Lisica Chapters

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:

36 – You

Maahjabeen finds Pradeep at sunset, tears in her eyes. He stands beside a tall Toyon analyzing its spiky leaves. When he sees the look on her face he drops the reader and reaches for her hand. She throws herself instead against him. Only when he envelopes her in his arms does she begin to sob, deep ragged sounds of grief.

“What…? Oh, love. What is it?”

She breaks away and begins shuffling back to camp, unable to speak about it. He quickly gathers his things and follows, a look of immense care on his face.

They arrive at the Love Palace in silence and she begins hauling at Aziz, the blue kayak stored beneath. Pradeep stows his things and helps her. He lifts the rear and she hauls it, still sobbing, out of camp toward the lagoon.

Flavia emerges from the bunker. “Ah no. What is it?”

But Maahjabeen has no words.

“What is wrong with her, Pradeep?”

As Maahjabeen leads him out of camp, he makes sure to match her strides. “I don’t know yet!” he calls out over his shoulder.

They navigate the fallen redwood and re-emerge onto the beach. Firewater, the yellow kayak, is already here. It’s been pulled a good ten meters clear of the tide line. He is shocked that she’d ever leave one of her boats alone out here for so long.

In moments they are on the water and she is paddling straight as an arrow to the far right side of the lagoon, the southwest corner of the whole island. There is something dark on the rocks there.

It is the corpse of an Orca calf. The markings are unmistakable. And it has been chewed on frightfully. Its fins are torn and whole pieces of its side are shredded, with only a small amount of viscera still spilling from the open wound. Its eyes are gone.

Now Maahjabeen is weeping uncontrollably. Her kayak starts to drift away in the current. Pradeep paddles to the far side of it to keep her from heading toward the lagoon mouth and all those unforgiving rollers. He knows intuitively that there is a meaning in this death that has not been revealed to him yet. The loss of marine mammals always makes him sad too, but this… this is somehow personal to her.

“It’s okay, babi. It’s okay.” The diminutive for her springs unbidden to his lips. His mother used to call him that when he was a child, facing one of his panic attacks. He pets Maahjabeen’s arm, as close as he can get to her in these unwieldy craft.

“La. La…” And Maahjabeen unleashes a torrent of Arabic that Pradeep is incapable of following. But she keeps repeating one word over and over.

“What is ‘Ama?’ I don’t…”

“Ama was my mother. She died last year.” Maahjabeen drops her face into her hands and the paddle slides from her grip.

Pradeep collects it, slides it under a couple shock cord lines, and holds onto her kayak. He’s running out of hands here. And he needs to keep both boats out of the current.

“In a car accident. I didn’t get to see her. I didn’t get to ever say goodbye. I was on the Red Sea.”

“I’m so sorry… Look. Just hold on. I’ve got to paddle.”

“Yes, of course.” Maahjabeen hooks her fingers under Aziz’s lines. “And her ghost… I feel her all the time, Pradeep. She is always watching over me.”

Pradeep waits patiently, unsure how all these things fit together.

“This poor baby…” Maahjabeen gestures listlessly toward the dead calf. “It is a sign. A sign from God. It is all coming to an end.”

She falls silent. Pradeep tries to figure out what she could possibly mean. What sign? What end? He knows so little about Islam and the Quran. It doesn’t have killer whales in it, does it? How could it? The whole thing is set in the desert.

“The orcas…” Maahjabeen whispers her secret, staring out over the horizon. “They watch over me. They saved my life in the storm. They are mine. I am supposed to watch out for them and I can’t even do that, because of this horrible surf! I am supposed to be out there with them, their protector, keeping things like this from happening!”

Pradeep looks at her, caught between befuddlement and wonder. “Is that what you do on the open water? Adopt whole pods of orcas? Protect them? Wow. That’s so amazing, darling.”

“No. It isn’t… This isn’t like a choice, like they are the animal I chose to study for my senior thesis or something. This is what has happened to me on the water. They chose me. This is real.”

Pradeep only nods, shocked to see how off-balance his lover has gotten. “Yes. I see that it is. But help me understand.”

Maahjabeen opens her mouth and then closes it again. There is a whole other world here, a profound hidden world of signs and ghosts and intuition, all presided over by a loving God. How do you describe that to someone who only lives in this cold hard modern world? “They are all… connected. They all… watch out for me. Do you see? It is a holy commitment, what we have. Mother and daughter. Human and whale.”

