Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the second 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:

26 – Starting Over Now

Triquet sits up, happy to be done with the worst night of sleep they have ever had. No blankets. Not a stitch. Just their four bodies lying in a shivering pile outside the entrance to the smoking tunnel. Now Triquet extricates themself from the others and rub their own shoulders, trying to get some circulation going again. Ye gods, that was awful. And it felt like fourteen hours. Just interminable. Only now, with the silver dawn filling the interior valleys, are they able to move. Finding a latrine is probably the first order of business, but they don’t know where they are. Far enough away that the stink doesn’t carry to the village. And not anywhere down the path they took the day before.

The stand-off with the other village had lasted into the afternoon, until the wind had finally shifted and the smoke no longer pressed them up against their bank of the river. Once they departed, the others on the far side did too, without a word of farewell or warning. Triquet could tell it was obviously a distinct cultural convention, and worth all the study in the world, but it was really somewhat outside their wheelhouse. Where’s Clifford Geertz when you need him?

So they’d returned to the smoky village to find that Wetchie-ghuy or his minions had been there, with a new feather and stick fetish hanging from a hut’s pole and his name on everyone’s lips. The villagers, who had grown very glum since the smoke had begun, now grew even more downcast.

They’d all shuffled sadly into their huts as night had fallen, leaving Triquet, Miriam, Katrina, and Jay to fend for themselves. So they found a hollow at the base of a cliff and basically used Jay as a bed. He insisted that it wasn’t the first time it happened and Katrina had laughingly corroborated him.

It must have dropped into the mid teens at night. And none of them in insulating layers. They shifted and shivered and held each other tight, sleeping in fits and starts. At one point smoke rolled in again. Just as they thought they might need to evacuate the village it cleared away and they tried to sleep once more.

Now Triquet is glad to be up. Their mask had gone crooked during the night so they make sure to affix it properly again. Afflicting these poor villagers with a plague would be adding more than insult to injury. Gah, what a curse modern humans are. We helplessly destroy everything we touch.

The two options Triquet has to relieve their bladder are the two trails they’ve successfully traveled on: the wide trail leading down to the river and the game trail Jay followed Morska Vidra and the others up and over. Deciding against pissing in the wind, Triquet hurries down the wide trail, thinking that before they get to the first stream there is a broad forest behind which they might find a moment’s privacy.

Moments later, straightening from a crouch, Triquet feels eyes on them. They hurrily finish, scrubbing themself clean with a handful of moss, covering their mess, and pull their pants up. The dark eyes in the seamed face gleam in the morning light.

“Good morning. Not polite to stare, you know. At least where I’m from.” Triquet doesn’t recognize this old man. He is short, with a barrel-chest and round face. His curls are gray but he isn’t ancient. Perhaps in his fifties. And he crouches at the side of the trail, where Triquet left it to find some privacy. Now they will have to pass him to return to the trail.

There is something malevolent in the old man. The staff he leans on doesn’t look dangerous, but Triquet remembers how villagers from across the river carried spears. Maybe he was from there. That would just be Triquet’s luck.

Triquet doesn’t know self-defense, but in an earlier life they weren’t a bad soccer player and they still trust their kicks. If the old creep gets up to anything, then…

And that’s exactly what happens. As Triquet nears him, the old man says something unwholesome and grabs his own genitals. Then he says the word koox̱ and reaches for Triquet’s.

With a shrill scream, Triquet jumps back and away, their foot connecting with the man’s outstretched forearm. He watched Triquet as they did their business. Now he wants to confirm what he saw. What is the great goddamn fascination certain people have with nongendered people and bathrooms? How, in the middle of absolutely nowhere planet earth is Triquet still being forced to deal with this utter bullshit?

Triquet hurries down the path, the old man’s croupy laugh in their ears. Disgusting. Horrible. Infuriating. It’s only when Triquet re-enters the village and their gaze falls on the fetish that had been waiting here in the village when they’d returned last night that Triquet realizes who that was.

“Where were you?” Jay whispers and Triquet jumps. He did an admirable job of creeping noiselessly across the village to join Triquet here beside the hut that sports the fetish. “You find a spot to pee?”

Triquet shakes their head no and leads Jay by the arm away from the wide trail heading down to the river. “Up there. That’s your best bet.”

A wind rises and the morning birds go silent. A few villagers appear in their doors, looking with fear at the sky.

