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 25 – Blows Him A Kiss
June 17, 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:
25 – Blows Him A Kiss
Maahjabeen lifts another armful of heavy branches and carries them across the beach to the lean-to she is rebuilding against the trunk of the fallen redwood. It had been Pradeep who had made it for her a few weeks ago, and then again after that sleeper wave, but the last storm had once again erased all sign of it.
Now, as a labor of love, she builds it again.
Catching her breath, she leans against the giant mass of the horizontal trunk behind her. The sun is breaking through, with silver streaks lighting the ocean in the far distance like spotlights tilted down from heaven. Imagine being a school of sardines out in the open ocean and all of a sudden God decides it is your time to be the star of the show. Maahjabeen is a firm believer in the growing marine biology discoveries about fish intelligence and social complexity. So she imagines they would react to the beneficent touch of the creator with glee. They might be dancing with the stars under the waves, for all she knows.
Maahjabeen giggles. She is in love, truly in love. This is what it is supposed to feel like. She is in wonder at the purity of Pradeep. Mind and body, he is unlike anyone she thinks can even exist in this world. And he is hers. All hers. She wraps her arms around herself with a sense of deep completion. After losing her mother and then her family and town and country and culture, she has been adrift, literally following the currents wherever they take her, ever since. She has had no home, no roots. And it has not been a thrilling adventure. It has really only felt like bleak survival. Because when there is nothing to fall back on, your thoughts return again and again to finding stability. These short oceanography contracts have kept her afloat (again, literally) but she can’t depend on finding them consistently over the years. She needs a larger plan. Before, she just couldn’t decide where to build her life. Now she knows: wherever Pradeep is.
Then she realizes she doesn’t know where Pradeep currently lives. This is important information. It can be a home base for her, a landing spot between her contracts all over the world. Maybe he could even come with her sometimes as another researcher.
Maahjabeen giggles again. She has never been like this. She comes from a family of reserved, educated women. Even their love they dispense in brief but intense dollops. But that is the Tunisian way. And Maahjabeen is now a citizen of the world, is she not? Her time in Japan, in Indonesia and Dar es Salaam and Belize has shown her how wildly different humans can be. Only some of them follow the prophet. Some follow other religions. And others appear to be entirely without God. What had dismayed her is that she couldn’t readily tell which was which. She’d thought that by looking at the hovels and high-rises of Hokkaido and Sumatra and Corozal she could discern the godly among them. But the atheist Japanese had the cleanest and fairest towns and villages of all and her brothers and sisters in Islam in Dar and in Jakarta had been some of the most despairing.
It has caused doubt in her. Not in her faith, which remains as deep and profound as it ever had, but rather in her cultural connection to her faith. She is still a devout Muslim. But she realizes she is no longer the Tunisian version of that. She can now see Allah everywhere, in every tall tree of this island and every wave that laps against the gray shore. She sees holiness in the faces of unbelievers and knows that God is omnipresent, regardless of whether they believe it or not. He watches over them all.
So in that sense, Pradeep has already joined the ummah just by his willingness to listen. She is already doing great work by revealing the Prophet’s words to him. Maahjabeen can rest assured that her intimacy with him is no sin. And besides, not a living soul will know what happened here. It will be their secret forever.
The god rays break through the clouds and their spotlights widen on the ocean’s shining surface, creating white gold luminescences that are painful to behold. She turns toward the southwest instead, to study the dark horizon. It is always a comfort to her, to see the infinite sea disappearing over the furthest edge of the world. This is where the Pacific has every other ocean beat. She has felt this same sweet solitude on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans for sure, but the scale that the Pacific provides is something else. God is here again. The scale of god, the power that comes with infinity. She suspects that God’s divinity specifically derives from His endlessness. Her mathematic brain has always thought so.
What she would give to be out on that open ocean, well-supplied and with a clear forecast for like five days. To be surrounded by nothing but water… It has been too long. She is not really made to live this long on land. She hopes that Pradeep understands that he is dating a mermaid.
This gets another chuckle out of her. What her lover’s amazing brain has reminded her, in their trips together in the kayaks, is that they aren’t skating over a shining surface of a two-dimensional world. It is the roof of an entire rich ecosystem that she is often unwilling to fully take into account. Perhaps it messes with her solitude, the idea that she is far from alone when she is on the water. Perhaps she has a bit of thalassophobia, a fear of the deep, that she has never properly reconciled. But how can you reconcile that terror? Look at those patches out there right now.
She scrambles atop the trunk to get a better view. Blue and green and gray fields exist on the surface of the nearby ocean. They indicate many things, one of them being the depth of the water beneath. The ocean floor could be like 3800 meters here and it wouldn’t surprise her. To fall… to be pulled down into inky, icy oblivion… La. She isn’t sure there is a healthy way to deal with the human need to avoid the deep.
Now. Back to work. How did Pradeep build this thing…? Oh, you idiot. He had twine. Maahjabeen can’t do much here without it. Well. It won’t be more than a moment to retrieve a roll. And maybe she can grab a bite while she’s in camp.
Maahjabeen scrambles onto the fallen log once more, this time facing camp. And that’s when she sees it: the plume of gray smoke streaming from a hole in the top of the cliffs directly above. The wind whips the smoke up and away before it reaches them. That is why she hasn’t smelled it.
But the island is on fire.
Ξ
“I knew it was Jay’s idea!” Esquibel has heard all she needs to hear. It is always Jay. He is the one problem with this whole mission.
“No, no…” Mandy waves her hand in defeat. “You can’t pin it on him. I’m the idiot who actually set the fire.”
“But why… Why would you do that?” Alonso is at a loss. A giant plume of smoke streams from the island like it’s the chimney of a log fucking cabin. Any ship within range will see them. If the skies continue to break up every satellite in this whole hemisphere will turn their cameras onto Lisica.
Amy puts a calming hand on Mandy’s arm. “More importantly, why would you do that without consulting us first?”
“I just—I’m so sorry! I just thought that it wouldn’t be such a big deal. I guess I don’t have much experience with fires. But it seemed safe since it’s all contained in that one like chimney there. So I thought I could just build a quick fire at the base and… I don’t know. I guess I thought it would all go poof and then I’d have an easy way up to the platform on the cliff.”
“It must be like thousands of cubic meters of dry fuel.” Pradeep shakes his head in despair. “It could burn for, like, weeks. Not that it will. But it must be a massive amount of dry wood. We’re talking a four hundred meter shaft, minimum, with like a three meter cross-section. Let’s say the wood is only able to fill half that volume. That’s still… I mean, I can do some calculations… There are equations for how fast wood burns, I’m sure.”
“And how hot is it getting in there?” Amy shakes her head in despair. “It’s like a giant rocket stove. I wouldn’t want to be any of the critters who set up homes in there.”
“Oh my god I didn’t even think about them!” Mandy holds her face in her hands. This is a nightmare. She doesn’t even feel Esquibel’s comforting hand on her back. Now she has to bear the burden of dead wildlife. She ruined the entire field study. She probably ruined their relationship with the Lisicans. And now she has all this blood on her hands. Mandy’s never had to handle this amount of guilt. She can’t take it.
Pradeep has stepped away to the bunker. He returns, calling out, “That’s what I thought. You can feel a noticeable draft pulling air through the sub. Much stronger than before. Amy is right. With all that fuel it must be drawing the air up it and creating a kind of rocket effect. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hot enough to melt steel in there.”
“Oh, god!” Mandy can’t bear any more. She tears herself away and flees, out of camp, away from this reality. But she stumbles in the sand and falls on her side, hands still covering her face. She is wracked by grief, only dimly aware that Esquibel and Amy kneel on either side, consoling her.
Alonso sighs, shaking his head. He wishes he had more fury. But instead he just feels a great weariness. This is how it happens. Not even halfway through the study. The military ships return and the island is taken away from them, just as Plexity is beginning to show its promise. Is this shock? Perhaps he’s in shock.
“Lonzo, we need to come up with a bit of a plan.” Amy encircles his wrist with her hand.
He can only manage a grunt.
She can divine his helplessness. After a compassionate smile and a hand pressed against his cheek, Amy turns toward the others. “Okay. Listen up, everyone. Safety protocol. As long as smoke is coming out of that hole, nobody is allowed in the tunnels. Actually, we probably want to close up the sub as tight as we can.”
“But what if it’s the others coming back?” Esquibel’s question, called out from Mandy’s side, stops them all. Even Mandy sits up.
Through her tears she bawls, “Oh, you’re right! What if they don’t want to be stuck in the interior and they try something dangerous! We need—Oh, Esquibel, you’ve got to call in the Air Force now. Or whoever. Please. We need help.”
But Esquibel only has a helpless shrug for Mandy. “I would if I could, Mands. You know I’d do anything for you.”
It is this evidence that finally convinces Pradeep that Esquibel really doesn’t have a secret link to the outside world. She would do anything for Mandy. “Shit. We really are alone here, aren’t we?”
“It is what Alonso and I have been telling you.” But it is not a point Esquibel needs to hammer home right now, not with how it’s making poor Mandy feel. Esquibel knows what the girl did is reckless but she does feel sympathy. She might have done the same thing in Mandy’s place. It was a reasonable course of action. Who can tell how long fires burn?
“Have we found any other route to the village? Amy? Anyone?” Pradeep tries to get back on track. “Could you see any trails when you were there? I have heard of a few, but…”
“Well, there’s the bad trail,” Amy lists, “and then another wide trail that heads down, I assume to their water source. Then there were a few game trails heading into the trees but I didn’t ever have time to see…”
“It’s possible there’s another way through,” Pradeep says. “But all the ways we know right now bottle-neck at the tunnel right next to the one on fire. So unless Triquet and the others somehow surprise us, they’re stuck there.”
Mandy wails and Amy comforts her with an arm over her shoulders. “Yeah, I think that’s clear, Prad. But maybe we can find a way to reach them. It won’t be weeks. Not with the fire burning that hot. I bet it’s done in another hour or two. We’ll see them again in the morning. I’m sure of it.” But the words sound hollow to them all, even to Amy herself. She eventually stops trying and pushes herself to her feet. “Well, I guess I’ll go close up the sub. Oh, don’t worry, Mandy. I won’t lock them out. I’ll make it so they can push the doors open. I just want to keep the smoke out.”
The impromptu meeting disperses as afternoon progresses into evening. Soon it is only Esquibel and Mandy left, one holding the other. Then Alonso calls out for Esquibel and she squeezes Mandy one last time before abandoning her. No. That is too harsh. She is just busy. With real work. Something Mandy cannot have.
Coming from the shadows, a voice growls, “Well I for one am glad you lit the tunnels on fire. I hope it collapses them and makes it impossible for anyone to go through them.” Flavia leans forward, her eyes burning. “Tonight I will sleep with more peace than I have in weeks.”
Ξ
“We will wait. We won’t do anything rash. We will only see what happens next. Jay…” Miriam puts a heavy hand on his forearm. He is filled with so many wild plans. “We aren’t going to search for the waterfall right now and we certainly aren’t going to launch anything off it.”
He frowns but nods, disappointed.
Miriam surveys the village. The Lisicans have stopped talking to them. They’ve stopped doing nearly all their normal daily work. The smoke has really rattled them. The researchers now stand off to the side, beside a bush and a rockfall in a neglected corner at the edge of the village beside the cliff the tunnel emerges from. It has been an hour, maybe more. They are doing all they can not to draw any more attention to themselves.
Morska Vidra emerges from a hut, blinking at the bright light. His face is thoughtful. With the tip of his thumb he selects several young villagers, talking to them in his sing-song. None of them look happy to be selected. Their heads hang down and their eyes are hooded, but they follow him.
Morska Vidra scrambles up a rockfall to a game trail in a cleft. He is headed toward the source of the smoke, but overland.
Jay can’t stay still any longer. “Fact-finding mission. We got to get in on this.” He slips away from the others and crosses the tunnel mouth to join them. “Heeey gang, mind if I tag along? I know a bunch more songs I could sing.”
“Jay!” Miriam’s voice is too loud, a dreadful whipcrack in this quiet little hamlet. Dozens of heads snap toward her. She lifts a hand in apology and her face goes red. She puts her hand over her mouth. Then she finally manages, “Jay, please get back here.”
But it’s too late. With a helpless shrug, Jay follows the last of the villagers into the cleft, obscured by overhanging boughs of cedar.
Miriam quivers with fury. Triquet ventures a light touch on her elbow but Miriam doesn’t even seem to register it. Triquet withdraws their hand.
“Well.” Katrina likes challenges for sure. But this is a bit much. Their only way out is gone. “And they’ve got to think we did it, somehow. Us or the others at the beach. They must be furious. I hope it doesn’t burn down anything sacred or whatever or we might get a taste of their penal code.”
“Well, Jay can take whatever punishment.” Miriam shakes her hands, trying to release the emotion roaring through her. “We can just watch. Now. We can’t just sit here and pretend to be invisible. We need to show them we can be of value.”
“I’ve got a first aid kit.” Triquet pulls off their backpack and takes out a small ziploc filled with medical supplies. “I don’t… I have no idea how to indicate to them how that might be useful though. Oh, why did Jay have to follow them? I was hoping he’d lose his mind and drop down into the tunnels and somehow save us all. Now I guess I’ll have to be the one to do it.”
“No.” Miriam and Katrina say it at the same time, both putting hands on Triquet. Miriam continues, “We have no idea how dangerous that is. And smoke inhalation is a real killer. You can’t. We just have to be patient.”
Triquet falls back into their embraces with a ragged sigh.
Jay has always prided himself on his climbing skills but these kids are flat-out amazing. First they’ve got top-notch ankle mobility, which he’s always struggled with as a basic bitch white boy. And their joints and hip flexors are as explosive as soccer midfielders. They hammer up the nearly vertical face, their toes grabbing little pockets in the dried clay here, kicking themselves upward like mountain goats.
Jay scrambles, his shoes unwieldy here. Finally he takes them off and crushes his toes getting them to follow in their barefoot tracks. They finally crest the cliff and Jay is surprised to see a wide hollow up here instead of the edge of the cliff dropping to the beach. But no. There’s yet a higher cliff beyond this one, rising up even more. And they’re headed toward it at a brisk pace. Jay starts running to keep up with them on the open land. He nearly reaches the Lisicans by the time they start ascending this cliff. They still haven’t acknowledged him in any way.
The cliff leads upward through a narrow maze of green limestone channels tufted by shrubs like a Doctor Seuss illustration. Jay pulls his way up through them, the soft skin of his feet already so tender. He hasn’t toughened them up in too long and now he’s paying the price. Well, the smoke’s getting worse too and this is what he’s here to see. Good thing he’s got a proper N95 mask already on.
They crest this cliff and here he is. On top of the entire fucking world. The seawinds whip at him from across the island to the north. The gray dome of clouds that conceals the island touches the sea in nearly every direction. He can see it all now, better than any drone. The island makes sense. “Ahh. Miriam’s gotta see this. Incredible.” He takes out his phone and gets a dozen shots before the others move on out of view. He hurries to join them.
They’ve dropped down the front face of this cliff, which sweeps outward in a smoke-filled bowl about the size of a basketball court. They get to the far edge of it, where the smoke is quite bad. Morska Vidra puts his feet over an edge and lowers himself down, face squeezed shut against the fumes. The others follow.
Finally Jay, heart pounding, crawls nearly blind to the spot and sits at the edge. He drops his legs over and feels a small ridge under his heel, no more than a couple centimeters wide. This is it? Then what? Man… Sometimes being heedless has its downsides for sure.
He slowly scoots down a fairly sheer face, sometimes hanging from the fabric of his shirt and shorts. But then he hears their voices below him and realizes they stand on a spine that is level here. He joins them, uncomfortably close on the small ridge.
This close to the fire, the air is suddenly scorching. Jay realizes it’s just on the other side of this ridge. And it’s roaring. The cliffs had hidden all this from them before but now they can hear it. It’s like a giant Roman fucking candle sending a huge jet of yellow flame straight up into the air. Cinders fall everywhere. They can’t get any closer.
Finally Jay realizes what he’s looking at. He understands what happened here. He remembers that it was his own words.
Now the Lisicans finally look at him. Shock, sadness, fear. He can’t bear their gazes. They don’t even realize how right they are to blame him for what they’re seeing. Jesus, dude. You’ve really got to learn to watch your fucking mouth. But never in a million years did I think she’d actually go and do it!
Ξ
Flavia hates waking up at night on this island, ever since those crabs took over the beach on one of the first nights. She’s never really gotten over that. Since then, if it’s dark, she does all she can not to open her eyes. But her alarm goes off all the same. Even before she is awake her hand moves to silence it.
Here in her cell, she starts to drift off again but a tiny inquisitive voice in the back of her head starts asking what that alarm was for. And now, until she can figure it out, she can’t get back to sleep. Flavia squints at her phone screen. It presents a reminder:
YOUR FOURTH WEEK STARTS TODAY.
Flavia drops her head back on her pillow. Right. Her ordeal here isn’t even halfway over. But at least she can go back to sleep now. Since most of the heavy-lifting with Plexity is already done maybe she can just sleep through all of the next day.
What is that sound? Ah, yes. The fire. It is like an old-fashioned boiler in the next flat, an uneven sputtering of white noise in the far distance. And the ground outside flickers with its firelight. It is still burning quite hot. What a foolish thing that was for Mandy to do.
How hot is the fire getting? Flavia is generally comforted by feedback loop transfer functions and the state-space equations that can describe them. Now she lets them trickle through her mind. But she doesn’t know the starting values of the fuel or what its ignition point is. She will have to guess, which mostly makes the exercise irrelevant. And now she isn’t falling back to sleep at all.
She hears a giggle. Strange. The only other ones in here tonight are Maahjabeen and Pradeep and neither of them are the giggling type. Perhaps Maahjabeen is having a silly childhood dream. That’s what it sounds like. Such a carefree giggle.
Flavia wishes she could feel so carefree. But her life has never been so easy. Not that she’s had to deal with any particular challenges. She comes from a privileged family with historical roots and a tradition of philosophy and science in their ranks. She was mildly bullied for being a nerd in school and mildly assaulted once by a couple boys, who learned to keep their hands to themselves after she knocked one’s teeth out and dislocated the other one’s knee. But apart from a few rattling moments like that, her life has been pretty much her own. She is the paragon of a modern Italian woman, in control of her body and her career and her daily life.
After Prozia Giulia left her a sizable inheritance and an old farm in the Po River Valley, Flavia had become independently… well, not wealthy, but secure. And her work brings in enough revenue that she can almost pretend she is a success. It is when her patents start to make money that she will truly build her empire. Then she will be carefree. Until that day, it is projects for others like this.
No. Not like this. Never again like this. If anyone ever asks her to work onsite again she will laugh in their faces. From now on, she will do all her work from the comfort of her couch or not at all. Flavia has learned her lesson.
Maahjabeen giggles again. Ha. It must be quite a sweet dream!
Ξ
Miriam picks at the wall of the cliff beside her with her smallest tool. She’s getting flakes of dried clay intermixed with a variety of sandstones. The cladding, again. This is what hides the interesting layers from her, even here. When oh when will she finally be able to discover the roots of this island? She needs a bloody sluice to tear the earth off this cliff so she can finally see what she wants!
Suppressing a grimace, she shifts to see what else she can reach. They really haven’t moved since they’ve gotten here. Katrina and Triquet still stand with her in the corner of the village, unwilling to make a peep. It’s quite clear that their team is responsible for the fire and the villagers are extremely upset with them. It is a sign of their civility that they have been so restrained in their response.
Jay eventually returns with the others. His face is streaked with dirt and soot and he is uncharacteristically silent, eyes downcast. Whatever he saw up there has disturbed him greatly. Katrina tries to ask, then cajole answers from him. But he only shakes his head and shoves his hands into his pockets.
“Well, this is ridiculous.” Miriam looks to Triquet and Katrina for support. “We need whatever information you’ve got, Jay. Did you see the fire?”
Jay nods yes, his face even more unhappy.
“It’s not the camp, is it? Please God tell me it isn’t camp.”
“No, no…” This rouses Jay enough to speak. “Everyone’s safe.”
“Then where is the fire?” Triquet snaps fingers under Jay’s nose. “Hey I know you’re upset and you’re not like playing coy here but we need some real answers now. Dude. What’s on fire? Are we in trouble? When will it go out so we can get home?”
Jay groans. “It might be days. We gotta… We gotta, like find some food I guess. It’s one of the tunnels. The vertical one filled with branches and logs. And now it’s burning.”
“Ohh.” Triquet nods. “Yeah, that makes sense. But how did a fire get started…?”
Jay only crosses his arms and shakes his head no. He ain’t no snitch. And even though it was his idea, he’ll definitely have some choice words for Mandy himself, in private.
As the day progresses into afternoon, the wind shifts and billows of smoke come rolling through the tunnel mouth to cover the village. Now Miriam and the others have to move, scurrying with the Lisicans out of the village down the main path, deeper into the valley. The smoke, heavier than air, rolls after them.
The path is two people wide and the bare tree roots and soil soon give way to rounded river stones beneath their feet. Miriam kneels to scoop up a few. Quartz. Ha. This is an old riverbed and there must be a seam of quartz up-canyon. Here’s another pink quartz shot through with pyrite. Nearly everything else is sandstone of various hardness. She stands, pockets the samples, and hurries after the others, smoke chasing her.
Miriam is quite glad to have a properly-fitting mask, but her eyes are still streaming in the dense smoke. Her breath labors through the filter and her chest aches. Her heart is beating too fast.
The trail flattens out into a wide river valley. It follows a narrow stream, with a worn bank where the villagers must get their water. Here, they’re far enough from the rim of cliffs that the wind blows across, pushing the smoke off to the west. The villagers cross deep into the valley to get as far from the smoke as they can, finally standing along the tall bank of a larger creek in a long line.
This flight has revived Jay and he’s back to problem-solving mode. Where will they cross this little river here? It’s deep and flowing fast, the water dark blue and brown, reflected in the nauseous sky. The first flecks of ash are sprinkling its surface.
Jay and his crew look up and down the bank. There is no bridge, no ford, no fallen log. As far as they can tell, there is no way across. The Lisicans stand waiting, anxious but fleeing no farther, their backs to the river.
“Uh, won’t we be better off like, over there?” Jay can’t help but say it aloud to the closest Lisican, a relatively tall man who comes up to his shoulder. Jay points at the far side of the river. Then he corrects himself and points again using the tip of his thumb. But the man won’t even turn around to look.
“Who’s that?” Katrina hasn’t said much these last few hours. Usually in a crisis she likes to chatter or sing a song but here, in masks and smoke, she can’t lift her own spirits, much less those of anyone else. But now she sees a figure on the far bank, a teen girl in a blue feather cape, who stands at a distance and calls out.
“Eeeyyyyy-Yee!” The girl’s voice ends in a piercing crack. “Laak lilḵa Dunaax̱oo?”
The woman who first lectured Katrina at the entrance of the hut now separates herself from the others and takes fifteen or twenty steps away from the river before she turns around. She responds to the girl with a long loud chant that carries across the river, pointing at the fire, then at the tall strangers in their midst.
The girl considers the speech for a long moment, then turns and vanishes. The woman on this bank hurries back to join the others, waving a hand in front of her own face and coughing. The villagers all fall to talking to each other. Still, none of them will turn to look across the river.
“Anyone else,” Triquet drawls, “starting to think we shouldn’t be looking this direction? Some kind of taboo, I guess.”
“Who knows?” Katrina shrugs. “We may be exempt. Who even knows what’s going on here? Christ. It’s nothing but one bloody incomprehensible thing after the other. All I know is we haven’t brought them a single moment of joy since we got here. They must be so sick of us.”
“Maybe we… uh…” Jay looks over the heads of the Lisicans up and down the bank to find a more suitable place to stand, away from the villagers who hate them so much. But stands of reeds and clumps of vegetation block his view each way. “Let me just check downstream here.” Jay breaks formation and steps away from the river, crossing before the last clutch of villagers on their left to investigate what lies beyond a surprisingly-tall stand of catchfly.
A gap in the vegetation on the bank is infilled with tule reeds. No real place for them here. Pushing through the reeds leads to a marsh with sucking mud. And if he goes any further away from the river in search of solid ground he’ll be right back in the smoke.
In defeat, Jay returns to the others, where the air remains clear.
Katrina has used the time he’s been gone to make a plan with Triquet. After the woman addressed the girl on the far bank, she had returned to her place at the riverside, next to the old crone Katrina had been trying to meet in her hut. Of course she’s been evacuated too. Now this might be their only chance to speak with her. But Triquet isn’t convinced.
“Give the old thing a chance to catch her breath first, girlfriend. She ain’t going nowhere.” Triquet still carries the folded display in the internal sleeve of their backpack where a water pouch should go. But they make no move yet to retrieve it.
When Jay returns, he taps them each on the arms and gestures with his chin at the far bank. They look over their shoulders to see the members of another entire village standing outside the edge of the woods there, regarding them.
Their leader is a tall woman with tight gray curls carrying what looks like a spear with a cross-brace. She begins speaking but Jay can’t follow. His mind’s awhirl with what that cross-brace means. A spear like that is only used in big-game hunting, like elk or bison. If your prey has the potential of lunging and goring you then you put a cross-brace on your spear so it won’t plunge further than a certain depth. It keeps you away from antlers and tusks. She wears a hide cape and skirt. Further proof these people hunt big game. There’s large mammals on this island!
Katrina is discreetly recording the woman’s speech. She speaks softly into her phone during a silence. “This is the other like chief, I guess. Like the lady boss. That’s what I’ll call her. Now Lady Boss is pointing at the trees and the cliffs and the river. Listen! She’s saying the same word Morska Vidra used! Tuzhit! Tuzhit! Tuzhit everywhere!”
Triquet narrates what happens next. “Now our own Lady Boss, the crone’s daughter? She’s stepping away from the river to reply. There’s some kind of holy significance perhaps? A significant cultural element of both their villages, this river? That if they get too close they can’t look at it? Good fences make good neighbors?”
“We’ll call our Lady Boss, uh, the Mayor? I think she’s repeating what she told the girl.” They listen to her speech again, and when she indicates the tall strangers in their midst, Jay for one feels compelled to bow in the direction of the new tribe.
That doesn’t go over well. Lady Boss lifts her spear and shouts in a dreadful guttural voice at them, her consonants crashing together and her eyes flashing. They haven’t seen this kind of aggression from anyone in this village. “Whoa. That ain’t good.” Jay averts his eyes like the others.
Lady Boss makes a decision. She directs some of her villagers to go stand on their own bank of the river. Katrina glances back to see that a good twenty of their tribe line it in opposition, their own backs to the river. “Well, this is ridiculous.”
“Norms must be observed,” Miriam tells Katrina, squeezing her hand for patience. “Especially during a crisis. That’s what they’re for.” Miriam takes a long glance herself. Lady Boss and the rest of her village have left, leaving only the score of those on the far bank. “Even if we have no fucking clue what they mean.”
Triquet shares a glum look with Katrina, then Jay. “Anyone else getting hungry?”
“Oh, damn,” Jay groans, “you had to mention it.”
Ξ
“This is my processing site here.” Pradeep leads Amy to a small clearing in the grove, near Maureen Dowerd’s grave. He has excavated a long trench of turf, topsoil, and clay, removing the long narrow samples of earth to lie in rows, where they’ve been marked with small pins adorned with white flags. “The flags mark the boundaries of each medium, gravel, clay, etc. We’ll need Miriam to help us analyze what each of the minerals are. But we get to categorize any life forms we find in each layer.”
Amy crouches beside the samples and studies them, marveling that there can be so much life in such places. “We need to isolate strains, and there might be millions. The soil alone probably contains… who knows?”
Pradeep falls into lecture mode. “Recent papers estimate five thousand bacterial species. But that’s from a soil sample in Bergen, Norway. Lisica might have somewhat more or less, but it’s definitely a very different environment. But here’s the magic of the military-industrial complex. The Dyson readers make short work of the samples. Watch…” And he loads a couple milligrams of loose soil into its tray, which withdraws into the body of the unit. Pradeep’s phone buzzes. He consults it, then shares its display with Amy. A steady stream of eubacterial identifications scroll down the screen. Most cannot be identified by name, which may mean they’re unique and undiscovered.
“Sweet Jesus,” she laughs. “Just identifying the first strain… Instantaneous here but god, just doing that took the entire second semester of my sophomore year. Now it’s happening in the blink of an eye in batches by the thousand. I’m so old.”
Pradeep laughs. “My generation of scientists will be so meta. Or specialists so narrowly-focused they only speak a language like three other people do. Nobody in-between, for sure. So now back to work. The important part here is to keep all the samples straight and annotate the context of each sample with the Plexity keywords. I’ve got it set up like an assembly-line. And I’ve only got a few hours of work here left. So if you start on this end, and take a tiny scoop, no more than a milligram or two, then we can work together toward the bottom…” His stomach growls loudly enough to interrupt him and they both laugh.
“When was the last time you had a proper meal?” Amy frowns at him, knowing she won’t like the answer.
“Yes. Last night. You’re right. I’ll grab a snack when we’re done. I’ve just got another project that—”
“Why don’t you go grab a bowl and spoon out some of the rice on the stove. It’s still warm. There’s curry powder in the little blue bin if you want. But hot food! Now! And plenty of it!”
