Chapter 48 – God, We Suck
November 22, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final 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!
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48 – God, We Suck
Triquet is monumentally annoyed. And the infuriating part about it is that they aren’t quite certain what it is annoying them. All they know is that things that normally don’t provoke any reaction in them are now enraging. The fiddly bits of the espresso maker. The disorganization of last week’s laptop files. These brown stains on their flower-fringed ankle socks that never seem to get truly clean. That’s what it is. Things have gotten so dingy here. The lovers are all quarreling. The villagers are stubbornly distant. Everything is covered in a layer of dirt. It’s enough to drive anyone batty.
With an immense effort, Triquet tries to shake off this ennui with a return to their tent. But none of their clothes hang on display any more. There’s no room in here. They sorely miss the bunker and its storage. And the sub. It’s basically lost as well. Getting to the sub now is a thirty minute crawl through mud. And Triquet can’t do it alone. So their investigations have slowed to a halt.
No. No more of this gloom and doom. It’s actually a pleasant morning after the gentle showers. The bees are buzzing. The sun even makes brief appearances and the dewy meadow glitters with refracted light. Come on, Triq. This is still paradise. Of course it’s dangerous. Everywhere is dangerous. Now put on some chiffon and find your courage, soldier. Even if the whole Lisica expedition ends tomorrow, it has still been one of the highlights of your life.
There. Triquet always looks better in green. Now, how to finish this look? Hmm. They left their really big pieces of costume jewelry at home. Otherwise it’d be that chunky fake jade necklace and bracelet set that’s half Cloris Leachman, half Flintstones. Here they’ll just make do with the wooden prayer beads and a fake garnet ring. They pull on a pair of booty shorts underneath for modesty, locate the pink slip-ons, and step back out into the fresh air feeling somewhat restored.
Makeup? No, not with the amount of sweating they’ll most likely do. Today is hopefully the last day of really putting this camp together. But it’s going to take all day. Triquet can see Flavia has already wired things to the solar panels. When Katrina gets back they can fly the parachute overhead again and get a little more protection from the rain. Then her lights can get strung and the little village will feel complete. But before then, Triquet has ideas.
First, a riverstone path to the trenches. Those have been dug a hundred meters upslope and away from the creek, over a rise and hidden in a cleft. It’s a better spot than they had on the beach but this isn’t sand beneath their feet. They’ll all quickly churn an ugly line of mud into the ground unless Triquet is able to prevent it.
Crossing the meadow to the creekside, Triquet is disappointed to find that the bank has no easily-removed rocks. They’d imagined this would be like most of the creeks they’re familiar with, mostly like the slate and flint banks of the Delaware Gap. But here it’s all loam and moss and ferns overhanging the banks and the water is running fast and black. No loose stones anywhere.
Following the creek upstream, Triquet unwittingly follows Amy’s footsteps up the canyon toward the tributary where she would have done their laundry. But they stop at the base of the cliff she ascended. Here is a pile of rounded rocks deposited during some long ago flood. Now it’s just a matter of transporting them. Triquet waves at the golden childs dogging them. “Care to lend a hand?”
But of course the youth makes no move to help.
Triquet unfolds a small tarp and loads as many of the big rocks onto it as they can safely manage. Then they drag it back to camp. Hm. These slip-ons are not the right shoes for the job after all. And maybe a flowing gown of tissue-thin fabric isn’t the best either. But it did unlock something about their mood. Now Triquet can see that it’s the unyielding pressure coming from the natives that’s making so many of them crack. It’s Jidadaa with her cryptic demands in the middle of the night, the shamans stalking them, the golden childs hovering. They are in an inexorable hydraulic press and its plates just keep squeezing closer and closer together.
Returning from their third trip with the stones, Triquet passes Mandy emerging from her tent, who looks completely out of sorts. “Good morning, sunshine.”
But Mandy doesn’t respond, peering at the sky instead. She steps further out from camp and crosses to the meadow.
Intrigued, Triquet drops their load on the pile and follows her.
Mandy holds a barometer. “Crap. Look at that.” She absently hands it to Triquet and scans the gray-mantled sky. This marine layer can often hide what’s happening above.
Triquet reads the barometer. “920 millibars. Very low. That’s what it says. Is very low bad?”
“920 now? OMG. Uh, that’s a lot more than very low. That’s like… one of the lowest recordings I’ve ever heard anywhere in the world. The world record is in the 890’s and that was a tropical cyclone in the West Pacific. My god. What’s coming our way?”
“You’re saying that means another storm’s coming? This is what they mean by a drop in barometric pressure? But like when? And how much? Can you retrieve your weather station first?”
“God! I haven’t been able to fetch it! I was going to, but then we found Jay and Pradeep instead. I mean, I’m super glad we found them, but… I need data!”
“Well, what’s your guess?”
Mandy accesses her newfound powers of observation. She smells the air deeply, noticing that it’s wet and perhaps a bit fruity, like it swept across continents of thawing tundra. Well, that will be its engine no doubt. Cold differentials. And the trees on the far ridge are riffling in a stiff breeze that has the character of a compressing wave, as if the air itself is being pushed hard from behind by an accelerating force. They don’t have long. An hour at the most. But this half-assed camp won’t be able to survive a real onslaught, not if it hits as hard as it promises. “So sorry. But my guess is that we will all have to go back into the sub for a few days.”
Triquet’s pile of rocks is still pathetically small. “No! I just got all this work done! And—and… Ah, hell.” They drop their head in defeat, a black mood descending again just like that.
“Ah! That’s why I’ve been so grumpy!” Mandy realizes in relief. “We’ve all been on edge! It’s because there’s a huge storm coming! This like looming threat feeling has totally been weighing on me. Oh, what a relief. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Triquet studies Mandy, uncertain about her conclusion. It’s eerie how much her analysis matches Triquet’s own, but it’s led them each in opposite directions. An oncoming storm somehow gives Mandy peace? Ye gods. No it doesn’t. Isn’t this just another compounding amount of pressure, to crush them all into bits?
Mandy waves at Miriam, still at work in her trench. “Hey, lady! Storm coming! The biggest!”
Miriam sighs in defeat. “Oh my days. Seriously? Turns out this place is as bad as Ireland. Great… When?”
Mandy squints at the sky. “Don’t know. Soon. We need a real roof over our heads for this one.”
Miriam uses the spade to clamber out of her trench, covered in dirt. “God forbid we ever get any actual work done.”
Ξ
Katrina unweaves the plaited cord that secures her to the trunk. Iwikanu smiles, encouraging her, tapping at her wrist with gentle fingertips. It is a long cord, stiff and thick as her finger. But she has depended this whole time upon its strength. Now it is time to go.
Finally it falls free and she is untethered, crouching on the fragile skein of this platform they’ve built high in the redwood canopy. Iwikanu smiles at the gap in the floor, the ground nearly a hundred meters below. She is expected to climb down through it and begin her long descent down the trunks and branches that form a woven series of living ladders all the way to the ground.
This fairy ring of redwoods is perched on the western slope of the interior bowl of the island. The land rises nearly vertically beside the trunks, with madrone trees pressing beneath, granting the irregular rungs for the ladders she climbs down.
Finally Katrina finds her way to the lowest trunk. This last ladder hangs down the trunk’s length in a long line of looped cords like the one that kept her safe above. But these are for her hands and feet, tied off at regular intervals. She supposes this ladder can be raised to prevent any attacks. She thinks once more of Singlung He and his aphorisms about attack and defense. “I don’t know. I’d be more worried about people shooting us from the hillside.”
The matted platform Katrina had spent the last day and night on was a marvel of construction, something she’d never conceived. It rocks quite strongly in the wind. Tall trees sway far more than she ever knew. When a gust pushes through this circle of columns, it hits one first and then the others at greater and greater delays, making the platform rock and oscillate with increasing force.
Those who live up here ride the rhythm with sea legs, never losing their footing, never tethered to the limbs. But Katrina could barely stay on her feet up there. She spent most of her time on her hands and knees, laughing and gasping in terror, trying to stay on the good side of her hosts as they finally gave up on her balance and tied her off with an umbilical cord to mother tree.
They did make it easy. The Shidl Dít were kind and patient with her, understanding her lack of experience being a bloody bird. It wasn’t that she was unwilling either. Or that she had a particular fear of heights. It was just… absolutely debilitating. Survival instincts kept shorting out her abilities. And gravity felt different up there, like it was on some sort of counterbalance or pendulum and if she didn’t watch herself her feet would kick out and she’d pivot from the waist and tip over some edge to her terrifying death.
Okay. Maybe she did have a fear of heights. But Katrina was fairly certain it was less the heights and more a fear of death. Or, as in the old joke, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.
Only as she nears the ground does she notice that Iwikanu has descended with her, waiting patiently in the loops above for Katrina to drop to the earth. She does so and soon the two of them are standing face to face, sharing one last smile. Iwikanu unslings a boarskin bag and presents it to Katrina. “Ohh, that’s so sweet. God, I don’t even know if I have anything for you. Um. Here.” She pulls off a hair tie and makes a short ponytail of his hair. She wraps it tight and steps back. “You look proper handsome now.”
They say farewell in Russian and Katrina tells him that she will never forget him and that he must visit her in Australia some day. But this is more of the language than he knows so his smile just freezes and his eyes dart. She breaks off, the strong impulse to give him a hug bringing her up short. It’s probably a bad idea. She does it anyway. He laughs.
Then Iwikanu puts his golden mask back in place and steps away from her. She understands now, that this is a ritual distance that she cannot break, even if she needed him. Iwikanu is no longer her sweet new friend with a little sister and two gentle parents who gave up their own bed to her last night. Now he is what they call kadánda dayadi, child of pollen, child of the spring. And to them, he is no longer human. He is transformed.
She would have understood none of this if his chief the Dandawu hadn’t spoken a fair amount of pidgin Russian. But through broken phrases and mime and a lot of patience on both ends, they talked long into the night and again in the morning. He is an old man with extensive knowledge of the island, but little of the outside world. She did what she could to avoid too many unfamiliar ideas, and he showed no appetite for exploring them.
Katrina wonders what her insatiable curiosity must have seemed like to him. Is it just the unfathomable luxury of a modern life, to pursue knowledge for its own sake, even on topics that will never be useful? Is it just her overactive first-world brain that would be happier harvesting nuts and making boarskin leggings? She recalls telling one of her university professors about a hike she had taken and how she felt like a Stone Age nomad but he had corrected her. She was, in fact, nothing like a paleolithic human. Their conscious minds were fixed in the present, watching the branches of each tree for a bird that might make a meal, scanning shadows for predators waiting to make a meal of them. They did not have any fancy ideas about social media or petrol prices running through their heads. They couldn’t afford to. She is not any kind of ancient ancestor. Katrina is instead very much a product of her generation.
The day is gray and gusty. She knows the plan must be to retrace her steps back to pine camp and she only hopes she can remember how to do it. For being a hidden village, getting here was pretty straightforward. Two ridgelines and then a drop to the trees. So after she climbs that drop and follows the two ridgelines back, she should be where Iwikanu slaughtered that boar who attacked them.
Mentally, she divides the hike into four sections. Actually it forms a cohesive narrative, like they are each chapters in a novella, a charming story called Katrina’s Hike. The first chapter must be the introduction to her return, reacquainting herself with the ground and climbing the steep slope up to the top of the ridge, from which she can briefly spy the ocean on the western horizon, between gaps in the farther ridge’s peaks.
The second chapter is that first ridge, which leads her up and down its broken spine and over knobs of reddish stone. Miriam would like it here with all its exposed geology. But Katrina would prefer to get back under the trees. This is too much sun and wind for her all day.
The third chapter is the second ridge, a transverse line across the south of the island that brings her back to the east and the valley at the bottom of the sloping Douglas Firs. But the weather is starting to sour here. The wind really sweeps through the trees now and each gust brings the crack of falling branches. Getting close now. This is the far end of the valley in which that boar lived. All she has to do is cross it again and she’ll be home in no time.
But… as if there’s a pressure-sensitive plate beneath this meadow, as soon as Katrina steps onto it, the skies open up and a deluge of rain drops on her head from out of nowhere. The meadow darkens and the temperature drops. She is instantly drenched.
Cursing at the icy water finding its way beneath her three light layers, her teeth start chattering. “Got to… keep moving…” If she can just get back to camp she’ll be able to dry out.
Katrina ascends the final slope as runnels of water race past her, tearing the soil out from under her soles. It is a grim half hour of struggling against the elements. The wind and rain lash at her, chilling her to the bone. The golden childs who is otherwise Iwikanu still paces behind, patiently watching but never helping.
When Katrina finally does get back to pine camp, water sheets across the ground, carrying away the pine needles, the tents are all soaked through, and no one is there.
Ξ
Alonso and Miriam limp into the village, holding a hopping and grimacing Triquet between them. They are all soaked to the skin and miserable. Just before entering the village Triquet had slipped in the mud and twisted their left ankle. Despite assuring their older colleagues that they can walk it off, they had fussed over Triquet and hauled them up by the arms, nearly carrying them the last few paces with care. Easing their patient down to the deck of Morska Vidra’s covered porch, the three refugees look around.
The village looks deserted in the purplish downpour. No smoke, no light in any door. Puddles are already forming pools in the village square. The only sound is the creak of the trees in the wind.
Alonso grabs a handful of Triquet’s clothing and wrings it out with strong hands. He shares a sidelong pleased look with Miriam. “Did you see?”
She is shivering, slicking back her hair to get the water to stop dripping into her eyes. “See what?” She scans the village again.
“No no…” Alonso stands again. “Mira.” Then he crouches. “I helped Triquet. I carried them. For the first time. I helped. I was the carrier instead of the carried.” His proud smile is so wide.
She nods, dumbly, knowing how significant this is but unable to find enthusiasm within her. She squeezes his hand instead and looks into his eyes, her breath ragged.
“Oh, Mirrie, you’re freezing.” Alonso reaches over Triquet’s legs and envelops her in a bearhug.
Triquet thinks of saying something, but then doesn’t. Instead, they fall back in regard to study the two dark figures in embrace. What must it be like to love so well, so long? It is outside Triquet’s experience. Their parents certainly never did. Growing up, they had a few friends with cool moms and dads but certainly nothing like this. There is a silence in the contact point between them, as if Miriam and Alonso have sealed themselves together. Dyadic withdrawal. Triquet remembers the term from a sociology course. They have just retreated into a world they alone populate where they are something larger than themselves alone. And now the storming world is beaten back, with Triquet sheltering beneath.
Finally they break free and Alonso blows on her fingertips. Then he places a strong hand across Triquet’s chest. “How is the pain?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. But I saw you, Alonso! I sure did! Big man on campus, carrying me away. How are you?”
“There is pain, certainly, yes.” Alonso considers what to say next about it. But nothing more is required. He holds out his hands and shrugs. “I am only glad I can help such a sweetheart.”
“Can we like… knock on his door?” Miriam stands, staring doubtfully at the hut. “What do you think, Zo?”
“I think they are not here. I mean, where even is the door?”
Miriam and Alonso step toward the black gap between the redwood bark boards that used to be covered by a door of smaller bark pieces. He leans his head in. “Hello…? Ah. Here is the door. They stowed it inside. I wonder why.”
“There’s no one in there?” Miriam steps inside, ducking low. The ceiling isn’t much more than Amy’s height. Alonso has to hunch over quite a lot.
“And nothing. There is only a door. And an old… eh, loom? Bedframe? I do not know what this is here in the corner.”
“But where did they go? I mean, the floor’s dry. Why would you leave your dry house in the middle of a huge storm? Madness.”
Another refugee arrives, stepping on the boards of the porch outside. It is Esquibel. She ducks in and looks around. “Good. This one is empty. And it has a firepit. Bring him in here.”
Alonso and Miriam go back outside to find Maahjabeen and Flavia unlashing Pradeep from the travois. Soon Esquibel helps them pull his unresisting body inside. His eyes are open and his face is slack. Mandy follows, carrying a sodden ball of sleeping bags and pillows. She disappears within as well.
“What the F?” Jay stands in the center of the the village, turning round and round. “Ghost town. Great. Where’d everybody go? And what do they know that we don’t?” The rain is cold but not frigid and he’s warmed up now. It’s just a lot. Even with his hood cinched tight, it’s hard to keep it out of his ears and eyes.
Alonso watches him from the porch. He beckons to Jay, in disbelief that the boy literally doesn’t have the sense to come in from out of the rain. “Come on. Get out of there and dry off.”
“Hold on, chief.” Jay pokes his head into each of the other huts first. They’re all empty, all the belongings gone except the doors. “So weird… Hey, Alonso. Why do they put the doors inside?”
“Maybe so they do not float away?”
“Seriously. I’m going to float away for sure.” Jay steps onto the porch, shakes like a dog, and unzips his rain parka. It kept him pretty dry except for a hefty leak at his neck. But he’s in shorts and sandals anyway. “You think we can all fit in there?”
Esquibel sticks her head out as Jay asks this. “Firewood,” she orders. “Before you get out of your wet things.”
Jay sighs. “Sure thing, Doc.” He zips his parka right back up and steps out into the downpour.
