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:

39 – Nonsense I Mean

“How did Jidadaa get you back anyway?” Amy sits beside Flavia on her platform in camp. The fog has not let up and a dank chill creeps up from the ground through their feet and legs. She murmurs the question, conscious of the masked golden childs, as Jay calls them, squatting at compass points on the camp’s perimeter. These figures are never still. They shift and scratch itches and follow sounds. But they don’t respond to any questions or offers of food and drink and they evidently aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Spooky.

Flavia shrugs. “A lot like the first time. Then it was the girl child Xaanach. This time Jidadaa. Both woke me in the middle of the night and led me quietly out of his camp. I guess he needs better security, but I am glad he does not have it!”

“That’s amazing. And did Jidadaa lead you right back here or did you go somewhere else first?”

“Somewhere else?”

“Like maybe she has some hidey-hole of her own? See, last night, after you got back, Jidadaa disappeared again. Right before these golden childs appeared. I think maybe she knew they were coming and she wants to avoid them. Jay says to the Lisicans they’re like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They scare her. But if we could find her now, like if you know where she might be hiding, we sure could use more answers.”

“They are pretty scary.” Flavia is empty. She wants to just give up. Completely surrender. Why can’t she? Everything here is an arduous epic adventure. Nothing is as simple here as settling down to her workstation with her dog across her feet and a steaming espresso in her hands. She misses big Boris. And she is sure he must miss her. She tilts her head back. “Ehh… Amy. I can’t do this any more. I have to go home.”

Amy throws a comforting arm over Flavia’s shoulders. “Soon, my dear. We’re nearly into May now.”

“You think that is some kind of help? We still have weeks of this! Weeks! And now the villagers are coming in and like taking over! We can’t do anything outside of their view! There is no privacy! Who cares if it is Wetchie-ghuy or these…” She gestures at the nearest golden child, who twitches when they hear the name Wetchie-ghuy. “These… I don’t even know what to call them. But what happens if we try to leave? Eh? Has anyone tried yet?”

“One goes with. When anyone goes to the trenches. Or like when Jay went down to the lagoon. Perhaps they’re protecting us.”

“I don’t want them protecting me,” Flavia declares loudly. Defiantly. “I just want them to leave me alone. All of them.”

Amy nods, patient and sympathetic. “See, if we can figure out where Jidadaa went then she could help answer some of these questions. If they are protecting us, then toward what end?”

“So we end up in their pot instead of someone else’s.”

“Cannibalism. Wow. Huh. There hasn’t been any sign of it here. Unless you know something that Wetchie-ghuy…”

“No.” Flavia waves a disgusted hand. “I don’t. Don’t worry. It is just me stereotyping your beloved natives, right?”

“Beloved? Ha. They won’t even talk to me. I’m too unclean.”

“Well, Amy my dear, I would be happy to switch roles with you at any time. They can’t seem to get enough of me.”

“Did Wetchie-ghuy try to put that loop over your hand again?”

“Oh, yeah. Like five times. Finally I took it and threw it off a cliff. And you know what he did? He giggled. Then he made another one out of some branches and tried again. Such a creep.”

“I feel like the two shamans are trying to claim us. Each one is taking as many of us as they can get. And if they can’t have us, then it’s better to poison us so the other one doesn’t get us.”

Flavia scowls. “We are just like… trophies to them.”

“I don’t know if we can continue to work under these conditions. Although I have no idea what else we can do.”

“Amy?” Miriam exits the bunker with Triquet and waves. “Come with us?”

“Sure thing, Mir.” Amy gets up and squeezes Flavia’s arm. “Well. I guess I get a chance to see. You just stay here and rest up, Flavia. Be Alonso’s partner. That means don’t let him go anywhere alone. Otherwise, nobody needs anything from you today.”

“Good. Because I swear to you I have nothing left to give.”

Amy grimaces, her inability to raise Flavia’s spirits grating on her, and joins Miriam and Triquet at the edge of the camp. They head toward Tenure Grove, one of the golden childs following.

“Do you think we can put this one to work?” Triquet wonders. “Ask how handy they are with a spade and trowel?”

“I mean, you can try…”

Miriam looks up at the cliff face they approach. “Right back at it. It’s important to Alonso that we continue the work today.”

Amy nods. “I’d say it’s important for all of us. We have to keep our routines or we’ll go crazy under these conditions.”

