Chapter 56 – Amy’s Foxes Ever Did
January 20, 2025
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
56 – Amy’s Foxes Ever Did
Flash.
Cleaving the darkness of Alonso’s sleep, a white corona of light pops in an upper corner of his closed eyelids, shattering his slumber. He drags himself awake as voices rise. Someone starts screaming. Another. Familiar voices.
A gunshot.
Somehow Alonso is now racing barefoot across the slope. Where even is he? Pine needles beneath his feet. Others run beside him, shouting. He had been so deeply asleep. Not even dreaming. And now he’s charging out from under the edge of the trees, his legs stabbing him with nerve pain but still carrying him out into the dark meadow. Ah, yes. They had all returned to pine camp at the end of the night once Katrina told them their presence in the village made old Yesiniy irate.
A huddle of women stand in the field in fierce dispute. He can’t even make sense of their words. Oh. Esquibel kneels and tends to Mandy in Katrina’s arms, Flavia holding a light. What is going on?
“He shot her!” Katrina yells, outraged, to those who approach. “The fucking spy shot Mandy!”
“Superficial!” Esquibel assures them. “She will be fine.”
Alonso and Miriam pull up short as Pradeep and Maahjabeen and Jay emerge from the darkness behind them, their phones flaring with light.
“Where is he?” Jay scouts the perimeter. “Why’d he shoot her?”
“We surprised him.” Flavia holds her light on Mandy’s stained shoulder as all the others flare around her. “With the flash.”
“Of all the stupid bloody things you’ve done…” Esquibel seethes. But she needs to focus on stabilizing Mandy first. Wounded in precisely the way that Esquibel is trained as a specialist. She will have the very best care. This will not harm her. Not Mandy.
“The Chinese spy?” Alonso is slow to grasp all the elements of the scene. “He is here?”
Katrina nods at a line of darkness. “Dived into those bushes. Headed toward the creek. Upstream. Who knows. He might still be right there, lining us up. Esquibel, did we not have a deal that we were not going to do any more of this shit in private?”
“This.” Now Esquibel has to be as precise with her words as she is with the few surgical implements she carries. “This is exactly why I had to… I am sorry. Does someone have a blanket?”
Jay instantly tears off his jacket and places it under Mandy. Maahjabeen does too, rolling hers into a pillow and kneeling at Mandy’s head, soothing her with caresses at her temples.
Mandy clutches her shoulder, silent and grim. Fuck this. Fuck everything about this. It feels like a really angry giant punched her. Really hard. And she can’t have anyone fussing at it, even Skeebee. Especially Skeebee. Mandy grunts at a sudden sharp pain, a shot at the base of her neck. Her whole right side starts to tingle then goes numb. She eases a bit down onto the jackets and looks up at Esquibel with suspicion. “Now what are you going to do?”
“Just cleaning it up, Mandy G.” Esquibel’s voice is quiet and infinitely tender. “The bullet passed through. Hit nothing major. Good entry and exit points. Right now I’m just going to remove any fragments, okay? Just make it spotless for you…”
Mandy feels a distant tugging. The faces of nearly everyone from the camp loom over her. But it’s too much. She closes her eyes in distress and turns away, blocking it all out. What a horrible mess.
Pradeep appears with a pair of groundcloths and blankets and pillows. He builds a nest beside Mandy and prepares for her transfer. “Ready whenever you are, Doctor.”
“Thank you, but…” Esquibel focuses on her task, pulling the fibers of Mandy’s punctured jacket and shirt out of the entry wound, washing it with a bulb of sterilized water. “I don’t want to move her at the moment. Can you fetch my two big kits for me? Back at the tent. It is all I brought from my clean room in the cave. Thank you. And someone start boiling water.” She hears Pradeep rise and hurry away through the grass.
“Anything else we can do?” Miriam appears, laying her fingertips on Mandy’s other shoulder with the lightest touch.
“I have Flavia and Pradeep.” Esquibel is taking refuge in her professional training. “The rest of you, honestly, are in the way. Please go back to bed. We can discuss everything in the morning.”
“Ehh…” Alonso groans. “I don’t think any of us will be able to go to sleep for a long time. Not while poor little Mandy is out here in the field with a bullet in her neck.”
Mandy makes a frightened face at Esquibel, who smiles comfort back to her. “Shoulder,” she corrects Alonso. “Just muscle. Small caliber. Nothing major. And the bullet is gone. Now I am just doing some pre-op care so when I do stitch her up she won’t have much of a scar at all. Good thing you’re not left-handed, darling. We’ll need you in a sling for the next week or two.”
Despite her order, the others arrange the pillows and blankets Pradeep brought and lie down in the field beside her as she works. Esquibel frowns and shakes her head. “Your big Cuban family is very strange, Alonso.”
“Yes, aren’t we?” He has his head in Triquet’s lap. “I am sorry, Doctor Daine, if we are continuing to bother you. But my heart, it is still hammering.” Others murmur in assent. “There was a shooting. An actual person we know and love getting shot. The adrenaline is too much. We can’t just go back to bed.” Esquibel continues to work in silence, now pushing Mandy onto her side so she can tend to the ruptured skin of the exit wound. Alonso tries again. “So what happened? How did this…?”
Jay, who has been patrolling the bushes since Katrina pointed at them, now hushes them. “Shh. Shhh…” He listens, straining in the darkness. They all do. There. The faint crack of a footstep, then another, moving away. “There he is. So what should I do, team? Follow him? Let him go?”
“He has a gun, Jay.” Miriam may not be able to go back to sleep but she sure is weary. “He just used it. Please don’t give him—”
“Yes, come back, Jay.” Alonso’s mind is starting to clear. What a disaster. He wishes he knew what to do but nothing is clear. “We need to hear what happened first. Katrina?”
“Yeh. Well.” Katrina is at the edge of the groundcloth, sitting on her heels hugging her knees facing Esquibel and Mandy. “We just knew she wasn’t going to tell us so we had to keep an eye on her. Last night, nothing. But tonight, Flavia wakes me like an hour ago and whispers, ‘she’s on the move.’ So we hopped up and crept like cats through the bushes and sat shivering in the dark for like ever while Esquibel stood out in the middle of the field like a fucking scarecrow. Just standing there.”
“Oh, Esquibel, what were you thinking?” Alonso appeals to her, trying to include a modicum of respect along with his exasperation. “Please, uh, illuminate us on the subject.”
“Shortly. If you will only give me ten minutes…” Esquibel wishes Mandy hadn’t fallen back into the dirt when she’d been shot. Too much grit in the exit wound. Now she must be thorough. “I will be glad to answer all your questions when…”
“I believe it would have been fine if Mandy had not found us.” Flavia holds the light steady, on its highest setting. It is the least she can do. But she does not look at the blood. That is too much. “But, eh, she did not know the plan.”
They all give an expectant moment for Mandy to tell her side of the story but she remains silent while Esquibel picks at her.
Katrina takes up the tale again. “So, I mean, Mandy sort of got rightly irate about the situation when she realized what was going on. We had trouble keeping her quiet. And when the spy heard her I guess he thought Esquibel had double-crossed him so the gun came out and that’s when—”
Flavia finishes, “I had the brilliant idea to do like Jay and flash my camera at him. But that only made him want to shoot me. And I am so sorry. He hit Mandy instead. Poor sweet child.”
Jay is the only one who doesn’t settle. He gathers firewood, piling it at the edge of the groundcloths, and after a few manic minutes he builds a fire. With all this activity he doesn’t hear what Esquibel says to the others to fend them off. He doesn’t need to. There’s other smarter people here for that.
“No no no, Esquibel. That is demonstrably false. You know,” Flavia responds, growing irate, “I wouldn’t have had to make such a decision if you had only trusted us for once! And told us what you would be doing!”
Esquibel bears it in silence. She is now stitching both wounds closed, having determined that there is no more reason for delay. She has to focus on keeping her hands steady, something that is normally not a problem. But nothing about this is normal.
“I have a question…” Alonso holds up his hand like the professor he hasn’t been for five years. “What does any of this mean about the likelihood of being picked up at our appointed hour?”
The camp silences. They’ve all been thinking it. Miriam is the first to brave the topic. “Well, Zo, I mean, really, this mission is still too big for just one man. He can’t decide it all, can he? It’s not like he was going to pilot the ship himself. There’s what, like at least a few dozen personnel involved.”
“But he would give the orders.” Triquet frowns into the darkness. This reminds them of their worst nights in Guatemala, the jungle alive with rebel gunfire. At least this time they aren’t suffering the shits. They’ve had nothing to add until now, but this kind of big-picture analysis is where they can chime in. “It’s like a command structure thing, yes? I mean, Baitgie could just delay the pickup for another eight weeks and make up his own reasons to his boss, right? And this is some black budget nonsense so there might not be almost any oversight at all. They’ve forgotten about Lisica before. He could keep us out here for years.”
“Now… now talk like that is making me insane.” For the first time the light in Flavia’s hands shake. “If we get trapped here I will kill myself. I swear.”
“Flavia, please. Paranoia doesn’t help…” Esquibel has heard enough raw emotion. Now she needs them to calm down.
“Paranoia! You say that? She is lying right there! The woman you love! Shot by a Chinese spy!”
“Stop shouting that!” Esquibel hisses. “If he can hear us, he will know we know! I hadn’t let go of the facade he is Japanese!”
“Flavia. My dear. We will get you home,” Alonso promises. “I understand. Everything feels very dire right now. For all of us. But we will figure this out.” He waits for Esquibel to finish wrapping Mandy in gauze and covering her with an extra blanket before continuing. “Now. Doctor Daine. Please tell us the contents of your conversation with the spy.”
Esquibel sighs. She has run out of other things to do. “He held out his hand. I said I didn’t have it. He never spoke. He took a step toward me. I said that I had done my best but there was no storage anywhere that I could steal. I told him I was really upset with myself and to give me another couple days. He reached for me. But that’s when we heard Mandy behind us and he pulled me to the ground and took out his pistol. I shouted. I told them no. But then the flash went off and he fired. Then he ran. That is it.”
“All the way back to Ussiaxan.” Jay still patrols the far side of his fire, peering at the dark line of undergrowth where he disappeared.
“And how do you believe this will be handled by Baitgie? Do you think this will prevent him from having us picked up?”
“Well, no.” Flavia immediately tries to interrupt but Esquibel holds up a hand. “Wait. There are several possible scenarios and in each of them I can’t see how it would help. Like, let us say he really wants that data. His real bosses have decided it is valuable enough to mount this operation all the way out here. But all the moving pieces are too complicated and it fails. The plane crashed. The handoff with the crooked doctor doesn’t go as planned. Now will they just give up? No. They will still pick us up on time and just wait to find an easier way to steal the data, perhaps after we submit it to Baitgie. For some reason, they didn’t want to wait that long. Now they must. Or…”
“Or maybe they just send like a whole Chinese strike team or whatever to Lisica,” Triquet adds, “who take it from us by force.”
“Or why doesn’t this American colonel just keep us out here so the spies can keep trying?” Maahjabeen’s cynicism about the great powers has never been so validated. “We are just puppets to him. Numbers on a sheet of paper.”
“There is an actual global satellite agreement coming into force next week. He didn’t make that up.” Alonso tries to recall anything about his interactions with Baitgie that could be useful now. “The whole situation will change. He said once that when it happens he’ll be required to publish an inventory of all his secret hideouts. People will start looking. He will only have a small window here…”
“If I am not home by the 20th of May my department chair will call the Italian Polizia, I swear. Interpol. All of them.”
Alonso frowns. “I doubt that. Maybe after a week has passed.”
“This is just not how militaries operate!” Esquibel needs all this ill-informed nattering to end. “I was in endless meetings leading up to this mission. Support teams. Resources. Extra training. So many people know we are here and are working to bring us home in, what three more days? Multiple branches and even nationalities working together in international waters. It isn’t just a shady figure in an office all alone pushing buttons. He would have to, possibly, falsify the facts on the ground here to get the operation to change its timelines. And he would never do that. It would lead to a whole list of questions he couldn’t answer.”
“So what do you think it is, then?” Miriam asks. She sits behind Katrina, the girl leaning back against Miriam’s bent legs.
“I doubt that the point of this whole operation is about the data.” With a steadying breath, Esquibel centers herself and focuses on this last scenario. Saying it out loud will help fill in the gaps that have been torturing her for the last few nights. “It isn’t about Plexity. It’s about me. This is just how they are grooming me to join Baitgie’s little band of traitors. After I committed to this whole charade, they had me. See, the way it will go is I will go home. And some anonymous contact will send me footage and proof of me betraying this team. The spy, he wears a camera. He films me each time. It’s already happened. I am already compromised. They can ruin my life unless I join their efforts. Labor in secrecy my whole career. I’m probably not even supposed to know that Baitgie has also been turned. But this is how they will get me. And I am useless to them if I remain out here. So they will come get me.”
“And maybe it’s just a little bit of column A…” Triquet holds up one hand, then the other, “…and a bit of column B. The Plexity data will be useful to whatever their own mad scientists are cooking up, and you’d also be a valuable asset for them.”
Now Mandy rolls back, putting a hand to her shoulder, and looks at Esquibel. “Valuable.” The word holds no weight. Mandy’s eyes are unreadable. “What are you going to do now, Skeebee?”
Esquibel shrugs at Mandy, sad. “I knew that espionage was going to ruin my life, but I didn’t realize how quickly or… fully. I swear to you all I had no idea at the… depths of this. I am sorry, Mandy. I hoped we could somehow continue this wonderful love affair that we have here, but… I am so sorry you got shot. I am so so sorry. You deserve better. Better than me. You deserve safety.”
“I guess I appreciate the apology. Or something.” Mandy hates this. The intruding bullet, dividing them from each other. In her heart she can’t blame Esquibel. The intense woman has always been larger than life. She operates under a whole different set of rules. Things like this always happen to her. Of course the Americans and Chinese are fighting over her. But still. This is a hell of a way to get dumped.
In the silence, Pradeep quietly asks, “Flavia. That flash. Was it just a light or did you actually take a picture?”
“Oh. Ehhh…” Flavia frowns, instantly upset with herself for not thinking of this. “Yes. Here. But they are too far away.”
“Is there anything,” Pradeep continues, “that might identify the spy as belonging to one country or another?”
Flavia zooms in on the two figures. Esquibel is on the ground. The spy crouches over her, legs spread, pistol out. His black suit is featureless, nearly undetectable against the darkness behind him. “No. No… You can’t even see his face. No details…” She searches in vain and then finally shrugs, giving up. “It is a useless picture.”
“Well. In a sense.” Pradeep rises, joining Flavia beside Mandy. “We know that this image can’t identify him. But does he know it?”
“And more importantly,” Triquet adds, “do his bosses know it?”
“Exactly.” Pradeep takes Flavia’s phone and examines the image himself. “Esquibel. You fell awkwardly. Maybe twisted your ankle? It looks quite bad.”
“It is fine.”
“Yes, so our spy has retreated to his base, where he must contact his superiors and tell them… what?”
Maahjabeen answers. “That we all know about him now and one of us took a picture.”
“Which will put him in very bad trouble,” Pradeep continues. “What kind of reaction do you think his commanding officer might have to that news, Esquibel?”
“Oh, fury. I am quite certain.” Esquibel considers the issue. “The Chinese are all about saving face, even in the PLA. It’s kind of… known. Different military cultures. They will almost always double down and try to save the mission before his commander has to report the failure to his own superiors. Yes, Pradeep. You are right. Our spy may come back with a vengeance. Take everything we have at gunpoint. The hard drives, everything.”
“No!” This stirs Alonso and he heaves himself up to address them all. “He cannot have it. I would die to defend it.”
“You might just. He might get orders to secure Flavia’s phone and kill the witnesses, yeh?” Katrina asks, miserable.
Esquibel scowls. “He… might. I just wish I knew why they are doing what they are doing. Then we would be able to make a plan. But we will never know.” She shivers, thinking of how easily the Chinese spy put slips of paper beneath her shirt as she slept. Twice. Esquibel won’t sleep well these last few nights, maybe ever again. “I think it would be best to retreat to the sub, someplace that only has single doors that can be defended.”
“Exactly,” Flavia agrees. “Doors and walls and furniture.”
“You’re talking about right now, aren’t you?” Katrina groans.
Esquibel tries to calculate it. “Well, if his base is in Ussiaxan, then we know he can’t get there in under an hour, and that’s during the day. It took us at least that long. So it will be at minimum two hours before he can return here. Add time for him to relay how he failed and to receive new orders… It’s currently 3:19 am…” Her frowning face is illuminated by her phone’s screen as she consults the time. “I think we will be safe until dawn. But we must expect him after that.”
“What if he has friends?”Flavia asks. “More spies?”
“What if he brings the whole Ussiaxan village?” Jay adds.
“No,” Esquibel and Katrina say at the same time. Then Esquibel continues. “They are looking for the fox, remember? According to the Russian we met, nothing is more important to them.”
“Yes…” Alonso now recalls that Esquibel, Katrina, and Mandy had returned in the dark after a long absence with Jidadaa and Xaanach. “I never heard the details of this. We were too busy moving back here. And you were gone all day and into the night. In a field, you met a Russian… what, soldier?”
“No,” Katrina answers with a sigh. “He was a scientist like us. He mentioned some technical university when he was raving. I didn’t recognize it. I think it was in the east, like Vladivostok area.”
“He… was?” Alonso asks.
Esquibel nods once, curt. “He did not survive. Sepsis. But I was able to take away the pain at least.”
“Who killed him?” Pradeep wonders.
Esquibel shakes her head. “We couldn’t tell. The original injury was… well, an autopsy could shed some light but I couldn’t tell. His ribs had splintered and punctured a lung. But we don’t know if…”
“It could have been a boar,” Katrina lists, “or a bad fall in the woods or maybe the Thunderbirds just got sick of him. Maybe he asked the wrong questions. Their like representative there didn’t seem too upset when the bloke died. He just took back a necklace they’d given him and vanished.”