But Pradeep hesitates. “Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure we’re clear here. Do you get the collection protocol?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing the last two weeks? Just not on this scale. But yes! Go! Eat!”
Satisfied that the work will continue without him, Pradeep smiles his gratitude to Amy and scurries back to camp. Now that his hunger has announced itself it claws at him, interrupting his every train of thought. Biology, even his own, has its demands.
The rice and curry isn’t enough. He finds a packet of powdered eggs and reconstitutes them with a bit of oil and water. There. A foam of yellow protein. That will keep him going. He sits with a bowl near Alonso, Flavia, and Esquibel, who all work on laptops in silence. Alonso peers over his reading glasses with a frown and addresses Pradeep. “How goes the processing facility?”
“Grand. I’ve got Amy working it right now while I grab a bite. The species identification software in those Dyson readers is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen. Or perhaps it’s part of the microfluidics process itself. Probably both. Anyway. Now that I know readers like these exist, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do fieldwork again without them.”
“It’s excellent data. Mm, that smells good. I’m getting hungry.”
“Don’t move, Alonso.” Pradeep stands. “I left an extra serving in the pot. Here. And would you like a glass of wine with that?”
Alonso holds up his hand to forestall Pradeep. “No wine. Not this early. And no more drugs. Not for a good long time, at least. Just food. Thank you so much, Pradeep. You are a prince.”
Pradeep recalls how Alonso looked at him with such ardor while he was rolling on Molly. Pradeep blushes and looks down, hoping Alonso has no memory of the event. That’s how those party drugs work, isn’t it? People black out and need to be told what they did when they lost all control. Pradeep finds the concept unimaginable. His anxiety would never let him do such a thing.
After finishing his own bowl, Pradeep washes it and moves on to his next project. He really should have started this hours ago but it didn’t occur to him until he was knee-deep in the soil samples and nobody else seems to feel such urgency about their lost colleagues.
But still, he should have done this sooner. Pradeep hauls out the case that contains the drone and the headset and joysticks Katrina uses to fly it. He has never worked with such an advanced model. The old DJI mini he used before didn’t even come with a headset, just a flatscreen monitor and grainy resolution.
“Pradeep. What are you up to…?” Pradeep can’t locate the source of the voice. How odd. He takes off the headset and looks around. Who was it who spoke? They sounded so… forlorn.
“Just, uh, working with the drone,” Pradeep calls out in a neutral tone. “Thinking I might get it up and over the cliff. Send a note to the village. I don’t know. Maybe it’s crazy.”
“You can’t take the drone!” It’s Mandy. She leans out of the bug netting that had shadowed her. She looks dreadful, her hair hanging in lank strands, dark circles under her eyes. “I mean, we need it for the weather station. What if you lose it? Then I won’t have anything.” She lets the last word fall, realizing how lame she sounds. What has happened to her? How has she become such a loser? She can hardly show her face in camp anymore.
Pradeep sits back, recognizing the screech in her voice. Mandy is ruled by her emotions at the moment, her spirit nearly broken by the mistakes she’s made. He blinks at her. Consolation is hard for him. Not that he doesn’t feel for Mandy. He just doesn’t know how to put his care into words without triggering his own anxiety. Then what a fine pair they’d be, huddled in two opposite corners of her tent, curled fetal, facing away from each other. No, he has to be more helpful than that somehow. “Uh, it’s okay. There’s a second battery, you know.”
But now Mandy is crying, utterly miserable. Poor girl. Pradeep wonders how he might respond if it was Maahjabeen in tears. He stands and crosses to her platform. Pradeep sits awkwardly on the edge. He pats Mandy’s shoulder.
She sobs more loudly and pushes her face into his shoulder. She just wants to hide. That’s all she wants now.
Pradeep puts an arm around her, worried that he might smell too bad, his clothes, his armpits, his breath. “There, there.”
He looks up, across the camp, to find Esquibel watching them with a crooked smile, entertained by his predicament. Pradeep makes a face at her, in sympathy of Mandy.
Esquibel, to his surprise, smiles warmly and blows him a kiss.
Chapter 19 – He Is Back
May 6, 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:
19 – He Is Back
Triquet wanders the sub in a refractory mood all afternoon. Their thoughts are sluggish and emotions bruised and they don’t really know why. Probably just exhaustion. This place is so intense. The sub had been the only place they’d been able to find some solitude. At least, until now. Someone’s coming. Triquet calls out, “Fancy meeting you here.”
Miriam ducks through the hatch and crosses the sub’s main compartment of the lower floor, wearing one of her field bags and a helmet with a light. She has an eager gleam in her eye. “Triquet, love. So glad to see you. I’ve got a, well, a personal question to ask if I might. Oh. No, not you personal. Me personal.”
Triquet had instantly grown guarded despite themself and Miriam had noticed. Now they just feel abashed. “Ah, well then fire away. Secrets are like crack to me. I am immune to TMI.” Miriam is just too adorable and seeing her lightens their mood.
“It’s a… well a bit of a wardrobe question, you see.”
“I like how your voice got all posh and Victorian there.”
“Well, I’m stilted not for my own sake, but I guess for yours. I don’t want to presume too much. It’s nothing really. I’ve just, well, I didn’t know Alonso would be in the condition he’s in so I brought a fancy little piece for myself. Don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I had no idea what I was getting myself into here. None of us did, eh? But I just took this lovely fitted bodice out of storage for the first time and tried it on and guess what?”
“You look like Florence from Florence and the Machine?”
“Oh, you think so? I adore her. No. It was too big. I’ve bloody shrunk. Not just in the boobs but everywhere. I was afraid I’d have gotten bigger with age but I guess I’ve dropped some weight here just in the last few weeks on the island.”
“You know, I’ve noticed that before on digs. Like I’ve got a working field weight that I tailor all my selections to,” they turn to provide an admirably flat profile of their seventies cowboy shirt and tweed kilt for Miriam’s admiration, “and then at home I just let myself go, wear mumus and fuzzy slippers all day. So you need someone good with a needle to help you take it in?”
“Would you be a dear?”
“But of course. I might even have a bit of lace I can spare to fancy it all up. Sounds like fun, girlfriend. But not now, though? You’re headed somewhere?”
Miriam squeezes Triquet’s arm and widens her eyes with cartoonish excitement. “Down! Down…! These tunnels still have so many secrets to yield. Come with me?”
“I’d have to fetch my gear.”
But the geologist’s enthusiasm drags them both toward the entrance to the tunnel past the next chamber. Triquet ducks through the hatch to find Miriam suddenly speechless watching Esquibel at work. The doctor is down below in the hull breach of the sub, laboring to seal the tunnel entrance with metal panels and grates. Preoccupied, she doesn’t see them until Triquet’s shadow moves across the wall. Then she spins with a gasp and reaches for a black satchel at her feet.
“Sorry,” Miriam chimes. “Didn’t mean to scare…”
“Ah! Miriam! Why are you sneaking up on me like that?”
But Miriam shakes her head no, tight and annoyed. “Excuse me, Esquibel, I think I’m the one who might be owed answers here. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Esquibel straightens with a grim exhalation through her nose, her mouth in a flat line. “This is now a security issue, Doctor. I am in charge of security.”
“Oh, are you?” Triquet asks. “First I’ve heard of it.”
“Please. You must understand,” Esquibel indicates the tunnel mouth below, “there is at the minimum one known kidnapper on the other side of that tunnel. Flavia has escaped from him but we have no indication that he has given up.”
“Well, yes, but this is just silly. What we’ve also learned is that the whole cliff face here is riddled with caves and tunnels. If they find this one blocked they’ll just go to the exit by the waterfall.”
“I am blocking that one next.”
“But what I’m saying is we don’t know all their ways in and out. They could have a thousand. We’ll never know. By taking away the only ones we do know… I mean, isn’t that some kind of tactical error or something?”
Esquibel has heard enough. She raises her hand. “I am not speaking to you now as a medical doctor but as a Lieutenant Commander and field officer who is in charge of this mission.”
“Whoa.” Triquet raises their own hand. “You can stop right there. Nobody signed ol’ Triquet up for any military mission, lady. Save your fancy titles for someone who cares.”
Miriam shakes her head and scowls. “This is a scientific mission, Esquibel. I am a geologist. These are caves. I demand access.”
Triquet is riled up now. “I mean, where does the security end, Esquibel? Will you just lock us all up inside the bunker? I mean, if the natives have access to the whole island. Or can you call in? You can, can’t you. Cancel the whole mission. Bring in the Navy and have them bury another fucking ship in the sand for no reason.”
Esquibel only looks at them with a closed face, backed into the corner. She doesn’t understand how they can be so dense. “Tell me. How many islanders are there?”
“We have no idea,” Miriam answers.
“Precisely. And tell me, what is their disposition toward us? The last report from Amy didn’t sound very good.”
“No, it didn’t. But it’s not like they tied Flavia up and carried her away. They just tricked her. They’re harmless. Since I know their tricks, they won’t work on me.”
“And one last question. Why did they want Flavia?”
Miriam falls silent. Finally Triquet offers, “Sounded like a forced marriage situation to me. But who knows? Maybe they were just working out some deep cultural thing. It sounds like most of them are fine and only one of them causes trouble. We just have to figure out a way to get the good guys to realize we’re on their side and not Wetchie-ghuy’s. Then things will be peachy. But yeah, Miriam… Maybe Miss Super Soldier is right. Not about blocking things up. But wandering alone through the tunnels might not be the best idea right now. Maybe just until the situation stabilizes.”
Miriam shakes her head in disbelief. “Can’t believe this. I finally gain access to the bedrock of the island and you’re going to take it away from me? With your military fever dreams? Shocking.” She returns to the hatch. “There will be a mandatory meeting tonight. This will not stand. Regardless of your priorities here, you do not pull rank on me. Ever. Understand, Esquibel? You’ll have to use whatever you’ve got in that bloody black bag to stop me.”
They listen to her footsteps clanging away, along one deck then the next one above. Finally Triquet exhales. “Good lord, Esquibel! Where did you learn manners, from all the bullies at bully school?”
Esquibel only shakes her head. “I am sick of coddling you people. You have no idea what you are talking about. Colonel Baitgie and I have done all we can to protect you precious little scientists from the big bad military. If I was an actual security officer and not a nice and reasonable medical doctor, I would be yelling at you about operational security all day every day.”
“So yes. All the bullies at bully school. Good for you. Maybe next time you recruit a team of scientists you let them know the military is kidnapping them before it happens.”
Esquibel lifts her hands, helpless. “That was not my call.” But she doesn’t know how to appease Triquet. “The island remains entirely classified. It’s a matter of timing and finessing of policy that we could have you here at all.” That seems to have no effect either. Triquet only watches Esquibel with speculative hostility. Finally she thinks to change the subject. “Look. Doctor Triquet. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something else anyway. We will have our mandatory meeting tonight I am sure. But until then, I think it is now very much time to exhume the body of Maureen Dowerd.”
Triquet exhales with such force it’s nearly a gasp. “Autopsy. Right. Now you’re speaking my language.”
Ξ
Two shadows darken Flavia’s door. She is in her cell, deep in her work, fingers rattling the keyboard. “Eh, what is it?”
“Uh…” Jay begins. “Just like checking in on you?”
Flavia frowns comically and turns to regard him. Pradeep stands there with Jay. They look like awkward teens about to ask for the car keys. “Hello, boys. And what do you think you can do for me?”
They shrug at each other. Pradeep says, “We were just, uh, talking, thinking about your—your whole ordeal. We weren’t sure you’d had a chance to…” He waves his hands in a vague gesture.
“I am fine.” She returns to her work. “Those little bastards don’t get any more of my time than they have already taken. Thank you.” She turns back to her work and the equations start to flow from her fingers. She adds in an absent voice, “If you want to help me, tell me that you big strong men will guard and protect me if any of them try to come after me again. Will you do that?”
“For sure. We got your back.” Jay takes another step into the room. He is always a little too loud and eager. Bodyguard duty must sound like fun to him.
Pradeep is, as always, more cautious. “Do you have any reason to believe this Wetchie-ghuy character will try again?”
“I don’t know! Why would you think I know? I don’t speak the language. All I really know is that he wanted me to stay with him in his filthy little hut on the mountain and he wanted me to wear his loop around my wrist. I had to escape with the help of a little girl. Does that sound like he has given up to you?”
Pradeep frowns. “We won’t let anyone take you anywhere, Flavia. I absolutely promise. But I really wish I knew what he wanted from you. We’ve got weeks more of this and we have to come to some kind of resolution or it will be unbearable.”
“Then how about we throw him off a cliff? Problem solved.”
“Ehh, maybe…” Pradeep edges out of the doorframe. Flavia stifles a smile at his discomfort. This obviously isn’t going the way he intended. He slips away without another word.
“He a big guy? How old?” Jay is evidently preparing for the fight.
“What? No, you idiot. He is a little old man. This is not like a boxing match. He is very clever. Wetchie-ghuy tricks you.”
Jay cocks his head. “What was it like in there, Flavia? We got this whole other world right next door. Were you scared?”
“Yes, but more confused and frustrated. It took me so long to figure out what had happened. The food was terrible and they were not very nice. It was like the time I went to a conference in Delaware. But at least then I had a hotel bed.”
“Cool. How did you escape? You didn’t really talk much about it. Did you have to run for your life? Climb out your window?”
“You have seen too many movies. No, this little girl woke me in the middle of the night and led me away. We just walked out of camp as quietly as we could and she brought me a very strange way back to the village. Lots of climbing. More than my poor legs can do. But she was very patient with me. Xaanach. She mimed choking Wetchie-ghuy to death all the time. So I did too. It’s how we knew we had the same goals. I can’t say she was a sweet little girl. Wiser than her years, for sure. But I owe her my life.”
“Awesome. Well. We’re super glad you’re back. And if there’s anything you need, you just let me know.” He lays his big callused hand on her shoulder. She likes its warmth. Despite herself, Flavia pauses writing code and leans into it. “Like, yeah. You want a massage? I can do that.” He starts gently kneading her neck and she groans, surprised by how much it releases.
“Oh, that feels so good. This is like some kind of day spa now, between you and Mandy with all this touching.”
“Totally. We could be the therapists. Take you to a mud bath. Do like some pedicures.” He begins to work her muscles more deeply, getting into it. His hands are strong. He’s quite good at this. Flavia drops her shoulders and surrenders to his touch.
Ξ
Katrina and Mandy stand on the beach, using the drone to retrieve the weather station after breakfast. They are softly chanting Lizzo lyrics, arms linked, swaying back and forth, bumping hips. Katrina wears the headset. Mandy cranes her neck up, trying to spot the little black dot against the gray sky.
There it is, lifting off with the hacked-together weather station hooked and swinging beneath. Mandy mutters bitterly, “Stupid Wetchie-ghuy, stupid kidnapper ruining everything. We were finally gonna have access to the cliffs from the other side. I could just climb out to any spot I wanted whenever I wanted. We wouldn’t have to do this at all if he hadn’t stolen Flavia.”
“Just when you think you’ve finally escaped all the creeps.” But Katrina’s voice is absent, focused on her task.
“I can’t believe what Esquibel did on your decks last night.”
That gets Katrina’s full attention. She giggles, her body echoing the dance moves she’d been inspired to perform. “Fuck yeh, she was awesome. Oh my god I haven’t danced so hard in ages. We need to give her a DJ name. What do you call her?”
“Skeebee! She was totally Jam Master Skeebee last night!” But Mandy’s laugh trails away. She tastes a wetness on the wind that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Hold on…” She releases Katrina and steps away, toward the lagoon. Mandy studies the marine layer but it lies low, too close, hiding the movements of the sky behind. If there’s a new storm out there she can’t see it. “But I can taste it.”
As frustrated as Mandy is that her modern tools have been mostly useless out here so far, it has forced her to become more like her ancestors in her understanding of the weather. She is proud that her nose registers each subtle shift of the wind now, that she can smell the swamp of Siberia on the eastern wind or the chalky arctic Alaskan interior from the north. Losing her satellite imagery and digital meters is only making her a master of her field in a way that no amount of lab work could ever do.
And she gets to do it with Esquibel and Katrina!
Mandy watches the sea darken. Yes, there’s something out there, possibly headed their way. She turns back to Katrina, but she’s still preoccupied with the drone. Now Mandy really wants to see the barometric reading it carries. She’s pretty sure she can feel the pressure dropping—that she’d been feeling it drop for some time. Oh, no. This might be another big one.
“Where’s Triquet and Esquibel?” Amy calls out to everyone in the bunker. She works to reinforce the door before the storm hits. The tarps on the roof have been doubled and reinforced. Next, she’ll hang double tarp curtains against the exterior of the windows. Then they’ll be snug. As soon as they find those two.
“Not downstairs,” Miriam calls back as she climbs the stairs from the trap door, closing it behind her. “I checked every inch. Even already found a way around Esquibel’s barrier. What nonsense.”
“She’s probably hiding from you now,” Amy teases. “In fear of Doctor Truitt. Don’t poke the Irish wolfhound.”
Miriam bares her teeth, joining her at the door, but Mandy chimes in as she passes, “From what I’ve heard of the exchange, you’re in for a fight. Esquibel doesn’t back down. Like ever.”
Miriam’s eyes flash but she doesn’t say another word.
“I’ll go find them.” Jay steps to the door. His limp is finally easing and he’s eager to get one last stretch of the legs in before he’s cooped up in the box for days on end again.
“Uh, we don’t know when it’s gonna hit,” Mandy tells him, “but between my barometric and wind speed readings, it might be soon and it might be hard. I wouldn’t go out there.”
“When was the last time anyone saw them?”
“At the exchange,” Miriam replies archly. “I left them down there. Maybe they got stolen away by Wetchie-ghuy.”
Flavia’s haggard voice emerges from the cluster of cells, “Please don’t talk about him! Don’t even make jokes!”
“Sorry, Flavia,” Miriam calls out. “That was thoughtless of me.” She grimaces a silent apology to everyone else.
Amy pokes her head through the doorway. “Pradeep? Can I get you to finish binding the door like I’m doing here? I’ll come with you, Jay. But let’s hurry.”
Moments later, in hard shells on top and shorts on the bottom, they are out the door and into the darkening camp. Everything is lashed down and covered in tarps. The wind whips at them in eddies and swirls, icy cold.
They begin at the far edge of the grove to the west, wanting to be methodical in their search. Jay tries to scan for tracks but there’s been too much traffic here lately and the sand is too soft to register foot placement or sole pattern. They slip under the trees, following the path they first did when they discovered Tenure Grove. “Man, that was, what, three weeks ago now? Almost? The first time we walked into these trees?”
“Feels like a year.” Amy shakes her head in wonder. “So much has happened in such a short time.”
“Yeah, and I have a feeling the fun ain’t about to stop. Especially if we can’t find these two madlads.”
“Did you just call Triquet a lad?” Amy emerges beside him as the understory clears. They walk on the soft duff.
“Uh… I guess so. And Esquibel, if we’re counting.”
“Yeah, but she probably won’t care about being mis-gendered. Triquet probably does. I hope you aren’t—”
“No, I get it. But, look, it’s an internet meme. Madlads are wild and reckless. It’s just a generational reference thing. There’s no gender to the meme. It can be anyone. I bet Triquet knows that.”
“You might want to sit down with them at some point and get some real guidance on your behavior. Okay?”
“Sure thing, boss. Soon as we find them.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Pretty good. Good range of motion. Good stamina so far. Kinda weak though. I wouldn’t want to do much that’s technical and have it fail. That’d be bad. Huh. Well this is the end of the grove this way. Did they like go to the waterfall?”
“Almost the end. We still need to check that one last fairy ring.”
“Right. The grave site.”
They step onto the twisted cords of the redwood’s roots and peer into the enclosure within.
Triquet kneels beside Esquibel down there. They have exhumed the body of Maureen Dowerd, who lies on her side on a white plastic sheet. They wear gloves and white smocks and are murmuring to each other, absorbed in deep conversation. Jay registers the planks of the coffin’s lid leaning against a tree, the corpse’s curled and mummified hands with purple nails. Then the first rain drops spatter onto him.
“Oh, no,” Amy sighs in despair.
Esquibel spins, looking up at them, alert and defensive. “Eh. Good. It is just the biologists. They can help.”
Amy laughs, a little derisive. “What do you mean just?”
“No no,” Esquibel waves the slight away. “I only meant it is not someone who will try to stop us.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s exactly what we’re here to do. Feel that?” Jay holds up a hand. The rain is coming from over the top of the cliffs, random fat icy drops. If they hadn’t been so preoccupied with their autopsy then they would have noticed it.
“Big storm coming. We’re buttoning up the bunker. We’ve got to, uh, clean up and…” Amy waves her hand in a kind of general inclusion of everything before her. “You know, before it hits.”
Esquibel nods. She immediately begins to gather the white plastic sheet beneath the body. “Yes, we have finished our primary exam. And we’ve learned what we can of the cause of death. See?” She lifts the stiff corpse, turning it so they can see her scalp behind the left ear. The blonde curls are clotted with dark blood. Esquibel gently peels the hair away to reveal the blunt force wound that crushed her skull and ended her life. “I’d wanted to take a look at her internal organs too, but… Ecch. I hate the rain.”
“Feels like it’s gonna be a cold one too, Doc.” Jay doesn’t know how he feels about what he sees. He’s been on a couple digs before where they unearth dead bodies, but never with this kind of personal connection. Like, he’s seen her face in photos and now her remains are just so naked and vulnerable, twisted on the ground. He wishes they could just leave her in peace.
Only Triquet hesitates. “Yeah, I don’t necessarily consider this exam complete. There’s a number of tests as an archaeologist I’d like to run. But many of them involve taking samples. And I’m not sure what the guidance here is on taking biopsies from, like, an Army employee who’s the same age as my great-grandma.”
“Hurry, guys.” Amy leaps into the fairy ring and pulls a pair of nitrile gloves from her pocket. She snaps them on and grabs a corner of the sheet. Jay awkwardly follows. “We don’t want her grave to fill with water before we can get her back in it.”
“I guess we can pull the old girl back out again some day if we need,” Triquet reluctantly allows. “Ooo, that is cold rain. And it’s coming from the north this time? Lawdy lawd.”
They slide the body back into its simple wooden coffin. A single desiccated lilac wildflower pressed against the floorboard is its only decoration. Leaving her wrapped in her new plastic shroud, they re-seal her modest tomb and push the meter of earth that covered it back on top. They’d had to cut a whole nest of roots away from it to reach it. They place the severed pieces awkwardly atop.
Now it is raining in earnest. They tamp the loose earth down as well as they can and hurry from the grave site, Esquibel using a second plastic sheet as a large shawl to protect herself from the pelting drops. Triquet scoots into her relatively dry embrace and they pick their way under the trees like a honeymoon couple.
The wind continues to swirl, coming around and over the cliffs to fill their little bay from every direction. They are protected from the full blasting force of this storm, this assault from the Arctic that might be the last of the season.
When they reach the campsite, it is dark and the leaf litter is swirling in the wind. Mandy stands near the closed door of the bunker in a yellow stormsuit, waiting for them. “Fantastic! You found them!” she shouts over the lashing rain in the trees above. “Now I’m just gonna get one last peek before heading in!”
She shepherds Esquibel, Triquet, and Amy through the door. But Jay hangs back. “I’ll come with you!”
Mandy frowns at his shorts and sandals. “You’ll freeze, dude!”
“Nah, I run hot. Lead on!”
It’s true. She shouldn’t be out here alone. Katrina would have been a better choice. Esquibel will never play in the storms with her. Instead, she gets this… overgrown puppy.
Mandy leads him to the redwood trunk. She wants to get over it before the growing wind might make it impossible. From atop it, she looks at the lagoon with rising excitement. It is a cauldron of gray and black water, the currents all askew.
The whole world flashes. Mandy sees her own silhouette on the sand below her. And then the crack of thunder hits them from behind, tumbling her into the freezing sand.
“Whoa… Whoa…” Jay drops beside her. Their ears are ringing and eyes dazzled. He hauls on her as she flounders in the sand. Finally, Mandy sits up, face covered in a coating of grains. “You okay, sister?”
She nods dumbly. Sister. Somehow, among all the shock and noise and rain and all the raging sensations inside and out, this is what her brain fixates upon. Why, in a crisis, Jay thinks of me as his sister. Aw. What a sweetie!
Mandy squeals in delight at the experience and rolls to her feet. Now she’s the one who pulls Jay upward, shouting into his worried face, “That was INCREDIBLE!”
“I know. Heh. Right?” But he is taken aback by her enthusiasm. This chick nearly got blasted by a million volts of lightning and she’s coming back for more? “What a monster! Keep leading on!”
Mandy gives Jay a cheery thumbs up and links her arm in his. Even he can tell the change in her, how suddenly unguarded she is. He isn’t sure why, but he enjoys it. Intimacy. Jay hasn’t had much of it in his life but when he gets it, man does it feel good.
They stroll down the beach as the freezing rain throws gusts at them. Mandy wants to get as far as she can from the cliffs so she can turn back and see as much of the storm as possible. But now that they’ve reached the edge of the beach the clifftops are obscured in dark clouds. “Aww. I wanted to see!”
More lightning flashes in the interior. “Yeah, that wasn’t a one-off, Mandy. We should get inside.” Even Jay has limits. But he feels for her, the stormchaser who doesn’t want to waste such an epic blast hiding in a concrete box.
She drops her shoulders. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s go around this time. I don’t think I can climb the trunk when it’s so wet!”
Jay nods, taking the lead. Mandy drags her feet, unwilling to go back, even though her body is starting to shake with chills. When she fell, water ran up one sleeve and she hasn’t been dry since. And her face is absolutely soaked.
She follows him around the giant roots tipped up to the sky and back to camp, the world under the trees gloomy and dim even though it’s like 10:30 in the morning. Maybe she can come out again once the front has passed and the electrical activity has subsided. If she could ever get her wind speed gauge high up on the slope facing Alaska to the north she could probably get readings up there rivaling world records. But that’s all the way on the far side of the island. Still. Five hundred meters above the sea facing one of the world’s biggest storm incubators? Yes, please. In meteorological terms, this can be classified as porn.
Finally they make it back to the bunker and Jay hauls the door open of bunched green reeds, which is somehow doing a great job keeping the interior dry.
Mandy steps in behind him. The instant she pulls the door shut, pencils of white brilliance shoot through the reeds’ gaps and a thunderclap smites the bunker with such force that dust falls from the walls. Flavia screams.
Jay turns back to Mandy. Their faces are both fully spooked. She lifts a shaking hand and he gently high-fives it.
Ξ
“Before we begin,” Alonso says, “I am not interested in chains of command or titles or expectations or prerogatives. We are here as a family now, for thirty-seven more days together, and this meeting will begin and end in a spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and sympathy for each other’s positions. So. For that reason, I will ask you, Miriam, to please tell me what happened between you and Esquibel. But I want you to tell it from her point of view.”
Miriam had already opened her mouth to begin. But at this last directive she closes it again. Now she has to do some thinking. She shakes her head to clear it and frowns. “Well. Uh. Obviously Flavia came back. And when I, Esquibel, heard that she’d been abducted and the bastard was still out there, I thought of military ways I might protect the camp. Defensive measures. And my first thought was to close the tunnels.”
“Esquibel, is that fair?”
Esquibel nods. Despite his evolved approach and kind words she hasn’t let go of the guarded tension keeping her spine erect. “It is.”
“Could you please tell us what Miriam was thinking?”
“She was… thinking about rocks.”
“About science,” Miriam interjects. “Remember science? You know, the entire purpose of this mission?”
“About science, yes. She is a good professional. Very serious. And she doesn’t let anything get in the way of her mission. That is important. Definitely.”
“So then why is there disagreement?” Alonso spreads his hands, speaking over the sheeting rain outside. “Can we not see that both of us are working toward the same ends? We both have our best interests at heart, do we not?”
Miriam raises a shaking finger. “Agreed, but… You were too hasty, Esquibel, to play your military card. Perhaps I would have understood if we were under danger of imminent threat, but—”
“Hasty? Ha! I’ve hardly mentioned anything related to security in over two weeks! And there are so many times I should have! We are breaking protocol here every day. And just because you are used to the way things are done at your university does not mean that is the way they are done everywhere.”
“Colleagues. Please.” But Alonso’s beseeching words are lost.
Miriam stands. “You have brought us here under false pretenses assuring us this is a scientific mission when it is in fact an American military operation that we were not properly informed of, nor did we agree to. In a word, this is an abduction.”
“Abduction? Listen to yourself! You signed the documents!”
“We didn’t know what we were signing, did we?” Triquet shouts back, standing as well. “It was redacted top to bottom!”
“That was not our decision! The paperwork was taken by, the, the various security agencies before we could hand it to you. You received it from them. We have done all we could.”
The silence is excruciating. Each scientist digests this disturbing turn of events. Then Jay snorts. “Let me get this straight. Those NDAs we signed that we didn’t know what we signed… We signed it all away, didn’t we, chief?”
“They redacted the terms of the NDA as well?” Esquibel curses at the roof and shakes her head in disbelief. She sighs heavily, rearranging her internal understanding of this argument. “Oyaa! You will all have to forgive me. I was under the impression we were far more… aligned in our understanding of this mission. The fact that you don’t know what you signed changes that. Just so you know, your signatures on the forms expressly promise to follow the military command structure here. It is a common clause when working with contractors, especially in dangerous zones.”