Triquet and Jay look skyward as well. The smoke is still there, hanging in the still air. Why is the air still? They just heard the wind. But it isn’t a wind. It’s an uncanny sound, with a high pitched whine slicing the air… It’s the oncoming white noise of a black drone. That’s what the birds and villagers both heard.

It hovers above them, slowly circling, as if unsure it sees them. Jay yelps, leaping into the air. “Yo! Here! We’re here!”

Katrina stumbles out from her spot beside the cliff, dragged out of sleep, unable to process what is happening. Jay pushes her arms into the air.

“There! Up there! You see it?”

But it isn’t getting any lower. Now it hovers over the clearing. The villagers have all vanished inside again. Whatever omen this inexplicable thing brings is entirely unwelcome, that’s for sure.

After a long moment, the drone’s servo underneath, that Katrina usually uses to hook Mandy’s weather station, now releases a small sachet or bag. It spins downward at an angle, catching a breeze, and blows into the trees that lead to the river.

Jay yelps again and takes off at a loping run, crossing the village and heading down the wide path. It couldn’t have gone much farther than this. The breeze wasn’t that stiff. But it fell like it was almost pulled under the eaves…

A small brown figure crouches over a bush, using a staff to pull the sachet to them. Wetchie-ghuy. He’s stealing what the drone dropped. “Hey!” Jay runs to him but the old man cackles and spins away, diving into the ceanothus and disappearing underneath.

Jay tries to follow but he is much larger. The old man tumbles forward with shocking speed, vanishing in an instant from view.

“Hey! Hey! Now, goddamnit that’s not yours!” Jay has hardly ever felt such fury. It was just such a patently wicked thing to do, he is outraged to his core. Just who the fuck is this guy?

But he’s lost him in the underbrush. The clever little bastard has wriggled away like a cat. Jay has lost. With a ragged sigh he pulls himself out of the clawing branches and turns dejectedly toward the village. The drone is gone. Probably out of battery. And their plan is ruined, whatever it was.

A cry of pain emerges from the underbrush. Jay turns back to it. After a bit, a silver fox trots out beside Jay, carrying the sachet in its mouth. It’s close enough for Jay to see a folded piece of paper in the transparent silk sack. With a crow of delight he reaches for the fox but it trots clear and takes the sachet back to the village.

Ah. This is Morska Vidra’s fox. Now the sachet belongs to him.

Ξ

“Hurry! It’s very strong!” Flavia grips a stick with monofilament line wrapped around it as a primitive fishing pole. Her first catch!

Maahjabeen lopes across the sand, laughing at her. “Ohh, very good. Jay is going to be so jealous that we started without him.”

“Well… we can hope…” Flavia grunts with effort between each phrase, “…that they get back… in time… for him to cook it!”

“He really is the best cook.” Maahjabeen drops to her knees at the edge of the water. Flavia marches steadily backward, feet digging into the sand. How large is this beast?

Finally it emerges, a pink rockfish nearly half a meter in length. It struggles mightily, and Maahjabeen wades into the water to hold its spiny ridge against her leg while she stabs her filet knife behind its skull, severing its spine. It shivers and blood stains the water. Something deep and sad plunges within her as it always does. This is such a beautiful and complex life that she has taken. “Inshallah,” she breathes, knowing that God is in even this—especially this—even if she is having trouble finding Him. She pulls the heavy creature from the water, Flavia whooping and carrying on like she just scored a goal at the World Cup. Maahjabeen smiles gently at her friend, realizing that, to the mathematician, this beautiful fish is just food.

Perhaps Pradeep is the same. How could he not be? He is a killer of epic proportions. He wipes out entire colonies of mold and bacteria for the sake of his curiosity and career. He affixes bugs to pins and feeds the blood of birds and fish into those creepy readers the army gave them. Echh… Maahjabeen doesn’t trust them. She doesn’t know why, or how they could possibly be misused. But their origin is all she needs to despise them. Fortunately, her work hardly requires their use. But even so, she suggests, “We should get a sample for Plexity before we cut it up into sushi.”

Flavia cackles and lifts the fish. It is surprisingly heavy. She has never landed such a huge fish. It weighs like three kilos. The most she’d ever caught were little shining sardines in a net off the Amalfi coast one summer that she and her brother always put back. But this is enough to feed the whole camp. “Is it good? Can we eat it?”