“What kind of scientist?” Flavia asks.
“His name was Viktor. He didn’t say. But I got the impression…” Katrina consults Esquibel with a glance, “something in the medical field. Not a doctor or a nurse but…”
Esquibel shakes her head no in agreement. “No, but maybe a technician. If he had been a real medical professional he would have done more to combat his infection. But he just… laid there. As far as we could tell he had only been in his sleeping bag smoking cigarettes for a week or more.”
“Waiting for his friends to find him.” Katrina shakes her head at the sad memory. “I bet those Russians who scared us off the beach were sent to find him. But they couldn’t find the way in.”
“Yes,” Maahjabeen agrees, “the Russians must enter where the Japanese did, up the west cliffs somehow. Maybe that message was for him, written in the sand.”
“He wasn’t waiting for his friends. He was waiting for the end.” Mandy’s voice is a spidery rasp. It makes them all fall silent. “He told us all about the foxes, Alonso. He said it’s all about the babies and where they go. He was like fixated.”
“Yes, Jidadaa has already told us this.” Alonso is sad to hear about the man’s loss. “What a waste. He gave his life for them.”
“But he told us…” Mandy sits up with effort, accepting help from both Katrina and Esquibel. “The Russians have figured out that to control Lisica you need to control the foxes. It’s their religion. It’s their whole culture. Lisica. The island isn’t just named after foxes.”
Mandy looks at both Katrina and Esquibel, who scowls. But it is the doctor who eventually continues. “He said, no he raved, that the foxes are actually in charge here. That they rule Lisica.”
“He wasn’t raving,” Katrina corrects her quietly.
“He was raving the entire time. Just because he had moments of lucidity,” Esquibel retorts, “doesn’t mean what he said was true. It is classic paranoid fever dream material. Animals don’t govern islands, especially ones with hundreds of people on them.”
“The foxes… are in charge.” Miriam knows the statement is preposterous but it still resonates within her. “Don’t know why, love, but that actually answers a whole host of—”
“Are you totally insane?” The amount of scorn dripping from Flavia’s words is insulting. “When did scientists start to believe such fairy tales?”
“I didn’t say I believed anything,” Miriam snaps at her. “I’m just talking in terms of models. We’ve had incomplete data about this subject for eight bloody weeks. But if you plug in these possible factors then all of a sudden our inscrutable villagers might start to make a lot more sense. Remember when you were arguing with the Mayor, Esquibel, about the placement of pine camp? It was Morska Vidra’s fox that chose our spot. Once he sniffed it out they were suddenly all fine with it. It was his fox who originally gave his blessing to us in the mouth of the cave, which let the villagers first talk to us. It was his fox…”
Flavia stands, waving her arms to interrupt Miriam. “Okay, fine. Fine. The people have put their pets in charge. So what? What does any of that have to do with us?”
In the silence, Jay suddenly perks his ears. “Yo yo yo. Someone coming. Oh, shit. We waited too long and now…” He searches helplessly for a weapon, for cover in the open meadow.
They all stand. Esquibel reaches for her satchel as the figure steps stiffly from the darkness into the light.
“Amy!” Alonso’s shout of joy is ragged with shock.
She stands at the edge of the firelight, blinking at them. Amy is gaunt, her eyes hollow. She is covered with dirt and bits of moss, as if she’s been buried beneath the forest floor these last five days.
They surround her, embracing her, murmuring and kissing her, picking debris from her hair.
“Careful. Careful.” Amy shields herself from those who want to squeeze her tight. She spins out of Pradeep’s embrace and clutches at her breastbone. Turning back, she reveals the fox kit the vixen had prematurely birthed then rejected. It has grown in the last couple days, nearly doubling in size, but it’s still sightless, an elongated worm with just the barest wisp of white hairs starting to sprout. It wriggles weakly in Amy’s cupped hands. “My little premie baby. This one was just the first. But it’s done now. Eleven in all. It’s finally over. They all survived. And mama is resting.”
Ξ
“The name of the man Maureen Dowerd fell in love with is not kept here. The soldiers showed little interest in learning any of the local languages or customs. They only called him Shanno. So it will only be among the Lisicans that his full story is known.” Triquet lectures all the others, crammed together on the bunks in the upper deck ward room of the sub. “But, well, if you’ll pardon the artistic license, I think this tale needs to be told from the heart. I’ll keep my assumptions and leaps of logic to a minimum here, but here’s what we now know…” Triquet takes a deep breath to place themself back in time, among the crisp collars and nicotine stains and upright posture of 1959. “This boat’s name is the USS Sunfish, an IXSS unclassified Tench-class sub built for intelligence gathering missions in the Pacific after the war. Its existence isn’t recorded anywhere. What we have finally uncovered is a crime of passion.”
“I mean… haven’t we known that already for a long while?” Flavia addresses the room, frowning.
Triquet nods. “That the colonel killed her, yes. Or had her killed. And he hunted Shanno and the child but never seemed to find them. It was Shanno’s own people who eventually killed him, right, Katrina? That’s what you said the head of the Thunderbirds told you. That it was the Ussiaxan. The people without a fox. And that they ‘caused Maureen to be killed.’ Which is pretty much the last puzzle that needed to be solved. That’s the part that took forever. But the collected records of Staff Sergeant Boren really bring the whole thing to life. It was the night of December 12th, 1959. He wrote it in a letter to his brother that he never sent. He says the Colonel ‘cracked like a bad egg. And the diesel shovel ran all day. The men were not happy.’”
Flavia shakes her head, displeased. “What does that mean? Ingles dug his fiancee’s grave? With a diesel shovel? Isn’t that just basically like a bulldozer? Why would it take him all day?”
“He wasn’t burying a body…” Pradeep realizes.
“He was burying a sub. Boren’s schedule for the day shows all standard activities were canceled or moved, even meals. And the next day things had shifted again. To finish the job. Or recovery. Seems like it was a real mad dash. A reckless decision.”
“To plug the hole.” Maahjabeen looks at Esquibel. “Common military instinct, apparently. That was the tunnel to the interior, right there at the top of the beach.”
“Exactly, exactly…” Triquet croons. They fall into character, the tormented jilted lover. “Ingles loses his mind. ‘If I can’t have her, no one can. These damn natives cause more trouble than they’re worth!’ And in his wild fury he orders his crew to put the cork in the bottle, leaving Maureen in the interior with her new man.”
“Too bad they didn’t know about all the other tunnels,” Jay chuckles. “That must have messed with his head when she popped right back out after all his work.”
“No, there were no other tunnels in those days. I don’t think…” Triquet shrugs. “This is where we would have to guess. But I figure all those other tunnels we get lost in underground here were dug in reaction to the sub taking away the villagers’ path to the beach. They tried a million different directions and only a few actually made it all the way through the cliffs.”
Maahjabeen waves at the ground beneath them. “But what about the channel underneath and all the concrete leading to the sea cave? The… the… what is the word?”
“The culvert,” Miriam offers.
“Yes, was that already there?”
Triquet shrugs. “I think it wasn’t. I think the culvert and sea cave were probably developed later. But I might be wrong. There are layers here. I think the sub got dug in and then they just kind of built all these things around it. Then they cut the conning tower off and fully buried it when it was time to change leadership, so they wouldn’t have to answer any tough questions, I expect. They built the bunker over it in 1961, the year Ingles left.”
Alonso chuckles. “We wracked our brains so hard trying to figure out why the Americans would bury a sub down here. We thought of so many like tactical and geopolitical reasons. But in the end it was all because of a broken heart.”
“And racism,” Triquet agrees. “And isolationism. All the normal human impulses. But I keep coming back to the phrase ‘they caused Maureen to be killed,’ instead of the Ussiaxan killing her. And what I’m pretty sure that means is that they were the ones who revealed Maureen’s infidelity to the colonel. It was a blow to the back of the head that ended her life. Behind the ear. She didn’t see it coming. She may not have known it was coming.”
“You’re saying,” Esquibel asks, “that he caught them while they were having sex?”
“Perhaps. Or maybe leaning over a crib. The baby’s been born. The baby who grew up to be Yesiniy, the old woman who now lives next to the Mayor. She’s obviously not his, not with that hair. It’s when Ingles discovers Maureen’s secret that he kills her. Hides her body in that grave in the woods. Leaves without saying a single goddamn word about it to anybody. Total monster if you ask me.”
“He never understood…” It’s the first time Amy’s spoken since they’ve set up in the sub. Her focus has been almost entirely on her infant fox, coaxing it to drink some of the powdered milk she has reconstituted. Now she shakes her head in sorrow at the tragic myopia the soldiers and sailors had. They never explored the interior of the island. They never saw its astounding life, never understood the secrets hidden in its green heart. “Poor man. Such a sad way to exist. Just so rigid. Sometimes I wonder how my ancestors were able to make it through a day.”
“I mean…” Flavia shrugs, “people still kill people for cheating today. It is not very different.”
“It’s not that. It’s…” Amy shakes her head, no words for what she now knows. “Postwar culture was just so monolithic. You know what I mean. We can hardly even watch their movies any more. Listen to their music. It’s not that it was just simple, it was… inert. Like everything they did was about enforcing some unnatural social norm or another. They were so busy doing all that they couldn’t hear the trees singing.”
“And you do?” Esquibel has given Amy a wellness check, which she satisfactorily passed, but that only indicates the health of her body. What her mind must have endured for the past five days has obviously left some indelible mark on her. It reminds Esquibel of the hallucinatory psychosis surrounding some new mothers’ births. What is it about the process of delivering infants that tears the fabric of reality for so many people?
Amy shrugs. “I got deep in the forest’s rhythms, I can tell you that much. And that vixen, she was just such a… vixen. Now I know why the word has the connotations it does.”
“What connotations?” Miriam asks, mock offended. “You’re the one who first started calling me Vixen back in the 90s.”
“Yeah, when you were being naughty,” Amy laughs. “I never thought an animal could be so controlling. It’s all somehow in their ears. The way they tilt and move them is so expressive. Like a lady with her fan. The idea that they run the island makes all the sense in the world to me now. She’s just got so many demands.”
“So, Triquet,” Alonso asks, “are you finished? Are these your final findings on this subject?”
“Final? Well, no. But it’s where I’m at now and I think most of the major questions have been answered. I’ll hand over my research to the authorities when we get back and see if they want to make anything of it.”
Esquibel nods. “They should. If only that an unregistered woman somehow got on their top secret island for a couple years and they never knew.” She frowns, watching Triquet duck through the hatch leading deeper into the sub. They return by the time she ends her sentence, arms full of bottles. “Now what? What is that?”
Triquet smiles wolfishly. “The last thing I have to share this morning. Who wants a shot of Bushmills in their oatmeal?”
Ξ
“Take my hand.” Pradeep holds his out at the threshold of the sea cave’s door. Maahjabeen giggles and grabs it. He pulls on her and she gives out a little yelp, then collapses into his arms. He swings her up and carries her through like a bride. “Welcome home, my love.” He kisses her, or at least tries to. But they are both laughing too hard and their teeth clack on contact.
He stumbles when he enters the cave and his grunt is met by a series of heavy splashes in the water. They both gasp and whip their heads around, to spy the last of the sea lions dropping from their perches on the shelves of the cave.
Only a few remain, watching the intruders with shining black orbs. Other heads surface, their curiosity getting the better of them. Pradeep and Maahjabeen remain still and quiet, frozen in an awkward fall, hands braced against the stone floor, bodies twisted. Finally one of the closer sea lion mothers barks at them, an urgent plaintive bellow that echoes from the walls and water. The call is taken up by a few others and soon more heads have emerged to join the chorus. It is a deafening sound, hurting Maahjabeen’s ears. She finally shifts, rolling onto her side so that she can plug her ears with her fingers. An urgent glance to the back wall shows that Firewater and Aziz are still safely stacked there.
The sea lions subside, mollified, and hump their way back onto the shelves. Pradeep frowns at their behavior. “They are awful quick to accept us. I was afraid that we’d scared them off entirely. But they’re already back out of the water…”
“Because something in the water scares them even more.”
“Your orcas.”
Maahjabeen smiles fiercely in agreement.
“Fantastic. Remember the carcass we found here the first time?”
“You are so romantic.” She cups his face, only half-joking. There are so many sea lions in here she can smell them. Probably sixty or more, and all crowding her favorite spots in the cave. She rolls to her feet and one of the distant sea lions takes up the alarm again, but this time none of them join her. She subsides after one of the larger males croaks, a decision having been made. “Yes, papa. I would risk the two skinny little humans instead of the pod of orcas as well. Wise choice.”
Pradeep is a bit spooked by the lustful growl in Maahjabeen’s voice. He notes the gleam in her heavy-lidded eyes. Her stance. “What has gotten into you? You look like a predator too.”
“Oh?” Maahjabeen would reflexively deny it but she sees no reason to. The pulsing heat racing through her limbs proves it. Yes, how fine it must be to live as a black and white torpedo with fangs. To have these endless oceans as a playground, through which you can rocket faster than anyone. To snare a wriggling bit of meat, plucking it right from the water and tearing it open… She grabs for the next best thing, hauling Pradeep close and kissing him wetly, pressing herself against him.
“This is weird…” is all Pradeep manages to say before she is atop him, smothering all further protests.
After she collapses, shuddering above him, they hold each other tight. Maahjabeen opens her eyes, the fireworks having passed and the odd refractory post-coital thoughts drifting through her. She is shocked to find a juvenile male sea lion on the stone floor of their own side of the cave, not more than two meters away. He bobs his tapered head, nose alive to their rich scents. She laughs at him.
Pradeep lifts his head. “What are you…? Ah. Yes. Weird. How long has he been there?”
“Long enough to learn things, eh, Mahboub?” She settles once more, head on Pradeep’s shoulder. The young sea lion still keeps his distance, and his head keeps bobbing. “So cute.” She loves the glistening intelligence in this creature’s eyes. “What a shame they taste so good. It is like hunting the deer, eh?”
“Okay now you are identifying with the orcas to a disturbing degree. I have worked with sea lions for years but I don’t think I have ever once wondered how they taste.”
“Hot. And juicy.” She kisses him and rolls away, sitting up. “I want to see if my clan are out there.” She stands wearing only a sports bra and shoes. Relishing the sea air on her naked skin she picks her way along the left wall of the cavern toward the next open grottoes where they built and then demolished their concrete buildings. Maahjabeen feels luxurious, a kind of fullness she has never before experienced. For perhaps the first time in her life she wants to walk around naked, in the most private place in the whole world, with nobody’s eyes on her except her own true love. And dozens of these furry, fatty snacks.
“Careful.” Pradeep scrambles to his feet, his shorts around his ankles. He pulls them up and holds out a useless cautionary hand. Maahjabeen steps toward a cluster of the resting pinnipeds. Can they tell how much she is on the side of their hunters? “Don’t get between them and the water.”
“But I just want to see…” Maahjabeen cranes her neck past their bodies. She edges forward and one of the nursing mothers lifts her head. “Oh, look, Pradeep! The baby is so precious!”
“Do you think you could get some of that milk for Amy’s fox?”
“Ehh…” Maahjabeen and the sea lion stare at each other. “As Salaam Alaikum.” She bows a bit and tries a close-lipped smile.
The sea lions all start barking again. But it isn’t because of her. She can see a tall dorsal fin racing in, a bow wave building before it. Then the orca rises from the water, mouth gaping, and snaps at the edge of the platform across from Maahjabeen. She cries out in pleasure, making eye contact with the magnificent fellow before he pulls back into the water, having missed his catch.
The sea lions at her feet surge against the back wall, caterwauling their terror, as the orca slowly swims the circuit of the cave. On the platforms in the center of the water, one sea lion is pushed to the edge. She falls in and the killer whale surges toward the spot.
Neither come up. A long minute passes. The orca is gone.
Maahjabeen finally drops her eyes from the last spot she saw the sinking fin. On the stone floor before her is a white splash, a mess of milk where the infant was nursing. She takes off her shoe and sock and soaks the fabric in the puddle. “Look, Pradeep! I got some milk after all!”
“Ha. What a fox this will be.” He shakes his head in wonder at the foreign DNA they are feeding Amy’s kit. “First boar milk, then powdered cow milk, now sea lion milk. It sounds like a superhero origin story. The fox who became a legend.”
Maahjabeen draws a sharp breath, a deep insight lancing her. “The orcas. The foxes. The foxes rule the land here and all the people on it. But my orcas, Mahboub. They are the rulers in the same way of the sea. Remember how much trouble everyone had about how the orcas led us to the old shaman? They are shaping what happens here as much as Amy’s foxes ever did.”
Chapter 50 – In The Dirt
December 9, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
50 – In The Dirt
Amy disentangles herself from the forest and stumbles out into the clearing. It’s been days. She hasn’t eaten or slept or even really looked up in that entire time.
Now she’s starving.
But where is she? At the edge of a grove of incense cedar and sugar pines, a nearly alpine environment. Facing southwest to judge from the light behind the clouds. The day after a big storm that she only dimly recalls… Amy opens a grimy hand before her, needing food and shelter. Where is everyone else?
She opens her mouth and a ragged moan emerges. Not what she expected. Amy expected words. But what kind of words? She has gotten by without words for days now. What does she need to say?
Shambling forward, she has no energy left in her limbs. Amy is spent, as if she’s the one giving birth.
Her vision swims. The land tilts like a pitching sea. She reaches out to the rough bark of a pine to steady herself.
Eyes watch her. Beady eyes. Familiar. But not the fox she’s been attending. This is another. Amy opens her mouth again. “Lisica.”
The fox chirps and bounds ahead, leading her from this place.
