Lisica Chapters

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Audio for this episode:

13 – My Secret Past

“You know, despite this current emergency,” Esquibel confides to Amy as they hurry toward the beach, trying to beat the setting sun, “I’m not nearly as unhappy here as I normally am.”

“Not nearly? Ha. That could be the travel slogan.” Amy climbs the fallen redwood trunk and drops down into the sand. “Come to Lisica! Be 84% less unhappy!”

Esquibel leaps gracefully from the trunk. “Careful here.” She kneels, peering at the churned up sand. “Can we see if any of them made tracks here…?”

Amy sighs. “Too many. All the endless comings and goings over the last few days. And who knows what shoes they’re all wearing. Triquet’s usually in those big boots but… Flavia is usually in like slip-ons? Maahjabeen could be barefoot for all I know. And maybe they aren’t even together.”

“Ehh. I think they must be. Otherwise all three of them chose today to independently disappear for six hours.”

“Unlikely, I agree. But maybe one thing set them off in different directions.” They follow the gentle slope down to the water, where weathered steps in the sand are now little more than shallow depressions. No footprints remain in the tideline. Either the water has washed them away or they were never there to begin with. “We just don’t know, Esquibel. So let’s not make assumptions without more data. Right now it’s just fairy tales.”

“Like how Katrina thinks the Chinese kidnapped them?”

Amy shrugs. “I mean, it does sound paranoid but it also sounds like she has some kind of background in spy stuff so who knows? We find the wreckage of a Chinese plane at the same time they go missing? Is that just coincidence or something more?”

A voice cries out to them from back the way they came. It is Miriam, who has climbed atop the fallen trunk to wave at them, calling out details that are carried away by the wind. So instead she just beckons them toward her.

They hurry back. When Amy and Esquibel get nearer Miriam yells, “They went into the sub!”

“Oh, thank god.” Amy grabs Miriam’s lowered hand and jumps up the log. “But I thought we checked the sub? Where were they?”

Esquibel leaps onto the log and scrambles up beside Miriam. “And are they okay?”

“No,” Miriam shakes her head. “I mean, we haven’t found them yet. We don’t know if they’re okay. They went all the way through and out the bottom underground somehow. There’s another hole in the sub that leads further down.”

“Another hole? Where? And they’re down there somewhere?” Amy begins to hurry. “Oh, Jesus.”

Esquibel takes off at a run toward the bunker, calling out over her shoulder, “I will get my supplies and meet you there!”

Amy follows Miriam into the bunker, then through the trap door and down the narrow steps into the sub. In the first wardroom they encounter Jay, who is slowly making his way along the deck with a bad limp. Amy slips her head under his shoulder and he gratefully uses her as a crutch. Esquibel appears, pushing past them.

“Thanks, boss. Hey. Wait. It’s the air. Miriam. Think about it.”

Miriam leads them in a hurry through the narrow hall to the control room. She waits for Jay impatiently in there, needing clarification. He skipped too many steps. “What do you mean?”

“Your tunnels! It’s got to be. They found a way in.”

“You think they’re in tunnels? Good heavens. There’s no way that’s safe. If it’s limestone channels formed by water they’re going to be wet and it will be slick and completely treacherous.”

Jay winces and grunts to drop himself belowdecks. Then he hurries through the three rooms down here to find Katrina and Pradeep crouched in the last one at a dark hole in the deck. His eyes are wide, fists clenched beneath his chin. She is beside him, clutching his arm, trying to keep his panic attack from spiraling.

“Good.” Pradeep springs up when he sees the newcomers and shakes off her grasp. “They are here. And I am certain you will not be needing me any more. Good,” he repeats, brushing past Amy and Jay and Miriam and fleeing the sub.

Katrina sighs and sits at the edge, dangling her feet into the void. “Poor bloke. Glad you’re here. We got a pretty puzzle.”

Amy and Jay cautiously approach. “What—what is it?” he asks.

“Don’t know yet.” Katrina shines her phone’s light through a rusted hole in the sub’s steel hull into a tunnel of raw earth. “Their footprints are definitely at the bottom. And they go off that way.”

Esquibel looks down at the ragged hole with a frown. “Has anyone else gone down there yet?”

“Nope. Where’s Mandy and Alonso?”

“They’re still searching the grove,” Miriam says. “Or Mandy is. Alonso is home base.”