“I see.” Pradeep feels immeasurable compassion for Maahjabeen. He just wants to kiss and hold her and make her happy again. But he doesn’t know how. The wind shifts, riffling the water, and for the first time the smell of the rotting corpse hits him. He hacks a cough and then turns away from her resentful stare. “I’m sorry. I caught a real whiff there and it…” But her face is only getting more irate. He should stop now. “I love you so much, Maahjabeen. I’ll do anything for you. What can I do?”

She crumples into tears again. Relief washes through her. Of course this is the way forward. And this is how Pradeep can join her unseen world, with the magical power of their love. Love is how he can be one of those watching over her, as she will watch over him in turn. Love is how she can share her wordless bond with these mighty spirits of the sea. And love is how she will get the ghost of Ama to rest easy. It will be his love that her mother will appreciate. Even if she will not approve of him for a whole host of other reasons, Pradeep’s love for Maahjabeen will solve her problems! Suddenly grateful, she lifts his hand, in awe of the gentleness of his spirit and the capacity of his heart, and worshipfully kisses it.

Ξ

Katrina leads Mandy up the final climb to the entrance of the Dzaadzitch tunnel mouth village. Morska Vidra and his fox are already there, as if expecting them. The two researchers stop to put masks and gloves on before getting any closer. As they do so, Morska Vidra departs, out into the daylight.

“Uh, hi and bye. That’s not a good sign.” Mandy carries the camp’s largest backpack and she is sore from wrestling it through all the tight underground passages.

Katrina shrugs. “Who knows? New behavior for sure. He usually accompanies us the whole way. But maybe, you know, familiarity breeds contempt. We’re old news by now.”

Mandy hoists the heavy pack again. “I hope so.”

They emerge into a village filled with the business of daily life. Children strip long reed leaves and thresh dried grains. Adults cook and weave and repair items. Morska Vidra has already joined a trio of women hoisting a wide slab of redwood bark onto the hole in a hut’s roof. Nobody remarks on their presence. It’s almost as if Katrina and Mandy are invisible.

“Okay, then.” Katrina looks around but none will meet her eye. So she ventures further into the clearing, the town square where all the activity is. Jay has given her directions. Where the cliffs rise to her left, there is a game trail beyond the circle of huts leading to the top of the ridge. “That way.” She points discreetly, not wanting to venture forth yet until she gets a better idea of why they’re being ignored. “But I don’t know…”

“What did we do wrong this time?” Mandy has to fight a sudden irritation. That last climb to get through here was even worse than reports had indicated. And the disassembled pieces of her weather station are such awkward shapes in the pack. They seem to catch on every corner. Why, she had to practically inch her way up the tunnels. Something naïve in Mandy expects the villagers to register what a huge effort this was from her, but of course they don’t know. And they don’t care about her personal victories. They’re the ones who made those tunnels. Hauling a twenty kilo pack through them probably doesn’t impress them one bit.

Katrina listens to the many voices around them. Something has changed. The words are muttered instead of chanted. She sees the soundwave in Pro Logic: a flat tonal shift has knocked down all the rising and falling waveforms, leaving it narrow and compressed. Is this the sound of mourning? No, they don’t sound sad. More like resigned. Or depressed. Great. They gave the Lisicans depression. Now Katrina can’t bear to cause them any more anguish. “Okay, ready? Now or never. Let’s just slip through here… Pardon us…” She takes Mandy by the hand and hurries past the villagers and their huts to a spot where the cliffs transition to a steep slope. It is the only possible trailhead. And she can kind of see some footholds scaling upward. But it will not be easy. “Ugh. Watch out. I’m not any kind of mountain goat. This might get embarrassing.”

“Yeah, I’m not what you call a real hiker either.” Mandy does enjoy the outdoors, but only really when it keeps to itself. Growing up with an uncle on Oahu’s North Shore, she was no stranger to the kind of storms they’d been getting, and family trips all over the islands were no less challenging than what she’d done on Lisica for the last few weeks, but diving into the great unknown had never been her thing. She looks up the eighty-degree slope, pretty sure her legs aren’t strong enough to carry all this weight up over the top. Well. She’s been waiting weeks to get here. It’s time to find out if she finally gets to be a scientist on this island or not.