Amy shuffles after.
Moments later she finds herself approaching a small, level clearing. Morska Vidra is here, collecting limbs and bark in piles. He works with simple efficiency, stripping the logs and pulling the bark from the wood. He doesn’t look up when she arrives until his fox interrupts him.
Amy and Morska Vidra stare at each other for a long moment. Finally she collapses to the ground, leaning back against a rotting log. The old man only watches her. Finally he goes back to what he was doing, turning his back on her as if she isn’t even there.
Amy watches him, exhaustion keeping her head empty of thought. Finally, his fox nudges her fingertips with his cold nose. She looks down. The little creature has dragged a leaf-wrapped bundle to her. Some of Morska Vidra’s own food? Yes, a couple knobs of fungus wrapped in aromatic leaves. She nibbles at one.
Ha. Chanterelles. Starving in style, she is.
“Thank you…” Amy croaks, nodding at the fox. She looks deeply at the small mammal for the first time, able to now distinguish this fox from the one she’s been helping. This fellow is sleek and handsome compared to the distended belly and matted fur of the vixen. And he has a very… intense look in his eye. Is that the word? More intentional, rather than intense. There is a will behind those glittering black orbs, a busy mind with a long to-do list.
“She…” Amy addresses Morska Vidra, trailing off after just the first word. But he can tell she wants to say more so with a glance over his shoulder he encourages her.
She marshals her strength and tries again. “She… isn’t ready yet. To give birth.”
Morska Vidra says something philosophical to the treetops. Then he tosses the branch he holds onto a pile and approaches Amy. With stirring words, he tells her that her work isn’t done yet. That must be what he means, isn’t it?
Amy struggles to her feet, to indicate her own self-reliance. Show Morska Vidra who he’s dealing with. All that strength she normally dislikes has come in handy over the last few days. But he is still not on her side, it’s plain to see. And she’s wavering again. Perhaps she needs to give him a proper Bontiik before she can—
Morska Vidra barks at her, like a coach enouraging a runner to kick through the finish line. He grabs her roughly, his hand twisting her clothes at her belt buckle, pinching her skin. He pulls her close.
Morska Vidra continues, slamming the length of her body against his own in a rhythmic chant. His eyes snap with vitality. She can do nothing but hang on, gasping with each collision. He leans in and blows a thin stream of air into Amy’s open mouth.
She is helpless in his grasp. But she doesn’t tear herself away. Amy can tell it’s all done for her benefit. It doesn’t feel like assault. It is more intimate than sex, mixing their breaths like this, having him shake her so hard it’s like he’s trying to knock the dirt off the roots of this old weed he’s pulled up. But it’s working. His vitality is spreading into her.
The fox barks cheerily from her rotten log. Amy stares deep into Morska Vidra’s eyes. Ahh. She understands now. This was the last piece of the puzzle she needed to find. Now she can heal the vixen and let her give birth in peace. A palpable life force washes through this landscape. Not easily accessed, but now that she’s broken through she can feel it everywhere. She can hear the plants talking.
This is what the mama fox needed. Not her surgical procedures, but this greater aid, this appeal to the island itself. Amy has finally found the version of Shinto that Lisica practices, here in this old man’s embrace. He has shaken the modernity right out of her. She can hear the old music again.
“I have to… get back.” Amy finally steps away from Morska Vidra, dropping her eyes. “Thank you, master.” She reflexively bows deeply, something she hasn’t done in decades. But it sure seems fitting here. She turns to the fox, who watches her with bright eyes. “And you’re the daddy, aren’t you?” Amy scritches him behind the ears. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep her safe.”
Ξ
Pradeep stands on a green hillock searching the hillside. A brief shower sheds water onto him, then passes. He hardly feels it.
And then it happens. The hours he’s spent visualizing her form materializing from behind the trees actually occurs, just as he thought it would. At first, he doubts what he sees because he’s already seen it with his heart so many times already. Her blue coat and black headscarf. Her white shoes.
Then Maahjabeen sees Pradeep. A sob bursts from her and now she’s running down the slope to him, arms out.
He opens his own arms in wonder, striding toward her. Nobody has ever loved him like this. He is speechless. She slams against him, her heat and heft and heart all hitting him solidly in the chest. “Nobody…” He needs to tell her. But instead she covers his mouth with hers in a kiss. She drags at him, pulling him so fiercely close their teeth cut their lips. They taste each other’s blood and tears.
“What did you do?” He wraps her tight and asks the air behind her. “How did you rescue me?”
“It wasn’t me,” Maahjabeen answers, turning them so he can see the figure waiting at the edge of the woods. “She did it all.”
“Is that a child? Who is that?”
“Her name is Xaanach.” The little girl stands doubtfully, nearly shy, beside a thicket, plucking at one of the leaves. But she watches the two lovers with a sullen intensity.
“Ah! She’s the one who led Miriam and Mandy to Jay and me. And didn’t she rescue Flavia?”
“Oh, I think you’re right.” Maahjabeen kisses him again, unable to stop. “She led me to Wetchie-ghuy’s hut but she wouldn’t let me go in. Maybe I was just there to give her the courage to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Release your spirit.”
“Yeah, Katrina said you went…” Pradeep searches for the way to say this. “You thought you could get back from Wetchie-ghuy…?”
Maahjabeen pulls back and makes a gesture with her hands, of one shooting up out of the other and spreading into a flower. “This is the gesture Xaanach kept using after we ran away. And she cast a clay jar into the bushes. That’s where he kept it.”
Pradeep shakes his head in disbelief. “Strangest thing. It did feel very much like something essential within me was missing. And now it’s back. But I don’t know… In hindsight it seems very silly, the idea that he could attack me on some mystical level. You know, Flavia thinks his drugs just wore off. And that’s all my—”
“Yes, Flavia is a fool.” Maahjabeen snorts.
“He did cast some kind of spell on me. But I don’t care what the answer is right now. I am just so glad to have my babi back.”
“Mahbub.”
They kiss for a long time, their hands roaming each other’s bodies, her fingers in his hair. After a timeless span they break apart to find that Xaanach has drawn close and waits at their elbows, studying their intimacy.
“Oh, hello.” Pradeep smiles at the child. She is a creature of the wilderness, with mossy bits of forest stuck in her hair and hanging from her neck and wrists. “Maahjabeen says it’s you I have to thank for my… my return to health. So thank you. I am glad that Wetchie-ghuy no longer has a hold on me.”
At the mention of Wetchie-ghuy, Xaanach eagerly crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue. Then she hisses, “Wetchie-ghuy. Nák. Wetchie-ghuy chán.”
Pradeep takes a deep breath. “It’s true. He did have his claim on me. But it’s gone now. That chain has snapped. You’ve made me free again. Thanks again. A million times.”
Maahjabeen allows herself to relax her fighting stance. She did it. She got Pradeep back. Now she can think of other things again. The sea. “Mahbub. Now that you are whole again. If you are up for it, we can transport the kayaks to the sea cave. Then you and I can live there. We still have ten days. Maybe nine. Just you and me.” She kisses him again.
Pradeep kisses her in return. “I want nothing more.”
Ξ
“Yes? What did you want to talk to me about?” Alonso looks at both Katrina and Esquibel, standing together but apart, turned away from each other with their arms folded. That’s not a good sign. And they asked him to leave pine camp to have this private discussion. What in the world is happening now?
“Please, Alonso. Have a seat.” Esquibel has rigged a small pier on the creek, jutting out a meter from the bank. “You can soak your feet in the cold water as we talk.”
“That does sound nice. But are we sure it won’t invite an attack from the bad guys across the water?”
“Well… In a sense… That is what we are here to discuss. Please, Doctor. Just let me help with your sandals and…”
“Ahh.” Alonso settles, the shock of the icy water robbing him of the dull pain. “You are an angel, Doctor Daine. Both of you. Angels straight from Heaven.” But halfway through his heartfelt statement he can tell it’s the wrong thing to say.
Esquibel steps back, a smile quivering on her lips.
“Are you going to tell him or should I?” Katrina hasn’t moved, still standing at a distance with her arms crossed.
“No.” The word is quick from Esquibel, accompanied by a raised hand and a half-step forward. What is it she doesn’t want Katrina to tell Alonso? “I… ehhh… Doctor Alonso, I wear many hats here.”
“Yes, Doctor Daine. We all do. And as far as I can tell, we’ve all done a pretty good job wearing them, in our many roles…”
“Including spy?” Katrina spits out the word.
“Spy…?” Alonso frowns.
“No, not spy,” Esquibel quickly corrects. “Not the way that you are thinking. More like hacker maybe. And I’m acting under direct orders from the good guys. I promise you. My orders come directly from Colonel Baitgie himself.”
“Yes, I know they do.” Alonso looks from one woman to the other. “So she is spying? On the Lisicans? What is the problem?”
Esquibel presses her mouth into a line and shakes her head. This is hard. “It is the Japanese.”
“Eh? From World War Two?” Alonso is surprised by the sudden turn in the conversation. He can’t make sense of any of this.
Esquibel only shakes her head no again.
Katrina prompts her. “She gave one of their spies a USB stick a few nights ago, didn’t you?”
“Wait, who?” Alonso stirs, turning from his contemplation of the creek’s dark currents to study both of their faces. Katrina is irate, Esquibel besieged. “What are you talking about?”
“The Japanese are our allies,” Esquibel explains. “There is no real danger in sharing…”
“Sharing what? What did you give them?”
Belatedly, Esquibel realizes Alonso will be far more upset about what was shared than with whom. She shrugs, trying to figure out a way to disarm this bomb before it’s too late.
But he is too smart to be forestalled. “Plexity?” His voice rises into a whine. But the second time he asks it ends in a roar. “Did you give them Plexity?”
“I—I…” Esquibel stammers, but Katrina cuts her off.
“She tried, but they got the original cast recording of Pal Joey instead. I could tell she was up to something. Stealing my USB stick to do it!”
Alonso struggles to his feet. “Explain yourself, Doctor. You—”
“Doctor Alonso, please don’t exercise yourself unduly.” Esquibel tries to get him to sit back down. “The water is good for your—”
“Don’t touch me! You tell me. Tell me what is happening here. Why do the Japanese want Plexity? What is in it for you? What does it mean for—for everything? Our mission, our safety.”
“We are safe. The mission is—”
Alonso explodes. “Just what the hell were you and Baitgie thinking, Esquibel? Coño fucking spy games on my watch. Why can’t the military ever do what they say they are going to do?”
“Everything is fine.” Esquibel tries to invest those words with as much confidence as she can muster. But it isn’t enough.
“No, it isn’t fine. Obviously. They asked for, what, the source code? And ended up with music tracks instead? So what will they do next? Give up? I doubt it. And where even are they?”
“I have it… under control.” Now Esquibel is starting to get irritated. She fights not to seethe at them. If she has to sit through yet one more moralizing civilian speech about how wicked and naughty the global military apparatus is she will scream.
Katrina laughs in bitter disbelief. “Why am I not reassured?”
“Who else knows? Anyone?” Alonso needs to manage this situation. Somehow. He needs to take control again.
“No…” Esquibel is once again too quick with that word. “I asked Katrina to be discreet.”
“She didn’t even want me telling you, Alonso.”
“I didn’t want her telling anyone! It had nothing to do with you, Alonso! It was specifically to limit the spread of this intelligence.”
“Yes, limiting the spread of intelligence. Doesn’t sound very much like what this mission is supposed to be about.” Alonso drags his hands down his face. “Esquibel! I trusted you! You and Baitgie! You are my partners! So tell me. All your secrets. You can’t—”
“Oh, she ain’t gonna do that.”
Esquibel pleads with them, hands out. “I can’t! I’m following orders here! I can’t share them! Not without authorization!”
“So. What do we do now? What will happen next?” Alonso scrubs his feet dry and puts on his sandals again, wheezing through the pain. He begins walking back to pine camp. He will need to tell Miriam, certainly. He can’t hide anything from her. And, well, really, all the others. None of them deserve to be kept in the dark when their careers and their lives are so plainly on the line here.
“Yeah, it’s not like the Japanese are going to give up, are they?” Katrina asks. “Come all the way across the ocean and leave with nothing but a rousing rendition of Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered. What’s going to be their next move?”
Esquibel falls silent. Neither of them know the Japanese have already come twice. They just think it was a single contact. No use in disabusing them of that notion now… She shakes her head and thinks. Yes. What will their next step be? “They will try to contact me again, I assume.”
“Well, maybe we can contact them first.” Alonso doesn’t like the idea of just waiting around for a Japanese spy to show up. They need to do something. And now that he has decided that, the rest of a plan starts to clarify in his mind. “I mean, the village across the water here…” He wheels back around, pointing at the far bank of the creek and the meadow beyond. “They are the ones who talked to the Japanese, no? So they’re still maybe talking to them, housing them, supporting their activities.”
Esquibel unhappily nods. This has occurred to her as well. “But those Ussiaxan villagers attack all the others, including us. I don’t know how to reach the Japanese. The last time, the first time, the agent didn’t contact me until…”
But Katrina’s restless brain has turned this problem on its side. “Wait a goddamn moment. I know what we can do, Alonso. I know how to find the Japanese.”
Ξ
Triquet unwraps their ankle and tests it. Yes… Better today. Still a little twingey, but probably able to bear their weight down the tunnels. It’s time they got back to the sub. And Flavia has agreed to go with them, for the sake of everyone’s safety. Considering how the day should go, Triquet might bring a little shift to wear in the muddy parts and then a real outfit in a bag once they get out. They don’t want to spend all day in a dirty fit.
Triquet fills a daypack and sticks with just a bit of eyeliner and lipstick. Then it’s a rice cake for breakfast and some hot water with lemon. But before Flavia finds them, Maahjabeen and Pradeep do.
“We heard this is where the tour starts?” Pradeep asks, deadpan.
“Oh! Are you lovebirds coming too?”
“We left the kayaks in the sub.” Maahjabeen peers past the edge of the camp, as if she could see through the cliffs to the sea below. “Got to get them out on the water. We should stow them in the sea cave. The big plan. So…”
“Jolly. And there’s Flavia. Good morning, doll. Let’s get a move on. The day wastes.”
Moments later the four of them are striding across the meadow, the dew soaking everything below the knees. Maahjabeen gives Triquet a speculative look. “What do you even hope to accomplish in the sub any more? I thought all your mysteries were solved.”
“Oh, honey, no.” Triquet giggles, thinking of the absolute mountain of artifacts and documents the sub holds. It could occupy them the rest of their life. “Not even close. For one thing, we still don’t know why they buried the gol-durned sub in the sand, do we? That would be a hoot. Knowing that. And I need to put together as good a snapshot of the collection here as possible. I’m going to have to develop quite the pitch. Welcome to my sub! Like my own personal archaeological Plexity, with lots of cross-referencing. How about you? How is your study of the great beyond coming?”
“I have done nothing. This is the first time Pradeep and I are both healthy in weeks. I haven’t seen the ocean in too long.”
They climb the trail and enter the village. Now, they are seen as somewhat normal fixtures and not even the village children break away from what they are doing to watch them. The researchers cross the village square in silence. Where Morska Vidra’s house used to be is now partially claimed by his neighbors. The remainder is a dark spot in the earth.
Descending the tunnel tree gives Triquet more trouble than they expected. They have to take it quite slow, and the tendons along the side of their foot are complaining loudly by the time they lower themself to the tunnel floor.
The mud passage is also less fun than normal and they not only get mud on everything but they injure their ankle further and hold everyone else up behind them. Groaning in pain, Triquet finally wins free to stand in the small chamber that has been dug beneath the sub. Where its hull plating has been removed lie the remains of Esquibel’s futile attempts to barricade it. Triquet will have to clean this mess up when they get a chance.
Ah, the sub! “Home sweet home.” Triquet trails their fingers along the steel walls, luxuriating in materials that have been manufactured. It’s been nothing but natural fibers for far too long.
“A roof. Aaahh…” Flavia releases a tension she didn’t know she held. The open sky always overhead is so… exposing. It exhausts you. “Civilization at last.”
“Where are the others?” Triquet realizes they haven’t seen Maahjabeen and Pradeep since the mud tunnel. “Did they not come this way?”
“Eh. No. Pradeep wanted to show his girlfriend a cave painting, he said. So they took a different tunnel. They will come down through the bunker and meet us from there.”
A few hundred meters behind them, Pradeep follows the twine, trying to remember the system of knots Miriam had made. It’s been weeks since he was in these particular passages. And it isn’t going too well. But as they’d watched Triquet squirm into the claustrophobic mud tunnel he had tried to think of alternative routes. Then he recalled the first thing he had seen underground.
These passages are short, rough and muddy, all linked together like a warren. Weaving through the maze reminds Pradeep of the mad flight with Jay through the dark last week. How has he found himself so quickly back underground? Ah, well. At least he knows where he is this time.
Maahjabeen bumps up against him, her eyes closed. She holds herself flutteringly still, like a hummingbird hovering in the air. This is not her place, deep underground. It is not her detour. She just needs to trust in her Mahbub. But that is easier said than done.
“See?” They eventually enter a small cavern with a high ceiling and Pradeep shines his light across a scintillating mosaic of shell and bone and paint. The Milky Way.
She blinks at the roof, her eyes slowly expanding with wonder. “Ahhh… It is so lovely.” Maahjabeen didn’t know what to expect but it wasn’t this. These villagers had seemed so artless. This is a colorful surprise. She reaches for the constellations close enough to touch, her fingers tracing the whorls of light.
“It makes me wonder…” Pradeep shakes his head. “What must their cosmology be like? Elsewhere in the world you see enough of the stars and galaxies at night to understand that it is the default night sky, yes? It is always there, only sometimes covered by clouds. Every society knows about outer space. But here? Maybe not. Something like ninety-four percent of your nights are under this marine layer. So you only see the stars on special nights. Do you even think they are always there? Or are the Lisicans convinced the stars only arrive once every two or three months?”