“I can’t believe anyone got Flavia down there.” Katrina prepares herself to descend. “Well. If she can go I can go. Who’s with me?”

“Me.” Jay shuffles forward.

“Stop, stop.” Esquibel pulls Katrina away. She puts her other hand on Jay’s chest. “Have you lost your minds? We aren’t just jumping in after them. They have been gone too long. They are lost or maybe dead. Think clearly.”

“It’s just there’s steps worn into the side here.” Katrina shines her light against the tunnel wall directly beneath her. “Can’t be any harm in dropping down to the mud on the bottom, taking a peek around the curve, see if there’s anything to see.”

“First we will discuss this.” Esquibel does not let go of the two young adventurers.

Amy tugs on Jay’s sleeve. “Amen. Hold up, Jay. Let’s make sure we do this right. Get everything we need. Let’s get a list going. Ropes and water and lights. How many of us are going?”

“Three sounds good.” Jay eases back. He tries not to sound too eager. They aren’t convinced yet. “Cool deal. Good plan all around. And Katrina’s got a nice little scouting idea there.”

“You are certainly not going down there,” Esquibel tells Jay. “Not if your ankle will ever properly heal. Alonso cannot. Mandy will fall and break something, I swear. And I shouldn’t. It is Navy doctrine not to risk the doctor.”

“Well, this is my field of expertise.” Miriam steps forward and peers into the hole. “Wow, was this dug by hand? Look at the marks on the walls.” Grooves and rough planes score the earth. She steps back. “Okay. Let’s pull back to the surface and really plan this out. Time is of the essence but we need to hear from Alonso on this. He may know something. We’ll approach it as a virgin caving expedition. So I’ll lead and we’ll be daisy-chained together with rope. I’ll take Amy. I’d like a third but I need someone with caving experience.”

Katrina says, “Well, I’ve just fooled around in some sea caves. Gone on a couple tours. But I don’t get claustrophobic.”

“Okay. That’s definitely a big part of it. We’ll see. ”

Ξ

An hour later, Miriam has returned to the hand-carved tunnel. Now she wears a helmet with a headlamp. A field pack with a short-handled pick and an extra satchel filled with water bottles slung across a shoulder completes her loadout. Her climbing harness is strapped into Katrina’s six meters behind her, whose rope harness is improvised but solid. Amy, in Miriam’s second harness and helmet, has another six meters of rope at the rear. Behind her the other hundred meters waits coiled, its end tied off.

Miriam will do all the real work. The other two will just be there to help remove injured team members or brace a line when she needs to climb or descend.

Jay, sulking, watches them go. “I could totally do those steps. I’m your caving third. I’ve got like a thousand hours underground.”

“Don’t make them take care of your fragile male ego right now.” Esquibel pats Jay on the shoulder. “They’re busy. Now it’s a hundred-fifty meters of rope. You go to the end, you come back. You never go off-rope. Right?”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Miriam salutes.

“Lieutenant Commander, please. And if anyone needs any medical attention, do not move them unless absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Amy waves, cheery. “I mean, Commander. And two yanks means pull us back up!”

“Is that a thing?” Jay asks as Miriam starts to descend, careful not to let the rusted metal edges anywhere close to her limbs. “Cause that sounds like it should totally be a thing we should do.”

“Yes. Sure. Agreed.” Miriam can barely contain her excitement. This is the most significant and dangerous thing she has done in quite a long time. Explore an uncharted cave system and lead a rescue mission at the same time? Now this is some fair craic. This is like Super Geologist comic book territory.

The lugs of her boots bite into the soft earth of the hand-carved steps. She secures her footing and climbs down, nine tall irregular steps to the mud floor. It smells damp, with alkalines and calcites in the air. The temperature is cooler down here. She crouches to inspect the slurry under her feet.

Katrina lowers herself in after. Her heels find the steps and she quickly descends, a bubble of excitement rising in her chest. Finally she’s getting treated as an equal around here. Way past time she gets to be the dangerous one.

Amy is next, thinking how lucky she is to go out on an adventure like this with Miriam again after all these years. They have done great things together in the past. Big Bend and Churchill, Ontario and the Columbia River Gorge. Either it was Amy getting brought onto a geology study as a field biologist consultant or Amy hiring Miriam to be the geologist consultant in turn. Back and forth, trading jobs and positions on projects across North America. But it has been a long time. Success in both their careers the last decade or so has made such scheduling impossible.

