Chapter 40 – The Rest Of Us Can Hide
September 30, 2024
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!
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40 – The Rest Of Us Can Hide
Katrina kneels before the golden childs in the gray rainstorm. They’ve rigged a tarp up over the door of the bunker where four of their guardians huddle, protected from the downpour. The masked figures will not come inside and they will not leave. So the crew have done what they can. She offers a steaming pot of hot water and four mugs. “Here you go, lads. Warm the core. Wait. Wasn’t there a fifth one? What happened to him?”
They make no move to accept the tray or what it holds.
She sits back, studying them, and zips her parka tighter, all the way up to her nose, so cold drafts don’t go down her neck. But here they sit, naked save for loincloths and masks, without a care in the world. They aren’t even shivering.
These aren’t the original golden childs. One looks old, with a bit of a paunch. He definitely wasn’t here before. And the others are new too, two young and slender, one kind of stocky with pale blond curls and ochre skin. Their loincloths are cured leather, twisted in sumo wrestler fashion. The world’s burliest thongs.
Otherwise they are barefoot and naked. Their hands and feet are darker than the rest, nails long and dirty. They somehow seem more primitive than the Dzaadzitch villagers, almost from an earlier era. She lifts a mug and sips from it. “Mmmm…! Good!”
Katrina offers the mug to the person seated closest. They don’t respond. Bollocks.
“Lisica.” She points at the ground. “Yeh? Uh, dzaadzitch and katóok. Wetchie-ghuy. Morska Vidra. Yesiniy. Uh…” No she doesn’t know any more of their proper names. She taps at her own chest. “Katrina. Pleasure to meet you. Katrina.”
Their faces are all pointed at her. They do seem to be paying attention. Each mask looks like a beetle’s back, with a line down the center dividing it into two curved faces, rich with gold. “Can I ask? How do you get the pollen to stick on there? And can you actually see through?” She lifts a hand, finger extended. But the golden child leans away, avoiding contact. She drops her hand, no point in forcing the issue. These people are here to help, right? Keep those wicked sorcerers from stealing any more of them away?
“Just how old are they, anyway? The shamans. Wetchie-ghuy? Fifty? Sixty? More? I wonder if they knew Maureen Dowerd. I mean, wouldn’t that just sort of neatly tie up a bunch of things? Maybe you lot popped out of a tunnel in like 1962 and scared the soldiers and they thought the only reasonable response would be to bury an entire fucking sub in the beach. Yeh. Because that makes sense. Maybe when they arrived there was a Jidadaa too. End of an era. Now coming faster and more furious for sure.”
The rain falls harder, angling under the tarp and wetting the legs of several golden childs. They seem unconcerned.
“Could I offer some blankets? Umbrellas? I mean, you blokes shouldn’t just sit out here like this. You’ll catch your death.”
Katrina stands, wiping the wet sand from her knees. She views the camp. Yep. There’s the fifth one, sitting out there miserably at the edge of the platforms. “How do you keep the pollen from just washing off?” she calls out but of course she gets no response. She shakes her head. “So many questions.”
Opening the door of reeds and twine behind her, she re-enters the bunker. Here there is life and noise and warmth, everyone working in close quarters on all their projects.
“No?” Amy sees that the tray is still in Katrina’s hands. She is crestfallen. “I don’t like that they won’t take my tea. I’ve always argued that a good cup of tea is a universal language of love.”
“They won’t take anything. Still won’t say a word. One poor blighter is in the middle of camp just getting drenched.”
Amy relieves Katrina of the tray and disappears into the back. Katrina sits heavily on an unoccupied bin, discouraged and tired.
Jay sits beside her, rattling away on a keyboard, organizing his notes from the day before. “What’s another word for scaly?”
“Reptilian? Segmented? Uh… That’s actually a hard one.”
“I know! And I’ve already used scaly like five times.”
“I thought there were no reptiles or snakes on the island.”
“Aw, I hope that isn’t true. But I meant this.” Jay gingerly lifts his shirt to display the line of scabs falling away from his healing wound. “Gonna have a wicked scar for sure.”
“Oh, you’re the reptile. God, Jay, that looks mean.”
“It was super shallow. Ridiculous luck. Otherwise it was like goodbye liver. And it’s doing much better. I think the humid air is what it needs right now. And the cold doesn’t hurt much either. I figure by the time this storm is over I can resume normal activities like a real man.”
“A real man.” Miriam sits on the other side of Jay, working on her own notes. She chuckles. “Just what we need. Doll, you know that as soon as you can move around you’re just going to hurt yourself again. Even I know that about you, and we just met.”
“Damn. Hurtful, Miriam. Very hurtful.” Jay scowls at her. “I thought you liked me.”
“Oh, I do, darling. I adore you. But I think you’ve demonstrated what kind of trouble you like to get into.”
“I can be safe. I hardly ever get injured at home.”
“Safe? Okay. Tell us what you plan to do once you heal up?”
“Well. I’m gonna reef dive for some more of those rockfish. And there’s the matter of Sherman’s osprey platform, so we got to climb that tree. And…”
“Need I say more?” Miriam chuckles at him. Katrina joins her. “One man wrecking crew, you are.”
Jay frowns, somewhat offended. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Fine. Nothing but dead weight to you, I guess. Just recuperating in the bunker every day eating you out of house and home.” He rattles off a few more typed words and then signs out of his account. With a sigh, he turns to Katrina. “Hey, do you think they’ll let us into the sub for a while?”
“Probably not. Why?”
“Cause I’m bored and I’m fucking sick of this reality. Let’s drop some of your acid down there and find a new one.”
“Yuuup.” Katrina likes the sound of that. She’s been wanting to dose but she didn’t want to do it alone. Not here. Not with all the challenges facing them. But with a buddy? “Yeh, I could definitely use a restart on this day.”
“Do you really think…?” Miriam frowns at them, but then shakes her head no. “No. I swore I’d never be the old person bumming out anyone’s trip. Fair play. Get along then. Just remember to drink a lot of water.” She leans in, conspiratorial. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake don’t mention it to Esquibel.”
“Should we invite anyone else?” Jay stands, wincing. The incision still crackles like a bolt of electricity from time to time.
“I say…” Katrina recalls this particular batch of blotter. It’s jet fuel. Super pure, and some of the strongest LSD she’s ever had. “Let’s keep it with the professionals this time. Make sure this drug works in this setting. Then we can try again later with others.”
“Cool cool. Let me just grab my herb and some layers and I’ll meet you in the back, little lady.”
“And I’ll just grab a couple itsy-bitsy tiny little bits of paper. And some water. Be right there.”
They both depart. Miriam shakes her head, bemused. “Ah, youth. Well, at least they have each other.”
A few minutes later Katrina has recreated the scene they shared on molly. Jay sits on a bench in the closest chamber in the sub to the stairs leading back to the surface. She has brought her laptop, to spin beats, and a couple of her fairy lights for color. Triquet has recently finished their work down here and it has transformed into a snug little museum-piece of a setting.
The millimeter square of paper settles under Jay’s tongue. “Like the world’s tiniest postage stamp.” He lights a joint and passes it to her. This is his Jack, to give them enough energy to ride this wave.
“Yeh, and you’re the envelope with the letter inside. And I just mailed your ass to the moon!” She leans in and kisses Jay.
He grunts in surprise and responds, her lips so soft and hot and wet. But she breaks off and stares at him.
“Sorry. Already breaking the barriers. Drugs haven’t even kicked in yet.”
“You’re good.” He thinks to draw her in for another kiss but no, this isn’t a hookup kind of situation, is it? This is psychedelia time.
“Don’t know why but coming on,” Katrina confesses, “this acid makes me really horny. But only for the first bit. So if you find me grinding up on you, nothing personal, right, mate?”
“Now that one, I can’t tell if it’s a compliment or an insult.”
They both laugh. Katrina leans against Jay. “No no. You’re hot and you know it. You’re even quite lovable. But we’re not…” She shakes her head at the improbability of Jay ever being her lover.
He agrees. “Yeah. You are too. I mean, back in high school they were always trying to hook me up with all the blonde chicks. Like some people just want to see all the blondes together.”
“Like some kind of busybody Nazi eugenics.”
“Yeah, now that I think of it. But no. Like, I could just see one of my old buddies trying to hook me up with his younger sister and then I find out it’s you.”
“Ha. You’re not that much older.” She leans forward, the first filaments of the lysergic acid uncoiling in her spine. Katrina kneads his thighs like a kitten making biscuits. “Ooo and you don’t know my brother. Although I think you’d like Pavel. He’d think you’re cool, for sure.”
Jay takes a huge drag on the joint, remembering that this entire endeavor is about changing his headspace. Katrina is complex, a jewel with more facets than he can count. But it’s all beauty through and through. No flaws. Just… brilliance. “Oh, man. Here come some visuals. Thank the maker. Man… Aw, you’ve got like little fairy flowers growing out of your eyelashes. Like…” He reaches out to touch them. “I needed this, yo. I’m used to having my phone, you know. My screentime. But now my whole optical nerve is like atrophying because that nasty old hag stole my shit.”
Katrina runs a fingertip over her own eyelashes. “What kind of flowers? I can’t feel them.” A flush envelops her and she presses herself forward against him. The contact feels so good she nearly swoons. With a drunken laugh she rolls her head against his chest. “My, you’ve got some fine muscles, lad.”
But Jay is blinking at the far wall, his vision fully engaged. Patches of lurid color bloom beneath the sepia tones of the photos Triquet has hung, bringing them to life. “Would you look at that.” It’s like an invisible hand is colorizing the old photos in realtime. On one portrait a flush of health appears on the smiling cheeks of some lieutenant. His hair gleams blue black. “Katrina… Dude. Can you see that?”
“Hmm?” Katrina looks up, realizing she was fumbling with Jay’s fly. Then he realizes it. “Oh. Oops. Like I said, I turn into this hot little devil, at least for the next like half hour. See what?”
She turns to look at the bare, cold chamber behind her. It holds no interest to her. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of Jay’s warmth. She backs up against him, snuggling close.
He chuckles. “Damn, girl. You sure you aren’t rolling instead of tripping? I’ve never seen anyone get so randy on acid.”
“Yeah, it just… plays my brain… like a… an oboe.” The words are halting and wrong. She laughs instead, an inebriated snort. “And I get all vibrate-y. Will you brush my hair? I bet I’d love it if you brush my hair. Like a cat.”
“Uh, sure.” Not really what he had in mind, but whatever floats her boat. It’s her acid, after all.
She turns around on the floor and leans back against his knees, pushing them open. Then she holds out a hairbrush over her shoulder. “You don’t have to. Except I really really… Yeh. I guess you have to.”
“I guess I have to. Sorry. Just not very practiced with…” He lightly strokes her scalp with the brush but the long fine hairs start to tangle. “Uh…”
“Long smooth strokes. That’s it. From root to end. Ahh. Oh, that feels lovely. And it’s a really fine man doing it.” She wiggles her hips in pleasure, rolling them up against his feet bracing her.
“I just…” Jay has to focus on what he’s doing to make it work. His eyes are starting to lose focus on her honey hair. “I mean, why do you think Jidadaa did it?”
That stops her. Katrina comes back to herself, the sensation falling away. “Huh. Jidadaa. She’s so awesome. What about her?”
“Yeah, well, you can have her. She keeps calling me the lidass and expecting me to kill everyone on the island. I mean, what is up with that? I’m just a surfer, girl.”
“Why did you stop brushing?” Jay dutifully resumes. “No, I think she’s wonderful. Don’t you think she is?”
“I mean, I think the word for her is unique.”
“Yes! So special. I’ve never met anyone like her.” Katrina turns to stare at Jay, a wicked little gleam in her eye.
“Well, you can forget about whatever naughty thought you got going in your little head because she doesn’t do drugs. Not even weed. Now her mom…”
Katrina collapses against him again. “Bummer. Brush!”
“Brushing. Your hair is so fine. And straight. I never had straight hair. Mine’s always been so curly. You’re like a spider… Like if Medusa… Instead of snakes you had spider silk…”
“Now it’s my turn to say I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult. So. What do you say? I’ve got about twenty more minutes of the hots. Oral sex, yay or nay?”
But Jay drops a hand on her shoulder for her attention. Oops. Did she go too far? Again? She pivots to him, an apologetic smile on her face. But Jay isn’t looking at her.
He’s staring at the hatch to his left, leading deeper into the sub. One of the golden childs is there, facing them. But this one is a bit different. The mask is more ornate. They wear a necklace of feather and bone. The man wearing it is older, to judge by the wrinkles and sagging skin of his belly and chest.
“Oh, Christ. Don’t scare us like that, grandpa!” Katrina pulls herself away from Jay and hauls herself onto the bench beside him. After a long moment she says, “Hello? Konnichi-wa? Uh, mushi mushi? What do you think? Should I offer to dose him?”
A rough voice comes from behind the mask. “Chto ne tak s toboy? Ty boleyesh’?”
Katrina blinks. Wait. She can understand those words. “That’s Russian. That bloke just spoke Russian.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked what is wrong with me? Am I sick?” She shakes her head no and answers the golden… man? “Net, otets. Prosto na narkotikakh.” She translates for Jay. “No, father. Just on drugs.”
Ξ
“Yes?” Alonso looks up from his laptop to see whose shadow it is darkening the door of his cell. The rain drums so loud on the tarps and steel roof that he doesn’t think he’ll hear the answer. He squints. Who is that?
“I said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’” Triquet repeats more loudly, feeling like they’re intruding on some senile elder who needs to be shouted at. Alonso is perched on his cot with a lap blanket, shawl, and half-moon reading glasses. He looks like Santa taking a day off.
“Yes?” Alonso repeats in the same gruff manner as before.
Now Triquet hesitates. What the hell do they think they’re doing in there? The man is obviously busy working. He has no time for Triquet’s gossip. Or whatever it is. Triquet turns away, suddenly ashamed, clutching the hem of their housegown. “You know, never mind. I’ll catch up with you when you’re not so…”
“No no. I need a break. Plexity is just laughing at me today. I can’t make it do anything any more. The creation has surpassed its creator and I have to learn to let go.”
“Yes…” Triquet lingers in the door. “They grow up so fast. But what’s wrong with it?”
“Ehh…” Alonso leans back, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “It’s just maths. A trick I was trying to use to change the bounded requirements of this dataset. If we can derive meaningful relationships from fewer data points then maybe…” He sighs, not wanting to say it aloud. “It’s possible we don’t have to do so much collecting to achieve the same results.”
“Well that sounds promising.” Triquet tries to be bright, even when their insides are in turmoil. Alonso deserves that much.
“It would be if I could make it work! But there is some fly in the ointment somewhere, preventing the results from computing properly. And I just can’t find it. It is driving me crazy. So, yes. Please ask me your question. But come in here so we aren’t shouting at each other like drunk college kids.”
“Roll Tide!” Triquet bellows, then chuckles at themself and with a measure of meekness enters the cell and sits on the side of Alonso’s cot, picking at the dried resin on their arm that still covers the eagle bite. “Nice job with the…” Triquet waves at the blank walls in a fruitless attempt at making small talk. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
“Your question?”
“Yes…” Triquet takes a deep breath, knowing they’re about to make a terrible mistake. Oh, well. “Have you ever been in love with a married woman?”
Alonso shrugs, not absorbing the question. His laptop screen is still mocking him. So he closes it. “Only Miriam. Why? Ah.”
Triquet nods solemnly. “I wasn’t going to talk to you at first. And then I thought, why would I do that? Why would I hide…?”
“It is fine. She told me of your night together. All the lurid details. And yes. She is very lovable. I grant you that. Ha. So she has cast her spell again, has she?” Alonso leans back, a pleased smile warming him. Yes, he needs a change of topic and this is perfect. A way to think with his heart instead of his head.
“So you aren’t upset? Threatened?”
“Threatened? Why? Are you planning on stealing her away from me? She told me you both had other ideas…”
“I am. She’s right. No. Not steal at all. It’s just hard to hear, for most people, that somebody is in love with their wife.”
“Do you know how many times I have had this conversation over the years? Oy oy oy. Especially when we were both teaching at Boston College together. I would be sitting in my office hours and some frat boy would come in and challenge me to a duel over her favors like we were knights at Camelot.”
“Really? A duel?”
“Well, once. And he was a tremendous nerd, the kind who would roleplay as a fantasy character on weekends. He had no idea that Miriam hates that shit. He didn’t have a chance.”
“Oh, dear. If she hates nerds I don’t like my chances.”
“Well, there are nerds and there are nerds. And you are much more stylish than that, my dear Triquet. No. I’d say your chances with my wife are pretty great. She understands how special and wonderful you are. And now she is falling in love with you too.”
Triquet mouths the words ‘thank you,’ tears welling up in their eyes, surprised by the immense tenderness they feel for Alonso. “She is… You are both so amazing. I just… I mean, I can’t believe the life she’s led! When she told me about going on a hike with Joan Didion I almost fell out of my chair. She knows everybody.”
Alonso chuckles. “Yes, Joan was smitten with Miriam as well. Those were good days. Very happy. It has definitely been a good life. I just hope…” And now tears fill Alonso’s eyes all of a sudden and fear grips his throat.
Triquet grimaces. “Look. It’s still hard. There’s still jealousy. And insecurity. No matter how hard we try to balance—”
“No, it isn’t that,” Alonso forces the words through. “I mean, sure, yes, you’re right. You will both need to take very good care of me to not feel left out, that’s for sure. But that’s not what worries me. We’ve had such amazing lives. Like, every academic dream I ever had has come true, and a whole bunch of others beside. You want names? When I was very young I shared a bed with Andy Warhol. The Tom Tom Club. Elton John once stuck his hand down my pants. I could go on and on. And I’m not any kind of mystic or religious nut, but it always felt like I was using up more than my fair share of beauty and light. I knew there must someday be darkness ahead. And there was. Oh, there certainly was. I could face what they did to me in the gulag, at least a little bit, because I knew that I had already enjoyed the glorious meal and this was just the bill come due. But it makes me worry. Miriam has never fallen from her heights. And I’m so afraid that when she does, because she has risen so very high…” He shakes his head in despair. “She doesn’t know… You don’t know. How dark life can be.”
Triquet nods in compassion and grasps Alonso’s thick forearm. “I think you’re probably the strongest man I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, that’s the stuff. You want to steal my wife I better get some damn fine honeyed words in the deal.”
“I can’t imagine stealing. Only… joining…” Triquet hopes it doesn’t sound like a come on. But then they hope it does.
“Yes, but why are you so shy with me? Eh? I am not used to it. I am used to being like Mirrie. Having people throw themselves… I mean, here.” Alonso takes out his phone. He presses his mouth into a thin line, opening a folder of photos he hasn’t looked at since he regained access to them. He swipes quickly through scenes he remembers so well, as if they’d happened yesterday, but at the same time a century ago, and to somebody else. Then he finds the picture he wants. It is 1993 and he is in Vancouver with Kevin and Chui, a quasi-official scholarly road trip and gay bar tour of the Pacific Northwest. Alonso is twenty-six, his hair thick and black, his eyes merry and dark face that of a Spanish noble. His shirt is unbuttoned and muscles are clearly defined beneath. “See?”
Triquet’s mouth drops open. “Holy shit.” On impulse they throw themself at Alonso and kiss him with passion. Alonso laughs at the gesture then responds in kind, reveling in this slender young body squirming in his lap.
Triquet breaks off. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“That was very superficial of me. Objectifying you like that. But sweet Jesus. I was into you the first moment I met you, Alonso. As a bratty sophomore at Penn. I’m sure you don’t remember.”
“I remember that we kept in touch. And that is why you’re here today. Your emails were always so funny and so smart.”
“And I guess I just did one of those ageist things where I forgot, or I let the old man window-dressing here distract me from the real you under all this gray hair.”
“No. This is the real me now, Triquet. They beat this guy…” he casts aside his phone, “out of me. I mean, I’ve still got a lot of healing to do, but I know what I look like now. I know who I am.”
Triquet gives Alonso a strong hug in sympathy, trying to impart strength. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through. And then to have some young asshole like me show up and threaten your marriage…”
“Yeah, these are definitely crazy days here on Lisica. In the gulag I could get so bored. Sometimes they would forget about me in a box for like a week. And my mind would rove. I would spend hours just watching a trail of ants. Everything here that happens in a single day would have been enough material there to occupy my brain for like a year.”
Another gust of rain sweeps overhead, crashing into the roof, and the two of them clutch each other harder, shivering. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t have a question after all. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing and hot and brilliant Miriam is and I didn’t think I could share that feeling with anyone. Then I went, “Hold up, Triq. There’s at least one person here who’s as into her as you are and maybe you could celebrate her together.”
“I am glad you came. Yes, we can. Her smell.”
“Like milk and honey.”
“And her brain. She has an absolute top-shelf brain. People don’t understand. It is like when you are an athlete, no? If you are in bad shape you can’t run up a hill. But when you are in okay shape you can. But only the runners in the very best shape can run uphill at any speed. Have you noticed this? Unless you are very fit, you can only run at your favored speed. But if you are in top shape then you can run as fast or slow as the people beside you and it doesn’t matter. Your muscles and stamina can work at any pace. That is Miriam’s brain. She is lightning fast with her creative thoughts and perceptive insights, but also she is able to keep timescales of half a billion years in her head. I can’t even remember… I mean, there’s the Devonian and the Ordovician and… That’s all I got. Married to the world’s greatest geologist and I can’t even recall the most basic facts about her—Oh!” Alonso starts, seeing another pair of figures looming out of the hallway. “Dios mio. Who is that?”
Triquet gasps. “Oh, my god, what happened to you two?”
Katrina and Jay lean against the doorframe, eyes wide, pasty and disheveled. Their energy is fractured and they can’t hold Alonso or Triquet’s gaze.
Katrina waves at them although she already has their attention. Finally she gets her mouth to work. “We got a problem, boss.”
Ξ
“Tell them.” Alonso finds a seat on a bin in the indoor kitchen in the back of the bunker. It is the end of the day and the storm has already darkened the skies. Miriam comes and stands beside him, a querying look sent his way. Everyone is here.
Jay covers his face in his hands. He can’t stop giggling.
Katrina is taking very dramatic breaths, Mandy holding her hands. This makes them all confused and a bit frightened. Finally she gathers herself. “Okay, first I got to apologize because we’re tripping. Whoa. Are you all doing that or…?”
“Doing what?” Amy asks, collecting enough mugs for tea.
“Your faces… Are fish. And we’re all underwater.”
Jay cackles, still holding his face in his hands. Katrina drags her fingertips through the air in wonder. She makes bubble sounds and giggles. Then she sees the way they’re looking at her. “Oh. Right.”
“You were going to tell us something?” Miriam prompts.
“What is wrong with them?” Maahjabeen asks Pradeep beside her. “I do not and will not ever understand drugs. I thought we were all in danger. Don’t you realize how foolish you both look?”
“They don’t care,” Flavia sighs. “Wish I could be so secure in myself but no. Never would I do this in front of sober people.”
Alonso prompts her. “Come on, Katrina. Remember how you said it was urgent?”
“It’s Alonso!” Her face beams with radiance. “Sorry. It’s just… sheets of color and you’re like a lion in the center! Aslan. Did you ever read the Narnia books?”
“Katrina. Focus. You said our safety is threatened.”
“I did?”
“You saw another one of the golden childs.”
“The golden man.” Recalling him shocks Katrina back into this reality. She grows instantly subdued. “Yeh. The golden man came to us when we were tripping in the sub. He was in the hatch watching. And he spoke Russian to me. Clear as a bell. Maybe a kind of Volgograd accent, the way he clipped his consonants—”
“Katrina.” Alonso is losing his patience. “What did he tell you?”
“Who?” Katrina looks around her. What is she doing in this dark room and why are all these strangers watching her?
Jay drops his hands. “He said the Russians are coming.” His eyes flicker and he’s unable to steady his gaze. But he shakes his head and tries his damnedest. This is the real shit. And he shouldn’t be fucked-up on goofballs at the moment. But he is. And he’s got to do something about it. He sees an open bucket of water at the base of the kitchen tables. He quickly kneels and dunks his head into it. The frigid shock makes his head spin. Not at all the right sensation. It just intensifies his trip. Now he’s in an ice cave like Superman. Except the cave is inside his head. And Superman is inside the cave. And inside Superman is… He pounds on his own forehead. “Uhhh… Slap me. Someone slap me.”
“No no.” Alonso holds up a paternal hand. “Nobody needs to—”
CRACK. Esquibel’s open-hand strike rocks Jay’s head back. A trickle of blood appears at the corner of his mouth. She grabs him. “The Russians? What are you talking about, you ridiculous child? You will come to your senses, both of you, right now, or I will—”
Katrina rides these bad vibes back into sobriety, if only briefly. “Hey, it’s okay. Let him go. We just had to tell you. The Russians are on their way. And, like, they don’t know we’re even here.”
“Oh my god, you’re serious?” Flavia squirms in her seat and Maahjabeen clutches her hand. “This isn’t the drugs? They are on the drugs, yes? This man, he wasn’t real. This is a made-up man.”
“Well then how did they both see him?” Alonso asks the room. “And how did they hear the same thing?”
“This story doesn’t make sense.” Esquibel releases Jay, who dabs at the blood and then loses himself in the bright red dollop on his fingertip. Nobody comes to his aid. They wait impatiently for the pair to continue. Esquibel prompts them. “So you’re telling me that a whole new golden person appeared in the sub while you were on drugs, speaking a language you know, and he told you the Russians are coming? Okay. Fine. Which Russians? Scientists like us or soldiers?”
“Soldiers,” Katrina echoes. And again. “Solll… diers…”
Then Jay, quietly: “He said if they find us here we’ll die.”
The entire room falls silent.
The tension is unbearable. Jay makes a loud bleating sound, covering his ears and scrunching up his face. “Stop… stopping. Time can’t just end. Somebody say something.”
“Is this a joke?” Triquet desperately hopes that it is, that this wildly inappropriate story is just in poor taste. Then Esquibel can yell at them and everyone else can go back to what they were doing, right? “Well is it?”
“You have to understand how difficult it is for us to believe you when you’re in this state.” Miriam crosses her arms, trying to quell her rising temper. “What are you children on, anyway?”
“Katrina’s acid,” Mandy informs them, to a chorus of groans.
“Acid?” Triquet snorts. “Okay, well here’s what really happened. One of you imagined this figure, this golden man, in the hatch, and then you told the other all about it and now you’re both convinced you saw him. You made up the whole thing about the Russians like in a bad dream. It’s all a dream, honey, okay?”
Katrina and Jay share a sidelong look. They know it wasn’t a dream. But how to convince the others? “Look,” Katrina begins. “I’m not what you call a rookie on this drug. I’ve dropped acid over a hundred times. I am an accomplished astronaut.”
“Oh my god did you really pull me out of the clean room and all my work just to scare me with this nonsense?” Esquibel claps her palm to her forehead. She is starting to get really angry. “Don’t tell me how many times you’ve done these drugs. It makes it so I can’t even trust you when you’re sober.”
“Exactly.” For once Miriam and Esquibel find themselves on the same side of an issue. “Look, Katrina, we all live, laugh, love here like a big Cuban family, doubtless, but you’re really trying our patience. And frightening us too.”
“No.” Jay spreads his hands outward, another ripple of panic washing through him. Whenever he can remember, he’s absolutely terrified of what the golden man told them. “Look. I don’t know if he came to us because we were on the drugs, though that’s how it seemed. But he was definitely real. Definitely definitely. And he said we got till dawn to hide. All our stuff. All our…” Jay waves at the bunker and camp, trying to include it all. “Hammock. Boats. We got to like cover our trenches somehow…”
“Hide? Did you completely forget…” Flavia protests, her fear making her irate, “that we are in the middle of a fucking storm? How are we supposed to take down our platforms and cover the trenches in all this wind and rain?”
“And how would anyone expect a boat or even helicopter to land during this?” Maahjabeen shakes her head in disapproval. “This is a fantasy you idiots have built up in your heads. No, the Russians aren’t coming. How could they?”
“Dawn.” Katrina shakes her head in despair at all the improvised structures in the bunker. They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them. “He said we have until dawn before the Russians get here.”
Miriam glances at Alonso, hoping to share her incredulous cynicism with him. But his face is drawn and his eyes are haunted. Right. The Russians. All he hears is he’s getting sent back to the gulag. These bloody fools are plucking on his heartstrings and they don’t even know it. “Now we’re going to stop this right here. Right now. Look what you’re doing to Alonso. You are going to repeat after me: There are no Russians coming at dawn. Say it.”
Jay and Katrina look helplessly at each other. “Sorry, Miriam,” Jay finally manages. “I know what I saw. And heard. It just didn’t go the way Triquet said. We didn’t imagine it. This acid don’t hit that hard. I mean, it does. But it didn’t.”
Alonso is beginning to tremble. Ah, no. His facade will slip again. Not Russian soldiers. Not again. Nothing is more horrible than the prospect of being returned to what he so recently escaped. Five more years. The very thought makes him audibly groan.
“Say it, Jay. Katrina.” Now it is Esquibel making the demand. “There are no Russians coming at dawn. And you will be handing the rest of that acid over to me for proper disposal.”
“I can’t. It happened.” Jay begs them. “What do you want me to do? We came and told you all as soon as it happened. We’re in danger, dude!”
“Jay! You are not in danger! There was no man down there!” Esquibel has had enough. She considers sedating them both against their will until this drug trip passes out of their systems. But she doubts she’ll get much support for such a drastic move. Then she recalls one of her activities from two days before. “Listen. It is impossible, anyway. I blocked off the tunnels again at the lowest level. Nobody could come up that way. He is only in your mind.”
“Katrina.” These are Pradeep’s first words. Once again, he speaks in a tone that seems to cut right to the heart of the matter. “If you want us to believe you, your words are not enough, regardless of how terrifying they may be. You have to give us proof. Actual physical proof that the man was there.”
Both Jay and Katrina nod. A jagged sadness rises in her. They don’t believe her and Jay. The Russians are going to show up and mow them down with guns. Or send them off to torture. She’ll be like Alonso and Pavel, broken for the rest of her life. They don’t believe her, all because of their prejudice against lysergic acid 25.
“I mean, we can look…” Jay isn’t ready to give up yet. Pradeep has given him something to do. “Come on, Prad. Bring your phone. See if we can find, like footprints or something. I don’t have my phone. Jidadaa stole it. And if I ever see Kula again…”
“Yes, Jay. We know.” Pradeep lets go of Maahjabeen’s hand and stands. “Come on. Let us see what we can find. Hold on, everyone. We will be right back.”
Jay leads Pradeep to the stairs and descends into the sub. After only a slight hesitation, Pradeep follows.
“Well. I guess this is what idleness and boredom gets you.” Miriam tries not to be angry at the kids. She has definitely been there herself. But anyone with eyes in their head can see how this farce is affecting Alonso. She just wants it all to end. “Can we agree not to take any more psychedelics while under threat of attack? I mean, what were you thinking, Katrina?”
“Uh…” Katrina sincerely tries to remember what they had been thinking. “Oh, yeh. We were thinking it was a whole day or more cooped up in this box so why not try something new?”
Esquibel growls. “Even the remotest chance that there is some kind of hostile maritime force landing on our beach at dawn will keep me from getting any sleep tonight. Preparations must be made. Even if it all is proven false. We still must guard against every eventuality.” Her anger nearly makes her helpless. She turns on Katrina, shaking a finger. “It is time for you to grow up!”
“This is ridiculous.” Flavia twists the fingers of one hand in the other. “Now it’s Russian soldiers? I cannot just sit here and wait for the next crazy part of this story. I am going to bed.”
“Wait.” Esquibel holds up a hand, an imagined spreadsheet with divisions of tasks filling her vision. “We need to… Ugh. We don’t know what we need to do first until we hear back from those two. And we need them back here as workers. Even if they are wrong and there is no threat, there will still be work to do before we can relax tonight.”
They all wait in silence.
“Where did you say you saw the golden man again?” Amy asks Katrina, who is staring at her own hand as its fingers slowly flex and spread. “Katrina? Where did you see him?”
“Um? In the sub. Didn’t we tell you?”
“Which chamber in the sub?”
“Just the first one there.”
Maahjabeen scowls. “Then what is taking them so long?”
“They are checking the whole sub to make sure there is nothing there.” Miriam feels like she needs to speak slowly for some reason. Maybe because Alonso is breaking apart and Katrina is on another planet. “And then when Jay is convinced it was a figment of his addled goddamned imagination they’ll come back and we can put this all to rest. Yes?”
After another long moment of silence, Mandy offers, “I was supposed to return to the weather station today to download data but of course that isn’t happening so… Kind of operating off stale measurements here but there’s got to be at least like another night of this storm before it abates.”
Esquibel spins to Mandy, cross. “I know! The idea that any landing force could brave the elements in the dark and hit the beach during this storm is just… I mean, it beggars belief, no?”
“Totally,” Mandy answers.
“Absolutely,” Miriam confirms, squeezing Alonso’s hand.
They wait another minute or two in uncomfortable suspense, the silence stretching.
“Watch,” Triquet says. “Pradeep climbs those stairs wearing a gold mask, shouting in Russian, run for your lives!”
“Bezhat’ za svoyu zhizn’!” Katrina helpfully translates, crowing at the roof. Then she giggles.
“How long has it been?” Flavia frets, checking her phone. “Five minutes? More?”
“More.” Esquibel frowns at the dark trap door and the stairs leading down. “Maybe we send someone to check on them…”
Flavia stands. “No. No more. This is how we always lose people, remember? We are not supposed to break up.”
“Calm down, Flavia. They’re coming back.” Amy puts on her bravest smile. “Anyone like some tea?”
Nobody responds. And Pradeep and Jay don’t come back. Not for another ten minutes, not for an hour.
Finally Alonso can take no more. The pressure within him cannot be contained any longer. He groans into his hands and sobs. Miriam looks urgently at Esquibel.
“Yes. Well. I guess something is going on down there after all. Thank you, Katrina, for your warning. Now…” Esquibel’s head drops. This is going to be an absolute mountain of work. “I guess we have to figure out how the rest of us can hide.”
Chapter 35 – My Brakes Don’t Work So Good
August 26, 2024
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:
35 – My Brakes Don’t Work So Good
“Slow down, Prad. Slow.” Jay holds his side as he gingerly follows Pradeep along the western edge of Tenure Grove.
Pradeep stops and takes out his phone. He opens a notepad app and dictates, “25 April, 9:33 am. Jay has just uttered the words ‘slow down’ for the first time in his life ever, to my knowledge.”
“Oh, he’s a comedian. Like a real funny guy.” Jay winces as he stops beside his friend, his left hand splayed protectively across his ribs. “Fuckin A, this didn’t hurt nearly as much the day of. What did Doctor Daine do to me? I thought her stitch-up went so well.”
“It is just healing. You know, that thing you will never sit still long enough to do?”
“Getting my blood flowing is also good for healing. I just got to make sure I don’t engage, well, like my entire left side. Turns out, it’s amazing how much you use the left side of your ribcage. Like putting on my sandals. Even the slip ons need me to lift my legs in a way that is just no no no bueno.”
Pradeep stops at the base of a huge coast live oak. “And here is as far as I’ll bring you. I even brought a tarp for you to lie on. The leaves are all prickly.” He unfolds it and spreads it on the ground under the boughs.
Jay sinks to his knees with a groan. “Oh, hell yeah. Now just feed me some lunch, baby, and you got yourself a date.”
But Pradeep is excited to get started. His face is already pointed at the canopy. This is a massive oak, as much as thirty meters high. He might be able to get about twenty meters up. Now. How to start? The massive trunk rises far above his reach before it divides. There are no obvious handholds. “Well. This is why we train.”
“Bro, you seriously ready to do this? They said you just flatlined on a cot like a couple nights ago.”
Pradeep stops and assesses his fitness, hands on hips. “I am somehow better than I have any right to be. Not perfect. My sternum still hurts. But I’m not nearly as weak as yesterday. Just don’t tell the Doctor we’re doing this.”
“No doubt. Well come on, then. Get on that bad boy. I want to see you pull some gnarly parkour shit up there.”
Pradeep takes out a length of climbing rope about twelve meters long. In one end he ties an alpine hitch. The other end he throws over the lowest crook in the trunk. Then he feeds that end through the loop of the hitch and pulls the rope tight.
“Bingo bango bongo, our boy is ready to roll.”
Pradeep dries his hands on his pants, takes a deep breath, and pulls himself hand over hand up the rope. It is too narrow and cuts into his palms. Gritting his teeth, kicking his toes up crevices in the rough bark, he rises one meter, then two. Somewhere between three and four meters is where he can hook his elbow around a nearly horizontal branch as thick as his leg. Then he swings his foot into the crook where his rope disappears. He shakes the pain out of his hands and peers upward through the greenery. “No real path yet available. This old Quercus agrifolia bastard has just extended itself in every direction. Need a loop.”
Pulling at the rope under his foot, he removes it from the tree. Then he makes a wider arborist’s loop of it on one end and gives himself a second one on the other end. He swings them into the branches, catching onto holds that are sometimes secure enough to bear his weight. He swings out and up, cheered on by Jay’s faint whoops from below. Finally he gets to branches built to a human scale. He sits in a fork of the limbs like a saddle, breathing hard, coiling the ropes and stowing them in his daypack. He takes out a Dyson reader. “After the last storm,” he calls out, “I was doing pull-ups on a branch of that coast fir beside you. And I found the remains of a huge uprooted porcini, just resting on the branch. At first I thought someone had put it up there as a joke. But that was impossible. The storm had blown it down onto the branch from above. So. Logically, giant mushrooms are up here somewhere.”
“Giant edible mushrooms.”
“Likely but uncertain. It was in end stages, just almost a clump of slime. So I’m like 98% sure it was porcini. Couldn’t use the branch after that. No grip. Now up here, I don’t see any troubles yet…” The outer edges of the oak are hung with long Spanish mosses but the interior, along the old trunk and branch lines where he climbs, are mostly dry and clear of life. He needs to get higher.
“Hey, hold the fucking phone. What kind of fir did you say that was?” Jay pulls his eyes from Pradeep’s exploits to study it.
“Coast fir of some variety. I hadn’t identified it. Just used it for pullups. No, the mushroom took my attention first—”
“Cause look at these bristlecones. Seriously, this is a bristlecone fir, dude. This might just be an actual Santa Lucia. Rarest fir tree in the world, dude. Only found in the canyons of Big Sur. Whoa. Seriously. Oh my god. We found an honest to goodness Abies bracteata Santa Lucia on Lisica. Holy shit. We’re gonna be like rockstar famous when we get back. You realize that, right?”
“NDA, Jay.”
“Shit. Right. Forgot about that. Well, some day.”
“Famous?” Pradeep blanches and swings up into the high branches, a good fifteen meters from the ground. “No thank you. I never need to be famous. Just give me a twenty year grant and a cabin somewhere and I will send you papers at regular intervals.”
Pradeep’s motion startles a nesting osprey. The massive black bird launches into the air with a shrill cry, screaming for its mate.
“Oh, no way! You got to get out of there, Prad! Sea eagles are super mean! Territorial! They can fuck you up!”
The osprey wheels into the sky. Now they see the gray and white highlights on her nearly three meter wingspan. She is a cunning hunter and a fierce protector of her nest. She wings quickly back to the tree, swooping past Pradeep, screeching at him.
“Yeah… Yeah, not good here…” Pradeep retreats, hiding behind two narrow trunks growing together. “See here’s a real operational flaw in Alonso’s plan.” He ducks as the osprey swings back at him, beating the nearby branches with her wings. “Theoretically, we are supposed to be collecting samples from every life form on the island.” She circles the tree and tries to attack him from the far side, but the leafy cover is thicker there and she peels away. “So who is going to get the osprey sample, you or me?”
“And her mate.”
“And the eggs? There must be eggs up there. Or hatchlings.”
“I mean, there are…” But the osprey has returned again, interrupting Jay. “There are protocols for sure. We just don’t, I mean, I didn’t bring any gear for trapping and sedating large raptors, did you?”
And now they hear the second osprey, out hunting over the water, returning with cries of urgency. Pradeep makes a quick decision. “Okay. Coming down quick. You might want to, uh, watch out.”
Jay moves as quickly as he can, which is agonizingly slow. He needs to get under cover. Pradeep runs out the limb he’s on and drops crashing down through the outer branches he can reach.
Both ospreys come in hard, reaching through the thicket for him with grasping talons and razor beaks. Pradeep yelps and releases his grip, falling onto a clump of others below. Then he rolls off them to land heavily on the ground. He scrambles away, unhurt, to join Jay under the protective eaves of the Santa Lucia fir. They peer upward. The birds have gone silent.
A trilling whistle pierces the air. Jay realizes it’s being repeated. He just couldn’t pick it out before during all the crashing and screaming birds. He and Pradeep step out and look up, to see a figure far above, a tiny dark silhouette in the canopy of one of the neighboring redwoods, nearly a hundred meters up.
The ospreys wing up toward the figure on a nearby thermal, who holds something out to them. Whoever it is stands on the branch with no concern for the height. They appear to be unsecured, just waiting for the birds. The lead eagle snatches the offering from the human’s hand. Somehow mollified by this, the pair of great birds return to their nest together.
Pradeep and Jay share expressions of open-mouthed shock.
Ξ
Esquibel wakes late. She lies alone on her cot, wrapped in fleece blankets and covered in Mandy’s sleeping bag. She is warm and snug, with no real memory of what came before. Oh, that’s right. Last night was dancing. Celebration. The return of the men.
She yawns and stretches, sitting up. This narrow cell closest to the clean room has become her own. She has not decorated it in any way, but the one clear wall has been filled with shelves stacked with trays and boxes. All the tools of her trade. They are what identify her. Sometimes she wonders what her life would have been like a thousand years ago. She’d be some hedge witch in a village with her stock of plants and poultices and people would hike for days to find her. But she would probably have to live as a hermit in the mountains after they found her in bed with a woman. It would be just her in a hut, alone with the leopards and the crocs.
Something itches in her cleavage, under the tank top she wears when she sleeps. She adjusts it and finds a slip of paper, like what you’d find in a fortune cookie, against her skin. She takes it out, assuming that it’s some manufacturer tag that came loose in the night. But it isn’t. It’s rice paper, folded endwise, so that when she unfolds it three times it’s as long as an uncooked noodle. And there’s writing on it.
DATA INSUFFICIENT. MORE OR NO DEAL. WEDNESDAY NIGHT. SAME LOC AS BEFORE. BURN THIS NOW.
Esquibel goes cold. How…? She covers her breastbone with her palms, hunching over protectively. Where did this come from? How did they get in here? Mandy was here with her at one point, wasn’t she? Oh, the violation! How could this happen?
Then the ice is replaced with fury. How dare they take this risk! So sloppy. Is this what she is getting involved with? No no no, this is too unsafe. If their spycraft is this loose then it certainly increases her own risk. She might break off the deal just because of that.