This shift in perspective is hard on Maahjabeen. She shakes her head, unwilling to grant the villagers such a deep and complex worldview. It is easier to think of them as ignorant savages for sure. Otherwise, she might have to think more deeply about what Wetchie-ghuy wanted with Pradeep’s soul. It is a notion that stuck itself in her brain as she followed Xaanach on the way to the shaman’s hut. Maahjabeen is usually not very good at seeing things from someone else’s point of view, but in a moment of insight she visualized the old shaman laboring by firelight to bring about some great work, the work of his entire life. And these foreigners have suddenly shown up, to give him the resources and opportunities he needs. Why, there’s so many more souls to collect! And yes, what he does stinks of the devil, and yes, bringing about his version of Lisica is probably the worst possible outcome, but still. The old man has a plan. What does Jidadaa call it? His prophet poem. In a moment of compassion or weakness or whatever it was, sneaking up to his dwelling Maahjabeen had felt a twinge of guilt for ruining his life’s work.
Before they leave, Pradeep takes photos of the cave painting. Then they pass through another small cavern that leads to a fissure in the cliff. In moments they’re outside. And it’s a mild day. The air is filled with salt and the regular sounds of the surf. Maahjabeen moans in contentment. “Oh, yes. Let us get the boats.”
Pradeep nods and forges ahead through brittle manzanita branches. It is so nice to see their old camp. It brings up a welter of unexpected emotions in him. This is where he nearly died (well, the first time) and also where he met the love of his life. It is the axis from which the rest of his entire life rotates, spinning outward in time. If he could, he’d fix up the bunker and live here forever.
And it would need a lot of fixing. They tiptoe through the open door, shadows in every corner. But a shaft of light displays the scattered fern fronds in the back corner and the raised trap door leading down to the sub.
Why is the trap door up? Alarm courses through Pradeep before he recalls that this is how Triquet rejoined them, days before. Nobody had been able to clean up the traces of their passage since. Now, once they retrieve the boats, Pradeep will make sure to cover their tracks once again.
It is the work of twenty minutes to do that and get the boats down to the water. Scouting their destination, they’d peeked over the edge of the giant redwood trunk across the beach first, to see if anyone’s Navy floated off the coast. But the horizon was clear.
Now, giggling in anticipation, they get the boats out onto the water. Maahjabeen seals Pradeep’s spray skirt and pushes him off with a kiss. After she joins him, gliding across the glassy surface of the lagoon, she playfully splashes him, just a few tiny droplets, and he yelps. “Remember when I made you roll?”
He grimaces at her. “I was quite sure you hated me, you know.”
Maahjabeen shrugs. “I hated everybody.”
She leads him out the mouth of the lagoon, hugging the outside of the breakers as Amy showed her. The sea is muted today. Safer. Its tempests are being tossed elsewhere. But they still need to dart across the gap in the surf at the base of the seastack. Soon they are paddling strongly up the island’s southeast coast, headed for the sanctuary of the sea cave.
But they never reach it.
As Maahjabeen leads Pradeep to the fold in the cliffs of its entrance, their way is blocked by a pod of killer whales.
Ξ
“Mandy dandy.” Katrina finds her out in the meadow, trying to figure out how to inflate her last weather balloon with the few remaining precious helium canisters she still has. This is hard. And if Mandy gets it wrong then it’s no balloon. And she has to go back to being useless. So she’s already crabby. And seeing Katrina does nothing to help her mood.
“Yes?” Mandy demands, exasperated. “What do you want?”
Katrina is taken aback. She has certainly seen this side of Mandy before, but this ire has never been directed at her. So she crouches helpfully beside Mandy and tries to read the instruction pamphlet over her shoulder. “Oh, balloons can be so frustrating. I did one of these for my nephew’s birthday party. You just need to—”
But Mandy plucks the pamphlet away. She turns on Katrina. “Can I help you?”
“Oh. You want to figure that out on your… Yeh. Well, I’ve just got a bit of air traffic control to discuss.” Katrina gestures at the drone’s hard case. “Worked out a flight plan but Esquibel said you were trying to get your balloon up and to make sure I didn’t get in your way. I’m sorry I’m in your way. I can… I mean, what’s the haps here, dude? Do you need a hand?”
“No.” Talked to Esquibel, did she? Mandy grabs a canister and screws the adapter onto it. Now she should be able to mate the adapter to the balloon’s bladder. But when she starts screwing it in she hears the hiss of escaping gas. “Ehhhh. Why is this so…? Fuck!”
“Nah, mate, you just got to press through. Super fast.” Katrina pulls the assembly from Mandy’s hands and quickly spins the canister until the threads seal. The hissing stops. “Like pumping up a bike.”
Mandy pulls the weather balloon back out of Katrina’s hands. “Thank you. Yes, I am too stupid to figure things out myself. You’re right.” She stands and stalks away, opening the hose valve that fills the balloon with helium. She hooks it into its harness, which is already tied down to their hundred and fifty meters of climbing rope. If she hadn’t snapped the steel cables the first time she had launched a balloon, she could put more instruments aboard. But because the rope itself is so heavy, she can only put up a minor suite. Not like she has that much gear left anyway. Almost all of it has been lost or damaged. Such a horrible clusterfuck of a meteorology mission. Mandy still feels Katrina’s eyes on her and annoyance makes her skin crawl. “What.”
“So I’m not like the most empathic person on the planet but, I mean, did I do something wrong? Are you mad at me?”
Mandy hates jealousy. It makes her helpless. And it strikes her at her core, making her question everything about herself. The specific sensation of it too is so unpleasant, all hot and suffocating and unreasonable. She can’t think with Katrina around, not when she is stealing Esquibel away right under her nose. Do they think she’s blind? No, just dumb. Mandy shakes her head and a bitter snort escapes. “You should know… Just so you know… Esquibel can’t ever hide anything from me. I can always tell when she has a secret. So I made her tell me.”
“Oh!” Katrina falls back, relieved. “You know? Oh, thank god. I thought I was going to have to deal with the Japanese all by myself. But if you already—”
“Wait. What? The Japanese?” What the hell does Katrina mean by that? “What do the Japanese have to do with anything?”
And now Katrina is instantly crestfallen. “Uhhh. Oh. I thought you said you… I mean, Esquibel said we couldn’t tell anyone so I didn’t want to initiate a… No. Fuck it. Alonso said we have to let everyone know. So here’s me, letting you know. I don’t care how Esquibel feels about it.”
“But… wait. The Japanese? I don’t care about that. Whatever it is. Esquibel has a secret. And she told you before she told me—”
“She didn’t tell me shit. Figured it out on my own. Caught her red-handed. Slipped her the USB stick but wiped all the Plexity data first.”
Mandy stares at Katrina in open-mouthed shock.
“So you didn’t know. Yeh. Esquibel is a spy, dude. And she’s done all she can to keep me from telling anyone. Are you…? I’m sorry. I can tell it’s a lot. It is a lot. So I was wondering. Maybe I can go first. Just a quick little recon mission across the creek. You can, like, take your time to digest this whole espionage situation and I’ll do my thing and be out of your hair by the time you’re ready. Deal?”
But Mandy still hasn’t closed her mouth. The shock resounds in her. This isn’t what she thought was happening. This isn’t it at all.
Katrina frowns. “What did you think this was about? Esquibel and me getting it on behind your back?” It starts as a joke, but by the time she finishes the question Katrina can tell that is exactly what Mandy feared. “Oh, Mandy dandy no…”
Mandy’s face crumples and she sags against Katrina. “I’m sorry. We’re both, it isn’t anyone’s fault it’s just we’re both so attracted to you… And when you both had a secret… that I couldn’t…”
“There there, my little poppet.” Katrina soothes Mandy and lets her hot tears flow. “What you and Esquibel have is so special. I’d never dare to put myself between…”
Mandy allows herself to be comforted. It feels so nice, being in Katrina’s arms. They fit so well together. But Mandy now knows the golden girl is not for her. Not when the price is her dearest Skeebee. “Thanks, Katrina. You’re so sweet. Sorry to drag you into… my crazy brain. I thought it was a love affair thing but it was really just… the Japanese? What does that even mean?”
“They’re spying on us here. Want Plexity data, I guess. And we realized they’re probably in the village across the way. That’s what the Dandawu told me. The Japanese used to visit the Ussiaxan. So I figured…” Katrina pulls the drone’s headset out of her backpack. “I’d maybe visit as well. See what the place looks like from the air.”
“Like Japanese, what, soldiers?”
“Spies. Operatives. Ninjas, as far as I know.”
Mandy only nods. Finally, she shakes off her many worries. “Okay. I mean, yeah. You can go first, Katrina dear. Sorry. I mean, this is my apology. For thinking mean things about you. We do your project first. And then, if it isn’t too much trouble, maybe you can help me with mine.”
“Good plan.” Katrina grins. “And no apology necessary. Being in a relationship is hard. I can’t seem to do it to save my life.”
Katrina opens the hard case and takes out the drone. Within moments it’s assembled and soon it’s aloft.
Now, where to send it? Its battery is full but that’s still less than twenty minutes of flying time. She’ll need to get lucky to find out anything really interesting in that time. And she’ll also need to be discreet. No buzzing people down game trails. Hopefully she can remain high enough they don’t even know she’s there at all.
The drone lifts into the sky. She sees the creek as a blue-black ribbon dividing the green meadow. Pine camp is so lush from above, with busy little figures doing their work under the trees. She can’t see the Keleptel village of Morska Vidra and Yesiniy from here. But she can maybe see some smoke from their fires.
On an impulse she follows the creek downstream. She wants to see if she can follow its course all the way to the waterfall. But she only gets a few hundred meters before the creek is entirely choked with deadfall. All the wreckage of every storm has collected here over the years, driving the creek underground. It must continue on under giant piles of molding logs in the dark, to spill out over the edge of the cliff somewhere further along. Ah, well. She doesn’t have any more time for this now.
She lifts even higher and returns to the far side of the meadow, spotting a narrow trail leading up to the north under the trees. Nudging the drone along, Katrina does her best to follow the path. But it swerves into the woods and is soon lost beneath the eaves. She swivels the drone around, to study the north horizon. A wide redwood-crowded ridge blocks the way, running east to west. She lifts the drone over it to see what she can find on its far side.
And there it is. Ussiaxan. A splendid village, three times the size of Keleptel. Not that far after all, just hidden on the far side of this wooded ridge. Smoke rises from log houses that are also larger and a little more refined than the huts they know. This entire village looks whole human development cycles ahead of all the others. Oh, great. The Ussiaxan are the overachievers of the island. They’ve gone and pissed off the smart ones. Not the best strategy.
There appears to be some animal husbandry going on here. Enclosed pens harbor pigs. A flutter of dozens of white wings in a small structure makes Katrina think of a dovecote. The village square is also more impressive, twice as big and lined with gray flagstones. As the drone soars overhead, one of the villagers enters the square and tilts his head up.
Oops. Too close. She doesn’t need to start a war here. She pulls up, away from the village, waiting until the man hurries away.
From this vantage she can see another stream that runs along the back of their village. Some of the houses have small jetties sticking out into it. She needs to remove the drone from the village airspace for a bit until they forget about it. Perhaps she should investigate if there’s anything upstream of where they dwell.
A clearing has been cut out of the woods here. On green grass stands a wooden building, of an older style than the log houses of the village and built with yet more refinement. Like a dilapidated cottage from a fairy tale, it stands alone in the woods, surrounded by tall pines at the edge of the stream’s banks.
Figures emerge. A tall woman and a short man. They are deep in dialogue and don’t look up. Katrina follows their progress toward the north side of town, and across a narrow bridge she had just thought was another of the jetties. Now they are on the stream’s near bank, between two yards.
“I need a parabolic microphone. Isn’t that what they’re called?”
“Like a spy microphone?” Mandy’s disinterest is clear.
“Yeh. Directional. Telescopic, baby. Not that I could understand what they’re saying. I wonder how divergent their language is from the village here? They’ve been apart like three or four generations now. Enough time to… Hey, hold on. Here’s someone we know. Hello, Lady Boss. Here’s a report from your, who are these two? The high priests? The top bureaucrats? Coming from the cottage in the woods. You know, the one across the stream. And they don’t agree on whatever it is. So they’re making you decide…”
They are small figures far below, their faces unreadable even at the furthest optical and digital zoom. But their hands are animated, all three of them. At least, that is a feature they still share with all other Lisicans.
Then another trio of figures moves across the footbridge and Katrina whistles. “Oh, fuck. So this is what this is all about.”
Her change in tone gets Mandy’s attention. She pulls herself out of her melancholy to study Katrina’s eager form, hidden behind the headset. “What? What is it?”
“They’ve got Sherman. These Ussiaxan villagers are parading Sherman through the yards and they’ve got like a collar around their neck. The Lady Boss and her like cabinet are arguing about what to do with them.”
“So what are they going to do?”
“These freaks, who knows? Might just make this Decapitate a Shaman Day. Wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. Or maybe they’ll cut some deal. Work together. That’s probably the dispute. Listen, Shirley. You can’t trust Sherman. You know it. I know it.”
“But on the other hand, Shirley,” Katrina puts on the man’s deeper voice. “Imagine what kind of power a shaman can bring to the fight. We could mop the whole island up, side to side! Think about it, Shirley. Just you and me. Ruling side by side…”
Mandy can’t help herself. A giggle escapes. “Is that really what they’re saying?”
“Something like it. I just really hope they don’t all find common cause. Because that would be bad for everyone else. We like that the Ussiaxan are isolationists. That is a very good thing and probably keeps a fair number of folks alive elsewhere. We don’t need them and Sherman mixing in the affairs of… Ehhh… This is when they’re giving Sherman the chance to respond. But I can’t see their face at this height. Just going to drop around a bit and…” Katrina physically ducks. “Oh, shit. They saw me. Oh, shit.”
“They did? Oh, god. What are you doing now?”
“Evasive maneuver time. Oh, shit. This place is going mad. Like an anthill. So many people. Like, like a couple hundred…? My god I had no idea there were so many here. Like on the whole island. And they can all see me. Oh fuck a duck. I’m so sorry! I thought it was quieter than—! Yikes! Oh my god. Nearly ran into a tree. Got to go up. Get out of here.”
“Yeah. Get out.”
Katrina rockets the drone up a couple hundred meters, until the village can be encompassed entirely by the camera’s frame. Here she hovers, seeing a crowd amass in the village square. They can’t see her at this height, can they? No way. She would be the tiniest speck. But still. No use upsetting them any more.
Katrina wings away back over the wooded ridge. She only gets a brief glimpse of the man atop a redwood platform hurling his spear at her as she passes by—the man who first saw her in the village square, as a matter of fact—before the drone is sent down in a spinning loop to crash on the slope in the dirt.
Chapter 49 – We’re Good
December 2, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
49 – We’re Good
It was a couple hours later that the roof blew off the hut. Near evening, with no light in the sky, the heavens detonated. It began with a great rushing through the far trees. Then a moment of dreadful silence, followed by a great screaming roar like a steam locomotive falling off a cliff. Trees cracked and splintered and fell. Then the wind hit the hut with concussive force and half the roof peeled away and vanished.
Now screams and whipping water fill the hut. Chaos. Figures dive across Pradeep, shielding him from falling pieces of wood. Jay and Maahjabeen lash him to the travois they’d kept him in. Then they grab the few things they can and, nearly blind and deaf, follow the others out into the battering cyclone before the entire hut collapses around them.
They all know to make their way to the cave. But the wind blasts over the northern ridges behind them and slaps them down into the mud, again and again. Trees groan and fall in every direction. A redwood lands on a hut on the far side of the village with an unbearable crash, shaking the ground.
Jay is nearly horizontal to the ground, clawing through the mud as the wind hits him with unbearable force. He drags the travois, Maahjabeen somewhere back behind controlling its tail.
He comes upon Alonso, crawling across the mud, eyes squeezed shut. Jay grabs at his coat and pulls him in the right direction.
Finally they find themselves in the cave mouth. It is already filling with floodwaters. But there is a high slope and shelf where the wooden and textile belongings of the villagers have been stowed. It should remain above nearly any amount of water. If that isn’t safe then nowhere is.
They pull themselves out of the water and up the slope. Their refuge is more of a side grotto, a low gallery of deep depressions worn away in the limestone band here.
Shuddering groans and vocalized shock are all they can utter as they each take up residency among the baskets and bundles of firewood and cooking pots. Here they huddle, watching the water below them rise and fill the tunnel leading into the cave and the shaft with the tilted tree. Now they’re trapped here. This flood effectively blocks them from descending any deeper.
The temperature tilts to near freezing. A shattering blast of hail hits the cliff wall outside and chunks of ice the size of blueberries skitter in. Then, as suddenly, the hailstorm stops.
“Dead,” Jay pronounces. “We’d be dead for sure if we were still out there.”
The winds swirl now, buffeting across the mouth of the cave with harmonic concussions. Between that and the water swirling down the interior, closing the tunnel like a valve, the air pressure beats at them and they all squeeze their eyes shut and cover their ears.
Then the rain returns, a downpour as dense as a waterfall. The water in the cave rises even higher, only four meters or so from where they perch. The storm comes from the northwest, which is right along the line of the village into the cave mouth. The ragged hole screams, as if the god of thunder plays it like a flute, and gouts of water slap against the floor. This lasts for heart-stopping minutes and the water rises even higher. Then it abates and the storm’s fury lessens.
They grasp each other tight, shivering, terrified by what they have just witnessed. Finally Esquibel does a head count with her phone’s light and a shaking hand. Yes. All ten of them. And five golden childs, hunkered in a corner closer to the cave mouth. But wait. Their masks have been removed.