“Yeah, but Alonso… He had a very bad night. You saw him, Ames. He thought he was back in the gulag.”

Amy’s face falls. “Oh yeah, in bed I could hear him. And when he got up… At first I didn’t think it was a bathroom call. He looked desperate, like he was trying to escape.”

“Escape?” Triquet frowns. “Uh, where? Forgot he was on an island, did he?”

“Escape… life. I don’t think…” Amy answers quietly, “his mind was working all too well. Oh, Mir. He really is damaged.”

Miriam nods, sad. “And I don’t know how to fix him.”

“Time.” Amy and Triquet both say it and Triquet follows it with a giggle. “Jinx! Time, Miriam, and loads of chocolate.”

“So what are we working on today, boss?” Amy rolls up her sleeves as they near the base of the cliff. It is choked with brush and a fallen skirt of loose stone.

“I want to inventory who lives in that scree pile, if anyone. Got to be a dangerous place to call home, rocks sliding all over the place and crushing you. But still, if we are going to be thorough for Plexity, then it is a habitat we have to sample…”

“Life finds a way!” Triquet boldly pushes past the first branches of the manzanita and immediately squawks, ensnared, arms held above their head. “Except this life. Me. I’m stuck.”

“Life didn’t find a way?” Amy chortles, pulling the branches away from Triquet and allowing them to continue.

Miriam has paused in her examination of the scree pile to study the golden child, who has turned three-quarters away, their mask pointed up at an angle. “What do you think they’re looking at?”

“Well, Pradeep and Jay think Sherman the shaman hides up in those trees with his osprey. Maybe our protector here is on the lookout for them.”

Triquet scowls at the golden child. “What do you think that mask does for them? I mean, how do they see or anything?”

“I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“Lord, I am so sick of being hopelessly confused.” Triquet lifts their arms and drops them again. “I mean, yes it’s the first step in scientific inquiry, yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah. But, I mean, can’t we just get a tiny bit of clarity every once in a while?”

“Not a chance.” Amy pushes past Triquet and climbs to the top of the scree pile. Small flat rocks shoot out from under her feet in all directions. “Well, this is… Hm. I can’t get on this without…”

“Yeah, careful. You’re killing all our specimens up there, Ames.”

“Okay, but how…?” Amy hurries back down to the clawing branches and solid ground underfoot. “I mean, how else can we do it? We have to climb it. If we don’t start at the top, the loose rocks will just slide down onto whatever we uncover.”

“Well, according to him,” Triquet indicates a robin hopping along the scree slope to their left, “the scree pile is good hunting. So I guess there’s something in there.”

“You’re right.” Miriam sighs. “Anything moves and the rest just slides. Ugh. This is going to be hard.”

“Miriam?” Amy turns to study her old friend, gaze troubled. “What happens to Alonso if we aren’t ever able to make anything of Plexity? Like if, by the time we’re finished here, we don’t have enough samples and he isn’t able to get it up and running?”

“I do not know, Amy dear.” Miriam shakes her head again, watching the robin pull a winged insect from the gaps in the rocks. “I do not know.”

Ξ

A shadow darkens Maahjabeen’s cot. Pradeep squints, dazed from lack of sleep, at the silhouette looming over him and his beloved. “Jidadaa! There you are. Everyone has been looking for—” He falls silent as the Lisican girl’s hand urgently clamps his arm.

Jidadaa casts a worried glance at the square of blurred gray daylight visible through the sheets of hanging plastic. Once she’s certain that Pradeep will remain quiet she removes a white plastic package from folds in her clothes and unwraps it. It is an old shopping bag carrying blackened leaves, mashed and pulpy. Juices have collected in the bottom.

Jidadaa kneels beside Maahjabeen and awkwardly struggles to figure out how to get the concoction in the woman’s slack mouth.

Pradeep helps, whispering, “Does Doctor Daine know you’re doing this? Is this like a prescribed medication or…?” But the answer is apparent and he feels a fool for even asking.

Pradeep pinches Maahjabeen’s mouth open and Jidadaa makes a spout of the bag’s corner to pour a trickle of brown and black liquid past her lips.

Maahjabeen gags, expelling it.

“Shit!” Pradeep hisses, warding the bag away. “Shit! No! Stop! You’re choking her.”

Maahjabeen quickly settles. It was only a few droplets. Mandy’s voice comes from the far side of the bunker. “Everything okay in there, Pradeep?”