And what is this about asking for more? Such bald manipulation. Also very concerning. They obviously have no idea how to lure in an asset. Ugh. She may have gone in too hard about Dissatisfaction With The Americans in her contact letter. Now they must think she’s desperate. Well she isn’t. She’s… well, more than anything she’s offended. Legitimacy is hard to come by in this world, especially for an African woman. With this reckless contact she feels like she has been relegated to some lower division. Fine. If nothing else, that will just increase her price.
But she has no more USB sticks to spare. And she has no idea how to find one. Well. Keep her eyes out. It is all she can do. And yes. She will make herself some tea and use the stovetop to burn this note, then if anyone complains of the smoke she can stage a paper napkin or something catching fire.
Ehh, she had woken with such… relaxation. She had been empty. Now she is all anxiety and duplicity. This note is like that black splinter in the bull kelp, its existence solitary but still distorting the whole world around it. Horrible.
Ξ
Triquet wakes before Miriam does. They are tangled together, almost entirely naked. Oh dear, Triq. What have you done now? Never been a homewrecker before. Triquet squeezes their face shut, trying to make all the parts work. Their eyes are too dry. Their mouth. All the muscles of their face and jaw ache. And their neck and shoulders. It’s all a painful mess.
But Lord that was fun. Well, it started with fun. Then it got so goddamn touching and meaningful they couldn’t stand it, with poor Alonso wandering through his internal halls of grief. Then it got fun again, then it got… well… super hot and heavy. What an absolute shocker. Nothing Triquet had ever experienced before. Miriam is by far the best lover they’ve ever had. She was tender and fierce and artful and just so, so connected to Triquet’s every need and desire. Good golly, this is how it’s supposed to be? An ache rises in Triquet’s chest, a deep pang of regret over all the wasted years of fumbling hesitancy and miscommunication. Miriam had driven their body like a fucking speedboat through the waters, her hands and lips so sure.
And now what? Triquet can’t just let that go. It was revelatory, more precious than gold. They’d do anything to have a repeat of it, tonight if she’s willing. But on the other hand, this is a man’s wife. Your boss. Your boss who was tortured for five years and spent all night weeping out his trauma. And here you were, two tents over, banging his wife, singing Siouxsie and the Banshees. Eesh. Not a good look, Triq. And just not, well, what good people do.
Now what? Well, keeping secrets really isn’t Triquet’s way. If it was, they’d have just kept their birth gender and birth name and lived a private life of fantasy in a closet somewhere. But they just couldn’t ever keep their big mouth shut. Fuck. Their sigh sounds more like a groan of pain. It wakes Miriam and she smiles.
“Gor, I feel like shite.” She laughs, a croupy sound. Triquet counts the wrinkles at her eyes, realizing again how many years separate them. Miriam stretches and untangles her arms. “Way too old to be the party people. How you doing, lover?” And she kisses Triquet on the tip of their nose.
“Well, that’s one relief. That you aren’t waking up screeching, ‘What have I done?’ So thanks for that.”
“Why?” Miriam frowns. “What did we do? Nothing indecent, right? I don’t really think…”
“I mean, nothing…” Triquet grasps for a delicate way to put it, “…well, penetrative, but…”
“Exactly. Just some good old-fashioned fooling around. I mean, my menopause is almost upon me, dear, but birth control is still a thing in my life. Assuming you’re…”
“I’m not, I mean we can’t…” But Triquet doesn’t have the brain power this morning or the will to discuss it. “So we’re not…? We’re still friends, yeah? I didn’t ruin anything?”
“Ruin…? Honey, anyone who spends an hour going down on me isn’t ruining a thing. Mother Mary, when I finally came I thought the sky exploded.”
Triquet giggles, worry sheeting from them. “As long as you kept telling stories about Patty Smith and Debbie Harry I couldn’t keep my hands off you. Jesus, Miriam. You’ve met everybody.”
“Well, no. I was just very seriously into dancing in the clubs for a good fifteen years. It may be hard to imagine now, but I had this very particular look that, well, it just worked for me.”
Triquet finds it very easy to imagine, this long-legged, red-headed Irish girl gyrating elegantly under the lights. She must have been a legend. They put a hand on Miriam’s forearm. “You know, um. I have to tell Alonso. About last night. I hope you understand…” But Miriam laughs aloud. “What?”
“No way. We might have to race. I want to tell him first. But I guess you can if you want. He’ll love this.”
“Oh.” This is a scenario Triquet hadn’t considered. “For real? He won’t be jealous or…?”
“Oh, he’ll be fiendishly jealous. But only because he missed out. Not sure how you feel about my big Cuban bear, but I’m sure he’ll want to be part of the fun next time.” Miriam puts a tender hand against Triquet’s heart. “Assuming there is a next time.”
Triquet shakes their head in wonder. “God, who are you people and why has it taken me so long to find you? Of course. Yes, please. I’ve had a crush on Alonso since I first met him. Who wouldn’t? It would be an honor and a pleasure and, like a whole-ass fantasy come true. Just maybe give me a day or two to recover. I’m not as young as I used to be.” Triquet sighs again, and once more it sounds like a groan. They sit up and a headache announces itself. “Water.”
“Good call. Let’s find some.”
They stumble from the tent and the platform hand in hand.
Ξ
Amy sits at the long table in the sub’s belowdecks, facing Morska Vidra and the Mayor, who haven’t yet sat in the chairs provided. At Amy’s side is Katrina, recording everything and taking notes.
Running a finger down a list of words they believe are defined, Amy pulls out, “Uh, dzaadzitch. The word you repeated when you arrived. What is that? Dzaadzitch?” Amy holds her hands out, palms up, and shrugs.
The Mayor speaks slowly. Amy picks out the word katóok.
“Hold on. Hold on…” She consults the list. “No katóok here.”
“Katóok,” Katrina reads from her Eyat glossary. “Variants: dadóok, which can mean cave. Otherwise it means interior.”
“Jay was in a cave. I mean, we’re in a cave right now.”
“Or the island’s interior…” Katrina studies the Mayor’s placid face. No clues there. Katrina points at their feet with the tip of her thumb. “Katóok?” Seeing no response she points to where she guesses the center of Lisica’s hidden valleys and canyons must be. “Or, katóok. Is it out there?”
With her own thumbtip, the Mayor agrees by pointing to the island’s interior and repeating the word katóok.
“Okay. Progress! Yes!” Katrina writes down the word on Amy’s list. “But what about dzaadzitch? There is no mention of any word like it in the lexicons. In Slavic languages the closest you’d get is, well…” She shrugs, thinking, “I mean, maybe like a baby lamb? But Lisica doesn’t have sheep.”
The Mayor interrupts her reasoning with a long, emphatic speech, with plenty more mentions of dzaadzitch and katóok.
“I mean…” Katrina shakes her head, mystified. “We have to assume it’s been a good number of generations and of course they’ve invented their own words in the meantime, especially with all the loan words they eventually got from—”
The Mayor abruptly leans across the table, speaking again, and grasps Katrina by the wrist. She pulls on her arm until their joined limbs hang suspended over the table. With her thumbtip, the Mayor indicates the length of their connected arms.
“Dzaadzitch means arms?” Amy makes the suggestion in a meek voice, hating to be wrong. She grasps her own arm. “Dzaadzitch? Yes? Your arms? Your joined arms?”
The Mayor, still holding Katrina’s arm aloft, shakes both of them for emphasis. She tries to pull it even more taut and nearly lifts Katrina from her seat.
“Wait wait wait.” Katrina struggles to regain her balance, smiling and nodding at their guests. “I think I’ve got it. It’s some kind of connection. The ‘dza’ sound is in a bunch of words. Like, uh, ‘dzáaxʼ kadz’ means ‘string connecting a pair of mittens.’ Right? Like our arms are connected, yeah? Dzaadzitch.”
The Mayor repeats the phrase dzáaxʼ kadz and smiles. She seems mollified by Katrina’s line of reasoning. The Lisican woman uses her free hand to indicate herself, explaining something with a sentence that once again ends with the word katóok.
“You are? You’re katóok? You’re the interior?” Katrina’s smile falters. Wait. Maybe it doesn’t mean what she thinks after all.
“Oh, I get it.” Amy stands. “She’s Lisica. Or the heartland or whatever. Your arms are the conduit connecting the interior world with the exterior. And then you are… well, us. Right?” Amy asks brightly, pointing at Katrina. “Scientists? Uh… Americans?”
The Mayor grunts “Merriguns,” then once more points at herself and says, “Katóok.”
“Americans here. Lisicans here. But here? Who dzaadzitch?”
This prompts a long speech by Morska Vidra, who leans on the table and lists off a number of words.
“Wait. I know that one. That’s a name? I thought it was, like, a condition. These are names he’s listing, yeah?”
Amy nods. “I think so. He keeps saying Jay.”
Repeating it makes Morska Vidra say the name Jay again.
“And Jidadaa? That’s a name? Kula, Jay, Jidadaa? And they are the dzaadzitch, the connection between the island and the outside world? Is that what we’re getting here? I think that’s what we’re getting, Katrina.”
“Okay, but what does that mean?”
“Jidadaa. That’s the key. Remember, that’s the word on the photo we showed them when they got so upset? Said all those items were kept at the other village? Now it’s a person? Maybe it’s a title. Like something hereditary, cause that was an old photo. Too old.”
The four people stand around the table smiling foolishly at each other. The Mayor has released Katrina’s arm.
Katrina goes once more through her notes. “We need to ask Jay what he remembers. Didn’t he say the woman’s name was Kula?”
“The woman with the daughter?” Amy turns to the Lisicans. “Kula…” She puts her hand at one height, then moves it to the side and drops it a bit. “Jidadaa… Yeah? Mother…” She repeats the gesture, indicating one and then the other. “…daughter.”
With a thumbtip, Morska Vidra indicates the daughter. “Jidadaa.” Then he points at The Mayor: “Dzaadzitch.”
“Aha! Progress!” Katrina makes a note of it. “So it is a name! But what does it mean? Okay, so both Jidadaa and the Mayor are what connects the inside and the out.”
“Jay says Kula stole his gear and vanished. I doubt we’ll be seeing them again. And they live on the far side of the river, where we’re forbidden on like pain of death. So… Not sure how we…”
Amy falls silent as the Mayor and Morska Vidra confer, trying to figure out how to communicate more from their end. But nothing seems to resolve. Then Morska Vidra falls silent. He grunts.
An animal sound echoes from further within the sub. It is his silver fox, bleating for them, an expressive urgent note.
Morska Vidra grunts something then turns and bends at the waist. He vanishes through the hatch.
The Mayor regards them. Although her face remains impassive, the depth of her dark gaze indicates how deeply the animal’s call and Morska Vidra’s reaction shook her.
That surprises them all. “What? What is it?” Katrina still hasn’t figured out how to ask a proper question.
For a moment the Mayor looks frail. She places a hand on the table and regards them. “Wetchie-ghuy,” she informs them, tapping at her own chin with her thumbtip. “Moj brat.”
Then she follows Morska Vidra through the hatch.
Amy releases an anxious sigh. “Whoaa. What was that?”
But Katrina can barely hear Amy. She absently shakes her head, implications and glimpses of meaning shooting through her. “Well. Either Wetchie-ghuy is in trouble, or he’s causing it.”
But Amy makes a disbelieving face. “They can tell that from a fox’s cry? Proper names? I mean, I’ve seen some amazingly complex behavior in animals, but…”
“Yeah, I didn’t think about that. Kind of wild. No, I was all caught up in what she said after that. Those were Slavic words. Wetchie-ghuy is the Mayor’s brother.”
Ξ
“Fantastico!” Flavia puts her fishing pole in the crook of her elbow and applauds Maahjabeen, who has lifted a net filled with swarming crabs and placed it atop the kayak. She paddles with urgency; the writhing mass in the net could easily slide back into the water.
“We make these crabs in Tunisia, on La Goulette. With a humiss and oil. So good. But, eh. No chickpeas here. Careful!”
But the crabs have slid back into the water and Maahjabeen almost loses her paddle lunging for the trailing rope. She draws them back to the kayak and places them back atop the deck. “Just like six more strokes!” But when she digs in with the paddle the net slides toward her and against her sprayskirt. “La! Ehhh! They’re scratching at me! I can feel them! Through the fabric of my…!” Paddling frantically, Maahjabeen brings her boat back to shore. She pushes the crab net away and pulls herself free of the boat. Then she reels them in, scowling.
But Flavia is dancing. She celebrates Maahjabeen’s bounty, lifting the net up and counting how many she can see of the wriggling pale brown crabs, some wider than her hand.
“Oh, we have so many ways in Italy of eating crab. And we can make precisely zero of them here on this island! Ha! But imagine. Crab ravioli with ricotta and spinach… Or soup. Garlic and oil…”
“You are driving yourself crazy.”
“How can you do this?” Flavia holds the crabs as Maahjabeen gathers her gear and begins hauling her kayak up the beach. “I did not know what I was getting myself into out here but you did. You do this all the time. Leave civilization. Leave garlic and wine…”
“Not wine. I do not drink.”
“No. Well, but all the finer things in the world. You all make the crazy decision, consciously, to deprive yourselves of restaurants and movies and people and for what? To come out here and catalogue the very last of the last, like a bunch of obsessive compulsive teenagers who can’t leave a few stones in the world unturned. Eh? Why must you live like this? Like monks and nuns.”
“Yes, I think that is part of it.” Maahjabeen looks out over the ocean, shining in alternating bands of silver and gray. “We know that the knowledge we gain out here is deeper. We are that much closer to God.”
“Eh. God. If we are going to be friends then we will have to talk about this god.”
Maahjabeen stops, a storm quick to form in her eyes. “Eh? What about God?”
“I know your religion is very important to you but you will have to understand I have no faith. No god has ever spoken to me. So in that way we are very different. Just please. Keep it in mind.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m quite aware that I’m surrounded by unbelievers. It is the way of things, not just for me but for any Muslim who ventures out. You people always make me, eh, code-switch or you threaten me with your atheist outrage. As if an atheist has any basis to feel outrage. I never understand that. Rage, sure, anger and irritation. All that. But I have atheists come at me in the West filled with righteous fury. How is that possible? Where is the righteousness coming from if they are without God?”
“I think it is just people who have been hurt by religion in the past and the outrage comes from those injuries.”
“Yes, well, God is everywhere. And He is good. And so you will not ever get me to stop talking about Allah. He is the Light.”
“Well, you will never get me to stop telling you to stop. So there.”
“Eh. We are a proper Mediterranean standoff.”
“The Fourth Punic War.”
They walk companionably into the camp.
Ξ
Finally the world has stopped spinning. Alonso hasn’t slept all night. Life has beaten down all his doors and he has no defenses left. He is just a bare soul, trapped deep within himself, battered and bloody.
But the fight is over, at least for the time being. He can… rest? No, there’s no rest in him. He is blasted, strung out, attenuated by the chemicals into something less than human. Wrung dry.
How can his muscles be so sore when he has hardly moved for the last, what, eighteen hours? Ai, he is too old for this shit. Party drugs are a young man’s game. It’s easy when you’re twenty-two and pliable as a willow tree. Now he’s skeletal. There’s no bounce back, no sunny disposition to rely upon. Just a broken old man forced to face the remainder of his life with scars and demons and a slow tapering good night. Ugh. This is not the life he signed up for. Claustrophobia drags at him, pulling him into a desperate panic. No no no. This is not how the end will be for Doctor Sergio Alonso Saavedra Colon Ramirez Aguirre. He will not suffer pain. He stares at its baleful inescapability and finds a fatalistic Latin chuckle. No, he will not suffer pain. He will enjoy it.
“I will celebrate it!” His voice is ghastly, hoarse and (yes!) painful! “Nessun Dorma! Nessun Dorma!” Oh it’s like his throat is on fire.
“Knock knock.” Jay climbs the ramp to the Love Palace, his form a shadow behind the mesh.
“Yes, Jay.”
The tent is unzipped and the curly mop of reddish-blond curls ducks through. The youth grins and unslings a small satchel. “How you doing today, O Jefe my Jefe?”
“Fantastic.” Alonso doesn’t care if the boy is immune to his heavy sarcasm. He lets him have it. “Dancing on the ceiling.”
Jay laughs. “Yeah, been there, my dude. The coming-down blues. The worst one I ever heard… One of my high school buddies joined the Marines and he was like stationed in the Philippines?And they dropped acid right before some guerrillas ambushed them in the jungle. He was tripping hard, like peaking, when he got shot. He said he could feel the bullet pushing through his skin and every cell of his body reacting in super-slow—”
“Jay.” Alonso puts up an urgent hand. “Jay. Not another word.”
“Ten-four, boss. Anyway, Miriam sent me in. Said you’d need some of my medicine.”
“Water.”
Jay lifts a familiar metal cylinder from his satchel. “Hot water in the thermos. Here you go. But sip. It’s fucking pipin’, bro. We’ll just pour some into the lid. Now check it out. Honey packets. Amy said she was saving them for a special occasion and I guess this counts. Yeah, get it all in there. That’ll do it.”
Alonso has never experienced anything so soothing. He wants the honey and hot water to continue forever; it is such an immense relief. What an idiot. He had begun his drug trip absolutely drunk. And then he had screamed and cried for hours. None of it good for his throat. And never enough water. But this is like the oasis in the desert. “Gracias, muchas gracias, Jay. I am restored.”
“Miriam said you’d also appreciate one of my little juh-highnts. Ease the pains, dull the edges, get the flow back to flowing.” Jay pulls out a pair of thin joints and presents them against his upraised palm. “One will wake you up and one will let you sleep. Your choice. But they’ve both got some killer terpenes for healing—”
Alonso waves him away. “No. My poor throat. It would kill…”
“Right. Roger that.” Jay is crestfallen. But after a quick moment he perks back up. “Wait! I made some oil! Hold up!”
Before Alonso can protest Jay is back through his tent flap and hurrying across the sand to his hammock. He returns moments later, holding his left side. “Got to slow down, man. Shit hurts. Get too excited about life sometimes.”
Alonso only stares at him with a dull expression. His physical pain is fading now but the mental… it is like his brain is made of concrete. All the channels collapsed and depleted.
Jay pours a dollop of oil into Alonso’s lid cup, nodding like a mad sage. “This’ll cure what ails ya, Jefe. Super strong. You’ll sleep like a baby now. That’s what you need, right?”
“I am…” Alonso swallows, squeezing his eyes shut in pain, “I am currently suffering from the side effects of my last drug trip and you want to fix this by giving me more drugs? Madness. So what will it be with this one? What are the side effects?”
“I already told you. Sleep like a baby. The primary effects will be psychokinetic with some heavy visuals if you let them happen. But then it will knock you the fuck out and when you wake up it will be out of your neural pathways and just stored in your fat for another week or two. You won’t pass any drug tests, that’s for sure. But, I mean, it’s just weed, Alonso. It isn’t a drug.”
Alonso laughs. “You are crazy.” But the siren song of oblivion calls to him and Jay is the only one offering him a way there. “I do need to rest. Well. ¡Salud!” Alonso sips at the water, then finding it not too hot now, he tosses it all back and grins.
The oil puts a vegetal tinge on the back of his tongue. And he doesn’t know if he’s still tripping from the night before or if this is a whole new thing, but he senses filaments growing from the oil into the wall of his trachea, spreading outward like one of Pradeep’s underground fungal networks into every bit of him. A sigh from deep in his bowels takes the concrete out of him. Now he is like a discarded pile of clothes, tossed on the bed. He falls back, heavily, onto the cot and pillows.
Jay laughs in surprise and reaches for Alonso to break his fall but he winces instead and covers the wound to his left side. All he can do is grab the man’s leg.
But Alonso didn’t feel a thing. He is now sailing on a peaceful cloud. He can’t believe the effects hit so soon. This must be a Pavlovian response. A placebo… A palliative. And all the other nice P words he can think of, por su puesto. He grins at handsome Jay from the cot. “No no. I’m okay.”
“Yeah, whoa. Look at you. Yeah, you are. I’ll check up on you from time to time. Make sure you stay that way. So… things went well last night? You covered some ground? I mean, I don’t know if you’re ready to talk about it.”
“It was fine. Everything is fine.” And everything really is. Alonso wonders if this is part of Katrina and Mandy’s therapy. Hit him with the hard stuff to begin then have the gentle hippie boy show up with his balms in the morning. “You are the nicest fellow.”
“Wait til I get you an omelette. Then you’ll think I’m a god.”
They both laugh. Alonso realizes how hungry he is. “Oh, yes, pretty please, my darling. Sorry. My dude. No, it was…” He sighs again, collecting his thoughts. He owes it to Jay to give him a serious answer after the nice things he has done for him. “I can’t say it was hard because it took no effort from me to go back to those horrible places. And something about the way the drugs work meant I didn’t try to run away. So there was no… no struggle on my part, you understand? It was like once it started I was just along for the ride. So I do not blame myself for anything. It would be like getting flushed down the toilet and blaming yourself instead of the sewer for how you smell.” Ah, he likes that analogy. His brain is working again. “What an amazing oil you made. The flow is indeed flowing again. And I am very grateful. I had to face the men who tortured me last night and there was a lot of… yes, a lot of ground that I covered, but still I feel like I have been in a fucking riot. I am just beat up, inside and out. I remember… I remember Triquet was such a sweetheart. And Mandy… I swore she was pulling long shards of glass from my legs. I howled. Or I think I did. Maybe it was only inside my head.”
“No, you definitely howled. For hours.”
“Oh. Well. My apologies to everyone.”
“We were all so glad! I mean, she was barely touching you. But she’s got the gift. Mandy said I’ve got to heal more before she’ll lay hands on me like that but I can’t wait. Girl makes me scream.”
“But how are you?” Alonso reaches out and clasps Jay’s solid forearm. His skin is so soft, the corded muscles beneath admirable and worthy of envy. He is youth personified. The MDMA must not be entirely out of Alonso’s system. Something of the night’s glow illuminates the contact between the two men.
Jay is quite used to spending his time with people on drugs. He leans back, lights his daytime joint, and just shrugs. “Pretty good. Just chillin’. Trying not to open the stitches. Do not want to set myself back, know what I mean?”
Alonso nods. “Yes, but how are you after your… your ordeal? Tell me more. What did it look like, the rest of the island? The island that we will now never see?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I had no idea that I was bringing about an end to an era! I was just following the job description, man.”
“No. This isn’t over. You made important new allies and it sounds as though there is now maybe a path to speak to this interior village. This… what did Amy call it?”
“We’re calling it the Katóok village now. The one on the other side of the river. And this one at the tunnel mouth with the Mayor is the Dzaadzitch Village, the connecting village.”
“Someone will need to write these words down. I cannot keep them in my head.”
“Sure thing. Yeah. Maybe I do need a full-on molly and massage debriefing like you had here. I mean, not that what I went through is anything like your nightmare, but—”
“Jay, you had screaming natives chasing you through caves with spears! I would say yes! Let Katrina and Mandy heal you. If you are having trouble getting past it, I mean, who wouldn’t after what happened to you?”
“You know, the whole time I was pretty sure you would all be so pissed at me for leaving. I was super stoked when I came back and everyone was so nice.”
“No, we were very angry. It was a very stupid thing. At times you are truly a dangerous moron.”
“Fair enough. Yeah, there’s a third village in there somewhere. And then I guess a whole bunch of other free agents like Kula and Jidadaa floating around. Wetchie-ghuy and his whole deal. But this one thing they said, I couldn’t make sense of. So Jidadaa, she’s only half Lisican, right? She never knew her father, one of the men, right? She said that the men are gone but the men still come. I mean, what does that even…? Blew my freaking mind.”
“Men? I mean, if we just replace the word with soldiers it makes more sense, no? The soldiers left and the soldiers still come. Maybe they had a regular base but now there’s only periodic visits.”
“Poor women. Outcast from all the villages but still stuck here. They said they’d come back with me and I thought we could…” Jay shrugs. “I don’t know. We’d figure something out. Thought we had a deal. But they snaked my shit instead!”
“And they spoke English?”
“Jidadaa spoke some. She’s a smart girl.”
“Good. Good…” Alonso struggles to say more, but his demons seem to have returned. He can hear them calling in the distance, taunting him with their gleeful agonies in a variety of Russian dialects. They are not vanquished, merely held at bay. Well. It is the other side of the MDMA, is it not? It provides respite. But maybe he will never heal, not fully. Not even with Jay’s herbs.
Jay watches the hopeless pall cast over his patient’s eyes. He grabs Alonso’s forearm in turn, like they’re Romans greeting each other. “You know what you need, my brother? You need a good swim. We need to wash your ass clean.”
“I smell that bad?” Alonso is able to unearth a fossilized smile.
“No. Not literally. The opposite of literally. You smell fine.”
“Figuratively.”
“Yeah, that. Also, it gets the weight off your feet and it’s so absolutely fucking cold it all goes numb in just a minute anyway. Can you swim?”
“Yes, I am a good swimmer.”
“You rest. Just let the oil do its work. And when you get up, we’ll get you in the water.”
“Yes, Jay. But wait.”
Jay slowly gathers his things. “Don’t slow me down now. I’m gonna go get that omelette going for you.”
“Listen. I am a data scientist. Of all the people here, I think of the big picture the most. That is my specialty in my field. Yes?”
“Sure. That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“There is something happening across many fronts here in Lisica. Not just among what Plexity tells us about the life here, but in a wider sense. The military is unveiling the island in May. You have caused some prophecy to come to life that spells the end of an era. Those children with the golden masks. We are here to witness some change, some transformation, from one world to the next.”
“Yep yep.” Jay nods soberly. “We definitely live in a time of accelerating change. And me, my brakes don’t work so good.”
Chapter 34 – You People Are Wonderful
August 19, 2024
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:
34 – You People Are Wonderful
“Yes, of course such a thing is possible,” Flavia tells Katrina and Pradeep when they present their idea to everyone at dinner. “I am already making similar filters in Plexity. In fact, if you hadn’t spoken of it I am sure I would have gotten around to making one based on the day and night cycle in the next few days. It is really not that special.”
“Well, sure, mate,” Katrina allows, “but it is when you’re out in the actual web of it, the overlaid matrices in the water with the bull kelp all around. The connective tissues. Bloody hell. I tell you, Alonso…” She turns her attention to the man sitting in his camp chair, his belly like a beach ball stretching his t-shirt. “Plexity is deeply changing the way I look at things for sure.”
“Good. Excellent.” This briefly enlivens him. His energy has not been the best lately. He hasn’t shaved in three days now and the bristles on his cheeks are like entropy, unspooling his carefully-preserved self-image into that of a loathsome old man. And what is the deal with this giant goddamn gut he is suddenly carrying? He was a skeleton in the gulag, and not much more in the hospitals. Gaunt was the word everyone used to describe him. And now he is fat. Is that progress? Well, it may or may not be, but Katrina seeing the world through the Plexity lens sure is. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Well, it’s less about what I saw as much as what I imagined. Lines of influence stretching out in every direction, the past and future, the sea and sky and air, the kelp growing a meter every week and then dying back again, over and over. All these cycles and feedback loops. It really is its own supercomputer, ain’t it?”
“Yes.” Alonso holds his hand up like a conductor about to call for the first notes of Haydn’s Requiem in C Minor. He opens his mouth but the strings do not play. He reaches for his usual grand thoughts but fatigue prevents him from formulating them.
Miriam watches his struggle, knowing too well that she can’t help. If Alonso is unable to reference a masterwork then he will never be satisfied with anything less. But for once she doesn’t sympathize. He needs to dig himself out of this depressive relapse himself. He needs to work on his inner strength. His resiliency. She goes back to her own notes, only half-listening.
“Yeh, it was great…” Katrina finishes lamely, not understanding why Alonso had suddenly fallen silent, visibly unhappy.
But Pradeep isn’t tuned into anyone else at all. Plexity is giving him new returns on his queries and they all blow his mind. “Oh, my god! Alonso. Oh, I’ve never seen…!” Pradeep claps a hand over his mouth, brow furrowed, trying to make better sense of the data.
Alonso turns his heavy head toward the beautiful young man. No, not even Pradeep’s dashing good looks can stir Alonso now. But perhaps his discoveries can. “Yes? What is it, hermano?”
“It’s a, well, it’s just this innocuous cyst. I found it on a stalk of the kelp while I was out on the water. Like an infection. Or a… You know how trees get fungal growths and things? So I found this discolored bubble on the kelp and when I cracked it open I found this thing like a fat splinter inside. Like a dark seed.”
“Yes? And did you send a sample into Plexity?”
“I did! And it just confirmed that it was indeed a fungal infection of the kelp, and identified the fungus down to the class and order. But it had never seen this family. Neither have I. It’s a class of fungal endophytes that may be entirely novel!”
“Congrats, Pradeep!” Amy squeezes his shoulder. “I can’t think of a more fitting thing to name after you.”
A chorus of laughs and reminders that Mandy has a plasmodial slime named after her are called out.
“But that’s not the interesting bit. Look, Alonso.” Pradeep gets up and sits beside Alonso, sharing his screen with him. “Here’s a genetic profile of the little beastie. And here’s a molecular visual. God, these programs are so powerful. Now. Look at this table. These are its environmental interactions.”
“What am I looking at?” Alonso frowns, knowing next to nothing about fungi. “Why are all the values at zero?”
“Because, according to Plexity, it doesn’t interact with anything in its environment. It found no trace of local water or nutrients from the kelp. The fungus doesn’t appear to respire. Or metabolize energy stores. We can only assume it derives its energy somehow from the sun, as all things basically do, but in this case it’s unclear.”
“Wait. What are you saying? Of course it interacts with its environment. That is the hallmark of life!” Now Alonso pulls Pradeep’s machine into his own lap and looks more deeply at the data. “No water, no nutrients, no energy source? Then how does it replicate? What makes it alive?”
“It does seem to be in like a polyp or spore phase. Perhaps it’s just in suspension, waiting for different conditions. But yeah. Ever since you described Plexity and the web of life I’ve been thinking about this. Could we find a counter-example? Would we even recognize it if we did? Would it look like life if it was an isolate?”
“Isolate?” Alonso shakes his head, unable to conceive of such a thing. “I mean, let’s say it doesn’t eat or drink. It is still captured in the substrate of the seaweed’s cells. It is interacting with it, no?”
“Well, what I saw was that it formed a kind of protective sheath around itself. I think it was the sheath that the kelp was reacting to. The spore itself seemed, well, untouched. That’s what I’m saying. Can it be alive if it isn’t connected at all to its surroundings?”
“This is preposterous.” Alonso’s emotions stir, deeply offended. “And I believe you are just playing semantics. It will be a timescale issue, not a—a biological one. We keep this for two years or ten and then it fruits. Isn’t that what a fungus does?”
“Well, yes, but most of the fungi and molds I study are actively feeding and storing energy when they are in their suspended phase. It seems obvious. There’s free energy all around us. Here’s a billion years to figure out how to harvest some of it while you wait for the right conditions to, yes, fruit. But this endophyte isn’t utilizing any of them. Unless Plexity is broken or…”
“There is nothing wrong with Plexity!” Flavia looks up from her dinner of clams and seaweed and noodles. “Perhaps you collected the sample wrong.”
“Perhaps I did.” Pradeep isn’t interested in a fight. He knows he followed all protocols. “Running the sample again is definitely the next thing to do. So I did. Six times. Same results every time.”
“Eh… I guess I don’t understand the problem.” Esquibel has little patience for these highly theoretical discussions. “We seem to have identified it quite properly. It is like a seed, yes? You would not say that the sunflower seeds on my bagel are feeding off it.”
“Well, yes, actually you would. Seeds are alive, only dormant, and their cells are active.” Pradeep shrugs. “They feed off their stores of sugars and starches and wait for the right time to sprout. Now this endophyte also has active cells. The problem is it has no known stores of fuel or resources. It is only a collection of genetic blueprints. But somehow it is humming right along like, like a perpetual motion machine. Immune to its environment. Completely disconnected. I think it’s an alien.”
This is too much for Alonso. An unreasoning irritation shoots through him. “I think you’re the alien.”
Amy rubs her chin. “Are we sure that it fruits? What if this is its mature phase?”
“Amy, please.” This is too much for Alonso.
“I mean, talk about proving the rule. What would even the point of such life be? No reproduction. No respiration. Just… a splinter in a piece of seaweed forever.”
“I think,” Flavia says loudly, “there’s a small matter of the second law of thermodynamics that is having a problem with all of this. If something is producing activity, then they are expending energy. And if there is no energy source then the entire universe collapses because nothing works that way. I thought we all knew this?”
“It’s a mystery, for sure.” Pradeep is delighted at the discussion his endophyte has caused. “And I can’t wait to someday figure out the answer. Until then, I think we can all agree…”
But Pradeep is interrupted by a crash from within the bunker. They all instantly fall silent. Its door swings open.
Jay stands there, his entire left side stained in blood. He falls to his knees and groans. “Home again, home again, jiggity jig.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen returns from the lagoon with a reader, which she is beginning to seriously despise. She almost lost it again. Using one in a kayak is nearly impossible without losing hold of her paddle. She needs a lanyard on it, but there’s no attachment point to the case. She’ll have to figure out something…
Flavia eats a bowl of oatmeal and watches her return to camp. She admires the muscles bunching beneath Maahjabeen’s tight white rashguard. Flavia has never been so fit. She calls out, “You know, Maahjabeen, you remind me of a girl from university. A real beauty. Her name was Flore and she was from Brugge. Every boy in class tried to date her. And some of the girls too. But she was just too shy.”
Yet Maahjabeen is in no mood to hear about the adolescent failings of Flavia’s childhood. She glares at her as she passes. So Flavia gets up and follows her, perversely delighted in the reaction she’s provoking.
“For me, the men I have ever liked, they did not know. I always keep my crushes secret, you know? And the girls. If a girl is pretty, she gets so much attention. I do not want to be just another person bothering them.”
Maahjabeen gives a disbelieving grimace to Flavia. Surely the Italian woman can’t be so dense that she doesn’t even hear what she is saying? She stops at the tables to unload the reader and find a mug for tea.
“So, with Flore, I became her friend instead. She never knew that I had as big a crush on her as anyone. And I listened to all her worries about how the Italian boys were like rubbing up against her in the halls and humping her leg like dogs. She hated all of them. But after she had been there nearly all year she finally told me about the boy she did like. He was quiet, a small and dark boy from Sicily. He was a very serious student and he would never speak unless he had considered his words very thoroughly. His name was Ennio. Nobody knew him well. Nobody thought about him at all. Except Flore.”
Maahjabeen has found her mug and filled it with a sachet and some hot water. Now she retreats to her platform. But Flavia still follows her.
“She made me ask him out the first time, for her. She was too scared. But I didn’t care. I thought it was funny. And it didn’t matter because he was harmless. So one day I stopped him from leaving class and I took him to the benches outside. I told him that Flore liked him and I waited, very excited, to see if he would laugh or throw up or run away. I don’t know. But he did none of these things. He only looked at me and his face grew very serious. Then he looked down and his eyebrows came together. And he thought for a long time before he said a thing. But during that silence I became impressed with Ennio for the very first time. I saw a little bit of what Flore saw in him. Finally, after he was finished with all his thinking, he said, “Okay lo farò. I’ll do it.”
Maahjabeen disappears into her tent to change out of her wet clothes and Flavia sits on the platform outside, nibbling on her oats and continuing her story. “And it was so fantastic. I mean, the way those two fell in love. And I got to have like a front row seat. I was the confidante. They both told me all their big hopes and dreams and all the secret thoughts about how much they really loved the other one. It was like we were a little family for a whole semester…”
The memories silence Flavia and she shakes her head, bemused.
Maahjabeen’s voice calls out, “Yes? And then what happened?”
“Ah.” Flavia remembers why she brought this all up in the first place. “Yes, well, after our third year Flore had to go back to Belgium. And Ennio, oh he thought and thought about it. For weeks he wouldn’t think about anything else. Then when it was time for her to go, he decided. He left behind Torino, which was a very big deal, and joined her up there in Leuven. I visited once on break. They were so happy to see me but it was so cold up there and it rained the whole time. After they graduated they moved back to Sicily. Now they have two kids and she teaches French to adults. A good life, no?”
Maahjabeen pokes her head out of the tent and stares at Flavia with suspicion. “And what does this have to do with me? And, eh, Pradeep, yes? What are you saying?”
Flavia shrugs. “I just hope that I can be a friend. Sometimes I believe it is the closest I will ever get to true love. No, those two ruined me forever. I have had a few modern like relationships, you know? With lots of contracts and mutual agreements and meetings with therapists. Very neurotic. But once you see true love, la! You can’t accept anything less.”
The hostility in Maahjabeen evaporates. Her face softens. “You know… You are right. I am ruined too, but…” She laughs a bit at herself. “You know, Flavia, I want to talk to Pradeep about my mother, but I don’t know how yet. I feel…” Maahjabeen sighs in frustration and falls back into the tent.
Flavia sees this as her invitation and scrambles in after. They sit cross-legged facing each other in the cramped space, sharing the length of Maahjabeen’s sleeping pad. It is salty in here, as if the oceanographer brings the ocean home with her. And there’s a musky scent beneath which somehow accentuates her beauty.
Maahjabeen shakes her head, eyes worried. “I feel like… I think my Ama is a ghost and she is watching over me. And she is, well, my mother would not have liked Pradeep.”
“What? Not liked him? But he is so wonderful!”
“I know!” Maahjabeen squeezes her fists and drops them in her lap. “But to her it wouldn’t matter. He isn’t Muslim. And he isn’t Tunisian. Even if he was from the wrong side of Tunis she would have disapproved! My mother was very modern in many ways but with family, no. Even if he converts she would never love him.”
“And she is watching over you?”
“Sometimes I can feel her and…” Maahjabeen shrugs. “She is not happy. And if I told him about her, and how much she had always been, you know, at the very center of my life, it would be so hard. It would be like she is on the phone listening in. How can I talk about her in a way that will satisfy both her and him?”
“What if you told him what you are telling me right now?”
“I don’t know… That is the other thing about Pradeep. My mother would have hated his… you know, his…” Maahjabeen holds up a trembling hand, “…his anxiety. She would see it as weakness. She would be worried he would pass it down to her grandchildren. And if he fell apart in front of her, ehh…” Maahjabeen throws her hands up, hopeless. “I am glad they will never meet. I am not sure Pradeep would have survived it.”
They sit in companionable silence. Maahjabeen finishes dressing, Flavia completes her meal.
“I did not know you liked girls, Flavia.”
“See, that is what I mean. The people I fancy never know.”
Maahjabeen favors her with a dimpled smile, acknowledging the implication. “I like that I can talk to you about my mother. She loved Sicily. One of her closest friends was from Palermo. Sophia. We went several times when I was young. She would like that you are such a strong woman, Flavia. You do not compromise. And you stand on your own two feet. But she would be worried that you are not married.”
“Ech. No, don’t worry about me. I have a wonderful collection of battery-powered devices and a big dog at home. My life is all in here anyway.” She taps her temple. “Now. Changing subjects, I have some questions for you that are actually about science, if you can believe it. Katrina has set me a problem, well two problems actually. First is the Plexity filter she wants me to develop. And then there is the weather-modeling program we are making for Mandy. I need your input as an oceanographer for both projects. How… eh… how is your maths?”
“I love maths!”
Flavia claps her hands in pleasure. “You do? Oh, that is ingente! Huge! I did not know! Beauty and brains! Wow wow wow. Now I can see why Pradeep is wandering around after you like a dreamy little lamb.”
Maahjabeen rolls her eyes, easing into the familiarity of her new friendship. “Oh, la. You want to talk brains? I can’t even keep up with Pradeep when he starts—”
“No no no, right now we are talking about you, you and your big beautiful brain. These are data science problems so we need to isolate factors that emerge from marine sources, sì?”
“Of course. Alonso keeps making me focus on what he calls the threshold species and conditions. It makes me think a lot about the interactions. I’ve been building water column data for the lagoon.”
“Yes! That! That is what I need. Can you send me your files? Any format. And the more data the better.”
“Of course.” Maahjabeen blanches. “Oh, no. Is that what I think it is? DJ Bubblegum is getting started early tonight, isn’t she?”
Flavia starts moving to the soft disco beat wafting through the camp. “Well, why shouldn’t she? We are celebrating, now that we are all safe and together and happy again.”
Ξ
Alonso walks through the camp in a white sarong, expansive and care-free. His feet don’t even hardly hurt. Ah! What a beautiful night! Windy and cold with a gunmetal ceiling over the sea. Very Sturm und Drang. A Wagnerian kind of night. In this flowing fabric he is both Tristan and Isolde. He is the happiest man alive!
Jay has returned. And Pradeep has recovered. The entire project is back on track! The worries that had been eating away at him can kindly fuck right back off. They can scurry back into the shadows and cracks of his foundation. While things are going so well he can ignore how shaky his base is. Or, rather, he can shake it! “Katrina! Do me a favor and mix in some Bocelli! He is my guilty pleasure! E Pi’u Ti Penso, if you have it!”
Katrina frowns and searches her database. “I… don’t. Real light on the opera tracks, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that is not from any opera. It is a piece written for a movie by the very famous composer—”
“Here. Well. How about… I’ve got Marilyn Horne sings Rossini. Will that do?”
“Will it do?” Alonso makes a grand gesture. “I ask for comfort food and you offer me a—a dinner at a five star restaurant! Yes! Please! Marilyn is a genius. And I am very much in a Rossini kind of melodrama mood.”
And with deft technical wizardry, the mezzo-soprano’s crystal voice weaves seamlessly into Katrina’s lush instrumental beats.
“Ahhh…” Alonso spins slowly in the center of the camp, arms outstretched. Anxieties slough from him like old skin. He is new again. Re-born. Not Teutonic Tristan and Isolde any longer. This torrid Italian tale has swept aside the clouds. Now he is Bianca and Falliero both, demure maid and tragic hero. Passionate and noble. Now if he can only do something about this appalling gut…
He opens his eyes to find Mandy, of all people, dancing before him. She sways awkwardly, unable to embody the lyrical currents of the piece at all, but still Alonso is happy to see her. “Olé! Mandy is here! Arriba!” He claps to have her dance around him, but she evidently doesn’t know the convention. She only stares at him with a goofy smile and sways back and forth in time.
Katrina calls out to her, “Ask him!”
Alonso gives Mandy a face filled with mock-suspicion. “Ask me what? What are you two cooking up now?”
“We were thinking…” Mandy reaches out to Alonso and he mirrors her movement until they’re holding hands. “This might be a good night to resume our therapy.”
“Therapy…” Alonso is so transported he doesn’t even remember at the moment what the word means. But when he does, instead of the darkness it normally brings, he is touched by their persistent concern. He lifts Mandy’s hand to his lips and kisses it. “You are angels. Angels of light and love. I thank you. Yes, if that is what you think will be best, I submit to your expertise. But first we dance!” And he spins her.
