Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

55 – Something Important First

From atop the cliff, the sea shines chrome, in a band that emerges from the eastern horizon where the dawning sun rises. Maahjabeen watches the sea fill with light, thinking of God and destiny and the immutable design of His creation.

“Oh my god,” Flavia’s gasping voice behind her breaks her reverie, “they said you spent the night up here and I couldn’t believe it. This is about as far as my friend Maahjabeen can get from her beloved ocean.”

“Yes, but I can see it from here. I can see so much.”

Flavia stands on the far side of the mouth of the shaft that drops four hundred meters to the tunnels within the cliff. She carefully skirts it and joins Maahjabeen on the lip of the cliff on the far side, among the wreckage of the observation platform where Mandy lost her weather station during the bombogenesis. There is a little hollow beside the splintered timbers that have been neatly stacked as a windbreak, in which Maahjabeen’s sleeping pad and bag fit quite nicely last night. Yet she hadn’t barely slept. She can’t shed a sense of approaching doom. Only the staggering breadth of the ocean can forestall it and calm her mind.

“Where is your boyfriend?” Flavia stands beside Maahjabeen behind the stack of broken planks, looking where she looks but not seeing what she sees. The southern horizon is the very concept of infinity made manifest in the world. But Flavia’s taste for the abstract finds this real-world dividing line, where one shade of gray is finely divided from another shade of gray, far less comforting than the perfect representations of such mechanics that wheel and elegantly unfold in her mind. Ultimately, what she is looking at here is just a messy transition between two states of matter, from the liquid of the ocean to the gas of the atmosphere. But they are still mostly made of the same constituent parts. It is all just a matter of the density of moisture in each cubic meter and how the surface tension of the water is the bound between the two states.

After a long moment, during which Maahjabeen is filled once more with the peaceful silence of the open sea, she recollects Flavia’s question and replies, “Ehh, he has some notion to find a pond or inland lake before we leave. Collect more samples for Plexity. Good for his studies but not for mine. And I knew Alonso would argue with me if I tried to go to the sea cave, so this seemed the next best option.”

Standing beside her, Flavia takes Maahjabeen’s hand and rests her head on her shoulder. “Too cold. And I have already filled my lifetime quota of this ocean wind. When you are ready, we can go back down and I have espresso for you, mia cara. Do not be long.”

“What will you do…?” Maahjabeen asks, “when you get back?”

Flavia groans in pleasure. This has been her favorite thing to think about for weeks now. “Well, first I will feed my dog. And then I will take a bath for about six days. Then I will… let me see…” Flavia squeezes Maahjabeen’s hand and searches within herself for her deepest craving. But it has been too long. All of her favorites, that she tormented herself with missing during the first five or six weeks on this godforsaken island, now seem far too elaborate and decadent and… artificial in some depressing way. Even like the simple Carbonara they make on the corner for her. All those rich ingredients stacked together seems an oily mess, a nauseating indulgence. Tiramisu from L’osteria down the road is the same. She’s had it for her birthday every year for a decade but now the thought of all that sweet cream and sugar turns her stomach. “Oh, no. What is happening to me?” Flavia clutches her belly, finding it shrunken and uncharacteristically complaisant.

Maahjabeen turns to her with concern. She is nowhere near ready to leave this view but the tone in Flavia’s voice concerns her. “What is it?”

“My body… My taste… You do it. Think of your favorite meal or dessert. The thing that makes you the happiest. What is that dish?”

Maahjabeen shrugs, far from the concerns of the flesh. “Maybe a good Lebanese baklava, with walnuts not pistachios, and just a tiny hint of rosewater. That is my favorite.”

“Yes but now think of it. Would you eat it now, if I magically had it in my pocket and I take it out and here.” Flavia mimes handing Maahjabeen her baklava. “Buon appetito. Would you eat it?”

“Uh… thank you.” Maahjabeen giggles and mimes taking a bite.

“No, no.” Flavia waves away the idea of it. “I mean, could you really eat all that honey and sugar and dough right now, after we have been surviving on plain rice and like bugs and ashes for all these months? I can’t imagine eating my favorite foods any more and it is making me very sad. What if I never adjust back? What if my taste for the finer things in life is forever gone.”

“These are the finer things in life.” Maahjabeen sweeps her hand across the glittering surface of the sea.