With a grunt and a heave, Mandy follows Katrina’s uncertain path up the slope.

It’s a good sixty meter climb, following the shallow depressions left in the earth, pulling themselves up the maze of switchbacks to a brow of manzanita at the top. Mandy grabs their iron twigs and pulls herself the last few steps up to the rounded crest. Katrina is in a thicket of flowering yellow branches, gasping, waiting for her. Mandy, her legs afire, pushes her way through the clawing twigs to keep up.

When she reaches Katrina the wind changes. Her new senses pick it up acutely, delivering such a wealth of information and sensation all at once it nearly brings her to her knees. This is it. They’ve reached the top. They’re up in the zephyrs now, finally above all the land that blocks her from the sky.

Katrina leads Mandy through manzanita to the true crest of the ridge. They climb the broken spine of it and balance on reddish brown rocks, their clothes whipping in the thin cold wind. The horizon falls away to all sides. This is the view the drone first got when they sent it up over the top weeks ago. From due east to west the ocean fills their view, with the beach and lagoon below obscured by the intervening trees and brush. The endless sea is banded shades of blue and gray, with a patch of bright silver sunshine to the east. The wind comes from the northwest, as it often does, and it carries a saline tang mixed with an arctic chalk. It almost hurts Mandy’s nostrils to breathe it in. It’s the wind of an entire hemisphere. And they can see so much of the island now, this bowl-of-a-thousand-rims. It dominates their view to the north, with several long ridgelines obscuring the far end.

Katrina silently leads Mandy down the cliff, which looks utterly perilous. But the footprints here are unmistakable. This is a path that humans regularly traverse. Which means she can do it as well, even if it seems like they’re pitching themselves off a six hundred meter drop with every step.

Soon a shallow fold at the base of the cliff, hidden until they’re nearly upon it, provides a respite from the terrors of the heights and the whipping wind. They sit.

“Huh. And we’re not even there yet? Not quite as freeway close as I’d hoped.” Mandy’s brave attempt falls flat. She’s so tired.

Katrina just studies their surroundings with a troubled gaze. Then her eyes light up. “Aha! Look. We are already there.”

Mandy follows Katrina’s eyeline. Oh my god. There it is. That’s the platform, the remains of the wooden deck that had been built up here. It’s out and down, in a bowl of a depression another ten meters below them. These cliffs aren’t sheer at all. They hide all kinds of secret spots. With a cry, she scrambles down to it.

The vegetation surrounding the shaft’s mouth was blackened by the fire Mandy had lit. Most of the platform has also burned away. What remains is a length of tilted decking that extends outward toward the sea. Mandy swings wide of the shaft and hurries over to what boards are still nailed together. She tests them with a firm shake. “Still solid! Check this out! I bet they built this for their own weather observations! Now with just a little TLC it’ll be ideal!”

She works to prop the platform back into position. Katrina sighs in relief. Finally Mandy gets to be part of the team. They gently remove the weather station’s parts from her sack and piece it back together, Mandy fine-tuning it as Katrina scours the area for heavy rocks to secure the station’s base. Soon it is complete, an ultrasonic anemometer’s spikes crowning it like a junkyard Christmas tree.

“It needs regular manual downloads and the batteries are good for about sixty hours so I’ll need to come back up every forty-eight to swap them out.” Mandy’s shoulders slump as she realizes how many times she’ll be running this obstacle course. Her irritation mounts again and she hurls a small rock at the shaft’s dark mouth. “Nasty old Skeebee. Wouldn’t let me and Amy figure out a way to get up and down the easy way. I mean, just look at it! It’s obvious this is what those Army dudes used.” Finally she hears a clink as the stone hits the bottom.

Katrina shrugs. “Getting up here’s the hard part but we could totally base jump back down sometime. I do have the remains of that parachute that was hanging over the camp. But it’s like military surplus and needs some like, serious repair.”

Mandy shivers, imagining the struggle she’d have just to find the impulse to jump off this cliff. She doesn’t have it in her. “No, thank you. I’ll brave the passive-aggressive villagers instead.” She steps back and admires her handiwork. “Data… data…” she croons to the weather station, like it’s a beloved houseplant she just watered. “Give me all the data…!”