“Yes! Fine!” Pradeep’s eyes dart back and forth across the ceiling. What does one say in this situation? “Uh… No worries in here. Just past it now. All is well. Back to Do Not Disturb please.”

Mandy giggles. “This hotel maid hears and obeys.”

Jidadaa straddles Maahjabeen, pushing on her belly, kneading upward with strong fingers. Then she leans on her patient’s ribs, as if she’s squeezing the last of the toothpaste out. Finally, she gets off and rolls Maahjabeen over, so her face is off the cot’s edge pointed at the ground. Then she pushes on her back.

Gray goo dribbles from Maahjabeen’s mouth. Pradeep watches in mute horror, knowing he must have expelled the same mucous. Lumps drop out, like little owl pellets or dried clumps of gray oatmeal. Jidadaa keeps pushing. More and more emerges, landing with disgusting wet smacks on the plastic. Soon there is a pile on the floor like a cat’s foul vomit that needs to be cleaned.

Then Jidadaa rolls her back face-up. She pulls a juicy fingerful of black leaves from her plastic bag and pushes it into Maahjabeen’s empty mouth. Then she sits back and wipes a strand of hair away.

Pradeep quivers, fully anticipating another choking episode. But his darling dearest seems to tolerate the leaves fine this time. Her breathing steadies, if anything, and she slips into a deeper sleep. “I think that’s good. Is that good?”

Jidadaa shrugs, the movement awkward to her. She holds up her fingers stained with gray mucous and black juice. “The argument. See? Here it is. Gray on black.”

Pradeep makes a face. “Ugh. Let’s get your hands clean. There’s no way that’s sanitary.”

“First I clean the…” Jidadaa gestures at the gray pile Maahjabeen expelled. She uses an empty tissues box and some wipes. Then she cleans her own hands, although the perfume on the wipes makes Jidadaa blanch. “Ew. Need water.”

“Yeah, the creek’s your best bet to get all the smells…” Pradeep begins but her head twitches sideways no. “Ah. Okay. Not the creek. Are you hiding…? From the Doctor?”

“From golden childs. They are bad sign.”

“Ah. Yes. I see. I think. Well I won’t tell anyone you’re here. The golden childs. Are they… on our side or…? I mean, what are they doing here anyway?”

“Protect. All many want to stop Jidadaa. People in village. Sky people. Underground people. Golden childs. They think they can. But Lisica ends now.” Maahjabeen shudders and her body heaves forward. Pradeep throws his arms around her. “Listen to the bird,” Jidadaa demands.

Pradeep hears the familiar peal of an outraged eagle. The bird flies far above, winging its way home. “The osprey. But why is the bird screaming this time…?” His attention is split between its sudden appearance and Maahjabeen’s convulsions.

“He knows. I take his slave away.” Jidadaa lifts Maahjabeen’s twitching hand. She places it in Pradeep’s grasp. With her other hand she passes him the plastic bag filled with leaves. “Give to her, every bit. She will be strong. Give it all. Do not leave camp. Ever. Keep here with golden childs.”

“Wait. Where are you going?”

Jidadaa whispers over her shoulder, “Kula. She is my mother.” Then she slips out the clean room to the left and hurries silently to the steps leading down to the sub.

“Mahbub…” Maahjabeen’s weak hand reaches for his face.

“Oh! Babi.” He kisses her trembling fingertips.

“Where…?” Her eyelids unstick and her pupils slowly dilate.

“You’re here with me. Safe. Nothing will ever harm you again.”

“The taste… in my mouth…”

“Yeah. Must be pretty bad. Not the last of that I’m afraid. But I think we finally found you some medicine that works.”

“Good. I was trapped…” She falls heavily against his embrace, her eyelids fluttering, “in quicksand.”

“I know.” He kisses her brow. “But you’re safe now.”

“Tell me a story. Let me…” Maahjabeen trembles again. “Let me hear your voice. It… helps.”

“Yes. Of course. I remember. Your voice was the only thing that kept me alive. Your touch.” Pradeep opens his mouth and then closes it again. “But what shall I say? I mean… I could talk about, well, anything. What sounds interesting? Tunicates? Spongiform encephalopathies? Uh, pinniped eye parasites?”

She waves his jargon away. “Tell me… of yourself.”