“Rockfish? Oh, yes. Very tasty. You find it in most supermarkets. But ehh, now I am wondering how the removal of this fellow will affect the lagoon’s balance here and the reef where it hunted. We are having an impact for sure. I don’t know what rockfish eat, but whatever it is will breathe a sigh of relief tonight. At least until another one moves in.”

“It is our original sin, eh? Humans. We stain whatever we touch. With dirt and blood. Concrete and steel…” A kind of restless claustrophobia possesses Flavia. She is of a generation that sees nothing but its own impact. She can’t even have this, without guilt. But what is she to do? She needs to eat. Something usually dies somewhere when it is time for her to eat. Now multiply that by eight billion. A daily river of blood.

Flavia is reminded of a conversation she had with Jay the week before and now her perspective pulls far back, as it often does, to encompass the entire planet over eons. She watches the wars and the slaughter and the founding of cities on coasts and along rivers, clay and stone accretions rising like termite mounds in pyramids then skyscrapers, tiny chrysalis collections filled with light and life… “Huh. That is all we are, no?”

Maahjabeen looks at Flavia sidelong, envious of the dreamy abstractions she so effortlessly conjures. “What?”

“We aren’t individuals, us wriggling hairless worms. No. No, we aren’t even a swarm or a collective. We aren’t the point at all. See, you have to think about it over a long enough timescale. What is the first thing we do anywhere we go? We build. Look, if you were an alien in the sky studying Earth over millennia, you would see what is happening down here more like coral reefs. Our identity isn’t in this.” Flavia sweeps her hand over her body. “Or even in this.” She taps her temple. “It’s in the buildings that house us. They satisfy all our needs for safety and security and sturdiness, our claims against death. We want immortality. Concrete and steel give it. Wood and tile. My mother’s family has a villa in Verona that was built in 1582. It has outlived everyone. It is the family, in ways that none of us are. We are just the wriggling worms bringing it food and minerals so it can grow larger. And then families combine into villages and towns. Our cities now are concrete for hundreds of square kilometers. The nervous system is the power grid, the blood vessels and digestion the water and sewer lines. Huh. Jay told me this and I have never seen it so clearly before. All our science and religion matter less than our architecture. We build reefs.”

Maahjabeen was with her until that last bit. No, there must be a way to include Allah in this thrilling vision. It runs so counter to what Maahjabeen has ever believed to be true: that instead she is a unique shriven soul standing alone in God’s light, with her family and culture more important than anything but the ocean itself. To instead put all the emphasis on inert walls and roofs and floors seems heretical somehow. “I don’t like it. It removes the human from the system.”

“Well, that’s the thing. It’s only the accumulated expression of millions of humans over thousands of years that eventually makes a city state. We build and build. I wonder what the endpoint might be? A conscious city? Perhaps Hong Kong might be a good test lab, constrained and geographically isolated as it is. But no. Think. What is Hong Kong but an expression of human thought and will? Production and creativity? Towers rising to the sky. The entire landscape remade to suit its own needs. So we are not humans, no, we are towns and cities with millions of tiny little human agents working within.”

Maahjabeen shudders, the images getting too uncanny. What does that make her, then, as a solitary researcher on the waves? Perhaps she is a spore or whatever the coral polyps have that is floating on the currents, off to explore the world and found her own colony. But eh. “No. Building more buildings is not at all what I want from my life.”

“We don’t even have to,” Flavia shrugs, staring out over the water at the gray horizon, visualizing what she sees: a jumble of all the great structures she can imagine, and even some more humble, farms isolated in fields. “There are already enough sites. Our era just needs to contribute to the structures already on them.”

Prophet save her. That’s enough science fiction for one day. Maahjabeen lifts the rockfish to her shoulder and carries it across the sand back to camp. Halfway back, she tries to assure Flavia that she will get all the credit for catching dinner tonight, but when she turns to say so she realizes Flavia hasn’t come with her. She is still on the beach, staring pensively out at the horizon, caught in her vision of the distant future. What a strange person.

As she reaches the edges of the camp, Mandy rushes up to Maahjabeen, clapping and squealing with joy. Her grief has vanished and she is spritely again, her long hair pulled away in a ponytail. She goggles at the fish but it hardly delays her own good news: “There’s rain coming! Ra-a-a-i-i-i-i-n! It’ll put out the fire!”

Ξ

Esquibel has never taken a better bite of food than the rice and fish steaming in her bowl. Fresh fish is such a luxury. So nutrient-dense. She can already feel her body start to respond, as if chambers deep in her thoracic cavity and legs only now fill with vitality after being bare-as-her-childhood-cupboards for so long.