Mandy squawks and falls away as Esquibel marches outside, her face preoccupied and cross. But when she sees Alonso drop Mandy she laughs. “No no, Mands. That is no way to properly dance. It’s like this!” And Esquibel gives her hand to Alonso. When he raises it to spin her she pirouettes prettily away.
Mandy gasps from the sand and claps her hands. “Oh my god, Skeeb! I didn’t know you could dance like that!”
“The remnants of a colonial education in Nairobi.” Esquibel rejoins Alonso and they dance lightly together to Marilyn Horne’s soaring voice. He is delighted.
“Oh, Doctor Daine! You are a woman of many surprises!”
“And you…” Esquibel responds to the change in mood she finds out here. She laughs, letting her own cares fall away. “Alonso, you are the craziest Principal Investigator I’ve ever met!”
“What a compliment!” He spins her into an embrace and dips her. They both laugh.
Miriam appears through the ferns from the creek, holding one of the recorders. She exclaims, “Oh, my days!” Then Triquet appears at her side and they both cat-call the dancers.
Alonso gasps and stumbles in the sand. Esquibel falls from his grip. They do not stop laughing. Neither does Mandy as she pulls her lover up.
“Here.” Esquibel holds Mandy in a formal pose. “It is very fun. Let me show you.”
“Oh, Mirrie…” Alonso struggles again to his feet, covered in sand. He slowly gyrates his hips like a hula dancer, beckoning to her. “They’re playing our song.”
Miriam looks at Triquet. “I’ve never heard this song in my life.” She grabs Triquet by the hand and hauls them onto the dance floor to join Alonso. “But that’s never stopped us before.”
Ξ
Cool. Life without a phone. Cool cool. No worries. He can do it. He’s been off-grid before, like down in Baja every Thanksgiving. Come on, Jay. Just four weeks with no electronics. You got this.
But the thing about those times is that he still actually had his phone, he just couldn’t connect with it. But it still had all his stuff on it. Now he has nothing to read. No music to listen to except what Katrina shares. And that’s cool and all. None of it matters. He’s got dope aplenty. And as soon as he gets Esquibel’s stitches out next week he can run and swim again. Katrina speared a goddamn barracuda while he was gone? He needs to get in on that action. And he’ll definitely need something new to do with his downtime. Maybe he could… learn to weave?
See. Normally, recuperating in his hammock here, he’d be listening to Katrina’s beats and playing one of three games on his phone. He has one puzzle, one platformer, and one RPG going at any given time and he cycles through them depending on his mood. Like right now he’d definitely be up for some bullet storm madness. He’s getting restless just sitting here with nothing to do.
Flavia approaches and sits on the edge of the hammock beside him, holding a glass of wine. He grunts as her weight shifts them toward each other. She smiles, already a bit glassy with alcohol, and grabs his arm, squeezing the muscle. “How are you, Jay? I am hoping, per favore, for some of that herb you smoke.”
“Heh.” Jay moves gingerly, trying not to tug on the closing wound. “That’s right. Step right up for your magical herbalism here. And I could use one of those glasses of wine if you—”
“No drinking!” Esquibel calls out from the dance floor as she and Mandy pass by. “Not until you’re off the painkillers. So stupid. Don’t you know anything?”
Jay falls back with a wince. “Yeah yeah. I know. Just looking for a bit of oblivion, Doc, if you don’t mind.” His practiced hands pick apart a nug and sprinkle it across an open rolling paper.
Flavia’s hand slides from his arm to his rib. He is surprised by her familiarity, but Jay is the kind of boy who has no real physical boundaries and doesn’t understand why others do. “They tried to kill you? They really did? It wasn’t just like a… a warning?”
Jay chuckles. “Warning? Nah, dude came at me full force. I’m just super glad the girl screamed. Woke me up just in time. He was definitely going center mass. But I twisted, like, I don’t know, just reflexes, I guess. Hella clean wound, though. I’d like to see that blade. Maybe obsidian, but Miriam said she doesn’t think so.”
Flavia confides, “You know, I do not like this island. And this island, she does not like us.”
“Aw, what? Are you kidding?” Jay smirks in disbelief. “This place is fucking paradise. Come on. Everywhere’s got sketchy locals. An island like this is always gonna have someone claiming it. Just a fact of the modern world, yo. And it’s all settled now. I paid my blood debt. The scary village is like punishing their hunters. The golden childs, the four of them in their masks, we said goodbye. It’s over.”
“I do not like that you saw Wetchie-ghuy.”
“Yeah well I don’t think anyone is ever happy to see that fucker. Must be tough going through life like that. Imagine everyone hating the sight of you. Here. Just a little binger for ya. Should smoke right up.” He holds up a needle thin joint, expertly rolled.
“Aw, grazie, grazie mille.” Flavia plucks it from his fingers and kisses him on the cheek. The wine is definitely making her more emotional and touchy. She should watch herself or something. But the boy does not seem to mind. She remembers sleeping on top of him that one night, taking such comfort in his big frame and strong arms. She wants, somehow, a deeper connection. How do people do that? Flavia gropes for something meaningful to say. “Oh, Jay. How… how is the pain?”
“Sucks. But oh well. Wicked scar, I guess.”
Flavia shakes her head in frustration, his statement so devoid of data she doesn’t know how to proceed. Ai, why can’t the human languages be more like logic languages? She thinks it a dozen times a day. Why must it always be so indirect and messy? He’s so dear, this one. She remembers him and Pradeep showing up at the door of her cell to pledge to defend her. Maybe that is what she can do. “Hey.” She jabs him in the chest. “When they were after me, you swore to protect me. Well. Now it is my turn. If they come for you, Jay. I will protect you. Okay?”
“Thanks, dude. But, you know, I just want my phone back.”
“You understand? We have our backs. Eh. How do you say it?”
“I got your back, Flavia. And you got mine. Ride or die.” He holds up his fist for a bump. She leans in and kisses him instead.
“Cool. Cool cool.” Flavia pulls away, glistening and desirable. Jay has no idea what’s going on. But he’s learned long ago to just roll with it when it comes to girls. Her hand drags across his lap and for a moment he wonders if she’s about to unzip his pants right here in front of everybody. But she snares his lighter instead.
Flavia stands unsteadily and lights the thin joint. She feels stylish, sipping on its smoke like a cheroot. Then Miriam and Triquet spin past and an outstretched hand pulls her into their laughing dance.
Ξ
Alonso is soaked in wine. It perfuses through his tissues, releasing his fears and muddling his thoughts. Oh, if he had only had a cask like this in the gulag! He would have laughed the five years away!
Well, not really. But still. Here, here is his happy place, where his tongue hardly works and thoughts are like deep underwater creatures rising from the void. He is all heart, not head. When all is said and done, he is a creature of emotion despite all his intellectual achievements. Mandy on one side, Katrina on the other. These two sweethearts, working so hard to make sure he gets better. How lucky can he be?
They deposit him in his cocoon in the bedroom of his tent and he snuggles under the covers like he’s about to hear his favorite bedtime story. But he is nowhere near sleep. He is… well, excited. For the first time in about thirty years he’s actually excited to take drugs. He’d forgotten what a pleasure MDMA could be.
Katrina hands him one white pill and he swallows it dry. Then she holds out another, but a percentage of it has been shaved away. “Esquibel and I agreed that one isn’t enough but two may be too much. So your dosage is like 1.8. Here.”
Alonso dutifully swallows the second smaller pill. Katrina hands him a bottle of water. Then she holds out the crumbled sliver that remains to Mandy. “Want just a taste? This will probably just give you a bit of a glow…”
Mandy shrugs. “Sure. Why not.” She pops it into her mouth and immediately gags. “Ugh. So bitter.” She pulls the water from Alonso’s hands. “Gah. How’d you do that, Alonso?”
“Yes…” He realizes he must be very drunk indeed for the bitterness of the pills not to affect him until she mentioned it. He grabs the water back and rinses his mouth. “Very bad. Of course.”
“Lie back.”
“I don’t want to fall asleep.”
Katrina laughs. “Oh, you won’t be sleeping for a good long time, mate. Pretty sure about that.”
“Knock knock.” Miriam enters the tent with Triquet. “Hello, all. Just checking in on the patient.”
Triquet sings, “Ground control to Major Tom… Commencing countdown, engines on…”
“No no,” Katrina giggles. “He just took it. And I was about to join him. Anyone else?” She shakes a couple extra pills into her palm. Triquet and Miriam both accept the offer. They choke the bitter little pills down. Katrina takes hers too.
“Should you, I mean, as the like person in charge…?” Miriam begins, casting a worried glance at Katrina.
“Eh? Oh, mate, I operate far better when I’m rolling than when I’m sober. I’ve got a lot of experience with this drug.”
“I trust you, haiku triplet.” Triquet claps their hands then places them on Alonso’s barrel chest. “Now. How can we help? Is this like laying on of hands? A bit of faith healing for the wicked?”
Alonso laughs and mutters something none of them recognize. They share a few puzzled grimaces and turn to Miriam.
“I haven’t the faintest.” She leans in and pulls the gray curls away from her husband’s face. “What was that, Zo? I think you’re speaking Spanish.”
“Ah.” His eyes slowly come into focus. “I was just saying I love you all and I wish I could just have this experience in my brain. Just this one. Not… all the others.”
“How’s it feel, Doctor Alonso?” Mandy gets in position at the foot of the bed. “Can I put my hands on you?”
“I am…” Alonso sighs wetly and waves vaguely at them all. “A piece of meat for you all to… carve and cook and serve on a platter. Do with me as you will.”
Mandy approves. “What every massage therapist wants to hear.”
But Katrina frowns. “No, it’s not really like that. I mean, for this therapy to be successful you can’t just be… asleep or passive or whatever. This isn’t just massage. We need your help. It’s about what’s within you, yeh? The deepest scars.”
Alonso belches loudly and fills the tent with an unpleasant odor of wine. “Sorry. Forgive me.” He waves the air clear. Then he stares at his upraised hand. It trembles slightly.
“What is it, Zo?” Miriam studies his hand with him.
Katrina laughs at the look in his eye. “Coming online, I’m pretty sure. He should be a few minutes ahead of the rest of us.”
Alonso can’t stop staring at his hand. This hand, this object that he knows better than any other object in the world. His right hand. It has stayed with him throughout his whole life. He remembers it when it was soft and childlike, without all these lines and scars and mismatched skin tones, without the hair on his knuckles and the squared nails that now look like his grandfather’s. He lifts his left hand too, remembering digging in the field as a graduate student. Or throwing a futbol in and racing up the sidelines. These hands. Dios mío, he has done so much with these hands. He has built an empire. A deep, worshipful love for his own hands wells up from within him. He owes these hands everything. They have done so much for him, taken so much abuse for him.
And then he recalls the one they called Sergei fighting his hand into restraints so he could burn his palm with a glowing red wire…
Alonso bucks and his left hand thuds into Triquet’s chest, knocking them back with a surprised grunt.
Miriam snares Alonso’s right hand and kisses it. She says to the others, “Careful now. This is how his dreams have gone these last few weeks. Just make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”
Mandy shares a worried glance with Katrina, who puts a calming hand on Alonso’s shoulder. “We’re fine. It’s all fine. Do you know where you are, Alonso?”
“Yes…” He opens his eyes and tears suddenly stream from their corners. “This is Heaven.” Then he shrugs and his eyes clear. “I mean, do I still know I’m in a tent? Yes. But I can’t remember where the tent is at the moment. Is that okay?”
“It’s fine. Not too clear on it myself. And whooo…!” Katrina rocks back as the drug catalyzes in her blood and brain and sends her rocketing into space. “Here we go! All I know is we’re all on this spaceship together. I just wish I knew who was driving.”
“You are.” Mandy gives Katrina a meaningful glare. “You just told us that you’re more capable on this drug than—”
“Oh, right. Right. The therapy. Alonso! The therapy!”
But he only looks at her face hanging upside-down above his. “Oh, Katrina. I love you so much.”
She kisses his forehead. “Right back at ya, big guy.”
“What is it like…?” Alonso reaches up to her, trying to put his thoughts into words. They wait patiently for him. “To… to… have straight blonde hair? I always wanted to try. So fine. When I am feeling fem and I want anything other than this big thick Cuban forest on my head!”
Now they’re all laughing at him. Miriam pushes his arm. “Oh, Zo. You are such a shallow slut. Remember that time…?” And the memories flash through her, of a warehouse party and a fashion show, with banging techno and a long runway. Alonso had stalked the length of it in a velvet boa and a black satin sheath. Very Tim Curry. Stopped the show in its tracks. But as she tries to describe what she recalls, the memories vanish, leaving only the ache of nostalgia and a deep satisfaction that her life has been so rich.
“I had a dream.” The corner of Alonso’s mouth rises into a scowl. “A nightmare. Over and over.”
“In the goo-log?” Katrina stretches the syllables out into a silly cartoonish sound. “What a dumb word. Goo. Log. Russian is such a weird language. Russkiy takoy strannyy yazyk.”
Alonso talks over her, describes the dream. “I’m in the house of my father’s parents. My Oppy and Nina. And I am very young. But their house is surrounded by Nazis, like real Nazis from World War Two and they are unspooling wire around the house, turning it into a prison, a concentration camp. And we are trapped and cannot leave. Then the doctor, with the black uniform and the white apron, he finds me in the bathroom. He holds a spatula that he has been heating up, until it is white hot. Then he slices into my skull, like he is cutting slices off a block of cheese. And it is so painful. Oh my god, Mirrie, I couldn’t stand the pain.”
“I know, Zo. I know.” She and Triquet both grip Alonso’s shaking hand.
“You would think, in such a terrible place as a gulag, that when I was unconscious I could escape? But no. My poor brain needed to torture me as well. Ah! I hate that dream so much.”
“Okay. So here’s the thing.” Katrina’s eyes open wide and her pupils slowly dilate into focus. “Ehh… What was I…? Yeh. Right. Okay. So that Nazi doctor. The one who sliced your head open. Think about him now.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Well that’s the thing about rolling like this, Alonso. You can. You can think about him all you want and he can’t hurt you any more. You’re safe. You can tell him whatever you want.”
“You know… every time it happens I have the same thoughts. I see the spatula and I think that I am hungry and maybe he will feed me. Then I realize he is going to torture me and I argue with him, mostly that he shouldn’t do such a thing in the bathroom. He will make a mess and my Nina will yell at us.”
“But what do you say to him, Alonso?” The drug charges into Triquet and convinces them that with the force of their words they can invest Alonso with their own strength and courage. They grip Alonso’s arm tight and whisper it again. “What do you say?”
“Eh? Say to him? Uh. Fuck off, Nazi doctor. This is not your house. Leave me alone. This is not your brain to play with.”
“That’s it,” Katrina encourages him. “Tell him what you need to tell him. And then say goodbye. You won’t ever see him again.”
Alonso shakes his head in wonder. “Oh, but I have seen him so many times… ‘Go. Vamos. Get out of my head, you fucking creep. Goodbye. Forever. Go.’” He rolls his eyes up to Katrina. “But he is still here. And I can still feel…” Alonso seizes his head with his hands. Katrina and Miriam cover his face and hair with caresses.
Finally Mandy ventures to touch him. She places her hands against the soles of Alonso’s feet. He barks in surprise.
Alonso sits up, his face clear, his mind forcibly altered. “How did you do that? What did you do? Uh, uh… What is your name?”
“Mandy. I just touched your feet, Doctor Alonso. I grounded you. That’s all.”
“Yes. Yes, you did. Grounded to earth. Huh. The Nazi doctor, he went poof! In my head like a magic spell, he just disappeared! And I… Ah! What is wrong? Why do my feet hurt so much?”
They all share glances, none willing to remind him.
“Ah. They really hurt! Like, they always hurt, you know? But I don’t know why! I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, no you didn’t.” Triquet grabs Alonso’s arm again, trying to share more strength. This is a tremendous figure, this man. Triquet never thought they would be so close to him, to actually wrestle with his demons alongside him. “Look, brother. It’s just original sin, okay? You and me, we were just born this way and for some reason the whole world has to take all their anger out on us. Life is pain, right? But we’ve got each other. And together, we can… I don’t know… We can do anything! Stop time. Stop all the abuse. Build our own empire of love here in this…”
“Love Palace!” Katrina finishes with a giggle. She leans over and kisses Triquet. “Thanks, Triq. That was glorious. You’re the best. The very very best.”
“I am…?” Triquet covers their mouth with a hand, touched. “Not sure I’ve ever been the very very best before.”
“Oh, but you are…” All their voices chime in, with Alonso sitting up again joining them in fawning over Triquet, petting their face and telling them in fast, slurring Spanish just how incredible they are, mind and body and soul.
“Whoa whoa whoa.” Triquet finally falls back a bit and wipes a tear away. “Wait. We’re here for Alonso. We can give me therapy some other time. In fact, I think I’ll make my appointment right now. You people are wonderful.”
Chapter 30 – The Cigar
July 22, 2024
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:
30 – The Cigar
The next morning, Triquet sits cross-legged in their tent in a pink rayon frock dress from 1975, surrounded by stacks of neatly folded clothes and trays filled with make-up and beauty products. They sing to themself in a soft alto, channeling Beth Gibbons from Portishead: “Cause I’m still feeling lonely… Feel so unholy… Cause the child rose as light… tried to reveal what I could feel… And this loneliness… It just won’t leave me alone… It just won’t leave me—”
“Hello? Triq?” Mandy’s head leans into view, long black hair hanging down like a flag. Triquet would kill to have hair like that. This mop of fine, frizzled pale nonsense they were born with has been the bane of every costume and incarnation they ever tried.
“Present and accounted for. Come on in here, Mandy girl.”
“Oh. Uh… I mean, okay. It’s not a big… I just wanted to ask— I’m just taking kind of a survey…”
“Ask what you like. Sit yourself down and I’ll do your nails.” Triquet takes a deep breath to prepare themself, feeling old and wise. Mandy’s voice has a neurotic edge that promises trouble. Maybe with a bit of kindness Triquet can help.
Mandy crawls in. “Oh, wow… I haven’t seen…” The inside of the small tent is crowded with items, all ordered in their places. The sleeping bag and pillow are rolled neatly in the corner and Triquet sits on what looks like an ornate prayer rug. Scarves and small tapestries hang from the roof’s seams and LED candles of a variety of pastel hues illuminate the corners to give the interior a soft, homey feel.
“Here. Sit here, facing me. Nice and close.” Mandy dutifully scoots in, cross-legged, til her knees bump into theirs. Triquet holds Mandy’s childlike hands, smiling at her with warmth. “Oh, poor baby’s got a chill. Got to warm you up.” Triquet pulls out an orange shawl they knit last winter from a thick acrylic yarn, and drapes it about Mandy’s shoulders.
The girl’s lower lip still trembles. Her eyes remain haunted. “Thanks. That’s so nice. I just—” Mandy’s breath catches in her throat. “I just wanted to make sure… Just asking everybody… I mean, I know people must blame me for Jay being gone…”
“What? Whoa. No. You?” Triquet’s parental smile falters and their face splits into a disbelieving grimace. “What an odd idea. What does his disappearance have to do with you?”
But Mandy has worked it all out in her head. “I forced him to deal with that shaft when he didn’t want to, and for far too long, and I was going to force him today to do it again, so he obviously left to avoid me and then things just spiraled out of control. So…”
“To avoid you? Seriously?” Triquet unwraps a travel packet of wet wipes and cleans Mandy’s hands with them. Ye gods, how dirty they all are. This will need a second wipe. “Oh, honey-bunches-of-oats, I hope you take this in the best way possible but this is all beginning to sound like a pretty serious case of main character syndrome. Know what I mean?”
“No, this isn’t about me, but it is about what I did to—”
“What you did? Please. Okay, will you bet me? Like if you win, I’ll give you a full makeover and if I win you give me one of those amazing massages? Please. Cause this is the easiest bet ever. I can one hundred percent guarantee you that you, young and brilliant Mandy Hsu, are one of the last things rattling around in Jay’s brain. Think for just a second who we’re talking about here.”
“It isn’t main character syndrome,” Mandy protests sullenly, holding out her fingers as Triquet begins to trim her ragged cuticles with a pair of nail scissors, “if it’s just my idiocy that gets people to endanger themselves all the time. Again and again. I mean, he might be dead! We don’t even know! They said nobody’s ever come back from across the river! Not in like six generations! Katrina asked the villagers as many ways as she could!”
“Mandy. You’ll have to sit still or I can’t guarantee the quality of my work. Please. I’m an artist.”
Mandy takes a deep breath and stops fidgeting, watching Triquet work with minute precision on her nails.
“I think…” Triquet murmurs, “Jay has a plan of his own. Some rare plant he’s looking for or some wild theory he needs to test. He didn’t go just on a whim, or in reaction to what any of us might have said to him yesterday. This is all on Jay, that crazy bastard. But I will bet you he’s still alive. Don’t worry about that. He may be a goofball, but there’s something pretty resilient about him. He reminds me of the stereotypical American G.I. of World War Two. The Germans called him undisciplined and independent. He wouldn’t even stand up straight! But they learned the hard way that there’s something more important than looking good on parade. Jay’s got that. Sure he doesn’t look like much, but I bet in a pinch he’d be the first person you’d want by your side.”
Mandy finally drops her shoulders. “I guess you’re right. I just feel so awful about it! And I don’t know what to do with all this guilt! Every time something bad happens! I just get manic. I mean, what am I supposed to do?”
“Do? I don’t know, do what you did with Pradeep. You and Esquibel have been doing a great job with him. Or are you somehow responsible for his mystery ailment as well?”
“Yeesh. I feel so bad for that poor guy. I wish I could help him more but every time I put my hands on him I can’t help it. I turn green. He has something seriously wrong. Like way deep inside.”
“But it isn’t your fault.”
“No. Of course it isn’t.”
“And Maahjabeen going out to sea isn’t your fault.”
Mandy opens her mouth, then closes it. She finally allows, “I’ve learned that if I say that it was anything other than Maahjabeen’s own choice, she might physically attack me.”
“And we would cheer her on. Have you always been like this?”
Mandy nods. “I was a pretty difficult older sister to my brother, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t let him have a thought of his own until he was like ten. I always need everything just so.”
“Control freak.”
“The freakiest.”
“Okay. And now finally…”
Mandy gives Triquet her full attention. She appreciates the care they’ve shown her, even if it leads to difficult conversations about herself spoken with a bluntness she finds shocking. “Yes?”
Triquet holds up two bottles of nail polish. “Green or orange? They’re both gels and they both work with your coloring.”
Ξ
Alonso and Flavia sit side by side in their camp chairs. A bit of ragged sun keeps peeking through the cloud cover, warming the air. Flavia compiles her latest version of Plexity’s user interface and watches the progress bar slowly advance across her screen. How much of her life has she dedicated to watching that bar? Years? At least. “And… done. Try it now.”
Their laptops are linked. Alonso opens the program and tries out her changes. “Wait. Where did my options go on this screen?”
“I wanted to make them consistent across all the screens so you can find them under the…”
“Ah. Everything’s in the settings now. Not sure I like that. Yes, it’s more organized but the user will need to take two extra steps to access them. I’m actually wondering, since the collections are all so context-specific, if we might make the intake options part of the collection process. Like a prompt screen before they begin, to reset their parameters for each input. Because what we are learning…”
“Well, sure we could do that, if you want to take fifteen years to finish all your collections…”
“…is that our collectors are spending as much time fiddling with the framework as they are with the actual upload of data.”
Flavia sighs. An inevitable crisis faces Plexity. Perhaps this is finally the time to bring it up with Alonso. “Well. Maybe slow is better after all. Because, you do realize, signore Dottore, that we will never collect even ten percent of the samples you want from the interior of the island. Not in the next four weeks, at least.”
Alonso remains stubbornly silent. His hand finally opens and rotates, as if to say, perhaps/perhaps not.
“Listen, Alonso. You haven’t been in there but the rest of us have. And the idea you have, before you ever spent time in there, is too simple. This island is huge. It’s like—like I don’t know. The size of Venice. You would need so much time to fully explore each and every canyon and hilltop in there. There is no possible way in the four weeks we have left. Especially with hostile natives.”
“If they weren’t so hostile we would already be halfway done.”
This statement is so obviously false Flavia isn’t certain how to respond. She leans back with an irritated sigh. “No. No, you don’t get to blame your unrealistic goals on them. Look. You need to step back from this and look at it better. I know this was like your pacifier when you were locked away but you need to think of it as a funder would. Or a school oversight committee. Think, Alonso. What would you say if someone proposed to cover like twenty square kilometers of an island with a small team in two months?”
“If the concept was sound, I would support it with all my heart.”
“But the concept isn’t sound. The logistics are completely off. I don’t know. I’ve been wondering if there is a way we could get the islanders to help us with collecting but it seems like we’re moving farther away from that, instead of closer. And we only have four extra readers anyway. That’s the real bottleneck.”
“But I’m counting on you. You said your machine learning would help. The automated algorithms. What happened to that?”
Now Flavia is affronted. Instead of acknowledging his own shortcomings, he’s attacking her? “No, that has nothing to do with it. They are already saving you so much time and effort. But they can’t crawl around in the woods on their hands and knees. For that, you still need people. A lot of people. And a lot of readers.”
“So what do you propose?” Alonso has never felt such immense irritability. This—this nerd seems to do nothing but complain. She lives to point out flaws in everyone else’s work and ideas. “I’m beginning to feel that if things were up to you, Flavia, nothing would ever get done.”
“Nothing would ever—? I built you a working fucking prototype of Plexity in two weeks, you ungrateful asshole. And now you are being an even bigger asshole, thinking you can push everyone to do this impossible amount of work in the next four weeks. If I was in charge of your grant application, it would be denied. I wouldn’t even read past the first page. You need to re-focus on something you can actually accomplish here. Like just the lagoon and beach. It is reasonably cut off from—”
“Reasonably cut off? Think about what you just said, Flavia. There is no boundary for ‘reasonability’ in Plexity. It needs to be a hermetic, enclosed system for us to achieve the proper baseline for the program. It is making me wonder if you truly grasp what it is we are doing here.”
“Now don’t you talk down to me, you boomer.”
Alonso sits up straight. “I am Gen X, I will have you know.”
“Boomer is an attitude, not an age. Just do the math, if you’re such an amazing data scientist. I would say we still have 18 square kilometers of work to accomplish. In 29 days. Let’s see. That’s almost 621 square meters per day, or the area of a small house.”
“Divided by just those four readers and that’s only 150 or so. Ha. The math didn’t work out in your favor, did it?” Flavia only frowns at him. “Look, I know it will be hard. I know we don’t have nearly enough time. If I had written the grant I would have set the initial mission for two years here.” This provokes an involuntary shiver of revulsion from Flavia. “But we only have eight weeks. So we shoot for the stars. I am convinced, as we speak, that Jay is somewhere in the interior making a huge number of collections.”
“He didn’t take a reader.”
“Amy says he doesn’t need one. He will bring back hundreds of samples at least. And with his scouting report we will be able to decide how to approach the rest of the island. I am glad he took the initiative. We have been moving too slowly.”
Flavia just stares at him, then shakes her head in distaste. “Men.”
Ξ
Esquibel exits the bunker, stiff-legged and squinting. She realizes it’s the first time she’s been outside the clean room in nearly two days. The camp is gray. There’s a ground fog still at the edges of the camp under the ferns, but a sea breeze is beginning to riffle the air and chase it away. She shivers. “Doesn’t it ever get actually warm here?”
The only one here to answer her rhetorical question is Katrina at the kitchen tables. “Yeh, why couldn’t we come in the summer? I bet it’s pretty nice.”
But Amy, returning from the creek with a wash basin, disagrees. “I bet it’s more like San Francisco summers here. Temperature inversion. Howling fog. No, I bet this is the nicest weather it gets. Remember how Alonso said it’s under a cloud cover nearly every day of the year?”
“Well, then, next time can we please study a tropical island in the Indian Ocean?” Esquibel crosses to Katrina, who hands her a mug of hot water. “Ah, thank you. I am freezing.”
“How’s the patient?” Katrina stands before a hot pan, making a tottering stack of pancakes. She puts three on a plate for Esquibel and hands her a fork and a packet of honey.
Amy pauses drying the dishes to hear Esquibel’s answer.
“I don’t…” Esquibel drops her head, suddenly weary. “I need better diagnostics. Actual labs. This is some weird island bug that I haven’t seen before. Primary neurotoxic activity with secondary cardiovascular effects. And he just isn’t responding to any of the treatments yet. I’ve been going very slow, only trying things with few contra-indications and minimal side effects. Gram-positive antibiotics. Gabapentin. Nortriptyline. But anything else I try moving forward will have serious risks. I don’t like having to make blind guesses. I’m not used to it.”
“Is Pradeep in pain?” Amy brushes a tear away and goes back to wiping down the plates. “Is he stable?”
Esquibel shrugs. “He hasn’t coded again. But sometimes it seems he is getting close. And his breathing can get very weak. I gave him CPR like three times last night when it seemed he stopped.”
“Jesus.” Katrina kneels beside Esquibel and hugs her. “What a hero. You need to get some sleep.”
“Yes. Just a bit of fresh air and a bathroom break and then a quick nap. Mandy has instructions to wake me if there is any change in his condition.”
“What if…?” Flavia trails off, her mind racing. “Alonso, what if we took a Dyson reader blood sample from Pradeep? Perhaps it could find a virus or bacteria that isn’t supposed to be there.”
Alonso just stares at her. “Huh. I don’t know if we have a control… Has anyone put their own sample into a reader yet?”
Esquibel shrugs. “I don’t know what good that will do anyone. It would only be able to tell us like what the molar weight of a viral factor would be and maybe whether it’s gram negative or positive. Without a database of already known pathogens, we wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.”
“Well, does it have any human source data?” Alonso asks Flavia. “The Dyson readers came pre-loaded with all kinds of databases of known organic…” His voice tapers off as he queries Plexity about its own capabilities.
Flavia shrugs. “I haven’t looked. There’s been no reason.”
Alonso reads aloud, “Chinese Female Proteomic snapshot, Liaoning Prefecture, Age 29. Chinese Male. Age 33. Female, 22, Hebei. There’s hundreds. Huh. Who knew? And why are they all Chinese? But I don’t know if there’s any kind of directory or…”
Flavia’s fingers fly on her keyboard. “Where did you find that?”
“Under Miscellaneous. Remember? We created that folder for all the bells and whistles we thought we wouldn’t use.”
“As long as the data is there, I can create a query that will find what we want.” Flavia is back in her element. Actual concrete inputs that she can work with. She unzips a whole hidden database of human-derived samples. Columns of newly-liberated data scroll down her laptop. “Wow. It is a lot. Scattershot DNA. Proteomics profiles. Microbiomes. I will need some time. Sort through all the garbage. Figure out what the best lexical strategy is.”
Mandy appears in the doorway of the bunker, on wobbly knees. She leans against the frame.
“What is it?” Esquibel stands immediately, putting her plate on the table. “Is he in trouble?”
Mandy holds up a weak hand. “No. He’s fine. Just me. I fainted. I…” Mandy takes a couple steps, then doubles over and grabs her knees. “I was just trying to offer a little support, you know. Just hold his feet like I do for Alonso, but wow. Maahjabeen just found me on the floor. She said she’d heard me collapse. She’s in with him now. I just need some…” Esquibel wraps an arm of support around Mandy as she sags against her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, Skeebee. But whatever’s stuck in him, it’s awful.”
Ξ
“Pradeep.” Maahjabeen waits for Mandy to depart then she kneels beside his cot and kisses his slack mouth. “Darling. Mahbub.”
But he doesn’t respond.
She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care anymore who might see her, who might learn their secret. He is gravely ill. The only man who has ever truly loved her, the only man whom she has ever truly loved. He is only twenty-four and he has a whole life ahead of him. She kisses him again and rests her head on his hollowed-out chest, a mewling cry escaping her.
Maahjabeen prays silently, fiercely, calling on Allah to bring His grace back to Pradeep. She lifts the cold brown hands, kisses every knuckle. A panic rises in her. He shouldn’t still be on this island. He should be on a medical evacuation helicopter. He should be getting wheeled into a state-of-the-art hospital, surrounded by trained staff and beeping machines. Instead he rests on a makeshift cot in a room made of plastic sheets. And they are only waiting.
What bit him? Maahjabeen hasn’t seen any sign, in all her time on the beach, of any of the spiny urchins or anemones that could have caused this. He didn’t ever cry out. There was no point where he appeared to get injured. He just fell asleep on the beach after his panic attack. Maybe this was part of that somehow. Stress could do strange things to people. She knew a girl in college who studied so hard she held the muscles in her neck rigid for too long and caused stress fractures in her cervical vertebra. She literally studied so hard she broke her neck. Crazy things could happen. Or maybe it was intentional. Maybe it all started that night before, with the Lisicans sharing their seafood catch and Pradeep retreating into his tent. Maybe they had secretly drugged him somehow? Then that led to his paranoia and a reaction to it. He somehow knew all along. And now he’s dying…
Or maybe he just ate a handful of bad berries.
“We don’t know. Darling, we just don’t know…” His eyelids flutter so she kisses them again and chafes his hands. Now his breath deepens. Maahjabeen cries out and gathers him in her arms. She keeps chattering at him, making pillow talk in Arabic.
Pradeep pulls his eyes open. They are watery, distant, covered in a milky film. His hand trembles in her grip. He tries to speak but his jaw slides sideways and drool drips from his lip. “Eyyyyhhh…”
“Pradeep. I’m here, my dearest. I will always be here.”
His face slowly screws up into a trembling scowl. His lips purse. “Mock. Jah. Bean.” Then his neck can no longer hold his head and his forehead falls against her shoulder.
A long moment later, after a trickle of warmth has flowed into him, he pushes his face up against hers, then pulls back to look her in the eyes. He says it for the very first time. “I… love you.”
“I love you, too, you amazing man. And you will get better.”
“Just having you here…” His back engages and he sits up a bit. The film over his eyes starts to clear. “I am not so cold. Because you are here… and I love you. It’s the cold, Maahjabeen. That’s what… is killing me.”
“I will never let you get cold. Ever again.” Maahjabeen opens her jacket and pulls him into it, nestling him against her warm skin. She rolls him back onto the cot, cooing. Then she turns, to place herself beside him.
And that’s when she sees Esquibel standing in the entrance of the clean room, frozen in shock, hands parting the plastic sheets. Maahjabeen has no idea how long she has been standing there. She doesn’t know what she heard. Ah, well. Inshallah. What’s done is done. The important part is that being here helps Pradeep. She nods at the doorway. “Come. Doctor Daine. He is conscious.”
“Yes…” Esquibel moves decisively into the room and sanitizes her hands. She puts on a mask and nitrile gloves, then places a hand on Maahjabeen’s shoulder. “Please. I need to inspect him.”
“I cannot let go.” Maahjabeen’s eyes flash protectively. “My warmth is what is keeping him awake. He just told me.”
Esquibel pauses only half a breath before shaking her head to clear it, to strip this salacious scene of all its implications and to move forward with the new information alone, just as any trauma care doctor must do. Data is data right now. It can be a soap opera later. She puts a stethoscope against Pradeep’s neck, to hear it slow and turgid through his carotid. But as she listens it seems to deepen in volume and capacity, steadying. Huh. Perhaps the Tunisian siren is right. Well. It is nice to see her care for someone, even if it is a shock to see the two of them like this. “Pradeep…?” She gets down into his field of view. His eyes are open, dark and staring at the floor. His trembling arms disappear around Maahjabeen inside her jacket. What in the world. “Are you with us?”
“Hello… Doctor…” Pradeep’s voice is a ragged whisper. “You have to… help me fight this.”
“Yes. Good. That is the plan. We are both fighting together, yes? Can you tell me what it is we are fighting, though?”
“It’s down here…” Pradeep pushes the heel of one hand against the top of his pubis bone, just below his navel. He writhes upon making contact, twisting in Maahjabeen’s embrace. “Aaaugh…”
“La, la. Shh.” She soothes him, drawing him in again. Her eyes catch on Esquibel’s wondering stare and flicker defiantly, then soften into helplessness.
Esquibel’s own gaze melts and she puts a loving hand alongside Maahjabeen’s face. Their secret is out. Good for them. Two lovely idols, they are. And besides, their NDAs will keep the secret theirs. Now it is just between the Muslim girl and her god and Esquibel has an atheist’s impatience with the significance of that.
Pradeep settles, Maahjabeen replacing the pressure of his hand with the fullness of her hip, solid against his belly. Her voluptuous warmth soothes him and he releases a groan.
“Lower intestine?” Esquibel wonders aloud. “Digestive? Would you say it is digestive what you are experiencing?”
Pradeep shakes his head no. “Forgot I even had… an appetite. No. That’s all vanished. It’s just… this pit…”
“My guess has been neurological, from your symptoms. Have you ever suffered nerve pain or any nerve conditions before?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Just if you have a point of reference. Neuralgia doesn’t all feel like hitting funny bones. There’s impinging pain, like when a muscle entraps a nerve, or when you get a kink in your neck, or really nasty trigeminal pain from teeth. It can be burning or itching or sharp stabbing. Would any of those apply to how you feel?”
Pradeep shakes his wobbling head no. “More like… I’m being… pulled down… into the cold pit.”
“How cold? Are you going numb?” Esquibel, crouching beside him on the balls of her feet, pivots so she can grab his leg. She hits his patellar tendon below the kneecap with the edge of her stethoscope and is encouraged to see his reflex work properly. She takes off his shoe. “Tell me if you can sense this.” She softly pinches his big toe. “Can you feel anything?”
“Uhh…” Pradeep frowns. “Your hand on my heel?”
She squeezes his toe more firmly. “Yes. My hand is on your heel. How about anything else?” She pinches the meat of his toe.
Pradeep’s face collapses with anxiety. “That’s my toe, isn’t it? Why can’t I feel my toe?”
Esquibel takes off his sock and tries the other toes on his foot. First she runs the cold surface of the stethoscope across them but he doesn’t react at all. Then she pinches each of them.
“No! No! What happened to my toes?” Pradeep buries his face in Maahjabeen’s neck. She holds him tight and stares at Esquibel with urgent need.
Esquibel replaces Pradeep’s sock and shoe then gently pulls one of his hands away from Maahjabeen and pokes at his fingertips.
“Ow. Okay. I can feel my fingertips. Just my toes then. My poor toes. They’ve been… in the pit too long. You got to…” He shakes his head, the image of the endless mud overpowering what he sees with his eyes. “Nngh. You got to get me out.”
Esquibel goes back to his legs. She runs her hands up his sciatic nerve, rolling him onto his side. She pulls down his pants and tracks it into the base of his spine, directly above the girdle of his hips. With an inhaled hiss of disquiet, she takes out her light to more closely view what she has found there.
“What?” Maahjabeen heard her hiss and fears what it could mean. “What is it?”
“Right at his lowest vertebra, like lumbar five here. A pattern of dots. And now they are inflamed. And here. They look like this.”
Esquibel takes a photo and holds her phone up for Maahjabeen to see. It is the outline of an animal’s head, a tight constellation of puncture wounds in the small of his back. Each of them have grown angry and infected, connecting to each other in the vague outlines of a cave painting. It is unmistakably the head of a fox.
Ξ
“Ta-daaa…” Katrina kneels before Alonso, unveiling a plate with a pile of rice, a filet of whitefish, and a sprinkle of seaweed.
“Oh, thank you, my dear. How did you know I am starving?”
“I don’t think you’ve moved all day, have you?”
“No. I…” Alonso gestures helplessly at his laptop. “I am very busy. I am very much feeling the deadlines closing in on us.”
“Ha! Are you? We’ve still got like three weeks left, right?”
“Four! Exactly four weeks. Exactly halfway today. And Flavia, in her artless and direct way, informed me she thinks there’s no way we will finish our primary Plexity mission before we must leave. So now I am very busy.”
Katrina sets the plate on the platform beside his chair and stands.
“Do you?”
His voice makes her pause. “Eh? What’s that, mate?”
Alonso repeats, “Do you think we can finish in time?”
Katrina wonders how she might handle this situation best. She doesn’t have enough data to decide. She must listen first. “Well… Remind me what the goals of the primary mission are.”
“To characterize all the life on the island.”
Katrina nods slowly. “Okay. Well then I’ve got a question for you. Does it require a rich context for each sample? You know, what the sample is near, at different times and places, all that?”
“Of course. The relationships are the primary hallmarks of life. Not their own individual characteristics. That is the whole point. The purpose of Plexity is to show there is a larger living breathing meta-organism that—”
“Then no.”
“No? What do you mean, no?”
“You need a hundred thousand samples. We can’t get you a hundred thousand samples in the time remaining. I’m sorry. But it’s just physically impossible. You see that, right? I’m not saying the whole project is impossible. But if what you’re asking for is a variety of samples of about, I don’t know, 9000 life forms? Can we get you one Dyson profile for each of those 9000 samples by May 19th? Yes, I think so. And that can be like your scaffold, right?”
Alonso leans back with exasperation, lifting the plate and shoveling food into his mouth.
“Right? Isn’t that how it usually works? I figure we’re doing a great initial assay of the site, right? Isn’t that, uh, standard protocol for something like this? We get a nice broad overview and then we go back to our institutions, those of us who have them, and show them all this fantastic documentation and write a huge grant proposal for another year out here or something. That’s what I figured we were doing here. I mean, the idea that we could be finished here in eight weeks is, well, kind of silly, isn’t it?”
Alonso can’t look at her. He stares at the columns of data on his screen but he can’t derive meaning from them at the moment. His emotions churn so strongly in him he is afraid he will be ill. “And you think they will let us back on the island after our eight weeks is over? Eh, Katrina? Is that what you are counting on?”
“I’m not counting on anything. But why wouldn’t they? I mean, who does it belong to? Still the military? I thought they were about to give the island up because of some big new satellite agreement. Isn’t that what’s happening? So then we just have to worry about, I don’t know, competing research programs showing up and like rich assholes with yachts? I mean, who’s going to come all the way out here for an unsupported expedition except lunatics like us? All I’m saying is I don’t think we need to be completely done here in four weeks. We just need to show a compelling snapshot to the powers that be so we can continue our work. I mean, Pradeep and Amy said they could spend the rest of their careers here, easily.”
“Yes. Of course. You’re right, it’s just…” Alonso lifts and drops a hand, unable to put into words how much he has invested in these expectations. They literally kept him alive. And sane.
Katrina covers Alonso’s hand with her own. “Hey. It’s okay now. You aren’t like fighting for your life any more. You’re surrounded by all your loved ones. And like, admirers. Right? It was something Pavel could never accept. That he could like put these things down that he held for so long to help him survive and finally relax.”
Alonso nods, not really hearing her. “Yes. Well, thank you for your kind words. I should get back to Plexity, now that we’ve all decided that it will just be a shadow of what it could be. Yes.”