“Oh. Right. Well that is far more difficult.” But he shifts, making himself comfortable, reviewing all his memories. This is something he doesn’t often do. There is little to be gained from the practice. “You know, I have always thought of my life in two parts. The first part was India, with all the good and bad. Then I turned 18 and got into University of Houston and moved to Texas. And that was the second part. Two years there. Two years in Indiana. Then grad school with Amy in Monterey. Almost six years in the second part. But now…” He sighs, thinking of all those lonely days and nights in sterile buildings with neither friends nor family. “I think now… Meeting you, my life is in a third part, the part where I am not lonely anymore. You see, moving to Houston was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You know me. How hard change is for me, how fragile I am. Well imagine me as a 17 year-old grappling with the fact that I was going to move to the big bad United States all by myself to go to college. It is so hard for Indian students. We are used to a very different culture. And then, after a couple long plane flights you are suddenly taken to a place where nobody is your friend, there are no parties you are invited to, nobody reaches out to you. There is racism. I mean, I shut down. For like the first whole year, I was just like sleepwalking through my time in the dorms and in my classes. I made no friends. I only thought about going back home. Desperately. I missed the rich food, the loud streets, the laughing people. I mean, Houston has some of that, but mostly only for its own community and it is very different. And yes, there are all kinds of Indian student clubs and things that I should have joined but I just couldn’t find anyone… Especially those Indian students who adored it there. They fell in love with the fast cars and the shiny buildings and the American football. So I made no friends there. And frankly it never got any better. Not at Purdue or CSUMB. America is a wonderful place in a lot of ways but in so many other ways it is so, so lonely.”

A figure appears in the door. It is Doctor Daine.

Pradeep leans down and kisses Maahjabeen’s soft cheek. “But then I found you, my little babi girl,” he whispers into her seashell ear. “And the third part of my life started. Now I will never be lonely again.”

Ξ

“Oh… Just look. It’s so beautiful.” Mandy leans back from the workstation screen at the long tables in the bunker and claps her hands with joy. Then she stretches. She’s been sitting here a long damn time.

Amy leans over her shoulder, eager to share the enthusiasm. But all she can see are graphs and charts she doesn’t recognize. “Great job, Mandy! Uh, what am I looking at here?”

“My first official data-driven forecast for the next ten days!”

“Oh! Really? What does it say? Is that X axis temperature or…?”

“Well, no, that one’s actually a humidity reading. Sorry. I haven’t properly labeled anything yet. I’m just so happy! Finally!” she groans, collapsing against the keyboard.

Amy is happy to see Mandy feel productive for the first time. “Hooray for you! So should I schedule a beach party or…?”

“No. God, no. Here, it’s this one. Look. Precipitation. Huge storm coming. In like eighteen hours? I mean, this is still just a single weather station with no satellite or network help. So I can’t get any more exact than that. Should be a cold one too.”

Amy nods. “You know, frankly, I’ve been surprised how dry we’ve generally been here. I mean, have you ever spent a spring in Oregon? Especially on the coast. It like never stops raining.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too…” Mandy’s fingers fly fast on the keyboard. “Look. Some figures we have here offline. Lisica is only at about 65% precipitation of Tillamook, Oregon over the last five weeks, although I figure we’re pretty much around the same latitude.”

“Oh, I thought we were a bit further south. More like Brookings or somewhere around there. But it just pours there, on like a daily basis, until summer. And even then.”

“Yeah, the biggest storms in North America are generated out here. The thing, look, here’s a satellite gif of a storm developing in the Bay of Alaska. Watch how it spirals outward. I think Lisica might just be too far from the coast. See how ragged the bands get by the time they’re this far south? All the main moisture patterns are usually drawn to the east, toward North America. And then these others kind of wither away over the open ocean. It’s like the main cells propagate on either side of us but rarely right here.”

“San Francisco is like this. The whole town is just stuck out on a peninsula facing the ocean but somehow it magically gets way less rain than the coast to the north and to the south. They just get the howling fog.”

“Well, we’ve certainly had plenty of howling fog here.” Mandy doesn’t want to correct all the inaccuracies in Amy’s comparison so she just changes the subject by bringing up another page of data. “Here are the locations of all the permanent oceanic buoys that NASA and NOAA manage. I figure one or two should be close. Actually, look. They didn’t drop a single buoy within a thousand kilometers of here. This is a really under-studied spot in the ocean, kind of a transition zone between the storm nursery in the Bay of Alaska and the open ocean of the North Pacific. Now that I’m actually getting some readings of my own, I’m seeing a possible paper analyzing this area in my future. Maybe many papers.”