Alonso takes the opportunity he sees. “Well I think that can explain almost everyone’s difficulties here, can it not? Miriam? Eh? Let us not be angry with our sister Esquibel, let’s be angry at the anonymous asshole at the CIA or wherever who screwed this up.”
“It’s true,” Mandy adds. “I mean, Esquibel’s really only trying to keep us safe. She’s not the problem. The problem is that Wetchie-ghuy who she’s trying to prevent from getting here. She’s on your side. We’re all on the same side.”
But Miriam isn’t done. “The issue I continue to have is that I now find myself on a project dig where I’ve already signed away my free agency and authority and I would have never signed such an agreement.”
“Neither would I, hon.” Triquet is equally defiant.
Miriam holds up helpless hands. “So now what am I supposed to do? Leave? I can’t. Protest? Stop working? Destroy my notes? I mean, I have a very bad taste in my mouth now, everyone.”
“Does anyone not?” Triquet scans their faces.
Flavia raises her hand. “I do not understand the issue here. We knew this was a spooky kind of mission. I mean, they flew us here on a fucking attack helicopter. We can’t plead ignorance now. I think she did a very good job leaving us civilians to ourselves until the… the threat appeared. I am glad we have military support if that is going to keep happening here. Take out that evil little hermit if you would. Fucking bomb his hut. Please.”
“Yeah, just call in an airstrike,” Jay chuckles. “Classic American diplomacy here. I am an ANGRY god!”
“Jay…” Amy restrains him with a hand on his forearm.
“I mean, I’m never too happy with military work,” Katrina offers. “But I’m not like surprised. More like… resigned. Seems to me, Miriam, that your big problem is that she pulled rank on you and that was a real shock and surprise.”
“It absolutely was. And I’m still waiting for an apology for that. But the more important matter,” Miriam points at the trap door leading to the sub, “is access to the sites I’ve been brought here to study. Now I don’t care if you want me to bring your gun or have a couple bodyguards with me while I work, but I must work.”
“Gun? What gun?” Alonso wonders. “There is no gun on the island, Mirrie.”
“Oh, no?” Miriam swings her heavy gaze at Esquibel. “Well then what is she carrying around in that little black satchel? Her bloody birth control pills?”
But this is all news to Alonso. “Doctor Daine. You don’t have a gun. Tell them. It was part of the agreement. Baitgie promised.”
Esquibel doesn’t move. “This is not a conversation we should have in this setting, Doctor Alonso.”
“We are a family and what you can say to me you can say to—”
But Esquibel has heard enough about this family nonsense. She stands, her hand chopping the air. “Stop! I am not your daughter, nor am I anyone’s sister. This was not Baitgie’s promise to make.” Then she sees how they are all looking at her. She scowls at her feet and sits back down.
“So.” Amy leans back. “There’s a gun on the island. Like a pistol? A—a… I mean, what kinds of guns are there?”
“Shotgun, MAC-10, carbine…” Jay lists off his favorite video game guns. “Man, we could go hunting! Get some fresh meat!”
“I have a question.” This from Pradeep. Everyone had started to react to the news in their own ways but they’ve all learned to listen when Pradeep asks questions in these meetings.
Esquibel, relieved to change the subject, leans toward him. “Yes? Now what?”
“I guess it’s for both of you. Why didn’t you know of the tunnels, Esquibel? Alonso? And the Lisicans. They’re a surprise to you both, aren’t they? Why would your—your commanding officers send you here without that crucial information? You need to help us reconcile this sort of garbled data.”
“I cannot speak on classified matters. The briefings I had—”
But Alonso cuts her short. “Well I can. I told them that whatever classified information they shared with me I would share with you. And I told you when you landed that I would share everything I knew. And I was not lying. They did not tell me about the sub. Or the Lisicans. Or the tunnels to get there. They said they had made a few exploratory missions into the interior decades ago but no, otherwise… pffft. Did you know?”
Esquibel chooses her words with care. “I knew the island had been inhabited. Nobody knew if it still was. There was no mention of tunnels or submarines or…”
“God, imagine what else she knows that she isn’t telling us,” Triquet marvels. “There’s probably like the lair of some insane super-villain down below stockpiled with chemical weapons and she’s just like, ‘Carry on studying your birds and leaves while I plot the destruction of the world.’”
“Triquet.” Pradeep’s voice is a gasp. “Please. I know it’s preposterous but my imagination doesn’t need any help.”
“Sorry not sorry. I mean, I never want to get your anxiety going, boyfriend. But I need to know what else we may be in for here. Come on, Esquibel. You can’t have us… just live like this for weeks, totally blind to the dangers around us. We can’t—”
A flash of lightning is almost instantly followed by a crack of thunder. It is painful to the eyes and ears, and their brains are lanced by the overwhelming sensations.
Triquet continues, slamming the table. “I can’t live like this! With fucking kidnappers hiding in the bushes and soldiers with guns and lightning blowing the roof off this shithole! I can’t!” Jay is the first one to stand and throw a comforting arm around Triquet. Triquet rolls into his embrace. “I mean, I have a very nice townhouse in Philadelphia these days. Two stories. Skylights. Cafe around the corner. Park and grocery store nearby. Lots of friends.” They shake their head in wonder. “And you made me give all that up for this? For a deadly nightmare where I’m cold and scared and trapped for eight weeks in a box?”
Alonso shrugs, helpless. “I am sorry that is how it has developed. This was supposed to be a partnership. U.S. Air Force and several academic institutions. I did not know that there would be anyone here who could threaten us. That is what seems to have changed the entire mission’s… posture.”
Esquibel nods. “It has. It absolutely has. Think of the training you have done for your specialty. Think of all the years of work you honed your skills. That is what I did with military operations. Now that we are under attack, it is time for this specialist to use my skills the same way Miriam studies the earth.”
“I hate that she says we are under attack,” Maahjabeen says. “But I hate more that she is right. We are. And we have to do something about it. I do not trust the military. But, Miriam…”
Miriam nods, prompting Maahjabeen to go on.
“I do trust Esquibel.” Maahjabeen steps away from her place in the ragged ring of chairs and approaches Esquibel standing alone. She drapes her arm over Esquibel’s shoulders. “Don’t you?”
“That is absolutely the right way to think about this,” Alonso begins. “Think about the relationships and not the—”
“Alonso.” Miriam’s voice is low and dangerous.
“Yes, Mirrie?”
“Shut it.” Alonso’s eyebrows rise but he closes his mouth. Miriam turns on Esquibel. “You heard all these fine words, Doctor Daine. They were not directed at me. They were for you. So what do you say? Are these relationships important to you?”
“Absolutely, Doctor Truitt. And I am sorry I insulted you by pulling rank.” Esquibel responds to Maahjabeen’s show of trust by putting her own arm around the Tunisian woman’s waist.
Miriam stiffly nods. “And can we trust you?”
A surprising sob escapes from Esquibel and she catches it with a fist, pressing it back into her mouth. A tear spills from her eye. “I am only here to take care of you all. I swear. Even to the point of sacrificing my life to save yours. I am your doctor. And protector. Please. Yes. Trust me.”
Maahjabeen clucks like a mother and kisses Esquibel’s temple, then enfolds the doctor in her embrace.
Ξ
Miriam squats in the dirt, the trousers-legs hacked off and rolled up her pinkish thighs into shorts. Her tattered button-down shirt is unbuttoned to the navel. She isn’t wearing a bra. Her laptop is perched on a cooler before her. She squints at graphs and takes drags off a joint Jay rolled for her.
Alonso settles into his camp chair, sighing with pleasure. He looks at his dirt-smeared wife with ardent admiration. “You have gone fully native, my dear. I love it.”
Miriam grunts. She is deep in her work. There is a yellow tint to this dolomite that surprises her. Most likely iron.
“I have had a very good talk with myself, Mirrie. And I realized I have not been fair with you, with any of you. I have been hiding from you. And it is time to stop.”
But she is only absently nodding. “Um. It’s okay, Zo. We all do.”
“No. You see. I have decided I am not hiding any more.”
But she still isn’t looking.
“Miriam. You see?”
“See what, love?” She finally tears her face away and looks at him. Her eyes clear. She squeals with joy, care flushing away. Miriam rushes to Alonso.
He is clean-shaven. Alonso’s face is wider than she remembers and more rugged, but he looks twenty years younger than he had with that horrible grey beard. He did something with his hair too. Oh Christ he’s even more handsome than before.
Her boy. His eyes, yes his eyes are still troubled but he is back.
Chapter 13 – My Secret Past
March 25, 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:
13 – My Secret Past
“You know, despite this current emergency,” Esquibel confides to Amy as they hurry toward the beach, trying to beat the setting sun, “I’m not nearly as unhappy here as I normally am.”
“Not nearly? Ha. That could be the travel slogan.” Amy climbs the fallen redwood trunk and drops down into the sand. “Come to Lisica! Be 84% less unhappy!”
Esquibel leaps gracefully from the trunk. “Careful here.” She kneels, peering at the churned up sand. “Can we see if any of them made tracks here…?”
Amy sighs. “Too many. All the endless comings and goings over the last few days. And who knows what shoes they’re all wearing. Triquet’s usually in those big boots but… Flavia is usually in like slip-ons? Maahjabeen could be barefoot for all I know. And maybe they aren’t even together.”
“Ehh. I think they must be. Otherwise all three of them chose today to independently disappear for six hours.”
“Unlikely, I agree. But maybe one thing set them off in different directions.” They follow the gentle slope down to the water, where weathered steps in the sand are now little more than shallow depressions. No footprints remain in the tideline. Either the water has washed them away or they were never there to begin with. “We just don’t know, Esquibel. So let’s not make assumptions without more data. Right now it’s just fairy tales.”
“Like how Katrina thinks the Chinese kidnapped them?”
Amy shrugs. “I mean, it does sound paranoid but it also sounds like she has some kind of background in spy stuff so who knows? We find the wreckage of a Chinese plane at the same time they go missing? Is that just coincidence or something more?”
A voice cries out to them from back the way they came. It is Miriam, who has climbed atop the fallen trunk to wave at them, calling out details that are carried away by the wind. So instead she just beckons them toward her.
They hurry back. When Amy and Esquibel get nearer Miriam yells, “They went into the sub!”
“Oh, thank god.” Amy grabs Miriam’s lowered hand and jumps up the log. “But I thought we checked the sub? Where were they?”
Esquibel leaps onto the log and scrambles up beside Miriam. “And are they okay?”
“No,” Miriam shakes her head. “I mean, we haven’t found them yet. We don’t know if they’re okay. They went all the way through and out the bottom underground somehow. There’s another hole in the sub that leads further down.”
“Another hole? Where? And they’re down there somewhere?” Amy begins to hurry. “Oh, Jesus.”
Esquibel takes off at a run toward the bunker, calling out over her shoulder, “I will get my supplies and meet you there!”
Amy follows Miriam into the bunker, then through the trap door and down the narrow steps into the sub. In the first wardroom they encounter Jay, who is slowly making his way along the deck with a bad limp. Amy slips her head under his shoulder and he gratefully uses her as a crutch. Esquibel appears, pushing past them.
“Thanks, boss. Hey. Wait. It’s the air. Miriam. Think about it.”
Miriam leads them in a hurry through the narrow hall to the control room. She waits for Jay impatiently in there, needing clarification. He skipped too many steps. “What do you mean?”
“Your tunnels! It’s got to be. They found a way in.”
“You think they’re in tunnels? Good heavens. There’s no way that’s safe. If it’s limestone channels formed by water they’re going to be wet and it will be slick and completely treacherous.”
Jay winces and grunts to drop himself belowdecks. Then he hurries through the three rooms down here to find Katrina and Pradeep crouched in the last one at a dark hole in the deck. His eyes are wide, fists clenched beneath his chin. She is beside him, clutching his arm, trying to keep his panic attack from spiraling.
“Good.” Pradeep springs up when he sees the newcomers and shakes off her grasp. “They are here. And I am certain you will not be needing me any more. Good,” he repeats, brushing past Amy and Jay and Miriam and fleeing the sub.
Katrina sighs and sits at the edge, dangling her feet into the void. “Poor bloke. Glad you’re here. We got a pretty puzzle.”
Amy and Jay cautiously approach. “What—what is it?” he asks.
“Don’t know yet.” Katrina shines her phone’s light through a rusted hole in the sub’s steel hull into a tunnel of raw earth. “Their footprints are definitely at the bottom. And they go off that way.”
Esquibel looks down at the ragged hole with a frown. “Has anyone else gone down there yet?”
“Nope. Where’s Mandy and Alonso?”
“They’re still searching the grove,” Miriam says. “Or Mandy is. Alonso is home base.”
“I can’t believe anyone got Flavia down there.” Katrina prepares herself to descend. “Well. If she can go I can go. Who’s with me?”
“Me.” Jay shuffles forward.
“Stop, stop.” Esquibel pulls Katrina away. She puts her other hand on Jay’s chest. “Have you lost your minds? We aren’t just jumping in after them. They have been gone too long. They are lost or maybe dead. Think clearly.”
“It’s just there’s steps worn into the side here.” Katrina shines her light against the tunnel wall directly beneath her. “Can’t be any harm in dropping down to the mud on the bottom, taking a peek around the curve, see if there’s anything to see.”
“First we will discuss this.” Esquibel does not let go of the two young adventurers.
Amy tugs on Jay’s sleeve. “Amen. Hold up, Jay. Let’s make sure we do this right. Get everything we need. Let’s get a list going. Ropes and water and lights. How many of us are going?”
“Three sounds good.” Jay eases back. He tries not to sound too eager. They aren’t convinced yet. “Cool deal. Good plan all around. And Katrina’s got a nice little scouting idea there.”
“You are certainly not going down there,” Esquibel tells Jay. “Not if your ankle will ever properly heal. Alonso cannot. Mandy will fall and break something, I swear. And I shouldn’t. It is Navy doctrine not to risk the doctor.”
“Well, this is my field of expertise.” Miriam steps forward and peers into the hole. “Wow, was this dug by hand? Look at the marks on the walls.” Grooves and rough planes score the earth. She steps back. “Okay. Let’s pull back to the surface and really plan this out. Time is of the essence but we need to hear from Alonso on this. He may know something. We’ll approach it as a virgin caving expedition. So I’ll lead and we’ll be daisy-chained together with rope. I’ll take Amy. I’d like a third but I need someone with caving experience.”
Katrina says, “Well, I’ve just fooled around in some sea caves. Gone on a couple tours. But I don’t get claustrophobic.”
“Okay. That’s definitely a big part of it. We’ll see. ”
Ξ
An hour later, Miriam has returned to the hand-carved tunnel. Now she wears a helmet with a headlamp. A field pack with a short-handled pick and an extra satchel filled with water bottles slung across a shoulder completes her loadout. Her climbing harness is strapped into Katrina’s six meters behind her, whose rope harness is improvised but solid. Amy, in Miriam’s second harness and helmet, has another six meters of rope at the rear. Behind her the other hundred meters waits coiled, its end tied off.
Miriam will do all the real work. The other two will just be there to help remove injured team members or brace a line when she needs to climb or descend.
Jay, sulking, watches them go. “I could totally do those steps. I’m your caving third. I’ve got like a thousand hours underground.”
“Don’t make them take care of your fragile male ego right now.” Esquibel pats Jay on the shoulder. “They’re busy. Now it’s a hundred-fifty meters of rope. You go to the end, you come back. You never go off-rope. Right?”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Miriam salutes.
“Lieutenant Commander, please. And if anyone needs any medical attention, do not move them unless absolutely necessary.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Amy waves, cheery. “I mean, Commander. And two yanks means pull us back up!”
“Is that a thing?” Jay asks as Miriam starts to descend, careful not to let the rusted metal edges anywhere close to her limbs. “Cause that sounds like it should totally be a thing we should do.”
“Yes. Sure. Agreed.” Miriam can barely contain her excitement. This is the most significant and dangerous thing she has done in quite a long time. Explore an uncharted cave system and lead a rescue mission at the same time? Now this is some fair craic. This is like Super Geologist comic book territory.
The lugs of her boots bite into the soft earth of the hand-carved steps. She secures her footing and climbs down, nine tall irregular steps to the mud floor. It smells damp, with alkalines and calcites in the air. The temperature is cooler down here. She crouches to inspect the slurry under her feet.
Katrina lowers herself in after. Her heels find the steps and she quickly descends, a bubble of excitement rising in her chest. Finally she’s getting treated as an equal around here. Way past time she gets to be the dangerous one.
Amy is next, thinking how lucky she is to go out on an adventure like this with Miriam again after all these years. They have done great things together in the past. Big Bend and Churchill, Ontario and the Columbia River Gorge. Either it was Amy getting brought onto a geology study as a field biologist consultant or Amy hiring Miriam to be the geologist consultant in turn. Back and forth, trading jobs and positions on projects across North America. But it has been a long time. Success in both their careers the last decade or so has made such scheduling impossible.
Now she’s back in action with one of her favorite partners. The long lean form of Miriam stoops forward, drawing the other two ahead. Katrina mirrors her movement. There’s something of Miriam in the young Aussie, Amy thinks. They have the same hardiness and intensity. Yet they both possess such delicate edges.
“The curve narrows here,” Miriam calls out, her voice muffled. “Hold on. Let me remove my bags. Katrina. Please send them in after me. I hope it’s just a chokepoint but if it’s a sustained crawl I’ll need you to—Here. I’ll just tie them onto the line myself. Then I can drag them when I need them. Wish me luck.”
Amy can’t see past Katrina or hear what she murmurs to her. She must just patiently stand here in this pit, waiting to hear if there is good news or bad news from ahead.
Miriam is gone a fairly long time, long enough for Amy to get worried. Esquibel calls down to them, “What is happening?”
“Just some scouting.” Amy keeps her voice light. No point in alarming anyone. “Taking it nice and slow. Careful.”
“Good.” Esquibel retreats from the opening above.
“Any news?” Amy rests a hand on Katrina’s shoulder.
“Uh, the Nikkei Price Index fell by one and a third on news of a bleak commodities report today.”
“Very funny. Anything from Miriam? Two yanks? Anything?”
“No. She doesn’t even appear to be moving forward much. I can only see her feet. She’s definitely crawling. Like a worm. Ah! There we go!”
Amy hears fabric sliding across the mud. “Are those her bags?”
“Yeh. Looks like she got through to the far side and now she’s pulling it after. Maybe she can just pull us through. Get the full mud experience.”
Katrina kneels and puts a hand on the sloping roof of the tunnel. “My turn?”
Miriam’s voice is indistinct. Katrina thinks she hears an encouraging tone. She shrugs, realizing it’s all she’s going to get. Ducking down, she worms her way forward until she is lying on her chin, cold mud pressing against her entire front, soaking into her jeans and socks. “Here I come!” And to herself: Yeh, it’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.
It isn’t such a tight squeeze that she needs to force her way through but her movement is definitely constricted. She can’t raise her elbows and knees more than a bit. Slowly she scrambles forward. After about five meters she breaks through.
Amy is last. She loves a good Army crawl, although some of her earliest associations with it are less than pleasant. Anything military is always Okinawa to her first, and she was never happy there. Yet it’s good to be little, that she knows. This is her time to shine. But, like, wow. This sure is a lot of mud.
Amy spills laughing from the hole, covered in filth, falling onto a concrete floor. Whoa. Wait. Concrete? “What is this?” On her hands and knees she stares at the green-stained concrete floor before her. Water sheets downslope, from right to left. Above to the right the culvert is mostly collapsed and the water only trickles through. She can’t for the life of her figure out what it means.
“I know,” Miriam complains. “I was just finally getting used to a bit of soil and stone then nope! Yet another obstacle in my way!”
“Some kind of underground culvert or something I think.” Katrina sends her light ahead. “Like a concrete aqueduct. Maybe they used this to channel water somewhere? For some reason?”
Amy is utterly confounded. “I—I don’t know. I guess I just really didn’t expect this. I mean, none of Triquet’s records talk about an underground concrete project at any point in time. I can’t imagine what it was for.”
“If you’re very quiet…” Miriam says, holding up her hand, “you can hear the surf.”
They listen. Beyond the steady gurgle of water nearby, a deep subsonic rumble trembles the air every few seconds. “Which way is this? I’m so turned around. Are we pointed at the beach?”
“We must be. Come on then, ladies.”
“Wait. First,” Miriam delays them, shining her light backward. “Look. This mess is what probably kept them from finding their way back.”
The concrete wall they’ve emerged from has partially collapsed, exposing gaps that reveal bare earth. Each one of these gaps has been dug into, a whole yawning cluster of tunnel mouths heading off into different directions. Katrina counts eleven. Only because their climbing rope still runs out of the bottom, partially-collapsed entrance do they know that it is the way back. Without that clue it would be impossible to tell. She takes a picture on her phone, the flash blinding them for a moment.
“Oh, no… You think they took a wrong one back somehow?”
“I do.” Miriam turns back to the sound of the surf and the long dark concrete culvert ahead. “But let’s investigate this first. Easier going ahead, for one thing.”
Miriam slings her bags back on and steps forward. The roof is nearly two meters high and the slime-covered concrete walls are far enough apart they don’t need to touch them. But soon they reach the end of their hundred-fifty meter range. Amy calls out when she feels the rope behind go taut against her waist.
“Turn back?” Katrina is surprised the two older women haven’t suggested it yet. She isn’t used to being the voice of common sense.
“I have no desire to crawl through the muck just to tell Esquibel this much,” Amy says. “Cause then we’ll have to come right back and do it all again, if she even lets us. Maybe we can detach for a bit and leave the rope here?”
“Breaking the law, oooo.” But Katrina doesn’t actually think it’s dangerous. The culvert isn’t going to flood anytime soon, is it? And it’s not like they’re dangling from a pit.
“Agreed.” Miriam begins working on the rope tied to the back of Amy’s harness. She lets it fall. “We can remain roped in between the three of us but this rope leading back is really most useful as a breadcrumb trail just indicating which tunnel gets us to the sub.”
“Let’s just remember,” Amy adds, “bottom-most tunnel, looks like it’s blocked from this side, right in the middle. Everyone got it?” She drops the rope. Then she picks it up again. “But we can’t just leave this here. Maybe I should tie it off. So they can’t pull it back by mistake.”
Katrina nods, giddy. She can’t believe she’s in the presence of such daring old ladies. For a hilarious moment it occurs to her that she might indeed have to be the wise head down here.“Yeh, good thinking. Here.” She finds a fissure in the concrete. “Just like wedge that knot in here. We can make it impossible to get out.”
Amy agrees with a grunt, forcing it under a jagged hanging lip of concrete. There. No amount of pulling will dislodge it.
Miriam leads Katrina and Amy deeper down the culvert. After a short stretch the tunnel widens and water drops into a deeper trench with a walkway raised along the left side. They progress carefully, the concrete slick, the danger of falling and sliding into the trench real. Doors line the wall, three steel panels painted dark blue, their red insignia faded.
These doors are locked or welded shut. There is no give to them. “Triquet can figure these out later.” Miriam shakes her head in dismay at how many directions they’ve already been given to search. She leads Katrina and Amy past the doors toward the end of the culvert. A large grate, mostly rusted through, bars the wide opening. It is here that the freshwater spilling past them from above meets the ocean, whose gentle waves make noise on the far side. The air is closed off when the water fills the gap, sending gulping shockwaves of pressure up the culvert, bringing with it the inhalation and exhalation of air they felt all the way up in the sub.
Beside this grate at the end of the walk is a tall rusted steel door, slightly ajar. The sound of the surf is much louder here. Miriam makes an excited face to the others and slips through. Katrina peeks, then follows. Amy looks behind herself, left all alone and suddenly fearing ghosts, then she hurries through the door as well.
They find themselves in a sea cave, crowded with stalactites. The main feature is a broad waterfall from behind them that is joined by the culvert’s effluence to push a steady stream of white foam into the lapping seawater. Its ceiling is no more than four meters high but the cavern appears to be vast, large striated shelves of bare limestone creating channels through the rushing water and stone platforms in alcoves up above the waterline, on which the remains of pillbox bunkers and buildings stand. The remnants of a concrete pier jut out into the water, its steel rails rusted black. The half-sunk remains of a postwar patrol boat lie at the edge.
This was a hidden port, only big enough for small boats and submarines but nothing larger. It is a modest installation, but still an astounding one to their eyes. Some excavation has been done, but for the most part the structures fit in among the hanging stone and rushing channels. The one foundation by the port looks like it was a small boathouse or command center. Others further along look like storage, hidden in shadow.
To the far left, past obscuring columns and wandering currents, an indirect band of silver daylight dimly lights the cavern. Out on a forward platform near the sea cave’s entrance, a figure sits on the concrete and looks out at the light. It is Maahjabeen.
Ξ
“So the plan must be from now on,” Esquibel demands, standing at the head of the long table at camp, “anyone goes anywhere, someone at camp has to know. At least write a note.”
“Kind of unworkable.” Jay says it louder than intended. He’d meant to keep it to himself.
“And not really applicable in this case,” Katrina agrees with him. “I mean, if we’d all known they were down there they still would have gotten lost on the way back and we still would have waited too long.” She shrugs. “Not a real rules person myself.”
“You are both young.” Esquibel isn’t used to having to defend her medical orders. “You’re like the two youngest people here and your sense of risk is too high.”
“I’m young,” Mandy counters, “and I love rules! My sense of risk is very low. I’m not sure whose case that helps but… you know, like another data point?”
“Esquibel is right.” Everyone silences to hear Maahjabeen’s quiet voice. “It is my fault. I started the whole thing. And I should have left word where we were going. I just didn’t think… One thing led to another and suddenly we were in the tunnel chasing Flavia—”
“Wait,” Miriam interrupts her. “Flavia was in front?”
“She said she heard desperate cries for help. She hardly waited for us to respond before she just dived in headfirst.”
“Did you or Triquet hear any of these cries?”
“No. But we had to go after her.” Maahjabeen shivers. Then she laughs a bit sadly at herself before continuing. “Not been my best week. I’m not even fully recovered from the storm.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Esquibel scolds her. “You can barely move. What were you thinking?”
“She was thinking,” Jay answers for her, “that we still hadn’t figured out the source of the air in the sub.”
“Precisely. It was just an innocent exploration.” Maahjabeen leans back, irritated that Jay would speak for her but relieved that at least somebody gets it. “But by the time we crawled through that horrible mud tunnel and got into that concrete culvert thing she was gone. That was the last we saw of her.”
“The last?” Amy shakes her head. “That was almost seven hours ago. What happened to Triquet?”
“We explored the sea cave together, thinking Flavia had gone that way. We even searched the water in case she had fallen in. But no. She must have tried to return through one of the other tunnels. Just crazy. Triquet told me to wait there. That they would come back to get you and then we would all search for her together.”
Miriam groans. “And then Triquet must have tried to go back to the sub and taken the wrong way back instead. So all three of you are in completely different places, heading in different directions. Fantastic. We’re going to have to explore that entire system, step by step. But I don’t even understand how it all got there. Those tunnels are dug. Some of the marks are even quite fresh.”
“The island,” Alonso reminds her, “is inhabited.”
“So the natives have had access to us this entire time?” Esquibel clicks her tongue, worried. “Great.”
Amy stands. “Welp. I guess I’ll just like wait down in the culvert in case any of them get back. They’ll need a guide back to the right way to the sub. I had just gotten the mud off but oh well.”
Esquibel raises a finger. “You will not go alone.”
“Yeah, I’m with you, boss.” Jay hops to his feet.
“Jay, you aren’t going anywhere. And that is an order.” Esquibel wonders how she might enforce discipline among all her wayward civilians. Reasoning gives them too much wiggle room. And the illusion of free agency. In a crisis they need to follow her orders.
“And we did leave the rope down there for anyone to follow,” Katrina reminds Amy.
“Still.” In her mind Amy can see all the ways a pair of helping hands could rescue bewildered victims in the dark underground. “They’ll need all the help they can get.”
“Hold up. You hear that?” Jay puts a hand in the air to quiet them. They all listen. Something heavy is crashing through the underbrush toward them on its way from the pool.
Esquibel stands, wishing her black satchel was nearby. Miriam, having guessed what’s in it, does too.
Triquet limps wild-eyed and filthy from the undergrowth. They are drenched and shivering, wearing only a single boot.
Amy yelps. “Triquet!”
Esquibel runs to the tottering figure. Miriam fetches a blanket. As she wraps them in it, Triquet smiles weakly at her. “Found the way to your hidden chambers, Miriam. The ones behind the waterfall. Looking out from inside the cliff. Pretty cool.”
“Good Christ is that the way you came out?” Miriam scrubs their shoulders to warm them. Triquet leans in and Miriam takes this as a signal for a hug. Amy joins them around the back, pressing their heat into Triquet’s chilled slender body.
“You know me. Just one catastrophic decision after another.” They scan the camp over Miriam’s shoulder. “Oh good. You found Maahjabeen. Girl, I will never say another word to you about being reckless in the storm after the shit that I just pulled. Oh, baby. What was I thinking?”
“Did you like come through the waterfall?” Jay laughs at the preposterous image but Triquet only shrugs.
“There’s enough room in the chamber behind it to get a running start. I thought if I could get enough Delta V like a rocket, if you know what I’m saying, and just kind of bust through with enough horizontal velocity, then, you know, I’d be free. Frankly I was absolutely beyond done with my situation and ready to explode. It had been hours and I was desperate.”