“Are we done here?” Katrina has a faint hope that when they head back down, the temper of the village might have changed and they’ll be receptive again. She has loads of questions about their history and language. Triquet has a whole list they expect her to get answers for. This Lisican silent treatment is very inconvenient.

Mandy takes one last deep breath of this amazing rarefied wind. It’s surprisingly dry. No storms for a while. And there’s a stillness in the gaps between gusts that indicate no systems coming. Fantastic. The last thing she needs is a cyclone to pop up and wreck her instrumentation here. This whole rig is probably worth as much as a new car. “Yes, babe.” Mandy reaches for Katrina’s hand. She lifts it and kisses it without taking her eyes from the silhouette of the weather station against the shades of banded blue and gray. “Thanks so much for bringing me. I wouldn’t have made it without you.” And then, knowing deeply this is the moment between them if it ever is, Mandy steps close and kisses Katrina, a long breathy, dreamy kiss filled with tenderness and passion.

Mandy steps back and opens her eyes. Katrina looks upon her with affection and warmth, but not heat. Ah, well. It’s not like she was going to tear the chick’s clothes off, not here in all this wind. Then Katrina’s eyes skip past her to look at someone above and behind Mandy.

“Oh, hi,” Katrina waves at the willowy girl watching them from the heights above.

“Hi,” Jidadaa replies, waving at them. “How are you?”

Ξ

“Ecch, where is everyone?” Maahjabeen marches through camp, peering into all the empty tents. “Hello?”

“What’s up?” Jay pokes his head out from the awning covering his hammock.

She starts. “Ah. Jay.” Maahjabeen tries and fails to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “I was just… I need a… I mean, where did they all go? When I left, everyone was here. It was so busy this morning.”

“Yeah, everyone’s out on missions now or whatever.”

“Ugh.” She opens her mouth, closes it, and turns away. How can he possibly help? The answer is clear: he can’t.

Jay squawks, rolling out of his hammock. He pads barefoot across the sand to her, hand covering his left side. He forces his grimace of pain into an eager smile. “What’s up? You need a hand?”

It irritates her that this is the exact phrase she was going to use when she practiced in her mind how to ask someone for help. A hand is exactly what she needs. But… it is Jay. The one person in this whole camp she still doesn’t really respect. She nods. “Yes, but you can’t fool me. I know Doctor Daine put you on bedrest.”

“Ugh, it is so boring in there! I’m going absolutely insane in the membrane. You got to let me… I mean, I can at least like tag along and offer some suggestions.”

“Suggestions I do not need. I know what I need to do. It would just be very much easier with another person. But no. You cannot help. You have to be an adult and take care of yourself, yes?”

Jay presses his mouth into a displeased line. “You know, a lot of you guys think like I don’t hear the condescending tone or I don’t mind being lectured or talked down to all the time but…”

Maahjabeen turns away with a snarl of impatience. Getting into a spat with Jay about—about… she doesn’t even know what it is about! And she only has a short window when the tide is low. She slams the door of the bunker open and ducks her head in. It is dim. “Hello?” But the interior is empty. Even Doctor Daine is gone.

Maahjabeen crosses the camp. Jay waits for her, his face eager. “So where we going?”

“You are going back to your bed and I am going out to the lagoon to hang a gill net.”

“Fuck yeah. Clams for days. So so glad you finally allowed some harvesting in the lagoon. We were running out of the tinned stuff and things were looking pretty dire.”

“Yes, well, it is not as pristine as I had hoped. Now go away. I will not have the Doctor yelling at me about your wound.”

Maahjabeen hurries back to the beach. When she climbs the fallen trunk, she studies the ocean. Such a perfect vantage. She has grown to love the extra three or four meters of height this massive log offers. Distant sunbeams slant at an angle onto the ocean through breaks in the gray mantle. God is serene today.

Maahjabeen drops off the trunk and hurries back to the beach. Okay. Maybe if she spools the rope and net and slowly unwinds it as she paddles out to the anchor point she’s identified. No. There is no way the net will remain untangled. What if she carries the entire net out, ties it off, and then unspools it on the way back? That might be simpler. Still no way to conceivably keep the net together. Perhaps if she just lays it out carefully on the sand and slowly drags it at a diagonal…

“Oh, I see your problem.” Jay startles her. He stands behind her, studying the net she has made and the lagoon. “You just need me to stand in the shallows and feed it to you, right? I can do that.”