“Publish, by all means!” Amy rubs Mandy’s back, excited for her. “That is, if the Air Force will let you. You know, I wonder if that’s part of the reason this spot remains under-studied. I bet the Navy and Air Force turned whole generations of researchers away from focusing on this area.”

“Well, not any more! Ooh, hear that?” Mandy pops up, cocking her head. “A gust front coming! Wind already in the trees!” She hurries outside, followed by Amy. The gusts are bitter and dry. “Yep, it’s pretty cold. I wish I could see the northern horizon. It must be getting active.”

Amy takes a deep breath. It’s nearly twenty-hundred hours, a bit after dinner. What she can see of the sky is purple, banded with gray clouds. A few stars peek through. “Look. Is that Venus? That must be like only the third time I’ve seen it since we got here. Good thing we didn’t bring an astronomer along. This would be like their least favorite place on the planet. Can you even think of a place that gets more cloud cover than Lisica?”

“There’s a spot in the North Sea north of Iceland, and another at the edge of Antarctica. But yeah. This area is like top five for sure. I wrote a paper on global cloud concentrations as an undergrad. I remember the least cloudy regions were Arizona and North Africa. By like a lot.”

They walk out of camp toward the beach and scale the fallen redwood trunk. Mandy takes a deep breath. “Oh, I love my new superpower though! I hope I don’t ever forget how to taste the air! I thought I understood weather before but I really only did through my computer screen. Now I get to combine both!”

Amy nods, the old sage. “This is why people do fieldwork.” She turns back to the cliffs behind them but they are lost in darkness. One of the golden childs stand in the whipping wind facing them, guarding Amy and Mandy from unseen threats. “Oh, hello. Nice night.” The golden child only presents its blank face to her, like a giant insect’s eye. At a loss for words, she turns back to Mandy. “So what do you think a big storm might do to the whole war between Sherman the shaman and Wetchie-ghuy?”

“Something Jidadaa said a couple nights ago…” Mandy jumps back down, shivering in the wind, and retreats to camp with Amy at her side. “It’s really stuck with me. She said that Wetchie-ghuy gets his power from people’s fear. Shadows and deceit. But Sherman is a sorcerer of the sky. That’s where they get their magic. So I figure a big storm will, uh, definitely favor one or the other.”

“Sky magic.” Amy shakes her head. “Really? That’s where we are here? Because what does that even mean? They call the sun and moon? Make them do their bidding? I don’t think so. They both rise and set the right times every day. I mean, as a scientist, I fail to grasp exactly what sky magic entails.”

Mandy nods in agreement. “Jidadaa said Sherman controls the fog. I was like, uh, actually the convective cycle controls the fog but go ahead girl. You do you.”

“Yeah and I’d say Sherman’s more into poison anyway with all the shit they’ve pulled on Triquet and Maahjabeen and Pradeep.”

“Exactly! Thanks but no thanks, dude. We got enough poison in the sky where we come from. That’s why we came here. Cause it’s supposed to be clear and pure out here.”

Amy stops, cocking her head. “Well, isn’t that a thing.”

Mandy stops as well, at the edge of camp. “What?”

Amy shakes her head, bemused. “As a professor I often say my biggest job is to point out blind spots in my students’ perceptions so that data-gathering and data-interpretation can be done free of bias. So. What you just said. I think it’s a bias that we still consider Lisica pristine. Know what I mean? We keep finding examples that contradict that assumption. Again and again. But so far we only see them as disconnected data points instead of a wider pattern. The fault is in us. We want Lisica to be undisturbed by the modern world but it really isn’t.”

“What are you saying?” Mandy sniffs the air. “That Lisica is like a toxic dump site? That poison is in the air? I don’t really get…”

“No. It must be less direct than that. I mean, actually, you’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a toxic dump. Ruining land is what militaries do best. But no, these shamans aren’t like slipping radioactive isotopes into our drinking water. At least I don’t think they are. Biases are less visible than that. This is us not seeing what is right in front of our own faces because we’ve convinced ourselves it doesn’t exist. And what I’m saying is this is a developed island.”

Mandy blinks. She isn’t sure what that insight gets them. But she’s also pretty sure the lack of understanding is on her part, not in Amy’s explanation. She flounders, hoping to think of something useful to add. “Remember when we scanned the sub with our radon sensors? We thought it worked at the time, right?”