“Oh, Triquet…” Alonso laughs.
“Yeah, I got slapped down like a rag doll. Just gargling foam.”
“Oh my god there’s a whirlpool in that pool.” Miriam pulls her head back to share her facial expression of just how deranged she thinks Triquet is.
“I know. And it almost took me. But I grabbed some roots and hauled myself out. If I hadn’t, then yikes. I would have like shot out into the waterfall in the sea cave and, I don’t know, had to swim all the way around the island to get back.”
“That is what the underground waterfall is, isn’t it? Yes, that’s about what I’d figured.” Miriam completes the course of the submerged creek in the model of the island she carries in her head. “That waterfall in the sea cave must be where this pool drains. But who knows how long you’d be submerged before it spit you out.”
“Yeah, and I don’t need to be the one to test that idea. Whoo! Any spare seats? It’s been a long day.” Triquet collapses onto Pradeep’s platform, a sodden mess. He smiles and offers Triquet a bottle. “Thanks, Pradeep. But do I look like I need water?”
“So where’s Flavia?” Alonso asks.
Triquet sits up. “She’s not with you? Oh, no. I assumed she was cleaning up inside or… No…?”
Miriam lifts her field pack again, the matter decided. “The whole system. As soon as we can, Alonso. And who did she hear crying? Somebody else in trouble? Then they need our help too.”
“Or someone pretending.” Esquibel points to the fragment of the aircraft wing set aside and wrapped in a blue tarp. “Need I remind you that we may have a Chinese PLA soldier running loose on the island as well? Ultimately, this mission still has military oversight for a reason.”
“Oversight? What happened to partnership? And I think you’re overstating the likelihood of any Chinese presence.” Pradeep doesn’t want to contradict Esquibel but she is becoming worryingly autocratic. “You know, after the tsunami in Japan they were finding litter just like that all along the Oregon coast for years. This could have come from anywhere. It could be years old. Take it from someone who is like a world-class paranoid. You guys are being paranoid about this. The probability is next to nothing.”
But he can tell from their blank stares that he hasn’t convinced anyone. Triquet shakes their head. “No, but she was really upset. Flavia just cried out and threw her hands in the air and went for it. I asked and she just shouted, ‘Can’t you hear the bambino crying?’ And then I couldn’t keep up and I lost her. Man, I wish I hadn’t lost her. You can’t explore it all, Miriam. At least not tonight. The tunnels branch and some of them curve back on themselves. It’s a total maze. I was lost in there for hours. Totally losing my mind. When I found the chambers behind the waterfall I was so relieved I fell down and cried.”
“Flavia is lost in there?” Miriam turns and regards the ground and the cliff, trying to visualize the network. “It might be huge or you might have just gone around and around the same three tunnels. We need a proper exploration.”
“Shouldn’t we wait,” Alonso wonders, “until morning? It is getting late, Mirrie.”
But Miriam shakes her head. “Come on, Amy. Underground it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, Zo. We’ll bring just endless rolls of twine, untangle all the tunnels. Just think, the poor thing has been trapped in there for ages.”
“With no espresso or Nutella,” Jay jokes. “She must be wasting away. Man, this crowd is tough. Come on. Lighten up. She’s going to be fine. We all know it.”
“I hope you’re right, Jay.” Amy’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “Miriam and I will spend two hours below then come back up and sleep. It is getting late.”
Miriam is about to protest the time limit, but she nods. “What do you say, Esquibel? There’s no point in delaying. We’ll unspool the twine behind us and never, I swear this time never unhook. Two hours tonight and then as long as it takes going forward.”
Esquibel nods, mollified that the chain of command is at least being respected. “Two hours.”
Ξ
Mandy wakes right at dawn. Today is a work day so dawn it is. Her eyes snap open of their own accord and she stares at the rust spots of the ceiling’s corrugated steel. The bunker isn’t what she’d call cozy, but it does keep them dry.
Esquibel has rolled away and sleeps with her back to her. She is a furnace under a blanket, as extra as they come, even as she sleeps. Mandy chuckles, pushing off that hip she’s been kneading and pulling apart like a big tough piece of stale chewing gum. But it’s getting better, and the two of them might have never found a way into each other’s pants all those years ago without the excuse of this bad hip, a poorly-healed injury from her childhood.
Mandy kisses the glorious hip and rises. She has to visit the trench and see what the day will bring. The weather station setup with the drone has worked well so far and she’s finally starting to be able to look at her data as a progression instead of just curious snapshots. She unhooks the door and trips out into the blue light of another overcast day. Her Hawaiian skin could use a tiny bit more sun. Not that she’s complaining. Mandy has suffered through some truly terrible weather in the last few years of her career and she knows that Lisica is pretty much blessed. It’s like chilling on the Oregon coast year-round. Probably doesn’t even form frosts in the winter and hardly anyone here ever dies of exposure.
Mandy speculates what the natives must be like. And how long have they been here? Do they live in little ewok villages up above and sing songs all day? Or are they cannibals? Maybe something in-between? Her head fills with visions, of elders crouched under hanging eaves during a downpour, and then how they instruct her in the ways of the storms and take her into their circle.
The Pacific is filled with all kinds of isolated island people. Isn’t there that one island where they all worshipped Queen Elizabeth’s husband as a god? Like, still to this day. These people could be all kinds of weird. And it might be like two or three generations since anyone has contacted them. Wild. Like literally. Wild child times a hundred. Imagine growing up without the twenty-first century: the movies, the cell phones, the cars, the plagues, the crowding… living in blissful ignorance of the oncoming catastrophes. Amazing. They must be better off here without us.
On her way back from the trench to the bunker she sees Amy already awake and standing away from the trees, watching the cliff. As Mandy nears, she points above. “Look at those guys.” Amy directs her attention to a cluster of dark birds with pale undersides winging their way upward into mist. “You see their eyes? The white circle around them? Spectacled guillemots. Not ever seen this far east before. Usually just on the Russian and Japanese coasts.”
“That’s so cool. Oh my god. There’s so many.”
“Yeah, this is a huge colony of just countless seabird varieties. I really shouldn’t have ignored it this long. But I got caught up in all the other things down here on the ground. The birds were the first thing I noticed when we first arrived but then I kept my head down for too long. I forgot to look up.”
“Those thermals are so strong. Look at them!”
“The Pacific gulls? Yeah. This is their highway. And then they each have their little off-ramps to go back to their own little nest. ‘Honey, I’m home!’ Such a perfect existence.”
Even larger birds wheel upward on the strong draft. It reminds Mandy of the cyclone nook in the back of the grove. She might be able to conduct another experiment here. What she started doing is taking long videos of the twisters and then uploading them into a program her colleague built for situations like this that tracks litter in a windstorm. She’s been able to get all kinds of interesting data from that so far. But here she won’t be taking video of redwood duff and leaves, it would instead be birds spiraling upward.
“Brown pelicans.”
Mandy claps her hands, excited, and describes what she has in mind to Amy. “I think I can set up a camera here and get a long video and be able to characterize basically the entire open ocean air current as it interacts orographically with the island.” She takes out her phone to try a test video. But the darker birds aren’t visible against the dark cliffs. She needs white birds.
“Which ones are white? I can’t see the pelicans.”
“Well… Most of the gulls. All of them. A lot of the pipers. Half the murres. The arctic terns. Those are who you need. But I’ve never seen more. And they’re such incredible flyers.”
“When do they fly?”
“When…? Ha. That’s a good question. We have tons of observed behavior with terns in the literature. But this colony here remains unstudied. So who knows? They’re just transient here, resting for a few days or maybe if we’re lucky a few months to raise their chicks. They never winter. Arctic terns fly from one pole to the other throughout the year, following the summer. So these guys are headed north. They’ll probably be gone in another couple weeks. But the chicks have already had time to sprout feathers and join them in the air. You know, they’ve found three month-old tern chicks halfway across the world from where they hatched. And they live thirty years. Fascinating birds. They mate for life.”
“Yeah, I mean, do they come out for breakfast? At like what time? Or are they like bats who only come out at night?”
“When they aren’t flying they’re constantly feeding. Dawn might be a good idea because they’re waking up and it’s time to go fishing. Look, there’s a couple winging away to the open ocean there. Godspeed and good hunting, you two!”
Mandy claps again. “Look how they slice into the wind! It’s blowing like directly against them and they still find the angle to soar ahead! I wish I could do that.”
“You and me both, sister.”
Mandy leans against Amy and squeezes the older woman’s bicep. “You are just the sweetest, Amy. Thank you for taking such good care of us all the time.”
“Heh. Looking for muscle in there? You won’t find any.”
“Are you kidding? You are so strong. I think you’re like the strongest person in the whole camp.”
Amy makes a surprisingly bitter face about that. “I don’t know, Mandy. That’s not really something I’d like to be known for.”
“No way. We need to celebrate strong women!” Mandy wraps her arms around Amy and squeezes her. Amy squeals as she is lifted off her feet. They both laugh with abandon.
Amy lifts Mandy in turn and shakes her like a rag doll, her long black hair flying about. Then when they’re all laughed out they separate. “I love your question about what time terns eat. Maybe we can figure their patterns out together. So we can both use your long video and I’ll do a count. See if it changes.”
“According to different weather patterns. You think? We could do the first cross-discipline arctic tern atmospheric science paper like ever.”
“Oh, there’s probably been some before. We aren’t that original. And we could talk to Maahjabeen about different food sources and when they might arrive. Like are they just following giant schools of anchovies around the Pacific?”
“Right. They’re responding to the fish, who are responding to the, what, like, plankton? Who are following minerals along the temperature and pressure gradients underwater. Wow…” Mandy looks out over the water. “I just had the trippiest idea…” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know if there would be a way to measure it but… Well, anyway. I’m really into convection pumps, like when forests create rainfall above them. And I wonder if a school of like anchovies would transpire enough to create the conditions for deep convection. Could a big enough school of fish be enough biomass to call down rain on itself? The school would have to be huge. But some of them are, right?”
“I think so. But you can’t just equate one anchovy to one tree. These forests are huge too. Where this has been witnessed the most is the Amazon, so that’s the kind of scale we’re looking at. But it’s true, each tree releases a huge amount of water vapor each day. Stomata transpiration is what I think you’re talking about. So each tree can exhale a vast amount more moisture than a little fish… But on the other hand… we aren’t just talking about the fish. They’re following all that plankton and they also bring along bigger fish and squids and whales and all the birds we were admiring. So maybe if you add up all that wheeling biomass you can get your atmospheric effects. Possibly?”
“I just love the idea,” Mandy says wistfully, “of a whole bunch of little fish leading so much transpiring life around the ocean that they start all the storms in this half of the world, just shepherding whole cloud formations across the Pacific. That would be so rad.”
“Ooo. We could never predict the weather because we weren’t following the fish?” Amy chuckles. “As a wildlife biologist this has every stamp of my approval that I possess.”
“And if we end up killing all the fish then the storms…” Mandy visualizes every dynamic in the ocean grinding to a halt, every cloud system dispersing into fog. But of course it wouldn’t be like that. It would be catastrophic in the short term, yeah, until new dynamics form elsewhere dependent on other humidity profiles and temperature differentials.
“You’ve evidently been smoking some of Jay’s stash.” Amy giggles at Mandy. “I like the ambition but let’s stick with videos of guillemots and terns for the moment if that’s okay with you.”
“No, I’m not high. I mean. Maybe I am. High on life.” Mandy is effervescent this morning. Studies with great promise seem to be literally falling out of the sky today. “Sure thing. I’ll get a tripod and make sure there’s enough space on my phone. Might be time to delete those bachelorette party pics from Vegas last year.”
“What? All those pics of your besties drinking themselves stupid will be a literal blackmail goldmine in about five years. You’ve got to keep them.” Amy steeples her fingers with a diabolical laugh.
“Okay, creepy, but good point. Heh.” There was something uncanny about Amy revealing this dark side of herself that it fully unnerves Mandy and derails her good mood. “That’s a side of you I’ve never seen, Amy.”
Amy links her arm in Mandy’s and walks them both back to camp. “Oh, there are so many sides of me you’ve never seen.”
“Also creepy.” Mandy stops and untangles her arm. “Come on, Amy. Are you like trying to trigger me? What do you mean about other sides? My sister had a boyfriend who talked like that and she ended up in the hospital one night. Now I know you’re not—”
“No no. I’m sorry.” Amy holds up her hands, innocence on her face. “I was just making a few jokes and ehh. No, I hear how bad that sounds.” Amy stops, at a loss. “I suppose, in all fairness, it’s time. I should tell you of my secret past.”
Chapter 12 – Too Freaky
March 18, 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:
12 – Too Freaky
Triquet has now stacked and organized the entirety of the first three belowdecks rooms. That’s not to say that every artifact has been studied. Things have just been identified and put together with other similar objects. It’s quite a lot of material. To anyone less obsessed with memorabilia than Triquet, it would be entirely overwhelming. To the young archaeologist, it is an endless journey of thrilling discoveries.
The most inane thing can set them off: a mattress tag that lists formaldehyde as an ingredient; a dead mouse at the bottom of a mayonnaise jar; a deck of cards with the Queen of Hearts missing. Each artifact could exist nowhere in the world except here, in this time and place. That is what makes them precious. Invaluable, in fact. Triquet makes copious notes, writing with a Parker ballpoint pen on a moleskine pad. These items had been a graduation gift from their grandfather when they got their first Masters. Now it is as if their classic notetaking implements have fallen back in time to rejoin their contemporaries.
Triquet, alone belowdecks among the crew bunks in their pink satin vest, holds up their shiny blue ballpoint pen. “Hello, 1952,” they squeak in a pen-voice. “So nice to make your acquaintance.” The pen executes a formal bow. “Does anyone have a turntable for swinging tunes? Perhaps some Perry Como?”
“Why, Penny,” Triquet answers the pen in a deep announcer voice, “that’s a fantastic idea.” They open their music app and a folder containing every available Perry Como song. They select one of their early favorites and let the ethereal back-up voices fill the echoing metal capsule:
They were standing in a crowded station,
So unaware, of all the people there!
I didn’t mean to hear their conversation,
But anyone could tell, It was their last farewell!
Good-bye Sue… All the best of luck to you!
You’ve been my only gal, What’s more, my best pal…!
Triquet sings along, lifting a rotting Eisenhower jacket and slow-dancing with it for a moment before carefully folding it again. Ah, the past. The golden past, with none of the troubles of today. It’s always hard for Triquet to stay in the present and they rarely think of any future beyond their next dig. But the glorious past, already decided and locked in time, spreading in all directions behind them like a scintillating peacock tail while they trudge forward into the unknown… the past is their home. All the bright shining lights of antiquity lie scattered about Triquet, ripe for study.
“Allow me to worship my icons, O Lord.” Triquet finds a box of mysterious long glass cylinders with filaments, like early versions of fluorescent tubes. Divining what they are will require a fair bit of research. They hold up a thick manila folder, reading the name off the label, “Ingles, Philip John. Ooo, Air Force Colonel. Big boss man.” Opening the cover reveals a wallet-size black-and-white studio photo of the colonel in uniform. It is the same portly, balding man who presided over the group photo. “Bonanza!” Triquet sits, leafing through the pages.
They are dated in backward chronological order, the earliest records at the end. Triquet gently lifts the crackling corner to peer at the first one. December 15th, 1952. It is a hand-written note that instructs the reader to hand over to Colonel Ingles the codes followed by the cryptic phrase Foxtrot Avenue. The signature is an illegible scrawl. Triquet giggles. “Oh, I love the spooks and their games.”
Most of the papers are brief correspondences concerning orders of fuels and supplies, which seemed to take up most of Colonel Ingles’ executive time on the island. He expended quite a bit of effort to try to get the Air Force to give them a steadily-replenished library, to uncertain success. And he had a constant number of discipline reports in the… Triquet checks the top page, it’s from 1962… so ten full years that Ingles ruled here like a king. Triquet whistles. It’s a lot of discipline reports. One name finds its way into more reports than any others: Lieutenant Clifton M. DeVry. He eventually got brought up on insubordination charges and was shipped off the island in 1956.
The next letter is a handwritten note, also from 1956. Apart from the date, it only says:
Philly,
On my way! Hugs and kisses.
MCD
MCD? Maureen Christian Dowerd? His wife? Then why didn’t she take his name? And why isn’t she in any of the photos? This was the 1950s and irregularities like these were far more significant. Triquet pages forward through 1957 and 1958 but finds no further mention of her. Just more fuel, books, and discipline problems.
“This is the guy…” Triquet realizes, “who buried the sub. Was it his idea?” But none of these papers make any mention of it.
Near the end of the record, in 1961, a stained telegram from Duluth, Minnesota, directs Colonel Ingles to ‘send her personal effects to this address.’ It is signed Penelope Archen Stoltz. So Maureen from Minnesota is dead by now and her family want her things. Triquet itches to get their hands on the official records of Duluth from 1956 but they’ll have to wait until they get back home to do that. What a mystery! What killed her? Why did she remain buried here if her family asked for her things?
Triquet resolves once again to conduct an autopsy.
Ξ
Miriam stands at the edge of the waterfall pool, watching the torrent, which has eased since she first checked on it after the storm. It is no longer threatening to kill her. The water has cleared and is less turbid now, and fewer wood fragments are dropping down from on-high.
She can’t see the dark vertical ovoid openings behind the falls any more. The cascades no longer separate from the cliff wall. They have mostly resumed their former less-thunderous route, framed on both sides by thick vegetation and not the lovely slick bare stone that had been revealed beneath.
Now how will she get to it? Erosion has opened up who knows what kind of fantastical caverns behind that waterfall. And it is all hers for the discovering if she can just figure out how to bypass the water. Deflect it somehow? Let’s see. At this moment it’s dropping, say, a hundred liters per second? Maybe less. Each liter of water weighs a kilo, traveling near terminal velocity. So it’s like having a heavy man fall on you traveling two hundred kilometers per hour. No, she doesn’t have anything that can withstand those forces, regardless of how many branches Pradeep lashes together.
“Well this is intolerable.” Miriam scuffs her boot against the mud beneath it. It can’t all be soil here, can it? She uses the blade of her shovel to hack away the crowding undergrowth. The earth is soft, the detritus from the waterfall that has collected over the ages to a great depth. She won’t find any stone here at all.
“Well… How close can I get?” Miriam edges toward the cascade, trying to find a providential place where the soil fades and the rock rises and the water above won’t kill her. She forces herself deeper into the brush, using her frustration to force her forward and down. Her old knees creak under the greenery. And her left wrist is bothering her these days. Careful how you crawl, old lass.
Miriam looks up from the dead leaves and mud. The bracken forms a low vault over her head. A narrow tunnel disappears into the gloom, curving away to the left. But it terminates to her right, overlooking the pool through a screen of branches. “But Amy said there’s no game trails here.” Yet this is obviously the nest of some animal. What’s more, a small hollow has been dug and lined with grass near the water’s edge. Like a rabbit’s den. Or that of a fox…
Ξ
Jay can’t stay horizontal any more. He’s losing his mind. So he’s up and hobbling around camp, picking up dirty dishes from the tables and bringing them to the kitchen inside the bunker for a wash. He should cook. He loves to cook. And by the time he gets everything prepped, moving slow as he is, he’ll definitely be hungry.
He makes a pancake batter, adding a dried blueberry trail mix with walnuts and sunflower seeds. They only have vegetable oil to fry them in. No butter or maple syrup, though Jay has noticed how fast Flavia is inhaling their supply of Nutella. Well, he’ll just put out a nice little spread here with a fat stack of cakes and a little bit of the Nutella on the side for whoever wants it.
Mixing is a bitch with a broken hand. He leans his body against the wall, the bowl braced between his leg and the concrete, to stir with his off-hand. He’s probably making too much. He didn’t even ask if anyone else is hungry. But nah. Everybody loves pancakes. Miriam appears in the bunker’s door, headed toward him. “There she is. Miriam will eat some, won’t she?”
“Biscuits? Yes, Jay, I’d love some. Hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Sure you’re okay to cook there?”
“I have to do something. Or I will explode. But it isn’t biscuits. Just pancakes if that’s okay.”
But she’s hardly listening. Miriam still looks outside, where the gray daylight glows softly in the doorway. “It’s a shame about your mobility. I just found the cutest little nest in the bushes.”
Jay stops mixing and looks at her. “What kind of nest? Where?”
“Right by the pool. Under the thorn bushes and everything. You and Amy think there’s a fox?”
“You found the fox nest? Oh hells yeah.” Jay turns off the burner he had already turned on. He bangs down the bowl on the counter and hops urgently toward the door. “Show me.”
“Oh, dear. I shouldn’t have said anything. Let’s wait until you can walk at least.”
“No way, lady. I can crawl if I have to. I got to see.”
Ξ
For the first time, Esquibel feels properly set up. What is this, the tenth day? Eleventh? Sitting in the clean room, she pages through the journal she’s been writing in. Diary-keeping is essential for a doctor on a solo tour like this. So the eleventh. She always had to keep her own schedule when she was aboard ships. It’s easy when you’re busy for the days to blur together. But there is something dreamy and timeless about this island that has a similar effect. It’s all so very pleasant. Cold and wet at times, yes, but no malaria mosquitos or stifling humidity or clouds of black flies. She might even go sit on the beach in the spot she had installed Maahjabeen the day before and read a book on her phone. Something trashy.
As she walks across the sand though she already starts to feel restless. Is this it, then? All she has to do is keep an eye on Jay and Maahjabeen and Alonso and the rest of her time is her own? On a ship she would have constant complaints and injuries. Her ward would usually be full and her corpsmen and nurses worked to exhaustion. But eleven people don’t really require a full clinic. They hardly require a doctor. Although these eleven seem to be particularly good at harming themselves.
She scrambles over the gigantic fallen redwood and drops down the other side. Esquibel realizes she will have to start a hobby, some useful way to spend her time here. “Ehh, that is always the issue, isn’t it?” She knows she is a fine doctor and a good person, but she also knows that she doesn’t have much of a personality outside of her work. She has thrown herself into medicine over the last ten years. It has left little to no time for anything—or anyone—else. Should that be her hobby? Mandy? She could devote herself to the lovely girl and they could live out their dreams…
Well, yes. But that would hardly require hours of her day. She can’t just stare at Mandy all the time. It would be unnerving. And such behavior is beneath her. Esquibel has her pride, after all.
So, okay. A little bit of time with Mandy. Maybe they can improve their cell in the bunker and their platform in camp, make it more like a tiny house. That would be dear. But what else? There must be something she can learn to do here on Lisica to finally explore parts of herself that remain undeveloped. She could assist Triquet with their efforts. No. She has no curiosity for the litter of dead Americans. Perhaps she can dig trenches for Miriam. Well, if her hip lets her. It still tightens up from time to time. She should see if Mandy would pry the scar tissue apart again tonight.
She can’t think of anything Alonso or Flavia or Jay might teach her that she cares about. What about Katrina? Maybe she could learn how to DJ? Ha. Now that’s a funny idea.
But for some reason it’s the only one that sticks.
At the beach, her attention is drawn to something white with a broken edge floating in the water. Esquibel forgets her plans of leisure and wades into the cold water to retrieve it.
Ξ
“No, I’m okay. I’m okay. I just get excited.” Amy tries to get Jay back in his chair, but instead he hops on his good foot and winces in agony. “Oh, please don’t make me sit again. Going crazy, yo. I’ll sit when I’m old.”
“Indeed,” Alonso agrees, “you will.”
“But wait! Miriam didn’t stick around for the full forensic exam. There wasn’t really enough room in there for two. Oh, it’s a puzzle, that’s for sure.” This isn’t a full meeting. Mandy and Pradeep are nowhere to be seen. Esquibel is down at the beach. Flavia sits on her own platform, frowning at her laptop.
“Puzzle?” Miriam pours glasses of wine and hands them out. “In what way? Is it not a fox nest?”
“Well…” Jay draws long gray fibers from his pocket and holds them up in the fluttering wind. “If further examination confirms these are fox, then yes. But that wasn’t the only hair I found there. I also found these.” Jay holds up a clutch of long curly golden hairs.
Amy holds her hand out. “Let me see.” Jay passes the tangle of hairs to her. She gets out her phone and takes a picture, then magnifies the image. “Huh.” Amy inspects the hairs more closely. “I can’t think of a single animal that might reasonably be here with this kind of hair. I mean, a golden doodle dog? A Mongolian yak? Some kind of mountain goat or sheep variant would be my best guess here.” She passes the hairs to Alonso.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.” Jay places a broken stick with a sharpened end on the table. “Until I found that.”
Miriam picks up the narrow stick. Its end has been planed into something like a pencil’s point. “Tool-using foxes?”
“Oh my god, the island is inhabited?” Amy covers her mouth.
Alonso, holding up the hairs, slaps his forehead and cries out. “Yes! Ai mi. I have seen one. I keep forgetting. With everything that has happened and hitting my head. Yes! This is exactly it! The child had this hair.” He holds up the blond curls.
“A child?” Miriam turns to him. “What are you talking about? You saw a child here? When were you going to tell us?” But her eyes are worried. Is this Alonso’s sanity showing signs of cracking? She glances at Amy, who is at a complete loss.
“When did you see a child?” Amy asks.
“I keep forgetting then remembering again. That night when I fell in the dark. I was very drunk. But I was sure I had seen her. Or him. Little person in the shadows, only maybe ten meters away. Didn’t see me. Long curly hair and a little face. They were very real. I heard them as they stepped. I swear to you.”
“Wow.” Triquet slowly absorbs these revelations. Now a number of things start to make sense. “This is a very important piece. A very important piece indeed.” It somehow fits in what they have been studying but they still can’t divine how. How did this lead to an entire sub getting buried at the base? One of the charges that had gotten Lieutenant DeVry in trouble again and again was fraternization. When they’d first read it, Triquet had skipped over the detail, assuming it was with some enlisted man or something, but now it begs the question—fraternizing with whom? Could DeVry not keep his hands off the natives?
Triquet opens their mouth to say as much but they’re interrupted by Esquibel, walking toward them from the beach holding a white triangle with broken edges. “Look. I found this. Floating in the lagoon. Is it what I think it is?” A row of black numerals run along its edge, a second row in dense Chinese characters.
Triquet is up and at her side in a flash. They handle the piece with care.“My my my. Will you look at that. It’s the wreckage of a plane, like a fragment of its wing. See?”
Esquibel asks, “Anyone read… what is that? Mandarin?”
“Mandy?” Amy asks. “Where is she?”
“No,” Esquibel says. “She never learned it.”
“Katrina?” Alonso asks, craning his neck. “I bet you know.”
She sits behind him on her platform but has pink headphones on, grooving to a beat while she fills in an intricate flower drawing in a coloring book. She looks up and removes her headphones. “Why is everyone looking at me? Oh. What’s that?”
Triquet crosses the sand to her and shows her the wing fragment and its Chinese characters. “How’s your Zhōngwén?”
“Yeh. I did study Chinese a bit for some intelligence analysis work I did a few years ago. Let’s see…” Katrina frowns at a cluster of symbols. “I think this part says directorate or ministry.”
“A few years ago?” Triquet deadpans. “When you were sixteen?”
“Seventeen. ASIS wouldn’t give me classified access until after my birthday. I mean, I was still a minor. So stupid.”
“Ministry of what though?” Triquet examines the characters. They are right at the edge, further characters shorn away. With a careful pinch, they peel back the white laminar to examine the composite substrate. “This looks like carbon fiber here. Oh shit. And now…” Triquet hastily puts the wing fragment down on the ground at their feet, “…I’m fairly certain we shouldn’t be handling that with bare hands because that is a Chinese military component and they have been widely known to use toxic jet fuels among other deadly materials. Gah. Doctor Daine, you and I need to get clean real quick. Uh… Uh… Uh… What do you got?”
“Yes. Alcohol wipes. Peroxide. I’ll get them. Right away.”
“Isn’t peroxide one of the fuels they use?” Miriam asks. “But like a toxic version? Is it even safe to mix them?”
Triquet shrugs, alarmed. “You think I know? This isn’t my area of interest at all. I just read stories of Chinese rockets falling on villages and giving everyone blood cancer or something. Ahh! Hurry, Esquibel!” Triquet holds their hands away from their body and jumps up and down in distress.
“So what happened here?” Alonso shakes his head in worry. “Did this float here all the way from China? Somehow I doubt it. So what then? Chinese military plane flying across the Pacific got hit by the storm?”
“What was it even doing here?” Amy wonders. “I mean, there’s nothing here and this is way outside of China’s reach.”
“There’s nowhere,” Esquibel says, returning with a satchel filled with bottles, “outside of China’s reach. Believe me. I have been all over the world and they are everywhere. Hands.”
Triquet holds out their hands. Esquibel puts a small bucket beneath before pouring liquid soap on them. “Any reactions?”
“Just psychosomatic ones. Pretty sure I have like face tumors now. How about you? Did you only touch it with your hands?”
“I am not sure. I had to get into the water to fish it out. Above my knee. I think it bumped into me there. But I didn’t think it could be dangerous since it spent so long in the ocean.”
“You’re probably right. But I’d still wash that leg.”
Esquibel nods. She turns to the person beside her. “Amy, could you please remove my pants?”