“Alonso, that’s not what I meant. I’m in this for the long haul. Eight weeks, eight years. You hear me? I want to see the end of this. But properly. You had to know eight weeks wouldn’t be enough. I mean, didn’t they show you the size of the island?”
Alonso shrugs. “Yes, I admit, it is larger and… more complex… than anticipated. I didn’t know about all these tunnels. I thought we would be further along than this by now. Yes. But all we need are four six-hour shifts for collection teams. And during that six hours you just need to cover one hundred square meters. Flavia worked it all out. In the 28 days left it is really quite a reasonable goal. Then boom. One hundred thousand samples just like so.”
Katrina nods, her smile empty, realizing she has told him all he is able to hear at the moment. She brushes a strand of his curly black and silver hair back from in front of his eyes. “Got it. You know… Another thing… Mandy and I were talking… Thinking maybe this isn’t your very best night to try a round of MDMA therapy?”
But Alonso has already returned his attention to his laptop. “Eh? What’s that? What is MDAA…?”
“The molly.”
“Ah. Yes, we should definitely wait.” Alonso makes a weary face. “Between Jay’s disappearance and Pradeep’s… condition, I can’t ask anyone to face more risk or…”
“Well, it’s not risk. It’s perfectly safe, but the vibe is certainly…”
“Regardless of that, I think we can both agree that yes, this is not the right time for it. Thank you for checking in. And please. My compliments to the chef. The dinner is delicious.”
Ξ
“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” Jay stands at the bottom of a shaft of gray light, the first natural light he’s seen in thirty hours, rolling a joint. It’s not the easiest thing to do without a table. That’s why he’d pre-rolled five fatties before he’d started on this whole trip. But those are all gone now.
First he grinds some of his daily driver, a combination of OG Kush and Alaskan Thunderfuck. It usually gives him the old solid rocket booster in the shorts when he needs it. But it doesn’t make him paranoid or manic. The Kush keeps him grounded.
It’s been a hard day so he adds a bit more than normal. Then he unscrews the grinder to scoop out some of the kief dust that had collected in the bottom tray. A real hard day, yo.
He dabs his tongue along the paper’s edges and twists it closed. “Man, I love getting high.” Jay lights the joint and takes a couple big cigar puffs to get it going. Then he releases the billows of smoke into the shaft of light, watching their edges uncurl like seventh-dimension monsters of thought. “It’s like, I get to schedule all my highs and lows throughout the day. Like guaranteed.” He feels the rush outward through his scalp into the universe above as his feet send down roots into the soil below. “And now I’m on this planet again, but for real. Yooo. I’m back, bitches.”
He has been walking for hours already this morning, following the interminable curving tunnel, always bearing left ahead of him. He walked all day yesterday as well. It doesn’t make any sense. Math has never been his strong suit but he’s been trying to puzzle it out in his head as he went. The circumference of Lisica can’t be more than, what, twenty kilometers? If it’s like on average four by five kilometers, let’s say a diameter of five. Then it’s… uh… 3πr? So the radius would be like two and a half. Three times pi is nine. Nine times two and a half is like twenty-three. “There’s no way I’ve only walked twenty-three klicks! I’ve put in like twenty solid hours.”
But this is the first time he’s seen any light coming in from above. He relishes the change, after the monotonous hours that hadn’t afforded much of any entertainment. He almost wishes to be like Pradeep, who can effortlessly generate all these fantastical monsters out of the dark to be terrified of—which would be entertaining, but his brain just doesn’t work that way. Jay sees what’s in front of him and that’s pretty much it. And what he’s been seeing for too long is this gray tunnel and its curving parallel rails. Last night he hiked until his phone battery died. Then he crawled into his emergency bivy in a doorway out of the way of the rails just in case anything ever came down them. He plugged his phone into his spare battery and slept pretty soundly, all things considered.
No. He’s not really given to flights of fancy. What he knows with certainty, deep in his roots, is that this world they live in surpasses all else in wonder. No imagined fantasy monsters or palaces or even religions that people can make up in their heads can ever compare to the true infinite complexity of Mother Earth around them, the majesty Jay gets to study each day.
“And I get it.” He cinches his pack, takes one last gigantic drag off the joint before he crushes the roach beneath his heel and field-strips the paper and ash. He fishes out an energy bar and continues walking. “I’ve seen what it’s like in Nebraska. I drove across a few times. But who knows, maybe religion there does seem like a bigger deal on the flat land. I get it. But what you got to do, brother, is just travel one day west and you’re in the Rockies. Then you’ll see what religion’s all about. The peaks. The canyons. I mean, this whole island is all the god I need. Rising up like a… a giant statue from the deep. Yeah. And now I’m crawling across god’s face.”
Jay likes the sound of his own voice. The rush the weed brings delights him and fills him with the fantasies he just derided. He sees the island rising up from crashing seas like a vengeful Polynesian volcano deity with an insatiable hunger for virgins.
Oh, now he’s entertained.
He walks for a couple more hours, his sparkling high fading into monotony. He passes another couple slanting rays of gray daylight, shining through cracks in the tunnel above. He eats some banana chips and empties his last water bottle. But still he doesn’t worry. He likes walking. And he’s needed a huge hike like this to really unscramble himself after being laid up for so long. He’ll find some water somewhere.
Every once in a while he passes junctions, where the rails split and veer into solidly sealed-off tunnels. But it doesn’t look like a mining operation here. Everything’s too clean. It’s all just solid concrete that hasn’t nearly ever cracked or even stained over the decades. Sometimes he’ll find chipped and faded orange numbers at the junctions. He made out 13 at the last one. It relieved him to recognize the language. If this had been like a giant Soviet weapon installation he was crawling through, that would creep him out. It would be like playing a video game in real life. And not fucking Stardew Valley either. This is more like Half Life.
“Come on, now.” Jay takes a deep breath. “Well, you said you were bored and wanted to freak yourself out.” He groans, his feet finally dragging. “Aw, man. This is so dumb. What am I missing? I got to be missing something. There’s no way those kids came all this way. This is like some seriously Kafka bullshit here.”
He realizes if there’s anything anywhere it’s got to be at the junctions. He hadn’t looked very closely at 13 back there because it seemed like all the others and he’d gotten it into his head at the beginning of this walk that the way out would just be at the end. “Come on, now. You can turn around. It’s just right back there.” But Jay has a masculine intransigence that keeps him straining forward. It’s been his undoing down here for sure. “There won’t be another junction for hours, tough guy. Come on. Turn back.”
So with a last lingering look at the unchanging curving tunnel ahead, Jay finally swings himself around and retreats to the junction he left ten minutes before.
His phone is already at 78%. He’s kept it on the lowest setting for the light to extend the battery but he’s not too worried about losing power. The brick he carries is strong enough for five full recharges. Now he cranks it up, painfully bright, to investigate all the nooks and crannies of the wide junction. It is an irregular chamber, with two branching rail lines going off to two directions toward the left, shaped like an aorta from a heart. He inspects the solid concrete walls that seal off the two tunnels. No, there’s no getting through either of them. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s just in an irregular spiral that somehow continues forever. Maybe he’s already dead and he doesn’t even know it.
Oh. Wait. There’s a door.
Ha. Just as he was about to give in to despair after all. Fucking door right in front of him. Inset in the wall behind the orange number 13. But does it open?
Jay pushes on the steel panel with the toe of his boot and it swings partially open, metal on dust the only sound. A hallway beyond is filled with gray light.
Jay turns off his phone light, squinting in the glare. There’s a smell here, a smell he never thought he’d smell on Lisica.
Jay totters forward toward the light, a ridiculous smile on his face. He hears water trickling in the distance, and sees that the hall ends in an old gun emplacement dug into the cliffs. The gun is long gone but its narrowed defensible view still commands a broad swath of the ocean’s horizon out there. The gray light slants in at a strong angle. This interior chamber, a good thirty meters wide, is full of plants. Their gardener works among them, pulling weeds. She stands, an old Lisican woman in a modern canvas apron, t-shirt and jeans, smoking a giant handmade cigar. She looks at Jay blankly. He can’t tell if he is welcome here.
Jay points at the sativa bush beside him with glee. “Ganja.”
The woman nods, expressionless, and extends to Jay the cigar.
Chapter 28 – Just Getting Started
July 8, 2024
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:
28 – Just Getting Started
A tiny pocket beach of soft gray sand holds two figures intertwined on a blanket. The morning is warm. The wind is nonexistent. The sea murmurs instead of roars.
Maahjabeen kisses Pradeep’s hairline from one side to the other, little soft benedictions meant to quiet the unhappy buzzing in his skull. His latest extended outburst appears to be over and now he lies trembling in her arms, as spent as if he’d orgasmed.
Maahjabeen finally understands the reason for this quivering tension in him. Pradeep had been holding it close since the day before, when he had grown so withdrawn yesterday evening. She had almost bought, along with everyone else, his complaint after dinner that he was exhausted when he withdrew into his silent little pyramid, but she’d known something was bothering him. She’d assumed it was a touch of anxiety about their changing situation but this is much more than a touch. It is a storm, a flood of panic that has no basis in reality.
The idea that other hidden people live on this island—modern people with secret agendas—had been an idea he couldn’t dismiss. It had shocked him yesterday, it turns out, that everyone else hadn’t become as paranoid, as if they’d all rise up and beat the rushes from one end of the island to the next looking for spies or something. Now he thinks they’re all being wildly reckless because they were able to… what, change the subject? Realize there’s more than one thing to worry about out here? Celebrate Jay’s delicious catch and thank the Lisicans? All that should just be shelved until the mystery of the villagers who won’t get sick is solved?
“This is why you need God, dear one.” She nestles his face maternally in the holy space between a woman’s jaw, shoulder, and breast. She is cooing to him, watching the sea birds sailing above, petting his face. Satisfied with how his trembling is fading away, Maahjabeen is encouraged to continue. “It is too easy for you to fall into your own personal view of things. Your own reality. But when you know there is a single divine eye watching down on you, witnessing and judging every moment of the world around you…”
Pradeep lifts his head. His smile is tight and his laugh is staccato. “Ah hahaha. Maybe you don’t tell the guy with anxiety that there’s an all-seeing eye that sees everything he does, always judging him.”
“No, but He loves you!” Maahjabeen caresses Pradeep again. “It all comes from a place of love. Can’t you see that? It is where my love comes from. And you like my love, don’t you?”
Pradeep stares at her with helpless ardor. “I love your love.”
“It is the same love. That is all I am saying. And judgment is good. It keeps us living healthy, righteous lives. Lives with meaning. The scriptures contain all the wisdom one needs in life. It is like a guide book, a rule book our holy ancestors wrote down…”
She continues instructing him in the details of her faith. But he had stopped following after she had said it is the same love. Wait. Her idea of god’s love is the same as this incomprehensible and glorious love that she is showering on him? Well then, blimey. Sign him up. Maybe he’s ready for religion after all. He could never worship nearly anything he has ever discovered in this universe, except for this. This tapestry of honey in woman’s form. This love, as pure and infinite as the ocean. Yes, he will happily worship this. He buries his face deeper into her soft skin, this holy temple, letting the words soothe him, until he is dozing in her embrace.
Maahjabeen listens to the tide, her voice fading. Good. The more she talks the further she drifts from the essential core of her faith. Ultimately, she isn’t much of a religious scholar. She is not actually excited by the textual details of her religion. It is the culture that it provides and the mystical insights it unlocks within her, especially out here in the middle of nowhere. Oh, they couldn’t be more alone if they tried, just her and the man she loves. Who would ever need more than this? They could fish from their boats and build a driftwood hut up against the cliffs and live happily here forever, or at least until a storm wiped them all away…
Eh, what was that? Maahjabeen realizes her eyes have also closed and she starts back awake, Pradeep heavy in her arms. What did she hear? Feel? Sense somehow? What was it? The beach is empty. The kayaks, blue and yellow, still rest safely above the tideline. The sea remains calm. Out at sea, she glimpses a sheen of wide black skin rolling, just breaking the surface, on the far side of the waves. Ah, is that her orca spirit animal watching over her?
Yet her spine still itches of being watched. She needs to see up behind her on the cliff before she can settle. But that will mean dislodging Pradeep. “So sorry, love.” She slips out from under his embrace and is surprised that he doesn’t wake.
Sitting up, she turns. There is nothing but the bleak cliff behind her. Maahjabeen studies the bare walls of it until she is satisfied that whatever may have regarded her is now gone. Perhaps it was the orca, watching over her. Or warning her…
Something uncanny fills Maahjabeen when she turns away from the cliffs. She swears she caught a glimpse, just before she turned, of a native person, of indeterminate age and gender, just a fat little golem of a person with graying ringlets and a multitude of fetishes hanging from their dark cloak in the shadows at the base of the cliff. But when she looks at the spot again she sees no one.
Maahjabeen frowns, reality fraying at the edges. She has always been happy to have a deep mystical connection to the great and grand forces of the universe but this witchy nonsense is creeping her out. Is it real or is it a figment of her imagination? Why would her brain ever do this to itself? She had been so happy, content, with Pradeep in her arms.
But what if it’s real…?
Maahjabeen turns away from the spot again, and once again catches the briefest glimpse of the same person, standing hunched at the base of the cliff where they hadn’t been a moment before. She snaps her gaze back, but no. Nothing.
Now Maahjabeen can’t tear her eyes from the spot. “Pradeep.” She nudges him. “Uhh. Baby? Can you give me a hand?” But for some reason, once again, he doesn’t wake up. She pokes him even harder. “Pradeep. Hey. I need you.”
A chill descends from the cliff, tendrils of fog whispering down from the sky. What is going on? Why can’t she wake Pradeep up? Something malevolent is looming over her from the cliffs above. It is that shaman, someone she’s never before seen. There must be another one of those horrible tunnels that connects to the interior and now this creature is here, raining curses down on them.
It is the power of the sky that the shaman invokes. Maahjabeen knows this intuitively, the cold forbidding sky. And she knows as well that she is not without her own power. She is a dedicated maiden of the sea. And the sea is right here. In fact, her protector lies just offshore!
Without another thought, Maahjabeen stands and runs barefoot, clad only in her panties and bra, to the edge of the water. The sand is dark and the air is cold against her back. She isn’t looking at the cliff but she can distinctly see in her mind’s eye the shaman lifting a staff from which hang more fetishes, ready to call on powers dark and dreadful to keep her from reaching the water. All she needs to do is touch mother ocean, and she will find shelter from the sky under her cold dark waves.
Then yes! Another sheen of black from the water and this time a white eyepatch! It is her orca! Her mighty orca! And no clever monkey of the land, regardless of their spells and tokens, can fight an orca and win! “Oh, thank you, God, for sending me an angel!”
Maahjabeen touches the ebbing tide. It is even colder than she recalled, and forcefully reminds her that it is no sanctuary for her. She needs the air to breathe. The cold will steal her life. As much as she might wish she is a mermaid, she is a human woman after all and she is destined to live and die on land. So she turns back, filled with the strength of her conviction that this edge of two worlds—no, three—between the land and the water and the sky, is where she belongs. And no shaman’s curses can dislodge her from it.
The water splashes her, again, running up her side. This is a big wave. She needs to drag Pradeep and the boats clear. Aziz and… and… what did Amy name her other boat?
The water runs up against her once more, covering her face and nostrils… She sputters, sitting up. Oh, no! They’re swamped!
She startles awake. It had been a dream. A horrible dream and now she’s really here on the beach. She’d fallen asleep on the blanket with Pradeep and the tide had come in. It had been the tide hitting her three? four times? before she’d finally woken up.
Dizzy, she pulls Pradeep to his feet. He is still groggy, in a stupor. The blanket twists in the flowing current around their feet. The water is so cold. Then the leading edge of the wave touches the cliff face and pulls back, dragging the kayaks toward the sea…
“No! La! La!” Maahjabeen squeals, pushing Pradeep toward the blue kayak, which founders on rocks near where she left it. But Firewater (of course that’s its name!) is racing out to sea on the top of the tide. She churns after it, unable to let the sea take her boat.
Maahjabeen stumbles in the retreating surf and it soaks her, shocking her with its frigidity. But the yellow kayak meets the next wave rushing in and it is pushed sideways, then pressed against the sand below as the water overtops the hatch and pours in.
“No!” Maahjabeen screams again, reaching the kayak and dragging on it before it is swamped entirely. The wave crashes around her, nearly knocking her from her feet. But she regains her footing and stubbornly hauls the kayak from the water.
Shivering, spent, she rejoins Pradeep, who is fully awake now and waiting for her with a dry towel. He scrubs her, murmuring tender words, and prepares both of them for a quick retreat back to camp.
The shock of the water and nearly losing her boat forces all other thoughts from her head. It is a long time before Maahjabeen ever thinks of her nightmare again.
Ξ
“Living my best life, yo.” Jay climbed this bay tree last night and a wide nook separating one of its primary limbs from the trunk was enough of a spot for him to curl up in and survive the cold. Yet somehow he’d slept well. Must have been all the wine and weed. His emergency bivy sure helped too. Now he rolls it up and stows it away, studying the soft gray dawn light through the trees.
He is fully stocked and prepared for once. His injuries no longer hamper him. He wears his best gear and carries a full pack. Now it’s time to finally take the measure of this fucking island.
Jay drops to the ground, his legs not quite working yet. He falls sideways with a laugh into the duff. Well, at least it’s a soft landing. He picks himself up to find a pair of children waiting patiently for him at the base of the tree. “Oh! Hey! What’s up?” Jay fishes for his mask as he stumbles back to a safe distance. They watch him impassively. The kids here have such fine, impish features that he can’t tell if they’re boys or girls or… or foxes. They both look like little kits, with yellowish eyes and pointed muzzles.
Jay pulls off his pack and finds a bag of dried banana chips. He chews a few, easing his hunger, and holds out the ziploc bag to the kids. They don’t reach for it, though. They just watch him. “Pretty tasty. You don’t know what you’re missing… No? Okay. More for me.” He puts the chips back in his pack, takes a long drink of water from a steel bottle, and swings his pack back on. “Okay now. Let’s get cracking. I’ve been waiting to do this for weeks!”
Jay steps out from under the low-hanging canopy of the tree to scout the gentle hillside. He and the kids are in the interior valley downslope from the village, with the stream and wider river at the bottom of this vale, unseen down below. It had been an excellent camping spot last night, quiet and safe. The boys he’d partied with, Ahkhaachooix and Tlél wugoot, had eventually gone to bed in the village at the end of the festivities and he’d wandered down here for some shuteye.
None of the other researchers know he is gone. They’d all been asleep when Jay and his new buddies had closed down the party at camp and retreated back through the tunnels to the village, where they’d found an even larger party celebrating the harvest the rest of the troop had brought from the sea.
The villagers had all been so happy and welcoming, feeding him from their own plates and everything. Jay was pretty sure his chill surfer zen vibe was what they needed, not more chattering scientist nerds and all their pet theories.
By the end of the night, Jay had realized this was the Tuzhit festival they’d been talking about. And that Tuzhit was a name. It was like an ancestor’s birthday or something. There had been tons of speeches and formal chants and things, but still no music.
“Yeah, I left them,” Jay confesses, turning back to the kids. “I mean, if I’d told the others I was coming they wouldn’t have let me, or they would have made me bring someone else, someone who doesn’t want to do everything I got to do out here. See, I’m like a shepherd. You know dogs? Woof woof? Like the fox. But a working dog, herding sheep. My buddy Nate had a shepherd mix, real cutie named Stewart, all black and white. And whenever we went on a hike with Stewart he’d disappear for like a full hour. And Nate would just shrug and say, he’ll be back, he’s just getting the lay of the land. And that’s how I am. I got to get the lay of the land. That dog would scour every inch of whatever hill or valley until he knew it as well as his backyard. Only then would he settle down and hike right next to us. That dude was legit.”
The kids are still only watching him.
Jay laughs at his wasted breath. “Uh. Good talk. So off I go. Don’t, uh… don’t stick beans up your nose or nothing.”
Jay cinches the waist belt on his pack. It’s got a good twelve kilos in here. He’ll feel it after a while for sure. Now off he goes to the bottom of the valley! He’d thought about checking in with the village before he set out, especially if there was any of that yummy mussels and aromatic leaf dish left over from last night. But he was afraid they’d try to talk him out of his walkabout too so it’s for the best that he just head out. He’ll take three days tops to really scout the canyons and perimeter before returning home. Then he’ll take whatever punishment Esquibel and Alonso and Amy come up with. But they’ll all gain the benefit of his discoveries.
He reaches the creekside where the villagers get their water. He could fill up here but his bottles are still full. Aw, shit. Those kids are following him. They’re like forty meters back up the trail, their golden curls speckled with dew. That’s the last thing he needs, a pair of kids to worry about. He flashes a shaka. “Hang loose, little buddies. But I got to do this on my own, you dig?”
They apparently do not dig. When he starts walking they follow again, trailing behind at a safe distance.
“Well, let’s see what you do at the crossing.” Jay enters the wide bowl of the river valley. Blossoms cover the grasses with fields of yellow, white, and purple. “Beauty. Spring has sprung for sure.” Jay walks through the meadow, hands trailing along the tops of flowers. Soon his palms are coated in golden pollen. He turns back to the kids to show them his hands. “I am the King of Hayfever!”
But still they only watch.
“Quite the day. Pretty warm inland.” Jay takes off his pack at the riverbank and strips off a sweater. He studies the crossing as he stows the sweater and puts his pack back on. The river is blue-black, as wide as a four-lane road, with steep banks on both sides. He knows from his previous exploration that there’s no easy way across. He’ll just have to use his ingenuity.
“Well… I could drop a couple trees and use them as a bridge. But somehow, I doubt your folks would be happy about that. I could, let’s see… I’ve got an inflatable pillow here. Maybe I can use it like a floaty.” He scrambles down the muddy bank to the water, where he dips a hand in it. Super cold. Much colder than expected. He pulls back with a hiss. “Yeah, homie ain’t swimming across that, no sir. And it looks like there’s a deep current in there.” He scrambles back up to the top of the bank to pull a buck knife from his pack.
The meadow behind him is now empty. “Well at least the kids are gone.” He sighs, knowing it was his interaction with this taboo river that got them to take off. This couldn’t be a wise thing, to mess with the DMZ between two warring villages. But Jay has never been too wise. He needs to see what is on the far side. It’s like a biological compulsion driving him.
He retreats to the woods and takes down a good forty fir saplings, all of them about as wide as a pool cue and as tall as his body. He trims their branches off and bundles them with twine into a heavy raft, two layers thick. Then he notches the saplings so he can lay crosspieces for more support. The work is arduous and soon he’s sweating. He takes off his windshirt and another layer. Now he’s barechested in the humid morning, just a man and his knife. Collecting the trimmed branches, he ties them atop it as a thick green deck. Finally, after an hour or more, he drags the completed vessel to the edge of the bank. One last sapling, a long pole, will be his only steering device. All he has to do is cross no more than thirty meters of river to get to the far side…
He puts on his pack and pushes the raft mostly into the river. The unseen current pulls at it and Jay has to hold it and dig his pole into the mud at the same time to keep the raft from being carried away. He crawls out onto it as the current pulls it free from shore. With a mighty shove from his pole he attempts to get the raft out toward the center of the river.
Jay gathers the pole and pushes it down below him. But he can’t find the bottom. It is already over two meters deep here. Now he just waves the pole ineffectually about as the raft starts to spin. “Uh oh. This is the… I guess this is why you don’t cross rivers solo…”
He can’t get the raft to cross any more of the river. It takes him downstream at an increasing clip, a good five meters from the shore he left, pushing him past the bare bank on the far side down to where it’s far more overgrown. Jay keeps trying with the pole, hoping to find anything to push down there. But it’s deep, even deeper than this nearly three meters of sapling and his extended arm up to the elbow. He lies down, reaches his furthest into the black water with it, pulls it back, nearly topples as the raft rocks, and accidentally drops the pole. It floats away out of reach.
“Aaagggh.” Now he has no way to steer. With his frozen hands he paddles, trying to make of the raft a giant surfboard. Face down on the wet boughs, Jay paddles with his deepest, strongest stroke, first on one side, then the other. In this way, he is able to push the raft across the river as it carries him even further downstream. Now he is in the trees where they overhang the far bank.
Scrambling to his knees, Jay snares a drooping branch. It looks like some kid of willow variant. He’ll have to study it more closely after he saves himself. He slowly draws the raft toward the far bank, afraid the branch will snap, but it doesn’t. He pulls up to a mess of bracken that prevents the raft from reaching solid ground.
Jay tests the bracken. It is storm-wrack, decaying logs and branches dragged downriver to rest here against the bank, until the next storm dislodges it and pushes it further down. He can’t stand on it. It sinks beneath his weight. And the bank is still out of reach. “This is how you get tangled and pulled under and drowned, homeslice.” He can’t get out here. It’s impossible. Giving up on this exit point, he liberates a splintered limb that is wide enough to have its broken end serve as an oar.
Jay pushes away from the willow and its false bank and paddles madly for another spot further downriver. Finally, he reaches it, tumbling off the raft onto the muddy slope and nearly falling back in. Only pushing himself from the water with the oar saves him. But the raft is lost, spinning away in the current out of view.
Sodden, frozen, and a bit scared, Jay crawls up the far bank. The fir needles are fragrant and their points prick his palms. There’s no going back now. At least, not for a while. The thought of building another raft and putting himself through that ordeal again is enough to nearly make him give up on life.
“But first… the rest of the fucking island.” Standing, he brushes the needles from his wet pantlegs and exits the dark woods. He wants to get back to the meadow on this side and all its flowers.
The ground here beneath the brown needles is crumbled and hollow, as if it’s a home for a warren of ground squirrels or gophers. Mushrooms, pale yellow and golden, peek out from where they lift the topsoil above them. Some could be chanterelles. Maybe Cantharellus pallens. Jay stops to inspect them. Yes! A big chunk of a fresh one, as big as his fist, he levers out of the ground with his knife. Oh, what he would do for a stick of butter and a head of garlic. Well. He’ll just have to build a fire and roast this bad boy all by itself. Maybe with some bay leaves… He wishes he’d known what the fragrant leaves were he ate with the mussels last night but he only saw them after they’d been cooked and mashed.
Ha. Those nerds are sure going to miss his cooking. Watch, he’s going to return with like a buck slung over his shoulder, shouting, “We feast!” Jay cries it aloud as he steps out into the meadow.
He sees movement among the waving blossoms. “Whoa. No way.” There are people out there. Three, no, four. Small and slender, their faces are covered in featureless masks of golden pollen, standing among the flowers, waving their dark arms in slow imitation of tree limbs in the wind.
His words echo across the silent meadow and draw their faces toward him. Their faces are blank, smooth, entirely covered in pollen. “What the…? Okay, I was wrong. You motherfuckers are the kings of the hayfever. Those masks are sick. How the hell are y’all even breathing?”
He’s never seen humans stand like this, nor move their limbs in such odd unjointed ways. Jay looks back at the woods, thinking it may be his refuge. Maybe not. He turns back to the pollen people.
“So they say struck dumb, like that’s a thing, you know? But the thing is I’m already dumb and I can’t seem to shut up so I don’t know what to call that.” Jay realizes he’s blithering. But he can’t stop. “You all, uh, I mean, we’re all carbon-based life forms here, right? I mean, right? We’re all mammals? Or are some of us, I don’t know, like actually plant-based or…?”
One of them sways toward him, its movements more like those of a sapling’s stalk than an animal’s muscles.
“Okay. Now that is creeping me out. No way, dude. No way. I can’t accept that this is real. There aren’t like—”
A bird’s sharp trill, from further in up away from the river, gets the four golden figures to suddenly turn and dash, totally human, and race downriver past him, one giggling and tearing her wood mask from her face as she goes.
Now Jay quivers with astonishment. They are people after all. I mean, of course they are. Golden plant people don’t exist. Pollen faced people… He shivers. But he can’t ignore the fact that they’re fleeing from someone. Someone is coming. Jay should himself follow them. He hurries back into the woods.
A trio of hunters, two young men and a woman, glide into the meadow. They hold short two-prong spears and carry javelins on their backs. Dressed in hide tunics and leggings that have been blackened and softened by grease, they make no noise as they study the tracks of the pollen people through the trampled flowers.
Now they are coming this way. Jay hides behind the wide trunk of a redwood. This is stupid. They’re going to find him. And if they’re surprised then they might be more dangerous. There’s only one way to play this. He steps out, arms up, and faces them.
The three hunters stop, frozen mid-stride. They are low to the ground, like wolves on a kill.
Jay laughs nervously. “H-h-hey. I mean, hi there. It’s just me. Dancing in the flowers. Nobody else. Remember me? From before? With the smoke and the fire?”
They make a silent decision and arrow toward him again. The two behind split off to the left and right to flank Jay. Their faces are closed, their eyes dark and sharp as fangs.
“Hey now.” Jay has been in more than his share of scrapes and can tell where this is heading. He puts his back to the redwood and stands tall, which is much taller than them. Hands up, he swings his pack off. “Let’s not do this, folks. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
But they obviously disagree. The three hunters move in a coordinated rhythm to within ten paces of him.
They’ve fought men before. Jay realizes this as he cracks a knuckle against the hardness of his phone in the front pocket of his pants. Fumbling at his hip, he might need to whip out his buck knife here. But he has a better idea instead.
Jay pulls out his phone and holds it up. “Oh, you want some of this? You want to try me and my badass twenty-first century wizardry? Then smile.”
He takes a photo with a flash. The three hunters yelp, like dogs in a thunderstorm, and freeze again, hunching lower.
“Oh, you like that? Yeah. That’s right, dude. I’m stealing your fucking soul.” He takes another flash photo and another, one for each. “Sorry. That was racist. Lots of, uh, assumptions in that one. But check it out! I hold the power of lightning and thunder!”
Jay turns the volume of his phone up high as the opening chords of Cerebral Bore’s Maniacal Miscreation begin. Banging his head, he advances on them, howling, “Carve a path unto obsidian – insane creation of an abscessed mind…! Maniacal Miscreation!” But these last two words are shouted at their retreating backs. They broke and ran when the guitar went full heavy metal. In the quiet meadow the phone is startlingly loud. Now the hunters must be racing back to tell all their friends and relations about the giant pale magic man and the power he holds in his hand.
Jay turns off the music. His hands are shaking. “Well so much for the fucking prime directive. Couldn’t have interfered more. Uhh. Now what do I do?” His imagination goes wild, afraid the entire countryside will rise up against him, to hunt him down and make an example of his trespass, his head on a pike for all to see.
But if he returns now, will the hunters follow him back across the river and start a war with the village he knows? And with all the talk of spies and geopolitics his mind tolls like a bell, as big as the whole globe. Are the good Lisicans like the American village and these psychos are like the Russian village? Would they start a fight here that spirals outward to engulf everyone else? Did Jay just start World War Three?
“Okay. Okay, get a grip, dude.” Jay fishes in his pack for his smoke kit. He pulls out a joint, one of his nighttime indica sleep sticks. But he needs to calm the fuck down. Lighting it, he takes a deep drag and releases a billow of smoke. “Can’t go back. Can’t go on…” Cause, like, what would he even do here? Let’s say, him and his brass balls are able to spook these straight killers for a while with his light and music show, then what? He’d have to like take over the whole tribe to keep them from eventually attacking him. And that’d be that whole Kipling morality tale all over again. No thank you. It always ends badly for the man who would be king.
Then Jay recalls the pollen people, laughing with abandon even as they passed him, fleeing from the hunters. Who are they? “Well, bro,” Jay tells himself, “looks like it’s time to find out.”
Ξ
“Tuzhit is a name!” Katrina runs through the camp in the middle of the day, calling out in triumph. “It’s like an ancestral proper name and they were planning a Tuzhit festival! That’s what they were telling us! The clouds and the wind needed to be all…” She stops in the center of the camp as heads begin to peek out of tents. Katrina searches for the word. “Uh… Propitious! Auspicious! Delicious! They were waiting for all the factors to be right and our fire nearly ruined that.”
“Okay. And who is Tuzhit?” Alonso has decided this will be his gossip, his guilty pleasure. He will be as excited about the Lisicans as people get about celebrities. But it isn’t as easy to care as he thought it would be. These damn villagers would ruin Plexity yet.
“Not Eyat, that’s for sure. Not a single Tuzhit in any Eyat list I can find. Nothing even close, except for, uh, ‘adon kadushidán, which means we like to go hunting (and we go frequently).’ But check it out. In Slavic languages, tuzhit means to mourn or grieve. So maybe it wasn’t their actual name when they were alive, the ancestor they’re celebrating, maybe it was who they were to these people. And they mourn for them. So it’s a sad day, I guess.”
“Squid salad for lunch!” Mandy arrives with platters. The baby squid the Lisicans had caught for them have stored just fine in cold water over the last twelve hours. Now they are little dollops of chewy and crunchy protein atop three types of seaweed with a balsamic dressing.
“I recorded that long speech the Mayor gave us. Remember?” Katrina appeals to Triquet, who nods. “It was super long and dense and I’ve been pulling it apart. But the verb tenses are just appalling. They’re so complex. And this is some like basic knock-off version of Eyat. Not even the full intricacies. But putting sentences together is like chasing your tail. They all sound like, ‘Of the low-status man who approached you yesterday, the question shall be asked to you in the morning, who are an older woman of a higher-status inland community, who is in the habit of hearing from your clan…’ And by then I forget it’s a question. Just crazy stuff like that. But I’m definitely getting strong impressions. You know what I mean? Patterns.”
“And where are these patterns leading us?” Alonso swore to himself he’d be less crabby about this subject but now that it is here again he can’t help himself. “Their oral histories will fill every moment of our time here if we are not careful. I’ve heard how much they talk.”
“No idea where it’s headed, frankly.” Katrina’s assessment is sober and a bit worried. “But you’re right. An entire university department of anthropologists and ethno-linguists could spend their whole careers studying the Lisicans. This is definitely tip of the iceberg stuff. It’s just… I think we need to know as much about them as we can, just to learn if we are safe.”
“I agree.” Esquibel has been listening from the door of the bunker and now she enters the camp. “Learning a bit about their language and culture is a good step in that direction. I don’t see how you can argue against that.”
But Alonso, despite their reasonable pleas, becomes irritable. “Fucking human intervention, everywhere I turn. You must understand how this is for me. My dream… my visions of Plexity were the only thing keeping me alive. For years. I mean, I would be locked in a concrete box for days, so small I couldn’t even sit up. Face down. Cold like you’ve never known. In my delirium I built Plexity, the greatest experiment in modern life sciences. But it requires an isolated, stable, and natural setting. Just for its first iteration. Then it can be adapted for use everywhere.”
Katrina spreads her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you. All indications point to the Lisicans being here way before we were even born. Like they’re pretty much neolithic. They don’t have any modern items except for a couple old photos. They’re as much a part of this island as… I don’t know… the foxes.”’
“And what do you mean by ‘natural,’ Doctor Alonso?” Esquibel frowns. “Your use of the term seems more emotional than rational, if I may be so blunt.”
“Of course it is!” Alonso fights down sudden tears. “I told you I was face down in a pit fighting for my life for five years, did I not?”
Quietly, Amy answers for him. “This is an old argument between Sergio Alonso and me, Doctor Daine. In Japan we are taught that there is no division between the world of forests and animals and the world of humans. It’s all the same world. Or, more properly from a Shinto point of view, it’s all Japan. The skyscrapers are as much an expression of natural processes as, I don’t know, termite mounds or volcanoes. The division of humans from the world around them is pretty much a post-industrial Western idea. A lot of the Romantics in the 18th and 19th centuries, you know, with their fables of the dark haunted woods and people fleeing sweatshops and industrialization to find their spirit in idealized Nature. Yeah, that’s a very Snow White way of looking at the world.”
Alonso has regained his equilibrium during her long speech. “That is all very well and good, Ames. But you don’t know how much an inclusion of the human parameters into Plexity will, I mean, it’s multiplying every single factor by at least two orders of magnitude. It will break the model.”
Amy shrugs, knowing that all she can do is present the facts. “The model’s already broken, Lonzo. We just saw them carry away like fifty kilos of sea life and all those bushels of bay and wild onion. The broad leaf they harvested is unknown. I think the lily family. But the point is they’re gardening here. They’re hunting and fishing on a regular basis. This automatically changes all the readings we get. If our focus is the interconnected model, then, yeah. If they aren’t included then you’re just modeling a… fantasy.”
Alonso’s eye twitches. These are deep roots in him, fibers of conviction intertwined with his own sinews and bones about how this must be. He obsessed for far too long and Plexity became far too important for him to get this close to realizing it and having it slip away. But he knows how he looks. He just can’t seem to muster the leader’s trait of giving a shit about these Lisicans. Instead, blind in his own misery, he flings an arm back to where he know his wife sits behind him. “Mirrie. What am I supposed to do?”
“You silly sod.” She swats him. “Look around you. Brilliant minds everywhere. You don’t need to do anything. You’ve already assembled the team. Now you get to sit back and watch them solve this problem. It’s your vision, yes. But now it’s all of ours, too. It’s our daily lives, Zo. And it’s why we’re here.”
“Yes…” Flavia stands, lifting her laptop. “I am already writing a few notes about ways I think we can scale human factors without looking at a logarithmic expansion of computation. It is the same type of problem as the circadian rhythm cycle we were able to detect in the data, then nearly automate. Training the model with the new variables will be the hard part, then getting it up and running should be, well, still pretty hard, but doable.”
“I disagree.” Katrina holds up an index finger. “I think the hard part will be defining terms and variables of the Lisicans to begin with. I mean, I assume you’re going to start with things like calorie requirements and daily subsistence impacts on their ecosystems, but, I mean, we don’t even understand who these people are yet, or why they do nearly anything they do. They just had this festival, which was a major impact on their environment, and we don’t even know a thing about it. As far as we know it might be the season of festivals and it’s all night every night now til winter.”
“It’s a shame Pradeep isn’t here.” Amy tries to recall his words. “He and I had an interesting talk about this once and he said that if aliens were up above looking down on us in spaceships, they wouldn’t need to know our pop culture references and historical traditions to understand us. He believes all the internal narrative stuff and even a lot of scientific defense of cultural expression are overblown. He said it could all be measured by caloric output, all the wars and the famines and the building of cities, and the culture could be inferred with mathematical modeling. The reasons behind all our activity are only discernible at this huge macro scale.”
“I was just thinking the same thing!” Flavia turns to the lagoon, pointing at it. “Where is Jay? He was right. We are nothing but our structures! We are coral reefs! Our lives are too short to see it!”
Triquet crows, “Yipee! History wins again!”
Alonso laughs, rueful. “Thank you, my friends, for helping me lift my spirits. I do not mean to be so… It may be true that I began the leadership of this mission a few months or years earlier than I should have. But the opportunity presented itself and here we are.”
Esquibel opens a bin and takes out a tray filled with a variety of pills. “Here. Just a few supplements. Electrolytes and a B-complex. I think that MDMA therapy you did is still making you miserable. Your lows are much lower these last couple days.” She hands the pills to him and he dutifully swallows them dry as she monitors his pulse. “I cannot say it was a successful experiment.”
“What, the drug trip? The… the molly?” Alonso says the word with such innocence that Katrina snickers. “No. I think it was very helpful. It was like Mandy’s hands on my feet. Very scary at first but now I can see the utility. Maybe we do it again soon, yes?”
Katrina and Mandy share a surprised sidelong glance. “Uhh… yeh, sure thing. All of it? The double dose and the, oh, what’s it called, Mandy?”
“The massage?” Mandy flexes her fingers. “Tui na.”
“Yes,” Alonso points at her, “that.”
“Huh.” Katrina giggles. “That was a quick turnaround.”
“Well, that is what we are saying, is it not?” Now Alonso feels like there is a path of virtue ahead and he is damned if he will let it slip away. “We all recognize now that I am failing as a leader and you are both offering means for me to heal. It terrifies me, to be honest. You have no idea. But if your therapies mean I can still effectively run this mission then I will do anything. Anything.”
Now Katrina can’t help but spoil his dramatic words with a suppressed snort of laughter. “La, if me mates could see me now. The brave middle-aged bloke willing to do anything, include rolling on molly like a rave kid at a candy store. Uh, most of us don’t even need an excuse to roll like every weekend?”
Now they all laugh, in a minor key that suggests they appreciate the joke without really understanding what a fiend Katrina is, and what an unmitigated delight her many trips have been, showering herself with light and love in a thousand ways, which has changed her forever into a much better person, tiny lines of white powder stitching her heart like ritual scarification.
“Ultimately,” Katrina lifts Alonso’s hand and kisses it, “we can all agree that we just need more study, across the board. Fungus and plant and animal. Wind and sun and sea. You’ve given us this brilliant tool to work on it. Nobody thought we’d actually be able to finish it, whatever that means, by the time we left.”
“I just want a functioning prototype. Flavia’s bootstrap method is automating more and more processes so I believe if we are able to finally get a critical mass—”
“But what is that?” Miriam pounces a bit too quickly, but she has to get a word in before he skips ahead. “Slow down. Give the team numbers, Zo. Like in terms of samples. How many are we aiming for and how many do we already have? We’re nearly halfway through our time here, although we’ve only been seriously collecting for, what, ten days? So what are those numbers?”
“Ehh, let’s see.” He accesses the administrative dashboard for Plexity on his laptop and finds the appropriate values. “We have collected 8157 inputs of all types, including secondary readings and observations. 4338 samples from the Dyson readers. And it has been eleven days since the first samples were logged.”
“And how many do you need for your critical mass?”
“The data scientist in me has always believed Plexity will finally start to resolve into a clear and useful model at 100,000.”
“A hundred thousand samples? Oy vey.” Amy swoons. “That’s like a hundred times more than I’ve ever done, even in the widest assays. Good thing I brought Jay. He’s picking up like another thousand as we speak.”
“A hundred… thousand?” Miriam shakes her head. It is such a tremendous amount of work the idea of it makes her ill. “You can’t be serious, Zo. There’s not a single conceivable way…”
“Sure there is, Mirrie.” Alonso waves his cane in the air like a general marshaling his troops. “We are already four percent of the way there! And we are just getting started!”
Chapter 27 – Ji-da-daa
July 1, 2024
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:
27 – Ji-da-daa
Pradeep’s phone buzzes. It is one of the reminders he set to repeat each year, every April 12th. FILE TAXES. Well. That will certainly be a problem. He is surprised at himself for not anticipating this. Usually he is very detailed and obsessive when it comes to financial matters. He just hadn’t connected the fully off-the-grid nature of this project with his finances. “Fuck. Damn.” He is so poor at cursing. And now he can hate himself for that too. “Bollocks!”
He throws off his bag and pulls himself from under his pyramid tarp and stalks away barefoot onto the sand, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The camp is lit by the faintest blue light of dawn. Nobody is awake. But Maahjabeen ducks her head out, quickly scanning the silent tents before shooting him a meaningful, intimate glare.