“You know what I mean. I think of pizza and my stomach turns. That is so much cheese and oil and garlic! Even a nice salad. It is too much indulgence. These carefully picked leaves of cultivated lettuces and vegetables. And the aged balsamic. I do not think I can do it. Ai. The modern world has left me behind.”

Maahjabeen laughs at Flavia. “Yes, it is true. I would not eat the baklava. Even a little nibble would be too sweet. But this is not the first time I have left civilization and returned, you know. The hard part, I find, is how big and loud and scary the automobiles are. For the next couple weeks, you will be astounded that people just drive these giant blocks of metal around at terrifying speeds. You will see one from the corner of your eye and you will jump. And that will last maybe a couple weeks.”

“Oh, I can’t wait. On that last day maybe we sit up here and wait for the ship to appear on the horizon. Just you and me. We can make plans to visit each other and everything. I can’t wait for the cars to scare me.”

Maahjabeen nods, drawing Flavia close. “Pradeep too.”

“Oh, certainly. Your handsome boyfriend is always welcome. So what will you do when you get back? Will you still see each other?”

Maahjabeen laughs at the question, helpless. “We are obsessed with each other. I think we must. I don’t know how either of us will get any work done when we get home.”

“Home is where? I thought you didn’t have one?”

“Well, he’s been working with Amy and Jay in California. I have never been to America but if he is there then maybe it is time to try. He says their university is next to the ocean and that should be good enough for me.”

Flavia shakes her head, unconvinced. “I am not sure America is right for you, Maahjabeen. You are too pure. That is a place for… for hustlers. For salesmen and lawyers. I think you have avoided it all these years for a reason. Maybe you can find a better place for both of you. Does Pradeep ever want to go back to India?”

Maahjabeen shakes her head no. “He never says so. He thinks of visiting his family of course, but he has gotten more excited talking about going to Tanzania. He says he has a friend in Dar es Salaam we could stay with. He could work at the university and the Indian Ocean is right there for me.”

“Well there you go. Zanzibar for you.”

“Yes, but he has another eighteen months in this doctorate program first. So I am thinking just a bit of California. He says there are wide open places there. It is not all cities and highways. If I can find those open places, especially on the water, I will be fine.”

“Oh, yes. The states are huge. California itself is like the size of Algeria. It is good advice. Just stay out of the cities.”

“And what lessons will you bring back home?” Maahjabeen studies Flavia’s open face. “What have you learned here?”

“To never come back. Now let’s go. I will make you a breakfast of instant oats and dried berries that will knock your socks off.”

But still Maahjabeen doesn’t move. She looks at the horizon instead, but her smile fades into worry. “Wait. We have a problem. We can’t… Oh, no.”

“We can’t what? What is it?”

“Think about it. The ship will arrive on the morning of 19^th May. We will hide up here, watching. Maybe Esquibel will have to be with us to make sure it is the Americans and not the Russians.”

“Oh. Right. Yes, that is a good plan. And if it is the Russians we can just wait up here until they leave. Smart thinking.”

“No, but that isn’t the problem Flavia. I mean, that is certainly one problem, but what happens when the Americans arrive?”

“We… go home?”

“Do we? Who is in charge of this mission?”

“Alonso. I mean, Esquibel, if you want to be more…”

“No no no. It is that Colonel Baitgie. The one who is working for the Chinese. In the end, this is his mission. What if he is the one on that ship when it arrives? Will he even let us back aboard?”

“Ehh, he should. I don’t know what his game is.” Flavia frowns at the implausibility of Maahjabeen’s scenario. “But he is engaging in espionage. He is not like some action hero standing on the deck with a big gun. He will be more secretive than that, won’t he?”

The two women stare at each other, their minds racing. “I think,” Maahjabeen finally says, “that we might be the only ones who have thought of this so far and we might need to share our thoughts with Alonso.”

“And Esquibel.”

“Yes. At once.” Now Maahjabeen follows Flavia from the cliff through the tall grasses wet with morning dew to the climb down and the village below.

She is hardly aware of the descent as she does it. Her mind is too full of concerns. Maahjabeen spots Esquibel at the mouth of the cave from far above and drops down to her, running down the last of the steep slope with abbreviated steps. Flavia is right behind her.

“Doctor Daine.” Maahjabeen strides through the village, its occupants busy on all sides. She only has eyes for Esquibel though. Flavia is right with her. “We have been thinking about our last day. And we have a problem.”