“Oh, uh, sure.” Amy tries to emulate the doctor’s business-like approach to bodies and nudity. She fumbles at the buckle below Esquibel’s navel, then unzips them and drags them over the tall woman’s hips and rump. “Maybe wash both your legs to be sure.”
“Would you please?” Esquibel asks, mouth pressed into a thin line. How could she have been so stupid to expose herself to toxins like this? She needed a bloody archaeologist to remind her of it. Unaware of Amy’s fluttering heart as she wipes down the long smooth muscles of Esquibel’s legs, the Doctor instead worries that everyone thinks she’s an idiot. She doesn’t realize she’s been upstaged by the sight of her graceful long legs and smooth skin. They draw all the attention and conversation awkwardly stops.
“There, Esquibel.” Amy stands, disposing of a wad of wipes. “Now you should survive.”
“Whew. I think Amy needs a cigarette,” Katrina jokes. They all laugh, breaking the tension. Esquibel laughs too but her head still rings with recriminations and she doesn’t catch the joke. She just assumes they’re all laughing at her.
“Oh, um, Amy, I think I got it on my legs too…” Triquet strikes a pose and sighs and they all laugh again.
Now Esquibel gets it. She blushes and hastily pulls her pants back up. They aren’t laughing at her. They’re objectifying her. “Thank you. That should be sufficient,” Esquibel informs them in her most prim voice. “I’ll do some research on possible exposures and see if I have anything to counteract them. I’m not sure I do, especially if we inhaled anything.”
“But it doesn’t answer,” Miriam says, “any of our questions. Why were the Chinese even here? On their way to spy on Canada?”
“Or were they coming to Lisica?” Triquet shivers. “I sincerely hope not. I only like the spooky stuff when all the spooks are dead and gone. I don’t need to actually live through any of it.”
Jay shakes his head in confusion. “So you think the Chinese were coming here and got caught in the storm and… and what? The plane crashed and they all died?”
“It’s true,” Alonso says. “We don’t know if anyone survived.”
They all think about what that means, about the other bunker on the other beach, about the forested interior peopled by mysterious natives with curly golden hair.
Alonso chuckles, fatalistic. Life is the strangest thing. There is no anticipating what surprise might come next. “Well. I guess we will have to add more plates to the supper table. Things are about to get a lot more crowded around here.”
Ξ
Pradeep leads Mandy by the hand out of camp and into a tiny nook on the far side of Tenure Grove, where narrow arms of the cliff drop down on one side and the other to enclose this small hidden glade.
Mandy hasn’t held hands with a boy since her cousin Albert walked her to her car at Aunty Carol’s funeral. Male hands are so big, like cartoonishly-large. And Pradeep’s slender fingers are twice as long as hers, carefully cradling her entire palm. She doesn’t like being reminded how much bigger and stronger most men are. Their very existence is an implied threat. Fortunately the three men on this island have been gentle. She loves that they were seemingly able to leave toxic masculinity behind. Mandy can’t remember the last time she was able to live a daily life without it.
But the going is rocky and rooty through the understory and everyone has already watched Mandy trip over one thing or another so she’s grateful for his hand. She wonders what kind of weird fungus or bizarre mating habit of ant species he wants to show her. But she doesn’t need to ask. She’s not a child.
Pradeep halts her at the mouth of the nook. The space within is only as wide as a house, with small shrubs and stunted trees that probably don’t get enough sun, hidden by the tall cliffs almost into an enclosure. Pradeep looks at Mandy with a smile of expectation. He feels so bad for the poor atmospheric scientist, cut off from nearly all her observations. Well, here is a special one for her.
She gives him a side-eyed glance. “What am I looking at?”
“You will need to wait a moment. For the wind to pick up.”
“It’s pretty here. Like a little secret spot.”
“Yes, you wouldn’t believe the interactions among the ground-dwelling arthropods in the leaf litter. I think it’s a full ground war, with at least five fronts and… There. The wind.”
A gust flutters her long hair and rustles the dead branches on the floor of the nook. Then a longer sustained wind shudders past her and swirls into it, lifting redwood duff and dried maple leaves from the forest floor and spinning them in a modest twister.
Mandy cries out with childlike joy and claps her hands. “Oh, oh do it again! That’s brilliant! You’re saying it keeps happening?”
“For at least the last hour. Quite a strong effect. Like surprisingly strong. I was thinking this is how we could get Jay up the cliff. Sit him in a little sort of whirly gig during the next storm. It would spin him right up to the top!”
She giggles and leans gratefully against Pradeep, squeezing his arm, the way she would with any of her girlfriends who had just brought her a gift. He stiffens, unused to intimate contact like this, his smile frozen on his face.
Mandy playfully pushes on Pradeep’s shoulder. “Oh, babe, don’t worry. I’m not into guys. You’re safe with me. But thank you so much! This is so awesome! My god, I can actually run some kind of interesting experiments in here. Does it only occur with a westerly wind? Are there local temperature factors? There must be. So what conditions need to line up for the phenomenon to occur?”
Pradeep shrugs, knowing it’s a rhetorical question. Mandy’s hair still brushes against his shoulder. It is too soft for words. But her proximity keeps him as still as a mouse. He doesn’t mean for human contact to turn him into a frightened prey animal. It just does. And at this point in his life, the old habits are just easier than the new pitfalls of engagement. He withdraws, edging toward the nook. “Would it spoil your observations if I continued my work?”
“In there? Maybe. But I mean, go ahead. This is your lab first. I just got here. And sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you were coming onto me. I just wanted you to know I wasn’t. Onto you, that is.”
Pradeep nods, pained anxiety clearly showing on his face. Mandy feels a stab of sympathy and has to suppress the urge to give the poor guy a hug. Wow. Who hurt you, bro? We are all dealing with our own ish for sure.
The wind is still whirling, the threads of redwood bark and chips rising and falling in the column according to complex dynamics. He unslings his backpack and crawls forward, following an arc of lined-up pine needles that curve across the ground where the flood waters left them. Black flies and white gnats buzz above these collections of organic matter. Pradeep pries one lump apart with tweezers. He is on the lookout, as always now, for species symbiosis and interactions with their environments. He wants to be able to show Alonso some real knockout examples, really vindicate Plexity for the old data scientist. Hah. Here he goes again… Pradeep realizes he is making of Alonso a father figure, as he has done with mentors many times throughout his academic career.
The thing is, he comes from a family with a strong patriarch: his uncle. The old immigrant works very hard and his many nieces and nephews always come to him with their achievements, to show him that his work is meaningful, that all those pizzas that had put them through college would secure his retirement with a nice duplex or condo in the suburbs outside St. Louis. That is the plan.
But these expressions of filial duty make Pradeep a model student and one whom mentors gladly pick up. Reflexively, he is always trying to please them, to prove that their efforts on his behalf matter. It turns out, people really appreciate that care. It’s part of what allows Pradeep to be such a success in this cutthroat field. His ardent desire to please authority figures, whether they deserve it or not. Pradeep sighs with pleasure, finding an owl’s pellets bound up in the pine needles. He inspects it with the USB microscope attached to his phone. Microbes are already feeding on the small amounts of undigested animal matter that isn’t hair and bone. Wonderful. He scrapes a sample into a capsule and snaps it shut.
A stronger wind blasts the nook, the air pressure fluttering so much Mandy’s ears pop. Pradeep is nearly knocked off his knees. A long branch is picked up into the cyclone and sent skyward.
“Look out!” Mandy hauls Pradeep out of the way as the branch returns with a growing rush to earth. He falls back against her and they crash against the ground.
His weight crushes her ribs. She worries that the branch fell across his legs and hurt him. His hair smells of some spicy male shampoo. That’s the thing about men. She just doesn’t like how they smell. She never has. But girls smell like her favorite dessert. It’s how she knew she was gay, from the earliest moments. She just couldn’t imagine getting closer to that musky male scent.
Pradeep rolls away, worried that he’s hurt the poor girl. He holds up a hand in apology and she does the same thing. “Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Did I hurt you?”
“No. I’m fine. But it didn’t fall on you?”
“No. You saved me.”
She holds out her hands for help up. He hesitates for only a fraction of a second before he favors her with another brilliant anxious smile and pulls her back to her feet.
More wind whips into the nook, sending large branches skyward. It’s like a fireworks show, just for the two of them. They retreat to safety so they can watch it together.
It is so magical that Pradeep doesn’t realize he’s been holding Mandy’s hand again until the wind fades and it is time to go.
Ξ
“Water.”
Flavia looks up from her screen. She sits in her little private cell, up to her neck in coding. Did somebody say something?
“Water. Please.”
Ah! It’s Maahjabeen, in a cot in the cell beside hers. Flavia curses softly at herself for her thoughtlessness and pushes the laptop away. She finds a bottle in the kitchen and fills it from their freshwater bucket. She taps on Maahjabeen’s door.
The Tunisian woman is on her side, face clenched, breath ragged. Is she asleep? She doesn’t appear to realize she spoke aloud. But she still must need water if she’s dreaming about it. Flavia puts a gentle hand on Maahjabeen’s arm, recalling how much Alonso bellowed when she touched him.
Maahjabeen groans, a scratchy sound, and rolls onto her back. She unsticks her eyes and looks at Flavia without recognition.
“I brought water.”
Maahjabeen nods, her restless disjointed dreams fading, and tries to lift an arm. Her shoulder creaks but allows it. Progress. She grasps the cool bottle and holds it against the side of her face.
“How are you? How is your back?” Flavia strokes Maahjabeen’s thick black curls, visible at the edge of her headscarf.
“Mm. Better. Thank you.” Maahjabeen twists the top off and sucks water out like it’s a baby bottle. “Get so thirsty. And then my muscles lock up again.”
“Drink it all.”
Maahjabeen does so.
“There there. Let’s make sure you don’t waste away.” Flavia mothers her, tucking her bag under her chin. “More water?”
Maahjabeen looks at her with gratitude. “Soon.”
“Us Mediterranean ladies must stick together, eh?” Flavia grabs Maahjabeen’s big toe through the bag and shakes it. “I have been to Tunisia one time. I loved it.”
“You’ve been to Tunisia?”
“Oh, yes. Very beautiful. My uncle was in the Italian Corpo delle Capitanerie di Porto, eh… captain of ports, out of Genoa…”
“Coast guard.”
“Exactly. He was in the Coast Guard and he would take us out sailing all over every summer. He loved Greece best so we sailed the islands most summers but once we went to Tunisia. Something about it… Felt so glamorous.”
“Glamorous? Ha. You must not have left the tourist beaches.”
“No. I think we probably lived onboard his boat in the marina. That’s what we always did. But one day we were in a small town but they had a big square and there was a wedding. Like a wedding procession through the town. And everyone was dressed—”
“Ah, yes. Silver thread and satin as far as the eye can see.”
“And I was like twelve! The bride, she had a headpiece made of gold coins. And the men were so handsome.”
“Ha. That is a perfect description of them. The men of my country do all they can to make themselves handsome to twelve year old girls. Now so much of my dating life makes sense.”
“You should try Italian men. They only think the whole world revolves around them. Their mamas spoil them so much growing up they are just impossible. But there was fantastic fruit in Tunisia. I remember. Sweet. It just really seemed, like, a land of plenty.”
“It could be.” Maahjabeen sits up with a sigh. “It certainly could be. And it definitely has some bright spots. I guess I will return someday and spend the rest of my life there. It will always be home and I miss it so much. But as you can maybe hear in my words, I am not ready yet.”
“Eh, Maahjabeen. What are you doing?”
“I am seeing if I can stand.”
“Let me help.”
Maahjabeen groans as she straightens for the first time in a day. Her shoulders settle and ribs adjust and spine relaxes. She takes the deep breath Mandy begged of her so long ago, then rocks her hips a bit. “Eh. Still very sore. But it is good to be young and fit, no? I will be better. But I have to move. Will you move with me?”
Flavia laughs. “Sure. I should definitely move too. I haven’t been anywhere except my keyboard all morning.”
“Help me down into the sub.”
Flavia blinks at Maahjabeen, who finds her shoes beneath the cot and struggles to put them on. Flavia kneels down to help with the elastic straps and zip cords. “The sub? Don’t you want a nice walk on the beach or something?”
“My body has been all locked up but my mind hasn’t. And I’ve been thinking. Nothing else to do. And I remembered something that was really important a few days ago. Then Triquet got all caught up in their US Air Force murder mystery drama and we’ve all forgotten about the fact that fresh air still regularly flows through the sub. Nobody is even looking for the source of the air anymore. Let’s do it.”
“Do it now? Just the two of us? One who is like broken and the other who is like the least physically competent person on the island? Shouldn’t we wait for, I don’t know, Esquibel or Triquet?”
Maahjabeen takes a jacket from the corner. She thinks it belongs to Pradeep. He probably won’t mind. She shrugs, restless. “We can always stop if things become a challenge. But it is just the stairs. I might have trouble though so if you could help me…”
Maahjabeen leads Flavia out the cell and to the stairs headed down. With a sigh, feeling thoroughly unqualified to lead an expedition of this scale, she gathers her courage and with a grip on Maahjabeen’s elbow helps her descend slowly into the sub.
It’s changed so much since she’s been here last. Triquet really has a sense of design (if it wasn’t obvious from their fabulous wardrobe) and each room is now tastefully decorated with items from the past, bringing each chamber back to life. The bright work lights help immensely as well. It’s nearly like stepping back in time.
“Nicer down here than the bunker upstairs now.” Flavia studies the giant wall map before ducking through the hatch and finding a wall in the second chamber filled with photographs and news clippings, preserved behind a thick layer of transparent plastic.
But Maahjabeen doesn’t have an eye for any of it. She is on a mission. Moving again. She is like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. So rusty but only slowly now coming back to life. That movie helped her learn English. And it gave her very weird ideas about what to expect of Americans. Now their past is all around her, like coins from Carthage buried in the sand.
She gets to the control room and the permanently open panel leading to the belowdecks. The descent is more manageable now, with solid pieces of steel furniture stacked and braced as a fairly regular set of steps down. “This is where I need help, please.”
Flavia goes down first, standing on the desk that forms the base of the stairs. Maahjabeen sits on the edge and scoots her way down, until her stance is solid and she doesn’t have to lunge forward too far. They carefully find their way to the deck. “Big success!” Flavia cheers Maahjabeen. “You did it!”
“Do not,” Triquet’s voice echoes through the hatch from the chamber ahead, “scareme like that. Please, people!”
Flavia hurries ahead. She ducks through the far hatch to find Triquet among their collection, wearing a Renaissance-style linen tunic with laces at the neck and rolled up blousy sleeves. A velvet choker around their pale neck features a green faceted costume jewel. But the modern reading glasses on a chain nearly ruin the look. “Sorry, Doctor, I didn’t know you were down here.”
“Lost in time.” Triquet gives her a glassy stare, not truly upset, actually pleased to have the company. There are so many treasures here to share. “Look, Flavia. My whiskey collection.”
Apart from the fact that most of the containers are empty, it is an impressive assortment of bottles of all shapes and sizes, from flasks to jugs. The artwork on the old labels is really fascinating too, with Jack Daniels and Jameson and Wild Turkey the most common.
“And see. I saved one for… personal experimentation.” Triquet holds up a crate filled with three full vintage bottles of Bushmills, the amber liquid unevaporated. “We can nip one and still have two for reference if we need to run any tests. That’s ethical, right?”
Flavia chuckles. “Entirely ethical. And it is after lunch.”
Triquet uncorks the old bottle and sniffs it. “Smells like whiskey.” They take a swig. “Mm! So smooth!” Triquet wipes a drop from their chin. “I mean, maybe it’s just me with my silly expectations but this is probably like a sixty year-old bottle. Here. Try.”
Flavia toasts Triquet. “Chin chin.” She hums with pleasure. “Oh my god take this away it is so dangerous. It tastes like candy.”
“Irish whiskey candy. I know what business I’m starting when I get back home.” Triquet takes a longer pull. “Who is that? You brought a friend! Come on, then! It’s a drinking party!”
Maahjabeen contorts her way through the hatch and straightens. Her eyes fall on the whiskey in Triquet’s hand. “Ah. Hello.”
Triquet has the sense to cork the bottle and put it aside. They hurry forward. “It’s Maahjabeen! How are you, sweetheart? My god I didn’t think you’d have it in you to join us down here yet.”
“We have come,” Maahjabeen announces, “to finally find the source of the air.”
“The air?” Triquet shakes their head. They’ve been in too deep, every thought devoted to the piles of historical detail and data. “Ah! The air! Right! I mean, well, it must be coming from beyond the next room somehow, mustn’t it?”
Triquet leads them through the last hatch into the final chamber. Here the far hatch is welded shut, as it is with the control room’s far hatch on the floor above at the opposite end. It appears that the entirety of the sub wasn’t buried. The nose and tail were lopped off and only these major living compartments are left. Now they stand two full floors directly below the bunker’s trapdoor.
The expanded steel grates at their feet push cold air through. Then it pauses and draws the air in turn. Triquet steps back and clutches Flavia’s arm. “Oh. Right. Now I remember why I stopped looking for it,” Triquet admits. “Cause it’s too freaky.”
Chapter 9 – More Useful
February 26, 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 chapter:
9 – More Useful
The storm rages for three days. The ten of them remain trapped in the bunker for the duration. It is a grim marathon, punctuated by incoherent breakdowns from Alonso, Pradeep, Flavia, then nearly everyone else. The claustrophobia nearly does Amy in, and she finds herself weeping in Triquet’s arms one night for hours.
For Jay it’s the unrelenting ferocity of the storm. As a California boy his experience with storms is spotty. He’s definitely been out in some ragers, and he’s quite aware of the infinite power of the Pacific Ocean, but this is an assault. Like this is an unrelenting hammer and anvil where physics beats biology every time. It feels like the island will get torn up by the roots and carried away. He didn’t know that storms could be so insane.
Miriam feels like she is sinking in a leaky lifeboat and she only has her cupped hands to bail. Alonso is offline. When he isn’t babbling about AK-47s and gopniks he is asleep. Any decisions that need to be made are now hers to make. At one point, during her darkest hour, Miriam approaches Amy and asks if she knows of any emergency beacon or transmitter that Alonso had privately revealed to her. Because it’s time to hit it. Call in the Marines. But of course Amy knows nothing. Miriam asks Esquibel the same thing, but she only crosses her arms and presses her mouth into a line. “No. Devices would be useless anyway. Like any signal could penetrate these clouds.”
Esquibel is most concerned with Mandy. She has lost all reason. The Doctor sets up a nice cot for her in the clean room, where she attends her nearly the entire three days, sleeping at her side, making sure she feeds herself, and when Mandy tries once again to run out into the storm, forcibly holding her down and demanding her permission to sedate her. After an hour of shouting at each other she finally gets through and the girl meekly lies down and lets Esquibel give her two Benadryl and a Valium. She is asleep soon.
Triquet keeps the endurance racer’s mindset from the beginning. They are the only one who does not collapse. There had been a point at the beginning of their career, crouched in a Guatemalan pit toilet with the dysentery shits as rebel gunfire suddenly echoed through the jungle and killed their guide Topo, when they realized archaeology would some day kill them. The sudden clarity of that epiphany has never left them, and they are at peace with their destiny. They certainly hope it will be later—much later—rather than sooner, but this big old bad world has it out for everybody, and this tremendous storm is just the latest threat to their existence. Poor Maahjabeen. Triquet only hopes she didn’t suffer too much before departing to her Islamic afterlife.
On the morning of the third day the wind finally eases. Mandy is up an hour before dawn, lacing her boots. Esquibel opens her eyes and only watches, weary and heavy-limbed. “Mandy, no… You should wait for light.”
“I have to see.”
“You can’t see. There’s no light.”
“Well I can’t stay here. Not for another moment.” Mandy pulls on her blue storm shell and zips it to her chin. Esquibel is already up and lacing her boots as well. Mandy holds up a hand. “Oh, you don’t have to join—”
“Save it.” Esquibel lifts a portable work light. Its beam function should be sufficient. She grabs her coat as they head for the door of the bunker.
Outside is a ruin. They had brought nearly everything they could inside before things got too bad but the parachute they’d left hung in the trees is now just thin torn strips. The platforms are piles of scattered sticks. A multitude of thick branches have fallen across their path, making navigation to the beach nearly impossible. One of the giant redwoods has fallen, the width of its trunk now four meters tall. Mandy climbs its rough bark, gentle rain still falling.
At the top of the fallen trunk the last of the storm whips her, the air heavy and wet but no longer cold. Over the southeastern sea she can see a pale stripe in the sky that promises dawn and clear skies. Good. By the time she makes her way down to the beach, there should be light enough.
Mandy is bruised, stunned by the apocalyptic days she just endured. She still can’t forgive herself for letting Maahjabeen go, but at least she is admitting to herself that if she had stayed out in the storm she would have died like fifteen different ways.
Despite the obvious risks out here, Esquibel is glad to be outside. But her relief is short-lived. Fatigue steals up on her. She is used to open-ended shifts of intense caregiving, especially during her deployments, but this has been one of her longest. She is light-headed now, nearly delirious, only keeping it together through strength of will. They will take a quick look at the beach, realize Maahjabeen is still gone and how impossible her survival is, then go back to the cot and fall asleep in each other’s arms.
And to Mandy’s dismay, that is exactly what happens.
Ξ
Triquet is belowdecks with Katrina, stringing a line of work lights into the new chambers they’ve discovered. This room is narrow, lined with impossibly cramped bunks for the engine crew. An old odor of pipe tobacco and mildew still somehow lingers. As Katrina dresses the cable along the floor she finds an ammunition box under the furthest bunk.
“Uh, hold up, Triq. We got ourselves a live one here.”
Triquet squeals. Today they wear a galibayah—a striped cotton Egyptian shift, and black knit skullcap under their helmet, in a more somber vein. They just haven’t felt it is appropriate to wear fashion and makeup since the loss of Maahjabeen. They hitch the long skirt up and crouch beside Katrina to stare at the olive green container. “Ammo box. They usually don’t have ammo, though. Waterproof and bombproof. A lot of soldiers kept their valuables in them back then.”
“But what if it is ammunition?”
Triquet frowns. “Yeah… that could be a problem. Explosives can decay and become unstable. I mean, it’s a small chance, but… You’re right, you should probably back away.”
Katrina does so. “What are you gonna do?”
“Uhh. I know. There’s that sink back in the tip. That big enamel monster in the corner. Help me get it.”
They retreat two rooms to the chamber under the control room, where even the largest pieces have now been arranged and placed in rows. They lift the heavy sink and bring it back through the two hatches to rest it on the deck right in front of the ammo box.
“Now I’m just going to…” Triquet unlaces a boot and ties the cord to the handle of the ammo box. Then they tilt the sink at an angle, resting its top edge against the bunk. “Step back again. I’ll drag it until we get it under the sink. Then we drop the sink on it. Blast shield, right?”
“Right.” Katrina withdraws to the hatch as Triquet gently draws the ammo box across the deck toward the sink, which waits like the traps Elmer Fudd used to leave for Bugs Bunny. Thank god for Triquet. When everyone else fell the fuck apart, good old Triquet came through, organizing breakfast and clearing the area around the bunker of storm wreckage before asking for a volunteer to accompany them down here. Katrina has felt so hopeless, watching all these others battle their demons through the dark days and nights. But for her, it’s just more of how she has felt taking care of her brother Pavel. He’d always been ravaged by dark thoughts, even as a child, but now after a year in the gulag he is worse than ever. He’s drawn himself into such a subterranean place that he has gone inert. Katrina can only hope that healing is happening in there. That he is not becoming stuck forever in his dark place.
But now she has seen that phenomenon writ large. A good half dozen people nearly lost their minds in the bunker over the last few days. It was the worst camp-out she’d ever attended, lol. LMAO. ROFL. The acronyms are as heavy as stones in her mind. Yes… losing Maahjabeen has taken even Katrina’s humor away.
“And… so far so good.” Triquet crouches beside the sink. “Help me drop it now.” They gently shift the sink so that it covers the box, resting it upside-down on the deck. Then Triquet stands on a nearby bunk and shoos Katrina back to the hatch. “Ready?”
Katrina nods, not knowing what they are about to do.
Triquet yanks on the boot lace, still tied to the ammo box handle. With each yank, they knock it against the interior of the sink, again and again.
Katrina squints in anticipation, her fingers in her ears.
After a few moments of this, Triquet stops. “See? What I figured. Probably personal possessions. Juicy ones I hope.”
They lift the sink away and Triquet puts a white workcloth in their lap with the ammo box on top. They turn on the headlamp and camera on their helmet. The latch on the ammo box is rusted and needs to be forced, but with a clack it finally releases and the lid creaks open.
Triquet peers within. “Oo, look,” they fish out a foil-wrapped oblong. “Wrigley’s spearmint. You like gum?” They set it aside and draw out a stack of papers. “This is bizarre. I mean, What I don’t understand is how someone could just forget their personal effects. Here. Look. What kind of emergency bugout had to happen…” The stack of papers contains a passport. “See? They even forgot their passport. How could—?” Triquet opens the passport and glances at its contents. Their face goes sober. “Ah. Aha. Well then. That’s how.”
“What? What is it?” Katrina leans forward.
The passport contains a black and white photo of a middle-aged woman with a narrow face and dark lipstick, a 1950s hairstyle forcing her blonde curls into strange shapes. Her name is MAUREEN CATHERINE DOWERD.
“M.C. Dowerd is the gravestone in the trees. She didn’t forget her valuables, Katrina. I guess after she died, everyone else did.”
Ξ
Alonso sits in his camp chair behind the trap door in the corner, out of everyone’s way. His anguish sizzles in him like oil on a pan. He can’t seem to get past it. There is nothing but this pain. He has always suffered it and he will always suffer it and everything else is an abstraction, a comfortable luxury that he can ill afford. The words ring hollow in his head, shorn of meaning: Miriam. Plexity. Lisica. Remember when they were important? They had been the pillars of his sanity. He supposes that is gone now. His sanity has been swept away in that storm along with that poor Tunisian girl. Yet another burden he will carry forever. He will have to contact her family and promise restitution, debase himself with apologies.
Hot tears run down his cheeks again. He has always been weepy for sure, all that opera and those Cuban boleros growing up. They just open your heart. But now his eyes leak like his heart bleeds. He is fracturing, disassembling from grief. And all these people here, gathered from the four corners of the globe at his request, are all waiting on him.
And he can’t do a thing for them.
His hands rest on the cane, massaging its handle. His ruined feet curl under him, in an awkward position that hurts the least. They had broken him in pieces like Humpty Dumpty. And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. He has been atomized. Like the opposite of Plexity. They’ve beaten him into isolated bits and all the connective tissue is gone.
That poor child Mandy rouses again, crying out in the clean room. Here is yet another casualty laid at Alonso’s door. How many years of therapy will she require after the last few days? Oh, dios mio… He is ill from the wash of guilt sweeping through him, so he sighs raggedly and closes his eyes. It is all too unbearable.
Mandy breaks free of Esquibel’s embrace and slips through the clean room exit. Alonso opens his eyes to glimpse her bruised eyes and pallid cheeks. Poor dear thing. Ruined.
He has to think of something—anything—that he can contribute to this community he has created. His big Cuban family. If he only had a barbecue he could make them all some Mojo Criollo. But he has none of the meats or spices, not to mention the tools and a barbecue itself, as well as the strength to stand for more than a few seconds at a time. No. Useless. All he can do now is stay out of the way. Make sure that they don’t need to spend their few resources taking care of him. Shrink into yourself, Alonso. It is his only course.
Ξ
The sky is still gray, with dark streamers dropping sheets of rain from time to time. Mandy strides past Amy and Pradeep collecting all the wreckage from the platforms. She climbs the redwood trunk and navigates a fallen bay tree, its aromatic leaves all around her. Then she descends to the shore, filled with piles of sea grass and dead crustaceans. The gulls and other birds are pecking at the harvest, unconcerned by the human in their midst. A single dead sea lion lies rolled on its side, a giant red gash in its black tail.
Mandy reaches the edge of the beach as a fresh shower douses her. The lagoon is still dark. The open ocean has settled into bands of blue, the waves coming in orderly rows. She stands and watches them, vowing not to leave.
The clouds sail across the southern sky and it breaks open. Flavia locates Mandy on the shore hours later. She stands on the redwood trunk behind her, admiring the strands of Mandy’s long hair and scarves flapping in the wind like Cordelia, waiting for her life to begin again.
“Ai, Mandy is here!” Flavia calls out to the others who have come looking with her. Amy has been distracted by the bounties of the fallen redwood and Triquet has decided to try to skirt the fallen behemoth, back toward the grove and around its uprooted base.
The lagoon is settling now. Such a beautiful view, like some of Flavia’s favorite spots on the Ligurian coast. But those are warm enough to swim in and this, no. Never. Ah, look! Flavia is surprised to see curved black dorsal fins running in a line of three behind the line of surf. Are they sharks? They must be the biggest sharks in the whole world! Amy should see them. One rolls onto its side, lifting a pectoral fin, and flashes its black and white patches. Oh! It is one of those killer whales! Like in the movies! “Amy! Amy, come! You have to see! I think it’s killer whales!”
Amy pops up, giving Flavia a little moue of excitement.
Flavia turns back to them. “At first I thought they were sharks but then one showed me his…” Flavia falls silent.
Amy clambers up the side of the redwood trunk, its corrugated bark providing easy hand and foot holds. “Showed you his what?” But Flavia has an indescribable look on her face.