Pradeep wants to call out, wake the whole camp, ask who else forgot to take care of their basic paperwork. But half these people aren’t even American and others, like Alonso, have had bigger problems. This is Pradeep’s alone to deal with. So he gestures uselessly at his phone and makes a plaintive face at Maahjabeen, then wanders out toward the beach. He climbs the log, the chill of the wind off the open ocean cutting through his base layers. It is far too cold to be out here without a windbreaker. Whatever. It is his punishment for being such a dumbass.
The horizon is dark, bruised nearly black. Perhaps a storm passes them to the south, heading for the coast of North America. It will slam into the waiting Pacific Northwest and cover it with rain. That unbroken stretch of green forest that runs from Alaska down to like Santa Barbara is so amazing. Fed constantly by these storms spinning outward like a reverse whirlpool, flinging wind and water and life itself out into the wide world. Lisica is like the seed of all life, right in the center of this vortex like the pearl of an oyster. The vision thrills him, reversing what he thought was surely true. In this scenario, it is the genesis point itself, using the storms to cast all kinds of embryonic potential outward. Lisica, not Eden, is the secret garden from which all life emerged.
It’s a silly notion but it takes his mind off his troubles. Another figure scrambles onto the log beside him. It is Maahjabeen in her coat and boots. “What is wrong?” Her face is intense, nearly irate.
Pradeep steps away from her, afraid for her sake they might be seen together by anyone else. But she steps closer, clasping his arm. He just shakes his head. Her passion is too great for his silly error. It makes him feel a fool. He shrugs. “It’s just. My taxes. I forgot to pay them, I mean file them, before I left. It’s nothing.”
“Ohh…” She releases his arm.
“I’m just an idiot. I’m just angry with myself.”
“That is such a relief. I mean… I thought, well, I thought you had somehow found out, I mean, from your reaction back there, I would have guessed someone in your family had died.” She casts her eyes down, her brows flickering with pain.
They haven’t yet spoken of this. They haven’t had enough time alone together to peel away the layers of grief still tormenting Maahjabeen. He has wanted to say something but he doesn’t ever want to presume. He just wants to kiss her and take her in his arms and baby her while she lets it all go.
She scowls, clearing her head with a sharp toss. “I knew there was no way you could be getting a notification. I still… I had to see. Because, you know, when I found out such a terrible thing myself, I was totally alone. For a long time. And that made it very hard.”
Pradeep is overwhelmed by longing for this goddess beside him. Casting caution to the very cold wind, he pulls on her hand and they topple forward over the far side of the log so that no others might see them. They crawl across the freezing sand into the shelter she rebuilt, unable to resist touching and tasting each other.
He’s shivering. Oh, her sweet boy is too thin to survive this ocean wind without the proper gear. She will be his blanket. Maahjabeen unzips her jacket and covers Pradeep with her warmth.
Ξ
“Anyone seen Jay this morning?”
“He’s in the sub with Triquet and Mandy,” Katrina calls out from the tables beside the bunker.
Amy enters, shaking her head. “We had a date to collect some creekside gametophytes. What are they doing in the sub?”
“Who knows?” Katrina is busy with her linguistic puzzles. “They’ve been down there since last night.”
“Crazy kids.” Amy descends through the trap door into the sub, where she finds the entire top floor empty. She lowers herself to the next level to find Triquet in the main room among their stacks. For the first time, Amy realizes Triquet hasn’t dressed with their usual flamboyance since their ordeal in the village. She hopes nothing’s wrong. “Uh. Hey there.”
Triquet looks up, a bit of a worn, sad look on their face. “Oh. Hi, Amy. Is it morning already?”
Amy nods. “My goodness, Doctor. Have you been up all night?”
Triquet nods, glum, trailing long delicate fingers over a stack of files. “Couldn’t let it go. Haunted.”
“Haunted by what?” A shiver crawls up the back of Amy’s neck but she quickly suppresses it.
“The image of Katrina’s shawl. That Eyat piece. I swear I saw something similar in the files here. At some point. But I’ve checked my notes and I can’t find it. I must not have annotated it, like a big dumbbell. Or maybe I did but I used a descriptor for it I’m just not remembering. I really need a better tagging system. It’s driving me craaaaazy.”
“What was it? A photo or…?”
“I can’t remember! There’s so much material here and I’ve gone cross-eyed over the last few weeks trying to index it all. Thousands of entries. Tens of thousands to go. But I just know I saw… ugh, something. I just can’t remember what.”
Amy gives Triquet a hug. At first their body is rigid, intent on their project. But soon the warmth and human contact sinks deep. Then Triquet allows themself to be held. The two of them stand in silence, needing it. “Oh… thank you, Doctor Kubota.”
Amy steps away. “You’re welcome, Doctor Triquet. Any time.”
“People… who need people…” Triquet begins to sing, lacing their fingers in with Amy’s.
“Are the luckiest people…!” Amy joins in.
“In the world…!” They finish.
Amy laughs. “Hey now, you’re not old enough to know Barbara Streisand. That’s illegal.”
“No way. Yentl was my first crush.”
Amy sighs. “Young Babs is my kryptonite. What’s Up, Doc? Ooo baby. She’s amazing.” They share a laugh.
Triquet sags, wilting in the face of so many documents. They don’t know what to try next. This is hopeless. Finally someone actually needs an archaeologist to be of use on this crazy trip and Triquet is unable to provide.
“I didn’t even know you had such… neutral clothes.” Amy picks at the sleeve of Triquet’s khaki short-sleeve work shirt.
“It was for the Lisicans. I wanted to dress, well, I didn’t want our interaction to be about my fashion choices. I wanted it to be about that stupid display that none of them ever looked at. And the other reason is I have just loads of laundry to get done.” Triquet lifts a thick file they’ve already gone through five times and drops it again. “I swear, Amy, if I have to take another loss today I just think I might have to bring out the black veil and get maudlin.”
The words are lightly-spoken but their bitterness can’t be denied. Amy rests her head against Triquet’s shoulder. They are so much taller. Just a pale figure, standing strong and alone. Amy tilts her head back and smiles up at Triquet. “You know what, Triq? I really admire you.”
Triquet shakes off the compliment. “Wha-a-a-at? You admire that I can’t keep track of my own collections? How sweet.”
“No. I admire… who you are. The path you’ve taken in life. Sorry. Kind of out of the blue, I know. I just wanted to let you know. I know it’s not always easy. Actually, it’s never easy, is it?”
Triquet smiles gently, feeling a bit patronized. “Thank you, dear. That’s very nice, I guess. No, it isn’t ever easy, watching everyone pair off and have flings while I’m left with no one. No one but my chiffon and lace! You’re very sweet to think of me. Most people don’t. But what made you think of it? Do you… have someone like me in your life?”
“Do I…?” Amy’s brow wrinkles. “Uh, yeah. Me. I have me in my life. My whole life.”
Triquet doesn’t understand what all that pronoun wrangling is about. They just pat Amy’s hand and shake their head, a teensy mystified and bemused. “Yes. Well, we all do, don’t we?” Oh, well. It had been a nice gesture, but now Triquet is beginning to feel a bit like they’ve just been All Lives Matter-ed out of their identity. Of course everyone has their own memories of shame and ostracism. It’s just a bit different being non-binary.
But Amy won’t let it rest. “Oh my god, didn’t anybody tell you? I was sure Mandy would have told you.” She guffaws into her hands.
“Told me what, sweetie?” Triquet tries to force their attention back to the records. This conversation is getting too awkward. But they are just so tired. Maybe they should go crawl in bed.
Amy seizes Triquet’s hands and beams at them. “I was born in a male body, Triquet. I transitioned… well, half a lifetime ago now. I mean, I still transition every day. And I’ve had to deal with all of it. Lost a teaching position. Sued the university. Got hate mail. Still get hate mail. Chased out of a bathroom once, well, actually—”
“Oh, sweet child!” Triquet has no idea where the tears suddenly come from. They wrap Amy in a fierce and passionate embrace. Then they hold her out at arm’s length. “You are? Why didn’t anyone…?” But Triquet knows the answer to that before they finish asking it. Everyone handles their gender issues in their own way. Oh, but what they wouldn’t have given to know they had a real sister here this whole time! “Oh, Amy. You are the most beautiful goddess I’ve ever known!”
Amy laughs. “You said it again! Remember? When we met? You called me a goddess? And I said we were going to be best friends?”
“Ohhh it all makes sense now. You sweet sweet little…” Triquet is filled with love. Relief. Safety. A sense of belonging. They catch Amy up in another fierce hug and dot her face with kisses. “But wait. I don’t understand. Did Alonso…? I mean, when you were dating. He knew you were trans, right? He must have.”
“It was before, when I still identified as a gay man.”
“Wait. Alonso’s…? Aaaaaaaahhh! What is happening? I thought I knew who all you people were!” Triquet grips their head in their hands, reeling against the work table. “I’m always telling people not to fall victim to their own assumptions and I just—wow. I’m so sorry, Amy. I’m making more assumptions than anyone.”
“Not at all. I just wanted you to know. So you don’t have to feel so alone, Triquet. We—I mean none of us are gender-fluid—”
“Non-binary.”
“Non-binary. Right. Sorry. But the point is, we’re not the squares you think we are. Not in the least. In fact, go back a few decades the three of us were considered positively dangerous. We’re just old and tired now.”
Now Triquet thinks of a young dashing Alonso, a fierce Miriam, a brave Amy. Wow. The 80s just got a lot more interesting. These people must have been young gods. Triquet shakes their head in disbelief. “Did you come down here just to tell me that? I mean, why now? Do I look so forlorn?”
“Oh. Right. No, I’m looking for Jay. Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, he and Mandy went into the tunnels hours ago.”
“Well.” Amy steps back from Triquet with a sweet smile. “Guess I’ll go find them. Good luck with your haystack and needle and everything. But you should really get some sleep first.”
Triquet nods, the emotions draining from their limbs, leaving nothing but heavy-lidded exhaustion. But now it is a different exhaustion. Triquet feels swaddled up like a newborn. As Amy ducks through the next hatch, they call out, “Hey.” Amy stops and ducks her head back under with a querying look. “I admire you too. Goddess of the Hearth.”
Amy shakes her head and rolls her eyes in pleasure. “You always know just what to say!” She blows a kiss and returns to the dimly lit chamber ahead, still in search of Jay and Mandy. Into the last room and down the hole… The remains of Esquibel’s barricade have been neatly stacked against one wall. She sits on the edge of the metal panels and dangles her feet over. The joys of being short.
And then, at the bottom, where she has to wriggle through the long mud cave, she gains no advantage from her small stature. Because as well as being the shortest member of the team, she’s the thickest. So, if anything, she gets even more filthy than the others. The joys of being… spherical.
But Amy has long ago accepted that she will never be the girlish Liza Minelli in Cabaret of her dreams. Although she did all she could through college to learn those tap dance routines. Well. That was an unexpected encounter with Triquet, but so necessary! And now, by the light of her phone, she navigates to the left-hand tunnel and the sound of voices in the distance.
Amy pops out into the bottom of a chimney filled with a meter or more of wet ash and a slurry of cinders. Jay is crouched on a bit of solid ground above the mess on the far wall. Mandy sloshes through the stew, drenched and stained nearly black by her hours of exertions. “Hey!” Amy calls out.
Mandy screams in surprise and nearly loses her footing.
Jay gasps at Amy, then immediately starts laughing to expel the sudden shot of adrenaline. “Hey hey. What up, boss.”
“We had a date, young man.” Amy peers upward, to see the chimney arrow straight upward with a ragged hole of gray way high up at the very top. As she watches, a tiny cloud crosses the opening, proving to her what she sees. “Who-o-o-o-a…!” She looks down at them in wonder. “How high is that?”
“Thinking like 400 meters or more,” Jay shrugs. “Straight up.”
“You two are crazy!” Amy laughs at them. “That’s so high! What do you even think you can do in here?”
“Well. It’s kinda been a long process, I guess.” Jay scrubs his hair while Mandy continues wading in circles, feeling for something with her feet. “It took hours just to break the last of the big burnt pieces into little pieces so we could get in here. Then we, well, we made some silly guesses about what we were seeing until we figured it out. It’s much more clear now, with the daylight up there.”
“We sort of had to reverse-engineer… No! I’ve already been here! Ugh.” Mandy reverses course. “So I mean yeah, Jay and I argued, and I now admit that we might not be able to get to the top this way ourselves but we started thinking, well, how the fuck did the military ever get up and down this shaft?”
“Elevator?” Amy guesses. “Honey, you got to get out of that water, your teeth are chattering.”
“In a minute. Right. An elevator. Must have been. Ain’t nobody climbing a ladder for hundreds of meters. So if I can just find the old metal connections down here… Not here… Oh, my feet are so numb I’m not sure I’d even feel them if I did. Like pulleys we think? Or at least some kind of anchor points…”
“And Mandy won’t let it drain any more before she checks.” Jay gave up an hour ago. “Sorry. Forgot about the date, Amy. Or, I mean, I actually didn’t, I just didn’t know it was already dawn.”
“It’s like 8:30. You two have been down here for like ten hours.”
“F-fine.” Mandy has waded over toward Amy and now holds her trembling arms upward like a child asking to be picked up. “We can come back in an hour.”
“Ha.” Amy pulls the waifish girl from the water and drags her up the slope of the passage floor to a dry spot before letting go. “You can come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Mandy wails, but she doesn’t resist as Amy pulls her close and briskly rubs her back with a strong hand.
“Yes, Mandy. Tomorrow.” Amy shares a perplexed glance with Jay. What is wrong with Mandy? Her obsessive behavior is going to give her pneumonia.
Jay slides back into the slurry, wincing at the cold as he wades across. He is so done with freezing water. Even his bones are cold. “I know, but what was I gonna do, leave her?”
Ξ
Now that Plexity is mostly up and running, Flavia has taken a break from all the bug reports its users are generating to work a bit on the atmospheric modeling Katrina suggested they do for Mandy. First, they need to build a model of the lagoon and cliff faces in a virtual environment, then they should be able to start running processes.
It seemed like an impossible task at first. But Flavia discovered that the drone captures its flight path down to the closest meter. It also has collision-avoidance that doesn’t allow it to get closer than three meters to an object. So she and Katrina have spent all morning criss-crossing the lagoon, beach, creek, grove, and cliffs up to about a hundred meters, all at a three meter distance from said objects. Now their batteries are re-charging.
She has downloaded the flight data and created a plot of 1m2 resolution. It’s nearly a square kilometer so at a hundred meter height she has one hundred million data points. She can already feel her poor CPU crying. Katrina says she’ll build a beautiful visual representation of the wind current data but Flavia needs no such graphical user interface. She is happy with the columns of raw data. It is a nearly randomly-generated testbed, like a Minecraft seed. But it still follows organic principles of fractal erosion and Fibonacci propagation. The record in this dataset for vertical change between one square meter node and the next is on the cliffs, where there is a thirty-one meter differential. Amazing. They should also skin these tiles. Then she can assign friction values to each and perhaps, who knows, heat and humidity values? Well. Flavia will create the template and Mandy can hang whatever values she likes on them. Assuming they don’t melt their processors. But there will be shortcuts aplenty once it is up and running. Algorithms will automate nearly all of it once it is properly characterized. This will be fun! Of course it remains useless until they get proper readings for wind currents in the higher atmosphere but it is a good start.
Triquet emerges from a cell wearing their fanciest evening gown, dark blue satin adorned with costume jewels. They sashay around the bunker, dark red lipstick making their mouth a voluptuous heart. Without a word they approach each person and kiss them soundly on the cheek before discreetly re-applying the lipstick and moving on to the next. Soon, Flavia, Esquibel, and Maahjabeen are all kissed. And they are each given small gifts, chocolates wrapped with a tiny hand-written-and-decorated invitation.
Flavia cackles when Triquet kisses her. She needed someone to brighten her mood and here they are. She opens the invitation. It says, “Something special is in the air!” Bells and stars adorn the card. “Lunch outside at 1pm sharp, please.”
There is something about this day where everything feels settled. Flavia’s past life in Torino and Bergamo seems a faded dream now. This is her daily routine. She has adapted to squatting over the stinking trenches and casting handfuls of sand on her feces. Cold showers under the waterfall have become a thrilling treat and her little cell makes her imagine herself a nun in a convent, devoted in contemplation to the grand mysteries of life. And the beauty of the island can’t be denied. It is filling her with something deep and green, like the ancient Roman alabaster statues that grow moss on their lower fringes. She is ancient now like them, integrated into the world in ways she has never been, or ever wanted to be.
Katrina spins down the narrow hall between the cells, as pretty as a doll in Triquet’s borrowed finery. Her arms are above her head like she is some kind of calypso dancer and she is adorned with shiny bells and bands of gold. Her slender body is wrapped in tight layers of gold and silver lamé. A lion’s face has been artfully painted upon hers, with whiskers above hollows in her furred cheeks and a golden brow. “You are absolutely a vision!” Flavia catches her hand as she passes and kisses it.
Katrina purrs, “You think I don’t know?” She bumps her hip into Flavia’s shoulder then bends and kisses her other cheek.
“What is happening here? What is so special? Is it Carnaval?”
“No idea, love.” Katrina giggles. “But when Triquet tells you it’s open season on their wardrobe you don’t ask questions.” With a flourish, Katrina passes through the door to the camp outside.
Flavia hasn’t been on many field expeditions. In her experience, a career in mathematics has generally led to a lot of solitude with workstations and socially-inept conferences in sterile work spaces. But are life sciences expeditions all like this? Flavia turns to Maahjabeen. “Eh, sorellina, is today a holiday and I didn’t know?”
Maahjabeen is staring at her phone, hypnotized by the display options Plexity is offering her as she inputs tidal data from various points on the lagoon. Katrina has really outdone herself in offering ways to present, annotate, and track data. She is so impressed she doesn’t see Katrina’s costume and can’t tear her eyes from her screen. “Eh, Flavia…? What did you call me? What is a sorellina?”
“Ah. Little sister. No. Listen. I feel like I have been missing out. Are all biologist field trips like this such a party all the time?”
“What? No. Never.” Maahjabeen grimaces at the door and dismisses it all with a backward wave of her hand. “These people are weird. It is because of Alonso, I think. He is the first weird one. And he got Amy and Miriam to bring all their other weird people here. Then there is Katrina with her music and that drug addict Jay. These are not normal scientists. Not by any means.”
“Oh, good. I felt like I was taking the crazy pills. How do these people ever get any work done? I mean, not that I mind. I don’t always need it to be so formal…” And as if to prove her point, Katrina’s music blares from the camp, a lively Brazilian festival tune with a cheering chorus and lots of horns and drums.
At that moment, Jay and Mandy climb the stairs to the trap door and emerge from the rear of the bunker, shaking with cold and covered head to foot in ash and mud. But the music immediately grabs Jay and he shuffles stiffly forward. “What’s that I hear? The song of my peeps. All right. Hold on, DJ Bubblegum. On my way.”
His filthy appearance and joyous reaction are so preposterous that the initial shock Esquibel, Maahjabeen, and Flavia had upon seeing Jay and Mandy is released as gales of laughter. Jay waddles out the door, whooping like a cowboy. But Mandy is in more dire need. She collapses in Esquibel’s arms.
“Oh my god, Mands. You’re a mess. What have you done?”
“I’ve been…” Mandy releases a shuddering breath, “doing real work. Finally. After all these weeks. I’ve been working.”
“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Esquibel begins peeling clothes from Mandy’s soaked body.
Amy appears with two large towels, wiping her own clothes clean. “Wait. Where’s the boy?”
Flavia leans forward and peers out the door. “Dancing. Poorly.”
“What a loon. Oh, wow. What’s the big celebration here?”
Flavia shrugs. “Nobody knows but Triquet.”
Triquet, dancing a fair bit better than Jay, reappears in the door and hands out more invitations. They kiss Amy soundly on the cheek and crow, “This party is for Doctor Kubota! Goddess of the Hearth!” Then they hand Mandy an invitation but Esquibel fends off their ritual kiss until she can scrub Mandy’s cheek clean.
“There.”
Triquet leans in and kisses the clean cheek presented. “Oh, dear one. You’re freezing!” Triquet breathes into the hollow of Mandy’s neck and holds her icy hands as Esquibel scrubs her back.
Flavia realizes she will get no more work done this day. With a sigh she saves her work one last time and puts her laptop to sleep. Well, she is hungry anyway. And if there is drinking in the future she needs to have something in her empty belly first.
The day outside is eerily beautiful. The marine layer that nearly always covers the sky now only rests atop the island, like a dark gray hat that protects it from prying eyes. But the surrounding sea is luminous green with sunlight. And the wind is warm. Ahh. She could get used to a warm wind. It feels like such a luxury.
Katrina is up on her platform, swaying in time to her beats. Flavia is struck once again by the vision. This lively sprite… she deserves a better nickname than DJ Bubblegum. It occurs to Flavia that she must actually have one. She is a real DJ in Australia. She must have like a professional stage name. She crosses to Katrina and shouts up at her, “You are fabulous. What is your real name?”
Katrina isn’t sure she heard Flavia right so she pulls her headphones all the way off and laughs. “Repeat that?”
“We call you DJ Bubblegum. But what is your real DJ name?”
“Oh. Ha. I’ve had several. When I was fifteen me and my mates just took silly names. I was Seventy-heaven and I spun J-pop and house. Then when I was really into dark techno and gabber they called me Lamassu. But for the last few years I’ve been on this lush electro thing and I’m known as haiku triplet.”
“Haiku triplet? That’s what people call you?”
“It’s my slogan, a haiku with a little extra on the end:
First I will measure
the breadth of my life
and then I will cut to its depth.”
Flavia nods, appreciating the rule-breaking rhythmic triplet of the last line. Katrina hops back to her decks for a transition into a disco beat. Flavia turns away, recalling her mission to get food, but Jay grabs her by the hands and gets her dancing with him. She does all she can to avoid his mud and ash but within moments they mark her clothes. Ah well. Not that this top was clean anyway.
She finally disentangles herself and slips away to the kitchen tables, where she locates a clean plate and fork. Peeking under several pot lids rewards her with beans and rice. Topped with some of this horrible American parmesan and olive oil it isn’t half bad.
Flavia sits on the edge of Alonso’s platform beside him in his camp chair. She puts a hand on his shoulder, to ask if she can get him anything, but before words can issue from her open mouth he gasps. They all do. A troop of young Lisicans has issued from the door of the bunker. They are bare-chested, carrying nets and double-pronged fishing spears. They had been chattering but when the door opens they fall silent and goggle at Katrina’s music and the details of the camp.
“Uh oh. Wait. Hey.” Amy doesn’t know what to say. She stands and waves her hands ineffectually in both warning and welcome.
Katrina cuts the volume by half and grimaces in apology. She doesn’t know how bizarre that looks through her lion makeup. Jay, dancing with his eyes closed, raises his arms when the volume drops and bawls, “Aw, c’mon!” Then he opens his eyes and sees the villagers huddled by the door. “Ah. Oh. Hey, what’s up, my brothers and sisters? Fuck yeah. Little bit of dancing, little bit of fishing. This day’s looking up!” He claps his hands softly to the beat as he approaches the Lisicans, waddling on stiff legs. “Hey, gang. How they runnin’?”
The boldest of the Lisicans, a young woman they have seen before up in the village, steps into the camp. She speaks a long string of words to Jay, then points at him with the tip of her thumb, as if she is identifying him. “Ya-assa-ghay.”
Katrina mimics that last word into her mic, “Ya-assa-ghay,” looping the phrase over and over again in an echo. The Lisicans turn toward the sound in wonder as it skirls up a major scale and shatters like glass. “Okay. Sorry, that was a bit much. But check it out, peeps. Uh… ‘Lisica,’” she breathes, making it echo gently in a soothing refrain, fading like waves on the shore.
The villagers talk energetically to each other, recognizing the word. Katrina squeals with pleasure, jumping from her platform and bringing the microphone with her. She stands in front of the young woman with her friendliest smile. “Good morning.”
The young woman points at her own face with the tip of her thumb and says, “G̱óo-n-aa.”
“G̱óo-n-aa? That’s your name?” But the rising inflection of the question is obviously wrong. Katrina repeats it as a musician, not a linguist, getting the pace and intonation right. “G̱óo-n-aa.”
G̱óo-n-aa smiles when Katrina speaks her name into the mic.
“I’m Katrina. Uh. Bontiik. Listen up. G̱óo-n-aa…” She sings it, a long pretty croon that maintains the tonal profile but elongates the vowels. Katrina retreats to her platform where she records another loop and mixes the name into a violin arpeggio. G̱óo-n-aa cries out in a register that’s alien to the researchers. They can’t tell if it’s pleasure or outrage or terror. The other Lisicans start calling out G̱óo-n-aa as well, layering their voices in with the dance track. It is soon a discordant wreck, but everyone seems merry about it except for G̱óo-n-aa.
She steps through the camp, gaze turning from the laptop to the kitchen tables to the parachute hanging above. Then her eyes drop to the beach. She is alarmed to see the huge fallen redwood trunk, and calls out to the other villagers, making it clear that she hasn’t seen the beach since the tree fell a couple weeks before.
“Who wants to hear their name next?” Katrina asks into the mic.
Alonso holds up a hand. “Katrina. It’s too much.”
She smiles, abashed, knowing it’s true. With a sigh she steps back, shaking her head in rueful surrender. She just couldn’t switch gears fast enough and now she’s spooked them. Not that there was going to be a chance they’d meet in the middle today, not when her enthusiasm was already so high. “Good call, Alonso. I was about to offer them some LSD.”
“Katrina! How could you—?” Mandy sputters, outraged that she could ever consider such a thing.
“Joking. Just joking here.” Katrina holds up her hands. “Sorry. I like cracking jokes in inappropriate settings. I thought we’d already discovered that about me.”
The Lisicans, unburdened for a moment by the attention of the researchers, take the opportunity to slip out onto the beach. They climb the trunk and disappear on the far side, Jay not too far behind. The others only watch as he clambers stiffly over the log and calls out to the Lisicans before dropping out of view.
The others stand, watching, the forgotten music still pumping out a disco beat. Finally, Pradeep rouses himself. “So this lagoon is a regular fishing resource for them. We should have registered that when they came through last time. So that changes our approach here doesn’t it? This lagoon and beach isn’t any kind of pristine ecological environment, Alonso. It is being harvested and most likely cultivated by this, uh, this civilization here. This is a garden, not a wild forest. We can’t properly characterize the life on Lisica without…” He trails away, knowing Alonso doesn’t want to hear it.
But Alonso is a scientist, and this is where the data leads. Human presence and all that it implies. He sighs in acceptance. Regardless of the headaches it will cause, Lisicans fishing in the lagoon is what life on the island is actually about. Now he just wishes he’d thought to bring his friend Alastair Brock, a wonderful anthropologist. He would have known just what to do with these villagers. But none of the rest of them really do. “We will need to figure out how to handle these interactions. Like Esquibel said, we need some kind of protocol. We should work on developing that, team. Until then… Eh… Just keep the locals safe and treat them with respect. That is our first priority.”
“Yes, we should all be wearing masks, people.” Esquibel hurries to the kitchen tables and opens one of the plastic bins beneath, where she finds a box of unopened masks. She hands them out. “Ugh. And we should definitely be getting one to Jay.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if they really have any effect.” Miriam holds hers in her hands, not yet putting it on.
“Oh, Doctor Truitt,” Esquibel begins. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those. People who think masks don’t work aren’t—”
“Nay, I’m not an idiot. I know a properly-fitted medical-grade mask does its job. I’m just saying we’ve been afraid this whole time that we’d get these islanders sick. But so far our hygiene has been… not great, and we keep having contacts with them where they have long exposures to us when we’re not wearing masks, I mean, like that one time when the kids had Katrina for hours in the rain down here? And as far as we know none of them have gotten sick. Has anyone seen any signs of illness in the Lisicans since we’ve made contact?”
They all shake their heads no, sharing frowns.
“No no no. That is very bad news,” Pradeep stands and crosses his arms. “Because I can only think of a couple scenarios where that is possible and one of them isn’t possible at all, that they have some kind of super-universal immunity to all the diseases that we have stored in us.”
“Yes, there is no way that is true.” Esquibel is at a loss. “That would be a medical miracle that has never been seen yet it is impossible. But it has only been a couple weeks. Perhaps many of the diseases we have infected them with are still incubating?” Her voice trails off even as she says it, the likelihood of that being true of every strain of herpes and rhinovirus that they carry as a matter of course can’t be true either.
“So then what’s your other scenario, Pradeep?” Flavia demands. “The one that is making you so nervous?”
He blanches. “The other, likely, possibility we may have to consider here is that the Lisicans have enough regular contact with others in the modern world that they’ve already had their plagues and adaptations and gained enough immunity to global diseases. And if that is the case, then that means we may not be as alone here as we think we are…”
“Ehhh… No, I do not like that idea,” Esquibel exclaims. “Like who are we talking? Like—like spies?”
“Shouldn’t you be the one who knows?” Miriam shakes her head with worry. “But getting back to my original point, let me be clear: I’m not saying we should stop using masks. I’m just disturbed by the lack of, uh, medical issues that have been caused so far.”
“Who else could it be?” Flavia wonders. “There was that Chinese plane wing that Maahjabeen discovered.”
“Maybe the Japanese? How long have they been gone from that other bunker you discovered during the storm, Maahjabeen?”
“No no.” She dismisses the idea. “The Japanese have been gone since the end of the war. The Russians were in there after. Maybe it is them. Maybe there are still Russians who come in. Or maybe it’s more American military types. There is no reason to believe, well, anything they have told us about the history of the island. It has been nothing but surprises since we came here.”
“Or… somebody private…?” Katrina thinks back to the Jules Verne book she read when she was like twelve about an island in the Pacific and the evil genius who lived in the sea caves beneath. “Wait. Wasn’t that Captain Nemo? In the story?” But she can tell she’s lost them all. “Or maybe like a James Bond villain somewhere down there. We could’ve been drinking martinis this whole time.”
Esquibel shakes her head. “No, please no fantasy stories right now. It makes no sense. But Pradeep is correct. With the amount of contact we’ve had, we should have seen at least a common cold or two by now. But I don’t know how to actually plan for that. We just don’t have evidence for other, eh, modern people being here. Yet another security concern for us. I wish you would let me at least fortify the bunker. We must remain vigilant.”
The music stops. Katrina scurries off to the bunker, to return with her laptop and its list of Eyat phrases. Triquet sighs, sad. “Apparently so. Mother mercy it’s hard getting you people in a proper party mood and when I finally do, the locals show up and ruin all our fun. Colonial tourism just isn’t the glory it used to be.”
“What is this party anyway, Triquet? What is it about a lunch?” Alonso is glad the subject has been changed. He is never happy to have geopolitics and paranoia dominate his science mission.
“Oh. Well. Just a little celebration I wanted to have. Not that I did any cooking. You’re all on your own for that. But I just wanted to… I’ve been feeling… very alone here… But I had a marvelous little gabfest with Doctor Goddess Kubota here and found out I’m not quite the special little pony here that I thought I was.”
“What are they talking about, Amy?” Alonso turns to her, helpless with confusion.
“Triquet didn’t know you and I were gay lovers.”
“Ah! Yes. The good old days.” Alonso chuckles.
“Wait. What?” Maahjabeen looks from face to knowing face. Evidently she is the last one to not know this. Gay lovers? Is she not understanding some weird American slang? How could that even be true between Alonso and Amy? She is missing something here. She studies Pradeep’s face. He appears unsurprised. What is this, an inside joke? She will ask him when they are alone together.
“Bless. Amy’s old news is worth celebrating?” Miriam laughs. “What if I told you I once made out with Sinead O’Connor?”
Katrina’s head snaps up. “Fuck off. No way.”
Triquet squeals and throws themself into Miriam’s lap. “Details! Details! Was she still bald? What did she smell like?”
But Miriam is laughing too hard to answer.
“See. Here’s the problem.” Katrina slams her laptop closed and gestures at it as if it’s misbehaving. “There’s no Bontiik in this Eyat list. And no Ya-assa-ghay or Wetchie-ghuy. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re from a different language group entirely. And I just can’t wrap my head around some of this phrasing.” She opens her laptop again and reads out, “A ee- ⁓ a- (postpositional pronoun) her; him; to | to her/him (a non-main character of a narrative or event) | third person obviate postpositional • used in certain verbs where something is going towards the object (literally or figuratively).” She screws her face up in consternation. “I mean, there’s this whole weird way of looking at the world they have that is just so alien to us. Like their homeland is an object toward which the sea is directed. But the movement of the sea is the important part. Not the object, the homeland itself. Or it is so modified by activity and motion upon it that it becomes something else.”
This dense info-dump stuns them into silence. In the distance they can hear Jay whoop with joy but they still can’t see him.
Triquet dusts off their skirt and smirks at everyone. “Great party, no? I only throw the best. But anyway. Before I lose the spotlight completely here, I just wanted to share one other little thought about things. Amy, you know how I was down in the sub looking all night for an image I’d seen that reminded me of Katrina’s textile artifact?”
“Oh my god.” Amy sits up. “Did you find it?”
“I did. I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it because it was just a fragment of one of the torn-up photos. And I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing when I sorted them. But now I’ve put it back together.” Triquet crosses to their platform and lifts a manila folder. Opening it carefully, they show everyone the photo they have painstakingly re-assembled.
“What is that word?” Alonso squints at the letters written above the wall in the grainy black and white photo. It displays an altar with an ancient Eastern Orthodox cross, a battered lacquer reliquary box, a fishing spear made of bone, and a tapestry like the one Katrina photographed. “I think the letters are in Cyrillic.”
Triquet shows the photo to Katrina. Phonetically, she sounds out a word unknown to them all: “Ji-da-daa.”
Chapter 21 – Drift Away
May 20, 2024
Thanks for joining us on 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:
21 – Drift Away
Triquet stands before all of them. Most are seated in chairs beside the workstation but Katrina and Mandy cuddle on the concrete floor in a nest of sleeping bags and Amy, as ever, hurries back and forth from the kitchen bearing drinks one way and empty dishes the other. Triquet nods at Mandy. “Archaeology comes before Atmospheric Sciences so I guess I’ll start. Okay, so my latest project proposal is provisionally entitled ‘Abandoned Artifacts of a Postwar Listening Post,’ but that’s a little too Scientific American for my tastes. I need to bring some kind of sociocultural insight into the paper or I might as well be a day laborer. But interpretation remains, like, so far away. So far. I thought exhuming Maureen Dowerd would solve everything but it just raises more questions. Why did she die? Who killed her? There is absolutely zero mention of anything like that in the last two years of records on board. So it was a secret. But her grave wasn’t. It kind of points more toward foul play than an accident. Or at least a cover-up. I don’t know. What is everyone’s personal favorite scenario so far?”
“Oh, I know.” Jay sits up. “Check it out. Lisica isn’t the isolated listening post the Air Force wants you to think it is. It’s a special forces playground, man. They’ve been sending in the Japanese, the Russians, and now the Chinese? Right? That old bit of the plane we found? Who hasn’t forgotten about that? And that second bunker Maahjabeen found up the coast. Yeah? This place has been contested for ages. You see where I’m going with this?”
“Not really. I mean…” Triquet isn’t really into indulging in Tom Clancy fantasies like this. There just hadn’t been enough reason to, yet. “Okay. You are definitely onto something with all those other loose ends. I was thinking myself more locally, about the beach and the items in the sub, but it’s true. In the big picture we still haven’t investigated nearly any of this island. We have no idea. So what are you saying, Jay? The Russians killed Maureen? And then the Air Force couldn’t record her death because that was all too top secret? Maybe they took those records with them when they left?”
“I don’t like it. How does that account for the buried sub?” Pradeep’s question makes them all frown. “How does anything?”
“You know who knows?” Katrina’s voice has returned to full strength. She lounges against Mandy, sucking on an end of hair. “A very unpleasant, very old lady up in the village. She acted like I owed her something. Like I’d made her some promise before. But I think she was promised something she never got. Who knows what it was. I tried to work out some language with the kids, Triquet. But I’m making like the slowest progress. It’s impossible so far. Like they have a completely different frame of reference and we can’t figure out the way the other one looks at things. Yet.”
“What do you mean yet?” Flavia demands. “You have plans to see them again? Where?”
Katrina holds up a tentative hand. “Remember, Flavia. They hate Wetchie-ghuy as much as you do. The kids were terrified of him, when I mentioned his name.”
“But what does all that old bad blood have to do with Maureen Dowerd?” Triquet shakes their head in despair.
“They always kill the woman, though, don’t they.” Maahjabeen shakes her head, cynical. “An island full of one hundred men and one woman and she is the one who is dead.”
“You aren’t wrong. They had a picture of her, in the village,” Amy recollects.
“And she had blonde hair,” Alonso adds. It was the first thing he ever noticed about the one child he saw, the way their curly hair gleamed in the moonlight.
“Ohhhhh…” Jay and Katrina both groan, rocking back with surprise. “She was stepping out!” Jay crows.
“Fell in love with one of the Lisicans,” Katrina adds. “Had the wrong color baby. Esquibel. Could you tell, during the autopsy, if she’d ever had a child? Or maybe if she was still carrying?”
“No. I didn’t have time for a pelvic exam. We focused up above on the blunt force trauma. And then the rain came.”
“And the old woman up there,” Katrina says, “was like her long-lost daughter… Wow. No wonder she feels betrayed.”
“Or maybe,” Alonso pats the air with a hand. He needs to slow down this rampant speculation before the whole day is wasted. “Maureen Dowerd fell and hit her head and they never wrote it down because she wasn’t ever officially supposed to be here in the first place. Simple explanations, everyone. Let us keep to the simple ones and not turn this into a telenovela.”
“Then why are they blond?” Katrina asks.
Amy appears, holding a tray with diced-up energy bars and a defrosted berry sauce. “I don’t know, maybe from those Russians Jay thinks were crawling all over the island. Snacks?”
Flavia takes a handful. “Or maybe both. We are talking decades or maybe even centuries here. We know this island has been discovered at least like three times: once by the Lisicans, once by the Japanese, and once by the Americans. There is no reason to think it hasn’t been visited by even more.”
But Alonso has had enough. “Speculation, people. Please. Bring Doctor Triquet evidence if you have any. Otherwise, this is the kind of conversation I have with laymen who don’t understand what I can never get past a grant committee. You all know the feeling. Let’s be rigorous here. Doctor Triquet, is there anything you would like to add to your presentation before we move on?”
“No, thank you, Doctor Alonso. I seem to have stirred the pot quite enough.”
Alonso nods at Mandy. “Then Atmospheric Sciences.”
“Well, I can’t tell you much.” Mandy sits up and stretches like a cat. “But I can say that if I was betting on when the storm ends I’d say maybe this afternoon. The rain’s getting warmer, the wind has pivoted out to the west, and it’s just getting ragged. Can you feel it? The rhythm of the storm?”
Alonso nods. “That would be very good news indeed. What can you tell us of any work you may have done in regards to Plexity?”
“Yes, well,” Mandy rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “That’s where the fun comes in. So you’ve been saying, ‘Context, context, provide Plexity context!’ so now I’m like your Queen of context. Katrina’s been helping me plot out my readings as a base timeline and then with those recorded weather stats each day you get all the context you need. Place any organism or ecological subsystem on the timeline and you get the rain opening the flowers and releasing the pheromones and then the bees and the birds and… Well, I don’t know what happens then.” Mandy guffaws into her open hand. “The biologists can tell us. I just wish I could do that AlphaFold thing Flavia keeps talking about, instead of proteins it’d be atmospheric effects and it’d like let me tell you what the daily weather was in the past. That would be fire.”
“Not impossible,” Flavia declares. “In broad strokes, at least. And we do have a hundred years of climate data from like Hawaii and California, do we not? You get me the data and we could start to look at ways to extend our resolution back in time.”
Mandy makes a face. “Oh, there are already tons of recursion models and paleo-climate nerds who just go on and on about this, for sure. I’ll see if Alonso brought enough of the internet to see if any of their work is available. Super mathy stuff, no doubt. But!” Mandy holds up a finger. This is the important thing she needs said. “What I really need is data points, Alonso. I’m not able to do this properly with just that one DIY weather station at the top of the cliff and one down here. I need sensors all over the island. And in the water, too.”
This is the kind of progress he had expected from this meeting. Alonso nods emphatically. “That is a good idea. When the storm ends, perhaps you and Miss Charrad can find a way to add some of your instruments to her buoys.”
Maahjabeen shrugs. “I mean, the base station already records air temperature and windspeed. That is where I tether them to land. We could add, what, a barometer?”
Mandy blanches, unimpressed. “What I’d really like is if you could install some stations on these sea stacks. Really get unfiltered samples from the far horizon. Is that possible? Some day? Maybe?”
Maahjabeen nods. “Yes. It will just require a new arrangement. I have had time to think of what my next move is when the storm is over and I have realized we must paddle the kayaks into the sea cave and keep them down there. It is too difficult up here to fight the way out of the lagoon. The sea cave is a far better entrance into the water. Much better protected. So we will only push out through the lagoon once more and then paddle into the sea cave. Keep them there, then come back up through the tunnels. So whenever we need—”
“Have you forgotten,” Esquibel interposes, “that the tunnels are blocked and you can’t come back up?”
“And have you forgotten,” Katrina asks, “that I just spent half the night with a bunch of native kids who don’t care one bit about your bloody blocked tunnels, mate.”
Maahjabeen shrugs. “This is how I can do what Mandy asked. I could get a weather station on a kayak to a sea stack no problem from down there. Its outlet has splendid access to them. Very safe. I can do my work as intended if the boats are down there.”
“Katrina,” Esquibel says, “I will need you to tell me where that cave was last night the children showed you. You said it was one we don’t know.”
Triquet throws their hands into the air, exasperated now. “You just really aren’t getting the whole, ‘there’s far too many caves in these cliffs for us to block them all’ thing, are you? I get that it’s your training, but please, sister.”
“Alonso.” Esquibel turns away from Triquet, ignoring them. “I can assure you that Maureen Dowerd did not fall and hit her head. This was no accident.”
“Why not? In the dark, the roots tripped me and nearly killed me, didn’t they?”
“The roots did not choke you first. Her throat was so contused it almost looked like she wore a black necklace. But the choking did not kill her. The blow to the back of her head did. And the object that fractured her skull had one straight, even edge. Not even a sharp stone would leave a wound like that.”
The bunker goes quiet. Mandy’s right. The wind and rain are more ragged now, the storm’s remnants chasing the main mass south across the ocean.
“So what I’m saying,” Esquibel continues in a weary voice, “is that we have not only a kidnapper on this island but evidence of a murder. Old, yes, but it is within the bounds of possibility that the murderer is still alive and on this island. And you don’t want me to take any security precautions. What is wrong with you people?”