She stares at him with open hostility. Regardless of the fact that this is exactly what she needs, Maahjabeen is so outraged that he ignored her direct order to stay away from her that she thinks of filing a complaint. “I am telling you to leave me alone, Jay.”

“Damn, this has nothing to do with you, Maahjabeen. I just want some clams. And you need a hand. Why you got to be so uptight all the time? I ain’t hurting anyone by being here.”

“When someone tells you they want to be left alone, you have to respect that. It is the law. And it is decency.”

“Sure sure. But I don’t got to be anywhere near you. I hold the line, you’re in the boat. And guess what? I’m the best person in this whole camp to do it. I used to run these really fine gill nets for the fingerlings at the hatchery. I know how to keep them untangled. You go out there and set it and then I leave you alone.”

“You can’t do it one-handed.”

“Look. I’ll use my foot. Just hand it to me so I won’t have to bend over. Then I can let it out easy like. Come on, Maahjabeen. I’m not like harassing you. You were the one who came into camp looking for help but for some reason you just hate me. Come on. I’m not a bad guy.”

“Jay. Listen to yourself. When someone tells you that you are harassing them, you cannot argue it. You just have to respect them and give them space.”

Jay lifts a hand. “Hey, all I’m saying is you got it wrong. It could be Amy or Miriam or Morska Vidra asking me. You don’t got to turn this into a federal case or anything. Fine. If you don’t want to set the net, I sure as hell can’t do it without you, so… Peace.”

Jay shakes his head in frustration and turns away. What the fuck? Why did he come back from the other side of the island again? Oh, right. Because they were trying to kill him. But that hidden garden of Kula’s sure was sweet. And she and Jidadaa treated him with a hell of a lot more respect than—

“Jay.”

He turns back.

Maahjabeen studies him. She remembers being a teenager on the streets of Tunis protesting American intervention in Libya. She has always hated the Americans. And this is how they always look and act. He is a picture-perfect representation of them. Tall and blond and cute, unformed… and they can never take no for an answer. “Just stand here and unspool it and then stop being such a bother.”

“You got it.”

Later, after the net is fixed, Jay follows Maahjabeen back up the beach as she drags her kayak home. She stops one last time and looks out at the lagoon with a frown. “There is no telling,” she says, “how successful it will be. It is very possible all that work was for nothing. Or that it will only catch things we can’t eat.”

“Or…” Jay counters, “we feast like kings. I’ve got a cream sauce I want to try with the dehydrated milk and garlic flakes.”

“Your optimism is annoying.”

“Well, your pessimism is hella sad.”

Maahjabeen turns back to him before she navigate the roots of the fallen tree. Her eyes twitch with ire. There is such a gulf between them. “My pessimism is earned. Your optimism is not.”

“Uh, I’ve spent my whole life on the beach, lady. And the ocean always provides. I thought you knew that.”

“The ocean is my sanctuary. But it is not easy. Nothing is.”

“Man, some people…” Jay shakes his head in despair. “You’re like my mom’s always been. Nothing means anything unless it hurts. Unless you sacrifice something for it. But why? You and I are scientists. We know that isn’t how things work. Things work or they don’t fully irrespective of whether or not they’re hard for us. The universe doesn’t care about your feelings.”

Maahjabeen stops again. “That is where you are wrong. The universe cares very much about my feelings. My thoughts and actions. Purity of both is the only way to paradise.”

“Paradise? I’m talking cream sauce.”

“God knows everything you think.”

“Well, that’s creepy.”

Maahjabeen loses her temper. “Gah! Get away from me! What is wrong with you? Go back to your toys and your made-up world of comic books. Seriously, I have no idea what Pradeep sees in you.”

Jay draws himself up to his full height. She has finally gone too far. “You might think I’m like too laid back to be offended. But you’re wrong. You’re totally one hundred percent wrong. And if you can’t figure out why Pradeep and I are buds, then that’s on you, not me or him. The fault’s in you. And you might want to check yourself before you lose us all.”

Then Jay turns away from camp and instead slips into the vegetation leading toward the waterfall.

Maahjabeen watches him go, her own heat fading. She wants to call out a last insult but she visualizes Pradeep hearing it and she knows how much it would hurt him. Feh. What a mess.