“Iwikanu!” Katrina croaks, stumbling forward. One of the youths rises and holds his hand out to her. “The wind…” she explains to the others. “I guess this is finally when it blew the pollen away.”
“Oh, good,” Esquibel tries to muster sarcasm, but it only comes out as sincere. “I am glad they are human again.”
Flavia stands and holds out the pigskin bag to the former golden childs. She shines her own light into it, displaying the three uneaten but cooked steaks. She motions to them, offering the food.
One of the other youths smiles, teeth bright in the darkness, and lifts his own sack. They are evidently still provisioned.
“The villagers knew this would happen, didn’t they?” Katrina asks Iwikanu. “The… oh, what are they called? The Keleptel? Buggered straight off, didn’t they, gé? The Keleptel.” She has one hand dive through the other, of Morska Vidra and his people retreating through the tunnels. She tells her colleagues, “You use the interrogative suffix ‘gé?’ to ask a yes or no question.”
“Da,” Iwikanu answers. “Oni poshli na plyazh.”
“The beach?” Katrina exclaims. “All the way down there? In this weather? Or is that the only place where they know for a fact it won’t flood?” She translates the question into Russian.
“Da, da…” Iwikanu agrees. “Tam net vody.”
“No water, he says. I bet the cliffs protect it. So they’re all in the bunker, just chilling. Bloody brilliant. We just left the one place on the island where it’s actually safe to be in this storm.”
“Not just a storm,” Mandy corrects her. “Bomb cyclone. Some of the most violent events on the planet. But it might be over soon.”
“That was like a whole war’s full of bomb cyclones, honey.” Triquet has never seen anything like it.
“They have the best names.” Mandy’s voice quivers in the dark but her enthusiasm for the subject warms her. “Officially, explosive cyclogenesis. Bombogenesis. They almost always form over the sea and aren’t usually experienced on land. The baroclinic instability of the Northwest Pacific is pretty well known. Just, like, rarely actually lived through. This was only one of the many bomb events they must get out here, leaking east this time I guess away from the instability and hitting the island. The cliffs and the local humidity might have actually triggered the whole thing. And it got so cold for May. There must be some deep upwelling off Kamchatka right now. But it can’t last much longer this late in the season. Yeah. Listen. It’s already easing.”
They hear the wind and rain relent to gusting showers. But the water is no less, coursing across the entrance at their feet. Jay tries to peer through the cave mouth at the village outside but he doesn’t have the angle. He considers if the current is too strong to actually wade through. He extends a sandal into the brown water…
An iron grip seizes his arm. “Don’t.” It’s Miriam. “Flood like this will get worse before it gets better.”
“Yeah, but the last of the light in the sky is dying and I wanted to see if there’s any… Oh, well.” Jay gives up on the plan. Miriam’s right. That water is running too fast.
Maahjabeen leans back in the shadows so none may see the look on her face. She is cold and frightened, yes, but also prepared. Coiled for a counter-attack, she listens to the rain ease, knowing this might be her opportunity here.
She has known for days and now, even more so, these last few hours. It was after Katrina had told them all of what the golden man had shared with her that Maahjabeen had asked if they had talked about Pradeep at all and what could be done to save him. Katrina had leaned back against the blackened timbers of the hut beside her and said they had spoken about such matters only in regards to the shamans, and how they store the spirits they steal in clay jars on shelves in their homes.
Most of the unbelievers in the hut had laughed at the words but to Maahjabeen it sounded credible, like something an ancient Bedouin mystic would do, the kind of satanic witchcraft the Prophet first encountered in the desert and fought against. Yes, it is like a djinn in its lamp. Her Pradeep is bottled up, kept from her where one of the shamans hide him.
Katrina hadn’t asked the old man where they might find them. Not for lack of trying. Any attempts to draw a map or even discuss the island by landmarks had become hopelessly confused, she’d said. He couldn’t grasp any graphical or visual representations of the island at all. According to the Dandawu, the island is a poem.
Again, this makes sense to Maahjabeen in a way that it can’t to the others. Her entire life is shaped by verse. Of course the island is a poem. And once the Lisicans someday learn of the even greater poems of the Quran their lives will truly be saved.
So none of the researchers know where to find the shamans and their hidden shelves. But these Thunderbird youths probably do. Maahjabeen is counting on it. She’ll enlist one or more of them to lead her there so she can steal her lover’s soul right back.
But she can’t let the others know what she plans. They’d never let her go, especially Esquibel. So she must wait until she can slip away, probably right as this storm ends. Perhaps she can get Katrina’s friend to come with her. She said he’s good with a spear.
Ξ
Flavia and Mandy climb the cliff trail at dawn, still shivering and wet but determined not to spend another instant in that wretched cave after their long sleepless night. The strenuous activity warms them in the chill air. The dark cliffside is wreathed in fog and dashed intermittently with rain.
The trail is nearly gone, churned unrecognizable by the cyclone. Small trees and saplings lie across it, hampering their ascent. But soon they arrive at the first shelf above. It’s been a week or more since they were here and the lush meadow has erupted with thick bunches of grass that tower over their heads.
Mandy leads, parting the blades and stepping through to the cliff behind and the scramble to the top. Flavia is close behind. This is where they lost her to Wetchie-ghuy before and this time she is determined to stick right beside Mandy. It is why she came, to erase that bad memory and replace it with a better one.
They climb the fissure and arrive at the top. Where Wetchie-ghuy had crouched last time is nothing now but open sky. They are alone here, at the top of the island, clinging to the edge, the ocean everywhere, swallowing them in its embrace. Vertiginous, Flavia gasps. Sometimes she can forget just how isolated Lisica is. And then she has brain-breaking moments like these…
Mandy slips through the chute and scampers down the sloping face of the cliff leading to the edge, over which is nearly a kilometer drop down to rocks and surf. Mandy is moving much too fast for Flavia. But she forces herself to overcome her fear of heights and move faster. If she trips, there is still enough shallow slope here for her to tumble to a shrieking stop. She is still a good twenty meters from the edge.
Mandy cries out in dismay and hurries to the edge of the cliff on the far side of the concrete shaft. “Oh, drat! All gone…!” Not only her weather station but the platform of old wooden planks she’d affixed it to. Oh no. That thing had survived all the storms that came before. Was it worsening storms? Climate change? Probably. But also clamping a bulky weather station to it couldn’t have helped. Eek. She’ll have to tell Triquet she was responsible for the destruction of a historical site structure. They’ll be so mad at her.
Flavia follows Mandy slowly, stopping at the concrete lip of the shaft and peering down into darkness. “Can’t even see the bottom. But what was this whole thing for?”
“Oh, it was military so they probably had like guns up here. So they built a whole elevator or a lift or something. To like deliver all the ammo I guess.” She lifts her hands and drops them. “Flavia, I got none of that data! The whole station’s just gone! Every bit of it! Like all these broken components will wash up on the coast of Baja California in like two months. You know what? I should have put my address on them! Shit, I’m so stupid! Stupid stupid!”
It’s been a brutal week and Mandy can’t take any more right now. She crumples, hiding her face in her hands, hardly feeling Flavia’s sympathetic embrace. Mandy had gotten into meteorology to understand frightening and world-altering things like hurricanes and floods, so that she might better prepare for them and never be hurt by them. But actually living through one had shaken her to her control-freak core. The sheer power of that cyclone had turned her into a meaningless speck of life. A flea. She and all her friends could have been crushed and drowned and swept out to sea in an instant and the world would have carried on this morning just like nothing had happened. But that is unacceptable. Entirely. She can’t live in such a… crude thoughtless biological place. She has to somehow be more special than that, doesn’t she?
“There, there. We can figure out the data. I hate losing data.” Flavia soothes her, knowing that Mandy’s reaction is out of all proportion to a lost instrument or two. Yet after what they’ve been through, Flavia is surprised that Mandy hasn’t fallen apart entirely. “Poor little bambina. What is it, eh?”
Mandy allows her face to be drawn upward. She blinks her tears away and smiles gratefully at Flavia. “Oh, just a little thing I think they call ego death. That’s all. How about you?”
“I am fine. Counting down the days now. Yes. We are at eleven. Which is a prime number, indivisible. An important day to maths nerds like me. See, every day that comes until seven will be able to be further broken down. Ten days left? Why, we just have to live through five days twice. That’s two work weeks. No trouble. Nine days? That’s three days, three times. Easy. Eight? A month of weekends. Then seven. And seven feels like a lot again because you can’t divide it. A whole week. You see?”
Mandy nods. She likes systems like this. “Okay, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is… I mean, I shouldn’t want to leave this island at all.”
“What are you talking about? That is crazy. Of course everyone wants to leave. This place is trying to kill us.”
“I study weather. That’s my entire career. This is, like… I mean this spot is the nursery for some of the biggest storms on the planet. Shouldn’t I want to be here, experiencing all this weather? It’s like if you woke up one day and realized all those numbers you’ve been studying were an earth-shattering force that could easily kill you. Would you still study them?”
“But mathematics are an earth-shattering force that can easily kill me. What do you think like the entire Industrial Age was?”
“You know what I mean. I’m—I’m just frightened and I want to go home. I don’t want to live through any more catastrophes.”
“You and me both, Mandy. You and me both.”
Ξ
Miriam directs Jay and Katrina and Alonso to bring the pieces of the destroyed village to the central square. They were going to just pass through on their way back to pine camp but the devastation here can’t be ignored.
“I don’t know, Doctor Truitt…” Jay hangs back, fishing in his shirt pocket for his rolling papers and lighter. “I bet we mess it up even more somehow. Like there’s probably a whole system. They probably know which piece of wood belongs where in the whole village. We’ll just make it worse.” He deftly rolls a little morning joint and sparks up.
“We can’t leave it like this. Maybe we just straighten things…” Miriam pulls a collapsed heap of redwood bark panels, soaked through, from where they lay. As she places the pieces in rows on the ground before her, a fresh shower sweeps across the village and up the cliffs. But such modest amounts of weather hardly register any more. They all bow to their task, untangling the wood and laying it out in clean patterns. The four of them work together in silence. The marine layer above nearly breaks apart, but doesn’t. It only shows silver lines of sunlight in the cracks.
“God, I’ve changed,” Miriam mutters, attacking a pile beside Alonso. “Isn’t that the strange thing, Zo? Seeing you and being with you again, I’m not like picking up where I left off as a forty-seven year old field researcher five years ago. No, I feel most like I’m a twenty-three year old rock star again and we’re back in Nevada and San Diego and Reno. And… I’m just such a different person from how I used to be. I was terrible.”
Alonso laughs. “You were the vixen.”
“Which, strangely, also means fox,” Katrina interjects. “Mate, we’re surrounded by them.”
Miriam orders the closest pile. “I was just very much in love with myself. I didn’t have this kind of care of others, you know?”
Alonso nods. “Oh, I know.”
“You were the only one who could actually touch my heart under all those layers and masks and everything.”
“It was my abuela’s cooking.”
Miriam giggles and falls against him. He grunts, pleased, and goes back to sorting large pieces of wood. This redwood bark is amazing. Some of it is as thick as his arm, huge curving sheets taller and wider than himself. Beautiful, black with age.
Esquibel and Triquet exit the cave with the last pair of youths, stepping out into the clear morning air. “What are you doing?” she calls out to the others. “Did you lose something?”
“No. We just… feel bad for them.” Jay heaves on a plank, forcing a nearly-collapsed wall back into position.
“Ha. Feel bad for yourselves. Imagine what pine camp must look like.” And Esquibel stalks through the village alone.
Triquet bends to help. “Oh my god. Some of these places are like entirely gone. These poor people.”
“I wonder…” Alonso grunts, forcing his creaky body to work. “Do they have to rebuild like this a lot? Maybe more than once a year? Because that would get very old very fast.”
“Why ever clean when you can just disassemble and reassemble? Good lord these big ones are heavy. Just like sponges. So much water in them.”
Another figure steps out from the cave mouth. The first of the villagers. It is one of the shy preteen girls of the Mayor’s household. She has the darkest and curliest hair, nearly an afro. No one has ever heard her name. Slowly she emerges from the cave and stares dispassionately at the wreckage of her village.
“Eh, sorry.” Miriam has no words for this. “I know it must look bad but maybe we can help rebuild…” She shrugs at the girl.
“Mirrie…” Alonso’s face grows worried. “Don’t make promises we can’t keep. We still have so much work of our own and we have fallen so far behind…”
Miriam’s face flickers, her composure nearly cracking. It is hard to take Alonso’s continuing dreams of Plexity seriously here in day forty-bloody-seven in the aftermath of a major cyclone. But god forbid ever saying such a thing aloud. “Alonso, I love you,” she says instead, meaning it, and goes back to work.
The girl watches them for a few minutes before turning around and going back into the cave. A few minutes later, Mandy and Flavia re-enter the village by descending from the southern cliff in a small rock slide.
“Aw, what a good idea.” Mandy hurries to help the others. “We can put their houses back together for them. Show some gratitude for once. Or… at least just make it neat?”
“We’re afraid to do any more,” Triquet says.
Flavia only watches. She is fatigued, sore and battered from her night and then this epic climb and descent with Mandy. Now she is supposed to do manual labor? For how long? It would take days to fix this village. There are piles of wood everywhere.
A fox scampers from the cave mouth into the village, sniffing at the arranged pieces of wood. It sniffs the air too, its gleaming eyes taking in the scene. Then it scampers away.
“Wish I had a fox,” Jay grumbles. “Be so cool. Just this rad pet who feeds himself and lives like this parallel life, still a wild creature, you know what I’m saying? Just like, friends.”
Morska Vidra emerges from the cave, followed by the Mayor and Yesiniy and all the others. They gather at the near end of the village, watching the outsiders awkwardly labor with the remains of their houses. But Miriam and the others have the sense to stop, and gently lay down the pieces they hold. They withdraw to the far end of the village, at the trailhead leading down to the creek and meadow and pine camp. Morska Vidra crosses the village to them, his fox scampering ahead. “Bontiik.” He greets each of them, his face deadpan but his eyes smiling. Perhaps he appreciates their gesture after all. They murmur the greeting in turn, chucking him under the chin. The fox on his shoulder chitters at Alonso and they all laugh, releasing tension.
“Ask him if that’s a girl or boy fox.” Jay tugs at Katrina’s sleeve. “Tired of calling a living creature ‘it.’ Feel me?”
“Totally, dude.” Katrina turns to Morska Vidra, composing the question in her head. Then she thinks of a better approach. Yes or no questions only. “Lisica… kʼisáani, gé?”
“Da.” Morska Vidra turns to his fox, pulling it from his shoulder and holding it like a cat, stroking its fur.
“They always answer yes or no like a Slav. So weird.” Katrina turns back to Jay. “His fox is a boy.”
“Does he have a name?”
She shrugs, miming “Katrina,” then, “Morska Vidra,” then, pointing at the fox, she asks, “Saa? Name?”
“Nyet.” Then Morska Vidra laughs, as if the idea is comical. Behind him, the villagers have spread out into the remains of their homes. They pore over the organized rows of wood like shoppers at the market, lifting a certain piece and exclaiming its story. But they all seem to be seeking specific pieces, and some of them begin to find them. They lift the pieces of bark, large or small, and shout out their relief and gratitude, which is echoed by the others.
Morska Vidra returns to his own hut, which remains partially standing. The roof is gone and most of the wall around the door, but the remainder of it still stands.
He doesn’t look very happy about it, though. He searches for his own special piece of wood and when he finds it, it has been split lengthwise by the storm. It is an old, elongated plank of bark worn to roundness at the edges, but something cleaved it perfectly in two. Morska Vidra lifts up both riven pieces, his voice shaking and dolorous. His neighbors all call out to him and many flock to his side, putting a hand on him in sympathy.
“Like the keystone? But it’s wood. The heartwood.” Jay tries to find the meaning in this scene. “The one piece. Maybe like the OG piece, the last one left or something. Put there by his dad. Aw, Morska Vidra! Mad respect, dude! So sorry for your loss!”
His neighbors go back to their own disasters, leaving Morska Vidra alone in the remains of his house. He sits there, heartbroken, for a long time. Even his fox has left him.
“Should we go? We should go.” Triquet thinks a quiet exit is probably for the best.
Then Morska Vidra rises, chanting something roughly. He pushes on the remaining walls of his house, but they stubbornly resist him. His chant grows louder, a list of imprecations and curses from the sound of them, and he uses all his strength. The wall totters and falls, twisting in a heap to the ground.
Morska Vidra pulls the panels of his house apart, scattering them. His neighbors immediately start scavenging the biggest and most useful pieces. He stalks away, under the trees, his head held high and his eyes faraway.
Then another figure exits the cave. It is Pradeep.
He blinks in the bright morning light. “Where…? Where is—?” His voice is so unused, as if it’s coming from somewhere under the ocean. For a moment he can’t remember her name. Then he does. “Maahjabeen. Where…?”
“Prad!” Jay finally sees the tottering figure. He rushes to him, slamming into him with a bear hug. “You’re back!” But he goes gentle almost immediately. Pradeep is so fragile.
“Never left. Where is she?”
“Eh, Mandy? Flavia?” Alonso asks as he hurries with the others to congregate around Pradeep. “Did you leave Maahjabeen up on the cliff this morning?”
“Maahjabeen didn’t come with us,” Flavia answers. “We haven’t seen her.”
Miriam frowns. “Oh, we were sure the three of you were off together. Well then where is she? Was she still in the cave when you left?”
Mandy shrugs. “I have no idea. We didn’t check.”
“Then how long…?” Pradeep forces the words out. “How long has she been gone?”
Alonso shrugs. “I don’t think we can say. Maybe all night.”