Now she’s back in action with one of her favorite partners. The long lean form of Miriam stoops forward, drawing the other two ahead. Katrina mirrors her movement. There’s something of Miriam in the young Aussie, Amy thinks. They have the same hardiness and intensity. Yet they both possess such delicate edges.

“The curve narrows here,” Miriam calls out, her voice muffled. “Hold on. Let me remove my bags. Katrina. Please send them in after me. I hope it’s just a chokepoint but if it’s a sustained crawl I’ll need you to—Here. I’ll just tie them onto the line myself. Then I can drag them when I need them. Wish me luck.”

Amy can’t see past Katrina or hear what she murmurs to her. She must just patiently stand here in this pit, waiting to hear if there is good news or bad news from ahead.

Miriam is gone a fairly long time, long enough for Amy to get worried. Esquibel calls down to them, “What is happening?”

“Just some scouting.” Amy keeps her voice light. No point in alarming anyone. “Taking it nice and slow. Careful.”

“Good.” Esquibel retreats from the opening above.

“Any news?” Amy rests a hand on Katrina’s shoulder.

“Uh, the Nikkei Price Index fell by one and a third on news of a bleak commodities report today.”

“Very funny. Anything from Miriam? Two yanks? Anything?”

“No. She doesn’t even appear to be moving forward much. I can only see her feet. She’s definitely crawling. Like a worm. Ah! There we go!”

Amy hears fabric sliding across the mud. “Are those her bags?”

“Yeh. Looks like she got through to the far side and now she’s pulling it after. Maybe she can just pull us through. Get the full mud experience.”

Katrina kneels and puts a hand on the sloping roof of the tunnel. “My turn?”

Miriam’s voice is indistinct. Katrina thinks she hears an encouraging tone. She shrugs, realizing it’s all she’s going to get. Ducking down, she worms her way forward until she is lying on her chin, cold mud pressing against her entire front, soaking into her jeans and socks. “Here I come!” And to herself: Yeh, it’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.

It isn’t such a tight squeeze that she needs to force her way through but her movement is definitely constricted. She can’t raise her elbows and knees more than a bit. Slowly she scrambles forward. After about five meters she breaks through.

Amy is last. She loves a good Army crawl, although some of her earliest associations with it are less than pleasant. Anything military is always Okinawa to her first, and she was never happy there. Yet it’s good to be little, that she knows. This is her time to shine. But, like, wow. This sure is a lot of mud.

Amy spills laughing from the hole, covered in filth, falling onto a concrete floor. Whoa. Wait. Concrete? “What is this?” On her hands and knees she stares at the green-stained concrete floor before her. Water sheets downslope, from right to left. Above to the right the culvert is mostly collapsed and the water only trickles through. She can’t for the life of her figure out what it means.

“I know,” Miriam complains. “I was just finally getting used to a bit of soil and stone then nope! Yet another obstacle in my way!”

“Some kind of underground culvert or something I think.” Katrina sends her light ahead. “Like a concrete aqueduct. Maybe they used this to channel water somewhere? For some reason?”

Amy is utterly confounded. “I—I don’t know. I guess I just really didn’t expect this. I mean, none of Triquet’s records talk about an underground concrete project at any point in time. I can’t imagine what it was for.”

“If you’re very quiet…” Miriam says, holding up her hand, “you can hear the surf.”

They listen. Beyond the steady gurgle of water nearby, a deep subsonic rumble trembles the air every few seconds. “Which way is this? I’m so turned around. Are we pointed at the beach?”

“We must be. Come on then, ladies.”

“Wait. First,” Miriam delays them, shining her light backward. “Look. This mess is what probably kept them from finding their way back.”

The concrete wall they’ve emerged from has partially collapsed, exposing gaps that reveal bare earth. Each one of these gaps has been dug into, a whole yawning cluster of tunnel mouths heading off into different directions. Katrina counts eleven. Only because their climbing rope still runs out of the bottom, partially-collapsed entrance do they know that it is the way back. Without that clue it would be impossible to tell. She takes a picture on her phone, the flash blinding them for a moment.

“Oh, no… You think they took a wrong one back somehow?”

“I do.” Miriam turns back to the sound of the surf and the long dark concrete culvert ahead. “But let’s investigate this first. Easier going ahead, for one thing.”