Once Esquibel withdraws from the small door, Alonso peeks in. Yes, they are all settled and now there is room for the rest of them. “Come on, Triquet. Let’s drag you in here too.”
“Oh, fine. I’m fine. I’m coming.” Triquet hauls themself to their feet and tries putting weight on the ankle. “Yes. Perfectly fine.” But then they try tilting their foot outward and pain runs up the outside of their lower leg. “Or, well, not entirely. But walking I can do. Careful walking. Or even crawling.” It does seem like the better option. They make a grand entrance, on hands and knees, but no one even looks up. The others are engaged in their own struggles. Triquet finds a spot in the far corner and eases their back against the blackened timbers.
Miriam also drops against the wall with a groan, still shivering. Triquet drapes an arm across her shoulders and she leans into it. “How about a fire? Anyone? That pipe’s a smoke hole, right?” An intact tube of bark is stuck in the roof at a shallow angle. Whenever the wind swirls a few raindrops spatter in.
Esquibel nods. “Jay is getting us some wood.”
“And here he is.” Alonso steps away from the door to give him room to enter.
Jay ducks in with an apologetic half-smile. He is empty-handed. “Nada. They took it all. Wherever they went, I guess they knew they’d need their firewood.”
“Well we need a fire too.” Esquibel is worried about Pradeep. She doesn’t know how he will deal with all these extreme changes in his environment, just on a metabolic level. She doesn’t know if he can generate enough heat. What are these bizarre narcotics the shamans keep using against them? They present in ways she’s never seen with any compound or heard about in any literature. Oh, yes. This is a new drug we discovered on an island called Lisica. It removes your soul.
Jay shrugs. “We can burn the door.”
Miriam barks a sarcastic laugh, appreciating the dark humor. But then she stops herself. “Oh, you’re serious. And how do you think our hosts will like us after we’ve done that?”
Jay shrugs again. “It’s the only dry wood around. I can build them another door when the storm dies down no problem.”
“Yes, do it.” Esquibel doesn’t have time for the niceties of outreach and community engagement right now. “We need the fire. And we need that door to last all night. So keep it modest.”
“Will do.”
Jay pulls the door away from the wall and makes a face. “Okay. Problem one. This is redwood bark, which is super flame-resistant. Good against rot too. But it’s going to be a bitch to burn. Problem two. No dry kindling. So that’s going to be fun. Not exactly sure how we’ll get this done yet… Aha! But the frame is another wood, like laurel. Now that’s some good firewood there. Okay. I got a plan.” He pulls a buck knife and collapsible saw from his pack.
They all work in silence at their various tasks. Mandy helps Maahjabeen out of her sodden jacket and squeezes out her thick hair for her. But Maahjabeen only has thoughts for Pradeep. He doesn’t shiver but there is a bluish cast to his skin that worries her. “Mandy, please cover the door with a blanket. Where is that fire?”
As if she invoked it, a flame blooms under Jay’s hand in a pile of sawdust and strips of kindling. They all turn to watch as he coaxes it to life, putting wafer-thin sheets of redwood bark atop it. These only blacken and smoke but refuse to catch fire. “Need to make it hotter…” Jay pushes more kindling into the blaze and soon it reaches a critical heat, igniting all the other fuel he carefully places on the growing pyramid.
The heat spreads into the wide room, smoke spiraling up into the canted smokehole. Firelight flickers against the dark walls. They all ease back, letting the fire give them its primeval comfort.
“I love a good plasma.” They are Flavia’s first words. She has been engaged in a long silent struggle against the deteriorating conditions of the day. But the sight of those bluish-orange twisting sheets of ionized heat soothe her. “Remember the bunker? How nice it used to be in there?”
“I loved the bunker!” Mandy clasps her hands under her chin. “It was like one big dorm room. And the sub?”
“We should go back to the sub.” Yet as Triquet says it they realize how impossible that would be right now. Descending the tree trunk down that shaft in the tunnels would be agony on their ankle. What a dope, stumbling in the mud like that.
“We are not going anywhere.” Esquibel says it firmly, cutting the foolish notion off before they can seriously consider it. “This fire is the most important thing right now. Keeping Pradeep warm.”
“Did anybody bring food?” Flavia presses a hand against her growling belly. “I didn’t realize how hungry I am until now.”
“Shh.” Alonso holds up a hand. “There is somebody outside.”
They can all hear tentative footsteps on the planks of the porch. A tension winds in the air. Jay stands, gripping his knife. Is this it? Is this his moment? Is Wetchie-ghuy about to come barrelling in here with his potions and his spells? Where will Jay even stab him? He should probably decide before the whole thing goes down so he knows how to hold his knife. In the neck, like a stab down from above? Or a slash across his belly, which means he should reverse his grip and…
A figure leans in, dark and hidden, and a breathless voice hisses the Lisican greeting, the final syllable rising in hope. “Bontiik…?”
It is Katrina.
Mandy squeals and throws herself at her, pulling Katrina into the hut and squeezing her tight. The space is suddenly charged with everyone’s heat and movement, their exclamations and questions. They all have to hug Katrina, or at least touch her or pet her hair. For a long sweet interlude, it’s nothing but chatter and laughter and most of the sounds they make aren’t even words.
Finally they settle again. Katrina scans their faces. “Still no Amy? Blimey. Out somewhere in this storm? Poor dear. I hope the shamans are keeping her dry.”
“Jidadaa told us,” Alonso informs her, “that the shamans do not have her and neither she nor the golden childs know where Amy is. We are very worried. Very worried.”
“I mean… She’s an outdoors person, right? Probably living better than we are right now.”
“Where are the golden childs anyway? Have we seen them?”
“Oh, yeh.” Katrina points back out the door. “They’re out there a few houses down. Just watching. They’re kadánda dayadi, like the children of pollen. Don’t worry about them.”
“Why?” Triquet asks. “What does that mean?”
“So… From the beginning… They brought me to their village in the trees. Crazy place. Way up high in the redwoods. And they had this long ceremony to remove their masks up there. Lots of colored powders smeared on their skins then washed off. And when it was all over the bloke next to me took off his golden mask and he was just this guy. He introduced himself as Iwikanu. We were totally best buds. He took me to his parents’ house and they fed me some nice eggs and mash and his little sister couldn’t get over my pale white weirdness. Just like prodded me all night. She was so cute. But yeh. When he put his mask back on he wasn’t Iwikanu any more. They told me he transformed into an agent of the gods. The springtime god, to be exact. They’ve only got a couple more weeks of this before summer comes and the kadánda dayadi vanish like pollen on the wind.”
“So poetic.” Miriam unlaces Katrina’s shoes and peels off her socks for her. “And how did you learn all this?”
“Their chief speaks a bit of Russian. I learned so much. But here. Look. Check this out first.” Katrina holds up her prize, the sack that Iwikanu gifted her at the base of the tree. It is large and heavy and she is tired of carrying it.
Jay goggles. “What the hell? What is that made of?” He grabs the sack. “This is like pigskin. Feels like some giant hairy NFL football. Ew. Where’d you get that?”
“There’s boars, Jay. On the island. One attacked me. That’s why he took me back to their village. I needed to help him carry—”
“I knew it!” Jay crows. “Remember when the bad village showed up and they had those cross-braces on their spears? I just knew there had to be big-game hunting! And what’s in here?”
“Go ahead and open it.”
Jay unfolds the irregular flaps of the sack to find ingots of raw flesh, gleaming and purple, inside. Dozens. “What the…? Oh, baby! We’re eating like kings tonight!”
The hut fills with their joyful clamor once again. Nobody is happier than Flavia. She grabs Katrina and kisses her face over and over. Jay hops up and down like a child at Christmas. Only Alonso sighs, doleful, and Triquet sees it. “Ah, what’s wrong, boss man? Not a pork guy?”
“I love it. But I miss my wine. It would pair so well.”
Triquet giggles. “And bring me some truffle oil while we’re at it.”
Alonso laughs, appreciating the teasing. “Yes, I’m a wretched alcoholic, it’s true. Very spoiled. Eh. Mira. This bag is made from a single pig, just stitched up the sides. Kind of gross.”
“I don’t think that meat is very hygienic,” Esquibel cautions. “How long has it been out? Over 24 hours, yes?”
“Well they didn’t carve it up until this morning if that makes you feel any better. Then they rubbed this oil all over it and packed it away. I didn’t think I was going to get to taste it. Was kind of broken up about it, to be honest. But they were just waiting to give me my share! Oh, he was such a brute. His tusks were so scary, just like these pointed broken giant teeth coming at you.”
“Ehh…” Esquibel is unconvinced. “What kind of oil?” But then Jay gently drops the first steaks directly on the burning coals and the sizzle fills the night air with heady scents. “Just make sure you sear all the edges at least.” Then Esquibel has to stop talking because there is suddenly too much saliva in her mouth.
They all watch in silence as Jay cooks. He is a timeless figure, stooped over the flames, tending to the first feast of the hunt. From time to time he pokes at the sizzling meat with his fingers, testing its consistency. Within a few minutes he’s pulling the first ones free, knocking the ash from the charred crust.
Flavia has found a small flat tray in her belongings that can serve as a plate. “Here, Jay. Right here. Come to mama.”
With a grimace he drops it onto her plate and waves his fingers to cool them. Jay grins at Flavia, wolfish. “Let me know how it is.”
Flavia kisses him. “I have never been so attracted to you as I am right now.” They all laugh at her but now there is a sharp edge of anticipation in it as they crowd round. Flavia doesn’t even offer to share. She picks at it, blowing on the steak to cool it, and tears a bit off the corner. “Oh. Che meraviglia. So good. A little chewy. Gamey. Is that the word? But who cares.”
She hands the plate to Esquibel, who wrinkles her nose, inspects it minutely, then takes a bite. “Ah. Very hot. That is good.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “To kill the bacteria so… Oh.” Then she starts chewing in earnest. “Oh. This is amazing.”
“Yeah, I bet that oil is really helping lock in the juices.” Jay giggles, dropping the next finished steak on top of the first. Mandy finds another lid as a plate and soon they’re all eating and groaning in pleasure, falling back against the walls of the hut with dirt and ash and grease smeared on their chins.
“But what did you learn from this chief of theirs?” Alonso finally asks Katrina, licking his fingers. “You say he speaks Russian. That is another thing Jidadaa told us, that Russians visit them regularly. The tree village. What did you learn about that?”
“Oh, you saw Jidadaa? How is she?”
“Same as ever. She rescued Prad from Wetchie-ghuy at least.” Jay allows some grudging admiration to color his words.
Esquibel repeats, “Katrina. Tell us of the Russians.”
“It’s not a very good relationship.” Katrina is still eating. She can’t stop and there’s still three steaks they haven’t finished. “Lots of distrust. Strictly transactional I think, although I can’t figure out what the Russians give the Thunderbirds in return. The Shidl Dít. Like I didn’t see any modern stuff anywhere up on their platform. Maybe like some winter coats from Siberia or something.”
“And what do the Russians want from the Thunderbirds?” Esquibel locates a notepad and pen. She wants to make sure she gets what Katrina tells her recorded word-for-word. This is the most valuable intelligence she can bring back.
“And why are they even called the Thunderbirds?” Jay wonders. “I mean, like there are only a few birds in the whole world that can strictly be called thunderbirds and we haven’t—”
“Jay.”
“Sup, Doc?”
“Let her answer my question first please. National security and all that.”
“Oh. For sure.”
Katrina shrugs. “Well, like I said, there’s a lot of distrust. And like layers, you know? So I didn’t get what you’d call a straight answer. But they really opened up after I sang them some Marvin Gaye. They think I’m some kind of wizard.”
“That is so wild that they don’t have music.” Jay shakes his head. “I mean, can you imagine what your daily life would—?”
“Jay! Please!” Esquibel glares at him.
Katrina shakes her head in memory of the painstaking dialogue. “We went back and forth. Lots of miming. After a couple hours of that, what I was finally able to figure out is that what the Russians want here more than anything is the foxes.”
Esquibel’s pen is poised above the blank sheet of note paper. She blinks. “Eh? The foxes? What do you mean?”
“You mean like for their fur?” Jay frowns. “That’s so, like, 19th century. Nobody wears fur any more.”
“Okay… Eh…” Miriam can make no more sense of it than any of the others. “So did the Thunderbirds give them the foxes?”
“On that point,” Katrina manages through a full mouth, “they were quite clear. Absolutely not.”
They all consider this in a perplexed silence.
“But what did the Russians have to say about the Americans or the Chinese? Anything on that?” Esquibel can’t tell her superiors that the Russians were here like English bloody lords hunting foxes for sport. They’d tell her this whole mission was a waste.
“They don’t know. I tried to get kind of geopolitical for a bit but the Thunderbirds are like wildly incurious about the world outside. They know Lisica and its three tribes and that’s about it. But they know Lisica better than anyone else, I’m pretty sure. Even better than the shamans. The Dandawu has the deep cuts, that’s for sure. Like, they recognized the name Maureen Dowerd, Triquet. They like fully remember her.”
“Oh my god. The modern mystery. Yes,” Triquet groans. “Can we please get back to that?”
“She was a friend to all the tribes. The only one who could speak to everyone, even the great shaman at the time, Aan Eyagídi. It was the first time they had met an outsider who was a woman and not a soldier. And he spoke of her great heart. She sounds like a lovely woman. Very charming.”
“And then she fell in love with a local.”
“Yes, and that is when the fractures appeared. The Shidl Dít had no problem with their affair and the child she had. But those nasty Ussiaxan condemned them both. He said they’re the ones who caused her death. And for years they hunted her lover too. Killed him when he was old. But their lineage lives on. All those blond curls. Morska Vidra’s village mostly had no problem, but some did and left them to go live across the river. Reactionairies and their racial purity. Tale as old as time.”
Jay calculates. “So it was the, like, grandparents of the Lady Boss and that whole crew who killed Maureen? Poor thing.”
“Not exactly. We went round and round about this all night. The Dandawu used different words for what the Ussiaxan did to Maureen and her lover. They killed her lover. That was clear. But for her he used a more complex phrase, like ‘they brought about the reasons for her death.’ Like they set some kind of trap.”
“That’s wicked.” Triquet shakes their head. “And this is how the past informs the present. I wasn’t sure the bad tribe would hold their grudge forever but it sounds like that’s exactly what they do.”
“And the Dandawu confirmed the Ussiaxan kept all the secrets. On Maureen Dowerd and the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese. When Wetchie-ghuy deposed Aan Eyagídi during the time of the twelfth mothers, the Ussiaxan took all the island’s maps and diaries and keepsakes to what they call the treasure house—”
Triquet claps their hands to their mouth. “Oh my god there’s actual diaries out there? Plural? Mine mine mine! Ooo baby. That’s like textual chronology primary source white gold.”
“Yeah, but all surrounded by about like sixty warlike spear-warriors,” Jay reminds them. “We’d need like Seal Team Six to drop on their heads if we want to snag their shit.”
Now Esquibel is writing. “It is in their village, you say?”
But Katrina hesitates. “Ehm, you aren’t going to like call in a missile strike or anything, are you?”
“Are you serious? No. I can’t do that. This is just information-gathering. A big part of my job here.”
“I mean he didn’t tell me exactly, but yeh. I figure it’s in there with all their holy holies.”
“Do any of the Ussiaxan speak Russian?” Alonso doesn’t like how close this aggressive tribe is. Just across the creek. How much will their taboo to cross it matter if they are impelled by a greater need to kill the foreigners? “Can we reason with them?”
“No. Chinese. They’ve been contacted regularly by the Chinese, who come in from the north and always avoid the Russians and the Americans.” Katrina looks everywhere but at Esquibel. “They also used to be the contact tribe for the Japanese, like 80 or 90 years ago during the war.”
“That was the bunker I found on the west coast during that first storm.” Maahjabeen shakes her head at the memory. It seems like it was from six years ago, not six weeks. “Definitely old. Definitely Japanese. And Soviet too. So there’s some crossover.”
“I really need to get a look at that site.” Triquet flexes their ankle. “Some day. Could you like tow me on a raft?”
“Oh, the breakers would never allow it.”
“And the other really cool thing he told me,” Katrina continues, “is about the founding of the island. He said it was one man and two sisters. They were Eyat but he was Rumelian.”
“Rumelian?” Alonso wonders. “What is Rumelian?”
“I have no idea,” Katrina answers. “I was hoping one of you would know.”
But none of them do.
“What are you doing?” Flavia asks Jay, as he shakes as much water off his coat as possible and pulls it back on.
“Just thinking. One place I haven’t looked. Maybe it would be a good idea before it gets too late.”
“Where’s that?” Miriam asks.
“In the caves. That’s got to be where they’re hiding, right?”
“The sub,” Triquet grumbles. “Scattering all my sorted piles.”
“Who knows?” Jay goes to the door and pulls Mandy’s blanket wide. The loud drumming of the rain is disheartening, convincing all the others to stay by the fire. “Back in a sec.”
“That boy is a lunatic,” Alonso announces. “But I am glad we have him back.”
Jay returns nearly instantly. “Yep. Cave mouth is just full of all their belongings. But no villagers to be seen. They got no faith in their huts during a storm like this, I guess. And look!” He pulls a bundle of sticks through the door. “Stole some of their firewood!”