Then Miriam remembers that talk of souls and the underworld in the meadow. Oh, no. Maahjabeen has resolved to be a holy warrior, she’s pretty sure. “I just hope she didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Maahjabeen? Why what did she do?” Pradeep shakes his head. With each word, each step forward, each embrace from a friend he is restored to himself. Soon his thoughts might even flow freely again, as they used to. “Never. She couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“To rescue you, though?” Miriam holds Pradeep steady, rubbing his back. He looks anemic. “I think she’d be capable of quite a lot. She’s a tiger, that one. Saving her beloved from the evil wizard. Wait. I know just the thing to fix you up.”
Miriam hurries back into the cave.
“Wait, what is the implication here? How could Maahjabeen have possibly rescued Pradeep?” Flavia’s voice immediately rises in ire. “She disappeared. She wasn’t even here.”
Katrina’s laugh is low and spooky. “That’s what we’re saying, I reckon. She was out stealing his spirit back for him.”
“See, that is what I knew you were saying and I could tell you were all being foolish. Because that is impossible, what you are saying. Maahjabeen did no such thing. The drugs they gave him just finally wore off. Right, Pradeep? Isn’t that what happened?”
“I—I have no idea.”
“Well, what was it like?” Triquet asks. “You said the last one was like drowning in cold mud. Was this the same?”
“No. It was like…” Pradeep tries to grasp the memory of it, the fleeting impressions that single clear present sensation left in him. But he had no ability to reflect on himself during the whole ordeal. He was only a passive witness to all their words and actions. He saw it all, but he couldn’t keep it. “Inside I was hollow. No pain. No… emotion. But then like an hour ago I came back.”
“Smashed your jar, I bet.” Katrina gives Pradeep a long hug, trying to fill him with her warmth and life. “Big strong lad like you, deserves to get his jar smashed every night.” She kisses Pradeep on the jawline, but nothing stirs in him, not even from the teasing.
“I feel… newborn.”
“Whoa. Trippy. What do you mean? Like you have amnesia?” Mandy asks. “You can’t remember anything?”
“No… More like…”
She interrogates him with a laugh. “Quick. What’s your name? Where were you born?”
“Uh… Pradeep Chakrabarti. Hyderabad. No, I still have all the information. I just couldn’t… Just…”
“Had no soul?” Mandy ventures.
Flavia throws her hands into the air. “Now you are putting words into his mouth. Preposterous. Has nobody here done ketamine?”
“Sure,” Katrina responds. “Loads.”
“Well, that will make you feel as if you have no soul. Like that.” Flavia snaps her fingers. “This, ehh, it just lasted longer.”
Miriam returns from the cave with the pigskin bag holding three uneaten pork steaks. She pulls one out of the bag and holds it out to Pradeep. “Here, love. This will cure what ails you.”
“I do try to be a vegetarian.” Pradeep looks at the cube of meat with worry. “But I haven’t eaten in days, have I?”
“Just take what you can stomach,” Miriam counsels him. “You need something, that’s for sure. You’re like a ghost.”
Pradeep nibbles at the flesh of the boar. It is carbon bitter, the rind coated with ash. Then he tastes the gamey, cold steak, greasy and rich. There is something unpalatable and savage in the meat, as if the rage of the boar still sizzles in its blood. It only takes a few bites for him to be overwhelmed by the sensation. Pradeep makes a face and hands the remainder back to Miriam.
His heart suddenly hammers. Testosterone and adrenaline surge through Pradeep’s limbs. As his digestive tract voraciously tears the fibers of the meat apart, he is reset on some primal level. The violence at the heart of this animal’s death terrifies and saddens him. But now he is part of it. Now Pradeep is made of that violence. His eyes snap. He has trouble keeping himself from snarling aloud. Finally he finds his voice again.
“Okay. I’m back now.”
Ξ
Flavia approaches pine camp, fighting her way through the long wet grasses of the meadow to the tree line. It has taken all morning to get back here. First there was the climb with Mandy and then the whole scene at the destroyed village with Pradeep and all the Lisicans and finally a long frustrating interlude with the recently unhoused Morska Vidra.
She’d come upon the old man in the woods beside the trail. He was wandering aimlessly, nearly sightlessly, through a shadowy stand of pines. His fox pounced gaily ahead, chittering and digging for grubs, almost like the little fellow was trying to cheer him up. Boris does that for Flavia when she is sad.
She would have left him alone if he hadn’t stumbled and fallen as she’d passed. It was the first time she had seen that of any Lisican. They were always so sure-footed. Flavia hurried to Morska Vidra’s side and helped him stand. When he faced her he seemed to have visibly aged. In sympathy, she hugged his frail shoulders. He didn’t know what to do with the embrace, though, and only stood before her in silent grief.
Flavia searched for the right words. “My mother’s side of the family. We have an old house in Verona that my second cousins live in. Right downtown. It is over six hundred years old. The walls are so thick you can sit in the windows. It has been in our family for… what, thirty generations? I can’t imagine how I would feel if a storm destroyed it. All my ancestors. All those memories.”
Her voice soothed him and his shoulders dropped. He leaned into her embrace and the fox sniffed gently about her ankles.
Then the practical side of her kicked in. “But where will you live now? Build on the same spot? I didn’t see too many other options right there in the village. Or do you want to come live with us for a while? Eh? We have room, I am sure.”
Morska Vidra sat back on his heels and regarded Flavia gravely. She felt the weight of his judgment and fell silent. This wasn’t just him looking at her, this was… this was a man who was beginning to understand that his entire way of life was about to vanish. And it was all coming at the hands of Flavia and people like her. There was a deep melancholy in his eyes as well as a bitter outrage. It burst against her like a camera’s flash and she turned away, unable to bear what she saw.
When Flavia finally did look back, Morska Vidra had shrunken in on himself again, his fox curled in his lap. As far as she could tell, they were staying there forever. She moved on.
Now, she finds pine camp mostly empty and still in quite a state. The clean room has collapsed and its translucent plastic sheets lie twisted in the mud. The only person Flavia can see is Jay, standing against the only wall of the clean room that has been rebuilt. He is entirely naked, brushing his thick reddish-blond hair back from his brown forehead.
“Oh. Hey.” Jay makes no move to cover himself.
Flavia takes this as a welcome signal that she can, well, not ogle him exactly, but maybe appreciate a male body for what feels like the first time in ages. And he has such a nice one, with wide shoulders and long lean arms, a flat belly and long shapely legs. He is like a coursing hound, built to run.
“Welcome to my sponge bath, Flavia. Feels great, yo.”
“It really does.” Esquibel calls out from the other side of the sheet. Her long dark body can be seen in hazy silhouette through the plastic, her hands running all over her curves. “I may never put clothes on again.”
Flavia plucks at her own shirt and trousers. They are soaked and filthy and they make her skin crawl. Without a thought she peels them off and steps clear of what had always been her favorite clothes. Maybe after a thorough washing they can be again. Her skin prickles in the mild morning air. “Eh, where is the sponge?”
Esquibel steps around the edge of the sheet with a small bucket. She hands it to Flavia and examines her body with professional detachment. “And how are you? You look thin. Like you aren’t eating enough.”
“Are any of us?” Flavia pokes Esquibel’s own ribs, visible beneath her breasts.
Esquibel twitches back and swats Flavia’s hand. “Do not do that. I am ticklish. Otherwise you are fine? Turn around.”
Flavia lets Esquibel spin her slowly, lifting her arms and inspecting her minutely. The care and attention actually feels somewhat nice. She casts a sidelong look at Jay but he is still brushing out his hair, staring at nothing. Flavia is affronted.
She elbows him. “Hey. I am glad you are not like staring at me like a jackal but we are still two naked women standing here in front of you. I mean, you can at least say something nice.”
“Uh. Yeah, for sure.” Jay breaks his reverie, the violent rush of jagged images and sounds from the night before finally receding. “You guys look great. Molto bene. Is that how you say it?”
Esquibel frowns. “I do not need a man’s approval to feel good about my body. So how are you, Jay? All your contusions and incisions. Show me your ribs.”
“It is all about the ribs today.” Flavia runs her hands up and down her own. Yes, there is very little cushion beneath this skin. She can’t recall ever being so thin. And yet, she doesn’t want to feast and regain her lost padding. She likes how she feels. Food is something she only needs in spare mouthfuls throughout the day.
Esquibel traces the red line of Jay’s spear wound. It is healing well. “No infection. At least we can be thankful for that. How are the deeper layers…” She palpates the scar and he winces.
“Yeah, still pretty sore, Doc. Am I gonna get full range back? Got some big surfing plans coming up.”
“I think so. But you will feel it, certainly, the rest of your life.”
“Damn. Already damaged goods. And only twenty-two.”
“Here. Look at this one.” Esquibel raises her arms and turns her backside to them. She has a neat puncture wound above her right hip, an indentation that appears quite old. “Leaned against a broken fence post when I was eight. Almost died of tetanus. The time I spent in the hospital is what made me want to be a doctor. I still feel it, twenty years later.”
“Oh, I got no shortage of scars.” Jay proceeds to proudly point out the biggest ones, on his chest, on his shoulder, on his hip, on his shin. “Fell off a cliff, motorcycle, motorcycle, and sharp rock in the shallows at the end of a wave. Broke my fucking leg.”
Esquibel appraises him coolly. “And I am quite certain you are nowhere near done.” She shakes her head. “Human bodies. They are all so different. Look at us. All the colors and shapes. But we all still run the same.”
Alonso and Miriam arrive, stepping under the trees. They stop and regard the ruins of their camp. Not a platform still remains standing. Their own tent is a twisted heap covered in mud. The clean room is just a single wall of plastic, in front of which stand three naked members of their crew.
Without a word, Alonso and Miriam take off their clothes and join them. Flavia scrubs Alonso’s back with the soapy sponge she finds in the bucket and then Miriam does hers.
Nobody speaks. Alonso’s body is totally littered with scars, some broad and angry welts, some puncture wounds like Esquibel’s. All down his legs to his crooked feet. The words they just shared about their own scars ring shamefully in their ears.
Beside Alonso, Miriam is a pale and slender nymph. She piles her auburn hair on her head and lets her husband scrub her shoulders and the back of her neck. She purrs, closing her eyes.
“The family that bathes together,” Alonso laughs, “stays together. What is wrong, Doctor Daine? Have you never seen a torture victim before?”
“I am very surprised, Doctor Alonso,” she answers in a quiet voice, affronted by what was done to his body, “that you are as healthy as you are and not heavily addicted to opiates.”
“Yes, in large part that is what this trip is about. Learning to live with the pain. Otherwise I will be a junkie like that.” He snaps his fingers. “And the Fentanyl on the street kills people these days. So I would not last very long. No. My drug is Plexity. And all you beautiful children. You are what keep me here.”
Flavia turns outward peering through the trees at the far ridge. She imagines her vision telescoping even further, across the water back to the mainland, then spanning the whole continent. There is madness and torture everywhere. “This crazy world. Why does it have so many monsters in it?”
Alonso shakes his head. “They are everywhere. Sadists and evil bullies. Even here, in utopia…”
“Ha!” Flavia turns back, scorn in her face. “This can’t be utopia. It doesn’t have enough sunshine. Or hot water.”
“Yes, I would not call it utopia,” Esquibel agrees. “That implies perfection. And does anything about this camp look perfect to you? It is more a nice vacation.”
“Well…” Alonso shrugs. The sponge bath is over, but like the others he has no desire to get back into his clothes. “Here are my thoughts about utopia. First, it is impossible. Think of how different everyone is. What would be utopia for me, with lots of naked men and fully-funded science missions, would not be utopia for others.”
“I’m with you on the naked men!” Flavia grabs the muscles of Jay’s arm and he smiles indulgently at her. “But not here. Maybe Monaco. Or one of the Greek islands.”
“Plenty of naked men there,” Alonso agrees. “But I doubt they would all like my idea of utopia. And I wouldn’t care much for theirs. But utopias still do exist. It is only that they are fleeting. They last only a single moment and everyone thinks, whoa, that was a perfect little jewel of an experience, like this wonderful bath we all shared. But by the time you think it, it is already over. When you are outside the moment, appreciating it, you are no longer living in it and the spell is broken. Have you ever had that, yes?”
Jay nods slowly. “Dude. That’s so deep. Yeah, like every time I catch a wave. Those are my own little utopias for sure.”
“Uhhh, hi?” Mandy steps under the pine trees and approaches the knot of naked people. “Like what’s even going on here, guys?”
“Sponge bath,” Esquibel answers. “Then we just kind of… forgot it was over. Forgot we were naked, I guess. It feels so good to be out of those hideous clothes. Come on, you should try.”
“Well… isn’t it a party.” Katrina approaches with Pradeep, her arm around his shoulder. They took it nice and easy down the trail and across the meadow. He may be returned to them but he is still at the tail-end of an ordeal that lasted days. Now Katrina can’t stop goggling at all the skin, while Pradeep keeps his own eyes averted. “Don’t mind if I do.” Katrina shucks off her clothes.
The others welcome her into their circle, pouring soapy water on her blonde hair and scrubbing her skin with the sponge. Katrina moans in pleasure. “Ohh… I had no idea how much I needed group bathing in my life. Fantastic.”
“Mandy. Pradeep.” Esquibel orders them. “Come on. You need to get cleaned up.”
Mandy and Pradeep share a bashful gaze. They both step back in reflexive refusal. Mandy holds up a hand. “Uhh… No, thanks… We’re good.”
Chapter 45 – The USB Stick
November 5, 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:
45 – The USB Drive
Persistent birdsong penetrates the dense canopy. What bird is that? Jay doesn’t recognize its calls. It switches from buzzing to chirping to long melodic lines of warbling. Is that all one bird? Fascinating. It must be a mimic, like a mockingbird.
Jay opens his eyes. It is evening. The rain has stopped and their little hollow no longer drips maddeningly at arrhythmic intervals. Pradeep still sleeps beside him, their legs entangled for warmth.
“In my experience…” Jay mutters, his voice thick, “mockingbirds don’t sing at night. Just in the morning.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep’s voice is muffled. His face is tucked down, toward the pit of the hollow where redwood roots gather. He lifts his face. Jay is surprised to see how worn he looks, like he’s gained decades in the last couple days. Jay must look the same.
“Bird. Crazy song.” Jay pulls himself free. It’s too cold to lie here any longer. “We got to get moving, bro-him.”
“My legs. They really don’t want to.”
“Freeze our asses if we stay. Come on, Prad. Be the change you want to see…” Jay stands and grabs Pradeep’s upper arm, “…in the world!” And he hauls his groaning friend to his feet.
“Wow. I hate you for doing that.”
“Got to climb. Remember the plan? That’ll warm us up.”
“Perhaps I am not as cold as you. I could have stayed in that hole for another couple hours with no complaints.”
“Yeah, I’m freezing.” Now that he’s standing, Jay can see that it isn’t evening yet. The canopy just blocks most of the light. It is late afternoon and a golden glow suffuses the blue sky.
“Well we could just switch positions. I am still utterly exhausted.”
“We should hit this hill while we still got a little light.”
“It is true I don’t want to wait until morning. And now my phone is dead. No more flashlight.”
“Yeah mine too.”
“Fine then. Lead on. But don’t stop anywhere too long. Or I will pass out on my feet.”
“No doubt.” Jay surveys their surroundings, the pain of his many injuries making him feel like a badly-stitched-together golem. The sun is just setting over the far ridge, the meadow in shadow below with its low grassy hillocks, the very spot where they learned that they had dropped all the way into the wrong valley. Yep. There it is right there where his heart broke in fucking half. Good times. Anyway… After their tragic discovery they’d climbed up this way in a kind of daze, just to get away from it, and then they’d crapped out at the base of this tree. Said they’d just get a minute of shut-eye. That was like… six hours ago? Seven?
“The shadows…” Pradeep points at the nearby trees that are still lit by the setting sun. “From the shadows the sun is setting there,” he points at the slope across the meadow and then tracks a fair bit further south toward the equator. “We’re at like fortieth parallel so we’ve got to adjust the compass like so, and I’d say true west is about there. Hooray for one brief moment of sunshine.”
“Yeah, good call. That’s west. So north, east, south.” Jay rotates, pointing at each in turn. “Yeah. So I’m thinking that western ridge is the rim of the island. That west coast we’ve never seen.”
“Except Maahjabeen. In the first storm.”
“Right. But that’s like exactly the wrong way. We got to get back to our beach and our bunker and our… babes?”
“No. You will never call her a babe. She will tear your head right off. Yes, if the island is a clock, then the lagoon is at like 5:30 and we are currently at sort of… 7:30 or 8 on the dial?”
“Got to be. Which isn’t that far at all as crows fly. But you know it’s gonna be a fucking maze between here and there.”
“It always has been. You know, next time I take a posting on an island, I will make sure it is a flat sandbar. With one palm tree.”
“And a killer break. Come on, Prad. We’ll know more if we get up top here. We can chase the sun.”
“How… mythological.” Pradeep falls in line behind the limping, gasping Jay, who attacks the hillside with little forethought. “Wait. Wait. We can’t just charge this slope, Jay. We have to follow some contour lines. Bring us northeast for a bit first. Switchbacks.”
“Right on. Yeah. Get up top wherever. From the main ridge. We can get anywhere. On the island. In no time at all.”
“Yes. But climb. Out of the valleys. They are killing us.”
Then they speak no more, their energy turned to their poor feet and legs. Pradeep’s shins are covered in bruises. His climbing muscles scream with stiffness. But as he slowly warms up it all turns into a barely-tolerable throbbing ache and somehow he generates more mental fortitude from endocrine releases and conductive salts in cell walls and he keeps up with the mad Californian above.
Jay pivots them on the slope, making a switchback that heads more properly east-by-southeast where they need to go. Contours are only helpful if they actually take you to your destination. Sometimes you got to just take a mountain on its own terms.