Triquet is telling the story of their separation by fairy light, LED strands which Katrina hung upon her return while Jay happily deboned the fish and made this incredible meal. They all look well and Miriam assured her they practiced good mask discipline during their forty-three hour ordeal. Now Esquibel’s mind can’t focus on Triquet’s story, which flits from subject to observation to conjecture, too much all at once for her to absorb.

She sighs and takes another bite. It’s the meal that is disordering her focus more than anything. It’s nearly a sexual experience. Somewhere between sex and the religious ecstasies she witnessed in Nairobi’s Pentecostal churches. Paroxysms of joy. The meaning of life in sensory pleasure. Or rather, sensation so profound it introduces you to one or more gods. Life can be so good! Esquibel privately resolves to stop thinking poorly of Jay. The strapping lad obviously has his uses. And he is such a gentle soul. She can taste it in the broth in the bottom of the bowl. Nourishing. Comforting. How could he do that with such simple ingredients?

She studies Jay across the circle of chairs as they eat, Triquet’s narrative including smoke and storm and a whole new village of warlike Lisicans to worry about. Jay is an engaged listener, nodding and laughing at each recollection without taking the focus away from Triquet, who is of course an excellent storyteller. Jay feels Esquibel’s eyes on him and when he looks her way she toasts him with the bowl. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

He blushes, looking like he’s six years old. Esquibel shakes her head in amusement. She’s never known someone so truly young. So callow. Is this how they breed them in California? Puff them with innocence like marshmallows? Or is it only that life is so easy on his beach? This is a man who has never needed to learn how to be an adult. Life has removed those considerations. She is at once envious and bitterly judgmental. How can someone ever learn any kind of toughness unless he has faced adversity? How could he truly have a worthwhile character if each one of his needs every day of his life was met by merely holding out his hand? Look at him. He doesn’t even know how good he’s got it. That charming smile. Those blond good looks and that open, friendly innocence are worth millions of dollars. More. They are priceless. They will open every door for him throughout his life.

Ahh, her head is skipping again from thing to thing. It’s almost like she is drunk! She has to have better self-control or she will start to think about things that would remain better-off unthought and get herself in trouble. With effort, Esquibel stiffens her spine, levering what she had once identified as her T2 thoracic vertebra to rock back into a military posture. There. Now her training will help her master herself. Her head suddenly rises so high it stops Triquet’s recitation.

“What? What is it, Doc? Something in the dark?”

“Ehh?” Esquibel realizes she has pulled focus. Now everyone is looking at her. “Ah. Yes. Something maybe I heard. But I don’t think so. I think it was just… never mind. Please continue. I am only hearing things.” She waves everyone’s concern away and puts the bowl to her lips again, to hide behind it.

Triquet resumes where they left off. “And then, after I was done I pulled up my drawers and who do you think is standing there watching me? Wetchie-ghuy.”

“No.” Flavia shoots to her feet, holding a warding hand between her and Triquet. “No, I do not want to hear this story. So please maybe you do not tell it.”

Triquet sighs. “That’s fine. I won’t go into details. It went… okay. But he’s just a disgusting little toad, for sure. No, Flavia. Please stay. I’ll skip that whole part. But I can’t skip his involvement in what came next. You have to hear about what happened to the little bag the drone dropped. He stole it.”

“I swear,” Jay says, “he voodoo-ed that shit down into where he was hiding in the trees. There was no reason it should have dropped the way it did. Like at a forty degree angle.”

Triquet bows toward Jay with a flourish. “And superhero here went scrambling after it, but Wetchie-ghuy got to it first.”

“Of course!” Flavia scowls as Maahjabeen puts an arm around her. “The little creep.”

“But just as he was getting away…” Jay pauses. “You’ll like this, Flavia, the village fox ran into the bushes where he was hiding and bit him. Stole the, what was it like a big tea sachet? out of his hand and ran it right back to Morska Vidra, who didn’t want to touch it at all. But they wouldn’t let us have it back either. So they argued about it all night and into the storm. We never did get the sachet back. And as far as I know they still haven’t opened it. What does it even say?”

“Just an explanation of the current state of affairs, in case you didn’t know them.” Pradeep leans back against one of the posts of his platform, bowl balanced on his knees. “Where the fire was and how it got started and estimates on how long it might burn. Amy added some very nice words of encouragement. And Esquibel included a medical pamphlet for common field wounds.”

