of course that’s when she hands it back. No, wait. I think it might actually…” Jay is startled to find it remains on, the smallest amount of power still in its battery.
Someone had been in the process of composing a text. “It’s in English so it must be Kula. Or Jidadaa. But word on the street is she’s hiding from the golden childs so… Yeah. This sounds like Kula for sure. It says, ‘Jay leedass, you byand bye gota stop Wetchie-ghuy. End the argument. Leedass. Kill. Jay kill Wetchie-ghuy.’ Oh, fuck all the way off. What the hell?”
The golden man is speaking again, once he hears the words he himself had been saying. Now he urges Jay, the words lidass and Wetchie-ghuy coming fast and furious.
“No. Absolutely not. I ain’t killing nobody. That ain’t my job here. I’m just a… I mean, have your Russian soldiers do it, if you’re so buddy buddy with them.”
The golden man falls silent.
Pradeep asks one of his incisive questions, his tone demanding attention. “So when will the Russians leave? When…? Ah. When will…?” Pradeep acts out the Russian soldiers landing on the beach, looking around, then leaving. He has no idea if any of that was clear at all. “When?”
But the golden man pushes Pradeep firmly away with the flat of his hand against his sternum. Pradeep stumbles back and the golden man makes another speech, mentioning Wetchie-ghuy twice. Then, jabbing at Pradeep with the tip of his thumb, he snarls, “Lisica. Na Daadaxáats giuxhe dan. Lisica.” And he turns and points at his own tailbone. “Lisica.”
“Oh, damn.” Jay shakes his head in wonder. “Dod-ah-shats was Jidadaa’s name for Sherman the shaman. And looks like he knows about your fox tramp stamp. But what does any of that have to do with Wetchie-ghuy and why is he so aggro about you—?”
A sudden sob escapes Pradeep. That dreadful vision swims up in front of his eyes, here in the dark, of the shaman looming over him in the space between life and death, making a deal for his soul. “Because I belong to him. The shaman attacked me and filled me with his cold mud. Wetchie-ghuy saved me, but only for a price.”
To Jay, nearing the end of his acid trip, reality is a tattered cloth and now he’s falling through the holes. Did Pradeep actually say what Jay thought he said? Jay turns to the masked figure to ask, and finds him on his knees scrubbing his hand against the wet sand where he pushed Pradeep. Unclean. “What the F? What’s going on here, grandpa?”
The golden man stands and grasps Jay by the wrist, pulling him forward, evidently to do battle against Wetchie-ghuy. His speech is urgent, decisive. But Jay digs in his heels.
“Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on.” Jay pulls his wrist away and turns back to Pradeep, who is hunched around the impact on his chest, head down. “We aren’t leaving Pradeep. We aren’t leaving you, Prad. Not ever.”
“We should go back to the sub.” Pradeep’s voice is reedy, distant, as if something brittle deep inside him has snapped. “I don’t want to be down here any more.”
“Yeah. For sure. Me either. But we still don’t know which way that is. Golden dude here wants us—or, me—to go further down this tunnel with him. So that’s probably not where our crew is. But that way, back the way we just came, is where we just were! And we know there’s no sub back there.”
Pradeep only stares at Jay, shorn of all bravery. He is empty and frail. A febrile panic attack announces its arrival and he almost rushes to it, the one familiar thing amongst all this madness. Like a freight train it roars through this tunnel, picking up Pradeep and carrying him away on the fast track to hysteric madness. Tears leak out from his squeezed-shut eyes and his limbs quiver, dropping him to the tunnel floor. His hands go to his throat. He can’t breathe.
Jay hauls on Pradeep. “Fuck. That.” He holds him tight, as close as lovers, Pradeep’s legs not bearing any of his weight. “And fuck you, golden dude. I ain’t going with you. I’m staying here and taking care of my buddy. And fuck Wetchie-ghuy for doing this. You can go kill him yourself. Go!”
Jay’s meaning is plain. The golden man retreats in defeat, still muttering. He withdraws down the tunnel until the darkness swallows him. Soon they are alone in the dark and all they can hear is Pradeep’s gasping breath.
“Jay. Jay! We’re going to die down here.”
The incision in Jay’s side starts to complain and he grimaces. “No way, Prad. You’re just spooked. And this is the dark part of the trip. When all the demons come out to play. That’s all.”
And as if Jay invoked them, the darkness surrounding him fills with infernal pairs of slanted teardrop eyes, blazing red.
Ξ
“Here. I’ll go first and then you will see that it is safe.” Her friend Maahjabeen disappears into the dark ahead as Flavia hangs back, unwilling to enter the sea cave. “See?”
“No. I don’t see. It is cold. And wet. And I need to sleep, not explore all these fucking caves.”
“There is no exploration. It is already explored. Yala, Flavia. Get out of that little tunnel. It is nice in this cave.”
Finally Flavia emerges, blinking distrustfully at the gloomy reaches of the cavern. “More darkness. Fantastico.”
“No, off to the left. That is where it opens to the sea. Just take two more steps. Look.”
“Yes, that is gray light. Hooray. You have convinced me. What a wonderful cave.” Flavia’s flat voice echoes against the far walls. Then a wave rushes in and fills the cave with its hiss. She listens as it departs, registering the deep churn of the low curtain fall behind her to her right, where the water comes in from above.
“That is your river there. When you take a shower in the cold waterfall every morning, that water washes down to here.”
“I see. Then maybe I will be able to find that hair tie I lost.” But despite her black mood, she can’t help but be impressed. Flavia takes another couple steps inside. She uncrosses her arms. The air is cool but pleasant. What a strange place. It feels like a theme park ride, with the collapsing pier and sunken boat and everything. “You and Pradeep, you rowed your boats into here? Madness.”