Amy follows her gaze. There, out on the water, three dorsal fins cut behind the surf. And following them is a yellow kayak.
“Ahh!” Amy gasps, flinging her arm out. “Maahjabeen!” She screams in wild joy and clambers from the trunk. Amy fights her way through the fallen bay tree, Flavia finally rousing herself and falling in beside her. They reach Mandy before she has seen from her lower vantage point. Flavia wraps her in her arms, babbling incoherently, and finally Amy turns them to the sea as Maahjabeen surfs through the rollers and carves her way through the lagoon mouth, her arms stiff and her posture wrong. But once she reaches the safety of the still water she turns her boat and lifts her paddle to the sky, calling out to the three orcas who remained behind. “Netcharfou! Yaishek!”
After they depart, she turns back to the shore. She is so depleted she can only move robotically, favoring one side. Mandy is on her knees, crying out to her. The kayak skids to a halt in the sand.
Maahjabeen can’t get herself out. Flavia and Amy try to lift her but she has no strength left. “Okay,” Amy realizes. “Nice and slow. Step by step. Get your legs under you.”
“I can’t—” Maahjabeen’s unused voice halts. She shakes her head no. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“Are they… are you injured?”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. But she holds up four fingers. “Four times. Four times I tried to get back. Whenever it looked like there would be a gap in the storm.”
“But where were you?” Flavia unzips Maahjabeen’s wind shell, stiff with salt, and wraps her warmer coat around her. “Come on. Just hold on to my neck and we’ll get you out.”
“Four times.” Maahjabeen shakes her head in dismay, unable to communicate in those two words how many hours of terror in the dark on the water that meant. How many times she had believed herself lost. How the cold had been like knives one abysmal night when she was stranded on a seastack. There are no words to describe what she has gone through. But she needs to tell them the most important parts. Before she passes out. “There is a beach. Another one.”
“Another beach!” Amy crows. “Amazing! You are such a hero. So you sheltered there? ”
“Well. Mostly. I—I dug a hole in the sand and turned my kayak over and I was in there for almost two days. But then after I tried to paddle back I nearly died and spent a whole night out on the water. When I got back to the beach the second time I discovered this.” Her shaking hand holds up her phone, displaying a picture.
It is a shadowed image of another concrete bunker.
“I was able to spend the last night in there.”
Triquet arrives in a rush just as Maahjabeen shares this. They shower her return with squeals of joy and delight. Then they give the revealed image the same delirious reaction. “Magnificent! Look at all that trash! Oh, I can spend the rest of my life on this island!”
They all laugh, and with Triquet’s help they’re able to pull Maahjabeen from her kayak. She groans in pain, trembling. Something isn’t right with her back. After bracing the fiberglass shell against the wind that tore at her for two days, something has locked up in her spine. And her shoulders aren’t properly working anymore either after the night on the seastack.
“Let’s get you back inside and cleaned up.” Amy holds her up with a strong arm around her waist. “Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.” Maahjabeen stumbles. Their progress across the beach is slow and awkward. They can’t drape her arms over their shoulders because of the pain.
Triquet makes a face. “Maybe we carry her. Make a travois.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I can make it. Oh!” Maahjabeen blinks at the wreckage on the beach. “Look what happened here!”
Triquet leads the others around the base of the fallen redwood through the grove. “But wait,” Maahjabeen says, pulling on them to stop, her voice a bit querulous. “The last important part.” She sways among the upthrust roots of the fallen giant.
“Yes?” Flavia prompts her.
“The orcas. They brought me back when it was safe. They knew. They knew everything. I’d have never survived without…”
Maahjabeen swoons and Triquet catches her before she falls.
Ξ
In his downtime, Jay reads fantasy novels on his phone. He has an entire library, from old classics to new fanfic. He likes exploration stories best, where a hero adventures alone or with a small band into lands that no human has seen, and they encounter strange new life forms and magic and always—always—a dark secret that only the hero can truly deal with. The formula comforts him, and the fanciful descriptions of different worlds have only become more preposterous the more he learns of field biology in the real world.
Now, he’s having trouble getting into the next story. There’s a blue elf on the edge of a magical forest, gripping his spear and singing about seventeen verses of a song before he’s about to enter. But now that Jay has actually done it in real life—gone alone into the magical forest of an untamed land—he finds that the author has no idea what the hell they’re talking about. Who the fuck is singing songs? Where’s the anxiety, the careful re-checking of gear, the exhaustion you have to shake off after all the hoops you jumped through just to get to the edge of the forest to begin with? This pap is just written by some kid in the suburbs who has never journeyed farther than the local grocery store and whose only idea of nature is an interpretive trail at a state park.
Jay puts his phone down. For one of the first times ever, the spell can’t be sustained. He realizes it’s because he no longer has any need for the escapism. He did it. He’s already in the magical forest on the old haunted island. And it came with bumps and bruises—pretty much all self-inflicted, sure—but he doesn’t need to read about a fictional fantasy when he’s actually living it on the daily.
Maybe he’ll start writing. It’s never been his strong suit. He was diagnosed dyslexic once as a kid and then not dyslexic by like six other specialists but reading and writing still came late to him, only after the characters had stopped wandering all over the page and finally settled down. But the idea of a short story is imposing. That’s a lot of text, and he’s already deep in his field notes each day for hours.
Maybe poetry. Jay grins. He likes that idea. There’s magic here in this world. Maybe he can figure out ways to capture it in verse. “I mean, I’m no Kendrick Lamar but I can spit some mean bars.”
Someone is moving outside the small cell Jay inhabits. This had been Amy’s four walls of woven reeds until he’d hurt himself and she had taken to sleeping like a cat in the corners. He has to make sure she gets it back as soon as possible. His words stop whoever it is passing by. A slow-moving bulk fills his door. It is Alonso.
He blinks at Jay, his watery eyes swimming up from the depths. “I remember, Jay. I remember what I forgot when I split my head. Who I saw. You will never believe this but there is a—”
Miriam, working on her laptop near the bunker’s door, cries out in an excess of emotion, drowning out Alonso. He falls silent as she rushes the door.
Maahjabeen enters, held up by four others. Frail and tottering, but it is really her. Alonso gasps. He cannot believe his eyes. Nearly collapsing, he leans on his cane as a long groan escapes him.
“What is it?” Jay can’t see what they see. He is filled with alarm. Miriam sounds like she saw a ghost. “What, Alonso?”
But Alonso doesn’t even hear Jay. He waddles forward, pain and guilt forgotten for one sweet moment of relief so sharp he cannot contain it. He bellows, releasing the grief.
“Oh my god.” Esquibel exits the clean room and sees them. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” She rushes back into the clean room then rushes right back out again, holding a random piece of medical gear. She can’t get over her shock. “No, bring her in. Bring her in.” Esquibel shakes her head in wonder at the miracle. No, she has never been religious. But it is a miracle nevertheless. The odds of Maahjabeen surviving the last three days must be infinitesimal. Well, that is the miracle. The beating of impossible odds with human ingenuity and endurance.
They lay Maahjabeen down gently in the cot Mandy had used. Then Esquibel shoos the lot of them out, dismayed by the amount of dirt and sand they’ve tracked in. “Now I’ll have to sanitize everything again.”
Esquibel assesses her patient as she gathers her things for an exam. Maahjabeen has definitely suffered from exposure. She watches the doctor with glittering eyes but doesn’t speak.
Esquibel hands Maahjabeen water but the woman shakes her head no. “Water is the only thing… I had.”
“Food?”
“Ran out two days ago.”
Esquibel laughs, passing a hand over Maahjabeen’s forehead and slipping a thermometer into her mouth. “You sure are a tough girl, aren’t you? No simple storm was going to take you out.”
“God… was not willing.”
It’s the closest thing to a joke Maahjabeen has told and Esquibel laughs in appreciation. “First we will start with some of Amy’s tea and broth. You need electrolytes more than anything. I can give it as a shot if you…” But Maahjabeen has passed out. “Yes. Let’s do that then. And maybe a glucose drip. Let’s just put together a nice little cocktail here…”
When Esquibel inserts the IV, Maahjabeen doesn’t even flinch.
Ξ
Alonso once again sits in his camp chair under the trees. The wreckage has been cleared into piles that ring their camp. Pradeep and Katrina are busy rebuilding the platforms with all the new material the storm provided. They are getting ambitious with their ideas. Does he hear something about a deck and walkways? Those crazy kids. Where do they get all this energy?
Miriam approaches, folding her reading glasses into their case and closing her laptop. He sees her face transform from the cogitating academic to the suffering wife as she steps toward him and he resolves to keep himself from further ruining her mood. He is so tired of his self-pity. “Eh, Mirrie. What are you working on?”
She looks at him blankly, as if he spoke a language she doesn’t know. But no. That really was Alonso, speaking like a man again. Keeping her face carefully neutral, so as not to upset whatever delicate balance has led to this fine moment, Miriam says, “New rock and soil samples everywhere after the storm. I’ve got these feldspar flakes. Pattern-matching their crystallography against a database. You?”
He lifts a careless hand. “Haven’t you heard? I’m revolutionizing data science!”
They both share a soft laugh. She puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s Maahjabeen’s return. It has lightened all their hearts. Lisica is no longer a tragedy limping along as a failed science expedition. The tragedy has been reversed and it’s a science expedition again and they haven’t lost a soul. In fact, in the case of Alonso, they might actually regain one.
She asks, “How many beaches are there here, do you imagine?”
“Who knows? The map they showed me only had this one, I think. All of our focus was here. They said cliffs surrounded the island everywhere else so I assumed that meant this was it.”
Miriam thrills to hear his rational thought process again. During the storm she was afraid he’d collapsed into some alternate insanity that he would never escape. Now it looks like Alonso might heal, even from this. Oh, when will the suffering ever end?
He can see the attenuation in her face, her emotional reserves taxed more deeply than any time since her brother’s suicide. That had been their last dark time. It had seemed to last an eternity before she’d found the strength to go on. Now he couldn’t be responsible for adding any more pain to her life. He must be strong for her. The words Miriam and Plexity and Lisica have regained their meaning again, now that Maahjabeen has returned. He might even be able to accomplish some actual work today.
She sees all this play out on his face and Miriam’s heart uncoils a bit more. Can it truly be? She squeezes his hand. Is he back for good? Will she actually be able to focus on geology again? Their best vacations were always work trips for her, where he would stay back and cook for her and massage her shoulders when she was done. She misses his strong hands.
“Can we get into the interior, Zo? You don’t have to tell me details. Just a simple yes or no.”
He holds up a hand in a shrug. “Maybe at the end. They might bring a helicopter back.”
“And until then? I’m just here on the beach? You’re wasting prime Doctor Truitt field time, dear. I could be much more useful elsewhere. Not that I don’t need a vacation. But anyway, let me tell you what I really have in mind next: prospecting for caves. I’d bet if I dig into the limestone shelf behind the waterfall I’d find all kinds of fascinating things.”
But his mind is working now, she can see that. Alonso pats his pockets and frowns. “Could you bring me my laptop, Mirrie dear? And the brick?”
“And the battery and your glasses and a cup of tea. Coming right up.” She had been about to offer him a glass of wine and now she is so glad she did not. There will be more time for celebration later. Now, it is time to work.
Ξ
The celebration finally begins in the afternoon. Amy and Miriam erect the Love Palace on the larger platform that Pradeep is trying to extend in a long walkway to the bunker. Katrina has left him to it so she can set up her sound system again. The cascading strings of a Northern African pop song begin her set.
Maahjabeen, lying on a cot under the sky, lifts her wobbly head in surprise. “Eh. That’s Amani Al Souwasi. I love this song!”
Katrina squeals. “Oh, good! I looked and looked through my tracks. So glad I had a Tunisian. Her voice is amazing.”
Maahjabeen settles again with a smile on her face. She had been haunted those three unending days of the storm with visions of the others rejecting her, with good reason. She’d endangered them all by going out so recklessly onto the open water. Maahjabeen had jeopardized the entire mission. She expected when she returned that they would scream at her and cancel her contract. But there is none of that. No recriminations anywhere. Only Mandy, and her reproach is just for herself. It will be up to Maahjabeen to hold herself accountable here. Well. She definitely has enough self-criticism for that.
Flavia sits beside her with a lopsided smile, holding a tray of food. “Ready for dinner?”
“Starving. Eh.” It still hurts to talk. Her throat is so raw. Too much screaming and crying. “Glucose doesn’t really fill you up.”
“This is mostly broth with just a few noodles and veg. Here. We will start slow.” Flavia feeds her like a baby, tucking a napkin under her chin.
The salty broth tastes so good. Flavia dabs her chin and feeds her another spoonful.
Maahjabeen hates being helpless, hates being waited on. But still it is so nice to find that they care. Flavia cares. Nobody has fed her like this since she broke her collarbone in school and her mother had tended her and given her sponge baths.
Ah! She can’t think of her mother in this state. She is too raw. A sudden sob escapes her, making a mess of the broth. Flavia pulls back, startled and concerned.
“Oh, no. Too fast?” Flavia sets the bowl down and cleans the hot liquid from Maahjabeen’s neck and shoulders.
“No… You just… You made me think of my mom. Feeding me like a baby.”
“Ah. Yes, your mama.” Flavia sighs and shakes her head in pity. “This has not been your year.”
Maahjabeen doesn’t know how to respond to that. Actually, her career has really taken off since she has cast herself free. She has seen more of the world in the last twelve months than nearly the whole rest of her life combined. And opportunities like Lisica would not come too often, she knows. But inside? In the moments before she goes to sleep? Yes. Hot coals. And such isolation. She feels like the only person in the whole world.
Flavia uses a fresh napkin to wipe Maahjabeen’s cheeks free of tears. “There, there. Povero caro.” Now that the fierce Tunisian woman has taken herself to the edge of death, her proud shell has cracked. Flavia likes her a lot more now. “Your mama. Did she come to you? During the storm? In the darkness?”
Maahjabeen only shakes her head no. Nobody came. The nights were spent alone in a breathless suspension of anxiety and discomfort. None of her ancestors ever visited. Only the orcas.
Katrina mixes a classical piece in with her beloved Amani. Perhaps Haydn? It actually sounds good. Even the kick drum. Flavia nods her head in time to the beat. “Eh, our little Bubblegum DJ is pretty sharp. Her music makes me want to dance.”
But first she will finish feeding Maahjabeen. She was sure her mother would have visited. Even an imaginary visit, with all those hours and nothing to think about. Flavia can’t comprehend what Maahjabeen just went through. “I swear, I would have lasted about ten seconds in that storm. I do not know how you did it.”
“At one point my arms failed. My shoulders just wouldn’t work and I tried to lift the paddle but I couldn’t. And a current took me. It was going to smash me against the rocks and there was nothing I could do. Then the orcas appeared. They steered me right out of there back to the open ocean. They saved me, Flavia.”
“That is incredible.”
“And they led me home this morning. They told me when it was time and which way to go. God came to me through them.”
“Incredible.”
Ξ
It has taken all day for Pradeep to adjust to this new storm-tossed reality. And his mental state is still not entirely what it should be. A refrain has been echoing in his head since losing his sanity in front of everyone on more than one occasion. Not good enough not strong enough not tough enough – I don’t belong here… Over and over in an unending cycle. He can hardly look anyone in the eyes now.
But he is grateful for Katrina’s kindness, giving him a task to retreat into, and the effort he puts into rebuilding the platforms bigger and better than before is fueled by his quivering antisocial need to retreat deeply into himself. That is how he will heal.
Amy finds him near the end, when he is building his own platform. He gets a larger deck than he expected because of all the leftover wood. Without asking, Amy organizes the final pile and hands him each branch as he needs it. The work goes quickly.
At the end, he ties off the last joint with twine and stands, his back sore and shoulders burning. He dusts himself off and finds Amy still looking wordlessly at him, but letting him know with one of her irrepressible smiles that she has something for him.
Pradeep sighs. She is still his boss. This is still a job, even though his stipend is pitiful, not even four thousand dollars. He nods, trying to muster a competent air, and follows her out to the beach.
They walk alongside the trunk of the massive fallen redwood in silence. The deep corrugations of its bark—as seen with eye-along trunk, stretching away to the flaring root base—is a deep pattern, mathematics beyond what he can easily conceptualize. But it is still mathematics. The growth of this tremendous organism was as much a mechanical process as a biological one.
Finally Amy brings him to the base. It is truly a massive tree. Its trunk is over five meters in diameter here and the roots that were torn from the ground spread skyward now a good ten meters above his head. They skirt the wreckage, pushing themselves through the ceanothus and ferns. Huge shards of bright orange and red wood litter the area, as if the tree exploded. The underside is cavernous.
Pradeep exhales in wonder. “Oooooo.”
Amy laughs, the silence finally broken. “I knew you’d like it.”
When the tree had fallen, the peripheral roots had snapped and then the central root system had failed. The gust that had taken this tree down must have been immense. Pradeep touches the twisted roots, hard as iron. “This is another sign of anthropogenic global warming. We see no other trees of this size on this beach. And it wasn’t diseased. Therefore the storm that brought it down is measurably more intense than the ones that came before, or we would otherwise have a beach littered with the trees that had fallen in previous storms, quod erat demonstrandum.”
Amy smiles, relieved to have him talking again. These unearthed treasures should keep him busy a good long time. There appears to be an abandoned bobcat den on the periphery of the root system, with piles of bones and scat. Cavities in the rock and soil that have been unearthed are thick with the silk of spider eggs and floor-dwelling arthropods of many varieties. A whole writhing mass of larvae under a fallen sheet of bark still strive to develop.
And then there’s the interactions between soil and root and mycorrhizal fungi, which was always of particular interest to Pradeep. Here, Alonso’s Dyson readers would be invaluable.
“We passed this when we were carrying Maahjabeen back and I thought my god but I didn’t have time to stop. I knew this would be your happiest place. But I myself can’t wait to get a look at the crown. I think it’s accessible. Are you coming?”
Pradeep looks up at Amy, lost already in this miniature world of minerals and microbiology and artifacts. Tree forensics. They have called it that before. While walking in the woods they would stop when they saw fallen trees, discussing how they fell and what caused the initial failure. In crowded conditions it can take a long time to untangle which tree fell first and why. “Eh? Coming? No. But look, Amy. It wasn’t just the wind that knocked it over.”
He points at the exact underside of the tree’s heartwood. It is seared black in a wide jagged crescent. A similar scar in the remaining underground bole is visible under the fallen earth.
“Is that from lightning? Ye gods.” Amy reorders what she sees in her head. Those burst roots aren’t from being forced apart by the wind. Now she can pick out the black edges of certain shards. This trunk was blown out. A bolt with horrific power must have hit it somewhere up its length and shot through all the way into the ground. It must have gone off like a bomb. There were certainly explosions aplenty during the storm. This must have been one of them. “I wonder, is the poor bole dead too? Is this how you kill a redwood? Can its heart survive such a massive lightning strike?”
“How would we even be able to tell?”
“Well, anyway, so much for your climate change proof. This wasn’t necessarily a stronger storm. Unless the degree to which a storm is electrical is modified by anthropogenic factors. Which would be pretty amazing. Is there any data on that?”
“I have no idea. Maybe we can ask Mandy. But what about the surrounding ecology?” Pradeep ranges past the edges of the pit, where whole stands of ferns and buckthorn are crushed by the raw wood fragments. What about the small rodents who lived beneath? The crabs? The insects? “You know… I am not sure if this is what Plexity is really for. I get the sense we are supposed to be trying to measure the island as an entity that is in homeostasis. But this is such a new and dramatic reordering of the local context that, I don’t know, doesn’t it skew everything out of balance? Too much emphasis in favor of one recent dramatic event instead of the thousand years that this tree stood? How do we place correct value on each frame of reference? I suppose that is really a question for Flavia and Katrina…”
“Aw, now I worry that the crown might be blasted clean away. You’re okay here? If I leave you alone?”
Pradeep has trouble meeting Amy’s eyes. But he knows she deserves some recognition of his issue. It is certainly affecting his performance. “Yes. These are the things I study. Nothing is more familiar and comforting to me. Thank you, Doctor Kubota. I have not always had such understanding teachers and bosses in my life. My weakness was always something I had to hide.”
Amy grimaces. “No. Not weakness, Pradeep. Don’t think of it like that. You aren’t weak, by any measure. Right? You must see that. You have, I mean, you’re so competent in so many ways. Some of what you do is like superhero capability.”
“But I still can’t travel to Tucson without a panic attack.”
“Who can? No, but seriously. Ask yourself. Go back in time to yourself as, what, like a nine or ten year old kid? Tell him where you are now and what you’re doing, out here in the wide open world with some of the brightest minds of our time. Tell him he made it! He didn’t remain a prisoner to his fear.”
“Well. If we’re going back that far, can we just tell my parents instead? I think it would have probably been more useful.”
Chapter 8 – Hold On
February 19, 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 chapter:
8 – Hold On
Flavia returns from a mid-day shower, her skin prickling with cold. She has started taking them twice a day, growing addicted to the sharp pleasures of the clean water slapping her with the weight of gravity. It shocks her and brings her out of her deep reveries in ways nothing else can. Because when the maths start flying around in her head and logic chains bolt themselves together at nearly subconscious levels, she might as well be in a coma hooked up to an IV.
But now. Yes. Back in the real world. And it is beautiful here. She has always loved the California redwoods. She even had a poster of them above her bed in primary school. So to live among them for a few weeks is a dream. And the people are not so bad at all. A very interesting mix. They also distract Flavia from her work, which she needs from time to time so that when she resets she can see her current coding problems from a different perspective. She just needs inputs of time and near-random real world sensation to gain that new observer status, like in the thought experiment about the viewpoints of travelers as their spaceship approaches c, light speed. So, brief investment now made in the real world, she can return to her dynamic interior abstractions with renewed purpose.
Except it is not to be.
She hears the sobbing of a woman while she is still pushing her way through the underbrush. Flavia stops. The scientist in her wants to withdraw and let this woman have a moment in peace. But, despite the efforts of Esquibel and a couple others, Lisica is nothing like a professional setting, and her cultural instincts take over. She hurries to the base of a huge redwood, circling around its roots. Flavia recognizes Maahjabeen’s hoarse voice and muttered Arabic, desperate questions to herself, before she sees her. But it is too late to stop now. She steps over the last root. “Maahjabeen, no, no…” She reaches out a hand.
Maahjabeen is wringing her hands together, shaking with grief. She allows Flavia to console her, leaning her head against her shoulder, weeping even more heavily. Her headscarf comes loose and Flavia makes sure to keep it in place while the woman in her arms cries it out.
After a few minutes, Maahjabeen pulls away and wipes her eyes. “Thank you, Flavia. Thank you very much.”
“Of course. Whatever I can do. If you need to talk or…”
“It is March twenty-ninth today. It is the one year anniversary…” And then Maahjabeen falls into Flavia’s arms again, overcome. After another bout of grief passes, she manages, “Today, a year ago, my mother died. In her car.”
“Oh, terrible. So sorry.” Flavia kisses the top of her head, holding her tight, imagining losing her mother—that force of nature—to a car accident in Bologna. Her heart goes out to Maahjabeen.
“I didn’t want to bother anyone. I thought no one would find me here. I just wanted…”
“No. Please. Whatever other problems we have, Alonso is right. We are family now. A big Cuban family. For eight weeks. Just let me know whenever, and you can tell me about your mama and I will make you a nice espresso. Whenever you like, okay? Maybe I even check up on you sometimes, eh?”
“I miss her. And I miss being home. I was supposed to be back in Tunis for this day but I took this job instead. I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready to go back. My family doesn’t understand. I just don’t—I can’t handle grief the way they do, all together in a big crowd. It is too much. And they just want me to settle down and get married. I was supposed to, but it didn’t work out. No, I need to think my way through my problems, in silence, out on the water. That’s how I handle things.”
“The curse of the scientist.”
“Big Cuban family, eh?” Maahjabeen stops another sob with a gulping laugh. “That is crazy. This whole thing is crazy.”
“So far. Very crazy. I am sorry you can’t get out on the ocean.”
“Oh, I haven’t given up yet. If killer whales and Zodiac pilots can navigate it then I can too. In fact, it’s looking more calm today than I’ve seen so far. If this trend continues then I might get my big chance soon.”
“Killer whales? Out here?”
“I’ve seen them. I think it’s a local pod because they haven’t gone away in three days. I hope they’re still out there when I finally get my kayak past the breaks.”
“And by then I hope to have a working alpha of Plexity for you to use. Input your data, everything about the sea.”
They stare at each other, expressionless. Finally, Maahjabeen says, “You don’t really believe it will work, do you?”
“It’s not that it won’t work,” Flavia shrugs. “I just don’t see the purpose. All the data points we collect will be so contextual it will be meaningless. It is like how you can’t ever draw a map at perfect resolution because then it needs to have all the same features of the original—”
“Which means it has to be the same size, yes.”
Flavia shrugs, philosophical. “In the end, I am happy to be here to support Alonso and his recovery. And this will look very good on my CV. I just wish it was… ten days instead of sixty. Imagine, if we were already wrapping up and going home the day after tomorrow with all our new findings? I would say this was a perfect trip. But fifty more days of this? Eccch. I don’t know.”
“At least they stopped playing the music all night.” Maahjabeen stands, a fluid and graceful movement. She pulls Flavia to her feet and gives her a sharp but brief hug. “You are so nice. Thank you for letting me share my memory of my mother.”
“Of course. Our mamas live forever in our hearts.”
Ξ
Mandy brings a box to Katrina’s tent. “Hello-o-o…? I found it.”
Katrina, from within, grunts. “Uh. Perfect timing.”
“Is it? It doesn’t sound like it is.”
“Just finishing my third nap of the day.” The door unzips and Katrina rolls out, blinking. She was hoping she could just spend the whole day nursing her hangover but evidently her destiny says no. Mandy won’t leave her alone.
“Impressive. Three naps before noon. You’re like a cat.”
“Meow.” Katrina stares impassively up at Mandy, who senses the tiniest trickle of electricity between them. Or is that just projection? The lean and lovely Australian girl is very much Mandy’s type. And even though she spent last night in the arms of a male of the species, Mandy noted from the morning gossip that their clothes had stayed on. Perhaps there’s a chance. Katrina is just so damn cute. Mandy hopes she gets invited to the next dance party. “So what you got there?”
This breaks the spell. Mandy starts, then giggles. “This is my baby. Can I show you my baby?”
Katrina laughs, wiping her nose with the back of her hand like a toddler. She sits up. “God, we’re such nerds. Yes, please show me your baby, Doctoral Candidate Hsu.”
Mandy giggles again and opens the cardboard flaps. She brings out a whirlygig looking device, mainly a rotary fan studded with modules and sensors. “This is the all-seeing eye.”
“Wow. Yeh. Sounds like Greek myth. Is your other baby a demon with a hundred hands?” Katrina spins the frictionless fan.
“That’s the anemometer. Wind speed.”
“Zephyr, god of the winds. Got it.”
“Thermometer, hygrometer, barometer, and then this tiny thing contains a miniature digital transmissometer and Campbell Stokes recorder, though they’re really just emulators and they don’t work that well…” She points at each of the modules in turn, grafted to the stem of the anemometer with twisted wire. “Then I route them all through the network card I salvaged off my radiosonde and get a data stream of two kilometers range, line of sight. That should work, shouldn’t it?”
“Salvaged?”
“You didn’t see my weather balloon fiasco yesterday? I sent one up with a sensor suite when the morning was calm. But then those gusts came in hard last night and pulled the anchor out of the sand and crashed it into those trees over there. Total loss. Except for the radiosonde. It fell off on this side of the falls.”
“So where do you want the drone to take it? To the top?”
Mandy nods. “The most unobstructed view possible, as long as I still get signal. I could get the most amazing readings up there.”
“And how are we gonna lift this thing up there? Or anchor it when we drop it? You want it in some exposed spot, I guess?”
“I was hoping you had some ideas. I’ve kind of maxed out all my own resources…” Mandy realizes as she says it that she has made a plan in her mind of working on this with Katrina before she ever asked if she’d actually want to. Oh, Mandy. You’ve done it again. Whenever she realizes she’s being controlling she always flashes to the family dinner when she was like six and Auntie Fiona from the Filipino side of her family laughed at her, “Well doesn’t little Miss Mandy always have to be in charge!” It was supposed to be a corrective moment for her to feel shame and be reminded of her feminine meekness, but the gender-role rankled even then and the retrograde words had only made Mandy stand taller that day. She still doubles down whenever anyone challenges her bossy ways. It’s not her fault that she knows what to do in so many situations when others are at a loss. This is how she always proves her worth.
Katrina finally pushes herself to her feet and lifts the improvised weather station. “Oh, no. Shoot. This is way too heavy. There’s no way we can get it to the top.”
Mandy sags. “It is? I thought I’d made it super lightweight!”
“It’s the batteries. That’s… a lot of batteries.”
“Well, we got to get data the whole time we’re here. Everything we do in atmospheric science is longitudinal, pretty much. So it needs to give a steady stream.”
“But the drone literally can’t lift this package. Its payload is only a small camera, like not even a kilo. This is like three or more.”
“What if I get rid of—? No, I don’t want to do without any of the readings. This is the one snapshot I’ll get. Ugh.”