“Christ,” Miriam shakes her head, “imagine how they’re reacting to those mysterious written artifacts now. That were delivered by a giant buzzing black sky insect. We just invented an entire bloody religion with that one stunt. Thanks, Sony.”

“I tried to keep it up out of view but I suppose it is such a unique sound that they hadn’t heard before there was no way I could hide it.” Pradeep shrugs, helpless. “Shoot. The drone seemed like such a good idea at the time. But when it came time to actually write out the message, it turned out there was hardly anything to tell you besides to hang tight. And now I’ve traumatized an entire village. I’ve broken the prime directive!”

“Uh, we all have at this point, mate. We’re pretty bad trekkies for sure. Can I share a bit of my own story?” Katrina squeezes Triquet’s arm. “I’ve been so busy since we got back but now I have some results to share.”

“Yeah, you vanished, there at the end.” Triquet steps back, granting the space to Katrina, and finds their bowl. Time for seconds. Over their shoulder, they call out, “I was afraid our debacle had left you hurting, sweetie, but I didn’t want to intrude.”

“No. Not at all. See, well, confession time. I did a bit of a no-no yesterday when we got driven out of the village by the smoke and I hung back a bit to snap this.” Katrina holds up her phone. On it is a photo of a rough bare interior wall, on which hangs a cape or a tapestry. The flash illuminates its details sharply: it is quite old and tattered, its dark blocky designs faded to shadow. Katrina zooms in on the textile piece and hands her phone around. “I really hope no one was still in there, like hanging back, like hiding in the corner when my flash went off. Talk about starting a religion.”

“What is that?” Alonso can’t make sense of the abstract shapes, inexplicable as cave paintings. “I don’t get it. Is that a shawl?”

“I didn’t dare mention I’d done it while we were still there. In case any of them found out.” Katrina’s voice is conspiratorial. “What if I’d broken a real taboo? So I waited until we were back here safe and sound to bring it up. So look. I compared this image to all the art examples I could find for all the nearby peoples. I started pretty much counterclockwise. The Kiril Islanders. The Ainu of Japan. Various Polynesian groups in Samoa and Hawai’i. All the Native American peoples of the West Coast. And I finally found a close match for the artistic style.”

“You did?” Triquet’s voice is loudest above the others. This is big news and they’re all excited by it. Triquet begs for Katrina’s phone for another inspection of the artifact.

But now Katrina plays coy. “No no, you pack of geniuses. Guess. Whose artwork is it? Who does this look like to you?”

“It’s gonna be something weird,” Amy chuckles, “like from Chile or not even the Pacific Ocean. What do Bosnian designs look like?”

Pradeep holds his hand out. “Let me see it again.” Katrina hands him her phone and he studies it in silence as the others think.

“Didn’t one of us have a Masters in Design or something?” Jay wonders. “Ask them.”

“Yeah,” Mandy snorts. “Katrina.”

Katrina shrugs. “I’m not the expert here. Triquet’s our star archaeologist. But that’s cheating. Let’s hear what the amateurs think first.”

Pradeep finally pronounces, “That art style is so familiar. Like the faces on a totem pole. I will guess one of the peoples of the Northwest. Like near Seattle.”

“Good eye!” Katrina takes her phone back and indicates different parts of the faded artwork. “These do indeed compare to the distinct artistic styles of the Northwest Pacific cultures. See if you look real close here you can still find a tiny bit of red and blue pigments. Then look. This is what it looks like if you take a couple hours to digitally fill in those gaps with paint… Here’s my rough attempt.” She swipes to the next photo, where she’s painted the spots that have faded. “See? It nearly looks like what it is…”

Triquet finally snatches the phone from her hand, brow furrowed, to crouch in the sand and study the photos in detail.

“Who are the tribes of Seattle? Or the nations, I guess?” Mandy tries to remember what she knows of them.

Katrina starts bouncing up and down, unable to contain her excitement. “Well, here’s the thing. Totem poles and this kind of indigenous Northwest style is somewhat shared among the different Salish peoples. But it goes all the way up the coast and that’s where our Lisicans are from. Alaska. But they aren’t Salishan. They’re probably related to the modern-day Tlingit.”

“Tlingit!” Triquet exclaims. “I see it! The geometric patterns! Excellent detective work, love!” Katrina takes a small bow.