All the others are pleased, but Katrina thinks back on her time with the Dandawu and all the kindnesses his people showed her. She shakes her head in despair. “God, we suck.”
Chapter 47 – Their Own Game
November 18, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final 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:
47 – Their Own Game
Jay’s hammock swings gently in the breeze. He is half-awake in the night’s darkness, comforted by its rocking. He’d dispensed with putting the rain fly over the hammock last night, taking a chance that the storm is fully over. He’d been so damn tired. Like a zombie, he’d just strung the basic bits up, slipped the underquilt over, and passed out in his bag.
Now he’s awake and the wind pushes on the hammock, swinging him like a baby in a bassinet. Wait. Why is he awake? He should be able to sleep for another like twelve hours no problem after the shit he’s just gone through.
His hammock abruptly stops. So does his breath. Someone has stepped close and the swing ends in a bump.
“Jay…” The voice is a hiss. “Jay lidass…”
Jay groans. “Oh, no. What do you want now, Jidadaa?”
She glances significantly beside her. Jay lifts his head and looks. One of the golden childs stands behind. “Oh yeah? You want me to see that you two made up and you’re all besties now? Cool. So happy for you.” He waits but she doesn’t respond. He groans. “And now you’re gonna make me figure it all out myself? What that means. Can’t you just like spell it out for me? Jesus. Can’t handle all the hidden shit. Just talk yo talk, sister.”
“Thunderbird house. They find Kula. Make deal. Good deal.”
“Right. The golden masks are the Thunderbirds. The secret village nobody knows. Kay. So they talked to your mom and she talked to you and you’re on team gold now. Cool. Super stoked for you both. But I figured that out when the golden dude handed me my phone back, didn’t I? Now good night.” Jay lies back down and closes his eyes.
Jidadaa bumps him again with her hip. “Yes, they are Shidl Dít. They live in trees.”
“Groovy.”
A long suspended silence finally snaps. Jay can’t take it any more. He sighs in irritation and his eyes open. They are both still looking at him like a pair of cats who need to be let outside.
“Fine. What? What? Just stop staring at me like that.” Jay sits up, realizing he’s not getting any more rest any time soon. He scrubs his greasy hair. “Don’t you people ever sleep?”
“Jay, it is time.”
The golden childs turns away slightly, like a door swinging open. He is inviting Jay to come with them.
“You do realize I’m exhausted, and injured, and I’ve only had one hot meal now in the last like eighty hours, right?”
“It is time. You are lidass.”
“Nope. Not going nowhere. Well at least I ain’t going nowhere without telling everyone. And then we all get to make ‘the decide.’” Jay points at the golden childs. “He tell you what his boss wants me to do? Kill Wetchie-ghuy? Can you believe that shit?”
Jidadaa only regards him.
“Oh, Jesus, not you too. Look, I’ll come with you no problem if you’re like taking me to Amy. Is that what we’re doing? Going to where my missing boss is? Rescue her from wherever she is?”
Jidadaa confers briefly with the golden childs in Lisican. His voice is soft and muffled behind the mask.
Jay points at the youth in accusation. “I knew you all could talk, bro. I knew it!”
“We do not know where your Amy is.”
This sobers Jay. “You don’t? That’s fucked up.”
“Yes. Jay is lidass. I am Jidadaa. Must begin.” She clasps her hands together. “Long to make. Hard to do. Much work. You and me. Start now.”
“What was that? With your hands. You and me together? What, are we going to like get married now?”
“What is with all that chatter over there?” Flavia’s annoyance cuts through the darkness. “Who is talking so much at… after three o’clock in the morning?”
“I know, right?” Triquet responds from the platform beside hers. “And they don’t sound very happy with each other.”
“It’s Jidadaa,” Jay calls out. “She’s here to take me away. And you can all imagine how thrilled I am at that prospect.”
“What? No.” Esquibel’s muffled voice comes from within the clean room. “No no no. You are going nowhere. Tell her to come back in the morning and maybe we will discuss it.”
“That’s what I said and she says it’s got to be now.”
“Somebody wake up Alonso.” Triquet calls out. “Miriam?”
“Poor thing,” Miriam yawns. “Finally sleeping so soundly. Zo. Darling. We need you.”
“Uh?” Alonso snorts and blinks himself awake.
Jay speaks loudly now for the whole camp. “Jidadaa is telling me that some part of her prophecy or something is getting started now. That I’m leed-ass, some kind of destined figure to them. And they want me to kill Wetchie-ghuy.”
“Wait wait…” Miriam rubs her forehead. She needs Jay to slow down. “Is this the same prophecy as before?”
“Nobody is killing anyone here.” Esquibel steps out of the clean room, her hand held up. “Do you understand that, Jidadaa? Wait. Where are you? I can’t see you in the dark. Ah, there you are. No, we are not on this island to get involved in any of the local politics and we absolutely will not kill anyone for you.”
“Not for me. For Lisica. For you.” Jidadaa’s voice is sibilant and chilling, rising from the blackness. “Wetchie-ghuy say no. He say his way. He argue he have different destiny. His prophet poem fight our prophet poem. And other. The big argument.”
“Just how many of these prophet poems are there on this island?” Triquet unzips their tent and emerges, shivering.
“Nine and three and five.”
“Okay. Uh. I don’t really know what to do with that information. Where’s Katrina? We need someone to turn on the lights.”
“What, she never came back?” Now Miriam is fully alert.
“Katrina is with the Shidl Dít,” Jidadaa informs them. “People of Thunderbird. Live in the trees. She has long speech with their Dandawu all night.”
Miriam groans. “Bloody Katrina. Why would she just disappear like that when she knows we have to stay together?”
Mandy squeaks from her own tent, “Oh my god. Is she safe?”
Esquibel slips back into the clean room to dress herself.
Jidadaa nods. “Safe, yes. Bound.”
“Bound?” Miriam doesn’t like the sound of that. “Bound with what? Ropes?”
“Words.”
“Jidadaa,” Alonso begins, his voice rough but kind, “I appreciate that this, eh, moment is very important to you and you obviously worked very hard to make this prophecy happen, but you must see this from our point of view. We are just trying to get some sleep after a very long day. Jay isn’t a figure in your prophet poem. He is just a normal man. I do not know what to tell you except that I am sorry. We cannot help you. Please. Grant him some peace. He has had a very rough few days.”
“It is time. We must begin.” But Jidadaa’s pleas fall on deaf ears.
“Wait. Stop. Esquibel exits the clean room dressed in her warm layers and holding her phone, its light beating back the darkness. “No more of this dancing around and around it. Tell us the whole thing.” She crosses to the hammock where Jidadaa stands with the golden childs. “All of it. What the bloody conflict is here. Why we’re under attack. Whose soldiers were on the beach. We need actual data. No more of your mysterious secrets and orders from on high. You answer all our questions to our satisfaction and then we might decide that we can help you. Okay?”
“Ha. Good luck.” Jay groans and settles back into his bag.
“First.” Esquibel faces Jidadaa, hand on hip. “What exactly are you asking Jay to do?”
“Today, make first sacrifice. Make promise. Join my hand.”
“Make Jay your… ? Your husband?”
“No. My koox̱.”
“Oh, fuck that.” Jay sits up again with a scowl. “Koox̱ is slave. I’ll have to follow her around and do whatever she says. So you’ll like order me to kill Wetchie-ghuy and I can’t say no?”
“Yes.” Then a wild laugh escapes Jidadaa. She grabs, breathless, at Jay’s arm. “This is the prophet poem. Very big chance, live or die. Wetchie ghuy has old poem. Strong story. Story everybody know. Make himself power. But Daadaxáats say no. Lisica say no. They tell other prophet poem. Then Shidl Dít. They have other prophet poem. The people talk. Outsiders come from all direction. Shidl Dít talk to Russian. Keleptel talk to American. Ussiaxan talk to Japanese then Chinese man. All get different story. But now, all people of Lisica talk. Cross river. Learn other poem.”
“Wait. The Chinese are here…?” Esquibel exclaims. “That’s an important bit. Since when? How many? What is their mission?”
“No. Nobody know. Nobody talk to Ussiaxan.”
“You just said all the people of Lisica are talking!” Jay is irate. “So which is it? Cross the river. So the Ussiaxan are the ones who attacked me, yeah? At Kula’s that one night, with the spear in my side? With the Lady Boss and all them? They’re the ones, yeah?”
Jidadaa goes back to her appeal. “Tonight, make first sacrifice. Tomorrow, next sacrifice. Every night.”
“What is this sacrifice?” Triquet asks. “Wetchie-ghuy?”
“No. He very last sacrifice.”
“Ah. Building up to it, are we?”
“First sacrifice is blood and feather.”
“Sacrifice to…?” Now Triquet has an anthropological curiosity about the belief systems in play.
“God of midnight wind. God of big wave that take you from shore.” Jidadaa points with her thumb at precise spots on the horizon where each of these gods apparently reside. “Lisica must be give charm. Make her happy. Cover in flowers.”
“How many gods do you have?”
“No, not my gods.” Jidadaa snorts and pokes her thumb at the golden childs. “His gods. His prophet poem. Strong poem. Kula make Shidl Dít happy. Is good. Very strong tribe.”
“So who are your gods?”
“No gods.” Now Jidadaa’s eyes dart across the ground. “Live in cave with Kula. Men come and go. No gods.”
“Let us change the subject, if you please.” Esquibel suppresses the sharp pang of guilt she feels for this poor creature. No time for it here in the middle of the night. They all need Jidadaa to tell them clearly what is happening here and why. But so far she still hasn’t. “So what you’re telling us, if I understand correctly, is that different nations have shown up over the last, what, hundred years? And influenced different factions of the Lisicans so that their prophet poems reflect the agendas and priorities of the nations guiding them?”
But Jidadaa is busy counting it all up on her fingers. “Seventeen. Seventeen prophet poem.”
“And they’ve all been weaponized? Eh? The prophet poem? One is what the Americans want. One is what the Russians want, yes?”
Jidadaa disagrees. “Prophet poems are secret.”
“So nobody knows about these poems except us?”
“Most. Most…” Jidadaa searches for a way to explain what she means with her limited vocabulary. Finally she gives up and shrugs, repeating, “Most.”
Jay’s head pops up again. “She doesn’t know where Amy is, I already asked her.”
“So one of the shamans has Amy?” Esquibel wishes more than anything that this could be a more linear exchange of information. Any structure at all would be useful. But instead of bullet points or powerpoint slides she’s just chasing phantoms in the dark. “Okay. Missing one of our own, captured by an unknown enemy. Kind of a counter-insurgency scenario. Come on, everyone. Think. What does that do for our position? What exactly is our position?”
“We’re being asked to jump on board with Team Thunderbird,” Jay explains. “I think they’re like the keepers of the old knowledge, for the most part. Closest to the Lisica spirit, yeah, Jidadaa?”
“Yes. Close to Lisica.”
“So if they’re so close why can’t one of your old-soul golden childs do the deed on Wetchie-ghuy? Answer me that. Why do I got to be the one who caps him?”
“Cannot fight and win. Wetchie-ghuy too strong.”
“Well maybe if he takes off his fucking mask he’d have a chance,” Jay seethes. “You think I have a chance? No way. I’ve seen how fast that old man can move. He’d cut me in pieces before I even took a step. This is just not happening. I don’t have it in me, chica. Find another killer.”
“Jidadaa start tonight, if you come or not. Jidadaa start anyway.” Her voice is quiet, eerie in the lightshot dark.
“Well that’s just too fucking bad. Cause I ain’t coming. Go ahead and get your Jidadaa started without me.”
But Esquibel still needs actionable intelligence here. Not this background gibberish. She can make no sense of this latest appeal. “What is it? What exactly will you start, Jidadaa?”
“No. Jidadaa not my name. Jidadaa is doom. Doom start tonight even if Jay lidass sleep in his bed. Doom start now.”
Ξ
“Knock knock.” Esquibel stands at the edge of Mandy’s platform, holding a bouquet of wildflowers.
Silence from within Mandy’s tent. Esquibel knows she is in there. She’s been watching since she got up at dawn. Mandy hasn’t once left her shelter.
“Mandy G.?” This is an old nickname, one that should indicate how much Esquibel wants to kiss and make up. But still there is no answer. Jealousy flares in Esquibel’s viscera. So she isn’t in there? She didn’t sleep here last night? Mandy couldn’t take more than a single night alone before running into the arms of… Who? Katrina is gone. Maybe Flavia?
Finally Mandy unzips her tent and stares out at Esquibel. She says nothing, her fine black hair a frizzy veil obscuring her eyes. She doesn’t even look at the flowers.
Esquibel’s smile falters. “Can we talk?”
Mandy withdraws her head. But the tent flap remains open. With a sigh, Esquibel realizes this is going to be more difficult than she hoped. She places the wildflowers on a corner of the platform and folds herself nearly in half to get through the tent door.
It smells like Mandy in here, sweet and salty. Oh, how Esquibel loves that smell. She loves everything about Mandy and wishes she could just fall into her arms and dream the entire day away.
Yet first… “I am… very sorry.”
But still Mandy says nothing. She looks bruised, like she’s spent a long sleepless night alone in here.
“Oh, Mands. You have no idea how sorry I am. I was wicked to you, absolutely horrid. You didn’t deserve a word of my…”
But Mandy is shrinking away from her. Esquibel wisely stops.
They sit in breathless silence. Now Esquibel is scared. Mandy has never pulled away from her before. Perhaps she should leave.
A sudden tear spills from Esquibel’s eye and she stifles a sob. Oh, what a mess. Why did one of the only women she’s ever loved have to be here on this mission? Now she’s miserable, knowing that she caused her beloved such pain. “I’m just so sorry!”
Mandy watches her, dull. She has no reaction to Esquibel’s tears.
“I will give you all the space you need. I apologize for all the pain I caused. I’ll go.” In meek surrender Esquibel ducks her head and starts backing out of the tent. She is nearly gone when Mandy finally whispers:
“Why are you hiding things from me?”
Esquibel stops, mid-crawl. She is facing down, her tears dropping on Mandy’s foam sleeping pad. Oh, no. This might be even worse.
“I can tell you’re hiding… something. And you want me to just carry on like nothing’s happening. And I can’t. I just can’t any more. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust—”
“I absolutely trust you. I love you, Mandy.”
“But you’re hiding something. Someone. Yesterday morning you smelled like Katrina and now she’s gone. Is there something you want to tell me about what you might know about that?”
This hits far too close to home for Esquibel. She gasps and sits back on her heels, reaching out for Mandy. “Is that what you think? That I’ve been sneaking off to sleep with Katrina and hiding it from you? Oh, Mandy, no. Never. I…”
“Then what are you doing? What are you keeping from me?”
“Ehh…” Esquibel’s eyes go wide and roll back and forth. She is trapped. “Would you be satisfied knowing there is a military matter I must keep to myself and can you leave it at that?”
“A military matter? Like… what? Like is there a radio? Are you two sneaking off to give reports in the dark or something?”
Esquibel finally eases a bit, relieved to have Mandy chasing a false trail. Now her training kicks in. “I can’t tell you, darling. It’s classified. If I told you I could be court martialed, kicked out of the Navy, sent to prison. All kinds of horrors.”
“Does Katrina know?”
Oh, this inexorable bloody girl. Why won’t she just drop it already? Mandy can tell whenever Esquibel is hiding something from her? Fantastic. This is an absolutely untenable strategic posture for an undercover remote operative. It’s like being followed around by a mind reader. “I have… I made a solemn promise to myself long ago to never tell you a lie, Mandy. And I have held myself to it. But I do have another side to my life. I wish I could share all of it with you. Really, I do. It would be wonderful if I could share all of myself. But it is best for all of us that I can’t. Legally, morally, tactically…”
Mandy still watches her. Esquibel tentatively reaches out and wipes the fine hairs from across her face. Distrust is in Mandy’s eyes. Esquibel leans back again.
Mandy struggles to speak. “So Katrina does know. What is she doing? Is she some kind of spy or something?”
“No. No no. Nothing like that. She is just… Well. You know how Katrina is. Her crazy mind just never stops…” Esquibel wiggles her fingers and turns invisible dials in imitation of DJ Bubblegum.
“I can’t have you and her sharing a secret.” Mandy’s voice is tiny as she hugs herself. “Not her.”
“I understand how hard that is for you and you must believe me it is just an unfortunate, ehh…” Esquibel rolls away in a ball, knowing she can’t say another word. Mandy is too insightful.
“Secrets. Lies.” Mandy lifts a numb hand and drops it on her lover’s hunched back. Not to comfort her, just to read her even better. Shit, what was Mandy thinking, falling for a Navy officer? She’d known enough of them on Hawai’i. Her family had sworn them off as schemers and coldhearted foreigners for generations, even though they drove like half the islands’ economy. Now here she is, mixed right up in the middle of some goddamn military spy novel, facing the prospect of losing both Katrina and Esquibel to a bunch of geopolitical nonsense she can’t ever even know. “You know, as a certified control freak, I just can’t do this. I can’t… I mean, I’m ready to give you my whole life. When this is over, I was thinking I’d follow you…” Mandy shakes her head, heartbroken. “But how can I actually do that? I don’t even know who you are.”