“God, that seems like six months ago now. But it was clean. No, I think it’s actually safe here on Lisica. It’s just that we can’t keep operating on the false supposition that this is some Garden of Eden and we’re the first ever explorers. But so far we’re only like, ‘Okay, well sure there’s mysteries and secret graves and hidden villages and weird natives, but we’re still these great explorers in a virgin land.’ It’s a fallacy and I think our frustration is just our inability to see what is actually here.”

“So what is actually here?”

“I’ve got a feeling that this place is far more advanced than we know. I mean, like politically. We’re getting plots and sub-plots as deep as these tunnels. But for some reason we just can’t accept it. You know, I think there’s just a real need for a lot of us to feel that we are the very first ones somewhere. It like removes a whole layer of moral ambiguity and guilt. If we aren’t taking Lisica away from anyone, if in fact it’s our own island and nobody lives here, then we get to be the heroes in our own story. But it’s almost never like that. In fact, it probably hasn’t been like that for anyone anywhere since like a million BCE. We’re always kicking someone out or committing genocide or, well, being the villains instead of the heroes. We’re always destroying a local habitat, no matter how careful or high-minded we think we are. I guess that’s what the villagers probably mean by Jidadaa. They knew we’d eventually come. And when we did, that the old ways would all end. They’re right. Jay is the leed-ass or whatever they call him. We all are. Harbingers of doom.”

Ξ

Maahjabeen wakes with a clear head. She is present again. Rested. Whole. Oh, praise Allah! She fiercely squeezes Pradeep’s hand in gratitude and love.

“Ow.” Alonso gently extricates his hand. “I mean, what a grip!”

“Oh! Doctor Alonso! Forgive…! I thought you were…!”

“No no. I’m sure. But Pradeep is busy. He made me promise to hold your hand until he gets back. In just another bit.” He glances upward, where several people crawl on the roof fixing the tarps in preparation for the storm.

“Ehh. What time is it?”

“About four o’clock in the morning. More rain coming. Mandy made us get up early to fix what the wind has broken and make final preparations. But I was already…” Alonso shrugs. Another night of horrors. He’d been more than happy to be roused.

“Another storm? But I want to get in my boat.”

“To hear Mandy talk you will not need to move. The deluge will come and everything will all wash away. This cot will float, no?”

Despite herself, Maahjabeen giggles. This life she is returning to is so good, better than she has ever known. Pradeep is the sun. He is the brightest and purest thing she has ever known. Before him her life was in shadow. It always was. Even her happiest memories from before held darkness. Yelling. Anger. Guilt. Her family is a very contentious lot. And she was always nursing some resentment or other over the insult of the day. It is how she became so fierce, in proud opposition to their challenges. And not just from her family, it was also her sexist professors and the unhappy students that made up her whole life. They would all throw their pitiful and infuriating self-inflicted issues in her face. And that was why she always escaped to the utter serenity of the ocean.

But then Pradeep arrived. And he is bearing gifts. His love is so pure she cannot doubt it, even for a moment. So the dark thoughts she has always had about herself just sound indulgent and paranoid in her own ears now. And the ferocity. She can lay that aside as well. She can laugh. She can dance. As long as he is with her, she is complete. She doesn’t ever need this to end and she has no need of Heaven. Eternal bliss is already hers.

She blinks at the apostasy. That is the very first time such a thought has ever entered her head. And she doesn’t like it.

“What?” Alonso studies her worn face. “A shadow passed over you. What is it?”

“Oh. Nothing. ” Maahjabeen has to very carefully not fall back into her familiar hectoring resentment. She sighs to release the tension and seeks out Alonso’s hand again. For once, she is happy to have him interrupt her wayward thoughts. “Thank you, Doctor Alonso,” she squeezes his big rough hand, “for watching over me. I am not sure I have had too many bosses who would do that.”

“You are very welcome. It is my…” Pleasure is the wrong word here. So is duty. Alonso pats their joined hands with his other. “I am very glad we get to be friends, Miss Charrad.”

“Please. Maahjabeen.”

“Of course. I just always wanted to respect your professionalism.”

“Yes. Thank you, Doctor Alonso.”

“I think we are both people who yell. And when we met…” He releases her hand so he can make an explosion between his own. “Boom. You know?”