Ξ

“Has anyone seen Jay?” Pradeep ducks into the bunker. Amy and Triquet and Esquibel all share a workstation, discussing how to word their findings regarding the grave of M.C. Dowerd.

“Isn’t he in his hammock?” Amy remembers that she was going to bring him dinner an hour ago. But it slipped her mind.

“First place I looked. Not in the grove. Not on the beach.”

Amy sighs. “Shoot. I should be keeping a better eye on him. You know how he likes getting in trouble.” She turns back to the others. “Triq. You’re the best writer. Just make sure you add sentences in the lead paragraph about the setting based on my notes. I bolded the important bits. Seems I’ve got to find a wayward child.”

“He isn’t a child,” Esquibel mutters bitterly. “And you should all stop treating him as one.”

“Huh.” Amy barks a short laugh. “Jay’s like one of those high-performing special needs kids. Can hardly dress himself but he’ll spot four different species of lacewing while Pradeep and I are still getting our bearings. I know he can be a little much but we absolutely need him in the field. Which is where he probably is.”

“Yes…” Pradeep agrees, following her outside. “But where?”

They find Jay sitting beside Alonso at the waterfall’s pool, playing cribbage. Alonso soaks his feet and they share a joint.

“Ahh. Gambling. I should have known.” Pradeep slips through the dense brush at the edge of the pool and crouches beside them.

“No money on this game,” Alonso rumbles. “Or I would be very poor right now. You may think he is an innocent boy but he is really a hustler.”

“Just the luck of the cards, my dude. Sup, Prad. Hey, Amy.”

Pradeep leans down. “I think I figured out how he got up there.”

“Seriously? No shit.” Jay drops his cards. “I’ve been cracking my brain on that. Total mystery hour.”

“Who got up where?” Amy is glad she carries her daypack. She unslings it now and gets out a few snacks for the players.

“Amy, that is too kind.” Alonso unwraps a packet of crackers and dips them in the pool’s cold water. “Hm. Surprisingly good.”

Jay opens an energy bar and tears off a huge bite. “Show me.”

Pradeep takes a packet of dried fruit. “It is the Lisican fellow we saw in the crown of the redwood when the ospreys attacked. We couldn’t figure out how he got up there.”

“Way high up. Like a hundred meters. We were like, dude!”

“But there is no hurry. You should finish your game first.”

“Shit, it’s already over. Sorry, Alonso. Double run. And fifteen-eight is sixteen. Not your day, homie.”

Alonso glowers at the cards. Amy pats his shoulder.

Jay wheezes as he pushes himself to his feet. “I know…” he forces the words through the pain, “…not to pull the stitches open but I got to stretch the scar tissue or… ah!” He stumbles up, wincing. “Never heal properly otherwise. Good to go, Prad. Let’s get it.”

Pradeep and Jay leave Amy to get Alonso back to camp. “Ah, well. Boys will be boys.” She starts cleaning up their picnic.

“Eh. Unless they become girls.”

“Or nonbinary.”

“Precisely. Jay told me about the osprey nest. He says they can’t get blood samples unless they kill them. I told him—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes, I told him absolutely not. But it made me realize we need a policy for collection. We have no trouble killing all the insects and tapeworms and sea life. But birds? Mammals? I mean, as a field biologist, where do we draw the line?”

“It really depends on our values as principal investigators and how challenging it is to get our results. Do you think you can get an accurate report from Plexity without…?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, they are apex predators in this ecosystem, aren’t they? You people have always told me those are the keystone species.”

“Ospreys certainly are. But I don’t know how to get the samples you need.”

“Maybe something with the drone…?” Alonso taps his chin, lost in thought.

Amy stares at him as if he’s lost his mind.

Down the trail and across the camp hurry Pradeep and Jay. From her platform, Maahjabeen watches them go off together and her lover can’t understand why her face is so sour. But he doesn’t have time to find out. He’ll ask later.