“Tlingit…” Alonso has heard the word before, but knows next to nothing about the people behind it. “And is Tlingit their word for themselves or our word for them?”

“Well, I’ve only done the most preliminary reading, so I’m not really sure. They live on Alaska’s panhandle, you know that part that stretches down into Canada? There are four basic divisions, apparently.” Katrina reads from her phone, “Southern Tlingit, Northern, Inland, and Gulf Coast Tlingit. And each of these regions have a bunch of different tribes and councils. So they all have names of their own for themselves. Says they’re all super private, so there isn’t much about them in our files. I can do better research, of course, when we’re back somewhere online but…”

“I am unconvinced.” Alonso sits back, automatically settling into his old position of judging doctoral candidates. “Your evidence is too tenuous. It is only a single item. What if they are from somewhere completely different, like a tribe from the south or something, and a single Tlingit once visited them a hundred years ago and left this piece as a gift? What if it is not Tlingit at all? You need more than a sample size of one.”

Katrina vigorously nods in agreement. “Yes. Yes, and that’s why I was overjoyed to find this, like, blog with some Tlingit phrases. There isn’t like a translation program or a whole online dictionary really anywhere, at least that I can access here. But some of the words do match. So here’s my second line of evidence. Then I looked more deeply and realized it’s actually more related to an extinct Athabascan language called Eyat. So I’ve been listening to Eyat recordings and the Lisicans’ speeches get so so close to making sense. Something about the forefather. Something about the seasons or the calendar. The storms seem to be connected to Wetchie-ghuy, who is an outcast shaman who used to be part of the tribe? Maybe? Something like that.”

“You have been translating their words?” This makes Alonso sit up. Katrina has suddenly gone so far so fast.

Katrina nods again. “That word koox̱ that we keep hearing get thrown around? Flavia. It doesn’t mean wife.”

“No? Well good. What does it mean?”

“It means slave.”

“Ai! Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Slave? Wetchie-ghuy was trying to enslave her?” Now Triquet wishes they weren’t so gentle with their kicks. “Not just a sexual predator but a slaver too? You know, I don’t like this whole Jabba the Hut plot turn. Leia here isn’t ready for bikini season.”

Katrina reads aloud: “Hereditary slavery was a substantial part of Eyat culture until shortly before their extinction, when it was outlawed by the US government over a hundred years ago.”

“Hereditary?” Mandy makes an offended sound. “These people keep slaves for like generations? Ew. Can we please go back to not understanding what the Lisicans were saying? I liked them more back then.”

“What else do we know?” Triquet asks, finally looking up from the phone. “From what I can see, I can tell you this is most likely a pinniped’s hide, like a sealskin, scraped clean and bleached, then painted with organic dyes. I remember hearing in a lecture how interdependent the coastal trade and culture networks were between the coastal settlements and Athabascan Diné folks in the interior. But that’s all I got. Maybe they got their dyes by trade? Not many plants to harvest on like glaciers, I’d imagine.”

“No, they aren’t on glaciers. It actually isn’t that icy that far south.” Amy recollects her visits to Juneau and the Tongass National Forest. “Rainy and cold as hell. But so beautiful. Just endless trees, right up to the water. Wolves and eagles. Tons of fishing. The Eyat must have had it so good for so long.”

“So good they kept slaves.” Mandy can’t get over the fact that they’re sharing an island with people who keep slaves—who tried to enslave them the first time they saw them!

“Not all of them,” Miriam amends. “Maybe just Wetchie-ghuy. Morska Vidra and his people didn’t try to enslave us. Or maybe it’s that other tribe that does? Maybe there’s some kind of dispute between them? About slaves? Or outcast shamans?”

Katrina shrugs. “I don’t have a clue. Yet. But I’ll keep working on it. But it’s definitely slow going. Like I said, there’s this weird Slavic word-bombing going on in their language and just when I think I’m starting to get their like pidgin Eyat, all of a sudden I’m playing Bosnian word games with my schoolgirl friend again.”

“You say it’s a pidgin?” Now the discoveries are coming fast and furious. Triquet remembers that one undergrad linguistics theory class that broke their brain. Their near-failure in that course played a distinct part in their choice to become an archaeologist and not an anthropologist. Things instead of people. Triquet has never regretted their decision. “I don’t know much, but I do recall that there are like established metrics you can use to chart how many generations a language has drifted from its origins. Pidgin languages nearly always develop in pretty standard ways.”