“Our last day?” Esquibel had worked to narrow the cave mouth with bundles of firewood and unused planks of redwood bark last night. Now she steps out of her fortification, sipping a mug. “What do you mean?”

“You have to talk to that Chinese fellow before they come.” Flavia has advanced several tactical steps in her mind and realizes she has gone too far to make sense. “I mean, listen, what if Colonel Baitgie is aboard that ship when it arrives?”

“Colonel Baitgie?” Esquibel makes a face. “I doubt it. For one thing he’s Air Force. He’d just get the Navy to do it for him. That’s how we all came out here. The smallest taskforce possible.”

“But what if he has heard that you have not handed off the…”

“Ohh… Yes.” Esquibel nods, weary. “The blasted USB stick that has ruined my life. I have been thinking about this. How to save my military career.”

“Your military career?” Maahjabeen exclaims. “How about the lives and security of all the people on this island?”

Esquibel is surprised to hear Maahjabeen be such an alarmist. “I can’t imagine that Baitgie would jeopardize his position with such a bold move. He must be worth quite a lot to the Chinese. They will keep him hidden in the background. Do not worry.”

“Well, then, what if he has helpers? All we are saying is that if the Chinese have told him that they never received the data they were promised, why would he let us off the island until we have satisfied their demands?” Maahjabeen’s hands flutter with worry. “Maybe he gives the Navy a false order, that we are supposed to be left here, or maybe that we should be taken into custody. Maybe the whole Chinese thing is a lie, just an elaborate plan to frame you, Doctor. If you did give them the data then he can blackmail you for the rest of your…”

“You think I haven’t worried about that?” Esquibel hisses, making the closest villagers flinch in reaction. “That is what I am spending all my sleepless nights here doing, trying to decide what I will tell him. I have to play stupid. I have to present my side of the situation as being hapless and unhelpful. If I am incompetent then that is better than being in opposition to him, no? Oh, I had no idea there were show tunes on that USB stick. I downloaded all the Plexity data. I have it right here for you. I must have mixed the sticks up.” Esquibel shrugs. “See? To protect the rest of you, he cannot know that you all know. So we must all agree. You must all be very trustworthy and discreet and asking that of people like Jay and Katrina is…” Esquibel presses her head from both sides as if she is keeping it from exploding. “But I have no choice. I cannot expose any of you to this danger. It is mine alone.”

“And what if the Russians arrive first?” Flavia asks. “We will watch from the cliff above but we don’t know what a Russian or American ship looks like. Will you join us up there?”

“Yes. Good plan.” Esquibel can see the wisdom in it. “And they won’t be able to see us, unless they are very lucky. And even if they did, there is no indication that they know how to access the inland from the beach.”

“They do, the Russians have their own way in,” Maahjabeen says. “That’s what that other bunker in the west is all about. And the leader of the Thunderbirds speaking Russian. Right?”

“Ah. Yes. True. But still. We can wait them out. If they arrive first, I am sure the Americans will chase them away and then we can depart in safety. We just need to be careful these last few days. It is getting very dangerous.”

Flavia shivers. “Ugh, I hate this so much. Who would ever put a poor research mathematician in such a place?”

Esquibel gives her a lopsided smile. “Well, a traitor would. I will play stupid as long as I need. But when I get back to the mainland, I will go to the CIA headquarters in Virginia myself this time.”

“Dear God, this is a scary game you are playing.” Maahjabeen resolves to include Esquibel’s well-being in her daily prayers. “I wish we could be more help. But we will do whatever you need of us so we can all put this place behind us when it’s over.”

“Thank you, Maahjabeen. Thank you, Flavia.”

The two of them hug Esquibel in turn and depart. She withdraws back into the cave, where she’s built her clean room in the small alcove where they rode out the storm and the flooding in here.

Esquibel’s mind is blank. Her pulse is quick and shallow. She stops and tries to take a deep breath but the adrenaline coursing through her veins won’t let her calm herself.

Once she is sure she is alone in here she removes the latest slip of rice paper from within her bra and reads it one last time. It had been against her skin when she’d awakened, just like the last one. The block letters spell out in tiny letters:

NO DATA. WRONG FILES. TONIGHT AGAIN.

Ξ

Pradeep leads Miriam and Jay up the slope he climbed the day before. But once the undergrowth clears on the steepening slopes he traverses off to the right at a tricky angle, using crusted knobs of dirt to save himself from sliding down on loose soil.