“Don’t listen to them, Esquibel!” Flavia waves derisively at the others. “I very much want you to close off all the tunnels. Blow them up with explosives! I don’t care.”
“Easy for you to say, Flavia,” Triquet tells her. “None of your work requires access to any of these areas. But ours does. Doctor Daine, you’re acting like this is the first time any of us have been in a dangerous situation. Honey, please. In Honduras my dig was in the middle of a guerrilla war, okay? Alonso knew he was going to a dangerous spot in Central Asia and ended up in a gulag. We know there are risks. We aren’t these pie-eyed innocents you think we are. It’s just we accept some risks in the pursuit of what we do. Science. Just like the medicine you’ve dedicated your life to. Science is why we’re here. The Lisicans are just another risk like getting injured or surviving the storm outside. Ask Maahjabeen which she thinks is more deadly. Getting lost in a storm or interacting with the natives?”
“I was very much hoping,” Alonso says in the awkward silence, “that we could keep this meeting on track. Miss Hsu, do you have any other meteorological observations to share with us? No? Then, moving on. Who is next? The biologists? Amy?”
“Well.” Amy stops moving for once. She puts the stack of dirty dishes on a table and cocks her head, collecting her thoughts. “We were making great headway there right before the storm hit. I think you’d have to agree, Pradeep, Jay, that we were really starting to hoover up a bunch of samples.”
Pradeep only nods. Jay beams and gives a thumbs up.
“Have you noticed,” Alonso asks, “any surprising trends? Broad patterns? Things you maybe did not expect?”
“I mean, that’s everything here.” Amy spreads her hands. “The redwoods aren’t supposed to be here. I discovered a new sub-order of Hymenoptera, ground wasps that may be unique to the island. Jay is like a kid on Christmas morning. He’d bring me new things every day before the storm hit. And I can’t speak for Pradeep any more. He’s in some deep territory.”
“Yes, Pradeep? What is this territory? How deep?”
“Quite deep indeed! About a meter underground, a mycelium signaling network in the grove that talks to the roots of the plants and enriches the soils. It’s been documented elsewhere, but the ones I’ve been looking at here underneath our feet are some of the most robust examples we have of large-scale, cross-kingdom fungal and plant biochemical communication networks. We may also have Animalia agents such as Ariolimax slugs and eriophyid mites that contribute to the—the release of chemical markers that create phase changes in the wider forest. The use of the Dyson reader just allows me to document these changes in realtime. So I will say it is an unalloyed success, Doctor Alonso. Bravo.”
“Yes!” Alonso hauls himself to his feet and points at Pradeep, who beams at him. “This is what I am talking about! This is the gold here! These are the kinds of papers that will show what Plexity is capable of! Publishing world, watch out!”
“Ehh, I don’t understand how you think you’re going to be able to publish any of this work.” Flavia’s face is bleak. “Nobody will ever be able to replicate our work, Alonso. Bespoke operating system. Classified technologies. How will anyone ever peer-review what we are doing? They can’t even visit the island yet or use the readers without signing one of those terrible NDAs. It will take decades. Admit it. We are really only doing this for ourselves.”
“Years, maybe,” Alonso allows. “Not decades. The Dyson reader is slated for release some day, I am sure. And Plexity will be as well. As soon as the patents and trademarks are properly filed. So yes. This will take some time. Many of our most astounding discoveries will have to wait. But long-term, this work is everything. It is the basis for an entirely new science.”
“It’s our retirement,” Miriam amends. She’s been quiet today, letting others fight Esquibel. Also, the LSD still hasn’t entirely left her system. She remains slightly disoriented and she has trouble following the denser details of the conversation. “So A, B, who’s next? Is it me? G? Geologist?”
Flavia points at Alonso. “D for data scientist. Or G for geneticist, which comes before geology. It is Alonso’s turn first.”
“Yes.” Alonso settles back. “The data science here, well, I think most of you have each heard from me how it affects your discipline in particular. In general, it is a large-scale effort, with powerful tools that will derive new findings from huge datasets. So now that we’ve finally got the collection pipeline set up—with apologies to Miss Hsu for the delay in adding her meteorological capabilities—for most of us now our work is entirely about collection. Like ninety percent of our energies should be dedicated to collecting, recording, and characterizing life now for the remainder of our time here. Don’t worry so much about categorization or theory-building at the moment. Let’s inhale this beach and lagoon. Fill our lungs. And I would like it to be an all-hands-on-deck effort. Doctor Daine, if your medical and security issues allow you extra time, please assist in any way that you think may help. Doctor Triquet, if you can provide a human, archaeological framework to our work, to please remind us that we always see everything through a flawed, human lens. That is really why you are here. Because there is no such thing as a direct connection to nature. It all comes through our imperfect senses and our poorly-formed biases and flawed perspectives to be considered by our fallible brains. So I find the work you are doing in the sub as important as any other. We need to know what this island does to people, no? And what they do to it. Also, if you are ever free, I am sure Miriam could use more help with the digging.”
Flavia holds up a hand. “I am sorry. But using me as some kind of untrained field helper is a terrible use of resources. I will stay here in the bunker, safe and sound, and keep making sure all the code works as intended so all our machines keep running as needed. I can promise you it is a full-time job. And the rest of my hours… I am tired. I need sleep.”
“Yes, I am not much use myself,” Alonso agrees. “But I am feeling better. Did you notice I can stand like a real person again without a cane? I mean, not all day, but…”
Esquibel lifts Mandy’s hand like the winner of a boxing match. “The magic hands of our physical therapist here!”
Mandy demurs. “Oh, I’ve hardly done anything yet.”
“Yet?” Alonso pales. “That means it will get harder?”
Mandy smiles wickedly at him. “Just you wait.”
Alonso nods. “Yes, I will wait, you sadist. I will wait until I have about seventeen glasses of wine in me.” The thought of it deflates him and he finds his chair again. “Now I am the one who must apologize for taking us off track. Eh. Where were we?”
“G for geology?” Amy asks.
“Yes. Miriam. Please.” Alonso rubs his eyes as his wife begins her presentation. He sighs, hoping the concussion’s headaches aren’t back. Just a moment’s rest…
Miriam stands, a bit wobbly, a philosophical air possessing her. “Allow me to take you back to the early days of planet Earth, when the skies were red and lava ran like rivers from volcanoes. It was a time of great change, when—”
“Oh, god,” Flavia exclaims. “Why does every geologist have to start their talk like this? Numbers. Tell me the numbers. How old?”
Miriam makes a face at Flavia. “Fine. Let us begin one hundred ninety million years ago with the formation of the Pacific Plate, which is the tectonic plate under nearly all of the Pacific Ocean. Now we know that hot spots punched through the mantle to create isolated archipelagos like the Hawaiian Islands, but the model I’ve created here allows for an ancient upthrust that was initially a single event. Just one island, aye? And at first it didn’t reach the surface. It was just a raised underwater platform of coral and shellfish, slowly depositing calcium over the igneous roots. So after several more eons lava found its way up this tube again and this column had a second upthrust in the relatively near geologic past, perhaps quite near, like within ten thousand years. This is when it broke the surface of the waves, capped by limestone.” Her thoughts are beginning to run more fluidly now, the foundations established. “Regarding Plexity… there are countless examples of interactions in the geology literature such as alkalines leaching into water and changing the composition of plant life. Now I can… Well… Uh… Depending on a number of factors outside my control…” She locks her neck so that she doesn’t turn to glare at Esquibel, “I may be able to conduct mineralogical examinations to provide some, eh, fruitful matrices upon which much of the life here flourishes.” Miriam looks at a fixed point over their heads on the back wall and says stiffly, “I will only say that the study of this island’s interior would be… a rather significant event in modern geology.”
Miriam sits back down. Her brain hasn’t stopped spinning yet. This entire dim rainy day-long conference has an air of unreality to it. She is just so tired. All she wants is to sleep this day away.
“Who is next?” Amy calls out. “Medicine? Or math first? And what are we calling Katrina?”
“My maths.” Flavia stands, more formal than the others, holding her laptop. “Alonso, I know I said the beta wouldn’t be ready for testing until next week but I lied. It will be tomorrow. After these last few days with the storm and nothing else to do I have made tremendous progress. Now, when we go live it won’t have any of your precious modules, this will just be the core program…”
“Of course. Of course,” Alonso leans forward and blows Flavia kisses. “But Flavia. You are a genius. I cannot believe you are able to deliver the beta. You did it in like twenty days. What a miracle.”
She holds up a hand. “Talk to me about miracles after we debug it. But no, like you said, Plexity is only a thousand lines of code. Not so tough. Just a tricky little puzzle. Most of the tough problems were already solved years ago in bioinformatics. I will just have to keep my cellular automata for some other fancy project instead.”
“Let us work on this as soon as the meeting ends, Flavia. I am very eager to see how you resolved a few of those pathways. Were you able to keep the richness of the data? You were talking about the analog signals of the Dyson readers…”
“Yes. More of my off-the-shelf modules. These inspired from soundwave design programs. You know how they have made such advances in getting digital bits to sound like waveforms. So I was able to repurpose some of those algorithms. But!” Flavia holds her finger straight up like a referee calling a foul. “If you want your precious program to keep running and growing and improving then you will keep me out of the fields and forests like a cartoon character chasing bugs with a bugnet!”
“Yes, Flavia.” Alonso laughs. “Anything for Plexity. I will feed you espresso and noodles myself all day long. Fantastic news. Thank you. Now who did we say was next? Medicine? Doctor?”
Esquibel shrugs. “Medically, we are doing well at the moment. No new injuries. And the storm is forcing us to stay still in here so those of us who were already injured have had time to heal. Our nutrition could be better. I worry about the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Phyto-nutrients. It might start to degrade our physical and mental performance. Just a bit. If we were staying longer I’d say we should plant a garden.”
Jay sits up. “Check this out. What if we start harvesting seaweed from the lagoon? Like as a regular operation? Super healthy. Bull kelp and nori. Lots of compounds we need. And there’s so much we’d hardly make a dent. Also, kelp is the fastest growing plant on the planet. A meter a day. So, it could really help…”
They all turn to Maahjabeen. She crosses her arms. “If I can gain access to the sea cave,” she bargains, “then I will not have time to properly manage the lagoon alone. So perhaps we could discuss some compromises.”
Jay pumps his fist. “Yes! I’d be happy to take over! I’ve been a fisheries manager in the past. You won’t be sorry—”
“But this is all dependent on regular access to the sea cave first.” Maahjabeen’s voice cuts right through Jay’s celebration. They all look to Esquibel.
She sighs and shakes her head. “Okay. How about this. We have planned entries and exits. We secure perimeters and scout our route. Nobody travels alone. We do a bit of self-defense training before anyone goes anywhere. With those basic precautions… I suppose we can learn to live on this dangerous island.”
“Miriam? Triquet? These terms are acceptable? Katrina?” Alonso studies each of their faces. They are all lost in thought.
Then Katrina links arms with the other two who had been mentioned. “Yeh, boss. We’re your underground team now. Maahjabeen, you need to get to the sea cave? Just let us know. The three of us will bring you. I want to talk to the Lisican kids? They talk to all three of us. Triquet wants time in the sub? We help. Miriam wants to dig in the tunnels? We dig!”
“That will slow us down like so much,” Triquet complains. “I’ll never have a full day of work again.”
But now Katrina has seized the initiative in the meeting. “Look. Real talk, Triq. We’re only getting in all these fights about the interior because it’s new and weird and scary and we don’t know what happens next. But I bet you, in a couple weeks at most, all this will just be a memory. And we’ll be like sharing feasts with the Lisicans and we’ll have full access to the whole island and fucking Wetchie-ghuy will be in Lisican jail or whatever. Just like a week or two at the most we need to be careful. Cautious. Right, Esquibel? Just until we can adjust to this new reality. Then we can optimize.”
Esquibel grudgingly nods. “Maybe, Katrina. If we are lucky.”
“Well, that’s what I’m saying, baby,” Katrina drawls, winking at Esquibel. “They call me Lady Luck for a reason.”
This elicits laughter from nearly everyone.
Katrina spreads her hands in a dramatic gesture. “Okay, freaks and geeks, you want an update? It’s my turn now. First, I got to say thanks for warming me back up this morning. That was so sweet the way you took care of me and I love you all and owe you all so much. Now, the next thing on my agenda is dance party. We got to celebrate the end of this storm, peeps. If it’s over in the next few hours, then we got to dance ourselves clean. So join me under the trees in the camp tonight and we’ll get us some soul in our souls if you know what I mean.”
“Oh my god, after last night I don’t need another party for like two years,” Flavia groans, tilting her head back. “Maahjabeen. Come on. Tell them. Last night was too much.”
“Yes, Maahjabeen, was it?” Katrina asks, a hair too eagerly. Pradeep burns holes in her, but Katrina giggles his stare away. “Was last night too much? Or was it just right?”
“Ehh…” Maahjabeen looks away. “It was all right. I do not mind the music so much any more. I guess I have grown used to it.”
“Feh.” Flavia flips a hand at her. “Traitor. But be serious now, Katrina. What about your work? What about Plexity?”
“Yeh, okay. So those readers are where I’ve been focusing my energies. Brilliant pieces of gear. Truly. But they’re still lacking a bit in the user experience side of things. I mean, you put a sample in, it flashes red or green, you carry on. The interesting results only emerge when you’re back at the lab putting it all together. But what if there was an app on your phone instead?”
“What?” Flavia is the most surprised one of them all. “What app? I haven’t heard of this. What are you talking about?”
“It just occurred to me, Flavia. We’ve talked about rigging external screens to the thing but why should we? Think about it. There’s no ports in the readers. They’re using encrypted bluetooth to speak to those USB dongles they gave us. So I can hack into the bluetooth and just run a basic app with some like simple data visualization and geotagging and such. You know. An app.”
“You’ve talked a bit about this before,” Pradeep says. “But I couldn’t really see it or how we could use it in tandem with the readers, out in the field where my hands are already full of trowels and collection bags and lights. But yes. Having an app on my phone that would allow me to instantly classify, say the various mycorrhizae… I’ve already been doing a mostly manual version of this and it would save me so much time.”
“Good! Then I’ll bash that together this afternoon. Aw, you look tired, Pradeep. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep. Well, you can take a nap in a bit and when you wake up it’ll be done! I won’t even make it very expensive, but of course there will be in-app purchases and micro-transactions for sure.”
Jay barks out a laugh, the only one who gets it. “Loot boxes yo.”
Katrina giggles. “I mean, a girl’s gotta monetize what she can in this life. Also, I have a thought about how we might use some of our maths, Flavia, to help Mandy develop better weather models. I’m thinking we might be able to emulate virtual weather stations for her at certain distances, using triangulated data and complexity theories. If nothing else, it’ll help refine her models locally.”
“Ai, it sounds like my work is gonna become about the weather,” Flavia observes, “both at the macro level and at the micro. Well. It is time I understood it better.”
“Oh my god that is so sweet,” Mandy says. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by virtual weather stations but, like, whatever help would be huge. I mean, how do you even make a virtual weather station? What’s the point?”
“It’s mostly predictive, particle physics on deterministic paths, acting like waves and currents, right? If we measure a gust of wind at one location, we can have a certain degree of confidence that it carries on over a predictable path. So if we have an accurate enough measurement of the land and sea in this general location, and then I think at minimum three actual real weather stations at wide intervals, we can create a virtual environment of the weather where you could sample it from any point—”
“Well, not any point, Katrina, dear,” Flavia amends. “Nobody brought a cryogenically-cooled supercomputer, did they? We cannot keep track of more than a few hundred data points on the hardware we have here. And we can effectively predict even fewer points. But I’m sure we can improve on Mandy’s data analysis using these techniques, yes.”
“That is wild.” Mandy shakes her head. She knows about virtual atmospheric environments from some of her computation classes in grad school, but she hadn’t thought how she might apply them in the real world. Katrina is utterly brilliant. She must think Mandy is a total dunce. She shakes her head in disbelief. “And that’s something you can just, like, whip up out of thin air?”
Katrina shrugs. “I’ll put it on the list. Also, I’ve been thinking of ways we can re-treat the wall panels in the sub to get away from that lifeless cold war aesthetic. It’s so gray! We need more warmth down there. I know that’s not strictly Plexity-related, but come on.”
“Eek,” Triquet hunches their shoulders. “This is blasphemy. Perhaps some detachable wall coverings or something but please don’t renovate my museum. It’s so… pure.”
Alonso tries to keep his focus on this conversation but their voices are starting to fade out. He is spent and he feels his age again. No. Older. Miriam and Amy remain far more vital than he is. He squeezes his gnarled hands, massaging out the pain. This meeting is interminable. They have spoken about too much and covered too many subjects. It has no clear direction any more. He doesn’t know how to wrap it up. “Okay. It is lunch time. We need to think of ways to… eh.” He waves a hand in surrender. “Enough thinking for a while. Anything else to bring up before we are done?”
Flavia lifts a shy hand. “Only that it is my birthday today, if anyone cares.”
They all cry out in celebration. The youngest ones surge against Flavia, squealing and hugging her. The others hang back, calling out and clapping. She is smothered with affection.
Katrina kisses Flavia again and again. Then she leans back and howls, “And you said no more parties! Ha! Tonight we rage!”
Finally Flavia emerges, hands upraised. “Basta! Basta!”
“How old, love?” Miriam asks. “It’s all about numbers, right?”
Flavia recognizes the jab and smiles. “Only one hundred ninety million years. No. Thirty-one. I am a… what is the word, spinster? now.”
Amy and Miriam laugh long and loud. To them, thirty-one is a whole generation ago. Esquibel links arms with Flavia. “Thirty-one gang rise up.”
Flavia is shocked. “We are the same age? No.”
Esquibel pulls away. “Why? What age did you think I was? Older or younger?”
Flavia can’t answer that. “Ehh. I guess I never thought of it like, like—I mean, Doctor Daine you are so accomplished so I guess I thought you were older—But of course that would be impossible because you look so many years younger than me…”
Esquibel’s laugh is free and easy, everyone’s favorite sound. “Ha! That is a lie! Don’t worry about offending me, Flavia! This face isn’t as fresh as it used to be! And that is fine! I’ve been trying to be an old lady my whole life! Let’s see… You are exactly… 89 days younger than me. There. More numbers for you.”
“That makes your birthday…” Flavia does a quick calculation, “Wait… Christmas Day?”
“The day after. Boxing Day.”
“The thirties are your best,” Miriam says. “Still so much energy but you aren’t a crazy person any more like you were in your teens and twenties. You’re going to survive. You’ve figured out life skills and how to live a daily life but everything is still so fresh and new.”
“Is it?” Flavia asks. “I have never had enough energy and I have never been a crazy person. I am a very normal person and my twenties were not like that. Also, nothing feels new.” She sighs, a melodramatic sound. “I guess I am also an old lady in training.”
“As am I,” Maahjabeen adds. “When I was growing up I hated being a little girl. Nobody listening to a word I’d say. I couldn’t wait to drive a car and shop for my own food. Independence!”
“Should I feel bad,” Katrina asks Mandy, “if I never wanted to grow up and move past the playdates and sleepover stage of life?”
“I’m with you,” Mandy says. “For me, childhood was playing all day in the waves of the north shore. I mean… I never wanted it to end. Getting old scares me.”
Miriam joins them. “Me too! To the young at heart!” Triquet also links arms with them. Jay does too.
They laughingly divide themselves into two groups. Only Katrina registers Maahjabeen pulling Pradeep into the embrace of the old souls. He wears his nervous, brittle smile as they surround him.
“Amy!” Flavia calls out. “You can’t stay in the middle! Alonso! You have to choose! Old or young, eh?”
But Amy is torn. “I can’t decide. Some of me feels so young and some so old. I’m a perfectly-balanced mix, I guess.”
“Ah, coward!” Flavia laughs at her. They all wait for Alonso.
He shakes his head, bemused. “I don’t know… how to fit myself into this idea. I feel… I guess… I think when I was young I was really young, even younger and more innocent than anyone here. My entire identity forever was to be this boy wonder. Remember, Amy? All our professors telling me to grow up? But then… I never did. I am like a sapling who got broken before he ever became a tree. And that makes me feel old. But I feel like… I feel like I never spent any time being an actual man, you know?”
Miriam squeezes his hand. Pradeep offers, “Isn’t that what you are doing right now? Leading this project? Being the patron of this big family? Here’s a manhood to be proud of right here, Alonso.”
“Salud. Thank you, my friend. Those are kind words…” But Alonso’s final sentence trails off. He is spent.
“Aww. Our big patron has had a big day now and it looks like he needs a big nap.” Amy steps into a cell and retrieves a blanket. “Let’s put him right back in the cell where we slept. The cots are still set up. Whose cell is this, anyway? Who did we evict?”
“Maahjabeen.” Katrina pounces on these opportunities like a cat with a mouse. Her eyes dart playfully over to where Maahjabeen stands with Pradeep. They step slightly away from each other.
“Oh?” Amy shakes her head. “So sorry to push you out. Where’d you end up sleeping last night?”
Maahjabeen just waves her hand. “I was fine. I just found a spot of my own.”
But Amy hugs her in apology. “You poor dear! You must have suffered so!”
It takes all of Katrina’s willpower not to say something.
Maahjabeen breaks away to approach Alonso. She places a hand on his arm. “Doctor, can I offer you a hand?”
“Yes… Miss Charrad…” Alonso allows her and a few others to haul him to his feet. Now his old injuries are throbbing again. Ah, well. He glimpsed health and happiness these last few days. It will be a long road back, but he is most certainly on that road now.
Mandy registers his grimace. When they get him settled, she will kneel at his bedside and put her hands on his feet again. This is a really good time for Tui Na, although she doesn’t like the damp chill in the air. Never conducive to pliable muscles and tendons. Scar tissue seems to shrink in such conditions. But there will still be things she can do to get things flowing again in his extremities.
Also, she’s still got a bit of the old MDMA afterglow coursing through her. Touching things still seems like the solution to all the world’s problems. In fact, wouldn’t deep intimate contact also be the solution to Alonso’s problems? Isn’t that how healing works?Mandy doesn’t know. But she knows who would. Katrina. “Hey… I was just thinking about working on Alonso, you know. But like, both inside and out. Not just the scars in his feet but like the scars in his brain. Those are probably even worse and we should be trying to do something about them too.”
Katrina turns surprisingly sober eyes to Mandy and she belatedly remembers Katrina’s brother Pavel. “Yeh. I think about it all the time. You know, torture is something that happens once and then it like repeats itself again and again in the victim whenever it can. And they can’t stop it. Sometimes I wish I could just cut it straight out of their heads. The trauma circuit. Just snip. Gone.”
“Yeah. Well, I was wondering if you knew at all about MDMA for PTSD. War veterans and rape victims and everyone.”
Katrina throws her hands helplessly into the air. “Of course. I’m like an expert on guided trips! I know drugs. I tried to get Pavel to do it but he wouldn’t. Not with his little sister. And he just doesn’t believe in it. So… I mean, if someone doesn’t believe an experience like that can help them then it won’t.”
“But Alonso…”
Katrina gapes at Mandy, then laughs. “Oh my god. You think? I guess I… I mean, maybe it was just really age-ist of me but I honestly didn’t think to ask him. It was such a fight with Pavel I just didn’t… Huh. Silly me. Hey, Alonso…”
Katrina and Mandy follow the others into Maahjabeen’s cell.
“Yes?” Alonso grunts from the cot. Amy is tucking a sleeping bag under his chin while Maahjabeen discreetly gathers her things for a bit of a move to another cell.
“Let’s talk drugs, mate.” Katrina sits beside Alonso on the side of the cot while Mandy kneels at his feet. She takes them into her hands and he groans.
“Drugs. Sure. I always loved drugs.”
Katrina claps. “Good man. Have you ever had Molly?”
Alonso opens his eyes to frown at Katrina. Now what kind of crazy plan is she talking about? “I never touched her.”
Miriam laughs, leaning in. “No, Zo. Molly is MDMA. What we called ecstasy back in the day. Alonso here was a major consumer of dance party drugs in the late 80s. We all were.”
“Eh. Ecstasy. Yes. I would take some and start kissing everyone. They always called me the Painted Whore.”
“Remember when you sang Happy Birthday Mr. President to Professor Bynum and grinded on his lap for his birthday?”
“Oh, god,” Alonso laughs. “I almost lost my department chair.” He sobers, thinking of the implications of their words. “But, what? You want me to take some now? I’m telling you, I just need some sleep. Then I’ll be better.”
“Not now, but maybe when you’re ready. There’s been a huge amount of documentation about how MDMA can dissociate you from traumatic emotions. You can look at them from a distance and build a new relationship with your interior reality.” Katrina knows. She’s seen it happen again and again. She’s felt it herself.
But now Alonso understands what’s expected of him. “You want me to revisit all the torture? But this time on drugs? Ah. Ladies. I can’t think of something I want to do less.”
“All I’m saying,” Katrina holds up both hands, “is that there is a significant amount of healing it can offer. Like Mandy’s hands. It only hurts at first and then it gets better. And the hurt with Molly is only the anxiety you feel beforehand. When it gets started there’s no pain at all.”
“Huh.” Now Alonso is closed off. He studies them all with heavy-lidded eyes. “That is what you think.”
Katrina pats his leg. “Well. Like I said, not now. When you’re ready, maybe. I got to see some of this Painted Whore in action, if nothing else.”
Alonso giggles, then allows himself to drift away.
Chapter 17 – It Means Betrayal
April 22, 2024
Thanks for joining us on 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:
17 – It Means Betrayal
Triquet wants a second mug of tea but they’re damned if they’ll let Amy get it for them. So it takes a bit of effort to escape her eagle eye. With a nod to be excused from the meeting, Triquet backs themself away from the long tables before heading to the trenches, the mug carefully hidden in a crook of their arm. Last night’s brief storm littered the sand with branches and clusters of moss, stippling the sand with the imprint of rain. After returning from the trenches they circle around camp into the bunker and to the kettle with hot water. On their return, Amy watches with narrowed eyes.
“Oh.” Triquet plays dumb. “Anyone else need anything? Tea?”
“I’ll take some.” Mandy holds up her mug. With a wink to Amy, Triquet turns right back around and fetches it. “Coming right up! Don’t forget to tip your servers!”
Once they all settle, there is a lull in the discussion that can be neatly filled with Triquet’s concerns. “I’d like to talk more about the Lisicans.” Alonso gives an encouraging nod. “As the only one here with any anthropological training at all, I guess it’s my role to remind people that we should be in as little contact with the native population as possible.”
“Yes,” Miriam leans forward in her camp chair, her half-eaten dinner of lentils and rice perched precariously on her knee, “let’s design an actual policy here, people. If we don’t, these poor blighters won’t know what hit them when the modern world beats down their door. They have no idea what meeting us means. And this whole island will be open for business come summer? Shit idea, that. We know what it always means, don’t we? Disease, loss of culture, loss of traditions…”
Mandy nods, “Loss of language, loss of identity…”
Esquibel adds, “Alcohol and drug dependency will skyrocket, as will suicides. All kinds of mental issues with displaced populations. We have it very bad in Kenya. I have seen so many cases.”
Triquet settles back. “Well good. I was afraid I was going to have to dissuade some pollyanna here who thinks it’s their mission all of a sudden to muck up the Lisicans’ lives and save them.”
“No, not save them…” Amy shrugs, thinking on how charming and suddenly intimate her interactions with the little people have been. “But I don’t see any harm in safe interactions for the purpose of further study. These have to be important moments, right? First contact before we pollute their minds? So I’ve been recording as much of it as I can. I started transcribing the words I can recognize into a spreadsheet. Very few meanings attached to any of them yet. Except for good morning or hello, which is—!”
They all repeat after her in lifeless rote, “Bontiik!” and chuck each other gently under the chin. She’s already taught them all.
“Oh.” Amy’s enthusiasm drops. “Yeah. Well, that’s all I got so far. I’m actually a terrible linguist. Can anyone else…?”
“That sounds like something Katrina might do.” Alonso nods to her at the end of the table, playing a game on her phone. “Eh?”
Feeling their eyes on her, Katrina looks up. “Oh no! What did I miss? Did someone say something sexy? Uh… That’s not the only thing I’d like to lick, mate.”
They all laugh. Mandy says, “No, you silly. Do you have any background in languages or linguistics?”
“Well…” Katrina sits up. “I’m not supposed to talk about it but I did contract with the Singaporean Air Defense when I was really young. And they thought they could use some of the algorithms I’d written to find like who might be a possible threat in the Malay border population using keywords and statistical modeling.”
“Wait. When you were really young?” This is too much for Jay.
“Yeh. Fifteen.” The table erupts in disbelief but Katrina holds up a hand. “They didn’t know I was fifteen. Come on. I forged the security documents. To them I was just another online contractor. But it was too icky. I didn’t like the way they were using my tools to suppress minorities so I started feeding them false data to make them think there were spies in their own ministries. It was a blast.”
“I’m not sure that was an answer,” Alonso rumbles, “but it was a hell of a story. So do you think you might be the best of us to study Lisican speech?”
Katrina shrugs. “I do speak five languages.”
She looks around the table. Alonso says four. Amy and Miriam say two. Esquibel and Maahjabeen say three. Pradeep says three. Triquet adds, “Just Russian and Spanish really. But I don’t know if Klingon counts.” Jay offers, “Donde esta el taco?”
Katrina rolls her eyes. “Fucking Americans, although Aussies are just as bad. Right. So if that’s the metric then I guess it’s me. Okay. When it’s time to rock a funky joint, I’m on point.”
Alonso looks at Jay for help. “Is that a yes?”
“Come on, dude. House of Pain was from the nineties. That was your music. Definitely a reference you should get.”
“My music? The nineties for me was Andrea Bocelli.”
“Am I the only one,” Mandy suddenly stands, frowning, “who thinks we shouldn’t be talking to the Lisicans at all? Like maybe even boarding up the tunnels and waiting for real professionals? Like, aren’t there some primitive tribes who refuse contact with the modern world? And I think they’re better off.”
“Well, we could,” Amy agrees, “if they didn’t have Flavia. That cow is very much already out of the barn. They’re getting all kinds of contact now whether we like it or not and whatever policy or plans we may have had are just…” She shrugs. “Look. I think we should engage as much as needed to gain trust so that we can get Flavia back. Then we can re-visit this subject afterwards. But she needs to be rescued. We can’t forget what’s important here.”
“We absolutely need her return.” Miriam shakes her head in frustration. “But we just can’t ever seem to get past the point in the conversation where they acknowledge they’ve seen her, inform us that she’s gone further inland, but then that’s it! They have nothing more to say. Nobody can lead us there. They can’t even tell us where she is exactly. It’s as if they literally stop understanding what we ask, no matter how we act it out.”
“And we have to remember too,” Triquet is relieved that nobody expects them to take on this anthropological burden. They’re already busy enough with their artifacts. “This isn’t first contact. They showed you an old photo of Maureen Dowerd. Remember Lieutenant DeVry and his fraternizing? I mean it’s been sixty years but I wonder where they got all those blond curls?”
Maahjabeen lifts her hands in helpless curiosity. “And where did they even come from in the first place? Hawai’i? On open boats? Impossible. The currents all lead away from this place. That’s what they told Alonso. So how did anyone ever find this place by boat?”
“You know what I find even more interesting?” Pradeep looks around the table. “Where did the fox come from? And when? Silver foxes are pretty rare on the West Coast.”
“Lisica.” Katrina stands. “Fox Island. I guess we can’t just say the foxes were always here. But nothing was always here. Not even the trees. So, we need answers, do we? Righty-ho. Let’s see if the natives recognize any combination of French, Russian, and Malay. But first… has anyone found a way to get through the tunnels to them without crawling through mud?”
Jay shakes his head no. “Not yet. But it’s a nice mud. Like good for your pores.”
“Yeh, I’ll just pop out on the other side with a mud facial and cucumber slices on my eyes. They’ll think I’m some kind of salad monster.” Katrina giggles. “Well, no time like the present. Come on, Amy. You can introduce me to all your new friends.”
Ξ
“Devonian, I’m pretty sure.” Miriam stares at the cliff face. “But there’s only one way to prove it, ladies.” She hands one canvas bag to Esquibel and another to Maahjabeen. “Stromatoporoid fossils. Let’s see if we can find any. Tiny sea creatures that went extinct after the Hangenberg Event.”
Esquibel only stares at her. “I know nothing about whatever it is you’re talking about. I’m very sorry.”
“Geology, right?” Maahjabeen guesses. “I think I’ve heard of the Devonian. But what is a Hangenberg Event?”
“The Hangenberg Event.” Miriam pushes through the ferns and brush to find that low tunnel she and Amy and Triquet had exited. Esquibel and Maahjabeen haven’t crawled through the brush yet and they hang back.
Esquibel peers suspiciously into the tunnel mouth. “Ehh. Can you guarantee there are no venomous snakes or spiders in there, Doctor Truitt?”
Miriam laughs. “I can guarantee nothing. I only know rocks. But so far you haven’t had to treat any bites, have you?”
“True. But you did not grow up nor practice medicine in East Africa, where there are a million things trying to kill you. It is still very difficult for me to accept that I can safely be outside here, just crashing about in the bushes.”
“Well, I appreciate that you were both able to come. We should all see the tunnels and so far this is the easiest way to get to them. Now, since you asked, the Hangenberg Event was the second largest mass extinction event of the age, second only to the Late Devonian Mass Extinction, which occurred only thirteen million years before. Watch this branch here. It has thorns.”
“How long ago was this?” Maahjabeen follows Esquibel, her shoulders and back still aching but doing much better. Coming along seemed like a good idea and nothing has changed that so far. She needs to do the physical work and she admires Miriam.
“Oh, this was all Panthalassa back then, a gigantic sea that covered nearly the entire Northern hemisphere. But that doesn’t help answer our geologic mysteries, does it? Almost all of the sea floor that existed back then has subducted under newer, more modern tectonic plates. Ah, right. When? Well, the Devonian spanned about 419 to 359 million years ago.”
“Aha.” The numbers mean nothing to Esquibel. She wears two layers of nitrile gloves and the first have already been torn on a hidden leaf. “When my grandma was young.”
“Oh, I dream of popping into a time machine!” Miriam hurries forward, lost in her vision. “To see the planet when it was all lava or all water! To see its bones first developing! It would be like witnessing its birth. All of our births. And the Devonian has nothing on the Ordovician. Absolutely my favorite. Aha. There’s the exit up ahead. I can see the light through the branches. Uh, where is everyone?” Miriam realizes she hurried ahead. She turns back. “Come on, you slugs! I’m twice your age, you know!”
Esquibel appears, replying with a brave smile and nod. She holds up one hand, now that its glove is shredded and useless. But her slow pace is holding up both her and Maahjabeen behind her. She finds a short fat stick she can use as a staff to ward away the twigs. Soon, they’ve re-joined Miriam. She leads them into the light.
“Here. If I remember correctly, we’ll have access to an actual living weathered stone cliff face.”
“But you didn’t finish your story.” Maahjabeen is frustrated to have fallen behind. She pulls herself up beside Miriam. “How did the Hangenberg Event kill everything?”
“Honestly, we don’t know. There’s several theories. Glacial melt could have led to climate change and eutrophic dead zones. Algae blooms. One of the more interesting theories is that fossils dated to the event show chromosomal and genetic damage, meaning there may have been a massive radiation spike. Gamma rays from a nearby supernova or something. Just wiped out nearly all of the life on Earth in a flash. But those studies remain inconclusive.”
She stands, where the tunnel opens up to a tiny trail around the outcrop, to disappear in the folds of vegetation on the far side. “Yes, here!” Miriam croons, reaching up, to brush the dirt clinging to the cliff face. “Here we can dig to it!”
But the bedrock is less accessible than she hoped. Damn organics covering everything on this bloody island! She needs to work in a desert again after this and Japan. She was fighting with plants and soils and clays everywhere she turned there too. Maddening. With a sigh she drops to the ground to see if any loose stones have fallen. Yes. Here’s a shoebox-sized oblong covered in moss. She scrapes the green rind off it. Then she splashes the bare stone with water and rubs it clean. “Yes, a dolomite or I’m a baboon. Look at this.”
Maahjabeen kneels beside Miriam. Esquibel is still too happy to be standing to get right back down on her knees. “What is it?”
“A type of limestone. It’s utterly preposterous to find it out here in the middle of the North Pacific like this but nothing about this island makes sense from a geologic standpoint so who’s to say? I only know dolomite when I see it and, once I give it a proper microcrystal assay under some better lights I can tell you even more than that. You see the green flecks? Feldspar. So this is a metamorphic suspension, igneous-based. But if we can find any of those micro-fossils…” Miriam finds a rock that fits in the palm of her hand. She turns it over and scrapes away the clay with a pick. “And this one is pure sandstone. Well here’s some fossils. But they aren’t ancient enough to tell the secret of the island.” Miriam holds out the rock to Esquibel, who looks at both sides.
“I can confirm it is a rock.”
“Please put it in your sack for me. I’m hoping we can fill up all three before we get back.”
“Just any rock?” Maahjabeen takes it from Esquibel to study the fossils. She frowns and puts the rock in her sack.
“Any rock. I’ve really only found other sandstone examples near, you guessed it, the sand. And I’ve been dying to get some actual samples from the cliff. Here. I think if I brace myself on the far wall I can chimney up into position.”
“Don’t!” Esquibel snares the older woman’s sleeve. “That is not a solid surface, Miriam.”
“You’re right. Fine. I’ll scrape the face clean first.”
Maahjabeen stares at Esquibel, trying to silently communicate how quickly she wants this project to end. But Esquibel doesn’t get the message. “It is true. I am no fun at parties.”
Maahjabeen shakes her head in bemused frustration at Esquibel. “You are so serious all the time. Except when you are with Mandy. If I ever invite you to a party I must make sure she comes too.”
Esquibel can’t tell if that’s an insult. She’s pretty sure it isn’t a compliment. It seems like a bit of a betrayal, having Maahjabeen of all people questioning her reserve. “It’s not like I don’t know how to have fun. It’s just this is a professional environment and I am an active-duty Lieutenant Commander, you know.”
“Well, I was a crossing guard for my primary school but I can still laugh every once in a while.” Maahjabeen says it in a teasing voice but she feels sorry for Esquibel, trapped all day every day in her clean room with no reason to leave. It must be hard to be a doctor. All you see are the results of worst-case scenarios. You never see the million successes, only the few bloody failures. It must frighten you and tilt your perception of every reality.
But Miriam and Esquibel share a surprised glance. Maahjabeen is lecturing anyone on social graces? Hilarious. Miriam can only hope it means the rigid Tunisian woman is finally starting to relax and let them in.
Esquibel puts a hand on Maahjabeen’s shoulder and gives her a mocking acknowledgement. “Thank you for your service.”
“Oh, look!” Miriam gasps, tearing aside a stand of ferns. “Glories and treasures! A whole pile of aggregates and silicates! Dear lord, will wonders never cease?”
Ξ
Under Miriam’s direction, Maahjabeen deposits her full canvas sack beneath the long tables at camp and finally retreats to her tiny cell in the bunker for some privacy. The ladies treated her well and she feels they are all proper friends now, but still. Maahjabeen is just not a people person. She is an ocean person.
So then what is she doing sitting in this concrete box, listening to Mandy tap tap tap on her keyboard? Maahjabeen stands. This isn’t where she belongs. She pulls on her sandals that she has just taken off and grabs her hat and sunglasses. It is now 1300 hours. She has not yet studied Amy’s wave phenomenon at this hour. So far it has only formed long enough for her to transit at low tides below 1.2. And it should be low tide again in another ninety minutes.
She strides through camp with purpose, sparing only a thought of pity for Alonso trapped in his camp chair and a kind of general contempt for everyone else who could be out on the water with her, but instead choose to waste their lives on the small and mean demands of land. The continents are nothing, just slivers of bare rock, basically glorified reefs with bits of life crawling atop. The rest is endless ocean. Panthalassa. Maahjabeen loves that new word. Imagine how it used to be! Sea monsters and volcanoes bubbling up from below. And just endless quiet, endless open skies and rocking liquid silence. She could spend a hundred million years in her boat and never see another soul. Oh, Lord. Why did you put me in this place and time? Chasing vanishing corners of isolation in a crowded world. I am tired of all the people.
With restless exuberance she climbs over the fallen redwood for the first time. Only when she stands atop it can she see the lagoon, and from a higher vantage than she’s used to having. The wave sets really are much clearer from up here. There’s an underwater snag or prominence that tugs on the break to the left. That’s where Amy’s barrier seastack is and its secret path out.
But Maahjabeen remains unconvinced. It cannot be so easy to escape this lagoon. If it had been so easy then why did it take so long to find? She knows that is logically not how such things work but her fatalist view of the world inspires a relentless cynical internal monologue.
At least that’s what I tell myself. La. There is smoke coming from the lean-to Pradeep made for her. Ah! That drug addict! She marches down the length of the trunk to the lean-to and climbs down beside it. “Yala!” She leans in. “This is not your place, Jay. Why do you always think you can just—?” But Jay is not alone.
Pradeep currently has a joint to his lips. He squawks in surprise and pulls it away, shoving it into the sand.
Jay calls out in dismay, “Aw, man… Don’t waste it.”
Maahjabeen is so surprised to see Pradeep in this context that she can only shake her head and drop her gaze. “I mean… Of course you are welcome to… I mean, you built the structure, Pradeep.”
“No. You’re right. I am sorry. I did not think how this would look to you. I only thought of relaxing and watching the waves.”
Until he says it aloud he doesn’t realize how much he desires Maahjabeen’s approval. The anxiety that grips him now is of the claustrophobic social variety, where his thoughtless mistake will humiliate him in front of everyone. “I’ll go.”
But she pushes him back in, growing more irritated. “No no. What kind of hostess would I be if I let you leave like that? Sit down. And smoke your drugs if you must. It is not like the smoke will stay. Not with this crosswind.” The social obligations allow her an easy way out. She’ll just get them situated and then watch the waves from the trunk above. Somewhere upwind.
“Not really sure I can any more.” Pradeep sits again, sheepish and awkward. “I was just trying to relax and now I’m not—”
Maahjabeen throws her hands up. “Oh, please. I do not really care. It’s not like the smoke makes you murderous or lecherous or anything. It just makes you stupid. And I don’t understand why anyone would want to be stupid. So here.” She kneels in the cold sand and excavates the joint, handing it to Jay.
He makes anxious maternal noises as he tries to dry the joint out with the lighter, held at a distance. Finally satisfied, he lights it and puffs it back to life. “Ahh. That’s my baby. Close call.”
Maahjabeen sits back on her heels. “Maybe you can explain it to me. Because I do not understand. Islam requires us to keep our bodies and minds clean. I cannot comprehend why you would ever want to make it dirty.”
“Well, the thing is…” Jay takes another puff and cocks his head at a philosophical angle.