Miriam slings her bags back on and steps forward. The roof is nearly two meters high and the slime-covered concrete walls are far enough apart they don’t need to touch them. But soon they reach the end of their hundred-fifty meter range. Amy calls out when she feels the rope behind go taut against her waist.

“Turn back?” Katrina is surprised the two older women haven’t suggested it yet. She isn’t used to being the voice of common sense.

“I have no desire to crawl through the muck just to tell Esquibel this much,” Amy says. “Cause then we’ll have to come right back and do it all again, if she even lets us. Maybe we can detach for a bit and leave the rope here?”

“Breaking the law, oooo.” But Katrina doesn’t actually think it’s dangerous. The culvert isn’t going to flood anytime soon, is it? And it’s not like they’re dangling from a pit.

“Agreed.” Miriam begins working on the rope tied to the back of Amy’s harness. She lets it fall. “We can remain roped in between the three of us but this rope leading back is really most useful as a breadcrumb trail just indicating which tunnel gets us to the sub.”

“Let’s just remember,” Amy adds, “bottom-most tunnel, looks like it’s blocked from this side, right in the middle. Everyone got it?” She drops the rope. Then she picks it up again. “But we can’t just leave this here. Maybe I should tie it off. So they can’t pull it back by mistake.”

Katrina nods, giddy. She can’t believe she’s in the presence of such daring old ladies. For a hilarious moment it occurs to her that she might indeed have to be the wise head down here.“Yeh, good thinking. Here.” She finds a fissure in the concrete. “Just like wedge that knot in here. We can make it impossible to get out.”

Amy agrees with a grunt, forcing it under a jagged hanging lip of concrete. There. No amount of pulling will dislodge it.

Miriam leads Katrina and Amy deeper down the culvert. After a short stretch the tunnel widens and water drops into a deeper trench with a walkway raised along the left side. They progress carefully, the concrete slick, the danger of falling and sliding into the trench real. Doors line the wall, three steel panels painted dark blue, their red insignia faded.

These doors are locked or welded shut. There is no give to them. “Triquet can figure these out later.” Miriam shakes her head in dismay at how many directions they’ve already been given to search. She leads Katrina and Amy past the doors toward the end of the culvert. A large grate, mostly rusted through, bars the wide opening. It is here that the freshwater spilling past them from above meets the ocean, whose gentle waves make noise on the far side. The air is closed off when the water fills the gap, sending gulping shockwaves of pressure up the culvert, bringing with it the inhalation and exhalation of air they felt all the way up in the sub.

Beside this grate at the end of the walk is a tall rusted steel door, slightly ajar. The sound of the surf is much louder here. Miriam makes an excited face to the others and slips through. Katrina peeks, then follows. Amy looks behind herself, left all alone and suddenly fearing ghosts, then she hurries through the door as well.

They find themselves in a sea cave, crowded with stalactites. The main feature is a broad waterfall from behind them that is joined by the culvert’s effluence to push a steady stream of white foam into the lapping seawater. Its ceiling is no more than four meters high but the cavern appears to be vast, large striated shelves of bare limestone creating channels through the rushing water and stone platforms in alcoves up above the waterline, on which the remains of pillbox bunkers and buildings stand. The remnants of a concrete pier jut out into the water, its steel rails rusted black. The half-sunk remains of a postwar patrol boat lie at the edge.

This was a hidden port, only big enough for small boats and submarines but nothing larger. It is a modest installation, but still an astounding one to their eyes. Some excavation has been done, but for the most part the structures fit in among the hanging stone and rushing channels. The one foundation by the port looks like it was a small boathouse or command center. Others further along look like storage, hidden in shadow.

To the far left, past obscuring columns and wandering currents, an indirect band of silver daylight dimly lights the cavern. Out on a forward platform near the sea cave’s entrance, a figure sits on the concrete and looks out at the light. It is Maahjabeen.

Ξ

“So the plan must be from now on,” Esquibel demands, standing at the head of the long table at camp, “anyone goes anywhere, someone at camp has to know. At least write a note.”

“Kind of unworkable.” Jay says it louder than intended. He’d meant to keep it to himself.

“And not really applicable in this case,” Katrina agrees with him. “I mean, if we’d all known they were down there they still would have gotten lost on the way back and we still would have waited too long.” She shrugs. “Not a real rules person myself.”