“Definitely…” Pradeep struggles, grasping at vines and only belatedly realizing they have thorns. Palms bloody, he slides down into the bracken once he releases his hold. “Ah. Definitely not an actual path this way. May not be a path at all…”

“Land of the lost, dude. Let’s go find some dinosaurs and shit.”

“How are you lads at bouldering?” Miriam has stopped to clean her sunglasses and survey the slope. They’re about to enter a canyon, the raw banded rock of the far cliffs obscured by trees. This is the geological wonderland she’s been seeking. And she can spot a rockfall ahead and far down that promises a path forward.

“There?” Jay points at the target. “Yeah, if you’re good with like a dirt glissade to get all the way down there. Ha. We could use shovels instead of ice axes.”

Miriam nods and takes off her pack. She removes three tools with foldable handles: a spade, a pick, and a hoe. “Grand. Which would you prefer?”

“Oh, you’re being serious?” Jay guffaws. “Right on. Uh…” He takes a closer look at the slope before them. “I don’t know, dude. My leave no trace principles are really screaming about this one. We could start like an actual landslide and we don’t know enough about what lies below, know what I’m saying? We might really wreck some shit, totally unaware.”

“Yes, and then what? How will we get back up?” Pradeep makes a face, his anxiety pricking at him for one of the first times ever in the deep wilderness. He points at the slide. “That’s a one-way road, that is, and I’d prefer not to trap ourselves on this hike. I think if we just get a bit further here along my route there may be a more solid path down. Ah! Yes. We’ve got a better chance over here. But don’t put your tools away quite yet, Miriam. Things will still be very tricky. And I’ll, uh, take the hoe.”

She passes it forward and tries to peer over his shoulder. “What do you see?”

“Solid footing. A maze of rock and ceanothus.”

“Ooo! What kind of rock?” Miriam eagerly follows Pradeep with Jay at her heels. “Looking very ultramafic down here. This deposit might just be a type of intrusive troctolite, assuming these bits here are a calcic plagioclase.”

They weave their way down, forcing a path through the brittle clawing branches and broken sandstone steps, using their tools as makeshift handholds on the drops. The last twenty meters is a true face-to-the-wall descent, and Pradeep once again objects to obstacles that will only let them travel one way.

But they can see much more of the canyon now. It winds inland to the northwest, toward the heart of the island. A stream exits its narrow mouth, bordered by redwoods and willows. “Where does all that water go?” he wonders. “Sorry. Think I’ve gone about this all wrong. Thought I could find a middle path but… You’re both going to hate me but I’m pretty sure we should retrace our steps all the way back to pine camp and then come at this canyon from wherever this stream joins the main creek instead.”

“Uh, we could do that,” Jay frowns, “but how would we know we’d choose the right stream and make sure were going up the right canyon? Remember on our three day ordeal how spun we got trying to get back?”

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a proper surveyor,” Miriam sighs. “I haven’t worked on a site without ArcGIS data for ages. Aha! No, Pradeep. We don’t have to go quite so far. Look, from here we can drop and switchback down to the stream with a bit of luck.” She pushes aside a flowering bush and reveals a narrow gully dropping down at their feet.

“Ah, you’re right. Thank god.” Pradeep sighs, the hours-long detour avoided. “I am so glad you agreed to come along, Miriam.”

“Me too, love. You’ve gotten me quite excited. I think we finally might see the geological heart of this island after all.”

After another dozen minutes of fighting their way downslope, Pradeep leads them through the last of the vegetation, forcing his way through a stand of dogwood. “Ah! Eek.” He pulls up at the edge of the water, balancing on clods of dirt that slowly crumble beneath his feet. Trapped after all, with no way back up. With a muttered curse he drops into the stream from the overhanging bank onto a sandbar submerged nearly a meter. He yelps as his legs are swallowed by the cold water. Then he wades toward the shallows as Miriam and Jay drop in beside him. Pradeep frowns at the fern-clad overhang off which they jumped. “Hard to get back that way. We’ll have to find another way downstream.”

“Blimey, look!” Miriam gazes into the canyon, which is lit by a rare slanting ray of golden sun. The trees glow green, beckoning. The cliff face beyond is striated with quartz and silicates, yellow and brown. “Mercy me. I’ve never wanted to work a site so much. Come on, lads. Now it’s just a bit of wading.”