“Oh, yes. More than once.” Then Maahjabeen giggles, her tough exterior cracking. “I’m sorry. This cave has become very dear to us. It is one of our favorite places. I just wish I could get the boats through the mud tunnel. Then it would be so easy to launch from here. But it is always… kind of a death-defying process to get out of the lagoon and along the coast here. Don’t tell Alonso. Or he won’t let us do it any more.” Not that the storm will allow it these days. She is surprised that the sea level remains so low. If there had been a significant surge, it must have already passed.
Flavia realizes how tense she is. Now that they’ve reached the end and found no threats, she can finally relax. And, oh, how sore her muscles are! She sags against Maahjabeen. “Oh my god I need to pass out. Breaking down the camp. That was more physical work than I have done in… well, more than I have ever done. Ever ever. In my entire life. I mean, seriously! I must have gone up and down those steps a hundred times!”
“I worry about Triquet.” Sudden tears fill Maahjabeen’s eyes and she hugs Flavia tight. “And Pradeep. Of course.”
“And Jay?”
“Sure.”
They stand in silence, hearing another sweep of white noise that echoes from the sea cave’s entrance to them. It adds layers to the other water sounds in this cavern: the curtain fall; the slap of waves against the rock shelf; the boom of the distant surf. “It is the rainfall on the ocean,” Maahjabeen finally realizes, the water sounds acting like a siren’s song upon her. “Come. Let me show you.”
They pick their way closer to the sea cave entrance, following a narrow path along the left wall that eventually widens into a manmade cavern. Flavia steps on the worn concrete pilings, unwilling to go much farther. It sounds like an angry ocean out there, one that could tear them to pieces. But Maahjabeen strides confidently forward toward the diffuse gray light.
“It would have to be a sudden epic storm swell to sweep us off these rocks. We will be fine. But listen.”
Flavia studies Maahjabeen’s rapturous face. She is dubious. What about this situation could possibly inspire such a reaction? “Is this a religious thing? It must be. Because I do not understand—”
“Listen.” Maahjabeen grabs Flavia’s forearm and they go silent.
The sheeting of rain on the water rises and falls over the regular slap of the tide. Flavia lifts her eyes to the gray light, happy to have something to look at, and patiently waits for Maahjabeen’s special moment to end. “Did you hear, Flavia? That is the voice of God.”
“I heard sh-shhhh-shhhhhh and that is all. It is just water.”
“No, listen with your heart for once. Not your head. Listen to the world with your soul.”
Flavia makes a face and stands in cold silence for another ten seconds. “Ah. There it is. God is telling me to stop being such a stupid fool and to go back to the sub.”
“Flavia…” Maahjabeen grasps her by both hands. “You cannot be deaf to it anymore. It is happening all around us. The golden childs and their prophecies. The signs everywhere. The attack on me and Pradeep. These are happening. And they aren’t… they can’t be fully understood by science and the rational mind.”
“Well I am glad we agree you are not being rational.”
“Of course I am not! Because the world isn’t entirely rational! It is mysterious and strange and divine! Just because experiments are the only thing we can reproduce does not mean they encompass every facet of life. Don’t you see? Sure, science is a wonderful tool. The best. But we need other tools as well to really understand the nature of the universe. Be honest with yourself.”
“Honest? You want to talk about honest? Okay. How about you tell me why it is that in brainscans of religious people, they are found to have a circuit in the brainstem that fires more than a normal person’s does? That is all your religion is. You have built yourselves a self-reinforcing feedback loop in your heads that sees omens and all kinds of weird subtexts and your god circuits fire off these learned sensations to make you feel holy. It is very simple. You are not hearing the voice of god. It is just a cognitive module you were given by others, most likely your parents.”
Maahjabeen has never heard this. But it does make sense. At least the first part. “Okay, I can accept that our brains are wired different, but has it occurred to you that this may not be a closed circuit but instead like a—an… antenna? Actually connecting us to the divine? And when we pray, we are strengthening the antenna as we broadcast and receive.”
Flavia looks at her strangely. “Okay, that’s halfway sensible. If you please put that hypothesis in the language of Information Theory, especially with a quantum field emphasis, you might get me to listen. But guess what. Your hypothesis is inherently untestable. That is the problem with what you are saying. Yes, experiments always need to be reproduced, or what? Or it is all nonsense. It is whatever you want to say the world is and there is no foundation, no underlying truth. Just feelings. And what is the point of talking about feelings? They are ultimately subjective. They cannot be shared. I mean, we use language and all kinds of art forms to try, but no. You cannot truly share an experience like two computers share files. So what you are talking about is the ultimate subjective experience. The one that is between you and whatever private biological interface you are having with the world around you. It is not the infinite. It is the opposite. The isolated number. The more you talk of god the further you get from the world around you and the more you sink into yourself. And please, Maahjabeen. Do not tell me about the wonders of religion. There is a reason it has fallen out of favor in more and more of the world. It is because the wrong people do the wrong things with it. The reason we need science at all is because there are so many people with bad intentions who try to tell us the world is ruled by their god. Science says no. It is like the laws in a government. We need to understand and all agree that the world works in a certain way or guess what? We get insane religious wars again about who goes to heaven and who does not. No. I do not hear any voices or music in the wind. I hear water on water. I only see light. Ai ai ai. Do not make me question your intelligence. You are too nice for that.” And with a somewhat disgusted shake of her head, Flavia breaks away from Maahjabeen and retreats out of the cave back into the dark tunnels leading to the sub.
DW Draffin -- Lisica 