“You are both young.” Esquibel isn’t used to having to defend her medical orders. “You’re like the two youngest people here and your sense of risk is too high.”

“I’m young,” Mandy counters, “and I love rules! My sense of risk is very low. I’m not sure whose case that helps but… you know, like another data point?”

“Esquibel is right.” Everyone silences to hear Maahjabeen’s quiet voice. “It is my fault. I started the whole thing. And I should have left word where we were going. I just didn’t think… One thing led to another and suddenly we were in the tunnel chasing Flavia—”

“Wait,” Miriam interrupts her. “Flavia was in front?”

“She said she heard desperate cries for help. She hardly waited for us to respond before she just dived in headfirst.”

“Did you or Triquet hear any of these cries?”

“No. But we had to go after her.” Maahjabeen shivers. Then she laughs a bit sadly at herself before continuing. “Not been my best week. I’m not even fully recovered from the storm.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Esquibel scolds her. “You can barely move. What were you thinking?”

“She was thinking,” Jay answers for her, “that we still hadn’t figured out the source of the air in the sub.”

“Precisely. It was just an innocent exploration.” Maahjabeen leans back, irritated that Jay would speak for her but relieved that at least somebody gets it. “But by the time we crawled through that horrible mud tunnel and got into that concrete culvert thing she was gone. That was the last we saw of her.”

“The last?” Amy shakes her head. “That was almost seven hours ago. What happened to Triquet?”

“We explored the sea cave together, thinking Flavia had gone that way. We even searched the water in case she had fallen in. But no. She must have tried to return through one of the other tunnels. Just crazy. Triquet told me to wait there. That they would come back to get you and then we would all search for her together.”

Miriam groans. “And then Triquet must have tried to go back to the sub and taken the wrong way back instead. So all three of you are in completely different places, heading in different directions. Fantastic. We’re going to have to explore that entire system, step by step. But I don’t even understand how it all got there. Those tunnels are dug. Some of the marks are even quite fresh.”

“The island,” Alonso reminds her, “is inhabited.”

“So the natives have had access to us this entire time?” Esquibel clicks her tongue, worried. “Great.”

Amy stands. “Welp. I guess I’ll just like wait down in the culvert in case any of them get back. They’ll need a guide back to the right way to the sub. I had just gotten the mud off but oh well.”

Esquibel raises a finger. “You will not go alone.”

“Yeah, I’m with you, boss.” Jay hops to his feet.

“Jay, you aren’t going anywhere. And that is an order.” Esquibel wonders how she might enforce discipline among all her wayward civilians. Reasoning gives them too much wiggle room. And the illusion of free agency. In a crisis they need to follow her orders.

“And we did leave the rope down there for anyone to follow,” Katrina reminds Amy.

“Still.” In her mind Amy can see all the ways a pair of helping hands could rescue bewildered victims in the dark underground. “They’ll need all the help they can get.”

“Hold up. You hear that?” Jay puts a hand in the air to quiet them. They all listen. Something heavy is crashing through the underbrush toward them on its way from the pool.

Esquibel stands, wishing her black satchel was nearby. Miriam, having guessed what’s in it, does too.

Triquet limps wild-eyed and filthy from the undergrowth. They are drenched and shivering, wearing only a single boot.

Amy yelps. “Triquet!”

Esquibel runs to the tottering figure. Miriam fetches a blanket. As she wraps them in it, Triquet smiles weakly at her. “Found the way to your hidden chambers, Miriam. The ones behind the waterfall. Looking out from inside the cliff. Pretty cool.”

“Good Christ is that the way you came out?” Miriam scrubs their shoulders to warm them. Triquet leans in and Miriam takes this as a signal for a hug. Amy joins them around the back, pressing their heat into Triquet’s chilled slender body.

“You know me. Just one catastrophic decision after another.” They scan the camp over Miriam’s shoulder. “Oh good. You found Maahjabeen. Girl, I will never say another word to you about being reckless in the storm after the shit that I just pulled. Oh, baby. What was I thinking?”

“Did you like come through the waterfall?” Jay laughs at the preposterous image but Triquet only shrugs.

“There’s enough room in the chamber behind it to get a running start. I thought if I could get enough Delta V like a rocket, if you know what I’m saying, and just kind of bust through with enough horizontal velocity, then, you know, I’d be free. Frankly I was absolutely beyond done with my situation and ready to explode. It had been hours and I was desperate.”