“Lead on, Doc.” Jay moves to a collection of deadfall at the edge of the stream and pulls a crooked staff-length limb free. He snaps off the secondary branches and hands it to Miriam. “Just watch your footing.”

Entering the canyon is like stepping inside a cathedral. Miriam’s Catholic upbringing would have her genuflect and cross herself. The towering shafts of the ancient trees and the precipitous cliffs place her deep in the bedrock without being underground.

The canyon’s neck is narrow, leading them through high granite and sandstone bulwarks on either side that force the water through in a rushing flow. They can’t be climbed. But Pradeep finds stones that can be used as stairs, right in the middle of the stream. Finally it opens into a wider passage, the floor of the canyon as broad as twenty meters in places. Here they find more sandbanks in curving oxbows, including one above the waterline. Finally they can rest. Taking off their packs, they drink and eat as Jay rolls a joint.

“Ah. Look. This is quite a nice spot.” Pradeep pushes aside some broadleaf vine maple and white alder to reveal a higher washout behind them that is now level and clear with a floor of sand.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind flash floods,” Jay says.

“I can’t imagine the kind of storm that would lead to a flood at this upper level. See? It hasn’t reached this high at all this year, even after the storms we’ve seen. And the rainy season will taper soon as summer begins. This is better than pine camp, I’d say.”

“It’d be brilliant to stay here the last few days.” Miriam picks up a river rock at her feet, gray sandstone with black inclusions. “I could finally get so much done. But not all of us would agree, I’m sure. I can’t see Alonso hiking even a single percent of that route.”

Jay passes the joint to Miriam. “Ah, but what if we could get him to follow the stream from the beginning? At least, that’s the hope. We could even float him most of the way.”

“Well if we’re floating then I bet I could get Maahjabeen to do it.” Pradeep laughs, then looks to the top of the opposite cliff. “Look. It’s right up there. That one unmistakable big rock way at the top. Uh, what’s the proper term, Miriam? That big rock there.”

“You mean that truncated spur with the tower of red granite?”

“Yes. The top of that short tower is where Xaanach led me. Cut my hand.” He holds up his bandaged finger. “What is that, like two hundred meters? Three hundred? Straight up.”

Miriam laughs at the guess. “I think we’ve already established that we’re quite shit at estimating cliff heights. But what a beauty! This whole cliff. Look at all the lovely stratigraphy! Pradeep, you’ve done it. You’ve finally found the heart of this place.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Pradeep studies the canyon even further upstream. “I mean, now that I’ve paddled all the way around the whole bloody island, it’s at least six or seven kilometers in length, maybe more. And right now we aren’t even a kilometer north of the southern coast, are we? We’re barely in the interior here. No, there’s a lot more in there that we will never see.”

Jay shakes his head, jealous, peering upstream into the shadowy green density. “Man, that’s where Amy is. Somewhere way back in this maze. Dreaming the green dream.”

“Yes, I envy her too.” Pradeep thinks of how deeply she must have sunk into this extraordinary web of life. The secrets she must be learning of this island will remain forever beyond him.

“You… envy her?” Miriam shakes her head in distaste. “You know, she’s been gone nearly five days. Two big storms. We don’t even know if she’s eaten or slept that whole time.”

Pradeep shrugs. “Well, at least we know that nobody is holding her hostage. She could come and go at any time. Morska Vidra didn’t say she seemed unwell.”

“I just hope,” Jay adds quietly, “she comes back soon. Getting mad worried for her. And I just—just really miss her. She’s like my mom and my best friend and my boss all rolled into one.”

“Aw, Amy would love hearing that.” Miriam watches Jay climb the deadfall upstream. “Careful, now. That’s probably never held a human weight.”

“Yeah, tons of wreckage here…” Jay scrambles along the logs lying crosswise at angles. They were deposited so long ago they have grown moss and ferns from their blackened trunks.

“Keep climbing, Jay. I saw a pond or lake from above—”

Jay sways over a sudden pit. “Whoa! Okay. When you follow, do not under any circumstances go this way. There’s like a net of vines over a full drop into rushing water. Like ten meters down. You fall in there you ain’t never coming back.”

Pradeep and Miriam pause in their own climbs until he can find a better path upward. He finally does so, peeking over the ledge. “Yeaaah boi! Here’s your lake up here, Prad! Oh, it’s so awesome! Come check it out!” And he scrambles up out of view.