Maahjabeen plucks the joint from his fingers and hands it to Pradeep. “No. I want to hear from Pradeep. I respect his opinion.”
“Well, Jesus. Okay, then.” Jay falls back with an explosive laugh. “Guess I know where I stand.”
Pradeep gingerly takes a hit. He needed this. But he doesn’t think it will help his case with Maahjabeen if she hears that. He knows how she feels. He spent the first year working with Jay in solid disapproval of his stoner ways. But certain cannabis strains relieve Pradeep’s anxiety as well as any pharmaceutical. He shrugs. “I just see it as part of the continuum of life. We are merely animals who have evolved over millions of years, and we have always interacted with our environment, other animals and…” he holds up the burning joint, “…plants. We eat them, we smoke them, we rub them on our bodies and shove them up our bums. And it’s all for the effects. It’s the same as eating a papaya for the digestive enzymes. There’s nothing inherently wrong in the practice.”
“The Prophet said every intoxicant is unlawful.”
“But is that like how all your people feel?” Jay just can’t keep his mouth shut. “Because I once knew this Iranian dude in San Jose. Super chill. He said weed was basically fine in his culture because they didn’t think of it as a drug, just as like a relaxant and appetite stimulant. He said the Middle East basically invented herb.”
“It is true.” Pradeep takes another puff. “Sri Lanka can claim to have cultivated the first cannabis, as the Afghans also do with their Kush. It may have arisen in multiple places. Why did the Prophet hate intoxicants?”
“The people of the city had fallen into vice and could no longer hear the words of Allah. You do not need this. That is what he was trying to tell us. You do not need to burn a plant to find peace. Just listen to the word of God and you will…” Maahjabeen stops, interrupted by an unsettling silence.
Pradeep leans in. “What is it?”
“Hush.” Maahjabeen ducks under the door and steps outside. Why is it so quiet? The wind has died and the gray clouds are suspended above like curtains. The waves. The waves stopped. For one moment she watches in excited discovery as the water pulls back from the mouth of the lagoon, briefly revealing a shallow shelf of stone.
Then she realizes what that means.
“Up. Go. Run.” Her voice is hoarse. The words can’t come out of her mouth fast enough. “Yala. Up! Tsunami!”
That magic word gets the boys tumbling out the door and onto the sand. Maahjabeen is already scrambling up the side of the trunk as the water rushes in, overtopping the barrier rocks on the far side of the lagoon and filling it in an instant. It floods the beach. The water rises and rises…
From atop the trunk, the three of them cling to each other. With a fatalist dread they watch the sea green water rush toward them. It moves faster than they can run. But it is already slowing. By the time the swirling water reaches the trunk it is hardly a meter high. It foams at their feet for a long angry moment before pulling away, taking one of the planks of Maahjabeen’s shelter with it.
Then it is gone.
Maahjabeen shakes herself like a cat. That was close. The utterly terrifying power of the ocean and her own insignificance chop at her roots with stunning force. She’s as weak as this fallen tree.
Jay hops back down, laughing at their brush with death. “That was boss. Look, Prad. It took all the sand from under the trunk.”
“Ah! The poor shelter.” Pradeep scrambles back down to see if he can save it. Now that the sand floor has been pulled away, the twine-secured planks sag sadly against the trunk.
“But check out beneath. So much more is exposed. And see. There’s a big burl down here. This old boy may have been dealing with more infections than we knew.”
The thought that a viral infection might have felled this giant instead of a lightning bolt pleases Pradeep. He leaves the shelter aside. Not much he can do here without more twine. The tsunami, if that’s what it was, still rattles him. He doesn’t know how Jay can be so nonchalant. They were nearly swept away. He looks up at Maahjabeen with a frown. “Was that a true tsunami?”
“I am not sure yet. But sometimes there can be more than one. You should both stay up here with me until the sea settles.”
The wave sets have been obliterated by the tsunami and the green sea is a roiling, rocking mess webbed with foam. Why, she could paddle through that cauldron no problem to reach the open sea. Everything cancels everything else out. But for how long? She laughs like a madwoman, thinking how dangerous it would be.
Pradeep and Jay clamber back up onto the log beside her. They all watch the sea in silence as it slowly reorders itself.
From out of seemingly nowhere, Jay pulls out the still-lit joint and sucks on it, then passes it to Pradeep.
Maahjabeen has trouble categorizing what she just witnessed. “So there are rogue waves and there are tsunamis and they both have very different causes…”
But she isn’t teaching Pradeep and Jay anything they don’t already know. “Yeah, that was either a distant earthquake in the sea bed or, well…” Jay shrugs, “nobody’s really quite sure what causes rogue waves yet, do they?”
“The nonlinear Schrödinger equation!” Maahjabeen and Pradeep recite at the same time. Then they laugh. She continues. “Ah, you know about that? It is one of my favorite theories.”
“Fascinating bit of nonlinear modeling,” Pradeep agrees. “One wave might be able to steal the energy not only of the waves that follow, building itself up, but even from the one before it too.”
“Wait. How?” Jay can’t fathom how a wave racing forward could somehow pull energy from the wave in front of it. That’s why it was in front, wasn’t it? Because the one behind couldn’t reach it. The whole idea contradicts every surfer instinct he possesses.
“Basically little feedback loops can build solitons—” Pradeep begins before Maahjabeen excitedly takes over.
“Hyperbolic secant envelope solitons! They’re self-reinforcing wave packets that can maintain their coherence like halfway across the ocean. But the equations are so…” She throws up her hands. It is the physics of waves where she found the limits of her maths brain. “Like as long as a novel and tangled like a knot.”
“Ohh I love the classical field equations.” Pradeep takes his final hit. His thoughts are starting to collapse and settle within him. “They are so comforting.”
Maahjabeen hasn’t been able to talk about this with anyone in too long. “Alonso told me the island is a computer. Well the ocean is one too, just infinitely more complex. A squid eats a fish off the coast of Indonesia and it butterfly effects the motion into waves and currents that we still feel here. I once heard, though, that in order to model every interaction in the ocean, the computer would have to be the size of the ocean. So, to me, we should just study the ocean itself and learn what its outputs look like instead of building supercomputers to create simplistic artificial versions of it. Like, I don’t think we ever pay enough attention to laminar flow in the water surface layers myself. It is a very powerful interaction.”
“Wind knocking down my waves,” Jay agrees. “Bums me out.”
“But let’s say it was a tsunami…” Maahjabeen estimates where it likely originated, perhaps the Asian east coast. The Pacific and its ring of fire, all the hotspots that encircle the ocean, triggering volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and seaquakes that reshape the world. “Where would you say that is?”
“Uh, Taiwan?” Pradeep sights along her arm. “But I hope not. I mean I hope everyone is okay.”
“Inshallah,” Maahjabeen intones, then drops her arm. “Well. The sea is returning to normal. I will say it is most likely a rogue wave. Tsunamis are faster and more like a general flood.”
Jay is skeptical. “That didn’t feel like a flood to you? There was no crest to that wave. No impact. Rogue wave, they might have heard the crunch back in camp. But nobody heard nothing.”
“Is everybody here an oceanic researcher?” Maahjabeen doesn’t mean for it to come out as petulant as it does, but she is tired of always being corrected. “Rogue waves can also be silent. That is why they can be called sleeper waves.”
“Fair point.” For as combative as Jay is, he gives up an argument as quickly as he starts one. “And I’m not disputing your expertise. Just a lifelong beach bum here. Yeah, they say when my family first had a ranch in Carmel, my like great-great aunt was sunbathing on the beach and got pulled out and drowned by a sleeper wave. They full-on terrify me.”
“So I guess no one will ever be spending the night in the shelter.” Pradeep sighs. “Oh, well. It was a good idea while it lasted.”
“No. Please rebuild it.” Maahjabeen touches Pradeep’s elbow and doesn’t register how electric he considers the contact. “We will be grateful to have it. It is for watching the ocean, yes?”
Pradeep gives her a tight smile. He is glad she appreciates her bungalow. But he really wishes she would lay those long graceful fingers on someone or something else.
Ξ
“This is the last climb here.” Amy calls down to Katrina, waiting for her to make her way past the tree that the Lisicans have placed inside the tunnel, a pale spotlight of indirect daylight illuminating the roughly vertical shaft. These villagers are like these sturdy little industrial shrews of humanity. Amy is reminded of the ancient troglodytes of the limestone caves of France. They lived in them over thousands of years. Some people are just born to dig.
“This is wild.” Katrina finally pulls herself up to Amy, eyes wide. “You should know, for your peace of mind, I’ve long ago stopped trying to think of where the best place to have a rave down here is. I just got really into the idea at first. Rave in a cave. Rave in a cave. It was like a refrain. But there’s just no way. I had no idea how immense it is down here. Just really incredible.”
“Rave in a cave.” Amy snorts. “Not sure how the Lisicans would feel about that.”
“Well. They’re all invited. Have you heard their music yet?”
“No music.” Amy’s breath is coming in short gasps as she climbs toward the last level bit of passage that leads to the village. “But their whole language is like music. You’ll see. Very sing-song.”
They approach the tunnel’s end to see the same man waiting for them as before, the silver fox curled at his feet.
Amy affixes a mask over her mouth and approaches. “Bontiik!” She chucks him under the chin. He does the same to her. The fox sniffs at her toes. Amy spreads her arms inclusively wide and turns to Katrina, who also puts a mask in place. “My friend! Katrina!”
The little man looks at her with shining dark eyes. He has reddish curls, not blond at all, and a calm authoritative air. He gestures with an open palm and says something long and involved in a mush of vowels and soft consonants. At least that’s how it sounds to Katrina. But then a single word sticks out. Ostati. It’s a form of ‘remain’ in Slavic languages. She repeats it aloud. “Ostati? Stay? Remain? Who stays?” Then, slow and simplified, she asks, “Da li govorite russki? Do you speak Russian?”
The man holds up a finger. “Da. Da li.” And then he continues, his words once again disintegrating into mush. But Amy was right. It is a pleasing sing-song mush. She just can’t make any sense of it.
“Are those Slavic words or is it just a coincidence?”
“That a fox is named Lisica in both languages? Impossible. Has to be. I wonder how he always knows we’re coming.” Amy nods and smiles again and again, making notes on her phone.
“What’s his name? Do we know?”
“Feel free to try.” Amy makes an exasperated gesture. She’s all out of ideas how to advance their dialogue.
Katrina pats herself on the chest. “Katrina. Katrina Oksana. Drago mi je… Um… Kako… kako se zoves?” She laughs. “Listen to me. I sound like a Serb. Come on, dude. What’s your name?”
He responds pleasantly, at length, his voice rising and falling. The more she hears of Lisican the more the words start to separate into units. But there’s all kinds of sub-vocalized consonants and glottal stops and fricatives Katrina doesn’t recognize. This will take some study, for sure. She takes out her own phone and starts recording everything he says.
After his speech he slides a dry slender hand across Katrina’s palm and grips it. He leads her from the tunnel.
The fox still sniffs at Amy’s feet. Finally satisfied, it turns and scampers after its human. “Woot. Passed the test.” She steps out and away from the cliff, to find that the village is framed in vibrant color, wreathed in flowers. “Wait. This wasn’t… Wow. Where’d all these flowers come from? This must be the spring bloom. How lovely!” Amy points at the clusters of orange and violet and pink and white flowers in clusters. “Yarrow and angelica and this is chamomile. You could make tea!” She has an audience now, four children and three adults hanging on each word. She holds up a chamomile flower and one of the little girls plucks it from its stem and pops it into her mouth.
The natives look healthy. Apart from their diminutive stature, their dark skin is clear, their bellies are not swollen. The elders don’t appear to be afflicted too badly by arthritis. Their teeth are strong. Amy wonders what their life expectancy is.
The man who greeted them now leads Katrina from house to house, speaking to someone within at each stop. Katrina nods her head and waves, but she can’t see inside the gloom. It feels like a formal tradition so she keeps her mouth shut and follows his lead.
At one house, older and more dilapidated than the others, the man puts a hand across Katrina’s chest to keep her at a distance. He doesn’t seem to realize or care that his forearm is pressed against her breast. He ducks low to send his voice through the low dark doorway and calls out in an aggressive, nearly hostile voice.
An ancient crone peers out, one eye filled with white cataracts. Her hair is white and nearly gone, the curls limp against her dark skull. She lifts a bony hand and speaks. It almost sounds like a curse. This is not a happy moment. He has evidently roused her from a long isolation.
The man takes the crone’s hand and pulls her forward to where Katrina waits. Tottering forward, complaining, her one good eye stares at the ground. The man joins her hand to Katrina’s and she finally looks up, blinking at the young Australian woman’s face.
For a long, trembling moment, everyone in the village watches the crone cup Katrina’s chin. Then with a ragged cry she pushes her away. “Guh-byyye.” She flaps a hand dismissively at Katrina and everyone starts talking all at once, begging the old woman to reconsider. But she only repeats the farewell again and again. “Guh-byyye. Guh-byyye.”
“Well.” Katrina tries not to feel rejected. This has nothing to do with her. But still, somehow, it stings. “They know some English, it seems. Uhh.” She waves at the old woman, who stares at her with hot tears and clenched, shaking fists. “Good-bye?”
The woman groans and spins away. The others all talk at once, some pulling at Katrina to ask further questions and others pulling at those to dissuade them. The man with the fox holds up his hands and defends his decision to bring her here.
Amy watches from the edge of the village, hands full of flowers. “Everything okay over there, Katrina?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
A woman emerges from her house bearing an abalone shell filled with smaller tusk shells and feathers. She carefully picks out three shells and a glossy black feather and presses them into Katrina’s hand. By her urging, Katrina offers the gift to the crone.
But the crone will not engage with Katrina. She is back at the door of her house, squatting to go back inside. She still mutters, “Guh-byyye… Guh-byyye…” with unmistakeable grief.
“She won’t take them.” Katrina hands the treasures back to the woman. “Nice try, though. Why doesn’t she like me?”
Now all the women and children and men speak, their words falling over each other, mild arguments springing up on each side. They pull on each other sharply to interrupt, although none of the heated words sound like insults.
Katrina records it all. “Uh… What do you think, Amy? Feel like we’ve out-stayed our welcome. Don’t you?”
“Maybe so.” Amy turns to the closest adults, a woman and man wearing tight headbands of twisted leaf and not much else. “But I still want to find out more about my friend Flavia. Flavia.”
They all fall silent to see if they can divine the meaning of her words. The children try to imitate her. “Flobby-uhh.”
Amy points at the tunnel mouth. “She was the first one out. Remember? And then you said she went up this way?” Amy retraces the path through the village to a tiny overgrown footpath on the far side. She points up it. “Flavia. Remember?”
Now the village falls silent again. Katrina marvels at the change and how quickly it came. Their faces go from animated and wide open to closed and staring at the ground. But this isn’t the same reaction they had with the crone. This is something… darker.
“I don’t like the looks on their faces much, to be honest.” Katrina sidles up to Amy. She doesn’t feel threatened. It’s only that these people are so alien. And she is so far from home. “What did they do to Flavia? Don’t tell me we found cannibals.”
“Uh, that’s racist.” But Amy’s words are hollow. Her mind is calculating, trying to tell if she’d get in any trouble by taking this trail. She holds up her hands, beseeching the villagers. “We have to find her. If she went this way we have to go. She’s our friend.”
Amy parts the fern fronds and takes her first step up the trail. She looks back. A wordless seething resentment sweeps through the villagers. One young boy lifts a hand and yells at her, “jidadaa!” but his mother pulls his arm down and shields him from Amy.
“Okay. Fine. I don’t understand why but I’ll turn back if you don’t want me to go.” Amy lifts her hands in surrender to re-enter the village. But the adults of the village hurry forward, holding their hands up, muttering the words Wetchie-ghuy and koox̱. She is not welcome any more. Amy steps back, not wanting to be pushed. “Oh. Ehh. Shoot. I appear to have made some terrible mistake. Sorry. So sorry. I promise I won’t do it again.”
But still they won’t let her back into the village. The children withdraw into the houses and even the man with the fox won’t look at her. He only holds his hands up to push her out if she tries to come back in.
“Oh no! Katrina! Help! What have I done?”
“You went up the wrong path, I guess. The koox̱ path. Maybe… Maybe you need some of those gifts like the shells and the feathers. Maybe they’ll forgive you then.”
“Fine. Yeah. And how am I supposed to get them from here? I wasn’t doing anything wrong! We need to find Flavia.” Amy can’t believe she lost their love so quickly. Things had been going so well! “Come on, guys! It isn’t like I have a choice!”
“We should get you out of there.” Katrina starts scouting the heavily-wooded edges of the village. “Do you think you can like skirt around back to the tunnel mouth? Get you back to camp and try this again someday?”
“I’m trying…” But Amy can tell the thickets are impassable. The only way back is through the village. “But they won’t let me. I think I might have to go up this trail and look for Flavia myself, Katrina. I mean, it’s the only way left.”
Katrina has no words. Amy is right, but there’s too much inexplicable significance here. These decisions are clearly too weighty to be blundered into. “Okay. Gah. I hate it but you’re right, I guess. Well, good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” Amy turns to leave. But another voice from further up the koox̱ trail stops her.
“Don’t say good-bye.” It is Flavia. “To them it means betrayal.”
Chapter 16 – Again And Again
April 15, 2024
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:
Book II – Empirical Emotions
16 – Again And Again
Pradeep leads Mandy and Katrina on an expedition to the west edge of Tenure Grove. It’s gotten less attention so far because it is nothing but impenetrable undergrowth. But they’re dressed for it. Katrina wears pinstripe coveralls. Pradeep carries his collection pack. Mandy is in her red storm parka zipped up to her chin.
“You’re going to get holes in it,” Pradeep tells Mandy when they pause at the edge of the brush. “And it will be so hot.”
“Nothing gets through this fabric.” Mandy proudly presents a sleeve the thickness of canvas. “A Norwegian fish boat pilot I met swears by it. He said even their flensing knives can’t go through it. Cost like my entire budget that month. But yeah. It doesn’t breathe at all. So if things get too active in there I’ll definitely start boiling.”
Pradeep turns his attention to the closest shrub. “So this must be a variant of boxwood or myrtle.” He snares a limb, finger-thick, growing nearly straight out of the ground and towering over his head. Its little serrated diamond leaves hang in yellow-green clusters. “Some have berries. But this doesn’t. I think it’s probably an Oregon Boxwood. Here is a quite stout rhododendron. And these are… five-finger ferns? My fern game is sadly very weak.” He pushes through their fronds to a larger, different type. “And this is, ah, Western sword fern? Look at the size of it. I’ve never seen one so big. Now…” Pradeep kneels and pulls its broad fronds aside. “Yes, down here. Look.”
Katrina and Mandy kneel beside him. There is a dark understory beneath the green thicket above, its floor littered with gray and black dead leaves, stretching ahead into impassable stands of bare limbs. Mandy shares an uncertain look with Katrina, who shrugs.
Pradeep is too excited to contain himself. With one of his brilliant smiles and a flourish he declares, “Thank you for coming… to the fantastical world of spiders!”
Mandy pulls away with a little shriek.
Katrina makes a face. “Ah. Aha. Spiders? That’s what we’re doing? I thought you were going to show us something, ehh…”
“Like the twister in the nook!” Mandy crosses her arms. “Dude, you can’t just say who wants to see something and oh yeah bring your burliest clothes, then not tell us it’s to go mess with spiders.”
The enthusiasm fades from Pradeep’s face. “I always forget how people feel about spiders. Uh. That’s fine. You don’t need to stay.”
They’re both touched by how crestfallen he is. Katrina puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, mate. I’m not frightened of them. It’s just… not what I was expecting.”
With a sigh, Mandy puts the hood of her parka up and cinches it. “You know we still love you, Pradeep. You’re just a weirdo. So what’s the plan? Are we collecting spiders? Do you have gloves?”
“Well, if you don’t want to, maybe you could just stand back and document them with pictures? Unless you aren’t comfortable…”
“No, that’s fine. I can take pictures. Do they bite? I mean, I know spiders bite. But are any here like super aggressive?”
“Well. I’ll do all the collecting. So if any of them attack they will jump at me.” Pradeep crawls in first.
“Well. Glad I wore coveralls.” Katrina kneels and follows. “Are we looking for all spiders? Just the ones on the ground? Or just—? Yeh, there’s a web right there. But I don’t see a spider. Aren’t those called weavers? Such a pretty name.”
“Ah, yes, that’s the classic Araneid bullseye pattern. Fresh too. She is probably hiding on a twig at one of the anchor points. Excuse me. Let me just get in there if I could…”
Katrina retreats from her spot and Pradeep pushes past her, their bodies bumping and scraping in the tight passage. Katrina laughs. “Oo baby. Whatever happened to personal space? Remember that one time I like touched your arm and you freaked? I guess I should have just had a spider to show you.”
Pradeep is intent on the web, unaware that what he presses so roughly against is soft flesh. “Eh? Oh. Yes, I suppose I can get kind of focused when I’m working. Sorry.”
“No worries. Like at all, big boy.” Katrina’s juices are stirring. She hasn’t gone this long without a good shag since she was like fifteen. And now his arm is grazing her nipple and he doesn’t even realize it. She blows Pradeep a kiss and he finally tunes in to her flirtations enough to blush.
Mandy crouches at the edge of the understory, peering in. “And how is this dark hollow filled with spiders and god knows what else not giving you anxiety, Pradeep? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. There’s all kinds of nightmare fuel in here. Like, what more do you need?”
“Most of my anxieties…” Pradeep speaks absently, shining his phone’s light on the web so he can follow its strands to the spider’s likely hideout, “…are social ones. It’s people who get to me. Flora and fauna aren’t… mean or selfish. They just are.”
“See, I have trouble with unknowns too.” Mandy takes a picture of Pradeep and Katrina with her phone, the flash a brilliant spike in the dark. They both grimace, blinded. “That’s how I got into the study of weather. It’s like the least predictable thing in the whole world and I needed to feel like I understood it so that, well… I mean, really it’s because I’m a control freak.”
“No…” Katrina’s voice drips with disbelief. “Say it ain’t so.”
“What?” Mandy grows self-conscious. “You noticed? Aw shoot. I thought I’d been pretty good out here so far. I haven’t strangled Amy over her placement of the kitchen yet or needed to re-arrange the lab tables five times a day. I’ve been behaving.”
“Esquibel revealed what’s behind that sweet little smile of yours. Told me all about your mastermind plans for world domination.”
“She did? What did she say?” Now Mandy is intrigued. It’s no secret that both she and Esquibel find Katrina hot. Is her lover talking Mandy down so she can make moves on Katrina herself? No, Esquibel would never do that. Would she?
“It was when we thought we’d lost Maahjabeen and she was worried about how upset you were. Esquibel said you were wasting away because you couldn’t control the situation.”
“Hmf.” Mandy doesn’t know how she feels about that. Part of her is touched by the concern. But isn’t this an invasion of privacy? Or perhaps they’re all just becoming better friends, learning more about each other. “Well, you should know Esquibel can be very controlling too. And she always kicks me when we sleep.”
Pradeep and Katrina laugh. He says, “I’ve never met a doctor who isn’t controlling. Absolute career prerequisite, I’m sure.”
“So, I’ll just like be your scout I guess.” Katrina crouches deeper and scuttles ahead, pushing the bare limbs aside. “Oh, here’s a good one! And look at the size of the lad! What a color!”
Pradeep squawks in excitement and pushes right up against Katrina. The spider sitting in the center of is web is bright orange and as big as his littlest fingernail. Its black and white legs hook its web, patiently waiting for a meal. Several former winged insects are bundled within the strands, their juices sucked dry. “That is a lovely Argiope. But the web has no stabilimentum. Curious. Most related species do. This might be a new one.” He smiles at Katrina, only a handspan away. “We can name it after you. You discovered it. Would you prefer Argiope katrina or oksana?”
Mandy has crawled in, up against their feet. She chirps, “I think it has to be Argiope dj bubblegum.”
They all laugh.
Katrina’s attraction to Pradeep is rising to new levels. He is the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. And he is just the sweetest and oddest man. Nobody has ever offered to name a species after her before. She finds herself falling into his dark brown eyes. If she knew it wouldn’t make him squeal like a schoolgirl she’d kiss him. Katrina takes a deep breath before she gets carried away. Oh, well. This randy girl will just have to satisfy herself with Pradeep’s firm body pressed up against hers.
But then in a sudden surprise, Mandy climbs over both of them, flattening them in the dead leaf litter. They collapse with a laugh as she demands, “I want to see!” She rests her chin on Pradeep’s shoulder, her leg over Katrina’s rump. “Oh my god, it’s so pretty!”
“Well, this is the craziest threesome I’ve ever been in.” Katrina turns and kisses Mandy instead, a brief sweet peck. When she pulls back she can tell from the look in Mandy’s eyes the girl is hungry for more. Well well. This is news to Katrina. She’s not sure if that’s a good idea. The last thing she needs is to get Esquibel angry with her. She’s the bloody doctor.
“Can I please get up?” Pradeep’s muffled voice breaks the spell.
Katrina giggles and turns away, wiping the corner of her mouth.
Mandy stares at her with a gimlet smile. More than anything, she is flattered that this gorgeous blonde Australian girl likes her enough to kiss her. All the rest of it can wait.
Katrina scoots forward down a forking opening, scouting further. Mandy rolls off Pradeep into the empty space and takes out her phone. She takes a picture of the spider named after Katrina and makes it a favorite by pressing on the heart.
“Oh, wow!” Katrina calls out. She’s advanced a few meters and they can’t see her. “Check this out!”
Pradeep army crawls toward the sound of Katrina’s voice…
The natives. It must have been the people of Lisica who’d cleared out this hidden chamber under the boxwood, an oval roughly five meters in diameter. Several large trunks act as columns, but the ground has been swept clear of litter and a couple flat redwood bark planks serve as furniture along the far wall.
Pradeep and Mandy crawl in, exclaiming in surprise one after the other. “This is incredible.” Mandy and Katrina can stand but he remains kneeling. “How many hidden spots do they have here?”
“And we thought for two whole weeks we were the only people on Lisica.” Katrina chuckles at the fallacy.
“Yeah. Well.” Mandy sits on one of the planks, unable to focus on this shadowed hollow. She still feels the glow of Katrina’s kiss. But she’s unsure what made the girl pull away and now she’s starting to get worried that she might never get a taste of those sweet lips again. Mandy sighs. “This place is full of mysteries.”
Ξ
Jay swings in his hammock, staring at the intershot network of branches above and the gray clouds. He could be anywhere on the whole west coast from the Sur up to Oregon’s Gold Coast. They couldn’t have found a biome that feels more to him like home.
And now he can’t move. God damn it. Being injured sucks balls. He pushed it way too hard yesterday, and now even though his bladder is nearly bursting the last thing he wants to do is fall out of the snug hammock and crawl his dumb ass down to the jakes.
“Man, that is a hell of a maze down there.” The sound of his voice in the quiet gets him going. With a groan he grabs both edges of the hammock and heaves himself up, his lower back and hips screaming. This is when he usually lifts his legs and swings them over the edge but his obliques and quads are having none of that.
Jay grunts, locked up. He’s used to waking up in a hammock sore and empty. His usual twenty mile days on steep coastal mountains end footsore and delirious. Especially if he’s been smoking mad herb. But yesterday he did like twenty miles on his belly. And as his high school soccer coach taught him, no matter how good of shape you’re in, you’re only in good shape for that activity. A runner can’t just suddenly swim. They’re whole different muscle groups and kinesthetic chains. A runner isn’t even ready to play soccer. Not until they strengthen their lower calves and hip flexors for that stop/start burst. So Jake, who hasn’t been underground in almost a year, is not at all in shape for a marathon caving sesh. And definitely not with a broken hand and dislocated ankle.
He rolls over his right shoulder onto the ground, landing in the sand on his face, which sends a sharp pain through the base of his skull. Oh, great. Now his neck hurts too? Man. Careful there. He had bad tension headaches as a kid. The last thing he needs is for them to return. Maybe he can convince Mandy to work on it. When she isn’t tearing his scar tissue apart, she actually does some pretty great deep massage. Her touch on his skin sure feels nice. Too bad she’s taken. He halts that train of thought and chuckles at himself. Look, chief, she ain’t for you. He doesn’t know if Mandy is gay or bi or monogamous or whatever but he just doesn’t want to get on Esquibel’s bad side. She’s the fucking doctor.
“I’m having… like a competition… with Maahjabeen…” Getting himself to his feet takes a comically long time. “See… who… heals last!” Finally he straightens. Well, kind of. He totters forward barefoot in the cold sand. “And I win! Suck it, ocean girl.”
On his way back from the trenches his limbs start to unwind. It’s clear that a little walk around camp is in order. He’s famished too. If he’s going to get any work done today he’s going to need some fuel. Didn’t someone say there was a carton of powdered eggs that still hadn’t been unpacked? Let’s see what he can make of those.
“Anybody else hungry?” As far as Jay can tell camp is empty but a lone, deep voice calls out, “Me. Por favor.”
“Alonso, my man. Coming right up. How’s a tofu omelet sound? With maybe like… You know what? Amy and me are thinking of harvesting some seaweed. Maybe if we get some edible varieties we can actually get some salad back on the menu. And if it’s too tough I was thinking we could steep it in your red wine for a few days.”
“An omelet would be amazing.”
Jay laughs at the disembodied voice and starts looking at the bins that remain unopened. “Yes sir, leave the seaweed experiments up to me. Good call. Aha! Here we go! Eggs for days! And a whole canister of powdered garlic! I’m in heaven!”
Twenty minutes later, Jay presents Alonso with a steaming plate on a tray with a mug of tea and dried bananas and blueberries as garnish. Alonso sets aside his laptop and accepts it with a grateful smile. Then he sighs hugely and rubs his eyes. He’s been at work now for hours.
“It looks delicioso. But where is yours?”
“Yeah, I ate as I cooked. Already done. Got a little excited and burned myself.” Jay, speaking with more care than normal because of his scalded tongue, sits on the platform at Alonso’s side.
Alonso laughs at him. “My god, you are your own worst enemy. You get hurt every day. Are you like this on every trip or is this one somehow special?”
Jay laughs at himself, carefree. “Yeah, I’m an idiot. You know what I think my trouble is here? Lisica is so familiar that I keep subconsciously like letting my guard down, thinking I’m still on home turf. But it isn’t. This is an island in the middle of the ocean. I forget I got to bring my A game at all times.”
“That is some good insight there, hermano. So tell me. What was it like underground?”
“Well, it’s pretty cool. Triquet told us about this bioluminescent fungus and I spent like twenty minutes trying to take a picture of it. Here’s the best one.” Jay takes out his phone and shows Alonso a dim blue-green fluorescent blob, grainy and out of focus.
Alonso grunts, then carves another slice out of the omelet. “This is so good. How did you make it so fluffy?”
“Had to whip it like a French chef. Yeah…” Jay frowns at his fungus picture. “Can’t really tell anything about it at all. Too bad. This is supposed to be for Prad. Any idea where he is?”
“He went off that way with a couple others.” Alonso points his fork at the west end of the grove. The more of the omelet he eats, the faster he wants to eat it. It really is the tastiest meal he’s had in days. Too soon, the last bite is gone. “Ahh. Thank you very much, Jay. That omelet was fantastic.”
“Sure thing. You can have one every day. Yeah, Miriam did a great job setting lines down there so I never felt lost. It’s just… there’s so much. All this digging must be like their second job or something. Come and haul out another few shovels of dirt like your grandpa did every day of his whole life. We still ain’t done yet.”
“So these are not natural tunnels?”
“I mean, some are. Carved by water. But most are dug. And then there’s the concrete culvert under the beach. I have no idea what the military was thinking. Maybe they were going to run it all the way up to the pool to give themselves a better source of water? The sea cave and its hidden base needed to be supplied? I don’t know. You’re going to have to get down there yourself somehow and check it out.”
“That appears sadly out of the question.” Alonso squeezes his knees. It is not only his feet that were broken. His torturers swung their rods against his shins and knees with equal ferocity. “But I appreciate the report from the front lines. Oh! I cannot work any more. I need to do something, anything. Even if it hurts.”
“Okay, partner.” Jay groans as he pulls himself to his feet. He collects Alonso’s tray with one hand and holds out the other for Alonso to grasp. “Come with me. Let’s go take a look at things.”
It feels like climbing a mountain, getting out of this camp chair. But Alonso lets Jay haul him forward and up and then he totters on those two broken pillars of dull fire again. Their heat will intensify, the longer he stands on them. The clock has already started ticking. “Where are we headed?”
Jay cackles, happy to have gotten Alonso to come with him. “I don’t know. Where haven’t you been yet?”
“Anywhere.” Alonso shrugs. “I was on the beach at first. Then I’ve been in the bunker and…” He shrugs again, realizing how sad it is. “That’s all, I guess.”
“Oh, man. You haven’t even seen the waterfall? Wait. I’ve got an idea. Give me ten seconds to get rid of this.”
Jay hobbles away with the tray. Alonso watches him go, then realizes he should get started moving in that direction. Jay will catch up to him. Ah! There was that one other time he ventured into the bushes here to pee. That’s when he saw the native child. A vision. A vision that has come true. Remember, Alonso. Be careful here. This is where you tripped and cracked your head open last time. By the time he catches his breath, Jay has returned with Triquet, who wears a floral housecoat and a scarf.
Now Jay carries a duffel bag, nearly full. “Hey, Alonso, do you know how to play cribbage?”
“Eh?” Images flicker through Alonso’s mind, of his uncle, Julio, and his nicotine-stained fingers and the nicotine-stained cards he always carried. Cribbage was one of the many games the dapper old Spaniard had taught him. His earliest introduction to number theory, probability, and statistics. “Yes. Why?”
“Because,” Triquet gently links their arm with Alonso’s to provide support, “when Mister Hophead here asked in the bunker if anyone wanted to smoke a doobie and play cribbage by the pool I couldn’t resist.”
“Oh. Is that what we’re doing?” Alonso leans against Triquet, his heart easing. “Ah, Triquet. Thank you. I’d follow you anywhere.”
Jay shows them the contents of the duffel. “Indica for the aches and pains. And you get to sit on the bank and put your feet in the water. Look. I’ve got a blanket.”
He pushes his way through a stand of ferns, the ground covered in clover and luminous moss. They follow, finally fetching up at the edge of the pool. Alonso stares at the falling cascade, struck by its grace and beauty. “I saw it on the drone video. From above. But it is so much bigger than I thought it would be! It is glorious! But wait, Triquet. This is what you tried to dive through?”
Triquet makes a face. “Did I tell you how desperate I was at the time? And that it doesn’t look so dangerous from the other side?”
“You are crazy. I take back all the nice things I just said about you.” Alonso pushes on Triquet’s arm in jest.
“Definitely a baller move.” Jay puts a fleece blanket down over the irregular rock shelf at the pool’s edge. “And you still somehow escaped unscathed. You’ll have to teach me your ways.”
They lower Alonso’s suffering body onto the blanket. Soon, a game of three-handed cribbage is in full swing. They fall to silently arranging their cards and taking drags off the joint. Alonso’s head immediately starts to swim. He has never been much of a smoker but the high is similar enough to wine to be enjoyable.
“But wait. The whole point was to get Alonso’s feet in the water.”
Jay’s voice comes from a long way away. Oh no. Miriam was right. This is powerful shit. His perspective telescopes forward and back like in a Hitchcock movie. He drops his gaze to watch Triquet fuss with his shoes. Those are Alonso’s own feet but they seem so far away. Good. The pain is in the distance.
“Tell me if I’m going too fast.”
Yes, Triquet also sounds far away. Everyone is so far. How sad. It’s just Alonso and the waterfall now.
“Jay.” Triquet snaps their fingers in front of Alonso’s face, trying to get his attention. “I think you broke him.”
“Yeah, I doubt he had much access to weed in a VA hospital. Well, let’s get his feet in the water and see if that helps.”
The cold water against Alonso’s skin is like an electric shock. It jolts through him with an awful stab, jangling his nerves. But he doesn’t pull his feet out. The THC and its related cannabinoids soothe him as the shock turns to crystal cold vitality. There is life in this water. It runs up his legs, recharging him. As the cold eases the ache in his feet, circuits are completed within him for the first time in nearly six years and Alonso rouses himself.
“Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a run of three is seven.” Alonso startles them by adding up his score and pushing the cards toward Jay. He suddenly feels great, better than he has in years.
“Well well well.” Triquet nods, happy to see their efforts bearing fruit. Alonso’s face clears and for the very first time here on Lisica, he looks like the man Triquet saw when they first met. It was way back when they were an undergrad and Alonso came to Ann Arbor to lecture. Triquet had gotten an instant crush on the older man. He had been so stylish and accomplished. Not like the victim they’ve been nursing here the last couple weeks.
Triquet takes another light puff. No need to get wasted. This is just a little break in the day before getting back to urgent matters such as locating Flavia in the interior and establishing some kind of relationship with the Lisicans. “I’ve got a double run for eight.”
Jay frowns. “Well you didn’t tell me you were both some kind of goddamn card sharks. I’ve only got a pair. Two points. And the crib… is empty. Great.”
Alonso and Triquet laugh at Jay’s ill fortune.
He glares at them, struck by what oddballs they all are. Alonso is such a character and Triquet is a complete fucking original and Jay knows that he himself is something of a cartoon to most people. Without thinking how it might sound, he blurts, “Do you ever like wonder why normal people don’t come out on projects like this?”
An uncomfortable silence greets his words. Triquet looks at Jay like he just called them a slur. Alonso is embarrassed for him.
“What? I mean, like take my cousins in San Clemente for example. Got normal jobs. Weddings and kids and houses and cars. The whole suburban thing. Why aren’t any of them here?”
“Are you… trying to imply that I am not normal?” Triquet fights the growing knot of sickness in their gut. Not again. Not here.
Jay blinks at both of them, unable to process what the problem is. “Ohh. You think I mean normal in a good way? Nah, not at all. To me normal is an insult. I’ve done all I could my whole life to let my freak flag fly.”
“So… you’re a freak?”
“Hundred percent. Aren’t you?”
Alonso lifts a hand. “Jay.”
Triquet covers Alonso’s hand with their own, very much against needing someone else to speak for them. A deep breath helps dispel the growing impulse to shout at this clueless young man. “I don’t ever like reminding people of their privilege, Jay, but… Normalcy isn’t just like what bands you like or what sports team you follow. Leave it to the white guy to be like, ‘Ew, the normals. How tired is everybody of them?’ Well the rest of us don’t have that luxury. Being normal is whether you belong or are accepted by society at large. It can literally be the difference between life and death.”
“Fucking A, what a great speech.” Jay rocks back, mind blown. “That is some serious wisdom you’re dropping. But. At the same time. I mean. Normal still isn’t great. Can’t we do better? When we were all in high school me and my buddies said we’d never get married. Literally like all of our parents were divorced. What was the point? As an institution it just like curled up and died. Then last year, Glen came out as gay and said he was getting married. And the rest of us were like, Dude. I get it. You become a full legal member of society but this is our chance to build something I don’t know, better than marriage, more meaningful. Or just more accurate for modern relationships. And now suddenly we’re on opposite sides of this issue.”
“Why is that suddenly his responsibility?” Triquet shrugs off the claims made here. “Why does being in the vanguard for one issue mean that we’re all of a sudden responsible to reinvent this whole other thing that straight white dudes ruined? I’m not your savior. Glen isn’t going to clean up your messes. He probably just wants a car and a family in the suburbs, if he’s like most people.”
“Wow, these are all such amazing points.” Jay pounds on his knee. “You are so right. Glen’s totally got enough on his plate. His husband has health problems. They needed the medical coverage. So yeah. I’ll like spend my social capital on revolution and let him and Farrell raise kids and join the PTA. I am so glad you set my head straight about that, doc.” Jay takes another huge hit from the joint and offers it to Alonso, who declines. “So, what about you, Alonso? Would you ever get married?”
“My wife would never let me.”
Jay giggles. He passes the joint to Triquet instead. “And what about you, Triquet?”
Triquet takes a hefty drag then makes a face. “Me? Never. Marriage is for squares.”
Ξ
As morning turns to afternoon, Maahjabeen finds that her body is finally starting to obey her wishes again. She is getting range of motion back in her spine and shoulders. Excitement builds in her, a nervous energy running down her limbs. Her hands make fists, wanting to grasp the paddle again. Her toes flex to steer the rudder. But she isn’t anywhere near the water.
With a brief bark of residual pain she stands from her seat at the long tables inside the bunker, where she’d been collating data from Mandy’s weather station and comparing it to her readings of local currents. Maahjabeen stretches as Esquibel exits the clean room.
“I heard you exclaim.” Esquibel assesses Maahjabeen, watching the young woman raise her hands far over her head. “Ah, that’s some good flexibility, Maahjabeen. How does it feel?”
“It feels like it is time for me to get back on the water. How about you, Doctor Daine? Are you much of a boater?”
Esquibel makes a face and shakes her head no. “I keep my time on the water to steel-hulled ships. You people in your fragile little boats make me so nervous.”
Maahjabeen laughs. “Yes, well you sailors in your big ships make us paddlers nervous. Do you think you can help me get my baby to the beach? I miss the water so much.”
“Are you ready?” But Esquibel can tell Maahjabeen has reached the point in her recovery where she won’t be dissuaded. “This is the critical time right now for re-injury. You need to be careful.”
“Yes. Careful.” Maahjabeen swears to herself she will be. This enforced recovery has been driving her insane. She’ll do anything to make sure she never has to go through that again. Lifting a solemn hand, she swears, “On the graves of my ancestors, I won’t do anything stupid.”
“You mean, like carry a boat all the way around that fallen tree and down to the beach?” Esquibel shakes her head. Humans are so foolish. Especially the young ones. “Let’s find someone else to help me do it. You just keep doing some gentle stretching. And if you feel something twinge, I need you to shut it down, okay?”
“Yes. Shut it down. Ah! Here’s Amy. She’s strong.”
Amy enters the bunker, her smile flickering when she hears this. But she shakes her head and re-asserts her sunny disposition and approaches them. “Hello, everyone. Or, should I say, Bontiik, and then I nudge you under your chin like this.” Amy uses the second knuckle of her index finger to gently chuck Esquibel on the point of her chin. “That is how you greet someone in Lisican.”
Esquibel and Maahjabeen stare at Amy in shock. Things are evidently progressing much faster than they thought. Neither of them have been through the tunnels to the interior. To Esquibel it sounds forbidding, like a medical emergency waiting to happen. Maahjabeen has already had enough of the tunnels after trying to initially pursue Flavia. Also, the interior is too far from the shore, it’s the last place Maahjabeen wants to be.
“Lisican.” Maahjabeen tries the word. “Yes, I suppose… Is that what they call themselves?”