“So if we find one of those matrices,” Pradeep reasons, “we can model the age of the pidgin’s development and find when they separated from the mainland and colonized Lisica.”

Katrina holds up her hands. “Maybe. Like after a lot more study. I’ve got a good ear for languages but you’ve heard how they sound. Like a musical trash compactor. They sound very little like any modern Athabascan language I’ve found. Those are more guttural. This is, I don’t know, chatty and light. As long as the vocabulary makes sense I’m going with Eyat, at least until further notice.”

Triquet raises Katrina’s hand in victory like she just won a boxing bout. “Winner and still champ-een! The soft social sciences! Ha! Without us, life would hardly be worth living.”

Ξ

Mandy excuses herself to use the trenches. They are all calling for more glasses now. It looks like it will be another celebration, with everyone returned. Maybe Katrina will play some more of that sultry music that makes Esquibel move like a cat in heat.

Upon Mandy’s return, at the edge of the grove she finds Jay walking toward her. He nods and she does too. But his expression is pained. She stops. “Oh, no. What is it, Jay?”

“Just uhh… Just had to let you know…” He shakes his head. “I didn’t rat you out. Never did. Nobody knows who started the fire.”

“Oh!” Mandy claps her hand over her mouth. The predicament Jay has been struggling with is instantly apparent to her. He’s been keeping her arson a secret! “I’m so sorry! I mean, everyone already knows it was me. Don’t worry. It was my stupid idea.”

“No, it was my stupid idea.” Jay struggles to keep his temper. He shakes his head, bitter. “Sorry. Not angry with you. Just myself. I can’t just go shooting my mouth off like that. I can’t!”

“No. Jay, no.” Mandy consoles him, a hand on his arm. “Please. Seriously. This is like my formal apology, okay? I was just so upset not being able to contribute any science I got really reckless and didn’t think about the long-term effects a fire would have.”

“Still.” Jay is stiff, unwilling to forgive himself. “It wouldn’t have even occurred to you if I wasn’t still fucking around… I just got to wise up, know what I’m saying?”

“I guess we both do.” Mandy gives him a fist bump. But he still isn’t over being upset. She searches for common ground. “Uh. It’ll be okay. So weird being the youngest ones here, right? You, me, and Katrina I guess. Back home I was running a lab of undergrads every day. They made fun of me for being so old. Now here I am the baby again. And nobody listens to what we say. And then when we do something it turns out to be a total fucking trainwreck.”

“Yeah.” But Jay isn’t ready to hear consoling words. “Speaking as a biologist, The real tragic part is the entire like biome that must have existed in that tunnel. There were probably a dozen different bird and animal species, maybe small mammals, and countless insect and plant and fungus—”

“I know!” Mandy turns away from the unbearable litany. “I mean, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I just thought it would burn like a chimney fire all nice and cozy for a few hours then I could just go and sweep out the ashes and start figuring out how to climb up to the top to install my instruments. I was so excited! But I’m just so dumb when it comes to things like this.”

“Man… I saw the flare from the top.” Jay shakes his head at the memory of the brilliant flame, like a burning oil well. Those villagers had never seen anything like it, that’s for sure. “That fucker burned so hot.”

“Pradeep said it could have burned for like a week. But I’m so glad the rain came and doused it. But it didn’t make things any better. The fire is out but the tunnel is still blocked. So we’re left with the worst of both worlds.”

“Nah. That fire was full-on jet engine style. We were getting air currents at the cave mouth sucking more oxygen into it. I’d be surprised if there’s any fuel left. It burned hot.”

“Are you serious? You think so?” This perks Mandy up. The prospect of having a clear path up the cliffs again revives her. She clasps hands with still-doleful Jay. “If it’s actually clear it almost makes it worth it. Let’s go check. Will you come?”

“Uh, now?” Jay hadn’t made any plan beyond finding Mandy and telling her he hadn’t snitched on her, but he didn’t expect the conversation to turn into a night-time underground expedition.

“Yeah. Why not?” Mandy swings his hand, trying to infuse him with her energy. “We’re the young ones, remember? We wake up at night? I do all my best work after sunset.”

Jay nods, unable to dispute it. “True dat.” He allows her to lead him back to camp, his reluctance slowly shifting to excitement.

As they go, Mandy spots a shifting shadow. Esquibel. She must have followed Jay to watch over Mandy. Jay never saw her. Now she silently nods, to signal that all is well and Mandy is safe. Oh, Esquibel. Mandy chuckles to herself. She knows she is safe, and certainly from Jay. He’s just a big goof.