Pradeep laughs, pleased that all this effort is paying off, and heaves himself up the remaining logs to behold the dammed canyon above. The water is a dark shining band, like a fat snake winding its way through the cliffs. But it has pockets of sandbars and narrow shorelines where willows and bay trees drink.

Brown pelicans and seagulls float on its surface. A trio of Canada Geese browse the edges. “Look at that, Jay! The geese are the only Anatidae here. Even here. No freshwater ducks or swans.”

“Trippy. Weird to see a wild lake without ducks. Didn’t Amy say she’d spotted some buffleheads in the lagoon?”

“Well that would be the only ones then. Both they and the geese are migratory so that’s how they must have got here. How we get here is another matter entirely…” With tentative steps, Pradeep makes his way off the dam of fallen logs to a narrow band of muddy shore on his left, the striated cliff at his back. From here he is able to survey the lake more clearly. Around the bend upstream it seems to balloon in size. That would be fantastic. The waters might even branch into untrammeled side canyons and unique ecosystems. But he won’t be able to see any of that from here. Without one of Maahjabeen’s boats he may never get to see the upper lake around the bend at all. He sighs, gathering his resolve, and kicks off his shoes.

“What are you doing, Pradeep?” Miriam gains the muddy ledge on which he stands. She asks absently, her attention absorbed by the staggering wealth of minerals on display before her.

He peels off his clothes and stands wearing only his boxer briefs, his lean brown body all skeletal right angles. Pradeep takes a hesitant step into the water. “Eh… Just going for a quick swim.”

Ξ

“Is there anyone…?” For the first time in hours Alonso looks up from his laptop screen. His mouth is dry as paper. “Ach. Where is Amy with her tea?”

He looks helplessly around. None of his team are nearby. Well, Katrina is interviewing that old woman across the village square but he would have to bellow to be heard. And it is just a cup of tea. Or a bottle of water. Anything would be fine…

A trio of children are playing nearby with a fragment of woven reeds, tugging on the frayed corners and interrupting each other with competing rhymes. One sees Alonso watching them and calls out to him, incorporating the bloated pale giant into his chant. The others turn and watch him too. He smiles and they laugh at him, a cruel sound to his ears. His smile fades with a sigh.

“No, if anyone is getting water it is me.” Alonso stirs, lifting his legs, which always scream with disuse. The sign of healing that he notices, though, is how fast the pain fades now. He draws his knees up halfway to his chest. Yes, he is getting more range of motion back. Do more with less pain. That’s his motto going forward.

“Ai, Alonso, what are you doing to yourself?” Flavia appears from the cave mouth with Maahjabeen. “Sit. Sit. What do you need? I will get it for you.”

“Ah.” Alonso falls back, the struggle just started and easily abandoned. “Flavia, you are a superhero. Yes, water, por favor. And lots of it.”

“Of course.” She ducks back into the cave and returns bearing a wide-mouth bottle and a mug. “Alonso went and got himself lost in the data, didn’t he?” She leans down and hands him the mug with a smile and a caress of his grizzled jaw.

He drinks greedily, emptying the mug, then hands it back to her for a refill. “Perfect. Thank you. No, not lost. Far from lost. Just forgot about my bodily functions all morning. Now it is after noon and I don’t know where the time went.”

“We bring you,” Maahjabeen holds up a pair of Dyson readers, “samples from the sea cave. Every corner of it.”

“You are also a superhero, Maahjabeen. Thank you so much. Do we have a terminal for them set up? Ah, yes. Here. At my feet. That dock is plugged in. Someone must have done it for me.”

Maahjabeen regards Alonso, sitting like a fat spider in his techie web, cables leading to metal cases and solar panels and the duffel bags of like five people stacked in there unzipped. There is no trace left of Morska Vidra’s home, only this untidy mess of modernity sitting in its place.

But Alonso doesn’t think of any of this. He is working like a man possessed. He hunches over the keyboard again, fingers flying. The struts and beams of this new architecture he is building are starting to become clear in his mind. It exists nowhere but in an abstract dataset of computational biology, and if he can pull it off with minimal errors, he may be able to dispense of nearly half of the executive process error margins. Its completion will resolve many of the remaining limitations of Plexity. They might just escape this island with a working prototype after all.