She chuckles, and in her depths she can feel how depleted she is. She tries to sit up but finds it to be a struggle. Ah. Not a full return to health yet after all.

Alonso helps her. “Pradeep said there is a tincture I am supposed to feed you if things go bad. Some herbal concoction of his from India, I gather?”

“Ugh. That stuff tastes so bad.”

“So you don’t think you need it?”

Maahjabeen tries to recall the circumstances around that black liquid. Hadn’t there been leaves in it the first five or six doses? And where had it come from? All she knows is that it is a component of her recovery. So she blanches and beckons silently to him. “The last bit. Come on. Let nobody say that I don’t finish my medicine.”

He tilts the little container into her mouth and she gags. It is so alkaline it feels like it strips the cells from the surface of her throat. But she feels it as a clean heat in her belly, killing off whatever that pit of mud was in there. How horrible.

Now, after a brief struggle, she is able to sit up. But her back is immediately cold. She wraps her arms around her knees, fragile and vulnerable in the night air.

Alonso drapes a blanket over her shoulders when he sees her shiver. Then he looks away. Even in her distress she is achingly beautiful. And this from a man who still considers himself gay! But Alonso has always worshipped beauty wherever he finds it. It is how Miriam stole his heart. It is how he learned that he is properly bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. He loves love. He flies to it like a moth to flame.

“I seem…” Maahjabeen’s teeth chatter, “to be in recovery here on this island as often as I am standing on my own two feet. I am sorry. My work is suffering. I am falling behind.”

“No no. It is I who must apologize for putting you unwittingly in such danger. I have been thinking about… Well. Everything. This whole venture. The naïve idea that I could trust the military about anything is… I mean, I guess I was desperate and only heard what I wanted to hear. But I should have known that there would be this entire other reality here, one that did not want us on its shores. And then I forced the issue, until the villagers had to push back. And now we are in this mess. And it is all because of me. Do you know the English word hubris? My dangerous pride?”

“Yes, it has been used by supervisors about me on their reports. But you could not know, Doctor Alonso. This is the Americans. If they can use you they will and there is nothing you can do about it. You are good. It did not occur to you how bad others can be.”

But an entire montage of dark episodes flickers through his head. He was not a good man in the gulag. He was a beast, a rat among other rats. His goodness had been altogether lost.

Now she registers his distress. Maahjabeen recalls how wounded he is. No matter what she has gone through, it is nothing compared to what he endured the last five years. Compassion wells up in her, a nearly unfamiliar sensation. She cups his face. “You are… very strong. Amazing.” The halting words seem insufficient but they prompt a tear to slide down his cheek.

Alonso ducks his head. “Yes, I am so happy we get to be friends, Miss… Maahjabeen.”

“Ooo, I like that. Yes. Miss Maahjabeen from now on.”

They both laugh, listening to the white noise of rain approaching from over the water. Others tumble inside, chatting and shaking their clothes dry. Life fills the bunker.

Pradeep is the first one back in the clean room. “Ah! You’re up!” He throws himself at Maahjabeen, only holding back at the last instant so he doesn’t tackle her. He holds her gently in his arms, kissing her face again and again.

Maahjabeen laughs, pushing at him, reveling in his passion. “I am. I think it is gone now, Mahbub.”

Alonso informs him, “She is just waking. And her strength is back. She nearly broke my hand.”

They all laugh more. Pradeep is flooded with relief and joy. Oh, paradise is not lost. He gets to return to it after all.

“Ehh, what is going on in here?” Esquibel backs into the clean room holding a stack of dripping tubs. She turns and sees her patient sitting up, bracketed by the two smiling men.

“She is back!” Alonso feels the little room is crowded now so he stands with effort, his knees balking and his feet groaning with pain. He hides a grimace and moves aside, edging toward the door slit. “And that medicine may just be why.”

“What medicine?”

Pradeep’s smile goes glassy. He supposes there’s no harm in telling the Doctor now. “I am sorry, Doctor. Jidadaa was here. About, uh, sixteen hours ago? And she gave me some leaves and stuff, like an herbal recipe, for me to give Maahjabeen. And it immediately improved her. Now, she is doing so well—”

But Esquibel can’t hear another word. “And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think the doctor should maybe test this ‘medicine’ of hers? Do the words contra-indicated mean anything to you? Oh, my god. You could have killed her.”

Alonso reaches out. “Now now.”