“Yes, well, their silver foxes. Katrina was right. They call them all forms of Lee-zee. Lisicha, Lisipatxo, Lisibaba. It was the word that we both understood and let them know I was ready to learn how to communicate. And then, wow. Once you gain their trust they’re really engaging. Very lively. And it’s funny for once to be the tallest person in the group.” Amy’s irrepressible giggle interrupts her story. “Now what did you need help with?”
“Can you help Esquibel carry my kayak to the beach? I need to be on the water. Just in the lagoon. Nothing ambitious. But I just never spend this much time on land. I am like a beached dolphin. Drying out and dying.”
Amy nods, sympathetic. “Of course. Of course. But only on one condition. No. Two.”
“Two conditions?” Maahjabeen assumes her bargaining face. Market-stall haggling is second nature to her. “What are they?”
“First, learn the greeting. Bontiik.” Amy chucks Maahjabeen under the chin.
Maahjabeen can’t deny that request. “Bontiik.” She reaches out and uncertainly touches Amy on the chin.
“I’m pretty sure the gesture has to be across the chin, like a gentle nudge. They kept correcting me.” Amy does it again.
Maahjabeen chucks Amy under the chin. “And your second condition?”
“That we bring both boats and I go out on the water with you.”
“Ehhh…” To Maahjabeen, the solitude the water brings is half what she needs. But before she can formulate an argument…
“Yes. Good plan.” Esquibel decides for her. “Now let’s get the boats. I can watch from shore. Get me out of my little room for a little while.” She fetches a hat and sunglasses.
Maahjabeen accepts her fate. The lagoon is large. Perhaps they can split up at some point and she can get some time alone.
It takes another ten minutes for everyone to gather their things and pull the boats out from under the big platform. Amy in front, Esquibel in back, they each hold the handle of a boat in both hands to carry them at the same time. They’ve loaded the cockpits and hatches with the few things they need. Amy has brought her own hat and a pair of the Dyson readers.
Maahjabeen hates this new giant fallen redwood trunk across the beach. It prevents her from being able to see as much of the water as she could before from camp and it prevents access. She just wants it gone. But it is just so huge there is no way they will ever be able to move it. Well. God has a plan. Inshallah.
To get around the roots they have to put the blue boat down and carry the yellow one first, then return for the second one to slowly navigate it through the choked passage. Finally they bring the kayaks to the shore and put Maahjabeen in place. They shove her off and she’s free, she’s actually free again once more.
Her shoulders still hurt when she paddles but she doesn’t care. This is the exact movement that originally injured her after all, but these are also the muscles that are strongest in her. Her body knows she must paddle. It is what she is built to do.
Within a dozen strokes she’s across the lagoon and getting swept across the inner face of the barrier rocks in an ebbtide current. With a strong dig in the water, she pivots and dances back out of the current before it brings her to the mouth of the lagoon. She paddles back, surprised to see Amy already in the water, churning out to her with short, powerful strokes that lift the nose of the blue boat above the waterline. Maahjabeen had been about to demand the same proficiency roll as she had of Pradeep, but Amy’s handling is so expert it would be nothing but bad manners. Well. At least she won’t have to worry about Amy drowning out here.
“Ohh this is so nice getting back out on the water again.” Amy leans her head back and sighs. “There was a time I basically lived on the water. Monterey Bay. Do you know it?”
“I have heard of it but I have never been to the United States.”
“Oh, we’ve got some fantastic paddling all over the country. I managed the sea lion populations for a number of years there. About twelve. And summers were up in Resurrection Bay, Alaska running killer whale trips for tourists. Isn’t kayaking the best?”
“God provides,” is all Maahjabeen can manage, suddenly afraid that this blocky old Japanese woman has more experience in the one thing that makes Maahjabeen special and the one valuable skill she can bring to this project. No. But that is not the case. She is still the only marine researcher here, the only one who can tell them what is happening in the wider ocean around them. That is, if she can ever actually access it.
Amy trails her hand in the frigid water. “Oh, look at all this sea grass. If it was any warmer we’d be snorkeling down there daily. But I don’t have a wetsuit for these temperatures. Do you?”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no, remembering how she forbid the use of the lagoon to Katrina. Could she do the same for Amy? She doubted it. The biologist has a clear right to be here, studying the life forms and making whatever collections she wants, despite Maahjabeen’s desire to keep the lagoon pristine.
“How’s the shoulders?” Amy’s maternal concern does make Maahjabeen regret her selfishness and she smiles in gratitude.
“Fine. Better. The more I paddle the better they feel. But look. You will appreciate this.” Maahjabeen navigates her boat to the mouth of the lagoon so they can both study the impassable rollers. “Here is the door to my jail cell. Without an outboard motor or a killer whale’s tail I just can’t get over those wave tops. The only time I could was before the storm.”
“Yes, I’ve been watching the ocean too. Big Japanese past-time, you know. Get the rhythm of the local tides in your blood. And talk to everyone you see about the weather. Basically every Japanese conversation starts and ends with weather. All the natural cycles.”
Maahjabeen only listens, staring at the unending rollers. Great. Amy might be a better oceanographer than her as well. Now what is Maahjabeen good for here? Leading morning prayer?
“It is a puzzle, though, isn’t it?” Amy paddles past the mouth, skipping her boat across the strong current before it can take her. “The thing is, I think if we get down to this angle we might see something.” She continues on toward the barrier rocks right off the eastern point. “Oh, this is a much better vantage point than what I’ve been able to see from the beach. Yes… Watch what happens when this sea stack gets hit by the second wave. The big one.”
Maahjabeen follows and waits. The wave hits the wall of rock with a crump, spraying a massive wall of white foam outward. Then on the return it sucks the surrounding water in.
“Watch here. See how that draw drops the next wave? Just like stops it in its tracks, but just right here.”
Maahjabeen nods, elated. “And the next one too. So the first two waves of the set get canceled here? There might be enough space to pass. But that’s awfully close to the rock.”
“Yeah, it’s a sprint for sure. But if you watch, there’s an epicycle. Every twentieth or twenty-first set is a much bigger wave that cancels out the next five.”
“Five waves of a set? That’s nearly a minute. I could get across that stretch in a minute no problem.”
“Yes, well, the benefits of patience.”
Now Maahjabeen is fairly certain Amy is a better oceanographer than she is. And just a better scientist in general. Her CV must be outrageous. And that collegial manner pays so many dividends. If Maahjabeen had been less reserved and territorial she may have learned these important things earlier. But it was not to be helped. She’d dealt with so much insanity on her previous jobs she needed to learn how to trust people again. Now she is just grateful to be in a position to have things go right. And she might even get out past the rollers after all! “Inshallah!” Oh, God does provide!
“You can say that again!” Amy laughs, wowed by the sudden transformation in Maahjabeen. Good lord but the young lady has the most scintillating smile. And her excitement to face the open ocean is infectious. Amy can’t wait to go herself.
But wait. Mandy is back on the shore, waving them in. Esquibel stands beside her, talking. But Mandy is intent on getting their attention. “Oh, no.” Maahjabeen slumps. “Not again.”
Amy paddles close to shore. “Another storm?”
Mandy nods. “Another storm.”
They take one more long paddle around the lagoon, Maahjabeen intent on getting her body right. Then they haul the boats from the water as the western wind strengthens and that corner of the sky begins to darken. With a sigh, Maahjabeen rests the paddle across her shoulders and supervises Esquibel and Amy’s packing.
“Look.” Mandy touches Maahjabeen’s shoulder. She points behind them. Pradeep is there, at the fallen redwood. He has collected the thick shell pieces of its bark that fell off on impact and he is now building a modest lean-to up against the trunk. When he sees them watching he motions to them.
Mandy and Maahjabeen approach. Pradeep lifts the largest bark pieces above, to serve as a roof. He ties them down with twine. “How do you like it?”
“So cozy!” Mandy ducks within.
Maahjabeen turns and asks loudly enough for Esquibel to hear, “I thought we weren’t supposed to build any structures?”
Esquibel, carrying both kayaks with Amy, looks at the lean-to with a pinched expression. She shrugs. “I can’t imagine it looks like a structure from above.”
“The satellites are fooled!” Pradeep celebrates by placing a lintel over the door. He ties it off then bows formally to Maahjabeen. “Your Highness. May I present you with the keys?”
She laughs, unsure what the joke is.
“Take a look in here!” Mandy pulls Maahjabeen inside, where the wind dies and the light fades to near perfect darkness.
“Very snug.” Now that Maahjabeen is out of the water she is hungry and just wants to get back to camp.
Pradeep appears in the tilted handmade door. “No. I don’t think you get what I’m saying. This is yours, Maahjabeen. I know how hard it’s been for you dealing with all us land-lubbers. So I built this as your own place. A cottage by the sea.”
Maahjabeen claps her hands over her mouth. Oh, dear God. This is hers? It is perfect. There’s a window overlooking the lagoon and everything. And it is so private here on this side of that huge log. It is just her and the sea.
Maahjabeen grabs Pradeep’s hand and squeezes it. “Thank you. Oh, Pradeep, thank you so much. It is perfect.”
“Just a few more tweaks here and there.” His hands won’t stop working on it. “And then we can move you in. Come on, Mandy. Let’s go get her things.”
“Yeah, Maahjabeen,” Mandy blows her a kiss. “You stay here.”
Maahjabeen sits in the doorway watching the lagoon and the rollers beyond. What is this filling her heart, this overwhelming pressure of light and happiness? The word finally comes to her: Abundance. “Inshallah.” God provides again and again.
Chapter 14 – Of Lisica
April 1, 2024
Thanks for joining us on 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:
14 – Of Lisica
The ebullience that normally animates Amy is now absent and she looks older than her fifty-six years. “It isn’t what you think, Mandy. I just… My past is…” She shakes her head, wanting to say it right. It’s been a while since she’s had this conversation though. Amy’s eyes scan the eastern horizon. A patch of blue has broken through, illuminating the ocean in that spot with depth. Perhaps that can be her inspiration.
Mandy watches Amy wrestle over her words with growing anxiety. Sheesh. What is the older woman going to say? Just what unwanted burden is Amy about to lay upon her?
Finally, Amy’s shoulders drop and she realizes that none of the long prefaces she was about to add to the statement make any difference. It’s always like this. “This is more information than you wanted, I’m sure, but I’m trans. I was born male.”
“Oh.” Mandy blinks. She exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Ohh…”
“Sorry. I still wrestle sometimes with all the hidden identity stuff. Dual images and masks. You know. And I just got a little careless there and forgot that you didn’t know what I was talking about and how I might sound. I’m really sorry.”
Mandy is so relieved she’s giddy. “No. That’s fine. I just totally misinterpreted what I was hearing. And that’s on me. Oh my god, that’s so depressing. I thought I was going to get to grow out of all the coming-out stuff someday but I guess not. I can’t believe you never get to let go of it. No, honey, I’m the one who’s sorry. I was like ready to kick you to the curb after one comment.”
“Well it was a pretty weird comment…”
They both laugh again, the tension broken. Mandy grabs Amy’s arm again. “So wait. I thought you and Alonso used to date.”
“Yes, when Alonso and I fell in love, it was 1991 and I was still a man. We were a very happy couple. Really just a summer of love. He and Miriam and me… That became it’s own whole thing. Such a wonderful thing. It’s what taught me that I really was a woman.”
“Then Alonso’s bi?”
“Another thing Miriam taught us. We thought he was as gay as I am. I think she’s the only woman he’s ever loved.”
“Oh. Wow.” Mandy can’t believe how many assumptions she had made about these three old people, which fall away now like ice sheets calving from glaciers, dropping thunderously into the deep. “I had no idea. You discreet fuckers.” She laughs. “Esquibel keeps wondering if Alonso is closet-homophobic. Oh my god. She’s going to get a real hoot out of this.”
“That’s hilarious. I should have said something before. It’s just I’ve always been really private about it, all these years.”
“No, I totally understand. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“And I mean, I knew that you’d probably be okay with it but it’s still something I just don’t talk about with nearly anyone.”
“Well, then I’m flattered.”
“Oh, god,” Amy reels. “That’s not what I meant at all. I’m not so special that the needs of an old maid like me mean so much.”
“Yes you are,” Mandy hugs Amy again, this time with true sisterhood. “And yes they do.”
Ξ
Esquibel inspects Jay in the clean room. The swelling in his hand has gone down and his ankle is regaining mobility. He is healing quite quickly. Good. But she doesn’t need him knowing that yet. He’ll just run off and hurt himself again, as long as Miriam is poking around in those caves under their feet.
“See? My NBA career ain’t over yet.” He smiles bravely so she can’t see how agonizing all that manipulation is. “No headaches in two days. Mandy’s been working it all out, teaching me a whole new meaning of the concept of pain. But I’m all set now.”
“I know. Her manipulations hurt so much, don’t they?” She inspects his pupils with her phone’s light. They are even and responsive. She is running out of reasons to keep him shelved.
“Well, as my uncle once told me, there’s two kinds of pain. There’s permanent pain that leads to damage and nobody wants that. But then there’s temporary pain from like stretching and bruising and adjusting to discomfort. And that doesn’t hurt you. Going through it makes you stronger.”
“Like when I flex your ankle?”
“Ha—aaaah! Okay now you’re just making some sadistic doctor point about something. I didn’t say I was fully healed…”
“And what would you do in a tunnel when you need to depend on that ankle to get you out of a tight spot? Will you push it to failure again? Of course you will.”
“I’m not twelve.”
Esquibel only looks at him. Finally Jay drops his gaze.
“Fine. Tomorrow is a week. Can I please act like a human again after a week?”
“We shall see. Now go rest and stop aggravating everything.”
Jay sits up and hops to his feet. But he hangs back at the clean room’s exit. “Hey, I got a question, Doc, a personal question, if you don’t mind me asking. Since we’re all one big Cuban family.”
Esquibel turns on Jay, hand on hip. “What.”
“I was just wondering. The name Esquibel. I knew a girl in my high school with that name but her family was from Guadalajara. Isn’t it a Spanish name?”
She is unwilling to encourage him, but it is her favorite story. And so far he just looks at her with that puppy innocence. “My mother. She was an exchange student in Mexico City in the nineties. Her host mother was named Esquibel. It was her favorite time in her whole life. She still speaks Spanish, even though she has never been able to return.”
“Oh. Got it. That’s so sad. We should like all pitch in and make sure she gets back there. Mexico kicks ass.”
“We? You don’t even know my mother.”
“Yeah, well her daughter’s been taking real good care of me so I figure I owe her.” Jay flashes a shaka. “Peace out, Doc.”
He leaves the clean room and scans the interior of the bunker. Pradeep is at a microscope. Katrina works on her laptop beside him. Mandy is also there, fussing with her weather station.
Jay walks past them outside. Alonso types furiously on his laptop in his camp chair. Amy is at the edge of the trees, watching the birds through binoculars and taking notes. Miriam and Triquet are down below in some dark cavern, searching for Flavia.
Maahjabeen is down by the water. Jay stands on the redwood trunk looking at her in the distance, trying to decide if he should bother her. Probably not. She isn’t the most friendly person in the best of times and these aren’t the best of times. Also, if he was her, he’d still be totally wracked with guilt about losing Flavia.
But she sees him and to his surprise, Maahjabeen beckons to Jay. He jumps from the log and crosses the beach to her as fast as his aching ankle lets him. “Hey, what’s up? Can I get you something?”
Maahjabeen wears a broad-brimmed sun hat over her headscarf and dark sunglasses. She looks like a movie star trying to go incognito at the Cannes Film Festival. “I can speak with you about this. You will understand and not try to stop me.”
“Ah! Crazy talk! Totally. I’m your boy.”
“I am adding to my list of places to go here. Now at the top it is the sea cave exit. Over there.” She points to the left, the southeast, around the point made of clay and somewhere up that coast. It is the opposite way she had gone before, during the storm. “It is probably hidden from outside so a kayak is the only way to find it.”
“Yeah. That’s your prime sea cave exploration tool, no doubt. Esquibel just gave me the green light to get back on my feet. Well, tomorrow is what we agreed. So you want to just hold off until then I bet we can find it together.”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. “I’m not quite at that stage in planning yet. Or healing. I won’t be ready to go tomorrow. And listen to you! You are too eager to hurt yourself again.”
“Ha. Look who’s talking. Maybe I’ll just get restless and go discover a cave system under the sub to get lost in instead.”
But that is too much and she falls silent, her mouth a compressed line. Jay is filled with regret. Aw, shit. He did it again. “Sorry. That was out of line.”
“I have an idea.” Maahjabeen studies the impassable breaks. “But it is only if you are a really strong paddler.”
Jay nods. “Kay. Let’s hear it.”
“What if we lash both boats together?”
“Uhh.” Jay can’t see it. “Lengthwise or like side by side?”
Maahjabeen laughs. “Side by side. I’ve been wondering if we can build some outriggers for the kayaks to give them extra stability on the open water. But what could we use as a stabilizing float? I don’t think we have anything disposable in camp. Then it occurred to me when you said we could both go out there together that if the boats are attached somehow side by side—”
“Then they act as each other’s outrigger? Wow, yeah we’d have to be strong paddlers. The added mass would be super tricky.”
“But it might get us over the breaks in one piece.”
“Yeah… Might… If we had something rigid between. And strong enough that it doesn’t just snap in two.”
“And then we can paddle to the sea cave.” Maahjabeen drops her gaze. “And see if Flavia’s body is floating around in there.”
“Aw, come on, Maahj. She isn’t dead. She’s just lost in there somewhere. Triquet can find her. And Miriam is like a world-class expert underground. She’s in good hands.”
Maahjabeen takes off her sunglasses and stares at Jay, offended. “Uh huh. What did you call me again?”
“Maahj? Like short for Maahjabeen? Like a nickname?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Cool. Okay. No worries.”
Maahjabeen sets her sunglasses back in place and stares at the ocean again. “Two days. We heal for two more days and then we try it.” She gives him a rare smile. “Thank you, though, for trying to make me feel better. I do appreciate it.”
Ξ
Pradeep hauls the ten gallon buckets to the waterfall’s pool for a refill. A few times per day the camp goes through an inordinate amount of fresh water. He also brings his pack and a Dyson. At the same point at the same time each day for four days now he’s been sampling the water at a single location. He wants to figure out how to set up a permanent monitoring station, where the microfluidics channels in the sensors are perpetually flushing themselves and giving new readings. He wants a profile of the life forms present throughout the day. In what ways do they wax and wane? Is the severity of the waterfall the only factor?
At the edge of the pond they’ve worn a shallow platform in the mud a handspan above the water’s normal level. He kneels here and submerges the bucket. They’ve stopped treating the water since Esquibel has declared it safe. It’s pure. Delicious too. Now they only regularly monitor it to make sure they don’t contaminate it themselves.
Pradeep dips the end of the Dyson reader into the water and gives it a minute to digest the sample. Then he does it a second time as a precaution and sets the reader aside. He lies down and drinks deeply from the pool. Then he pulls back and regards his shimmering reflection. He hasn’t seen himself in a couple weeks. He looks haggard. Lean and happy. But he really should shave. The few whiskers that lie scattered across his cheeks aren’t even dense enough to be called sparse. And an unruly curl is starting to peek out from behind one ear. He looks like he did on that one vacation they took to visit his mother’s family in Chennai when he was ten. But all in all, not so bad. And everyone here is being so lovely. Supportive. He doesn’t have to keep this ball of anxiety clenched inside him like a fist in his diaphragm. He can let—
Beside him the bushes shiver and a cackle splits the air. A junco in the laurel tree above startles and wings away, cheeping. Pradeep yelps and nearly falls into the pool.
His yelp quiets whoever cackled. After a moment, Triquet calls out, “Hello…?” Their head pokes out from the bushes beside him, in caver helmet, covered in mud. “Oh. We found Pradeep.”
“Praise be.” Miriam’s voice is muffled, deeper in the thicket. “I need to stand.” This is the tunnel to the poolside fox nest she had discovered earlier. It led them out from below. Now they have a legitimate path from surface level to the tunnel complex.
“Where did you come from?” Pradeep hasn’t quite regained his composure. “You gave me a heart attack!”
Triquet pulls themself free of the branches and stands beside Pradeep, dusting their canvas coveralls. But their state is hopeless. They’ll need to be soaked overnight to get all this mud out. “We are the dwarves of the mountain!” they crow. “Long has it been since we have seen the light of the sun.”
Miriam stands, her begrimed face lost in thought. “I don’t know how we can make it functional though. It is such a maze. And this is the tightest tunnel we’ve tried yet. Like I scraped my hip bones kind of tight. It’s like a warren in there, like a giant rabbit warren. Maybe the sub entrance is still the best.”
“Functional?” Pradeep stares doubtfully at the wall of vegetation in front of him, obscuring the cliff from which they emerged. “Like we could have a door to the caves here if we chopped this all back to the cliff face?”
“But what I’m saying is it would hardly be worth it.” Miriam shakes her head, tired and frustrated.
“No Flavia?”
Triquet shakes their head, sad. “No. But we’re being methodical and we’ve only gotten through the bottom two-thirds of tunnels so far. There’s a couple promising ones up top.”
“Seriously? It’s taking that long?”
“You have no idea how confusing it is in there. And we keep coming upon our own twine. We’ve started to annotate it but by the time we come back to it the third or fourth time the labels are just covered in mud. Dark, tight spaces, just looping around and around on themselves. Here. Let me help.” Triquet picks up one of the water buckets and leads the others back to camp. “Time for lunch anyway. I’m starving.”
Jay has already started making pancakes. In a sugar water solution he floats banana chips to rehydrate them. Chewy, but good. He adds more salt. Back when he was a line cook at a ski resort in college he learned just what an unhealthy amount of salt restaurants use in nearly every dish. It gets him compliments about his cooking ever since.
“Smells lovely.” Triquet, looking like they just ran a Tough Mudder race, drops the water bucket at the end of the table. “Now excuse me while I return to the waterfall for a shower.”
“Whoa. Look at you. Yeah, sure. I’ll keep a stack warm for you.”
“You’re a peach.” Triquet trips away, the aches and pains slowly stealing up on them. That was a long morning. Grim. So hopeless. What has become of poor Flavia? How had Triquet so completely messed up ever since the innocuous moment they opened up the deck panel that leads down to the sea cave?
The bambino… Why was the child crying? The mystery of it has cycled around in Triquet’s head a million times in those dark tunnels. Were they lost? Injured? The urgency with which Flavia responded indicated that it was a sharp moment of crisis, not like some steady sobbing from someone who was wandering in the dark. Had they fallen? Why couldn’t Triquet find a hypothetical that would get such a scenario to make sense?
Had someone stolen the child? Their mythical Chinese pilot? With a weary sigh, Triquet pushes their way through the foliage to the pool’s edge, where they primly strip off their clothes and let the icy falls wash all their cares away.
Ξ
It has been two weeks now. The project is one-quarter over. In some ways, it is going better than Alonso anticipated. In some ways, worse. What a time for Flavia to go missing! Right after she sent him a draft of Plexity’s engine, which is the oddest assortment of modules and plug-ins and bespoke code he has ever seen. Cellular automata? Just… why? Ah, well, that’s what happens when you hire a research mathematician to do a programmer’s job.
Most data scientists are big picture thinkers. And Alonso is no different. But he can separate himself from the rest of his mostly theoretical colleagues by busting out his applied maths chops as needed. It is merely the difference between developing a recipe and actually cooking it. He is comfortable in both worlds. What Flavia needs here is fewer ideas and more implementation. She is using Plexity as a testbed for many of her wackiest pet theories, apparently—which is absolutely fine. This is nothing but a grand multidisciplinary experiment after all—but the ultimate goal cannot get lost. So. He will just carve away the fat and inevitably defend his decisions while she rages and curses him in Italian.
Alonso looks up at the dark line of trees hiding her from him. He sighs. Well. As soon as Flavia is found, that is. Then they can fight all they like.
His fingers fly furiously on the keyboard, lines of Perl flowing from him into the machine. He is basically restating his initial attempt, which she had entirely discarded, and adapting it to take the useful ideas she suggested. Oh, she will hate this so much. She is trying to preserve this analog quality throughout the data but she has no idea how much that will defeat all the macro level data science he hopes to do with Plexity. She is only thinking about it locally while he is trying to characterize the entire planet. That fine touch will be nice only at the smallest frames of reference. If she is so excited about it then he will help her find harmonic resonances in the data sets after they reach a trillion inputs.
Miriam emerges from the tunnels again, drained and losing hope. Alonso sets his laptop aside and pushes against the arms of his camp chair, to stand and go take care of her. But his legs still won’t work and he realizes if he does try to stand she will set her own exhaustion aside and help him.
So he remains helplessly seated. Damn and doubly damn his torturers. If he was even six years younger he’d be scrambling through those tunnels more than any of them. “Oye, Novia.”
She crouches at a water bucket, scrubbing the clay mud from her hands. Over her shoulder, she offers a weak smile. Alonso looks like a bewildered castaway in his chair, gray-streaked hair standing straight up. “Still no luck, Zo. But we’re learning. I think the tunnels we just investigated were the first they dug, and have since been abandoned. They are cruder, the wear patterns older, and they lead nowhere. Most just stop. But one tunnel’s path clearly proves my hypothesis that they dug the tunnels with little thought of direction. They were just digging out the soft layers and avoiding the hard. This is more like the behavior of worms than miners.”
He shares a grimace with her. “And no sign at all?”
Miriam shakes her head no. “But there are two tunnels left now. And both are rather large. Flavia-sized. Very promising. We’re just being methodical. I hope it doesn’t cost us.”
“Look.” Alonso points with his cane. “That is nice to see. I wonder what those two could ever find in common.” Esquibel sits on Katrina’s platform beside her, pointing at Katrina’s laptop screen and asking a sharp question.
Miriam stares, flat, at the scene. Her mind is empty. She has no idea what those two young women could find so interesting while Flavia is still gone. All the times Miriam has broken down in tears, alone in a tunnel following a bit of muddy twine, has left her beyond empty. She has unwillingly transitioned over these last two days from a research scientist into a search and rescue volunteer, with no end in sight. “You realize we’ve only seen the tiniest bit of this island, don’t you? If the entire thing is riddled with these tunnels… I don’t know if…” she shakes her head in despair. “I just don’t know where she’s gone. We’ve looked nearly everywhere.”
“Sleep, darling. You are working so hard. There is only so much we can do. And we have so few people who are fit for this work. We need you to be fresh.”
“I’m very hungry.”
“We will feed you. Sit. Sit, and keep me company. Where is Jay? He always wants to do more than he should. Jay!” Alonso calls out in a deep resonant voice and waves his cane.
The bunker’s door opens. “Alonso!” Jay leans out, mimicking the older man’s stentorian delivery. “What you need?”
“Could you do us a favor? Please feed my wife and make sure she gets to bed. That is, if you are not…”
“No no. I’d love to. Playing nursemaid is my jam. Need me to carry you?” He puts a patronizing hand on Miriam’s shoulder.
Wearily she knocks it off. “I’m just hungry. I’m not an infant. Do we have any protein at all?”
“Well. You’re in luck.” Jay fetches one of the five gallon buckets from under the long tables. “Maahjabeen finally gave me the green light to harvest mussels at the shore.”
The bottom of the bucket is filled with dozens of their black and pearl shells. Some are huge, almost the size of her hand.
Miriam nearly swoons. “Oh, Jay! Dearest child! I take back anything mean I said to you. I am your eternal slave.”
Alonso claps his hands. “Ha. I’ve heard that before, Jay. Don’t believe her.”
Jay shrugs. “That’s cool. Not really into slaves anyway. Let me just put a bunch of these in with some garlic flakes and a dash of wine while I get the pasta going. Two shakes.”
He departs as Miriam settles in a chair. “If I lie down I will pass out. What he said sounds heavenly.”
“I hope he knows to make enough for everyone. Now I am famished myself. Oye. Jay…” The young man has returned from the bunker bearing a small plastic tray. “Jay, I think we would all enjoy this meal. Please make as much as you can.”
“How about this.” Jay strikes a Thinking Man pose. “I make Miriam’s first so it’s quick, and when I can I’ll start a big pot that won’t be done for another, I don’t know, twenty minutes?” He bows, presenting the tray to Miriam. It holds a joint, a lighter, and a bottle cap for an ash tray. “This here’s my indica knockout bomb. Just take one or two hits. Remember last time. You’ll be high as a kite for an hour then you’ll sleep like you’re dead.”
“Zo, he’s an angel. An angel straight from heaven.” Miriam lifts the joint and sparks up.
“You always did form unhealthy attachments to your dealers.”
They both chuckle.
Jay hurries once again into the bunker. The pot may be boiling.
Ξ
“Good morning, doll.” Triquet is subdued, in a pair of overalls and a thick shirt. Amy studies the birds, taking videos of the spiraling clusters, brown and black and white, as a band of sunrise flares across the underside of the marine layer and turns the ocean sea-green. Mist rises from the backlit black cliffs. “Any chance you’d care to join me?”
Amy sighs, counting twenty-three pelicans and noting them before giving an answer. This morning she’s seen common murres and Brandt’s cormorants and two black osprey, their enormous wingspans unmistakable against the glowing sky. Closer to the ground, it’s odd to see a redwood grove without so many of its normal birds. Neither robins nor ravens nor crows. Very few songbirds. A few oak titmice root in the undergrowth. Heavens knows how they ever got across twelve hundred kilometers of open ocean. Finally she closes her notebook and smiles sweetly at Triquet. “Anywhere, darling.”
But Triquet doesn’t have the energy to be arch. The search for Flavia has been grueling and hope is running out. “Miriam is still asleep. She needs it. But you aren’t. And I need a second.”
“Oh.” Amy points at the ground beneath her feet.
“Well, more like…” Triquet turns and points at a shallow angle below the earth behind the bunker and the cliff base. “But I can’t just wait up here doing nothing while Flavia’s still…”
“I know.” Amy drops her camera. “I’ll come. Let me just. Um. Get out of these clothes. Ten minutes?”
They meet in the sub a short time later. Amy wears a canvas shirt and jeans that are still wet from being worn down here and washed the night before. She shivers. “Come on. Let’s get to work. I need to warm up.”
Triquet leads Amy through the sub’s first floor, second floor, and then down the tunnel into the muddy crawlspace. They pop out in the culvert, half-hoping to find Flavia here. But it remains empty. They’ve posted an led light here. Amy swaps out its batteries. It shines on a permanent rope emerging from the tunnel they just exited. A sign in a ziploc bag pinned to the earth reads:
FLAVIA
FOLLOW THIS ROPE
TO THE SUB
Before doing anything else, they walk the culvert to its end to examine the sea cave in the hope that Flavia is in there. But it is as lifeless as ever, the waves crashing energetically against the worn concrete piers.
Satisfied that she isn’t down here anywhere, they return to the multitude of tunnel mouths. Small surveyor flags poke out from each one, where twine is tied off. All of them have been so marked except for the two tunnel mouths that gape above. They are divided from those below by a shelf of dull green gray limestone protruding from the earth.
Triquet randomly chooses the tunnel on the upper left. They place a surveyor flag and tie the twine’s end around it, a fat spool hanging from the nylon strap they wear as a belt. “Wish me luck.”
They pull themself upward.
Amy waits, looking up, as the six meters of blue nylon strap connecting them unspools at her feet. Finally she heaves herself into the tunnel, the twine running along a wall clogged with veins of raw rough stone. Soon her fingers are sore from gripping it.
Triquet ahead is having no better luck. It is slow going, weaving between these clusters of stone that shoot through the earth. And they stop to inspect the walls and floor after every step for any sign of Flavia’s passage. After climbing upward at a steep angle for more than twenty meters, the earth gives way to solid stone. But the tunnel slides sideways and then proceeds upward, through a natural water-carved tunnel. It finally rises nearly straight. “Ahh.” Triquet stands at the bottom of a very tall chimney. A tiny bit of indirect silver light, nearly directly above their head, glows, way way up there. “What in the wide world of sports?”
The passage doesn’t look all that daunting though. It is choked with logs and branches all the way up, many of which are solid and provide rungs for a very long ladder. But still. What a death trap.
“What’d you find?” Amy still labors under the shelf of solid rock behind them.
“Well…” Triquet kneels. “The real answer here is to look for her footprints first. Or any sign of passage.” There’s none. The tunnel is dry and mostly stone. The nearest branches and logs look worn, as if many feet had climbed them, but nothing to suggest it was done recently. “It’s a real climb. Like straight up the inside of the cliff. Who knows how high.”
“I’m coming.” Amy scrambles into the bottom of the chimney. It’s close quarters with Triquet. “Sorry if my breath is bad.” She cranes her neck upward. The light filters through the countless branches and logs blocking it. “Whoa… So pretty. But yeah. We shouldn’t climb that. There’s no way that’s safe.”
“I agree. Let’s just report back with news of this one and… I don’t know. I can’t figure out how we might ever actually explore it. I can’t imagine what happens if you fall.”
Amy feels Triquet’s shiver. She rubs their narrow shoulders with her hands to warm them up. Triquet rests their head on Amy’s shoulder. It is a tender, nearly intimate moment. Is this the time she should tell Triquet she’s trans? Now that she’s spoken to Mandy it seems like it’s news most of the team should know, and nobody more than the only non-binary person here. But it would be so very awkward, here in this pit deep underground. Never at work, Amy has always told herself. And this is work. “Let me just back out, my dear Doctor, and you can follow.”
Triquet waits, the chill passing. They peer upward, mind buzzing again. This is a very different form of archaeology here than the Antique Road Show up above. Fascinating. Truly sui generis. Without any other materials available, the natives strategically placed sturdy branches and logs across the wide chimney, braced by natural features. This will require a painstaking investigation. It will certainly need its own whole paper itself.
The strap tugs at their waist. Right. But first, Flavia. What do the Marines say? Leave no man behind? He’s not heavy, he’s my brother? Something like that? “Hoo-ra.” Triquet’s voice is swallowed by the dark. They duck back down under the shelf to follow Amy back the way they came.
Ξ
Miriam opens her eyes. Every bit of her aches, inside and out. Shame and guilt and a slowly rising horror that Flavia might never be found drag on her. But she can’t even lift her head.
When her brother Denny killed himself she was halfway across the world, digging trenches in Ethiopia. She had let him slip away, despite all the warning signs over the years. Even though she’d sent him useless cheery videos whenever she could and helped him with his coursework and even set him up with Hannah from Portsmouth for whatever messy good that did them, it was still far from enough. It had been her responsibility as the older sister to watch out for him and she had failed him. Miriam hauls herself out of bed. She cannot fail Flavia. “I mean, I’m right bloody here.”
Alonso snores contentedly beside her. He’s looking better, his sleeping face clearer. And is he losing weight? He seems less bloated. As dangerous as it is here, Lisica is good for his health.
She laces up her boots and puts on the clothes that are still caked with mud. As she walks down the ramp with her toiletries bag to the long tables, her muscles start to work. Yes, she’s a tough old bird. Constant activity over the years has made her body expect rough living each day. Just a visit to the trenches and a spot of tea, then brush her teeth and off she’ll pop.
It’s as she’s returning from the last of these tasks that Amy and Triquet emerge from the bunker. They are freshly soiled.
“The left side.” Triquet points a weary left arm upward, snaking its convoluted course. “Then up up up.”
“Up?” Miriam places her kit on her platform and secures her caving bag, making sure the water is refilled. “How far up?”
“Who knows. There’s light at the top, but… No sign of her.”
“So that only leaves the last one. I’m coming.”
“Are you sure? You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet, honey.” Triquet laughs and squeezes Miriam’s arm to take the sting from the words.
“And you two look like something the cat dragged in.” Miriam steps past them to the bunker door. “Who’s coming?”
They both follow her without a word as Miriam makes her way downstairs. Soon, after all the normal convolutions, they stand in the concrete culvert staring at the eleven tunnel mouths. Triquet and Amy have described to her the tunnel they just explored. They all agree that they hope the final tunnel isn’t like that.
It is not. When Miriam pulls herself up into its narrow opening, it immediately widens into a more comfortable passage, climbing at a forty-degree grade or so. “Oh, praise be.” She is delighted to see that it is all limestone and nearly no mud.
Triquet steps through the narrow mouth to find Miriam kneeling in the tunnel. “Amazing! Did you find anything?”
“Just my first introduction to the true limestone mantle of the island. Look how green! Absolutely microcrystalline. Benthic without a doubt. And this passage is water-worn, over millennia I’m sure. Look, Amy. Tiny fossils. Foraminifera. This is what proves these seas were much shallower at some point in the past. You get much deeper than 4,000 meters in the ocean and calcium forcibly dissolves. So you don’t get limestones in the deep oceans. And as far as I know, this has always been deep ocean here, back to bloody Gondwanaland. So somebody’s models are off. Or rather, everyone’s must be.”
They press on. This passage is generally as large as the concrete culvert below, still rising at a sharp grade. They are able to walk upright quite close together. The passage soon curves up to a bottleneck of spilled jagged stone. “So much calcium in these deposits,” Miriam jabs a rock under her boot with the spike end of her pick, “we could open a chalk factory. So I’m beginning to think this was always an uncharted large shallow platform here in the middle of the ocean. A rogue magma plume probably caused a bubble and then, so close to the surface, it bloomed with life. Reefs in particular. Then after a number of cycles of the reefs collapsing into the crust when the magma bubble stops, then rising again, we get these lovely limestone layers in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean, where nobody expected to find them.”
“Look. Prints.” Triquet kneels at the edge of the cascaded stones. One has a regular imprint of wavy ridges. “Sperry Topsiders or my name ain’t Triquet Carter Soisson.”
Amy blinks. “That’s your full name? Wow.”
“I mean, it’s the same price to change one name or three so get your money’s worth. But I only go by Triquet.”
“I love it.”
“Thank you. But footprints, ladies. This is it. We found her.”
Silently they climb the rockfall and pull themselves up into the next stretch of the passage which continues to rise, doubling back above where they had been. Now they’re avidly scanning the sand on the floor of the tunnel, looking for any more sign of Flavia. But the tunnel floor is too generally disturbed, with nothing conclusive for them to claim as hers.
Another bottleneck makes them climb again. This one features an entire cypress tree that either washed into this tunnel long ago or was somehow placed here. They climb its broken limbs up a long chimney to scramble out onto a short platform. The air is freshening. Light spills from the far end of the tunnel.
They ascend to it. More branches and logs litter this passage, but none block it. Bespelled, they move forward with rising urgency. It is clear what they’ve found before they reach the end. This is a tunnel all the way through the cliffs to the hidden valleys within. There is a passage after all and this is it. The island is unlocked. All its riches are now theirs.
Miriam strains forward, Triquet and Amy no less excited. They don’t even need to speak. The climb is a blur of stumbles and gasps and labored breathing. For a hundred meters they hurry forward until Miriam suddenly stops, raising her hand. “Hear that?”
Triquet and Amy listen. Voices. The easy gabble of a chattering group. More than two, that’s for certain. The voices are indistinct but they aren’t speaking English. It almost sounds like Brazilian Portuguese, lots of vowels in a fluid lyrical cadence. Overlapping sounds. But none of it is angry or distressed.
They cautiously walk forward, alert now. They are perhaps twenty meters from the ragged seam of the tunnel’s exit when the voices suddenly fall silent.
Miriam stops. She shares a worried grimace with Triquet and Amy. They’ve obviously been discovered somehow. But how? And now what? Should they retreat? Move on?
As they have a discussion of silent gesticulations, a silhouette appears in the seam, blocking most of the light. It is a little old man, childlike, with long curly ringlets falling to his waist. He waves his hand in front of his face, as if clearing the air, and then he raises that hand in welcome. “Dobree denda du ya’aak.” His sibilant voice fills the tunnel, then he adds another couple phrases in his singsong chant. As he finishes, a catlike creature steals upward and perches on his shoulder to get a look at them.
The researchers don masks and gloves. “Uh… Hello, mate. We are… uh, we’re looking for our friend.” Miriam looks at Triquet. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just a bloody geologist. You do this. Aren’t you trained in first contact protocols or something?”
Triquet holds their hands up. “This isn’t Star Trek. I’m just a bloody archaeologist. I don’t deal with humans. Just their things.”
It is Amy who hurries forward, hands pressed to her forehead in what she hopes is a universal symbol of peace and respect. “Hi, sir. Hello. It is such an honor to meet you.” She stops at a safe distance and holds her pose. The old man only watches, posture relaxed with all his weight on one hip, as his pet sniffs the air. “That’s a fox. That’s a—a lisica!” Amy points at the animal, her biologist joy overcoming her caution.
“Lisica.” The old man points at the fox. Then a rush of polyglot follows. Amy gave him the impression of knowing his language and now the linguistic floodgates are open. He beckons to them and turns, walking back out into the light.
With an apprehensive look at both the others, Amy edges toward the light. Triquet lifts the blue strap connecting them, thinking if it’s some kind of trap they can yank her back to safety.
After so long underground, the diffuse gray daylight is too much. Amy emerges blinking, wishing she could actually see the world she has finally entered. But she catches just brief snapshots at first: a flat space beside this interior cliff filled with bark longhouses; a crackling fire above which a dozen blackened trout are suspended; a cluster of small people in shifts and loincloths staring at her.
Amy’s hands return to her forehead in Buddhist appeal. She smiles her most beatific smile and walks slowly forward, hoping there aren’t a pair of warriors on either side of her with obsidian axes like Aztec priests. But no, when she looks to either side there is no ambush. Just curiosity.
“Uh. Flavia. My friend. Have you seen her?”
But the nine or ten people only watch her in silence. Now that her eyes are starting to work better she can pick out their fine features and wild range of skin and hair colors. Only a few are golden blond. Others have red hair and the rest have black. But all of them possess long ringlets. Their skin tone ranges from dark brown to ruddy and their faces possess snub noses and pointed chins. It is difficult at first glance to determine gender. She is as tall as the tallest one.
Triquet emerges from behind Amy. “Hello,” they say, waving. “Lovely place. We’re absolutely harmless. Did she tell you?”
Then Miriam emerges. At a loss, she bows to the group. Over her shoulder, she whispers, “Have we found Flavia yet?”
“I was just asking.”
One of the older villagers waddles forward, thin and tough as tree roots. In her gnarled hands she holds a cluster of shells somehow fixed together. She talks as she approaches, a rising and falling cadence that is impossible to follow. The word koox̱ is repeated again and again.
“Did I hear the word ‘American’ in there?” Amy asks.
“I thought I heard ‘colonel.” Triquet holds their hand out for the shells, which the villager is trying to share. “Ah. Ahh.” There is a photo affixed at the center of the shells, making them the frame of a kind of plaque. It is black and white, of a woman with blonde curls. “Yes. Maureen Dowerd. Yes, we know. We know her.”
The crowd erupts, all of them speaking at once. These are known words. They repeat them. “Maureen!” and “Dowerd!” again and again. The chatter begins again from all sides. Others emerge, perhaps thirty in all. The people of Lisica.
DW Draffin -- Lisica 