Flavia takes a long drink herself and wipes her hands on her jeans. But the jeans are so filthy her hands get no cleaner. She will have to go down to the creek or something and take a bath. Maybe she can get a few of the others to join her… such as her colleague who has just arrived. “Eh, Doctor Triquet. How are you?”

Triquet hurries across the village square, preoccupied with what they study on their phone. “Hmm? Oh, hi doll. Doing peachy. Just got a final clue here, perhaps. An entry in Ingles’ diary. Popping back down to the sub. How is it down there?”

“Very dirty. So I was hoping you would like to join me for a bath at the creek soon.”

“Sorry, Flavia. Got to go get myself dirty first.” Triquet winks at her, saucy, then continues toward the mouth of the cave.

“Wait. What is this final clue?” Flavia calls out.

Triquet scrolls back through the image to read it from their screen. “Dated December 12^th, 1959. ‘Finally put a stop to all this nonsense once and for all.’ That’s all. But you know, at first when I read it, I just thought he was complaining about some trivial thing but now that I am more familiar with the Colonel’s understated way, I can tell this was a huge deal to him and he was recording his only response to the whole drama. All the dates line up.”

“The whole drama? So 12 December is the day he killed the Dowerd lady?”

“Give me two hours in my stacks downstairs and I’ll let you know. So close!” With a wave, Triquet disappears into the cave. Flavia turns back to view the village. Their voices had been loud enough to carry across it. The old woman with Katrina is staring at Flavia, mouth open, eyes wet with distress. She mouths the word Dowerd and wrings her hands.

“Oh, what have I done this time?” Flavia waves weakly at the pair of them and turns away, catching up with Maahjabeen, who is finishing her own mug of water. “Eek. Get me out of here. You will take a bath with me, yes, my dear sister? Get all this mud off us.”

Maahjabeen nods. “Modestly, yes.”

Ξ

Xaanach laughs at Mandy and pushes her out of the grass back into the treeline. She lectures her, pointing at the grass with her chin and the tip of her thumb.

“Uh… Okay…” Mandy smiles weakly, looking for help from Katrina and Esquibel, but they are flushed with their exertions and preoccupied with catching their breaths. Jidadaa and Xaanach set a wicked pace. And it’s not like this is a trail or anything. Mandy’s poor legs are already bruised and scratched from barreling through dense stands of buckthorn. The two Lisicans slipped through the brush, hardly making a sound. But the three women tromping behind left a passage through the bush as wide as a sidewalk.

Katrina had asked them, when the Lisicans waited once for them to catch up, how they managed to move so freely in the thickets. This led to a long conversation between Jidadaa and Xaanach. Finally, the little girl pulled a branch of the buckthorn off and waved it, its thorny leaves the shape of her hand. She offered it to Mandy, lecturing, pointing at the structure of the plant.

“Xaanach say,” Jidadaa translated, “step to heart of daakakʼáts… eh, this bush? Yes. Every bush have door. Find door in, walk to center, then out. Leaves face out. Thorns face out. Always step from in to out. Yes?”

“What? What the bloody hell does—”

“Language…” Katrina reproved Esquibel like a schoolmarm before the doctor could explode.

“Whoa. Okay.” Mandy hadn’t even felt stupid for not getting what Xaanach meant. It was inexplicable. She just tried to think of ways to keep the conversation going. “So, like, that big stand of bushes there. Could you walk through it? I don’t see any door.”

Jidadaa stepped slantwise toward the buckthorn, pointing up and in from her left knee. “Here. You see? Every bush have door. If you a polite guest it show you.” She crouched, stepped forward and down to the left, then moved through the brush with only the slightest of rustling crackles.

“Huh.” Mandy frowned, not really getting it. She watched Xaanach move off once again, effortless through the buckthorn. She and Katrina practiced for the next hundred meters or more, while Esquibel still stomped loudly behind, complaining of the thorns and the impracticality of this entire endeavor.

Then they reached this grand meadow, its long stalks yellowing and waving in the breeze. Mandy had sighed in both frustration and relief. She had just been starting to get what the Lisican girls had meant about the doors in the bushes. But she is also happy to have their choked path lead to an open field.

When she tried to follow in Xaanach’s footsteps into the meadow the girl had stopped her and pushed her off the grass, lecturing her about something, some monster lurking in here?

Now Jidadaa arrives from her own hidden route up a narrow draw to their right. She laughs at Mandy’s uncomprehending look. “Pigs in grass. No walk in line. They knock you over. Walk here.” And she leads each woman to a place in a staggered formation, about three meters apart, facing the meadow. “Now we walk.”