Esquibel has no answer to that.
“And yeah it’s unfortunate. You just like full-on interrogated Jidadaa in the middle of the night. But god forbid anyone ever does that to you. I don’t know what to do with you, Esquibel. Doctor Daine. Lieutenant Commander Esquibel Daine. I mean, that’s who you really are, isn’t it? Those aren’t just titles. They’re part of your name now.”
“I swore oaths. I take them very seriously.”
“Okay. Let’s say you were me. Let’s say our positions were—”
“Oh, Mandy, you know I could never abide it. I’d go insane and drive you crazy. It isn’t fair. I know that. I’m so sorry. None of this was my intention. Nobody told me you’d be here. But when I saw you, nothing could keep me from falling back in love with you.”
“Stop it, Skeebee.”
“You have to know. I do what I do for you. For all of you. Some day you may learn that I made… a terrible sacrifice. And I just need you to know I did it because I love you. I love all of you here. You are not just my charges any more. Alonso was right. You are my big Cuban family. And I swear I will protect you.”
Mandy stares at Esquibel, her lower lip trembling. “Now you’re scaring me. Just what have you got yourself mixed up in? God. Why couldn’t you just be a normal doctor?”
Esquibel expels a fatalistic sigh. “Honestly? Student loans.”
Ξ
“Come here… Come here…” Amy’s voice echoes in Alonso’s ears like a mermaid calling to him from the deep. “Look at this. I have something to show you.”
Alonso opens his sticky eyelids and rises effortlessly in the dewy morning air. He passes through the fabric walls of the tent and glides across the dry brown needle carpet of pine camp. Miriam is at the kitchen tables, stirring a pot, chatting with Flavia. Esquibel is working in her clean room, the blurred outline of her silhouette visible through the sheeting.
Alonso follows Amy through sun-shot wilderness, quite certain this is a dream. She is a small dark figure leading him through patches of steaming fog, isolated birdsong in the canopy making his heart ache. He had forgotten how beautiful Lisica is, with all the recent drama and terror and labor. Now he is reminded that this entire island is a spellbinding fantasy landscape with the greens of Avalon and the shadows of El Greco.
She kneels, beckoning to him, gray-streaked hair hanging down and obscuring all of her face except a laughing eye. Dear god when did Amy get so old? Alonso lifts his own hand to find it veiny and splotched with purple. He drops it in dismay.
“Look at this.”
Alonso kneels beside her and peers at the beautiful purple flower she holds delicately between her fingertips. “Amazing.” It opens like a trumpet, the flaring petals stitched with dark lines and stippled with pale green and yellow dots. All of it dives into the center of a luminous golden well, its pistil rising as a delicate limb, the golden dollop at the end waving at him for attention.
There is a kernel of revelation in there. Alonso is sure of it. If only he could get a sample for Plexity, then he would understand.
Breaking the reverie, Alonso pulls back, shaking his head in wonder. Now it is no longer Amy beside him. It is her dead self, the compact male body and slicked-back hair of the boy he had loved. Those white-framed Ray Bans he had sported for several summers in the late eighties are perched on his forehead. So young again! And now Alonso’s hands are young again too, slim and long and brown. He cries out in joy and kisses his own palms, thrilled beyond measure to have them back. They no longer hurt. He looks at his feet. They are also magically healed. All pain has left him.
He catches up Amy’s hand and kisses it. She is Amy once again but an Amy he never saw. She is young and female. So beautiful.
“Did you see?” She directs his attention back to the purple flower. “It’s the mouth.”
“The mouth? No. What do you mean?” Alonso studies the flower, hoping for a clue. He stretches his body out, facing down, his nose almost touching the flower. At this range he has nearly microscopic powers of observation. He counts shining beads of nectar hanging from the stalk’s glistening whiskers. And he follows a busy crew of fluorescent green aphids across the petals as they vanish into the flower’s brilliant white heart.
“The mouth of the island. Everything she consumes must pass through the flower.”
“Its eye? Is that what you call it?” Alonso’s voice is doubtful, pretty sure Amy has just bastardized a biblical proverb about camels and needles instead of sharing a real insight. And how does that even work, a single blossom serving as the intake point for something as huge and complex as an island? Very improbable, that. Alonso is unconvinced.
But Amy senses his cynicism—she must have. Because when Alonso looks up she is no longer there. And the purple flower has vanished. The forest is dark and cold. There are no flowers, only shriveled nubs hiding below storm wrack. This is winter. And he doesn’t know where camp is. He should have been paying better attention when Amy led him here. Now he is lost in the dark.
No… There is a light, a halo of golden illumination in the night. Flickering. A small campfire, with a figure seated across it. This isn’t Amy. Alonso studies the seated figure cautiously, as if they’re a dangerous adversary. “Aha. You’re one of these shamans. The ones everyone says are arguing, yes?” Alonso indicates the dreamscape surrounding them. “This is all your idea, is it?”
It is a small goblin of a figure, of indeterminate age and gender. Their dark face is seamed and pitted, the eyes little more than slits but bursting with malicious glee. Tangled collections of bone and feather fetishes hang from cords woven into their hair and around their thick neck.
Alonso reaches for the barely-remembered details of previous conversations. “Let’s see. You aren’t the one that everyone keeps seeing, that Wetchie shaman. No, you’re the other one, aren’t you? They said your name was secret so we gave you a name. What was it? Sherman. Ha. We call you Sherman, did you know that?”
The shaman tracks Alonso as he approaches. In reply to all these questions, the shaman opens their mouth and a dense white fog spills out, running down their chin and dropping into their lap.
“Dios mío.” Alonso stops. “No, you can’t scare me. You think you are the keeper of the secret knowledge but you are not. I am. I am the one peeling back the mysteries of the ages. I am the one neatly dividing the world into its constituent components!” Alonso ends in a roar, a surprising amount of fury fueling his declaration. But it is justified. This pendejo has caused them so much grief, trying to poison people he loves. “No. Wickedness blinds you. You think you have some monopoly on knowledge hidden from the eyes of the common man? Ha. Try being a statistician!” Alonso has no idea if any of his words are being understood but the point is certainly clear. “You know nothing. Sherman. You just sit here in your little world casting your little spells. You don’t even know what flower the mouth of Lisica is.”
This makes Sherman snap their mouth shut. Their eyes bulge at the mention of the island’s mouth. It is clear Alonso guessed right. Sherman dearly wants to know this arcane fact but has no clue. If only Alonso knew what any of that meant…
“And you think I will tell you? No. Never. I only know because someone who loves me told me. And no one will ever love you.”
Now Sherman’s sharp eyes are piercing Alonso, right through his skull. But he laughs. “Is that the best death stare you got? Nice try. I survived five years of torture. And those fucking sadists made me look in their eyes the whole time they yanked on my fingernails…” Alonso bears down on Sherman, opening the doors in his mind that nearly always remain shut. “You want horrors? I got plenty.”
Sherman trembles, then finally drops their own eyes. It is clear they are shocked by what they see scored upon Alonso’s soul.
Alonso drops this terrible aspect and frowns, considering. “Do I even have a soul? Eh. It doesn’t matter. Normally I would say not a chance, but also normally I am not having magical battles with shamans in my dreams. So here, in this place, yes, sure, you saw my soul and what those monsters did to it. And you did not like what you saw, eh? The horrors of the modern world. You have no shaman second-sight for this one, do you?”
Sherman squints at Alonso as if they are staring into the sun. “You… are… shaman too.”
Alonso grunts in surprise to hear the shaman speak words he can understand. But he insantly disputes them. “No. I am far more powerful than a shaman, you asshole. I am a scientist.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen waits for a brief morning shower to end outside before she ventures from Pradeep’s side in the clean room. He doesn’t appear to sleep. He only stares into the middle distance. He is like a doll the shamans have tired of fighting over and now they have just cast him into a corner. It is nearly breaking her, holding this empty vessel so tightly.
She kisses the corner of his eye and he doesn’t even twitch. With a sigh she stands and slips outside, the brown needle carpet wet against the soles of her bare feet. Maahjabeen needs to discuss her plan with someone. Not Alonso. They always fight. Not Triquet, busy at the kitchen. Perhaps Miriam and Flavia will be the support she needs. They are in the meadow, halfway to the creek, working on something with tools. Maahjabeen locates her slip-ons and a windshirt. It is cool in the aftermath of the shower.
From a distance, the meadow looks like a solid monoculture of some long green grass rippling in the wind. But as you get near, the number of species explode. Some are more like dense ground cover beneath the grasses. Others are beds of tiny yellow and white flowers that she tries to not trample. Tall stands of waving stalks have the leaves of tomato plants. Then there are the thistles, tiny and angry with bright orange flowers. They are easy to spot after she gets lanced by sharp thorns the first time. And all the waving grasses are a riot of species, some tall and thin with rounded stalks, some with long bladed leaves like bamboo. Fluted lilies are being visited by pale bees. Best to avoid them too, Maahjabeen doesn’t know if they sting. She knows very little about wild meadows like this in general. If she was anywhere else she’d be afraid of snakes.
“Why, it’s Maahjabeen. How are you, dear?” Miriam stands in a trench up to her knees, spade in hand. Her fair face is splotched red from exertion and a stray auburn curl hangs from beneath her sun hat. Flavia crouches beside her with a pile of sample jars.
Maahjabeen studies Miriam. Only now does she realize how dispirited she’s become from her vigil beside Pradeep’s body. This kind of industry is beyond her. To think, she would ply the ocean waves for hours, carving herself forward with her paddles. She has always been so proud of her strong arms and shoulders and back. It all seems so far away now, like it’s a story she heard about someone else. Someone more fortunate, younger and more full of hope. “He is not changed.” Maahjabeen reacts to the naked scar of raw earth among all this luxuriant life. “Did you have to bury the flowers?”
“Flowers everywhere, love. Couldn’t be helped. How are you?”
Maahjabeen crouches on her heels at the edge of the trench Miriam has dug. It is all undifferentiated root networks and reddish soil, as far as she can tell. “How deep will you have to dig before you find something interesting?”
“How deep? Why, we are already finding all sorts of interesting things. Aren’t we, Flavia?”
Holding up several sealed sample jars, Flavia simply says, “Bugs.”
“And for the geology?”
Miriam laughs, tossing another spadeful of dirt on her pile. “As soon as I start digging, the discoveries begin. And we never want them to stop. It’s always budget or time or personnel constraints that does us in. If I had my way I’d drill down forever, until the bit melted in the magma. We know so little about what exists under the mantle. Have you ever considered that, Maahjabeen? Flavia? Have you ever given a thought as to what the ground is actually made of, right below your feet? Why, we know more about Alpha Centauri than we do about what it’s really like a kilometer straight down. I mean, imagine.”
Flavia shakes her head no. “Don’t imagine. That’s when you get stories of things living underground. Like devils and lizard people and dwarves. People imagined. And it’s only because they couldn’t conceptualize,” Flavia waves her hands around her head, “the impossible sea of molten rock down there. They had to put people of some kind in it. But it’s just molten rock forever, isn’t it?”
“Well, there are competing models now. It is certainly quite complex, like Maahjabeen’s oceans, aye? Currents and upwellings. Most of the mantle is actually solid rock, but in geological timescales it acts as a viscous fluid. Just imagine. The hardest rock on the planet, getting turned like taffy in the depths over the ages. No, it’s only near the very center that the rock turns liquid.”
“What kinds of rock?” Maahjabeen lifts one of the bits of gravel Miriam has excavated. It is gray and smooth, like a river stone.
“Down there? Peridotites and other silicates. All kinds, a huge class of minerals and crystals differentiated by their molecular structure, how the silicon bonds are built and what they allow. But that’s just a bit of sandstone there, in your hand.”
They watch Miriam dig some more in silence. Maahjabeen turns to Flavia but she is making notes about the bugs on a tablet and taking pictures of them.
A great yawning gulf seems to open up between Maahjabeen and the other two. She is not fully here. She has moved on to another plane of existence right now, caught up in a battle of life and death. But how to make them understand? “What if you did break into the underworld, though? What if you dig too far and let all the dead souls out? I mean, there must be billions…”
“How many billions? Ai. I know this.” Flavia holds up a finger, making a declaration. “In grad school we did calculations based on the advent of modern humans. If it is truly 320,000 years ago then there have been over 122 billion persons ever. Kind of makes you feel insignificant, yes? Living people are not even seven percent of the total humans.”
“So 122 billion dead souls come howling up from the breach…” Maahjabeen traces how they would spread across the sky like diesel fumes, darkening the clouds.
“I’d think it wouldn’t happen here, it would happen to some of those deep sea oil wells first, don’t you?” Miriam’s question is gentle. She can tell Maahjabeen is raw, troubled. As she herself would be if Alonso was catatonic like Pradeep is. “Those lads dig deep, kilometers down. I have yet to break a meter here.”
“But maybe this one is a hidden doorway to the afterlife.”
“Ecch, more talk of spirits and ghosts.” Flavia rolls her eyes. “We have to get my friend Maahjabeen off this island before she forgets she is a scientist entirely and becomes a witch or something.”
“Please, Flavia. You’ve seen Pradeep. You’ve seen what he is like without his soul.”
“I knew it. I knew this is what was on your mind. These fantasies from your religion. They are warping your brain, your beautiful brain. Don’t let them, Maahjabeen.”
“You leave Islam out of this, you kafir.” Maahjabeen spits the insult but Flavia accepts it with surprising grace.
“What is kafir? I thought it was a yoghurt drink.”
“No, it means unbeliever. And it is not a nice word. I already know how you think. I am not asking you. I am asking Miriam…”
“Aye? You’re asking me…?”
Only now does Maahjabeen realize that she came out here to ask for Miriam’s blessing for the only plan she can conceive. “I need to… I mean… Do you believe in souls, Miriam?”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Flavia interrupts. “This isn’t like 1932.”
“Growing up in Kildare in the 70s I got my fair bit of Catholic indoctrination, and I’ll have no part of that. But I don’t think the world is as… easily explicable as Flavia says. I’m still some kind of pre-modern Celtic pagan at heart, and we have our own complex relationships with the divine. I can’t say I’m fully with you on souls, as you define them. I think more in terms of energies.”
“That is even worse!” Flavia exclaims. “At least Maahjabeen’s nonsense has thousands of years of scholarship behind it. Yours is only some vague feeling. It is like a narcotic, this need for belief, dulling the senses and breaking logic. You can’t break the logic, Miriam. It is all we have.”
But Miriam is trying to hear the siren call of her past mystical encounters. There are a clutch of them, most from her teenaged and early adult years when she fearlessly walked the forests and fens at night. She found things then, in the chill of the fog, that she was sure touched on realities ungoverned by logic. “You’re an atheist, Flavia, sure. But I guess you can call me an agnostic, Maahjabeen. I have experienced things for which I have no explanation and I am waiting upon evidence before deciding.”
“Flavia is right. That is the worst kind of way to go through life. At least Flavia has the courage to defy God and be wrong. You are just like hedging your bets, Miriam. Have the courage of your convictions. Speak your truth.”
“Attacked from both sides, am I?” Miriam squints, trying to put unformed feelings into words. “It makes me think of Alonso, how damaged he is. That’s what you’re talking about with souls, isn’t it? It’s his soul that is damaged.”
Maahjabeen only nods.
“How can we talk about his scars without mentioning his spirit, eh? He carries these scars. And yes they are mental and emotional and certainly physical, but there’s so obviously something else, isn’t there? Some deeper damage that will haunt him all his days?”
“Yes, you understand. You understand what Pradeep is suffering. And you must see that I have to do something about it.”
“Now you are both crazy.” Flavia shakes her head. “Why can’t I ever leave this kind of medieval superstitious bullshit behind? Why can’t it just be mental and emotional damage, just, like, real bad? Like, of course Alonso has this damage. Why do you need to bring in a soul? We were just talking about emergent phenomena, yes? So. The neuronal activity in his brain gives rise to thoughts and feelings. Then with higher order phenomena we get a persistent sense of self. But his hardware has been permanently damaged. It has changed the data he is expressing. So those higher orders are changed as well.”
But they are both ignoring Flavia’s plaintive lecture. Miriam doesn’t like the fatalistic look in Maahjabeen’s eye. “What, dear? What are you going to do?”
“Esquibel is fighting for him on a medical level. I need to fight for his spirit, on the spiritual plane.”
Flavia snorts, her laugh incredulous. “Oh my god listen to you. You sound like a video game my nephew plays. The spritual plane? And where is that, eh?”
“It is in my faith. Be quiet, Flavia, if you have nothing helpful to add. I need some real advice from someone who understands.”
But this is too much for Flavia. “I knew it. I knew you were falling apart but this is too much. I could see it in your face. It is why I didn’t even give you a ‘hi, good morning’ or anything because I could tell you were just looking to get this nonsense started. You were already thinking like this. So what are you going to do now? Holy water and a magic sword?”
“Flavia, please.” Miriam winces, uncomfortable with the degree to which Flavia derides Maahjabeen’s beliefs. “Let’s, uh, celebrate diversity here if we could.”
“I cannot. As a scientist and as a thinking human.” With a sniff, Flavia collects her jars and tablet and departs, across the meadow back toward camp. Pointedly, she doesn’t follow Maahjabeen’s recent path through the tall grasses but forges her own.