For an hour they climb, passing out of the redwoods and through a stand of madrones and rhododendrons, then oak and sorrel, and finally grasslands near the spine of the ridge, which is marked by jagged lines of dark brown rock. They achieve the summit while the setting sun is just visible hanging over the western horizon, now distant and dim and pink, bisected by a pair of thin clouds. The wind whips them up here, bringing the marine chill. Vast and immaculately empty, the ocean surrounds them.
Now Jay looks down to regard the island. They are indeed on a ridgeline that connects with a larger main ridge up behind them, perhaps another eight hundred meters higher. Wow. This island’s got some walls on it for sure. But if they manage to stay on the ridges then they can skip all the ups and downs and meandering mazes. “Yes. Here’s our shortcut, yo.”
Pradeep frowns at the higher ridge. “Due north? That far? May I remind you that we’re trying to go southeast?”
“Yeah but once you get up top it runs east-west. We get on that ridge and head east, then when we get to the right valley, we follow that like sub-ridge down and boom, we’re home by supper.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“Man, I’m glad we agree about all this. Imagine if we were like fighting all the time. I’ve been in that situation before when—”
“Or if like one of us was high on acid.”
“Yeah yeah. That wasn’t my finest hour.” Jay picks his way along the spine of rocks, the slope they just climbed falling away before them. The ridge is broader than he expected and he doesn’t even see the far slope yet or into what it must descend. “Oh, no way!”
“What is it?” Pradeep steps past the outcrop Jay just vanished around and joins him in delight at the sight of a tiny waterfall, surrounded by lilies and ferns, splashing strongly from the recent rains. “Wow. That must be one full water table to get a waterfall going this strong this far up the slope. And I bet it’s quite clean.” Pradeep leans in and cups his hand under it. He lifts the cold water to his mouth and slurps. “Delicious.”
“Fuck yeah it is.” Jay is on all fours at the edge of the little pool below, drinking directly from it like a dog. “Best water ever.”
Movement. Pradeep cringes, his primal instincts unleashing anxiety that disperses the peace of this moment like a knife through smoke. He squawks, turning back the way they came, to confront one of the golden childs sneaking around the outcrop after them. “Oh. It’s just you. One of you.”
“What the…?” Jay rolls over, blinking at the silhouette of the golden childs against the bright sky. “Hey, what’s up, dude?”
“How long have you been following us?” The masked figure stops and drops their arms. The youth was obviously surprised to find his quarry here, but he shows no reaction to being caught out.
“Oh, that’s just swell. Do you think he started with us from the beginning? Like he secretly followed us through the tunnels and everything? Dude, you could have helped out sooo much, so many times. Do you even know we’re completely fucking lost and we’re just trying to get back? I mean, just show us the way. Which way…?What are some of their names? Uh, Lisica. Morska Vidra.”
“Yes. Let’s get some directions. Jidadaa. Wetchie-ghuy.” Pradeep points where Jay is pointing. “That way?”
The youth only watches them through his golden mask, their inscrutable bodyguard.
“Right.” Now Pradeep feels the urge to lead. “Let’s head out then.” He tries one last attempt at communication, pointing out their route. “We’re climbing the north ridgeline up there then heading west, and finally southeast. Back home, eh?”
But the youth hurries past them and turns to bar their way. He holds up his hands as if to block them.
“Oh, no way. You won’t let us climb that ridge? Why not?” In frustration Jay scrubs water into his hair and steps away from the pool. “ Come on, G money. We got to go that way. Got to.”
“Closed to foreigners?” Pradeep crosses the width of the spine to study the new valley that is revealed to the east and the main ridge overlooking it all. From this angle he can see a bit more of the ridge’s profile. Is that a thin filament of smoke he sees behind its central peak? “Aha. Look, Jay.”
“What? Where. A bird?”
“Smoke. I think.”
“Do not see it.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I do. Just the briefest… Well, anyway, do you think that’s what our masked protector here is doing? Keeping us from crossing paths with whoever is up there?”
“I mean, their entire job is to protect us from Wetchie-ghuy and Sherman the shaman as far as I know. So… yeah.”
“I guess we aren’t taking the north ridge.”
Jay can’t stand the sight of the winding valley at the base of their ridge to the east. Its cleft is hidden in darkness. “Bro, if we drop into whatever canyon that is down there I guarantee you we won’t get out of it before nightfall.”
“Well, contours. Maybe we don’t need to stay up on the ridge. But maybe we don’t need to drop all the way down into the creeks. Maybe this golden childs will let us advance the way we want if we just drop a hundred meters or so below the top and get back in the trees. We can still follow the ridge, just in a more hidden way.”
“I don’t know.” The complaint sounds querulous to Jay’s own ears. “That’s a shit ton more climbing. But yeah. Not like they’re giving us a choice.” So much for being home by dinner. “Well. It is what it is. Lead on.”
Ξ
“You know what I’m thinking?” Amy asks Triquet, who builds a platform beside her in their new camp. Amy has already finished her own platform and tent and worries there is still so much to be done in the waning hours of this day.
“Uhh. Tea. Got to be something about tea. Like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong? None for me, thanks.”
“No.” Amy straightens, peering at the patchy sky. “Laundry.”
From the far side of the camp, Mandy calls out, “Oh my god, yes! I’ve got a whole load!”
“Where? Like in the river?” Triquet frowns at it, the impassable natural barrier with its fast-moving dark currents dividing this side of the island from the other. “I don’t think the Lisicans would like that. Don’t want anyone hucking a spear at my head.”
“No, I was thinking we could just climb up its bank here until we found a little tributary. So many streams are running right now. Don’t have to get anywhere near the main river. Just a tiny dab of biodegradable soap and some elbow grease and we might even get them to line dry before it gets too dark.”
“I wish,” Miriam sighs, erecting the tent on a new platform, “that we could wash our sleeping bags. They are so foul. But there’s no way they’ll ever dry out here and then what do we do at night?”
“I have thought that again and again.” Esquibel emerges from within her clean room. “I dream of turning my sleeping bag inside out and strip-cleaning its fabrics with alcohol.”
“Okay, crew.” Amy empties her big expedition backpack into her tent, returning the articles of dirty clothing and accessories she should wash back into it. “You guys keep working. I’ll be the washing machine and dryer. Put your things in there with any special instructions. I can’t promise perfection, but…”
“Oh, you’re the best. Thank you so much. I think the weather might even hold all night.” Mandy appears with a small handful of things, followed by Triquet and Miriam and Esquibel. Amy’s pack is quickly full. She’s glad the others aren’t here to take her up on the offer. Laundry by hand takes forever. With any more to wash, Amy wouldn’t get back until midnight.
“You sure… you’re okay going alone?” Triquet has returned to building their platform.
“Who says I’ll be alone?” Amy nods at the golden childs who stand deeper in the woods above. Five of them had re-appeared once the villagers had left, watching over the new camp from a distance. And as Amy hauls the pack onto her back and buckles the waistbelt, one of the crouching masked youths rises to follow her.
She aims for the north edge of the meadow, where it gives way to trees. The black rushing river to her right is even more swollen than before. There is a point on its bank where the meadow ends and the pines begin. Amy pauses here for a bit. Such a delicious spot for a wildlife biologist, the intersection of three biomes in one place—forest, meadow, and water. Insect and fungal life probably exists in this ten square meters that exists nowhere else. If she has time, she will certainly collect every sample she can. Why, it’s like Plexity in miniature. “No. Actually…” Amy stands, reasoning aloud. “It’s the opposite of Plexity, which is a closed system. This transition zone has no boundaries at all. Its openness is its main characteristic. Huh.” Keeping the river to her right, she climbs up the north slope, a suddenly difficult outcrop of soil and brown pine needles sliding under her boots. The river begins to gargle beside her, dropping from the hills she’s climbing to the flat of the meadow behind. Maybe up this way she’ll find more falls.
The golden childs hovers behind her like a concerned parent, waiting patiently for her to navigate this crumbling obstacle. Amy reaches for the base of a sapling and hauls herself upward. Finally, the top. A bank of budding Osmaronia cerasiformis greets her on this bluff, while the river is now hidden in a cut that is a good five meters below, making all kinds of noise.
Amy pushes her way through the dense woody branches and wins through to a cloistered glade of clover and vetch, coated in rain. No more than a dozen paces wide, it is like a little chapel of light and life. The scene is so idyllic and pure that she doesn’t want to disturb it. Perhaps she should be like those Shinto monks who apologize to each creature they crush before taking a step.
The little glade bespells her. Unlike the transition zone below, this remote notch is far removed from the rhythms of the world. Purple blossoms and green leaves glow in the light of the setting sun. A pair of green-tailed towhees flicker in the branches of the pines above. Quiet and peace reign here. If she wasn’t the product of a modern education she would swear the glade is sentient.
During Amy’s childhood, Shinto had been a kind of strict folklore tradition she’d learned to hate. The rites and details of the rituals had seemed to always obscure the life it was supposedly praising. In Shinto, Japan has a mythological dimension, with gods and demons and fairies hiding in glens like this one. But Shinto is immutably Japanese, so there can be no such thing as a Lisican version of Shinto. It must just be its own magic here, its own unique power connected to place with its own secret name.
Amy has been pursuing this elusive nature of nature her entire life. Back in the 80s she had really gotten into complexity theory and for an entire generation the concept of emergent behavior was her specialty. Once complex systems reach a critical mass then new harmonics emerge, new behaviors and effects that are not always predictable based on the inputs, like steam from a kettle or human consciousness itself. Has that happened here in this glade? Has it… embodied somehow the essence of its nature? Does it have a giggling sylph or dryad hiding in the pines?
This elusive emergent property is the phenomenon of life itself, a rare miracle in the universe, firmly affixed to this tiny green and blue rock hurtling through the void. The study of emergence is the end result of the connections Plexity is trying to make. This is the evanescent heart of the matter here. Each scoop of dirt and rock that took billions of years to become soil and life has made unique interactions manifest in higher orders such as birds sipping nectar from beckoning flowers. And their song is its secret name…
Dark eyes stare back at Amy from within the stand of sword ferns across the glade. Wide and staring, round and beady… The inexact descriptors echo through her mind as she goes still. Yellow. Shiny. Quite certainly inhuman, perhaps canine? Oh, it’s a fox. Is that Morska Vidra’s fox? No… This one has a reddish lip and a narrow snout. The ears are different too, now that she can see them.
The little silver fox slowly waddles out from under the fern boughs onto the clover. Its belly is swollen and at first Amy thinks it’s diseased. Then she realizes she’s looking at a vixen, a female, and that she’s very pregnant.
This is wildly unheard of behavior. Foxes expecting litters like this will generally withdraw and be impossible to find. For one to seek her out is… preposterous. But then again, why do animals hide themselves to give birth? To protect against predators. If there are no predators of foxes on Lisica, then she can build a nest wherever she pleases. Astounding. But this one needs something from her? The pregnancy isn’t going well? Some veterinary surgery will be required out here in the middle of nowhere with no proper tools?
The vixen looks gravely at Amy with her yellow eyes. Then she turns and heads to the edge of the glade away from the creek, uphill. She pauses before she disappears once again into the ferns.
“You’re asking me…? Oh. You want me to come with you. Uh. Yeah. Hold on. I’ll just leave the bag here for a sec.”
Amy unbuckles the expedition backpack, trying to think if there’s anything she can use as rags if she finds herself attending a birth here. She snags a pair of someone’s socks from the top of it before closing it back up and resting it beside the bole of an old stump. There will be some crawling ahead, of that she is sure. Good thing her phone is fully charged if she needs light.
Ducking into the bushes, Amy disappears from view. After a long moment the fronds of the ferns stop shaking and return to stillness. Lavender butterflies flit across the opening. The towhees begin to sing again.
A moment later, the golden childs appears, looking for her. They find the backpack filled with dirty clothes and nothing else.
Ξ
Miriam finds Alonso in the meadow, studying the far hills. He has just enraged Maahjabeen again, who is stomping away from him back through the grass to what they’ve started calling pine camp.
Maahjabeen’s face is dark and her eyes are full of fire. She scowls at Miriam as she passes her. “Your husband can be so mean. He doesn’t have to be so mean.”
“Mean? Alonso?” Miriam blinks at her, but Maahjabeen doesn’t stop to hear her answer. She is too angry. “My Alonso? Never.”
Miriam joins her husband in the meadow. “You’re standing.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Alonso is preoccupied, though. Fighting with Maahjabeen always leaves such a bad taste in his mouth.
“What did you do to her this time?”
“Told her to stop making preparations to live in the sea cave and help us find missing people first and make this camp here.”
“You monster.”
“And I didn’t tell her she couldn’t do it. Oh, no. She would have killed me for that. I just told her to stop making it her top priority, especially when she will need help. We have no time to spare Amy or whoever for a dangerous kayak adventure. Not now.”
“She said living inland makes her crazy. I guess this is what she meant.” Miriam studies Alonso. Despite his current displeasure he is standing straight again and his shoulders have settled. This is how she always knew him before, but these last six weeks have been life with a fat old man hunched over his pain. Now he is starting to regain himself. Miriam never thought he might recover quite so quickly. “How’s the… what is it? Peanut butter and banana leaves treatment? How’s the wrap?”
“Not banana. Amy said maybe lily. It feels very odd. Warm, like warmer than it should, all the way inside. There is definitely an active compound or two in the Mayor’s treatment. I just hope there aren’t any serious side effects.”
“How long are you meant to leave it on?”
“I have no idea.”
They both laugh, a careworn sound. With a sigh, Alonso pulls Miriam close and they lean against each other, foreheads touching. The sky is filling once again with clouds, about to obscure the evening star. When it vanishes behind the rolling bank of gray the air begins to chill and they turn back, arm-in-arm, to camp.
There they find more arguing. Mandy storms from the clean room carrying her own bag. “She’s too much! I can’t take it any more. I’ll just—”
“You don’t have to like break up with me,” Esquibel exits as well, standing in the slit door entrance holding a white hand towel, “just because I asked you to move a few things that—”
“You’re hounding me! You’re always hounding me!” Mandy finds her own platform and drops her things on it. Now she’ll need to put up her own tent. At least maybe she can do it in peace.
“Well pardon me for being a doctor in a medical clinic!” Holding her hands up, Esquibel makes a visible effort to rein in her temper. “Perhaps I could have said it more nicely, and for that I am sorry, dearest Mandy, but please don’t make me apologize out here in front of everybody. It isn’t…”
“I’m not making you do a single thing. Ever notice that?” Mandy doesn’t know where this monumental irritation has come from. But she just can’t take the constant badgering and criticism any more. She needs her own space.
“You are…” Esquibel lifts a helpless hand and lets it drop, “…a wonderful partner. It is true. I am sorry.”
“Oh, Mandy loves you. It’s just, I think what she’s trying to say is that sometimes you…” Katrina offers in a helpful voice.
But Esquibel blazes once more. “Oh, don’t you dare put yourself in the middle of this. Not you.”
Katrina retreats, stung, the light of innocence dying in her eyes.
Miriam calls out, “Ladies, ladies. Please don’t let your frustration and exhaustion turn things sour. It’s just been a long few days. We’re frightened and at the ends of our ropes. That’s all. Things will be better after a nice hot dinner and full night’s rest.”
“Right. I can’t build my tent.” Mandy drops its aluminum poles with a clatter and stands, still quivering with indignation. “I have to cook dinner. Amy can’t. Jay isn’t even fucking here. It’s all on me. God! How did I end up with so much still to do?”
“I’ll put up your tent, sweetie,” Triquet offers. “I’d help you in the kitchen too but I’m not…”
“I can help in the kitchen.” Alonso moves toward it. He is not without pain and stiffness, but it is not corroding him. There is no timer on him standing up anymore. Now he has stamina. “Where is Amy, anyway?”
“Doing laundry.”
“Ohh… I have a few things… Where is she?”
Miriam points upstream. It is getting dark now and the slope is obscured in shadow. “Somewhere up there.”
“Well. Then I will wait until morning. Coming, Mandy. I will be your prep cook and dishwasher.”
Ξ
“So, this time we are neighbors, eh?” Flavia finally finishes putting her platform together, wrapping twine around the sawn pine branches and testing it with her feet. She smiles at Triquet. “Perhaps that means I can borrow some of your fabulous clothes.”
“Whenever you want, girlfriend.”
They work side-by-side for a long while in companionable silence. Triquet reaches for something more to say. Flavia is pretty much the only one Triquet hasn’t established a deeper relationship with and all they know of her is that she’s an Italian nerd who spends the whole day on her laptop. “You know, I have a cousin who’s a research math professor. Smart as a whip.”
Flavia isn’t too excited by this awkward small talk but she does appreciate the effort. “Oh? What does she study?”
“Uh. Mainly insurance? She wrote a book called ‘The Hidden History of Deductibles.’ Fascinating stuff, I’m sure.”
“Well, it can be. There is good work being done characterizing human behavior using maths. When done properly, it is actually kind of scary. We really aren’t that much more complex than a paramecium, if you get right down to it. People can be reduced to a few simple equations and interactions no problem. ”
But for a humanist such as Triquet this is a bit much. “We can? Just a few? I always thought I was a bit more… I don’t know, mystifying than that. I mean, in my case, I got a little coy with my internal motivations years ago when everyone tried to convince me that my choices don’t make sense.”
“Oh, they do. You are just… Triquet my friend you are outside the frame of reference. I would say most researchers are running maths simulations that you do not properly fit into. But the problem is not with the maths, it’s with their definitions.”
Triquet makes a face. This reductionism doesn’t sit right with them. As an archaeologist, the historical record of humanity is a rich and bewildering tapestry of unique characters and actions that can never be so neatly encapsulated. “So you’re telling me that all my behavior is… computable? That the reason I built a platform here as opposed to against another tree—say, that one—is just a basic function of mathematics?”