Ξ

“You know the strangest part, Zo?” They lie in bed, in the dark, Miriam and Alonso, his head on her chest. His eyes are closed but hers are open, seeing visions in the blackness.

He’s been drifting. Alonso grunts, pleased to hear the sound of her voice. Anything to have her keep talking. She starts stroking his hair. That too. He will never tire of how dear she is.

“The strangest part was that it was the first time we’ve spent a night apart since we found each other.”

“Hm.” Alonso opens his eyes, remembering a jumble of slurred images from the night before, after the seven glasses of wine that eventually allowed him to not worry himself to pieces over Miriam’s safety. “Yes. It was awful.”

She hugs him tight, kissing the crown of his head. “It was. Just dreadful sleep. And it got cold. No blankets.” Miriam snuggles closer to Alonso, reveling in his heat. “But that wasn’t the strangest thing. The strangest thing was, that I wasn’t with you and I missed you but… I mean, I really missed you, but… it was okay. For the first time in five years it was okay. I knew I was safe and you were safe and it would just be a matter of time until we saw each other again. So, I mean, I missed you. I certainly did. But for the first time I was able to really be, you know, myself. Not… just…”

“The grieving widow?”

“Yes! My entire bloody identity has been so bound up in you and your disappearance. It was crazy. Really difficult transition for me. We were never like this before. I was never Sergio Alonso Aguirre’s wife first and Miriam Truitt second.”

“No. Not you. My fierce independent little fox.”

“And not you, you big crazy adventurer. We’ve always been our own people. And for five bloody years I couldn’t…”

Now he hugs her. “Oh, Mirrie. I am so sorry.”

“No. It’s not your fault. This isn’t about you. It’s about my relationship with myself. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Of course it does, I inflicted my whole crisis onto you.”

“I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

“I know. But I did. And I owe you so much for that.”

“You owe me nothing. Because you came back. Now if you hadn’t come back…”

“Yes. You would curse my ghost.” They settle in each other’s arms and Alonso considers the implications of her words. “So… are you saying you would like some space? Would you like to maybe find another place to sleep, until…?”

She swats him, hard. “Don’t be daft. Of course not. I have no idea what it means. I guess I want to return to who I used to be. But I know I kind of can’t, can I? I’ll never be so… so brave, so unwise, so happy… To be free like that again. The nightmare went on so long I hardly realized it after a while. But the trouble is that… that solitary vigil I held, it changed me. A lot. I guess I just thought I was getting old, that this kind of despair was what getting old meant. But that isn’t true either, is it? This is some wild shit, Zo. I just don’t know who I am any more. It’s kind of scary.”

Alonso is tempted to say he knows a bit about what she means, but he knows that it will change the subject and make it all about his suffering again, which must always be the primary suffering, always the first and last one mentioned, like the Lord’s Prayer. And he’s already sick of that. He doesn’t want to eclipse her, not now. This is her time to unravel what she has become. Here in his arms. “I will love you whoever you want to be.” It sounds weak but it is true. She doesn’t know how much an equivocation it is. But he has already spoken things aloud that he thought he’d never speak and even lived through traumatic memories that he’d forbidden himself with the help of good friends and better drugs.

He had been so sure he would never heal. In the gulag and in the military hospitals, surrounded by men broken in war. He would have bet all the money in the world he was broken too, beyond repair. But bodies are wonderful things. All this computational biology unfolding within him. They never stop, the synapses firing and the blood chemistry shifting, unless you mentally stop yourself. And the last thing Alonso wants to do is to be like Katrina’s brother Pavel and mentally stop himself, stuck in his torture, unable to move beyond it. Oh, it still shackles Alonso to the earth, there is no doubt that he will be dealing with this pain for the rest of his life. But now he has a life.

Miriam floats up and away from the bed, her mind taking flight. Yes, who is she? And who shall she become…? Old ambitions reawaken in her. She sees canyons in Ethiopia and the Gobi Desert. Her view rises to the moon. Sweet Christ, with Alonso back she can scratch that itch she’s had for decades about lunar geology. That very charming astrogeologist postdoc invited Miriam to her lab last year and she had never followed up. Now she could. She could wander the earth’s hidden caverns again and learn the secrets of the sky. Oh, bless. Her whole life is starting over now.