Miriam is worried for Maahjabeen. She drapes an arm over her shoulder and pulls her close. “What is it, love? What do you plan on doing?”
Maahjabeen stares at the horizon with smoldering eyes. “I don’t quite know yet. I just know it is time we start beating the shamans at their own game.”
Chapter 46 – Pork On The Barbie
November 11, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final 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:
Book IV – Hypotenuse Of Hope
46 – Pork On The Barbie
In the Dzaadzitch village the next morning, Mandy and Miriam try to share gifts and make plans. With Morska Vidra beside her, Miriam watches a trio of younger villagers emerge from the cave mouth, bearing fish from the beach. “Oh, that’s a lovely catch. Now that you’ve got the lagoon to yourselves it’s fish every day, eh? You were just waiting for us to leave before you went back down there, weren’t you?”
But the villagers don’t engage with her. They are intent on their feast, exclaiming over the shining fish.
“What I was saying,” Mandy repeats loudly and slowly, trying to regain Morska Vidra’s attention, “is that if it’s okay with you guys we want to get out to the cliff tops daily. Day-lee. Understand?”
The silver fox appears, scrambling up the leg of one of the youths to sniff at his catch. They all speak to the fox with deference, waiting for its blessing. With a sneeze the fox gives it, darting away, and the villagers call out, pleased. They disperse to gather their fixings. The Mayor starts building a fire while others bring baskets filled with mash wrapped in green leaves.
“And do you have any rope?” Miriam extends an invisible line through her hands, trying to communicate the concept to him. But he hardly takes his eyes from the fish. “I want to drop down that shaft up there. Study the rocks. The layers and the history of the island? The rocks?” She points at the cliffs visible through the trees. “Hanging from a long rope, tied to something solid at the top?”
But before they can gain his approval, a young girl appears from the far side of the village. She passes between the huts and enters the village square, chanting to them all about something she just saw. The village falls silent. The Mayor stops building her fire and listens. The girl stops, turning back again and again, to poke at the air behind her with the tip of her thumb or her little pointed chin. The Mayor finally stands and says something. Then she points with her own thumb at Miriam and Mandy, directing the girl to them.
The girl skips forward, as light as a fawn on her feet. Her small dark eyes are alive with excitement and her black and gold curls bounce like springs. She chatters at Miriam and Mandy, fearless, then waits for their answer.
Morska Vidra turns to Miriam. She shrugs at him, confused. He pushes her gently toward the young girl.
“Aye. You want me to…? right.” Miriam bends over, the girl is quite small up close. “Hello, love. How can we help you?”
The girl slips her narrow hand into Miriam’s and pulls her forward. “Oh. Come with you?”
“Not alone.” Mandy starts, nervous as a rabbit, delaying Miriam with a hand on her elbow. “Never alone. Not after Amy.”
“And all the other disappearances. So come with me, please.”
“Uh, where?” Mandy peers doubtfully into the woods from which the girl emerged. “This is how we get in trouble, isn’t it?”
The girl pulls more firmly on Miriam, ignoring her resistance. But then she stops, trying a new tack. She places her other thumb against her chin. “Xaanach.”
“Shah-nock. Xaanach. Oh my god, I remember Flavia talking about you.” Miriam stops struggling and falls in step with the girl. “You’re the one who saved her from Wetchie ghuy, aren’t you?”
“Wetchie-ghuy…” Xaanach makes a horrid face. She tears at her own windpipe, then crosses her eyes and lolls her tongue out the side of her mouth. Then she laughs and pulls on Miriam again. “Pođi sa. Hwai.”
“Come on, Mandy. She hates him as much as we do. And she wants to show us something. We’ll be fine. At least we know she isn’t leading us to that sour old bastard.”
But Mandy really doesn’t have it in her. She’s here to climb the cliff behind her facing the sea, to reset her weather station, and that will take all her energy. She’s sure of it. With a groan she collapses against her companion instead. “I just don’t think I can do this any more, Miriam. I mean, honestly. I didn’t sign up to be, like, hunted. Russians on the beach, shamans in the trees. Come on.”
“Don’t fret, darling. We always have our golden childs with us.” Miriam indicates the patient figure standing outside the village, waiting for his two charges to return.
Giving in with a growl of supreme irritation, Mandy clenches her fists and follows, knowing with every step she takes that she is heading further into danger. “Why do we keep doing this?” she wonders aloud. “We know this is just going to be trouble but here we go again anyway.”
“Not sure what our other options are.” Miriam is committed to this course now and her long strides keep up with Xaanach’s happy bounding. “Come on, Mandy.”
As they pass the last huts and climb the forested slope behind them, Miriam examines the girl pulling her. There is something different about Xaanach, the particular weeds woven into her hair, the rattiness of her shift, her ebullience. And the way the Mayor spoke with her… There was a formality to it. It wasn’t how she speaks to any of her own people. Xaanach isn’t of the village. “Well, that must be right,” Miriam says to her aloud. “You pulled Flavia out of Wetchie ghuy’s hut in the middle of the night and by all accounts that’s like an hour or two from here. They wouldn’t let a… what are you, eight? nine year old girl? out alone, would they? All night, messing with the medicine man. Where the devil are your parents anyway? Just who are you, Xaanach?”
The girl stops and touches her chin with the tip of her thumb. “Xaanach.”
“Yes. Miriam.” She repeats the gesture on her own chin.
“Mandy. Nice to meet you. Please don’t hurt us.”
“Mee-yum. Man-dee. Hwai.” Xaanach waves them forward.
Somewhat mollified by the charming little pixie, Mandy allows herself to be led upward to the edge of a thicket. Down they go, crawling beneath its sharp branches, and out the other side to a rocky cliff face. Xaanach has been chanting this whole time, telling them all kinds of fascinating details about the world around them. Now she points at the cliff and finally releases Miriam’s wrist so they can both climb.
Mandy falls back and groans again. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“It would be…” Miriam peers at the cliff, picking at it with a fingernail, “if Xaanach hadn’t just led us to a deposit of plagioclase feldspar. What is this doing at the surface? My my my.” She croons at the crystal admixture. “You’ll be changing my island models for sure. See, Mandy? This is already a beneficial side-journey.”
“Yeah… I’m not sure how much climbing I’m good for.”
“Look. Xaanach’s already vanished up there in that cleft. Seems like it’s just a few meters then pop.” Miriam hauls herself onto the stone wall, the fractured face offering plentiful hand and foot holds.
Xaanach’s little face re-appears above, calling out, “Mee-yum. Man-dee. Hwai.”
“Why are you so, like, brave about all this?” Mandy really wishes she could let go of all this irritation but her unresolved fight with Esquibel has made her crabby and defensive, dragging her mindset back to the first few weeks of this trip, when she couldn’t ever get anything done. “Aren’t you worried about where she’s taking us?”
“Aye, for certain I am. But listen to yourself. You seem to have this notion that there’s an option here that gives you everything you want, and that’s just not how things are out here, love. It’s not like we say no to Xaanach and then just get to choose how the day goes. This is a… I mean, like, if we dropped ourselves into Times Square and said we’re going to live here for eight weeks, we’d have to spend a fair bit of time negotiating with the locals and making sure everyone was fine with us being there, aye?”
“It’s just…” Mandy drops her hands, knowing she’s lost yet another fight. “This has nothing to do with atmospheric science, okay?” With a muttered curse she hauls herself up the cliff face.
At the top, they find themselves at the top of a slope that drops away into a nice wide valley interspersed with oak groves and green meadows. Far away, there is a lighter bit of emerald moving against the dark green carpet of bushes. It is Jay in his softshell jacket, picking his way through dense growth. His face is burned red by the sun and wind and he is limping, his hand at his side.
“Jay!” Mandy calls out.
He is quite far away, hundreds of meters. Jay stops, unable to locate the voice, or even tell if it was an auditory hallucination or not. He blinks at his surroundings. Where is he now? Traversing this wide bowl, coming down from a steep motherfucking gradient behind him where he nearly got wrecked in a minor landslide. Its aftermath prevented Pradeep from following at a healthy clip.
“Jay! Over here!” The voice is so thin. It’s got to be one of the crew, though. Up ahead? He shades his eyes, the overcast sky still bright enough to matter. Are those figures up there? He waves.
Within moments, Miriam and Mandy and a little Lisican girl are down in the meadow with him. They drape his arms over their shoulders, and even though it stretches his scar, he lets them support his weight. “I am so so so happy to see you. Swear I could like kiss you both.”
“Deal.” Miriam laughs and kisses his cheek. “Ah. Maybe a wash-up first then I’m all yours.”
Mandy frowns. “But where’s Pradeep?”
“Yeah, he needs more help than me. Back this way.” Jay tries to turn them all around. Reversing course is the one thing he really hates doing. But it doesn’t matter now. He found help at last.
They tell Jay about their days and nights of labor and the move to the pine camp inland. He exclaims, “No way!” a dozen times at the proper intervals, shocked that the Russians or someone like them really did land on their beach. “The lagoon’s out of bounds? Like for the whole rest of the trip? Just when we set up the gill net? Aw, man. That is a major major bummer.”
“Why did you leave Pradeep behind?” Mandy’s worry grows. “Don’t you know we can’t do that any more?”
“Yeah…” How to communicate what the last day has been like? How they’ve woven their own paths, despite all their best attempts to stay together, across the southwest of the island? “It’s just, like, really choked with vegetation in there. Like really choked. Like, we haven’t seen a real trail in days.”
Jay leads them to another slope, this one carpeted with soaring Douglas firs like a proper Oregon forest. He just spent all morning coming down that way on feet and knees screaming with agony. It wasn’t that he’d put a lot of steps in, really, it was more that he just hadn’t been able to ever stop and rest them.
“Is Pradeep injured?” Miriam is starting to feel Jay’s weight. Just how far back are they going to have to go?
“Nah. Just… I get into a zone and… I should have waited but…” He shakes his head. There was so much he was going to tell these people! But now that he sees them, all the words he’d prepared in his endless hours of walking lack any meaning or power.
They walk under the tall firs, their brown needles carpeting the ground. After a few minutes of steady climbing, Jay stops.
On the slope ahead, a tableau:
Pradeep’s long dark form is face down on the hillside, unmoving. A golden childs stands on the far side of him, his back to Pradeep, arms raised. Wetchie-ghuy is crouched on a stone above, clutching a forked stick. Jidadaa is at a right angle to their stand-off, holding Wetchie-ghuy’s fetish. They are all stone still, so the newcomers also fall silent. No one speaks, not even Xaanach.
“Prad!” It is Jay who finally breaks the spell and charges forward, lumbering uphill with a bad limp.
Twitch. Wetchie-ghuy vanishes from the boulder.
In three bounds, the golden childs stands where Wetchie-ghuy had just crouched but the shaman is nowhere to be seen. Twitch. The golden childs also vanishes from view.
With a smile, Jidadaa turns to Miriam and Mandy. “Ah, hello, friends. Wetchie-ghuy, he almost gets this one,” she points at Pradeep, who still doesn’t move, “but we say no no no.”
Ξ
The racks that hold the solar panels were damaged in the move, struts now bent and bolts missing. Flavia tries to fix them with sticks and twine, but it is slow-going. She has placed the array at the edge of the trees facing the sun to the southeast. Finally she is able to make it sturdy, although it no longer has the ability to be adjusted. This will impact their recharge rate. Yet another thing to slow their research down.
Regardless of this frustrating task, Flavia likes it here in pine camp. Or, more precisely, she prefers it. She doesn’t actually like anything having to do with Lisica. She hasn’t felt any actual pleasures of satisfaction or desire since she left home. But that is probably due to the fact that home is Italy. She has heard this from Italian migrants before. Nowhere in the whole world is quite so warm, so bright, so emotional as the Italian Peninsula. Outside the borders of Her sea and mountains, people grow cold, the food bland and ingredients cheap. Even politics are more interesting and fierce in Italy than other countries, although they drive her crazy. But that’s the thing, other places don’t drive Flavia crazy. They only inconvenience her, like with these branches and this twine on this godforsaken frozen island in the middle of nowhere.
And yet, it is far better at pine camp than at the beach. That ocean wind had been driving her mad, the relentless movement of air that robbed her of peace and steadiness and the basic ability to think. Now, here in this protected valley, she can hear the songbirds trill instead of the waves boom, and she is mollified.
Flavia returns to camp. She checks her laptop to find it is now charging, the skeletal power network she has built for the camp now alive with solar-derived electricity. She loves technology that is so clean, with no moving parts. Moving parts are so… industrial revolution. Flavia likes her tech more elegant than that.
Alonso is at work in his camp chair, hunched over the laptop balanced on his knees. Now that she has checked off her first task of the day, it is time to move on to the second one before she gets hungry for lunch. Flavia locates an empty bin and turns it upside-down for it to be used as a chair. Then she places it facing Alonso and joins him at his platform, their knees nearly touching.
He is deep in Plexity. He grunts at her but his fingers don’t stop typing. She knows better than to interrupt him.
By the time Flavia arranges her laptop’s windows into her standard workflow, Alonso is able to break away.
“Yes, Flavia?”
“Buongiorno, Dottore. How are you?”
“Eh.” He makes a face. “You really don’t want to know. Really. I mean, I feel like… I’m a chef who has to feed two hundred people tonight and only half my ingredients have been delivered. Not even half. Just a tenth. Just… the eggs. And some water. Feh. What am I supposed to make with that?” He shakes his head in despair. “No, I am not looking for your pity. I understand that it is my fault. What I asked of the team here is impossible. The sheer number of unique inputs required is staggering. But Plexity is… I mean, I have to keep working on it. Can’t you see? Nothing else matters. Not really. As soon as I had the epiphany about it in the gulag and I saw it in all its glory, what it could become and the answers it could provide, then there was no point in ever working on anything else. Because the fundamental answers to nearly every problem can be found in Plexity, in its connections, in the web of life. So. How am I? Not very well, thank you. I just keep banging my head against this very firmly shut door, trying to salvage something from our six weeks in that lagoon. But the gaps in the data are too large. I can’t establish any of the baselines necessary to derive meaningful measurements. You of all people must understand what I mean.”
Flavia only stares at Alonso, mute. If she was the one feeling such frustration, any possible response he made would only end with shouting. She would lash out with all that anger. And she doesn’t need to be Alonso’s target, so she keeps her mouth shut.
Alonso nods, bitter. “Of course you do. This is what you’ve been trying to tell me since we got here. And now,” he gestures at his screen, “it is all ashes. Worse than ashes. At least ashes used to be wood, and when you burned them, the fires warmed you. This… this was all just a fool’s errand, with no benefit in the least. Just chasing our tails for six weeks.”
Flavia shrugs. “The American generals will not think so.”
“You don’t know. I got us here with some very big promises. Bold promises of what Plexity will be able to do.”
“Oh, yes? Like what? How would the military even use it?”
“Well, they had those two biologist contractors who were very impressed with the scalable resolution we should be able to offer. They could see its promise, especially at macro levels. With enough collectors and boots on the ground, they are certainly right. In the end Plexity will still probably be what I was able to promise. I will just never be the person who is seeing it. They will cast me aside and it will be someone else who—”
“Wait, wait.” Flavia holds up an urgent hand. “Cast aside? Are you telling me you don’t own the rights to Plexity any more?”
Alonso does not look up from his screen.
Her head rocks back, the implications hitting her like a truck. “Are you telling me all this work we are doing is for the American military, for a new technological platform that the American military will control? Ai, Alonso…”
“It is a very generous license they have given us for academic use and publishing.” His voice is quiet. “It is not something I wanted, for sure. And… they said it was a change in the contract that came down from the top at the last second, but no, I didn’t believe them. They probably knew how they were going to play me all along. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in a bargaining situation where the terms were changed just as I was about to sign. But what could I do? I had to sign the rights away. I had no leverage.”
Flavia slams her open hand down onto her knee. “You say no. You walk away when that happens.”
Tears spring into his eyes and Alonso holds his shaking hands out, pleading. “But I couldn’t walk. Flavia, I was in their hospital, after they had rescued me. And healed me. And their scientists said I could be of use. You don’t know. After five years, hearing those words… Being of use. Nothing sounded better.”
Flavia shakes her head, disgusted by the machinations of large bureaucracies. Che pazzo. She had been about to make his day brighter by proposing a new approach to Plexity, a modest way to salvage what they could of their enormous project. Flavia thought they might use the data they’d already collected as a massive filter for what they found next, screening every life form and compound from pine camp against what they’d found before in the lagoon, focusing on the scientifically-significant differences between biomes instead of the connections, per se. Then they might at least return with a handful of deep insights for their masters. But now she knows how much her masters the military men are. No. She will not work for them, not when they will enjoy all the data and share nothing with the wider academic world. Flavia has refused all military industrial complex work during her career and she has no intention of starting now. “But Alonso… The problem, as I’m sure you know, is that this… ehh, we should have known that… Well. I guess this just forces us to realize what the end-result of all this data collection will be. You must realize if we find anything too valuable with Plexity it will never be published, yes? It will disappear into their black budgets. Let us show them a failure instead. Or at most just the smallest amount of progress. We need to be thinking much much more strategically about what we are doing on this project. And you need to share with us the terms of your ‘generous academic license’ so we can figure out what we can tell them and what we cannot. Oh, Alonso. Were you really going to give them a fully-operational Plexity? And expect them to keep their promises about what you would be able to share?”