They make it through Tenure Grove to the far side, where the osprey nest is. Here is where they saw the man standing so high above. Jay is full of guesses and theories. “You found a way he got there from the cliff, didn’t you? No, wait. There’s like a whole permanent village up there isn’t there? Oh, man. That’s it. I can see where he stood. And there’s totally room for a swank pad up there. I mean, I guess. Can’t really see which tree…”

“That is the big problem I had.” Pradeep points up at the spot in the distance he hopes to reach. “That’s the tree, right? That one. Okay. Now follow me. It’s that one. It’s that one…” As Pradeep ducks into the understory, he tries to keep his arm pointing at the correct tree. But it is soon hidden from view. By the time he can see the redwood canopy clearly again, he is at the base of a cluster of them. “Now which one is it?”

“Uhh.” Jay tries to orientate himself. The trees are so fucking huge their tops seem disconnected from their bases. “I don’t think it’s this ring. I think it’s further in.”

“Well. Good eye, is all I have to say. Because I spent far too long trying to figure out how to climb these trees here. But you’re right. It is another group, through this way.”

Beneath a close canopy of rhododendron and fern they crawl, popping up to find massive striated reddish columns once again towering above them.

“This one?” Jay guesses, pressing his hand against it. He needs to take a breather. His side is burning like a motherfucker but there’s no way he’s going to tell Pradeep that. He’d make them go back home, right when it’s getting good.

“Close. Up and over and the big one on the far side.”

“Up and over, huh?” Jay doesn’t know if he has it in him. And the brush is so thick there’s no way to skirt this fairy ring and its high walls of entangled roots. He has to climb them.

“Maybe you should wait here…”

“And maybe you should kiss my ass.” Jay grunts, reaching as high as he dares with his right hand, and pulls himself upward onto the foot of the redwood trunks. A hiss of agony escapes him.

“And now I regret bringing you…”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Fine. You’re in. This is it. You made it. Just wait here now.”

But Jay’s looking at the redwood duff and bed of moss beneath his feet. “Somebody’s been here alright. Like a lot. See here and here? Trying not to leave tracks but that only works if you’re light on the land. Not if you’re coming in every day.”

Pradeep studies the brown and bare patches in the moss. They lead right toward the burn scar in the tree that is their goal. “Yes, good eye. That is where they go.”

“In the goose pen?” Jay struggles across the uneven bed of moss to the yawning seam an ancient fire had burned in the massive trunk. This is one of the largest Coast Redwoods Jay has ever seen.

“Goose pen?”

“Yeah, the settlers in the redwoods would keep their geese and chickens in the burnt redwood trunks. They just put little gates across the openings then boom, eggs for days.”

“Yes, well, this one isn’t a goose pen. It’s a lobby.”

“A lobby?”

“Well, whatever the ground floor is with the stairs leading up.”

“There’s stairs? Where?”

But Pradeep is already inside the goose pen, a voluminous space as large as an average bedroom. He has fitted his hands and feet to indentations cut in the blackened interior bark. Following them spirals him upward.

“Whoa…! Dude! You did it! Oh my god! This is totally like in Swiss Family Robinson! You ever read that? I fucking loved that book. They had this treehouse with a secret interior way… but, I mean, how will you get all the way up? Does it go fully to the top?”

“I mean…” Pradeep grunts with effort. This isn’t very easy. The trunk’s interior tapers the slightest bit, which makes each step a little bit greater than ninety degrees. “It has to, doesn’t it?”

“And if I had to guess I’d pretty much assume they don’t want us poking our heads up there.”

“Yes, but…” Pradeep wants very much to get to the top of this tree. “We can’t do a full survey of the island without it, can we?”

“Careful. That’s the kind of thinking that got me involved in some pretty heavy prophecies last week.”

“Well, what would you have me do?”

“I just want you to wait a few more days for me to heal up so I can come with you. One person shouldn’t go it alone.”

Pradeep sighs. “You’re right. I hate that you are right.” He drops from his spot, a good four meters up, and lands on the goose pen’s floor. He stares upward. Is there a dim bit of gray light up there at the top of this narrow cone? Or is it just a trick of his eyes?

“We need to come back with Katrina. And the drone.”

Ξ

“Success!” Flavia returns from the lagoon with a bucket filled with sea life. “The gill net was very full.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus, let me see what you got there.” Jay limps up to the kitchen tables of the camp. “Amy, where’s my filet knife at?”

Flavia places the bucket at his feet. Squirming fish, their backs red and mottled brown, can barely be counted, much less recognized. “Holy shit, a bonanza! You sweethearts. Papa’s got a plan for you.”