“Look. The drone can recharge. And the weather station can recharge. As often as we want. We just need to do regular runs. Swap out the batteries. Let’s work it out, Mandy. If this unit was just drawing from one battery, how long would the station last?”
“Thirty-five hours.” Mandy’s answer is prompt. She has worked out power requirements in detail.
“Okay. So we just replace the battery every twenty-four. Every morning it’s our regular chore. Drone fetches weather station. We replace the battery. Drone takes weather station back. Deal?”
“You think that could work?” Mandy doesn’t like all the extra transit that entails. She doesn’t quite believe in drones. A single mistake or dropped signal and the whole thing could crash. She only has one more suite of sensors if these are lost.
“I mean, yeh. We want to get some use out of the drone since we have it. I should be flying it every day.” Katrina pokes several of the junctions she might affix a twine loop or wire hook. “But now we got to figure out like a sling we can put around the whole thing to carry it. So are we agreed? You get rid of those extra batteries and I’ll grab the drone. See if we can figure out how to attach it safely to the gimbal. I’ll be right back.”
Ξ
“Can I get a hand when you have a moment?” Triquet stands at the edge of Pradeep’s platform, studying the young man’s solemn face, the laptop’s blue light casting angular shadows, making him look like the etching of an ancient king.
Pradeep nods slowly, his eyes never leaving the screen. His fingers are blazingly fast on the keyboard, in bursts of input. His spreadsheets are works of art. But sometimes he gets lost pursuing cells, forgetting what he was looking for. And now Triquet has knocked his current target clean out of his head. Oh, where was he going? Something about theOrthione griffenis parasites on West Coast mud shrimp populations?
After a long awkward silence, Triquet gives up with a curtsy and turns away. The vintage housedress they wear is a sturdy turquoise brocade with a scoop neck, already showing signs of serious wear from all the hard labor down in the sub. But the pearl choker still gives the outfit class, regardless of how filthy and torn it gets.
“No. Wait.” Pradeep sets his laptop aside and sits up. “Sorry. I’m coming, Doctor. Just let me get my sandals.”
“Boots, please.” Triquet stops and waits for Pradeep to put them on. “God, look at those monstrosities. Modern hybrid hiking boots are so ugly. They just look like six year-old sedans parked at a suburban mini-mall. Designed for dads who ‘hike’ by bringing the cooler to the kid’s soccer game. And what is that color? Plum? Burgundy? It just goes oh so well with the dark suede.”
“Done.” Pradeep stands, grinning at Triquet. “You’ll have to, ah, help me with my fashion some day, Doctor. Not all of us can be as stunning as you.”
“Wolverines. Ten dollars at Goodwill. Ba-zing. ” Triquet lifts a steel-toe work boot, clownishly large on their feet. “What were you working on back there, anyway?”
“Just re-ordering my notes into a more Plexity-friendly structure. Trying to adapt to the new paradigms Alonso has set up. I’ve processed all my latest collections with the new Dyson reader. Now it’s time to get back out on a kayak. But actually I’m thinking my next collection site might be a freshwater sample from the waterfall pool instead. See what micro flora and fauna exist in both locations and then try to figure out why. What are the common factors that allow them to flourish in both places?”
“Ooo that’s a good one. Neat idea.” Triquet leads Pradeep into the bunker, a bustling hive of activity now, with the work tables and clean room and private rooms and kitchen. Triquet weaves through all of it and brings Pradeep to the head of the stairs at the trap door.
“Down there?” Pradeep wonders why it hadn’t occurred to him where Triquet was leading him. Of course it’s down there.
Triquet looks at him with a shrug. “Down deep. Some of those pieces in the trash pile are like steel desks and furniture and they weigh a ton. Didn’t you hear? I hit the jackpot!”
Triquet walks past Pradeep, taking the stairs down one by one. They don’t look back or wait for him. There is only the expectation he will follow. Triquet opens the door at the bottom and Pradeep is relieved to see the room beyond is now well-lit. With a deep breath and a shiver he surrenders to the moment and for once lets social pressure overcome his anxiety. Down the stairs he goes.
The sub is so weird. The roof slopes above at a claustrophobic height. It turns out Pradeep is too tall for a sub. He would have never made it in the Navy. Stooping, he grimly follows Triquet’s scurrying form toward the far hatch. It’s nothing but the derelict engine room of a forgotten boat from long ago. There is nothing significant about that, Prad, except what you choose to make significant. This whole sub is just inert steel plates and the detritus of men, rotting in the sand. That’s all it is.
“Watch your head.” Triquet ducks through the hatch at the far end of the engine room and disappears. A yellow line of work lights runs the length of the boat, every other bulb unscrewed to save energy. This leaves room for countless shadows to spring out at him, or slowly transform into rats and spiders as he passes.
Triquet waits for Pradeep in the control room. Is he coming? Finally the young man shuffles down the hall, one hand against the far wall, the other hand holding his phone, its flashlight up full. Triquet frowns, puzzled. “Are you okay?”
“Yes… Just… Let’s just call it poor night vision. Oh my.” Pradeep pulls back from the yawning darkness of the warrant officer’s cabin. He edges along the wall past the Captain’s open door as well. “So what’s in there? That’s all been checked, has it?”
“The Captain’s cabin? Minutely. Although the original crew left scant traces in there. Frankly, I doubt the cabins were used much after the sub was buried. My gut instinct is this thing hasn’t been cracked open since like 1977. Have you not been down here?”
“Uh, not yet.”
“I’m sorry about your night vision. I had no idea. Are you going to be able to do this?”
Pradeep wants more than anything in the whole world to tell Triquet that no, in fact, he will not be able do this. But never, he is not the child he used to be, coddled by his mother and protected from all harm by his vigilant father. He is now an adult, and the night sweats and the panic attacks and the crippling collapse of his ego and will are measurably less intense than they used to be, bolstered by newfound strengths. Experience. That is the weapon he uses to combat these fears. Exposing himself to the world, regardless of how hard it might be. So far, the world has not yet killed him. It hasn’t even given him much reason to panic. What he sees in front of him with his own two eyes is just a room. A sad old room covered in rust. “I can do it.”
“Okay. Down here.” Triquet is fairly certain he’s not getting the whole story from Pradeep, whose mood has gone dark in the span of thirty seconds. But it is not in Triquet’s nature to push. They crouch at the edge of the hatch that opens to the floor below. Then Triquet lowers themself with a few grunts into the hole.
Pradeep closes his eyes. No. That’s worse. His eyes snap open again before the demons can rise up out of the darkness. Stick with Triquet. That’s his best bet. His only bet.
“You can just put one foot on this cabinet. It’s stable.” Triquet’s voice comes up from below. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
Pradeep lowers himself into darkness, feeling like he’s extending his legs into a garbage disposal. They will be shorn off by all the sharp claws that wait in the dark, leaving nothing but gore from his waist down. And the pain will be…
His foot touches the cabinet. He puts weight on it. His body moves even as his mind skirls with panic. Cold sweat sheets his skin. His hands might slip. Careful here. Don’t crash into Triquet.
Pradeep steps down onto the deck of an even narrower room, his face gray, his hands shaking. Triquet blanches. “Oh, dear. Are you sure you’re okay, Pradeep? You look ill.”
“I’m fine.” But Pradeep’s eyes are wide, as if he is afraid to blink. “Fine. Now what did you need help with?”
Finally, belatedly, Triquet remembers Pradeep describing his overactive imagination. This isn’t about his vision at all. “Oh. Ohh… Shoot. This place is really weirding you out, isn’t it?”
Pradeep grimaces and drops his head. “I’m so sorry. But…”
“No no. I get it. It freaked me out too at first. It’s hard to get used to, for sure. No, fair knight.” Triquet curtsies again. “I should have marked it. My deepest apologies. I release thee from my service. Go forth and return to thy spreadsheet labors.”
Pradeep stubbornly shakes his head no. “Uh, look, you got me all the way down here, Triquet. Let me at least be useful before I go. I do have to live with myself, you know.” He is glad he got the words out but Pradeep wishes he’d been able to utter them without clenching his teeth.
“Look, doll, anxiety is a real thing.” Triquet cocks their head in concern. “There’s no shame in it. It’s a big scary world out there and us big dumb apes just aren’t wired properly for it.”
“But the only way to re-wire,” Pradeep steps more fully into the room like he’s wading through deep currents, “is to force your brain to deal with new situations. If this is just circuitry then give me new circuits. Come on, brain! When I was a kid I couldn’t even stand up. Panic was so much nausea and like vertigo that…”
Pradeep sways and leans against the steel cabinet. His eyes flutter. But he sees something he didn’t expect. Everything down here has been neatly stacked and ordered, the garbage sorted and cleaned, small pieces set up in fussy knolling order on the shelves. All he’d heard was that it was a dump down here. That’s what he’d expected. But the floor is now bare in a narrow network of aisles, winding through tall stacks of like materials. The work lights are bright. The air carries almost no scent.
“It’s okay. It’s okay…” Triquet puts a slim hand on Pradeep’s shoulder to steady him. “Deep breaths, Prad. If you’re gonna fight it, you’ll need nice deep breaths. The crazy thing is how fresh the air is down here. That’s what I’m hoping to track down next. I still haven’t been able to follow the current down here. And I think that is the reason why.” Triquet points at a large steel bookshelf against the far wall. It has been cleared of its adjustable shelves and all that they held. Now it’s ready to be moved.
Pradeep nods, his pulse pounding in his ears. Best to get on with it. Now, what might be hiding in this corner back here? Snakes? He scans the floor. “I’m glad you made me wear boots.”
“Don’t worry. Nothing back there. I checked myself.”
“Right. Well here goes.” With far too much fearful anticipation for his own good Pradeep pushes his leg behind the corner of the bookshelf and drops his foot grimly on the ground. It lands solidly. No wet bursting carapace of some spider monster. No twisting writhing serpent grasping at him. Nothing. “Okay. Ready.” Shame and anxiety course through him in equal measure. “Where are we taking it?”
“Not much room down here. I think we just swivel it as much as we can against this curved near wall. It will have to be temporary. Okay. On three? One. Two.”
They lift, Pradeep walking his end in a wide arc. The air, which had only been a soft current before, now gusts into the room, smelling distinctly of the sea. It comes through another hatch that has now been revealed, this one half-open. The darkness of a further room doubles back under the floor of the sub above.
“Of course,” Triquet mutters. “Of course it does… Just like in the diagrams. Now where does this one lead?”
Triquet ducks through the hatch into darkness.
Ξ
“Is Triquet still downstairs?” Mandy is flushed, windswept. Amy stands in the kitchen opening a can of tomato paste. She admires the girl’s long black hair with its glossy sheen. Amy’s hair used to do that. Before she got old and decrepit.
“Uhh… I suppose so. They took Pradeep down there a while ago. I haven’t seen them come back up.”
“Storm coming. Big one.”
“Oh! Uh, that’s no fun… When?”
“Good question. I’m guessing soon. We should get them out of there. I’m still worried about flooding.”
Amy puts down the can. “Right. You want me to get them?”
“No, I don’t need you to—”
Miriam leans into the bunker. “Mandy? Are you in here?”
“Yes?” Mandy turns toward Miriam.
“Didn’t you say there’s a storm coming?”
“There is. Every sign it’ll be a big one too.”
“Can you please tell Maahjabeen? She’s trying to take her kayak out on the water and she won’t listen to me.”
“What?” Mandy squawks and hurries out of the bunker.
Amy nods. “Yeah. I’ll get the other two downstairs then.”
Mandy sprints out of camp across the sand, waving her arms urgently. Maahjabeen is already in her spray skirt, pushing her craft out into the lagoon. “Hey! Stop! Wait, Maahjabeen!”
But the oceanographer only has eyes for the glassy calm of the lagoon and the muted swells of the open sea. Mandy runs up to her as she pushes off, gliding out of reach. Annoyed, Maahjabeen puts one blade of her paddle deep in the water and pivots the boat.
“Storm coming!” Mandy gasps. “You can’t—!”
“Yes, I know. But this is my only chance to beat the—”
“Big one! We don’t know what it will do—!”
“Yes, that is why the sea went so flat! How long do you think I have?” Maahjabeen begins to paddle gently backwards away. The window is closing fast. She feels that keenly.
“How long? No! You can’t go out there! Conditions can change at any moment!”
“You aren’t the only one here with a barometer, you know.” Maahjabeen taps a black digital unit attached to her vest. “I can read the sky, even an unfamiliar one. I think I have an hour. Which means I’ll be back in forty minutes.”
“But look at it!” Mandy is appalled that anyone would consider taking a kayak out in these conditions with an advancing line of slate gray clouds on the southwest horizon. “The perspective doesn’t work from here. It’s impossible! Who knows how close it really is? And what it will do to the currents as it advances!”
“I’m staying close to shore, that’s for sure. Look, this storm or the next one. It’s clear this is the only way I’ll ever get out of the lagoon and I’m not staying trapped in here for eight weeks. It’s 1825 hours right now. I’ll be back at 1905 on the dot.”
“Then the next one! Let’s just observe this storm first! See how quickly it advances from initial observations! Come on! I thought you were the safety-at-all-costs one here!”
But the sea is too inviting. A film covers it, muting it, turning it soft and harmless. “Okay. Ten minutes. Just ten.” And with that, Maahjabeen turns her kayak expertly and lunges for the lagoon’s mouth. She is there within a minute, flying across the calm waters with ease. And now she is through! Finally! Out of her cage! The land falls away on both sides and all earthly entanglements go with it. Oh, she only ever feels truly clean out on the deep water!
She finally glides to a halt a couple hundred meters from the breaks. No, she was telling Mandy the truth that she would stick close to shore. Although she may have been less truthful about the ten minutes. Now, which way? To the right, along the southwest coast. That way she will be paddling into the wind. When it picks up is when she can turn back and have the first gusts carry her to the lagoon again. “Good plan, Maahjabeen.” She likes the sound of her voice. It is strong. She recites a prayer aloud, calling for God to watch over her. That sounds good too.
Maahjabeen spares a final glance for Mandy, abandoned on the beach, before she paddles around the western cliff that blocks the lagoon from view. Now she is truly on her own.
She glances nervously over her left shoulder. Yes, that’s a real storm all right. Her barometer is dropping under 1009 millibars. The surf here is simple, a line crashing flat against a wall of stone. She stays above it and rounds a point, to catch just a glimpse of an undulating coast before the closest cliff blocks her view again. But what a view it is! She paddles a bit further out to see it again and carefully takes a photo with her phone. She hadn’t brought her real camera. But it is beautiful, the cliffs of Lisica disappearing up the west coast in green and black folds. Now, to see how far she can get before she has to turn back.
Maahjabeen looks at the oncoming clouds again. Now that she has rounded the point she can see that the storm approaches from the entire southwest, stretching across a good seventy degrees of the horizon. Yes, this is a big storm, boiling up out of the North Pacific gyre in the frozen embrace of the Gulf of Alaska, then wheeling around to hit the island from below. She’s crazy, totally insane to even consider going on.
But Maahjabeen does. Just around one more point. Here, a fractured shelf holds a line of trees running the length of the cliff a hundred meters above her. Beyond that is a cluster of black rock and seaweed that is inhabited by more otters. Then a pair of jagged seastacks stained white with bird droppings. She skirts it all, staying out on the calm open water, and sees a spot along the coast another point ahead that may be hiding an inlet on the far side. That would be a prize, to be able to return with news of another waterfall. But how long does she have? Forty minutes, she said? Turn around after twenty? It’s already been sixteen. She can just push to that last point and take a peek within. Then scurry home.
Yes. Definitely scurry. The storm is noticeably larger and darker than it was when she’d first seen it. She leans in, twisting her core, willing her kayak across the water in a sprint. She is a waterbug skating across the deep gray surface as everything grows dark…
Oh, she may be taking too much time now. And the point is still a bit too far ahead. It is larger and farther than she estimated. And now she has no minutes left. But with one last sprint she might peek around anyway. Maahjabeen drives her boat around the last outcrop only to find that this point is broader than she thought. She’d imagined it as a knife edge like the cliff dividing the lagoon from the open water but this a bluff. Augh! She can’t turn around yet! This may be her only chance! And she can see how the cliff falls away only a few hundred meters ahead.
A fitful wind starts to ripple the sea, pushing on the left side of her face. Go, Maahjabeen, go! Hurry around the final point!
She pushes past the wide bluff and glides free, entering a wide and shallow bay fringed by a strand of pale sand, a white curtain of multiple waterfalls descending from the cliffs behind dropping into dark green forest. It is spectacular. The cliffs are solid walls of fern. She takes as many photos as she can, including one panorama before the strengthening wind makes her platform too unsteady.
Now. Now by the grace of God she hasn’t waited too late. Now is the time to race back over the dark water to shelter. She paddles with more urgency than she ever has in her life, flashing back to the crowd of clueless girls in their red boats and the unconscious one who didn’t know how to roll. She’d paddled as hard then, hurrying to get back to the dock and a full medical kit.
Now she fights for her own life. She rounds the bluff’s southern point to navigate the seastacks and follow the long straight cliff back but her heart quails when this stretch of coast is revealed. In the ten minutes since she’s been here it has transformed. Now the sea foams black and the surf slams against the cliffs with stunning force. She will swing wide, certainly, but the rising wind will push her toward the coast and the currents are definitely picking up. Inshallah, Maahjabeen intones and bends to her task. But it only takes an instant to learn she will certainly die against the cliffs.
She has waited too long. She cannot return to the lagoon.
Maahjabeen sits stupidly in the water, watching the storm rise and the water foam. Finally she rouses herself. There is only one option left. The beach she just left. She can stay there and ride out the storm. It is her only hope.
Maahjabeen turns the kayak once more, using the wind on her rear quarter to push her back around the bluff and even further from every human within thousands of kilometers. She isn’t cold. She has eaten recently and carries emergency rations in the stern hatch. The wind whips up behind her, creating whitecaps, and as she rounds the bluff a terrific gust pushes her away from the beach that just now comes into view. She fights to keep the nose of her craft pointed into the wind. It’s so strong that if she lets it hit her broadside she will roll in a heartbeat. Quickening rollers rise on either side of her, pulled up from the water by the coming storm. It is at her left, looming over her and dominating the sky. Lightning flashes beneath its black curtain.
Now the cold wind knifes into her, chilling her, and the sea boils. Fight! Fight! She had just crossed this water a few minutes before with ease! But now the storm pushes on her, trying to smash her against the bluff behind. She will not let it. She will not.
Maahjabeen struggles timelessly against the freezing wall of wind. Finally she gains the position she needs and glances off it at the closest possible angle to the coast to ride a wave into the bay and across its boiling surface onto the closest stretch of sand. She rips the skirt off its rim as soon as she can and tumbles from the kayak. Another wave, stunning her with cold, slams into her and she screams in surprise. It knocks her from her feet and rolls her away from her boat…
No no no! Maahjabeen lunges and throws her arms around her kayak before it is pulled away by the receding tide. Now she is throughly soaked, sand in all her layers. But she still has the boat. And the paddle. The craft is swamped but she can still drag it high up the beach. Here. She can carry it once she empties it of water.
The surf pounding her into the sand left her in shock, detached from reality. She observes herself as if at a distance. No. This isn’t high enough. The sea might very well cover this entire beach. Put the paddle in the cockpit. Use both hands on the hull. Come on, Maahjabeen! Further up! Further…!
A low shelf rises from the back of the beach a good ten meters, providing a refuge at the edge of the trees. If she can just fight her way up to that shelf then she will be safe. As she struggles with the boat on its vertical face the first fat raindrops hit her back. Oh, here comes the storm for real now. She is in God’s hands and no one else’s. With a heaving gasp she thrusts the boat onto the shelf up above. The rain starts to sheet down, drenching her with frigid drops. Now what will she do? There is no cover up here.
The trees will be too dangerous in this wind. She has another idea. Something she heard once from a friend from Malaysia. The top of this shelf is still sand, in rills and valleys. She finds a lee slope and begins to dig with a broken branch, creating a depression for herself to lie in. Then she rolls the kayak over the top of herself, so that her legs lie in the cold sand and her torso is inside the cockpit where her legs normally are, facing the seat.
With some rearranging she makes it work, with the first aid kit as her pillow and her spray skirt her blanket. She forces wet sand up against the coaming on the windward side to patch the gaps and soon she finds herself in a snug, waterproof shelter.
Maahjabeen is overjoyed at her ingenuity. Relief floods through her. It is not comfortable, but she can survive the night this way. She only has to listen to the rain drumming on the hull and recite some hadiths and this storm will be over in no time.
She did it. She survived.
Ξ
1905. Her watch says 1905 just like Maahjabeen said. But Mandy can’t see her anywhere. She didn’t come back. She said she would but she didn’t and now the seas are rising and the wind is picking up and whitecaps are filling her view. Impossible.
Mandy has never felt more helpless. What can she do? She paces back and forth along the beach as the light fades, fat drops of chilly rain starting to spatter her. She should have made Maahjabeen take a radio. Or like a signal flare or whatever they use out on the water. Mandy shouldn’t have let her go!
Miriam and Amy eventually find her in the dark, drenched and frozen. They appear like two hooded figures of death out of the gloom. But it’s just their rain coats. “Come on!” Amy shouts over the ripping wind. “Get Maahjabeen! We have to get inside!”
“I can’t!” Mandy bawls. “I can’t! She’s gone! She’s out there!”
This strikes both Amy and Miriam dumb. They only look at her with horror.
Mandy falls to her knees. “I tried! I told her not to go! I did everything I could! I—I…!” She collapses in grief, sobs convulsing her. “I told her it would be a huge storm!”
Amy wraps her in her arms and lifts Mandy with her unexpected strength. “She’s shaking, Mirrie. We got to get her inside.”
Miriam nods blankly, still studying the seething water. It’s getting so dark that she can’t even see past the mouth of the lagoon, where dim white surf crashes into black rocks with more force than ever.
Mandy fights them. She can’t abandon Maahjabeen. Leaving means accepting that the woman is drowned. And she can’t do that. She can’t let her go.
Amy and Miriam drag Mandy from the beach.
They carry her into the bunker, the wind flapping against the tarps. But they’ve done a better job of tying them down this time and the bunker is watertight now.
Mandy collapses on the concrete floor. Esquibel exits her room, trying to make sense of the chaos. They are all shouting over the top of each other and Mandy looks like her dog got hit by a car.
Everyone is in here. None have remained on their platforms. The storm is too violent. Upon hearing the tragic news, they all groan in despair. Alonso sits in a chair in the corner, face filled with agony. Flavia covers her face with her hands, unable to bear the details. Finally Esquibel and the others are able to fully piece the story together. Pradeep screeches wordlessly, dragging on his already wet coat, and bolts out into the storm.
“No, Prad!” Amy shouts. “Don’t!”
“We can’t—!” Miriam shrills, “We can’t lose any more! No!”
Jay wants to run after Prad, to haul him back or join him for his search. But his useless fucking ankle prevents him from even standing. He shouts in wordless frustration, the noise swallowed by the howling storm.
Alonso is devastated. Maahjabeen is his responsibility. Her life is in his hands. And he failed her. He brought her to this dangerous place with words of promise but he was unable to live up to that promise. He lied to her. His mind and body are broken. He can’t take care of anyone, not even himself. And now they’re dying because of him. Again. The grief in his heart is unbearably heavy.
The ground shudders from the storm. Lightning strikes hit the beach and thunder shatters the air. The maelstrom impacts the island like a car crash. Flavia screams.
Pradeep stumbles back through the door, soaked to the skin, eyes wild, limbs trembling. “I didn’t—couldn’t…” He sinks to the ground at the base of the wall. “Nobody go out there. I almost couldn’t find my way back.” Huge sweeping gusts dump rain onto the roof. Katrina pulls Pradeep to his feet and starts toweling him off. He can’t stop shivering, repeating the phrase, “There’s no way… There’s no way…” over and over.
Katrina hugs him. “No. There isn’t.”
Pradeep breaks down in her embrace.
Triquet finds Amy at the kitchen, boiling water for tea, her answer to everything. Triquet grabs her arm with a surprisingly firm grip. “We have to be strong. Right now.”
There’s something in Triquet’s face that tells Amy they’ve gone through something like this before and this is the priceless lesson they learned. Amy nods. “Yes. Strong. Yes.” Triquet indicates Alonso, who is so deep in his grief his eyes see nothing before him. He is clearly slipping back into his trauma. “Mirrie!” Amy hurries to his side, followed by Miriam.
“Lost, all lost…” Alonso holds up his hands. “Everyone I touch. Stay away! Or I’ll get you killed!” His eyes are wild, seeing visions that aren’t here. “Charlie, no!”
“Oh my god,” Miriam moans. “No, Alonso! Don’t do that! Don’t get lost in it! Stay here with us! Zo! Zo!” She shakes him.
A high-pitched note of desperate mourning fills the bunker. It is Pradeep, his panic reaching epic levels. He thrashes in Katrina’s embrace, pulling at his hair, his eyes startlingly white and round. “No! No!” It takes all her strength not to let him go.
“Oh mio dio what’s wrong with him?” Flavia shouts, pushing herself away from Pradeep as if his breakdown is contagious.
“It’s just a storm!” Katrina keeps shouting, holding fast. “It’s just a storm! There’s nothing we can do about it!”
They topple on the ground as the wind dies, gathering strength for another gale. But in the momentary silence all that can be heard is Mandy’s sobbing, Pradeep’s desperate panting, and Katrina’s soft words:
“It’s just a storm, Pradeep. We’re helpless. Just a storm. Bigger than us. We can’t do anything but hold on.”
Chapter 7 – The Tunnels
February 12, 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 chapter:
7 – The Tunnels
Katrina wakes up, her head full of sand, her eyes sticky, her heart hollow. Yeh. That was a trip all right. Now she’s tangled with Jay in bed in the Captain’s cabin underground. It’s pretty dark but a ray of silver light somehow leaks through the boat and down the hall to reflect on the far wall. She takes a deep breath.
Jay is snoring. She giggles joylessly, depleted. Patting the top of his head she tries to pull her limbs clear. They’d been holding each other desperately, wrapped tight. Still fully clothed she’s somewhat surprised that things hadn’t gone farther than they had. At one point she’d started feeling like a dirty girl, grinding against him as the Detroit electro got going. That shit always made her wet. But the sweet boy hadn’t responded in kind. It had frustrated her at the time but she is absolutely relieved now. He’d had some kind of emotional breakthrough instead and gotten all saccharine and romantic. In the end it had been so innocent and pure.
He’d told her he loved her.
Well. Let’s see if that still holds true when his head feels done in.
What is the last thing she remembers? The visuals had been amazing. They’d watched blotches of color pinwheel across the ceiling like clouds, talking about their upbringings. She’d been raised by her single dad. He’d been raised by his single mom. This realization of shared experience led to another flood of tears and desperate embraces from Jay.
What a teddy bear. She can’t remember the last time she’d made herself so available to a man and had him treat her this way. Not rejection—like the exact opposite of rejection. The rejection of objectification, perhaps? She’d danced for him and he burst into tears. Well. How will her ego ever recover? She giggles again. Ah, molly! You are magic! A chemically-guaranteed night of happiness and love every time.
He grunts. She rests her forehead against his and grunts in reply.
Jay unsticks his lips and looks at her with an abashed half-smile. “Water.” His voice is rough and creaky.
“I’ll fetch your bottle. Hold on, player.”
Now she fully extricates herself, dragging her limbs free of the bed. The cool air folds itself about her bare skin and she regrets leaving his warm embrace. Aw. Maybe she still feels a bit of the glow herself. Now. Where did he leave his water?
Jay rouses himself, his dreams fading. He’d been somewhere warm and wet, subterranean. It felt like a birth. Rebirth. Katrina had fed him the magic pill that unlocked his depths and he had—Katrina had… Oh, no. And then he had said all kinds of crazy shit. Told her he loved her. And yeah, sure, a kernel of that dearness still remains. She is awesome, no doubt. But the thrill is gone, baby. Gone for good. Aw, no. What a mess. He just couldn’t handle his drugs and keep his mouth shut! Come on, dude! Grow up! This isn’t a music festival, it’s like a career-defining opportunity with leaders from nearly every scientific field he loves.
Jay rolls onto his back with a groan, black misgivings and regret clawing at him, as chemically-guaranteed as the joy. “What have I done now?” He brushes his broken hand with his chin and hisses in pain. That fourth metacarpal had snapped like a pencil when the rock landed on it. He hopes it will someday heal right. He has so many plans for it. A sudden sob catches in his throat. “Fuck. Now I’ll never be a guitar god.”
Katrina returns with his water and stands framed in the narrow door, her hair curled under her chin like a question mark. “Hey.”
Jay doesn’t move. “Hey.”
Ξ
Pradeep joins Amy in the kitchen just as she finishes making eight bowls of oatmeal. “You can’t feed everyone every meal,” he scolds her. “You have to do your research too.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Amy waves a hand at him. “I’ve got plenty irons in plenty fires. And this isn’t much more than boiling water.”
“And chopping ginger and dried cranberries and making green tea and coffee.”
“Espresso. Careful. Don’t let Flavia hear you call it anything else.” Amy hands him a tray. “Now, let’s go check up on the Love Palace. See if they survived the night.” She follows him with a kettle and a tray of mugs. “You might be able to finally ask the big man some of your questions.”
“Did you notice?” Pradeep drops his voice to a murmur, “Jay never came back to his hammock last night.”