Alonso shrugs. “Look, those biologists were the only ones in the room who understood anything of what I was saying. The others didn’t have a clue. They could just tell the eggheads were very impressed and the general in charge really trusted both them and Colonel Baitgie. So I thought maybe I’d go back and if I’m lucky the contractors wouldn’t be there and I’m presenting to a room full of nothing but morons in uniform. Even Baitgie wouldn’t really understand Plexity’s implications if I kept it technical enough. They would just say, ‘Yes, great job. Mission accomplished,’ and I would leave with all my licenses and prototypes intact. And sure, maybe that is a little naive, but it is the best I was able to do.”
They stare at each other, two individuals trapped in the decisions they’d made with their lives. Neither feel there are any options for them to change their circumstances. Neither see any way forward.
The corner of Alonso’s mouth twitches. “This is when Amy is supposed to swing between us with an offer of tea. I miss her very much. Do you think she is okay?”
Flavia knows Alonso means that he wants her insight into what Wetchie-ghuy must be doing to Amy. It must be Wetchie-ghuy who took her, despite the efforts of the golden childs and their retreat to the pine camp. And nobody knows more about Wetchie-ghuy’s enslavement than Flavia. So Alonso wants her to relive that madness. She shivers and shakes it off. No. She won’t. “I have no idea, Alonso. I just hope they are a very happy couple.”
“Esquibel…!” A distant voice comes from the meadow near the creek. “Maahjabeen…! Esquibel…!”
“Is that Miriam?” Alonso tries to twist in his chair but his legs have fallen asleep. With a grimace he gets them working again and he stands. Flavia rises beside him.
“Who is calling my name?” Esquibel pokes her head out of the plastic slit door of the clean room. “Who is that?”
Maahjabeen emerges from her tent and stands atop her platform, shading her eyes. She squawks. “That is Pradeep! Alhamdulillah! They have Pradeep! Come!”
She rushes through the trees to him, Esquibel on her heels.
Miriam and Mandy drag Pradeep’s black-clad body through the grasses toward the camp on a crude travois, Jay limping beside them. There is no sign of Xaanach nor the golden childs who left with them.
Maahjabeen throws herself down beside them when they are still fifty paces from camp. Pradeep is unconscious, his head lolled to one side. She gathers him with a sob in her arms and holds him. “What is it? What happened to him?”
“Wetchie-ghuy…” Miriam is gasping. It has been a long journey. “He did something horrid to him, some voodoo bullshit…”
Maahjabeen wails and hauls on Pradeep, pulling his slack torso forward and tugging at his clothes. Alonso arrives, hurried across the meadow by Triquet and Flavia’s strong arms.
“No, there’s no fox or whatever on his tailbone.” Mandy reels away from her handle of the travois, her palms burning, her arms exhausted. She shakes her arms and groans. “We checked.”
“And Jidadaa told us,” Miriam adds, “that the fox was a symbol of the other one anyway, not Wetchie-ghuy. That Sherman the shaman. They’re the one who poisons people and puts the stamp on our spines, not Wetchie-ghuy. She told us a lot.”
“Then what is it?” Maahjabeen kisses Pradeep’s slack face, trying to transfer her love into him like she did before, when he was dying of that cold mud. She chafes his frozen hands.
“Uh…” Miriam shares a furtive look with Jay. “Well, according to Jidadaa, she said Wetchie-ghuy took Pradeep’s soul.”
“Not true.” Jay’s first words are a rasp. “I bought it back from him with a joint. Fair deal. Pradeep doesn’t belong to Wetchie-ghuy any more. He smoked that whole reefer to his head.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Triquet can’t make sense of any part of Jay’s statement.
Jay tries to recap but his head is buzzing with fatigue. His own words echo in his skull. “Pradeep knew that Wetchie-ghuy had claimed him and the first time that old asshole showed up he was just going to like go with him. But I made a deal to give him my weed instead and that’s when Wetchie-ghuy started smoking like a chimney and he just went apeshit and attacked me. Then…”
Jay falls silent, remembering what the golden man had begged of him all those nights before in the tunnels: Kill Wetchie-ghuy. Jay is lidass. It is his destiny. But he turned his back on that, didn’t he? And now his buddy got taken instead, despite all Jay’s best efforts. He failed Pradeep. He was supposed to take care of him, defend him from Wetchie-ghuy even if it meant killing the old man. As if Jay’s actually capable of taking a life. As if he could actually get his hands on the old man. And what that would have done to Jay, all that blood on his hands… Well. Looks like it’s one soul or another, Jay’s or Pradeep’s. That’s the price Lisica is demanding.
But the others aren’t listening to him any more. They’ve moved on without him, hurrying back to camp, Esquibel racing ahead. Jay stops and looks around, his face bitter. Well here it is. This is the meadow he’s been seeking for days, this broad expanse from weeks before where he first saw the golden childs and the Katóok tribe and all the rest. And now the crew lives here, up in the trees a good hundred paces from the creek. Well well well. Plenty of places to hang a hammock, for sure. Almost back to normal.
But now they said Amy’s gone. The one person he’s closest to in like his whole life right now. Man, she’s not just a boss. She’s his mentor and friend and guide. Without her, Jay wouldn’t even be in grad school, and he knows it.
“If I’d killed Wetchie-ghuy when I saw him… Pradeep and Amy would both be here.” He shakes his head in wonder at the surreal nature of the universe. Him. A killer. And not of just anyone, a shaman of an endangered Pacific Island tribe. At the request of another shaman from another endangered tribe… I mean, that’s who that golden man was, yeah? A third shaman? But so far him and his kids have been good to the team, watching over them and protecting them, for whatever reason. He was the one to beg Jay to kill Wetchie-ghuy. He must have known what was coming.
“I got to talk to that dude again. Maybe with Katrina in tow. Get some answers.” Jay shakes his head at how much they are up against. He takes one last look at the cold gray sky before stepping under the trees. “That’s what we need now. Answers. Information war, my peeps. It’s where we at.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen hurries from her tent back to the clean room, her head empty. She realizes distantly that for the first time in memory she has no thought of the sea. Or of God. Only Pradeep fills her heart and soul. She knows it is blasphemy but she is quite close to not caring. Maahjabeen has never known love before. She thought she had, but those were the first tottering steps of a child compared to the—the splendid dances they share. And love is all.
These disquieting revelations about her true nature almost make her stumble. She isn’t pious after all, but an imperfect creature of passions both romantic and sexual. Yet she hurries on regardless, back to the clean room with a clutch of socks, to give Pradeep a bit of a sponge bath and make him more comfortable, even in a coma.
She slips through the plastic slit, relieved to find the clean room empty of others. Only Pradeep is here, covered in blankets, an IV drip feeding him, and his eyes are open!
Maahjabeen rushes to him and covers his face with kisses. He only stares at the ceiling, hardly responsive. “Pradeep! Pradeep…!”
“Yes.” The word is like a pebble dropped into a pond, cold and inert. His eyes remain distant.
Maahjabeen pulls back. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“No.” He says it in the same empty way. His eyes do not move from their point on the ceiling.
“What is it? What is it, Mahbub?” She encircles him in her arms, pressing his slack face against her. But when he doesn’t respond she holds him at arm’s length again. “Tell me. Is it the cold mud?”
“No.”
She frowns. He doesn’t struggle. He is awake, just merely not present. And he apparently only answers yes and no questions. “Is it something else?”
“No.” Wherever she moves his head it stays, same with his arms and body. They are all heavy and inanimate.
“It’s… nothing else?” Unlike all the atheists here, Maahjabeen knows it is the soul that animates the body. So when she heard that Wetchie-ghuy had claimed Pradeep’s, she’d taken it quite seriously. And now, this dispassion is what one would expect of a man whose soul has been taken. He is nothing now but a golem. “Nothing at all in there…?”
Maahjabeen grabs his hand and spreads both hers and his against his chest over his heart. He blinks. “Yes.”
“Oh, where is it, Lord? Where has he taken it?” Maahjabeen laces her fingers with Pradeep’s and kneels by his side, in prayer.
This is how Esquibel finds them a timeless interlude later. She puts the packages she carries down and crosses to the cot. “Eh, he is awake. I knew he just needed some rest and fluids. How are you, Pradeep? Eh?” Esquibel is surprised by the storm in Maahjabeen’s eyes. She had expected to find relief there. “What is wrong?”
“He can only answer yes and no questions!” After this inexplicable statement, Maahjabeen dissolves into tears.
Puzzled, Esquibel turns to Pradeep. “Nonsense. He is just tired. How are you feeling? Can you tell me your name?”
Pradeep looks dully ahead, into the middle distance.
Esquibel takes out her phone and shines its light into Pradeep’s eyes. He has no pupil reflex, none at all. No reaction to the light response test, the swinging flashlight test, nor the near response test. Both pupils remain unchanged, with a median pupillary aperture, despite any stimulus. She leans into his field of view, frowning. “Can you… can you see me?”
“Yes.”
Oh, she doesn’t like the sound of Pradeep’s voice at all. Cold as a corpse. Frowning, Esquibel finds his pulse. It is like… footsteps in sand. Not weak, just… contained, with no real resonance to it, like a machine is pumping his heart instead of contractile muscle. She passes a hand over his brow. “Can you tell me what the day of the week is?” Silence. Esquibel tells Maahjabeen lightly, “I’d have been surprised if he knew it. I’d have to check to know, myself.” Then back to Pradeep, “So can you tell me your name?”
He only stares ahead. She snaps his fingers beneath his nose. No reaction. She taps the sharp edge of her phone against the patellar tendon of his knee. No reflex response. “What in the world?”
“Pradeep,” Maahjabeen forces out his name from between sobs. “Tell us, Mahbub. Do you have a soul?”
He turns his hollow eyes to them. “No.”
An icy chill runs down Esquibel’s spine. Forcefully, she shakes her head in cynical rejection of it. “These god damn medicine men and their hallucinogens, I swear. But this one seems to be more of a dissociative, I would guess. Shutting down the perfectly good brains of my colleagues. Why don’t any of these dangerous substances come with antidotes?”
“Oh… They do.” Maahjabeen remembers Pradeep telling her of how she had been brought back by a foul-smelling concoction of rotten black leaves when she was suffering. “That girl. Jidadaa. She brought me those herbs. We need her to…”
But Esquibel is shaking her head. “No. No more drugs on top of drugs. And Jidadaa was already with Pradeep, anyway. She saw what had happened to him and she was the one who said he had a, what? A soul-ectomy? Some kind of metaphysical amputation? So she obviously can’t be of any more use.”
“Then this is a matter of faith.” Maahjabeen resumes her prayer.
But Esquibel interrupts it with a firm hand. “No, this is the time for modern medical interventions. I was too worried about contra-indications and unknown side-effects when you were both poisoned but with hindsight I don’t think being so tentative did anyone any favors. So this time I will respond more strongly. First, deactivated charcoal, and then perhaps some epinephrine.” She puts a hand on Pradeep’s arm. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Well that’s a relief. Maahjabeen, I need you to do your religious practice somewhere else. Here is where his monitor must go.”
“There is nothing medically wrong with him.”
“Oh, here we go again.” Esquibel rears back, hands on hips, about to deliver another lecture on the dangers of superstitious thinking, when she is caught by the torment in Maahjabeen’s face. It reminds her of the day workers she used to see in Kenya when she was a resident, the young women with hopeless eyes and faces worn twice their age from brutal lives in factories and workhouses. And that forces her to recall what originally made her become a doctor: to ease suffering. The world is filled with so much of it. Palliative care is the best one can do for the bleeding world.
With a sigh, Esquibel rearranges the clean room so the monitor can be placed on Pradeep’s other side. She drapes a blanket around Maahjabeen’s shoulders, pats her bowed head, and leaves the two lovers alone.
Ξ
“What if I grab your hand? What then?” Katrina reaches for the hand of the golden childs accompanying her. The youth pulls away and she is delighted by his meekness. It is one of the only really human responses she’s ever seen from them.
They sit in a narrow cleft of gray stone, a fissure running down into the next valley to the northwest of pine camp. Katrina needs to be alone today, as much as is safe, and at first the golden childs gave her the solitude she craved. But the knots in her mind became no less untangled. Finally, surrendering to the impossibility that she could find any solutions to her troubles, she’d set a bit of an ambush here for the golden childs following her. She needs to talk to someone about this.
“A ty govorish’ po russki?” The youth just hides quietly behind his bloody golden mask and doesn’t say a word. “Okay, can you speak any language besides Russian? And I know you can speak behind your mask. The golden man did. Zolotoy chelovek sdela.”
Katrina takes a deep breath, trying to clear her head. “Why does your chief speak Russian, though? They must come here often. But not to the south? Not to the beach? The Russians must have some other way to access the interior of the island? One the Yanks don’t know? Okay, but why? Listening post… Regional base… Look. Mr. Singlung He was my sponsor for the Singapore Conferences and he used to go on and on about maritime supremacy being the foundation of regional hegemons. But the Americans must have known the Russians were here. They must. Their own little Cold War, yeh? Right here in paradise, murdering each other in their sleep. God, the spooks always think they’re so fucking clever…”
She tosses a rock from her perch in the fissure down the slope into the bushes below. A cluster of dark birds wing away.
“Multi-polar. A multi-polar island, with at least four axes. The way I see it you got your Americans here…” Katrina places a jagged piece of quartz in the dust at her feet. “Your Russians. Your Lisicans, who can be further divided into the competing villages and shamans with all their different agendas…” Then she picks up a small flat stone. “And the Japanese.”
Katrina watches the golden childs to see if the word triggers any reaction. But the pollen-laden mask remains impassive.
“I said what I said. She told me last night it was the Japanese. I told her that I hope they like show tunes because that’s all I put on the USB stick she gave them. She said I didn’t understand.” Katrina pushes herself again to her feet. “Thought she was going to kill me then. Wouldn’t take her hand from her gun. So I didn’t push it. But Christ how many players are there at this table? We thought Lisica was all remote and empty but now we can hardly spend a day without finding a whole new nationality has arrived. What, do you get the Hawaiians here too?”
Katrina entertains herself with images of barechested Polynesians paddling longboats through the waves at the mouth of the lagoon.
She sighs, studying the youth. “You’re a good bloke. Don’t talk too much. I like that in a man. But the big problem is what am I going to do? Should I tell Alonso? Mandy? I mean, yeh, I definitely will. I don’t hold any allegiances to Esquibel. Kind of a bitch, to be honest. But I don’t need to like ruin her life with one ill-considered confession to the wrong people at the wrong time…”
Katrina reflects on how it had ended last night in the dark. They had been so close, whispering urgently in each other’s ears, gripping each other. Full darkness. The only sensations were Esquibel’s stale exhalations against her cheek and her strong hand encircling Katrina’s arm. She had just finished a breathless tale of subterfuge, insisting that selling the Plexity secrets to the Japanese had been an order from her superiors. She shared how it had all started six months before, when a very nice elderly Japanese naval officer had made an initial contact with Esquibel at a medical conference in Jakarta. He’d made an offer so oblique she didn’t even understand what he was asking until she’d had time to consider it. But when she did she’d gone straight to the spooks at Langley and they’d ordered her to keep quiet and string the Japanese intelligence agency along. They told her the Plexity data wasn’t significant but sharing it would build trust. She was one of the good guys, she swore. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but Katrina had to understand that they must keep up appearances.
It occurs to Katrina now that Esquibel might have very well killed her and hidden the body in pursuit of her mission’s goals. Yet what stopped her most likely wasn’t decency but the presence of the golden childs, four of them crouched at the edge of camp. So instead she implored Katrina to forget what she’d seen and to keep her mouth shut. Otherwise there might be a real nasty mess when they got picked up in two weeks. If, say, at the Air Force debriefing, Katrina suddenly starts going on about a Japanese soldier in the night then all kinds of hell could break loose. Be discreet, Esquibel had begged her. I love you all and I am here to protect you, she’d finally confessed, emotion choking her voice. Then she’d stepped close, a leg sliding between Katrina’s to press up intimately against her, and kissed her. Then she’d repeated, “I do love you, Katrina,” which put her in a state of wordless shock, before Esquibel had disengaged and slipped off into the cold dark night.
Katrina hadn’t slept a wink since then.
She picks up the dark flat rock that signifies the Japanese. “Just… like… We got enough going on here, folks. Don’t come back and everything will be fine.” She tosses the rock into the bushes below.
This time, the rock hits an animal in the bushes and it squeals, a dreadful baritone rattle. The bushes shake with violence.
Now the golden childs beside Katrina stirs. He leaps forward and puts himself between the creature in the bushes and her. The animal storms out from under the branches, still outraged. A boar. It’s a huge boar, like the size of a moped. And not much slower. It charges up the slope toward them with dreadful speed.