“Well, I will take that as a sign to start drinking.” Alonso moves with slow care toward his barrel, holding a wine glass.

“Look at you, Zo!” Miriam calls out from her spot on Katrina’s platform, where she works on her laptop. “Graceful as ever.”

Alonso laughs and makes a florid gesture with his arms like a ballet dancer. “Just don’t ask for a grand jeté. No, but I am doing much better, darling. The swelling has come down, more than I thought it would. Mandy, I thank you. Where’s Mandy?”

“She and Katrina have been gone all day,” Esquibel informs them as she exits the bunker. “Is it dinner time? I am starving.”

“Almost, Doc. Going for the simple fish fry tonight.” Jay pours a profligate amount of oil into their largest pan. “Man, this is way too much fishmeat for one meal. We got to keep the rest for later. Flavia, we need more seawater for these guys. Keep them fresh.”

“Fine. Water is something I can do.” Flavia lifts an empty bucket and heads back to the beach. She passes Maahjabeen, carrying her kayak, as she goes. “Chef needs another bucket.”

Maahjabeen nods. She has just unloaded on Flavia about Jay and a sour unspoken message passes between them.

“No, seriously, Alonso…” Miriam puts aside her laptop and goes to him, where he is dispensing his first drink of the night. “You look so much better. What did you do all day?”

“Well, I had my feet in the pool. And then I joined Maahjabeen for a dip in the lagoon. Have you been? Very bracing.”

“That’s a weasel word for freezing and you know it. But you don’t care. You’ve always burned so hot.” Miriam leans in and nuzzles Alonso’s rough chin. Her arms drape around him.

“And you have always been my cold-extremities girl.” He kisses her temple. “Triquet. Mi amor. Can I get you a glass?”

Triquet is touched that Alonso and Miriam so easily include them in such intimacy. With a groan of pleasure, Triquet crosses to them and falls into a welcoming embrace. “You know it, big boy. I’m thirsty as hell.”

They all giggle at the flirtation. Alonso kisses Triquet’s temple as well. “And how about you, Triq? Do you run hot or cold?”

“You know me, Alonso. I’m like quicksilver.” They favor him with an arch smile. “Catch me if you can.”

Miriam kisses Alonso’s ear. “I told you they were naughty.”

Alonso laughs. “Ah! Where is Katrina? We need music! And dancing! Tonight is a real supper and we should all be here!”

“Let’s see. Maybe I can…” Esquibel crosses the camp and climbs onto Katrina’s platform. She begins picking through the DJ gear. “Does anyone know where the power button is on this thing?”

But everyone is busy with their own pursuits. Amy has joined Jay at the stovetop. Maahjabeen has stowed her boat and gone to Pradeep at his platform. It is up to Esquibel to figure out how to get this system to make music.

She opens Katrina’s laptop and it asks for a password. Of course. Esquibel can’t just go snooping through someone else’s machine. But that does remind her of her other mission. And this is perhaps the perfect opportunity. The second pocket of the laptop case yields a black and chrome USB stick almost identical to the first one she loaded with Plexity data. Into a pocket it goes. “Ehh, I can’t figure it out. We will need to be acoustic, I guess.” Esquibel lifts a small tambourine, festooned with satin ribbons, and bangs it against the heel of her hand.

“Doctor, a glass?” Alonso has both Miriam and Triquet hanging from him. His smile is wide, wider than Esquibel has ever seen. It is good to see her patient doing so well.

“Why, yes, Doctor. Thank you.”

“Maybe for a song. Can you sing for your supper?”

The others call out for Esquibel to sing. But she has never had much of a voice. She tries to think of something that will satisfy them. She bangs out the rhythm on the tambourine to an old Kenyan nursery rhyme from her childhood:

“By short/shot I love you baby
The baby to the sun/son
The sun/son to the owner
The owner to the men
The men to the bush—”

Esquibel stops. Figures appear in the bunker’s door. Katrina exits into the camp with a squeal of delight. “Ooo! Sounds like a party!” She is followed by Mandy, shuffling behind, very tired.

Finally, blinking and smiling at them all with hesitation, Jidadaa exits the bunker behind them.

Jay is caught up in the cooking. But he finally turns when the camp goes still to behold their visitor. When he sees Jidadaa in the doorway, he slams the spatula onto the table with surprising force, silencing everyone. “You.”