“Yeah the sub sounded like a nightclub til early hours.” Amy grins. “Hookups in the field… Ah, I remember the days. Well, I hope at least they used protection.”
They climb the ramp to the giant tent, sagging now at a couple corners. When she leaves, Amy resolves to reset the guy lines. It’s the least she can do. “Knock knock…?” she sings out.
“A moment,” Miriam answers. Then after some rustling of fabric she unzips the inner door that seals off their sleeping chamber. She is tousled, in a wool jumper and scarf and flannel pajama bottoms. “Just reading. Go ahead and set up in there—”
“Ooo. The foyer!” Amy chuckles.
“—and I’ll see if Zo is ready to get up.”
“How is he?”
“Still alive.” Miriam addresses him over her shoulder. “How are you, mijo?”
“The headache…” his voice rumbles, “is very bad. And my neck. Ah. I cannot move my head.”
Miriam kneels by his pillows and forces her hands beneath his neck. She begins to massage him.
“Ai! Too rough!” He lifts a pleading hand. “Softer! Softer…!”
Amy and Pradeep set places on the tent floor for the oatmeal and tea. Miriam soothes Alonso with murmured words of love.
Finally he groans, something releasing. Then his breath catches and he grasps her wrist. “I remember…”
“Yes? Dancing til dawn?” Miriam tries to lighten the mood with a joke but there is something distracted in his eyes. He searches for something he’s lost.
“Por su puesto, Mirrie, but no… I remember… Last night I saw a vision. In the dark.”
“Is this like the time you saw Jesus walking through the trees?”
“No, that was in college. And I had never drunk brandy.” He laughs sadly at the memory. But no. He makes an effort to regain the evaporating traces of what he saw last night before they are gone for good. It was very significant. Of that he is sure. But the concussion knocked it right out, and his wife’s beautiful face takes his attention now. “Ah, it’s gone. Something about Plexity, no doubt. Hopefully, when we are working on it I will remember.”
They get him to sit up in bed and feed him there with a large towel spread across his lap. The other three sit in the foyer to ply him with questions, which he assures them he can handle. “Please. Get my mind off this headache and make me use my brain again for something other than self-pity.”
“Aha. Yes…” Pradeep doesn’t quite know how to respond to this. Doctor Sergio Alonso Saavedra Colon Ramirez Aguirre is quite possibly his living idol. Pradeep had moved heaven and earth to get into Amy’s lab last semester, partially because of her association with Doctor Alonso. And now, after circling him like a nervous suitor for a week, he is ready to finally ask his first questions. He just hopes that he doesn’t waste Alonso’s time or sound like an idiot. But he needs to start with the basics. “Well, Doctor, I’m hoping I can sort of get your insight into Plexity at the foundational level. Like mission statement onward before we get into—”
“Yes, yes…” Alonso nods. “That is what I am hoping too. You can’t understand this new system just by looking at its features. It is like, Miriam, my dear, like drawing a map from only seeing the mountain peaks without looking at the rivers and the valleys. Yes?”
“Quite.” Pradeep takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts. Amy studiously looks away. This is his moment. She hadn’t let him prepare too much with her. He needs to get over his hero-worship and show Alonso that he belongs here. “So. Who will this survey be for?”
“For?” This is a question Alonso hasn’t truly examined, but it is a worthy one. “Well, when our reports first come out they will be classified. So it will be for the Air Force, I suppose. But that won’t last long. Maybe just a pass over our final draft with a black pen by somebody at the CIA. I don’t know. But eventually we are looking at the top journals, perhaps by the end of the year. And also I am dedicated to popularizing Plexity. For civilians and amateurs. I want this to be our teaching tool, our grand example to the world.” As he speaks his voice gathers resonance and depth again. His throat and chest clear and he speaks with growing conviction. “I want armies of observers fanning out over the entire globe, seeing the web of life in an entirely new way. There. That is who it is for. Does that answer your question?”
“Thank you, yes.” Pradeep laughs at the wild ambition of it. “But what, uh, what kind of security issues do you think we’ll encounter? Is there anything the Air Force told you that you shouldn’t—?”
Alonso laughs. “I have no idea. Do we mention the dead body? The sub buried in the sand? I don’t think we will. But this place is just full of surprises, no?”
Pradeep nods slowly. He can’t get over the feeling that Alonso is still hiding something about the military from them. “So, moving on. I have a question just about a matter of procedure. See, I’ve already started collecting samples but I want to make sure I do it in the proper way. The Plexity way. Now, let’s say I detach a nice bryophyte from a rock and put it in my bag. The way I understand it, you’d like me to focus not on the moss itself, but far more on the context. The mineral composition of the rock. What the moss was doing to it over time. How it establishes with other bryophytes a type of wet little nook, like a nano-climate of its own at the base of a Toyon tree. So what should I sample? The moss, the rock, and the tree? What goes into the plastic bag?”
“Nano-climate. That is an excellent term. So, this issue is exactly the thing that lies at the crux of—”
Pradeep, in his excitement, interrupts Alonso. “And are you even interested in notating the taxonomy of individual species at all any more or are we somehow beyond that?”
Alonso laughs, holding up a hand to deflect the torrent. “Slow down, hermano. Slow down. Yes, we are still recording the classic details. We are recording all of it. Plexity will liberate you as a researcher to bring all your observational skills to each moment. All of them. The color of the sky. The smell in the air. They are all connected. Don’t you see? This is the world of big data now.”
These words are like an invocation to Pradeep. He points at Alonso, a giddy thrill shooting through him. “Exactly! Yes! Global bio-informatics! It is where I was sure you were headed!”
Alonso waves at the island with his cane. “If we collect all the data we can sense and measure, if we soak in the entire context of life-forms here on this island, then that amount of data will be a treasure greater than an entire golden hoard. We will be able to find connections and causalities that so far remain invisible to us. We will be able to chart the humidity of the air above your bryophyte in many different contexts, and that will allow us—”
“Well, frankly, we don’t even know what we will be able to do with the data.” Pradeep sits back, shrugging. “It will be a mine that people can excavate for—well, forever. As new data theory is applied, new insights will emerge. I already work in connective systems primarily. The push and pull of biological and organic pathways. But you want to expand those diagnostics to literally an infinite degree. It’s like studying the heavens with a telescope that sees frequencies we haven’t yet discovered. So we are witnesses here, recorders and researchers. But we can leave theory to others. As long as we keep the record, all else will follow.”
Alonso leans back with a happy sigh. “Ah, yes. This one gets it, Amy. I am very glad you brought him.”
Pradeep feels like light is shining through his skin. This is it. This quiet moment in a tent. This is the moment he has been working toward his entire life. All the sacrifice, the waking up at four in the morning as a ten year old to do his homework before helping to open the restaurant. The lost social life, the bullying and teasing. The desperate academic competitions. It is all for these words, spoken by one of the wisest minds on the planet. This is it. Pradeep belongs. The august society is opening its doors to him. “So… Thank you, Doctor Alonso. Thank you so very much. But, I mean, in your estimation, are there certain systems that are more fundamental than others? Shall we start with some possible bedrock…” Prad makes an inclusive gesture toward Miriam, “…and move outward? Upward? Or are all systems—?”
“All systems are stratum independent and of equal value. No chicken and no egg. Everything all at once, in an organic ball. Recursive, with multiple (possibly infinite) connections and nodes. This is an entire organism here. Lisica. So start wherever you like.”
“Of course. Of course.” Pradeep falls silent, rearranging his plan of attack for the island. He has to think far larger than he has. He’s been focusing the last few years on just single specific cooperative, parasitic, and symbiotic relationships between two species. But now he has to operate from the assumption that every species influences every other species. Interdependence shoots through everything like oxygen.
“So…” Amy takes the opportunity to go even deeper. “Let’s talk about what Plexity looks like at the comparative genomics level, Lonzo. I’m not quite with you. It sounds like we’re going to be massively sequencing everything, and, like, all the time? At different moments? In situ as much as possible? How? My personal take on Plexity is that your vision is astounding and the science is sound but the capability in the field just isn’t there yet. How are we going to acquire and process so many genetic samples? Have you talked to Katrina about this? She has ideas about a unit with realtime displays for operator feedback. So you can tell what you should even be looking at next.”
“Of course.” He waves his hand at her. “Of course. We have thought of all this. And this will not be a perfect attempt. That is what you and Colonel Baitgie and Flavia the mathematician need to understand. This is the first faltering step. What this will do is show us what we need to solve next. Plexity will be iterative, no doubt. As will the study of Lisica.”
“And this Colonel…” Pradeep asks. “I get the sense that he hasn’t officially signed off on your Plexity project?”
Alonso searches for the proper words. In his silence they realize the Colonel has not. Finally, he says, “There is a module in Plexity that will allow us to output our data into more traditional graphs and lists. But listen. I brought it up to Baitgie and his contractors as much as possible but I could tell none of them see the utility in it.”
“That’s why I ask.” Pradeep’s self-assurance grows with each sentence. “I can’t imagine what the military would find worthwhile in Plexity. I’m surprised you mentioned it to them.”
“I just focused on how it will increase resolution and decrease error rates for their environmental impact reports. Because it will do that too. There is a business model, I understand, in selling Plexity software to labs running normal assays for them to pick out new features in their data and modify their systems. But I am not so interested in business myself. Maybe one of you can lead that spin-off and make us all rich, eh? I will be out in the field with my sample kits and laptop. Hopefully for the rest of my life.”
Miriam asks quietly, “Is there any reason to believe the military types will disapprove of what we’re doing here, Zo? Did they know we’d find their sub and that we’d have a drone get a glimpse of the interior? I just don’t want to fall afoul of anyone.”
“No. See. This is an abandoned post. The program was run by postwar generations who are now all dead. It remained forgotten for like thirty years. The Air Force flags it as ‘an outstanding issue to resolve’ every time they take a Pacific Command inventory but it’s always been very far down the list. Baitgie thought he could kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of a nagging bureaucratic detail,” Alonso’s waving cane once again includes the whole island, “and this troublesome scientist their PJs rescued, who, in a single fateful conversation at the military hospital after his debriefing has reawakened the Colonel’s undergrad love of forest management.”
“What’s a PJ?” Amy wonders. “You got rescued by pajamas?”
“A squad of very scary men. The Air Force Parajumper rescuers. They showed up to the gulag one night in silence and spoke to one guard after another. Very frightening. They all moved like ghosts. Nobody even thought to fight them. And I did not recognize much of the hardware they wore, nor any of its purpose. They found me in my box and carried me away, onto a helicopter that looked like a spaceship.”
Pradeep shakes his head in wonder at the trials this man has suffered. But he perseveres. “I just have one more question—”
“Liar.” Amy laughs at Pradeep.
“At least regarding this security slash military side of things…” Pradeep amends. “Esquibel asked the question a couple nights ago. How did a Cuban scientist pass a background check for any United States classified military… anything?”
“Ah.” Alonso sighs. “Just so. For that you have my uncle Don Jorge Colon to thank.” Alonso lets that hang for a moment, just to see the puzzlement grow in the young man’s long face. “You see, Don Colon was one of the ultimate anti-Castro operatives of the 1960s. In Miami he was famous, called El Dueño, the Landlord, for how many CIA people he would host at his hotel, even at his house. But his activity got too hot for the rest of the family so me and my sisters and my cousins all spent the 80s growing up in Madrid instead. None of the rest of us take part in politics at all. Cuban politics is a curse. It killed him, on a visit to Mexico in 1989. And it kills anyone who touches it in any way. They showed me they have a file on me as thick as a phone book. So they know. I am a citizen of the world. I study life not death. And apparently that was enough for them.”
Miriam sips her tea. Amy’s nervous laugh fills the silence. Alonso points with his cane under the platform. “There. Big gray tub, still wrapped with tape. Pradeep. Could you please do me the favor of bringing it up here?”
Amy stands before Pradeep does. “I’ll just help—”
“Amy, por favor. Let the young man do it. This is in response to his question about field collections and also your question about genomic assays. I am not so dreamy that I did not think of the real-world problems. I anticipated them as much as I could.”
“This one?” Pradeep drags a tub of Alonso’s description out from under the platform. A packing list is taped to the lid, a long column of items. “Says… sample kits and I guess their assorted accessories? Oh! Field kits?”
“That’s the one. Please cut it open and bring one of the kits up here. It’s amazing. When you meet the right people in the military it is like magic the things they can accomplish with a phone call. Those contractors… all black-budget. Could you imagine being a black-budget field biologist or geologist who is working on national security issues, with like a completely unlimited budget and no oversight? But nobody except like four people in the whole world would ever know your work. Would you do it?”
Miriam makes a face. “When I’m old and ready to die on a strategically-valuable mountain side.”
“Well, I mean,” Amy hems and haws, “I suppose I could for preservation, like keeping a secret Army base from putting pressure on a threatened species or something. But if they want me to like hunt caribou in the Arctic Circle because… I don’t know, they keep disrupting their radar or something, then no. No thank you.”
“I don’t believe,” Alonso rumbles, “that any of them get a choice in the matter. Maybe when they are very senior. That is certainly one of the trade-offs.” Pradeep tears the tape clear and lifts the lid. He brings them a white oblong carton about the size of a shoebox. A serial number is printed on its side. Nothing more.
“Open it, please,” Alonso instructs Pradeep. “I had a fascinating conversation with one of the contractors one day on the advances in microfluidics and their use as diagnostic machines. A lot has changed in the last five years. It led to these prototypes. We have eleven of the units and then, yes, show us…”
Pradeep holds up the machine. It looks like a giant white credit card reader with a wider tray jutting out from under its keypad.
“It is built to be modular. You put the sample in the front and then we have all these different little boxes you can plug in: micro-robots and solutions acting like transistors and circuits, creating a profile of the sample on, well, whatever module you have in there. You can get blood types and genetic or enzyme profiles, even some electrochemical activity can be captured with the potassium and calcium ion sequencers. The plan is to have it cross-reference an onboard database that fixes the sample as species-specific as well as location and time-specific. It is an integrated, real-time—”
Pradeep goggles. “What are you talking about? This is—? No way. This is an actual working field, like, Star Trek tricorder? But that’s impossible. Not with today’s technology. We are at least five to ten years away from that kind of technological integration, especially for something robust enough to be used in the field. Microfluidics is a particular area of interest for me and I follow the developments very closely and I can assure you what you are promising here simply won’t work like that. At least yet.”
“Let me finish, Pradeep.”
“And that you somehow snapped your fingers and got these units cobbled together in, what, like ten weeks? I’m sorry. Somebody promised you something, Doctor, that they couldn’t deliver.”
“Eight weeks. But they already had invented all the pieces and separately tested and built them for other black budget projects. It was just a matter of putting them all together. Now. That NDA we signed? The one Flavia is so irate about? Yes, it is primarily about these units. They are never allowed to leave the island.”
Pradeep stares at the unit, his preconceptions about the state of current technology falling away in a giddy rush. “Fascinating. But why would they let us have access…?”
“We aren’t the only ones using Lisica as a test bed. My guess is that they didn’t have qualified personnel who could be here in the timeframe and who passed the background checks like you did.”
“Like we did?” As Pradeep echoes this, Amy and Miriam frown. They didn’t know they’d been checked either?
“Yes, and you all passed. Even Maahjabeen at the last second. Now in that secret black budget world, there must be entire labs who developed some component of this thing eagerly awaiting our real world results. I call it a Dyson, in honor of my hero Freeman Dyson, and also because it is like a powerful vacuum in the field.”
Pradeep blinks at Alonso, marshaling his thoughts. “So it seems what you’re telling us, Doctor, is that there are maybe a few solitary elements in the United States military who have a vested interest in research being conducted on the island, in the manner we hope to achieve. But the larger Air Force and military complex, they have basically abandoned this island after using it as a dump and then they put a bunch of arbitrary rules around it that we have to abide by, and also they can’t be bothered to help or hinder our efforts. Does that sound accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. It’s actually a really a fantastic situation to be in,” Pradeep realizes. “We get all the resources with none of the accountability.”
“The American way.”
Ξ
“The only traditional thing I got from the Chinese side of my family,” Mandy tells Jay, who drowses on the beach under a sun hat, “is an ancient healing art that everyone—all my aunts and cousins and everybody—use on each other. It’s called Tui Na. Have you heard of it?”
“Is it like Tai Chi? Or… what’s that other one? Qi Gong?”
“No, not really. Those are like about your energy.”
“Your vibe.”
“This is about tendons and bones and muscles. Scar tissue.”
“Oh. I see.”
“So, like what I’m saying is, I’ve gotten to work on Esquibel in the past and it’s really helped her, especially with her bad hip. So she trusts me.”
“Trusts you to do what?”
“Reset your broken hand.”
“Oh. Ohh…” Jay sits up, fully awake now. “Wait a minute there. Is that what we’re talking about? Because I didn’t realize that’s what we were talking about. I thought the plan would be to just maybe keep it immobilized until we could get it back somewhere they had a surgical unit. Cause this is like a pins situation, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”
He only stares at her. “Why? What are you going to do?”
Mandy gives him a reassuring smile. “It’s already knitting again, but in the wrong shape. And it’s all scar tissue, even in the bone. And scar tissue looks like this.” She holds out her splayed hands, one over the other. “The fibers are all crossed and stiff. But if we pull on them…” She brings her fingers and hands into alignment, “…it is still scar tissue, but lengthened into orderly rows again so it acts much more like normal tissue.” She shrugs. “You can have almost a full recovery.”
“I’m totally dubious about the ‘pull on them’ part of this, dude.”
“The art is learning how much to pull to release the tension and straighten the fibers without pulling so hard you damage them. That’s the art my family passed down. I’m really good at it.”
“Look, Mandy, it’s a super sweet offer and I really appreciate you. I do. But, like can I have some time to think about it?”
“Okay. But there’s a short window for bone breaks like this. The longer you wait the less successful the recovery is and the more painful it becomes.”
“So it is painful.”
“Oh, you will howl.” Mandy giggles. “But it passes. It’s good pain. Seriously. Healing pain.”
“Man. And you said Esquibel signed off on this?”
Mandy nods. “Can I just see your hand at least?”
“Just see?”
“And maybe touch.”
“It’s super tender, so…”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Jay makes a face, then unwraps his right hand and holds it out to Mandy. She places it in her lap, holding it like an injured bird. “Is that okay?”
Jay nods. He releases a deep breath. The black mood that came after his night of carousing hasn’t lifted, but he is touched by Mandy’s care. He’s being mothered from like eighteen different directions here. And somehow he doesn’t mind at all.
Her index finger runs over the swollen bump below the last knuckle of his ring finger. “Oh, yeah. So angry. I can feel your pulse just like buzzing.”
“You can?”
“We’ve got to get this bone straight, Jay.”
But he doesn’t like how bright her smile is. “Wait. You’re like enjoying this, you fucking sadist.”
Mandy can’t help giggling. “I just know how much it will help once you’re ready. I’m excited for you.”
“You’re just gonna, what, like pull on my ring finger?”
“Mostly. Tui Na is about understanding how bones and tendons and muscles are all connected. So I will hold down the right tendon like this…” She demonstrates on her own hand, flexing her forearm and finding the relevant tendon that bunches near her elbow. She presses down on it and then releases her flex, using the pressure to pull on the tendon. “See? Stretch. Like making saltwater taffy.”
“So will this be a long slow pull or a—”
“No. Short snap. Ready?” Mandy is done being careful with his feelings and is eager to get something accomplished today. She wants to talk to Katrina about her idea for the drone but so far she is nowhere to be seen. Esquibel shooed her out of the clean room with instructions to help Jay. Now she just wants to be able to check this off her list so she can get back to her fruitless attempts to get some actual atmospheric science done on Lisica. The wind looks so calm at the moment she might be able to deploy a weather balloon and radiosonde.
“Short… snap?” Jay holds out his limp hand with a grimace, as if he’s trying to give it away to her. “What do I have to do?”
“Not much, really. Just like stay loose if you can. First I need to move it a bit this way and that so that might hurt. But it’s just the first diagnostic…”
“Aaauggghhh.” Tears squeeze out from under his eyes. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”
“It’s just scar tissue, Jay. And it’s all stuck. The blood and the fibers and everything. We just got to—” YANK “—unstick it.”
Jay bawls, jerking his hand away, cradling it and curling up in a ball in the sand. Mandy suppresses a nervous giggle. She knows from experience he would not appreciate hearing it in the least.
Finally he uncurls, flexing his fingers. “Hey… It does hurt less.”
“I told you.”
“I mean, it isn’t perfect…” He runs his fingers over the fourth metacarpal, “but it is better. Oh my god that hurt so much.”
“Now it’s flowing. Your body can heal itself there. We should immobilize it, though. Usually my auntie would help control the pain and swelling with acupuncture but I never learned it. That’s too much of the energy stuff for me. And it doesn’t always work.”
“I’m still gonna get x-rays when I can.”
“You totally should.”
“Wow. This actually is seriously improved. Thank you so much. I can’t believe it. Now do my ankle.”
Mandy laughs, pleased. “No… Esquibel said your ankle is just tendons and soft tissue takes longer. The window doesn’t start for manipulations for another week or more, after the swelling goes down. Then getting more Tui Na done on the scar tissue until the six month period is recommended.”
“Cool. Six months. Okay. So like where you living these days?”
She laughs. “Topanga.”
“Groovy. I’ve got a buddy down there. I’ll come visit every couple weeks and make you lunch and you can pull me apart.”
Ξ
“And just what do you think you’re doing in there, you hussy?”
Katrina has fallen back asleep in the Captain’s bunk, holding Jay’s jacket under her chin. She starts awake to find Triquet standing in the doorway, hands on hips.
“Oh. Hey. Oh.” Katrina wakes from the deepest sleep of her life and draws a breath in, heroically battling the absolute vacuum of energy and life and hope and love within her. She’s so far gone it almost feels like a K hole. It’s not that she has no will left. It’s that there’s now a howling void within her and whatever she feeds it is only sucked away. She sits up anyway, knowing in some abstract sense that’s the societal expectation and poor Triquet’s never done anything to warrant disrespect. “Sorry.”
Triquet holds up a sample kit. “You see what this is, Katrina? This is a field forensics kit. I could dust that mattress for hair and skin cells and get a pretty good reading. At least until you two decided to contaminate the setting with your sideways samba! Now I have to contend with, I don’t know, fresh fluids and pheromones. Is that a joint! Ye gods, children. What else have you done?”
“Nothing.” Katrina can’t square Triquet’s behavior with what she’s starting to recall of last night. “Wait… You were down here with us. You danced with me. Why are you pretending like you’re all shocked now?”
Triquet leans in and with a tiny bit too much sass, says, “Because you’re helpless and vulnerable, darling. It just seemed like the right play. No.” They sigh. “Don’t worry. After I saw where things were headed last night I came down here and took all my samples in this cabin then. So I’m lying about that part. Still wish you wouldn’t sleep on the bunk, though. That old vinyl is already cracking.”
Katrina sits up, her hand falling on Jay’s water bottle. She drains it. Then she puts on his jacket.
Triquet recognizes it. They pat Katrina on the shoulder, as condescending as possible. “So how’s your little heteronormative romance going dear?”
“It was very sweet, actually. Not at all what you’d expect. Do you…? Uh, are you into party drugs?”
Triquet gives Katrina a dimpled smile, leading her to the control room. “I’ve been known to dabble. But not inside any of my actual field sites, sugar. And I’m not sure there’s anyone here who’s really my type, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Oh. For sure. Well, uh, we can just have like a dance party with you, if you like. And we didn’t even do anything, if you want to know the truth. It was just like a sleepover. A really emotional like tearful sleepover. He’s a great guy. Not what I thought at all.”
Triquet gives her a sincere smile. “That’s really sweet. Now quit touching my stuff or I’m going to have to stop liking you so much, Katrina dear. So. Is that the panel down there?”
The dark rectangle in the corner is still resting at an angle against the far wall. Triquet edges closer to the darkness, feeling the cold breath of air crossing their cheek one way, then another. As a fan of all things kooky and weird and occult, this real-world version of abandoned cold wet darkness is a bit too much, even for them. But that’s what the headlamp’s floodlight setting is for, even though it shortens the battery life to an hour.
The floodlight blazes on the chamber down below, picking out molding sheaves of documents scattered across the floor, clothing, boxes upon boxes of beer bottles, furniture stacked and leaning against the walls, on and on, a literal decaying wonderland of postwar memorabilia and artifacts in a belowdecks hold, shot through with rusting pipes and conduit. Triquet quivers like a rabbit in a garden. There’s got to be a catch, right? This absolutely profligate amount of easy discovery can’t come without some price. Finally, Triquet murmurs to themself, “I know what it is.”
Katrina peers down, arms crossed. “You know what what is?”
“The catch. The price for all this bounty. It’s the answer to a question I’ve been asking since I first heard from Alonso: But why bring an archaeologist on a field biology project? He told me it was about integrating Plexity into the human realm and the context of the past, but I didn’t really buy it. I came because he is a legend and his work is fascinating and I could take the semester off.” Triquet crouches at the hatch, preparing to descend. “But now I buy it.”
Katrina watches Triquet hesitate at the edge. Her brain is sludge but even so the answer is apparent. “Alonso knew about this?”
“He must have.” Triquet takes a deep breath. “I cannot believe you went down there all by yourself, child, in the dark. On drugs. Heavens to Betsy. Did you have any kind of light at all?”
Katrina shrugs. “I had my phone. But I didn’t use it.”
Triquet shivers, a mix of excitement and dread. “Well, here I go. Just leave me a new battery every hour and food and water when you remember and I’ll see you in a month.”
Ξ
Miriam sets stakes in the soft moss-crowned dirt. It’s almost a crime to excavate such lovely topsoil. It is a rich chocolate, shot through with pale networks of roots, and only becomes sandy a meter down. Oh, the garden her dad would have grown here!
Esquibel had presented her with the entire New Trench Project after breakfast. It had evidently taken the expertise of nearly every one of them to come to an agreement. And the site they’ve chosen has satisfied none. It does not have a ready supply of sand. The winds might cause an unfavorable stink from time to time. And Jay will have to relocate his hammock. But on a beach this small with eleven giant primates and all their excreta, there is no such thing as a good answer.
But they’d all agreed that Miriam should be the one to dig it, with help from Triquet as needed (although good luck getting them out of the sub). But she had told them she didn’t need the help anyway. She likes digging. And she can use some time alone.
This island feels strangely like home. Perhaps it’s the sunless Irish climate and cold ocean. She doesn’t miss the humid heat or flies of her Japanese expedition, but she did love the tame pygmy deer of Yakushima and the clever macaques holding tourists hostage for food. It’s a shame there’s no large animals here to befriend. Somehow she doubts the otters or crabs or even foxes will do.
The sand is heavy-grained, dark gray with sharp edges. It looks like freshly metamorphosed clay. The larger bits disintegrate with a pinch. Good cat litter, that. Why, the business possibilities just keep coming! The exercise lightens her mood. She stands in the cut, a meter deep and forty centimeters wide but not even a meter long yet. She still has a lot of work to do and the perspiration is now running freely down her back.
There are two activities where Miriam has always considered herself in world-class shape: hiking and digging. She just does so much of both she can sustain the activity all day, at a pace that often puts younger people to shame. So she digs, clawing away the secrets of the earth one spadeful at a time.
Well. Eight weeks here. Then back to home base in Chicago with Alonso for perhaps the summer. Then she’ll need to teach at least two classes next fall and hope that she can get back to Japan for a final wrap-up maybe by winter break. Then they’ll need to find time to present and promote Plexity results. Yes, her life is booked. And it was booked even before the world miraculously returned her lost husband to her. Now, and with him so damaged, now her life is utterly mad. She should hire an assistant. Maybe Katrina would be free, although perhaps organizational skills are not quite her strength. Well, someone… Someone big and strong who might be able to lift Alonso on the days he can’t walk. Perhaps he will be in a wheelchair, and they will have to modify the house. Or sell it. If he can’t get into the loft, then what’s the use of having it? Well, they can transfer its library to the living room, perhaps. And install ramps at the front and back. Yes, perhaps they should just sell it instead. They will have to rethink their entire career trajectory plans, as agreed upon for the last twenty years or so. She’d abandoned hers, of course, over the last five years. And the idea of being brought back to the regimen she’d planned for herself as a twenty-six year old rankled. She’d learned so much since then of what she wanted to do with her life, her very days and hours, that she would need to revisit that agreement with him. In due time.
For now, she is here to dig. The geology of this island remains as much a mystery as before. What she’d seen of the interior suggests erosion as the primary force landscaping the island. Nothing newly volcanic up there, no sign that glaciers might have carved anything in eons past, as they did on Mauna Kea. But Lisica is far lower in elevation, although much further north in latitude…
Dig. Dig and uncover. What will you find today? I half expect there’ll be bones, or an unexploded nuclear torpedo or some such frightful thing. So far just this lovely soil and dark sand. But what must lie beneath? If the bedrock is limestone and we already have proof of caves then how many caves might there be? Why, this whole shelf here might be shot through with all kinds of secrets.
Miriam stops, breathing hard, sweat dripping from the point of her long nose. “Ah, yes. This… this is what my first main goal is here.” The spade bites into the sand once again and she heaves. “Once I’m done here, my job is to find the tunnels.”
DW Draffin -- Lisica 