But Pradeep flares. “She was dying anyway. And you had given up. She wasn’t on any other drugs to contra-indicate, Doctor.” When someone attacks Pradeep he normally shuts down but this is Maahjabeen she is talking about. The ferocity that he puts into her title startles all of them, including him.

“You do not know if I would have started administering drugs. It could have been very fast, during an emergency. You have to tell your doctor when you want to try a new—”

“And you wouldn’t have given the herbs to her! You would have taken them away for your bloody stupid tests while she drowned in her own…” Pradeep gestures vaguely, the remembered sensation of cold bubbling mud robbing him of his words. “She needed it immediately. And Jidadaa swore me to silence.”

Esquibel pushes Pradeep out of the way. “Give me room. Tell me. How do you feel, Maahjabeen?”

“Okay. Like I have run a marathon or two. But getting better. Don’t be angry with Pradeep. He did what—”

“Yes, I know. He is your own true love and this is all so special. You are some of the worst patients I have ever had, I swear! So insubordinate. It is ridiculous trying to keep you healthy under these conditions.” Esquibel takes the woman’s pulse and prompts her to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. It is still a bit gray.

“We appreciate everything you do, Doctor Daine.”

“And don’t you try that political bullshit with me, Doctor Alonso. You knew about this too? Was I the only one kept from…?”

“No no. It is the first I’ve heard. If I’d known you hadn’t ordered it I would have never given her the final dose.”

“You gave her some too? Ai! Please. This is appalling.” Esquibel finds her stethoscope and starts listening to Maahjabeen’s thoracic cavity. Still congested. Things still seem a bit turgid. But far better than they had been. Esquibel could hardly detect her breath the last time she listened in. “And what if it is coincidence? Or what if these herbs have side effects that do not show up for six years? You cannot just eat any plant in the forest. That is how people die of toxic shock and renal failure. Does that sound like fun?”

Maahjabeen only silently regards Esquibel. What a powerful figure the Doctor is. But sometimes she is tiresome. Can’t she see that Pradeep made the right choice? He saved her life. “It is only your pride talking now, Doctor Daine.”

“No it is not!” Esquibel slams her hand against one of the tubs and pulls a tablet free of the same pile that held her stethoscope. “You think we just operate without any medical procedures? No best practices developed over the last one hundred bloody years of modern medicine? Why can’t people just shut up and do what they are told for once? There is a very disturbing trend in the world these days. Nobody trusts an expert any more. There is a growing amount of foolishness here in this camp, where trained scientists are beginning to believe in some very silly things. But you don’t know. None of you do. This is how the bush people are. They have no power of their own so they must magnify it through voodoo and superstition. Only if you believe in it, can it harm you.”

“We didn’t believe in anything, Doctor.” Pradeep wishes she would just leave them alone. “But we still ended up with the faces of foxes on our tailbones and pits of muds inside.”

“Yes.” Maahjabeen clutches him. “That is exactly how it felt.”

“Poison, as I have said. Most likely injected by a pad of needles in the pattern of a fox face. Perhaps for some ritual reason. Ask Doctor Triquet. No. Listen. You allowed an untrained village girl to give you a folk remedy for a deadly condition. Why do you not understand how dangerous that is?”

“What would you have me do, when she is dying? What were you doing, eh? What big plans did you have to save her?”

“I was monitoring her.”

“Monitoring…” Pradeep lifts his hands and lets them fall. “Great. Thanks. So much. For all your efforts. You had no plan. Doctors never understand. If you were able to heal us we’d be happy to stay in your care. But when you run out of ideas we are forced to take greater risks, to trust those we wouldn’t otherwise trust. Without this medicine, Maahjabeen would have died. I am sure of it.”

“What makes you sure?” Esquibel pinches Maahjabeen’s toes. “You didn’t need any medicine, Pradeep. And you survived. You came back even more rapidly than she did. So what healed you?”

They all look at Pradeep. A sudden image of Wetchie-ghuy fills his vision. He recalls for the first time who really saved him, in the twilight space between life and death, and at what cost. A sob bursts from Pradeep and he covers his mouth with his hand.

“What is it, love?” Maahjabeen kisses his hand.

He looks up, eyes drained of hope. “I… I, uh…” He finds himself incapable of putting it all into words. “I’ve been… claimed.”

Esquibel breaks the silence with a snort. “Yes, this is the exact kind of nonsense I mean.”