“Climb. I’ll climb.” Katrina hears her own breathless words in her ear. They sound faint and weak and tardy. This monster and its ragged tusks are going to wreck them both. She hauls herself onto the fissure’s wall, trying to swing herself up and clear of the ground below. But she isn’t fast enough. The boar is beneath them now, tossing its head against the golden childs.
The youth leaps at the last instant, clear of the splintered tusks, and lands on the opposite wall of the fissure. He scrambles up before the boar can turn and charge again.
“There’s boars…” Katrina pants, over and over, “boars here on Lisica. There’s boars… on Lisica…” Finally she climbs to a safe perch and crouches there. The golden childs pulls himself up, nearly to the top edge of the cliff. “When were you ever going to tell me? Come on, then. Time for some pork on the barbie.”
Chapter 45 – The USB Stick
November 5, 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:
45 – The USB Drive
Persistent birdsong penetrates the dense canopy. What bird is that? Jay doesn’t recognize its calls. It switches from buzzing to chirping to long melodic lines of warbling. Is that all one bird? Fascinating. It must be a mimic, like a mockingbird.
Jay opens his eyes. It is evening. The rain has stopped and their little hollow no longer drips maddeningly at arrhythmic intervals. Pradeep still sleeps beside him, their legs entangled for warmth.
“In my experience…” Jay mutters, his voice thick, “mockingbirds don’t sing at night. Just in the morning.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep’s voice is muffled. His face is tucked down, toward the pit of the hollow where redwood roots gather. He lifts his face. Jay is surprised to see how worn he looks, like he’s gained decades in the last couple days. Jay must look the same.
“Bird. Crazy song.” Jay pulls himself free. It’s too cold to lie here any longer. “We got to get moving, bro-him.”
“My legs. They really don’t want to.”
“Freeze our asses if we stay. Come on, Prad. Be the change you want to see…” Jay stands and grabs Pradeep’s upper arm, “…in the world!” And he hauls his groaning friend to his feet.
“Wow. I hate you for doing that.”
“Got to climb. Remember the plan? That’ll warm us up.”
“Perhaps I am not as cold as you. I could have stayed in that hole for another couple hours with no complaints.”
“Yeah, I’m freezing.” Now that he’s standing, Jay can see that it isn’t evening yet. The canopy just blocks most of the light. It is late afternoon and a golden glow suffuses the blue sky.
“Well we could just switch positions. I am still utterly exhausted.”
“We should hit this hill while we still got a little light.”
“It is true I don’t want to wait until morning. And now my phone is dead. No more flashlight.”
“Yeah mine too.”
“Fine then. Lead on. But don’t stop anywhere too long. Or I will pass out on my feet.”
“No doubt.” Jay surveys their surroundings, the pain of his many injuries making him feel like a badly-stitched-together golem. The sun is just setting over the far ridge, the meadow in shadow below with its low grassy hillocks, the very spot where they learned that they had dropped all the way into the wrong valley. Yep. There it is right there where his heart broke in fucking half. Good times. Anyway… After their tragic discovery they’d climbed up this way in a kind of daze, just to get away from it, and then they’d crapped out at the base of this tree. Said they’d just get a minute of shut-eye. That was like… six hours ago? Seven?
“The shadows…” Pradeep points at the nearby trees that are still lit by the setting sun. “From the shadows the sun is setting there,” he points at the slope across the meadow and then tracks a fair bit further south toward the equator. “We’re at like fortieth parallel so we’ve got to adjust the compass like so, and I’d say true west is about there. Hooray for one brief moment of sunshine.”
“Yeah, good call. That’s west. So north, east, south.” Jay rotates, pointing at each in turn. “Yeah. So I’m thinking that western ridge is the rim of the island. That west coast we’ve never seen.”
“Except Maahjabeen. In the first storm.”
“Right. But that’s like exactly the wrong way. We got to get back to our beach and our bunker and our… babes?”
“No. You will never call her a babe. She will tear your head right off. Yes, if the island is a clock, then the lagoon is at like 5:30 and we are currently at sort of… 7:30 or 8 on the dial?”
“Got to be. Which isn’t that far at all as crows fly. But you know it’s gonna be a fucking maze between here and there.”
“It always has been. You know, next time I take a posting on an island, I will make sure it is a flat sandbar. With one palm tree.”
“And a killer break. Come on, Prad. We’ll know more if we get up top here. We can chase the sun.”
“How… mythological.” Pradeep falls in line behind the limping, gasping Jay, who attacks the hillside with little forethought. “Wait. Wait. We can’t just charge this slope, Jay. We have to follow some contour lines. Bring us northeast for a bit first. Switchbacks.”
“Right on. Yeah. Get up top wherever. From the main ridge. We can get anywhere. On the island. In no time at all.”
“Yes. But climb. Out of the valleys. They are killing us.”
Then they speak no more, their energy turned to their poor feet and legs. Pradeep’s shins are covered in bruises. His climbing muscles scream with stiffness. But as he slowly warms up it all turns into a barely-tolerable throbbing ache and somehow he generates more mental fortitude from endocrine releases and conductive salts in cell walls and he keeps up with the mad Californian above.
Jay pivots them on the slope, making a switchback that heads more properly east-by-southeast where they need to go. Contours are only helpful if they actually take you to your destination. Sometimes you got to just take a mountain on its own terms.
For an hour they climb, passing out of the redwoods and through a stand of madrones and rhododendrons, then oak and sorrel, and finally grasslands near the spine of the ridge, which is marked by jagged lines of dark brown rock. They achieve the summit while the setting sun is just visible hanging over the western horizon, now distant and dim and pink, bisected by a pair of thin clouds. The wind whips them up here, bringing the marine chill. Vast and immaculately empty, the ocean surrounds them.
Now Jay looks down to regard the island. They are indeed on a ridgeline that connects with a larger main ridge up behind them, perhaps another eight hundred meters higher. Wow. This island’s got some walls on it for sure. But if they manage to stay on the ridges then they can skip all the ups and downs and meandering mazes. “Yes. Here’s our shortcut, yo.”
Pradeep frowns at the higher ridge. “Due north? That far? May I remind you that we’re trying to go southeast?”
“Yeah but once you get up top it runs east-west. We get on that ridge and head east, then when we get to the right valley, we follow that like sub-ridge down and boom, we’re home by supper.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“Man, I’m glad we agree about all this. Imagine if we were like fighting all the time. I’ve been in that situation before when—”
“Or if like one of us was high on acid.”
“Yeah yeah. That wasn’t my finest hour.” Jay picks his way along the spine of rocks, the slope they just climbed falling away before them. The ridge is broader than he expected and he doesn’t even see the far slope yet or into what it must descend. “Oh, no way!”
“What is it?” Pradeep steps past the outcrop Jay just vanished around and joins him in delight at the sight of a tiny waterfall, surrounded by lilies and ferns, splashing strongly from the recent rains. “Wow. That must be one full water table to get a waterfall going this strong this far up the slope. And I bet it’s quite clean.” Pradeep leans in and cups his hand under it. He lifts the cold water to his mouth and slurps. “Delicious.”
“Fuck yeah it is.” Jay is on all fours at the edge of the little pool below, drinking directly from it like a dog. “Best water ever.”
Movement. Pradeep cringes, his primal instincts unleashing anxiety that disperses the peace of this moment like a knife through smoke. He squawks, turning back the way they came, to confront one of the golden childs sneaking around the outcrop after them. “Oh. It’s just you. One of you.”
“What the…?” Jay rolls over, blinking at the silhouette of the golden childs against the bright sky. “Hey, what’s up, dude?”
“How long have you been following us?” The masked figure stops and drops their arms. The youth was obviously surprised to find his quarry here, but he shows no reaction to being caught out.
“Oh, that’s just swell. Do you think he started with us from the beginning? Like he secretly followed us through the tunnels and everything? Dude, you could have helped out sooo much, so many times. Do you even know we’re completely fucking lost and we’re just trying to get back? I mean, just show us the way. Which way…?What are some of their names? Uh, Lisica. Morska Vidra.”
“Yes. Let’s get some directions. Jidadaa. Wetchie-ghuy.” Pradeep points where Jay is pointing. “That way?”
The youth only watches them through his golden mask, their inscrutable bodyguard.
“Right.” Now Pradeep feels the urge to lead. “Let’s head out then.” He tries one last attempt at communication, pointing out their route. “We’re climbing the north ridgeline up there then heading west, and finally southeast. Back home, eh?”
But the youth hurries past them and turns to bar their way. He holds up his hands as if to block them.
“Oh, no way. You won’t let us climb that ridge? Why not?” In frustration Jay scrubs water into his hair and steps away from the pool. “ Come on, G money. We got to go that way. Got to.”
“Closed to foreigners?” Pradeep crosses the width of the spine to study the new valley that is revealed to the east and the main ridge overlooking it all. From this angle he can see a bit more of the ridge’s profile. Is that a thin filament of smoke he sees behind its central peak? “Aha. Look, Jay.”
“What? Where. A bird?”
“Smoke. I think.”
“Do not see it.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I do. Just the briefest… Well, anyway, do you think that’s what our masked protector here is doing? Keeping us from crossing paths with whoever is up there?”
“I mean, their entire job is to protect us from Wetchie-ghuy and Sherman the shaman as far as I know. So… yeah.”
“I guess we aren’t taking the north ridge.”
Jay can’t stand the sight of the winding valley at the base of their ridge to the east. Its cleft is hidden in darkness. “Bro, if we drop into whatever canyon that is down there I guarantee you we won’t get out of it before nightfall.”
“Well, contours. Maybe we don’t need to stay up on the ridge. But maybe we don’t need to drop all the way down into the creeks. Maybe this golden childs will let us advance the way we want if we just drop a hundred meters or so below the top and get back in the trees. We can still follow the ridge, just in a more hidden way.”
“I don’t know.” The complaint sounds querulous to Jay’s own ears. “That’s a shit ton more climbing. But yeah. Not like they’re giving us a choice.” So much for being home by dinner. “Well. It is what it is. Lead on.”
Ξ
“You know what I’m thinking?” Amy asks Triquet, who builds a platform beside her in their new camp. Amy has already finished her own platform and tent and worries there is still so much to be done in the waning hours of this day.
“Uhh. Tea. Got to be something about tea. Like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong? None for me, thanks.”
“No.” Amy straightens, peering at the patchy sky. “Laundry.”
From the far side of the camp, Mandy calls out, “Oh my god, yes! I’ve got a whole load!”
“Where? Like in the river?” Triquet frowns at it, the impassable natural barrier with its fast-moving dark currents dividing this side of the island from the other. “I don’t think the Lisicans would like that. Don’t want anyone hucking a spear at my head.”
“No, I was thinking we could just climb up its bank here until we found a little tributary. So many streams are running right now. Don’t have to get anywhere near the main river. Just a tiny dab of biodegradable soap and some elbow grease and we might even get them to line dry before it gets too dark.”
“I wish,” Miriam sighs, erecting the tent on a new platform, “that we could wash our sleeping bags. They are so foul. But there’s no way they’ll ever dry out here and then what do we do at night?”
“I have thought that again and again.” Esquibel emerges from within her clean room. “I dream of turning my sleeping bag inside out and strip-cleaning its fabrics with alcohol.”
“Okay, crew.” Amy empties her big expedition backpack into her tent, returning the articles of dirty clothing and accessories she should wash back into it. “You guys keep working. I’ll be the washing machine and dryer. Put your things in there with any special instructions. I can’t promise perfection, but…”
“Oh, you’re the best. Thank you so much. I think the weather might even hold all night.” Mandy appears with a small handful of things, followed by Triquet and Miriam and Esquibel. Amy’s pack is quickly full. She’s glad the others aren’t here to take her up on the offer. Laundry by hand takes forever. With any more to wash, Amy wouldn’t get back until midnight.
“You sure… you’re okay going alone?” Triquet has returned to building their platform.
“Who says I’ll be alone?” Amy nods at the golden childs who stand deeper in the woods above. Five of them had re-appeared once the villagers had left, watching over the new camp from a distance. And as Amy hauls the pack onto her back and buckles the waistbelt, one of the crouching masked youths rises to follow her.
She aims for the north edge of the meadow, where it gives way to trees. The black rushing river to her right is even more swollen than before. There is a point on its bank where the meadow ends and the pines begin. Amy pauses here for a bit. Such a delicious spot for a wildlife biologist, the intersection of three biomes in one place—forest, meadow, and water. Insect and fungal life probably exists in this ten square meters that exists nowhere else. If she has time, she will certainly collect every sample she can. Why, it’s like Plexity in miniature. “No. Actually…” Amy stands, reasoning aloud. “It’s the opposite of Plexity, which is a closed system. This transition zone has no boundaries at all. Its openness is its main characteristic. Huh.” Keeping the river to her right, she climbs up the north slope, a suddenly difficult outcrop of soil and brown pine needles sliding under her boots. The river begins to gargle beside her, dropping from the hills she’s climbing to the flat of the meadow behind. Maybe up this way she’ll find more falls.
The golden childs hovers behind her like a concerned parent, waiting patiently for her to navigate this crumbling obstacle. Amy reaches for the base of a sapling and hauls herself upward. Finally, the top. A bank of budding Osmaronia cerasiformis greets her on this bluff, while the river is now hidden in a cut that is a good five meters below, making all kinds of noise.
Amy pushes her way through the dense woody branches and wins through to a cloistered glade of clover and vetch, coated in rain. No more than a dozen paces wide, it is like a little chapel of light and life. The scene is so idyllic and pure that she doesn’t want to disturb it. Perhaps she should be like those Shinto monks who apologize to each creature they crush before taking a step.
The little glade bespells her. Unlike the transition zone below, this remote notch is far removed from the rhythms of the world. Purple blossoms and green leaves glow in the light of the setting sun. A pair of green-tailed towhees flicker in the branches of the pines above. Quiet and peace reign here. If she wasn’t the product of a modern education she would swear the glade is sentient.
During Amy’s childhood, Shinto had been a kind of strict folklore tradition she’d learned to hate. The rites and details of the rituals had seemed to always obscure the life it was supposedly praising. In Shinto, Japan has a mythological dimension, with gods and demons and fairies hiding in glens like this one. But Shinto is immutably Japanese, so there can be no such thing as a Lisican version of Shinto. It must just be its own magic here, its own unique power connected to place with its own secret name.
Amy has been pursuing this elusive nature of nature her entire life. Back in the 80s she had really gotten into complexity theory and for an entire generation the concept of emergent behavior was her specialty. Once complex systems reach a critical mass then new harmonics emerge, new behaviors and effects that are not always predictable based on the inputs, like steam from a kettle or human consciousness itself. Has that happened here in this glade? Has it… embodied somehow the essence of its nature? Does it have a giggling sylph or dryad hiding in the pines?
This elusive emergent property is the phenomenon of life itself, a rare miracle in the universe, firmly affixed to this tiny green and blue rock hurtling through the void. The study of emergence is the end result of the connections Plexity is trying to make. This is the evanescent heart of the matter here. Each scoop of dirt and rock that took billions of years to become soil and life has made unique interactions manifest in higher orders such as birds sipping nectar from beckoning flowers. And their song is its secret name…
Dark eyes stare back at Amy from within the stand of sword ferns across the glade. Wide and staring, round and beady… The inexact descriptors echo through her mind as she goes still. Yellow. Shiny. Quite certainly inhuman, perhaps canine? Oh, it’s a fox. Is that Morska Vidra’s fox? No… This one has a reddish lip and a narrow snout. The ears are different too, now that she can see them.
The little silver fox slowly waddles out from under the fern boughs onto the clover. Its belly is swollen and at first Amy thinks it’s diseased. Then she realizes she’s looking at a vixen, a female, and that she’s very pregnant.
This is wildly unheard of behavior. Foxes expecting litters like this will generally withdraw and be impossible to find. For one to seek her out is… preposterous. But then again, why do animals hide themselves to give birth? To protect against predators. If there are no predators of foxes on Lisica, then she can build a nest wherever she pleases. Astounding. But this one needs something from her? The pregnancy isn’t going well? Some veterinary surgery will be required out here in the middle of nowhere with no proper tools?
The vixen looks gravely at Amy with her yellow eyes. Then she turns and heads to the edge of the glade away from the creek, uphill. She pauses before she disappears once again into the ferns.
“You’re asking me…? Oh. You want me to come with you. Uh. Yeah. Hold on. I’ll just leave the bag here for a sec.”
Amy unbuckles the expedition backpack, trying to think if there’s anything she can use as rags if she finds herself attending a birth here. She snags a pair of someone’s socks from the top of it before closing it back up and resting it beside the bole of an old stump. There will be some crawling ahead, of that she is sure. Good thing her phone is fully charged if she needs light.
Ducking into the bushes, Amy disappears from view. After a long moment the fronds of the ferns stop shaking and return to stillness. Lavender butterflies flit across the opening. The towhees begin to sing again.
A moment later, the golden childs appears, looking for her. They find the backpack filled with dirty clothes and nothing else.
Ξ
Miriam finds Alonso in the meadow, studying the far hills. He has just enraged Maahjabeen again, who is stomping away from him back through the grass to what they’ve started calling pine camp.
Maahjabeen’s face is dark and her eyes are full of fire. She scowls at Miriam as she passes her. “Your husband can be so mean. He doesn’t have to be so mean.”