“Oh, Triquet…” Alonso laughs.

“Yeah, I got slapped down like a rag doll. Just gargling foam.”

“Oh my god there’s a whirlpool in that pool.” Miriam pulls her head back to share her facial expression of just how deranged she thinks Triquet is.

“I know. And it almost took me. But I grabbed some roots and hauled myself out. If I hadn’t, then yikes. I would have like shot out into the waterfall in the sea cave and, I don’t know, had to swim all the way around the island to get back.”

“That is what the underground waterfall is, isn’t it? Yes, that’s about what I’d figured.” Miriam completes the course of the submerged creek in the model of the island she carries in her head. “That waterfall in the sea cave must be where this pool drains. But who knows how long you’d be submerged before it spit you out.”

“Yeah, and I don’t need to be the one to test that idea. Whoo! Any spare seats? It’s been a long day.” Triquet collapses onto Pradeep’s platform, a sodden mess. He smiles and offers Triquet a bottle. “Thanks, Pradeep. But do I look like I need water?”

“So where’s Flavia?” Alonso asks.

Triquet sits up. “She’s not with you? Oh, no. I assumed she was cleaning up inside or… No…?”

Miriam lifts her field pack again, the matter decided. “The whole system. As soon as we can, Alonso. And who did she hear crying? Somebody else in trouble? Then they need our help too.”

“Or someone pretending.” Esquibel points to the fragment of the aircraft wing set aside and wrapped in a blue tarp. “Need I remind you that we may have a Chinese PLA soldier running loose on the island as well? Ultimately, this mission still has military oversight for a reason.”

“Oversight? What happened to partnership? And I think you’re overstating the likelihood of any Chinese presence.” Pradeep doesn’t want to contradict Esquibel but she is becoming worryingly autocratic. “You know, after the tsunami in Japan they were finding litter just like that all along the Oregon coast for years. This could have come from anywhere. It could be years old. Take it from someone who is like a world-class paranoid. You guys are being paranoid about this. The probability is next to nothing.”

But he can tell from their blank stares that he hasn’t convinced anyone. Triquet shakes their head. “No, but she was really upset. Flavia just cried out and threw her hands in the air and went for it. I asked and she just shouted, ‘Can’t you hear the bambino crying?’ And then I couldn’t keep up and I lost her. Man, I wish I hadn’t lost her. You can’t explore it all, Miriam. At least not tonight. The tunnels branch and some of them curve back on themselves. It’s a total maze. I was lost in there for hours. Totally losing my mind. When I found the chambers behind the waterfall I was so relieved I fell down and cried.”

“Flavia is lost in there?” Miriam turns and regards the ground and the cliff, trying to visualize the network. “It might be huge or you might have just gone around and around the same three tunnels. We need a proper exploration.”

“Shouldn’t we wait,” Alonso wonders, “until morning? It is getting late, Mirrie.”

But Miriam shakes her head. “Come on, Amy. Underground it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, Zo. We’ll bring just endless rolls of twine, untangle all the tunnels. Just think, the poor thing has been trapped in there for ages.”

“With no espresso or Nutella,” Jay jokes. “She must be wasting away. Man, this crowd is tough. Come on. Lighten up. She’s going to be fine. We all know it.”

“I hope you’re right, Jay.” Amy’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “Miriam and I will spend two hours below then come back up and sleep. It is getting late.”

Miriam is about to protest the time limit, but she nods. “What do you say, Esquibel? There’s no point in delaying. We’ll unspool the twine behind us and never, I swear this time never unhook. Two hours tonight and then as long as it takes going forward.”

Esquibel nods, mollified that the chain of command is at least being respected. “Two hours.”

Ξ

Mandy wakes right at dawn. Today is a work day so dawn it is. Her eyes snap open of their own accord and she stares at the rust spots of the ceiling’s corrugated steel. The bunker isn’t what she’d call cozy, but it does keep them dry.

Esquibel has rolled away and sleeps with her back to her. She is a furnace under a blanket, as extra as they come, even as she sleeps. Mandy chuckles, pushing off that hip she’s been kneading and pulling apart like a big tough piece of stale chewing gum. But it’s getting better, and the two of them might have never found a way into each other’s pants all those years ago without the excuse of this bad hip, a poorly-healed injury from her childhood.