“Just how far away is this supposed emergency anyway?” Esquibel asks. At least this new tactic makes sense to her. Boars are a real thing, not mystical doors in bushes. “If we need to move a patient back to the clean room, I don’t see how we can do it.”

They wade into the grass, dividing the waves of green and gold that reach in places above their heads. Now Mandy can tell why they didn’t place them even further apart. If they moved into a wider formation at all they’d lose sight of each other.

They smell it before they see anyone, the unmistakable odor of cigarette tobacco on the wind. Then the acrid edge of something rank and unwholesome.

Mandy steps out into a small clearing in the grass, a hidden nest open to the sky. Katrina is to her left and Esquibel is to her right, with Xaanach and Jidadaa watching for their reactions from the other side of Esquibel. Mandy takes in the scene:

Garbage everywhere in small disordered mounds. Flies buzzing. A stained camouflage tarp has been tied down at a drunken angle on scavenged branches. A pair of boots pokes out the nearest end, where the tarp is tied low to the ground. The smoke emerges from within. The boots twitch.

Mandy doesn’t like the look of this at all. She backs away from it, into the safety of the grasses, crouching like a spooked cat. Beside her, Katrina goes still, her mind racing at this unexpected assault on her senses. Esquibel recognizes military-issue boots when she sees them. With a silent grimace she shoves her medical kits off her hip so she can access the satchel that holds her sidearm. But before she can draw it the grasses part on the far side of the clearing and a Thunderbird elder emerges. He calls out to Jidadaa in challenge.

She responds, making a firm point. They fall into a long dispute, with Xaanach crying out seemingly unhelpful bits as punctuation. Jidadaa refers to the three women again and again, specifically Esquibel. Finally, the elder drops his head and relents.

“He will let you see him now.” Jidadaa leads Esquibel across the clearing. She still holds her hand in her satchel, eyes darting.

“How nice of him. See who?”

Esquibel crouches at the side of the tarp at a safe distance from its shadowed interior. She can’t see much in there, only the outline of what looks like a bundle of clothes. Then the clothes shift and she can make out his profile. He lifts the cigarette with shaking fingers and takes another long draught.

She can smell the necrosis from here. It is an awful tang in the air that reminds her of that one ward she once knew full of Ethiopian refugees. They had come to them seeking medical care after weeks on their own in the bush. So many of them could not be saved. This man smells just like the Dadaab refugees.

“Does he have friends?” Esquibel asks Jidadaa.

“No. Man alone. Very sick.”

Esquibel finally takes her hand from her satchel and pulls her medical kits back into place. She unzips her traveling pharmacy and takes out a syringe kit and ampoules of Amoxicillin. “I can tell. Where is he hurt? Does he speak English?”

The man’s head lolls to the side, finally acknowledging the activity happening outside his shelter. He whispers something broken, fragmented syllables ending again and again in ‘avos.

“Not English,” Katrina answers Esquibel. “Russian.” She calls out to the wounded man, peering into his shadows. “Ona vrach. Ona pomozhet tebe.”

The man whispers something else and Katrina has to cross the clearing and crouch down to hear it. “He says it is too late.”

“Yes, well,” Esquibel wrinkles her nose and edges closer. “He is probably right. Is he armed?”

“Don’t shoot her. Ne strelyay v neye.”

“U menya…” He coughs, an ugly wet sound, “net oruzhiya.”

“He has no weapon.”

Esquibel holds up the syringe. “Medicine. Antibiotics.”

The man waves the cigarette, coughing, mumbling his words. Katrina leans in, nodding.

Esquibel waits for him to finish. “What? What did he say?”

“Nothing. I mean, I couldn’t follow… He is raving.”

“Yes. He is very close to the end. Jidadaa. Where is his injury?”

Jidadaa asks the Thunderbird elder and he passes his hand under his left ribs and along his left leg.

Esquibel nods, pulling back and circling over to the far side of the tarp. She can access his left side more easily from here. “Mandy. I need a hand. Please, uh, put this towel down here. Keep it clean. Sir? I am going to give you a few shots, yes? Make you feel better?”

But her patient holds up his trembling hand in protest. He takes a deep breath and says something forceful.

Katrina translates. “Wait. He says he needs to tell you something important first.”