“Mean? Alonso?” Miriam blinks at her, but Maahjabeen doesn’t stop to hear her answer. She is too angry. “My Alonso? Never.”
Miriam joins her husband in the meadow. “You’re standing.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Alonso is preoccupied, though. Fighting with Maahjabeen always leaves such a bad taste in his mouth.
“What did you do to her this time?”
“Told her to stop making preparations to live in the sea cave and help us find missing people first and make this camp here.”
“You monster.”
“And I didn’t tell her she couldn’t do it. Oh, no. She would have killed me for that. I just told her to stop making it her top priority, especially when she will need help. We have no time to spare Amy or whoever for a dangerous kayak adventure. Not now.”
“She said living inland makes her crazy. I guess this is what she meant.” Miriam studies Alonso. Despite his current displeasure he is standing straight again and his shoulders have settled. This is how she always knew him before, but these last six weeks have been life with a fat old man hunched over his pain. Now he is starting to regain himself. Miriam never thought he might recover quite so quickly. “How’s the… what is it? Peanut butter and banana leaves treatment? How’s the wrap?”
“Not banana. Amy said maybe lily. It feels very odd. Warm, like warmer than it should, all the way inside. There is definitely an active compound or two in the Mayor’s treatment. I just hope there aren’t any serious side effects.”
“How long are you meant to leave it on?”
“I have no idea.”
They both laugh, a careworn sound. With a sigh, Alonso pulls Miriam close and they lean against each other, foreheads touching. The sky is filling once again with clouds, about to obscure the evening star. When it vanishes behind the rolling bank of gray the air begins to chill and they turn back, arm-in-arm, to camp.
There they find more arguing. Mandy storms from the clean room carrying her own bag. “She’s too much! I can’t take it any more. I’ll just—”
“You don’t have to like break up with me,” Esquibel exits as well, standing in the slit door entrance holding a white hand towel, “just because I asked you to move a few things that—”
“You’re hounding me! You’re always hounding me!” Mandy finds her own platform and drops her things on it. Now she’ll need to put up her own tent. At least maybe she can do it in peace.
“Well pardon me for being a doctor in a medical clinic!” Holding her hands up, Esquibel makes a visible effort to rein in her temper. “Perhaps I could have said it more nicely, and for that I am sorry, dearest Mandy, but please don’t make me apologize out here in front of everybody. It isn’t…”
“I’m not making you do a single thing. Ever notice that?” Mandy doesn’t know where this monumental irritation has come from. But she just can’t take the constant badgering and criticism any more. She needs her own space.
“You are…” Esquibel lifts a helpless hand and lets it drop, “…a wonderful partner. It is true. I am sorry.”
“Oh, Mandy loves you. It’s just, I think what she’s trying to say is that sometimes you…” Katrina offers in a helpful voice.
But Esquibel blazes once more. “Oh, don’t you dare put yourself in the middle of this. Not you.”
Katrina retreats, stung, the light of innocence dying in her eyes.
Miriam calls out, “Ladies, ladies. Please don’t let your frustration and exhaustion turn things sour. It’s just been a long few days. We’re frightened and at the ends of our ropes. That’s all. Things will be better after a nice hot dinner and full night’s rest.”
“Right. I can’t build my tent.” Mandy drops its aluminum poles with a clatter and stands, still quivering with indignation. “I have to cook dinner. Amy can’t. Jay isn’t even fucking here. It’s all on me. God! How did I end up with so much still to do?”
“I’ll put up your tent, sweetie,” Triquet offers. “I’d help you in the kitchen too but I’m not…”
“I can help in the kitchen.” Alonso moves toward it. He is not without pain and stiffness, but it is not corroding him. There is no timer on him standing up anymore. Now he has stamina. “Where is Amy, anyway?”
“Doing laundry.”
“Ohh… I have a few things… Where is she?”
Miriam points upstream. It is getting dark now and the slope is obscured in shadow. “Somewhere up there.”
“Well. Then I will wait until morning. Coming, Mandy. I will be your prep cook and dishwasher.”
Ξ
“So, this time we are neighbors, eh?” Flavia finally finishes putting her platform together, wrapping twine around the sawn pine branches and testing it with her feet. She smiles at Triquet. “Perhaps that means I can borrow some of your fabulous clothes.”
“Whenever you want, girlfriend.”
They work side-by-side for a long while in companionable silence. Triquet reaches for something more to say. Flavia is pretty much the only one Triquet hasn’t established a deeper relationship with and all they know of her is that she’s an Italian nerd who spends the whole day on her laptop. “You know, I have a cousin who’s a research math professor. Smart as a whip.”
Flavia isn’t too excited by this awkward small talk but she does appreciate the effort. “Oh? What does she study?”
“Uh. Mainly insurance? She wrote a book called ‘The Hidden History of Deductibles.’ Fascinating stuff, I’m sure.”
“Well, it can be. There is good work being done characterizing human behavior using maths. When done properly, it is actually kind of scary. We really aren’t that much more complex than a paramecium, if you get right down to it. People can be reduced to a few simple equations and interactions no problem. ”
But for a humanist such as Triquet this is a bit much. “We can? Just a few? I always thought I was a bit more… I don’t know, mystifying than that. I mean, in my case, I got a little coy with my internal motivations years ago when everyone tried to convince me that my choices don’t make sense.”
“Oh, they do. You are just… Triquet my friend you are outside the frame of reference. I would say most researchers are running maths simulations that you do not properly fit into. But the problem is not with the maths, it’s with their definitions.”
Triquet makes a face. This reductionism doesn’t sit right with them. As an archaeologist, the historical record of humanity is a rich and bewildering tapestry of unique characters and actions that can never be so neatly encapsulated. “So you’re telling me that all my behavior is… computable? That the reason I built a platform here as opposed to against another tree—say, that one—is just a basic function of mathematics?”
Flavia shrugs and pushes her hair from her face, taking a break from erecting her tent. “I mean, sure. Don’t you see? There are a finite number of factors that caused you to choose that tree. Each factor has values that can be assigned and those values…”
“But what if some of those factors remain hidden? Maybe I don’t quite know why I chose this tree. Maybe my father was killed by an oak tree and I’ve like subconsciously avoided them for years.”
“Your knowledge of the factors that shape your decision are not necessary for computation to occur. The calculations still happen independently of your self-regard.” She suppresses a sigh. To Flavia, this ontological perspective is painfully self-evident and at this point in her life, automatic. But she has also had enough of these conversations to know how unpopular they are. “Look. A lot of people thinks this means we must live in a horrible clockwork universe without free will, but I am not saying that. I am just saying these maths are the tools we use to make our way in the world. But there is no destined solution these tools are leading you toward. They are just another way we make decisions and express them.”
Triquet shrugs agreeably. “Okay. Then let’s say we’re able to identify all these factors that make me choose this particular pine tree to build my platform around. It makes sense, your numbers all add up, and the results are clear. But what if, at the last moment, I decide to randomly choose another tree. What if I stop what I’m doing for no reason at all, and just build a platform around this little sapling instead? Then what?”
Flavia narrows her eyes and expels her breath through her nose, trying not to groan aloud in exasperation. Why must maths be so hard for people to understand? “It is still a rational expression. Even if it is randomly generated. Especially if it is. If you roll the dice for your decision, that is very simple arithmetic. We generate random values all the time in my field.”
“But it isn’t rolling dice, it’s…” Triquet puts their hand to their heart, trying to find words for the chaotic welter of emotions and desires that flow through them. “My heart isn’t made of numbers. It’s made of feelings, many of them contradictory, yeah? I’m afraid that all you…” Ah, but how to mention ‘computer nerds’ without hurting her feelings? “It’s just that life isn’t as neat as you want it to be. Look at the golden childs. Why are they protecting us? Some kind of prophecy? Why do they believe in the prophecy? Faith, I guess. But how do you measure faith? How do you turn it into a quadratic equation or whatever? Don’t you feel like you’d miss out on essential elements of the whole thing?”
Flavia shakes her head no. “Quadratic equations are not the best tool for these jobs because they are univariate. No. Listen. This is a linguistic thing I know. The ‘es’ in ‘essential’ is one of the oldest roots in Indo-European languages, from thousands of years before the Latin ‘essentialis.’ It means ‘to be.’ So our essence is that which makes us be. Not how we imagine ourselves in a different universe based on magical thinking, not how we wish to be, but how we are in this physical world. The physical world can only be described by physics, which means maths, so…” she shrugs, “I do not know what to tell you except this is starting to sound like the arguments I have with Maahjabeen about god.”
“No, I’m not like a religious…” Triquet objects, then falls silent, realizing that the subjectivity they are championing will eventually lead to that spiritual conclusion. Religion. Myth. Magic. Triquet’s always given a kind of formal academic honor to those concepts, making sure that they are properly respectful of the cultures they study without needing to make a final decision about whether those myths and religions are actually provably true. But if it came down to it, does Triquet actually believe in any of the the ritual traditions their subjects practice? When the Yanomami of Brazil eat their hallucinogenic Yopo plants do they really gain access to hekura spirits that rule the physical world? When orphans in Crimea have nightmares about Baba Yaga does the old crone actually manifest or is it just their imagination? And what about those beliefs that conflict, such as when sects of Christianity turn on each other like in, oh, The Hundred Years War? Are both of their interpretations of the Bible true? Neither? Can two contradictory things be true at the same time? Can things be true only on the local or individual level? Perhaps acts of faith are the opposite of universal, especially in this age of tribalism. “I have always…” Triquet gathers their thoughts, sitting on the end of their platform struggling to put their unstated policy into words. “I guess the way I try to think about it is that we are each of us different kinds of magicians.”
“What? No.”
“Yes! Haven’t you ever thought of things this way? I had Dia, an old great-aunt who swore she had dreams that could tell the future. Did you have anybody in your family like that growing up?”
“Of course. In Italy, anyone over the age of sixty has some kind of supernatural power.”
“Right. And our first reaction to Dia’s dreams would always be disbelief. Cynicism. My parents would argue with her about her crackpot soothsaying dreams and astrology readings long after dinner was over. And at first I was on my parents’ side.”
“Only at first? Then what?”
“Then it occurred to me one day that maybe universal laws just aren’t so universal. I know that my dreams can’t tell the future. But can I really authoritatively assert that nobody’s dreams can tell the future? Maybe that’s just the kind of magic that Dia can practice. My magic is, like, in my costumes. I can turn an entire party on its head by showing up dressed as Cher. And I don’t mean that it’s the sequins and lipstick. It’s that I cast a spell, honey, and people fall under that spell and it really works. What’s your magic?”
“My magic? Eh.” Flavia tries to forcibly shift her perspective for the sake of this conversation. “Alonso with his big Cuban family magic. Katrina with her DJ magic. I mean, aren’t those just other words for wine and drugs?”
“You know there’s more to it than that.”
“Is there? I am Flavia. I have no magic. Full stop. I am entirely a creature made of numbers. Is that magical to you? Because to me it is not. It is just like graduate-level seminar statistics. These things you are talking about are mathematical probabilities, not voodoo.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that, in my humble estimation, I can’t be certain of the empirical universality of anything. Sure, every star we’ve discovered so far fuses hydrogen into heavier elements. But does that mean all stars will, everywhere, forever? I can’t know that, so I have to stay humble and not get tempted by calling things absolutes. Ultimately my subjectivity trumps all. I mean, I can’t be a religious worshipper because I have no faith. But for those who do, maybe their universe is truly so different that I honestly can’t speak to whether they are actually talking to their god or not. I just don’t have that talent. But I do have other talents. You have your numbers, but that doesn’t preclude Maahjabeen’s access to Allah or whatever. That’s just her own inimitable talent. The Lisicans. They live in such a different reality we can’t just slap our Western number system, our analytics, on them and say we get it. We’ve been trying to understand their life and culture for six fucking weeks and gotten no closer.”
“Maybe they have their own maths.”
This stops both of them, the notion that all Lisican behavior might be described by an indigenous mathematical structure that is separate and unique from the numerical traditions they know.
Triquet rubs their chin, mind sparking with half-formed insights. “Well there’s another career’s worth of study right there. No, it’s just that I’ve always given space to people and their traditions. Respecting them allows us to see more of the humanity in our subjects. In other words, post-colonial guilt, and lots of it. See, to me, the very definition of humanity is something that transcends math and science. This is why in every one of our cultures we talk of spirit and soul. There is something else to it, in ways that we all interpret in our own unique subjective ways. I mean, we had some pretty wise ancestors and they tried to teach us things, yeah? So like celebrate diversity, sister. We are all of us, all eight billion humans, individuals with unique patterns and points of view.”
Flavia laughs. “Or, as your aunt the insurance researcher has proven, we are no more than five major personality types with billions of us fundamentally identical. Not that there is anything wrong with that… That is how biological agents interact with environments to create what look like unique phenomena, but are really just the same base integers in different combinations, and our own ability to remember these patterns or even correctly identify them is very bad because really we are still just a bunch of apes.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.” Triquet scratches their ribs in caricature of a primate. “Oo oo. Aah aah.”
Ξ
In the middle of the night her eyes open, belatedly realizing Amy never came back from doing laundry. Is that true? She’s pretty sure it is. Casting off her sleeping bag with a silent curse, she slips from her tent with her phone in hand. She pads over to Amy’s tent and shines its light within. Yep, still empty.
But someone is awake. Through the trees she can see their dim silhouette out on the meadow, standing tall and silent in the gloom. Stepping closer, she turns the light off and peers through the obscuring branches to see if it is who she fears it might be.
Clouds stripe the sky, their edges lit by an intermittent moon. Shadows roll across the meadow. When they retreat the figure is gone. No… Just crouching, closer to the trees now. And someone else is with them, a small dark figure dressed all in black.
She eases forward to see what they’re doing. Their heads lean together for a long moment and then the second figure rises to a crouch and scurries away. But this is no native, and definitely no one in her crew. They move like some lethal video game character, like an assassin or a spy. After a moment they are swallowed by the shadows. The second figure stands, tall and dark.
Esquibel.
Wrapping her black coat around herself, Esquibel steps quietly back into camp. She wishes for nothing more than a long hot shower to wash all this grime away. But she will not have one of those for two more weeks. She must stay filthy until then.
Stepping from the quiet grasses of the meadow to the dry twigs and needles of the pine forest requires all her care. She takes it extremely slowly, lifting and dropping each foot in slow motion. The camp is ahead, cloaked in darkness. If she can just get back to her cot in the clean room she will know she is home free.
It had taken so much nattering of Mandy to get her to leave her side tonight the pangs of guilt poke at her, again and again. Well. She is doing all this for Mandy and the others. Someday they will hear of her sacrifices and maybe understand. And now that it is over she can go back to treating Mandy like the princess she is.
Resisting an impulse to cross the camp and join Mandy’s lovely sleeping form right now, Esquibel takes another careful step.
Wait. Someone is there, in the darkness, watching her. Esquibel is sure of it. She can’t see a figure but she knows deep in her bones they are there. She stops, like a fool, her hand straying to the back of her waistband, and stares at where their eyes must be.
“Identify yourself.” Esquibel’s whisper tries to sound forceful without waking anyone else up.
But whoever it is doesn’t speak or move. They only dwell in the center of the darkness. She can’t even see their eyes.
Esquibel hesitates. Is it one of the golden childs crouching in the bushes? Almost certainly. Or maybe one of those odious shamans who are causing so much trouble. “Go ahead. Just try to kidnap me,” she mutters. “Just try it.”
Still no movement. She can see nothing but the dark. It’s just a presence she can sense, an unbearable prickling a millimeter under her skin. Someone is there. Isn’t there?
Or is it just her imagination? Another dimension of her rampant guilt? No, there is no one there, surely. She took every precaution. These people are all dead tired. None of them are awake. And none of them crouch in the dark like this, like a panther… No. This is just her fear of being found out.
“It isn’t what you think,” she mutters, surprised at how much she needs to confess to this knot of darkness. “I am not doing this for myself, but for those I love. I am not a traitor.”
This is the one thing Esquibel told herself she could never do. Say the words aloud. As long as she keeps them within the confines of her own skull she is safe, never to be discovered. But she didn’t know how difficult that would be, how it would contort every one of her thoughts and actions to hide the little secret inside, like that one unknown dark sliver Pradeep found in the knot of seaweed. She is bloated by her secret and just needs the relief of the pressure. Just a bit, just by whispering her secret to a spot of darkness.
“The money is good but it’s not about that. We’re playing a very deep game here. A very necessary game with geopolitical interests. And besides, it’s just the Japanese. They’re harmless.”
The darkness absorbs the sentences. But a bitter judgment still somehow emanates from it. Esquibel can tell her words are insufficient. Espionage is espionage, no matter how you cut it. Ah, well. She feels no better for confessing. “What a bloody mess.”
Esquibel shakes her head and finally drops her hand from her waistband. She steps past the knot of darkness feeling wretched and misunderstood. Thoughts of her cold hard cot fill her head. Yes, oblivion is all she can hope for now.
And then, to her utter dreadful surprise, a whisper emerges from the darkness, a voice she knows. “Fucking hell. I knew you were up to something. Well, guess what. I switched the USB drive.”
DW Draffin -- Lisica 