Mandy kisses the glorious hip and rises. She has to visit the trench and see what the day will bring. The weather station setup with the drone has worked well so far and she’s finally starting to be able to look at her data as a progression instead of just curious snapshots. She unhooks the door and trips out into the blue light of another overcast day. Her Hawaiian skin could use a tiny bit more sun. Not that she’s complaining. Mandy has suffered through some truly terrible weather in the last few years of her career and she knows that Lisica is pretty much blessed. It’s like chilling on the Oregon coast year-round. Probably doesn’t even form frosts in the winter and hardly anyone here ever dies of exposure.

Mandy speculates what the natives must be like. And how long have they been here? Do they live in little ewok villages up above and sing songs all day? Or are they cannibals? Maybe something in-between? Her head fills with visions, of elders crouched under hanging eaves during a downpour, and then how they instruct her in the ways of the storms and take her into their circle.

The Pacific is filled with all kinds of isolated island people. Isn’t there that one island where they all worshipped Queen Elizabeth’s husband as a god? Like, still to this day. These people could be all kinds of weird. And it might be like two or three generations since anyone has contacted them. Wild. Like literally. Wild child times a hundred. Imagine growing up without the twenty-first century: the movies, the cell phones, the cars, the plagues, the crowding… living in blissful ignorance of the oncoming catastrophes. Amazing. They must be better off here without us.

On her way back from the trench to the bunker she sees Amy already awake and standing away from the trees, watching the cliff. As Mandy nears, she points above. “Look at those guys.” Amy directs her attention to a cluster of dark birds with pale undersides winging their way upward into mist. “You see their eyes? The white circle around them? Spectacled guillemots. Not ever seen this far east before. Usually just on the Russian and Japanese coasts.”

“That’s so cool. Oh my god. There’s so many.”

“Yeah, this is a huge colony of just countless seabird varieties. I really shouldn’t have ignored it this long. But I got caught up in all the other things down here on the ground. The birds were the first thing I noticed when we first arrived but then I kept my head down for too long. I forgot to look up.”

“Those thermals are so strong. Look at them!”

“The Pacific gulls? Yeah. This is their highway. And then they each have their little off-ramps to go back to their own little nest. ‘Honey, I’m home!’ Such a perfect existence.”

Even larger birds wheel upward on the strong draft. It reminds Mandy of the cyclone nook in the back of the grove. She might be able to conduct another experiment here. What she started doing is taking long videos of the twisters and then uploading them into a program her colleague built for situations like this that tracks litter in a windstorm. She’s been able to get all kinds of interesting data from that so far. But here she won’t be taking video of redwood duff and leaves, it would instead be birds spiraling upward.

“Brown pelicans.”

Mandy claps her hands, excited, and describes what she has in mind to Amy. “I think I can set up a camera here and get a long video and be able to characterize basically the entire open ocean air current as it interacts orographically with the island.” She takes out her phone to try a test video. But the darker birds aren’t visible against the dark cliffs. She needs white birds.

“Which ones are white? I can’t see the pelicans.”

“Well… Most of the gulls. All of them. A lot of the pipers. Half the murres. The arctic terns. Those are who you need. But I’ve never seen more. And they’re such incredible flyers.”

“When do they fly?”

“When…? Ha. That’s a good question. We have tons of observed behavior with terns in the literature. But this colony here remains unstudied. So who knows? They’re just transient here, resting for a few days or maybe if we’re lucky a few months to raise their chicks. They never winter. Arctic terns fly from one pole to the other throughout the year, following the summer. So these guys are headed north. They’ll probably be gone in another couple weeks. But the chicks have already had time to sprout feathers and join them in the air. You know, they’ve found three month-old tern chicks halfway across the world from where they hatched. And they live thirty years. Fascinating birds. They mate for life.”

“Yeah, I mean, do they come out for breakfast? At like what time? Or are they like bats who only come out at night?”

“When they aren’t flying they’re constantly feeding. Dawn might be a good idea because they’re waking up and it’s time to go fishing. Look, there’s a couple winging away to the open ocean there. Godspeed and good hunting, you two!”

Mandy claps again. “Look how they slice into the wind! It’s blowing like directly against them and they still find the angle to soar ahead! I wish I could do that.”

“You and me both, sister.”

Mandy leans against Amy and squeezes the older woman’s bicep. “You are just the sweetest, Amy. Thank you for taking such good care of us all the time.”

“Heh. Looking for muscle in there? You won’t find any.”

“Are you kidding? You are so strong. I think you’re like the strongest person in the whole camp.”

Amy makes a surprisingly bitter face about that. “I don’t know, Mandy. That’s not really something I’d like to be known for.”

“No way. We need to celebrate strong women!” Mandy wraps her arms around Amy and squeezes her. Amy squeals as she is lifted off her feet. They both laugh with abandon.

Amy lifts Mandy in turn and shakes her like a rag doll, her long black hair flying about. Then when they’re all laughed out they separate. “I love your question about what time terns eat. Maybe we can figure their patterns out together. So we can both use your long video and I’ll do a count. See if it changes.”

“According to different weather patterns. You think? We could do the first cross-discipline arctic tern atmospheric science paper like ever.”

“Oh, there’s probably been some before. We aren’t that original. And we could talk to Maahjabeen about different food sources and when they might arrive. Like are they just following giant schools of anchovies around the Pacific?”

“Right. They’re responding to the fish, who are responding to the, what, like, plankton? Who are following minerals along the temperature and pressure gradients underwater. Wow…” Mandy looks out over the water. “I just had the trippiest idea…” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know if there would be a way to measure it but… Well, anyway. I’m really into convection pumps, like when forests create rainfall above them. And I wonder if a school of like anchovies would transpire enough to create the conditions for deep convection. Could a big enough school of fish be enough biomass to call down rain on itself? The school would have to be huge. But some of them are, right?”

“I think so. But you can’t just equate one anchovy to one tree. These forests are huge too. Where this has been witnessed the most is the Amazon, so that’s the kind of scale we’re looking at. But it’s true, each tree releases a huge amount of water vapor each day. Stomata transpiration is what I think you’re talking about. So each tree can exhale a vast amount more moisture than a little fish… But on the other hand… we aren’t just talking about the fish. They’re following all that plankton and they also bring along bigger fish and squids and whales and all the birds we were admiring. So maybe if you add up all that wheeling biomass you can get your atmospheric effects. Possibly?”

“I just love the idea,” Mandy says wistfully, “of a whole bunch of little fish leading so much transpiring life around the ocean that they start all the storms in this half of the world, just shepherding whole cloud formations across the Pacific. That would be so rad.”

“Ooo. We could never predict the weather because we weren’t following the fish?” Amy chuckles. “As a wildlife biologist this has every stamp of my approval that I possess.”

“And if we end up killing all the fish then the storms…” Mandy visualizes every dynamic in the ocean grinding to a halt, every cloud system dispersing into fog. But of course it wouldn’t be like that. It would be catastrophic in the short term, yeah, until new dynamics form elsewhere dependent on other humidity profiles and temperature differentials.

“You’ve evidently been smoking some of Jay’s stash.” Amy giggles at Mandy. “I like the ambition but let’s stick with videos of guillemots and terns for the moment if that’s okay with you.”

“No, I’m not high. I mean. Maybe I am. High on life.” Mandy is effervescent this morning. Studies with great promise seem to be literally falling out of the sky today. “Sure thing. I’ll get a tripod and make sure there’s enough space on my phone. Might be time to delete those bachelorette party pics from Vegas last year.”

“What? All those pics of your besties drinking themselves stupid will be a literal blackmail goldmine in about five years. You’ve got to keep them.” Amy steeples her fingers with a diabolical laugh.

“Okay, creepy, but good point. Heh.” There was something uncanny about Amy revealing this dark side of herself that it fully unnerves Mandy and derails her good mood. “That’s a side of you I’ve never seen, Amy.”

Amy links her arm in Mandy’s and walks them both back to camp. “Oh, there are so many sides of me you’ve never seen.”

“Also creepy.” Mandy stops and untangles her arm. “Come on, Amy. Are you like trying to trigger me? What do you mean about other sides? My sister had a boyfriend who talked like that and she ended up in the hospital one night. Now I know you’re not—”

“No no. I’m sorry.” Amy holds up her hands, innocence on her face. “I was just making a few jokes and ehh. No, I hear how bad that sounds.” Amy stops, at a loss. “I suppose, in all fairness, it’s time. I should tell you of my secret past.”