Flavia shrugs and pushes her hair from her face, taking a break from erecting her tent. “I mean, sure. Don’t you see? There are a finite number of factors that caused you to choose that tree. Each factor has values that can be assigned and those values…”
“But what if some of those factors remain hidden? Maybe I don’t quite know why I chose this tree. Maybe my father was killed by an oak tree and I’ve like subconsciously avoided them for years.”
“Your knowledge of the factors that shape your decision are not necessary for computation to occur. The calculations still happen independently of your self-regard.” She suppresses a sigh. To Flavia, this ontological perspective is painfully self-evident and at this point in her life, automatic. But she has also had enough of these conversations to know how unpopular they are. “Look. A lot of people thinks this means we must live in a horrible clockwork universe without free will, but I am not saying that. I am just saying these maths are the tools we use to make our way in the world. But there is no destined solution these tools are leading you toward. They are just another way we make decisions and express them.”
Triquet shrugs agreeably. “Okay. Then let’s say we’re able to identify all these factors that make me choose this particular pine tree to build my platform around. It makes sense, your numbers all add up, and the results are clear. But what if, at the last moment, I decide to randomly choose another tree. What if I stop what I’m doing for no reason at all, and just build a platform around this little sapling instead? Then what?”
Flavia narrows her eyes and expels her breath through her nose, trying not to groan aloud in exasperation. Why must maths be so hard for people to understand? “It is still a rational expression. Even if it is randomly generated. Especially if it is. If you roll the dice for your decision, that is very simple arithmetic. We generate random values all the time in my field.”
“But it isn’t rolling dice, it’s…” Triquet puts their hand to their heart, trying to find words for the chaotic welter of emotions and desires that flow through them. “My heart isn’t made of numbers. It’s made of feelings, many of them contradictory, yeah? I’m afraid that all you…” Ah, but how to mention ‘computer nerds’ without hurting her feelings? “It’s just that life isn’t as neat as you want it to be. Look at the golden childs. Why are they protecting us? Some kind of prophecy? Why do they believe in the prophecy? Faith, I guess. But how do you measure faith? How do you turn it into a quadratic equation or whatever? Don’t you feel like you’d miss out on essential elements of the whole thing?”
Flavia shakes her head no. “Quadratic equations are not the best tool for these jobs because they are univariate. No. Listen. This is a linguistic thing I know. The ‘es’ in ‘essential’ is one of the oldest roots in Indo-European languages, from thousands of years before the Latin ‘essentialis.’ It means ‘to be.’ So our essence is that which makes us be. Not how we imagine ourselves in a different universe based on magical thinking, not how we wish to be, but how we are in this physical world. The physical world can only be described by physics, which means maths, so…” she shrugs, “I do not know what to tell you except this is starting to sound like the arguments I have with Maahjabeen about god.”
“No, I’m not like a religious…” Triquet objects, then falls silent, realizing that the subjectivity they are championing will eventually lead to that spiritual conclusion. Religion. Myth. Magic. Triquet’s always given a kind of formal academic honor to those concepts, making sure that they are properly respectful of the cultures they study without needing to make a final decision about whether those myths and religions are actually provably true. But if it came down to it, does Triquet actually believe in any of the the ritual traditions their subjects practice? When the Yanomami of Brazil eat their hallucinogenic Yopo plants do they really gain access to hekura spirits that rule the physical world? When orphans in Crimea have nightmares about Baba Yaga does the old crone actually manifest or is it just their imagination? And what about those beliefs that conflict, such as when sects of Christianity turn on each other like in, oh, The Hundred Years War? Are both of their interpretations of the Bible true? Neither? Can two contradictory things be true at the same time? Can things be true only on the local or individual level? Perhaps acts of faith are the opposite of universal, especially in this age of tribalism. “I have always…” Triquet gathers their thoughts, sitting on the end of their platform struggling to put their unstated policy into words. “I guess the way I try to think about it is that we are each of us different kinds of magicians.”
“What? No.”
“Yes! Haven’t you ever thought of things this way? I had Dia, an old great-aunt who swore she had dreams that could tell the future. Did you have anybody in your family like that growing up?”
“Of course. In Italy, anyone over the age of sixty has some kind of supernatural power.”
“Right. And our first reaction to Dia’s dreams would always be disbelief. Cynicism. My parents would argue with her about her crackpot soothsaying dreams and astrology readings long after dinner was over. And at first I was on my parents’ side.”
“Only at first? Then what?”
“Then it occurred to me one day that maybe universal laws just aren’t so universal. I know that my dreams can’t tell the future. But can I really authoritatively assert that nobody’s dreams can tell the future? Maybe that’s just the kind of magic that Dia can practice. My magic is, like, in my costumes. I can turn an entire party on its head by showing up dressed as Cher. And I don’t mean that it’s the sequins and lipstick. It’s that I cast a spell, honey, and people fall under that spell and it really works. What’s your magic?”
“My magic? Eh.” Flavia tries to forcibly shift her perspective for the sake of this conversation. “Alonso with his big Cuban family magic. Katrina with her DJ magic. I mean, aren’t those just other words for wine and drugs?”
“You know there’s more to it than that.”
“Is there? I am Flavia. I have no magic. Full stop. I am entirely a creature made of numbers. Is that magical to you? Because to me it is not. It is just like graduate-level seminar statistics. These things you are talking about are mathematical probabilities, not voodoo.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that, in my humble estimation, I can’t be certain of the empirical universality of anything. Sure, every star we’ve discovered so far fuses hydrogen into heavier elements. But does that mean all stars will, everywhere, forever? I can’t know that, so I have to stay humble and not get tempted by calling things absolutes. Ultimately my subjectivity trumps all. I mean, I can’t be a religious worshipper because I have no faith. But for those who do, maybe their universe is truly so different that I honestly can’t speak to whether they are actually talking to their god or not. I just don’t have that talent. But I do have other talents. You have your numbers, but that doesn’t preclude Maahjabeen’s access to Allah or whatever. That’s just her own inimitable talent. The Lisicans. They live in such a different reality we can’t just slap our Western number system, our analytics, on them and say we get it. We’ve been trying to understand their life and culture for six fucking weeks and gotten no closer.”
“Maybe they have their own maths.”
This stops both of them, the notion that all Lisican behavior might be described by an indigenous mathematical structure that is separate and unique from the numerical traditions they know.
Triquet rubs their chin, mind sparking with half-formed insights. “Well there’s another career’s worth of study right there. No, it’s just that I’ve always given space to people and their traditions. Respecting them allows us to see more of the humanity in our subjects. In other words, post-colonial guilt, and lots of it. See, to me, the very definition of humanity is something that transcends math and science. This is why in every one of our cultures we talk of spirit and soul. There is something else to it, in ways that we all interpret in our own unique subjective ways. I mean, we had some pretty wise ancestors and they tried to teach us things, yeah? So like celebrate diversity, sister. We are all of us, all eight billion humans, individuals with unique patterns and points of view.”
Flavia laughs. “Or, as your aunt the insurance researcher has proven, we are no more than five major personality types with billions of us fundamentally identical. Not that there is anything wrong with that… That is how biological agents interact with environments to create what look like unique phenomena, but are really just the same base integers in different combinations, and our own ability to remember these patterns or even correctly identify them is very bad because really we are still just a bunch of apes.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.” Triquet scratches their ribs in caricature of a primate. “Oo oo. Aah aah.”
Ξ
In the middle of the night her eyes open, belatedly realizing Amy never came back from doing laundry. Is that true? She’s pretty sure it is. Casting off her sleeping bag with a silent curse, she slips from her tent with her phone in hand. She pads over to Amy’s tent and shines its light within. Yep, still empty.
But someone is awake. Through the trees she can see their dim silhouette out on the meadow, standing tall and silent in the gloom. Stepping closer, she turns the light off and peers through the obscuring branches to see if it is who she fears it might be.
Clouds stripe the sky, their edges lit by an intermittent moon. Shadows roll across the meadow. When they retreat the figure is gone. No… Just crouching, closer to the trees now. And someone else is with them, a small dark figure dressed all in black.
She eases forward to see what they’re doing. Their heads lean together for a long moment and then the second figure rises to a crouch and scurries away. But this is no native, and definitely no one in her crew. They move like some lethal video game character, like an assassin or a spy. After a moment they are swallowed by the shadows. The second figure stands, tall and dark.
Esquibel.
Wrapping her black coat around herself, Esquibel steps quietly back into camp. She wishes for nothing more than a long hot shower to wash all this grime away. But she will not have one of those for two more weeks. She must stay filthy until then.
Stepping from the quiet grasses of the meadow to the dry twigs and needles of the pine forest requires all her care. She takes it extremely slowly, lifting and dropping each foot in slow motion. The camp is ahead, cloaked in darkness. If she can just get back to her cot in the clean room she will know she is home free.
It had taken so much nattering of Mandy to get her to leave her side tonight the pangs of guilt poke at her, again and again. Well. She is doing all this for Mandy and the others. Someday they will hear of her sacrifices and maybe understand. And now that it is over she can go back to treating Mandy like the princess she is.
Resisting an impulse to cross the camp and join Mandy’s lovely sleeping form right now, Esquibel takes another careful step.
Wait. Someone is there, in the darkness, watching her. Esquibel is sure of it. She can’t see a figure but she knows deep in her bones they are there. She stops, like a fool, her hand straying to the back of her waistband, and stares at where their eyes must be.
“Identify yourself.” Esquibel’s whisper tries to sound forceful without waking anyone else up.
But whoever it is doesn’t speak or move. They only dwell in the center of the darkness. She can’t even see their eyes.
Esquibel hesitates. Is it one of the golden childs crouching in the bushes? Almost certainly. Or maybe one of those odious shamans who are causing so much trouble. “Go ahead. Just try to kidnap me,” she mutters. “Just try it.”
Still no movement. She can see nothing but the dark. It’s just a presence she can sense, an unbearable prickling a millimeter under her skin. Someone is there. Isn’t there?
Or is it just her imagination? Another dimension of her rampant guilt? No, there is no one there, surely. She took every precaution. These people are all dead tired. None of them are awake. And none of them crouch in the dark like this, like a panther… No. This is just her fear of being found out.
“It isn’t what you think,” she mutters, surprised at how much she needs to confess to this knot of darkness. “I am not doing this for myself, but for those I love. I am not a traitor.”
This is the one thing Esquibel told herself she could never do. Say the words aloud. As long as she keeps them within the confines of her own skull she is safe, never to be discovered. But she didn’t know how difficult that would be, how it would contort every one of her thoughts and actions to hide the little secret inside, like that one unknown dark sliver Pradeep found in the knot of seaweed. She is bloated by her secret and just needs the relief of the pressure. Just a bit, just by whispering her secret to a spot of darkness.
“The money is good but it’s not about that. We’re playing a very deep game here. A very necessary game with geopolitical interests. And besides, it’s just the Japanese. They’re harmless.”
The darkness absorbs the sentences. But a bitter judgment still somehow emanates from it. Esquibel can tell her words are insufficient. Espionage is espionage, no matter how you cut it. Ah, well. She feels no better for confessing. “What a bloody mess.”
Esquibel shakes her head and finally drops her hand from her waistband. She steps past the knot of darkness feeling wretched and misunderstood. Thoughts of her cold hard cot fill her head. Yes, oblivion is all she can hope for now.
And then, to her utter dreadful surprise, a whisper emerges from the darkness, a voice she knows. “Fucking hell. I knew you were up to something. Well, guess what. I switched the USB drive.”
Chapter 44 – In The Rain
October 28, 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:
44 – In The Rain
“God, look at that, Jay. Actual sunlight.” It streams through the trees ahead during a break in the storm, illuminating the pillars of redwood groves, which give way to a great expanse on the far side. “Almost there now.”
Jay limps along behind Pradeep, one eye squeezed shut, a hand plastered against his left side. “One sec.” He falls to his knees and heaves up the bile in his stomach. It is empty of food. Bile is all he’s got. Oh, yeah. That definitely makes the incision scream. And now his throat is so torn up it will never be the same. Pain everywhere, inside and out.
“Are you ill, my friend? Or just…” Pradeep makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, including all Jay’s injuries.
“Just…” Jay repeats the gesture, “exhausted.” But it is too painful to speak, the acid scoring his windpipe. He hauls himself to his feet and taps his chest pocket. “Least I got my phone back. Worth it.” He forces himself to move again. They are nearly there.
Dropping down a loose slope onto a wide basin, they shuffle across the forest floor as the groves give way to open ground. The creek has dropped off somewhere to their left. The woods are silent and still, the birds and insects continuing to hide from the storm.
“Weather coming back,” Pradeep observes. “That’s why they don’t come out. They know this is just a quick break. Ugh. Look at the clouds coming. So sick of the rain.”
“Who doesn’t come out?” Jay peers around.
“The animals. The fauna. That’s why it’s so quiet in here.”
Jay slurps a trickle of cold water off a lily’s broad leaf. It leaves a floral, sticky taste in his mouth. But it soothes his throat. Now he can speak again. “Study I read right before I left. Researchers have been listening to forests. In the ultrasonic range, just above human hearing. Plants talk.”
“With a bunch of tiny high-pitched voices? It is so cold today! Like that?” Pradeep is pleased with his joke but Jay doesn’t laugh. Oh, well. This is why he doesn’t crack jokes. Nobody expects humor from him. “Well, this is what I just proved with Plexity and the mycelium networks. Chemical signals travel along immense and far-flung networks carrying data…”
“Yeah, but this is through the air. Sounds like it does underwater. At a coral reef when you dive. All those pops and clicks and trills.”
“Really?” Pradeep listens but of course he can’t hear them.
“The more stressed the plants are the more clicks they make. If we just had a bit better hearing we’d hear them all the time. Know when to water our houseplants and such. Most critters must hear the plants chattering away like constantly. But happy plants only click like once an hour.”
“Well then this is indeed a quiet forest. These trees have to be pretty happy with all this rain and now sun.”
“Wait.” Jay stops, listening intently. “I do hear something.”
Pradeep listens too. It is a voice so distant that they can only sense its tones and textures against the edges of the silence. “Okay. Come on, this way. But quiet. Who knows who it is?”
They step in that direction, finding a gully dividing the ground choked with ferns. They follow it in the general direction of the voice, finally coming to a dead stop at a sudden drop.
A line of dark stone past the vegetation falls away nearly ten meters to a deeper cut in the ground, where their gully joins a larger one. This has running water at the bottom and a sandbar with a figure crouched on it. Wetchie-ghuy. But he isn’t looking at them. He is looking at a bay tree beside the water in which Jidadaa is perched out of reach.
She is speaking Lisican to the shaman. When Pradeep and Jay arrive she doesn’t stop or acknowledge them, nor does Wetchie-ghuy. Her voice ends in a question and his answer is abrupt.
She asks another question. “Xʼoon yadyee x̱ʼaadáx̱ sá?”
“Yax̱adoosh.”
“Ai eh.” Jidadaa finally turns to the two outsiders. “Seven days. That is how long.”
“How long until what?” Jay’s voice is filled with suspicion.
“The little babies are born. The fox babies.”
“Kits.” Pradeep studies this scene. It is some kind of standoff here, where Wetchie-ghuy waits for Jidadaa to, what, surrender? Give him back his little doll? Both? “We call baby foxes kits. But what does that have to do with anything? Don’t they have like five litters a year? I’m just shocked the island isn’t overrun with them.”
Surprisingly, Jidadaa translates Pradeep’s words for Wetchie-ghuy. He only pulls his lips back over his teeth and grimaces. Then, with the compulsion of a pedagogue, he begins to lecture them all on the subject.
Jidadaa says, “Foxes are old here. First fox came with Tuzhit. First man. Lisica beautiful then. All birds, all little mice. Then foxes eat all the birds. All the mice. All the snake and lizard. Then men say, no more fox. They kill. All fox gone. Then Lisica is very bad. Very bad time and all people are unhappy. But one fox is left, hiding. They find. She has baby kits. Eight. One for each village or íx̱tʼ…” She gestures at Wetchie-ghuy. “Long time ago. But now, only three fox left. One, she is gone right now. Hiding to have baby kits. Wetchie-ghuy and Daadaxáats look and look but they don’t find. They fight, to be the one to control fox baby kits.”
Wetchie-ghuy drops into a crouch upon hearing his rival’s name spoken aloud. He mutters darkly to himself.
“Wait…” Pradeep tries to digest all this information. “This is what their argument is about? Who gets custody of the silver fox kits? That’s… bizarre. They’re like kidnapping and poisoning people over it? Bloody hell. So Wetchie-ghuy used to have a fox of his own but it died? It ran away? And now he wants another?”
“He wants all. Make the decide. To decide who get fox. When fox can have baby kits, they are spirit of village. Without fox, village die. With new fox, new life.”
“Jidadaa, watch out!”
Jay barely has the first syllable of her name out before Wetchie-ghuy twitches forward, leaping for the lowest branches of the bay tree. But Jidadaa twitches as well, and seemingly without any effort at all she is crouched on an even higher limb.
Jidadaa holds out Wetchie-ghuy’s doll as a taunt and curses him, the Lisican words coming fast and furious. She threatens to pull the doll apart and the shaman below her relents, falling away from the tree and retreating to the sandbar, where he crouches once more.
“What is that thing you stole?” Pradeep calls out. “Why does he care so much for it?”
“This is magic doll. It tells Wetchie-ghuy where to find foxes.”
“Ah.” Pradeep nods. “That makes sense.”
“It does? In what universe does that make sense?” Jay rasps. “No. What I want to know is what the fucking shamans want with us? Why do they keep after us? Shouldn’t they focus on the fox?”
But Jidadaa doesn’t need to ask Wetchie-ghuy why. She already knows the answer. “You are magic. You are koox̱.”
Jay and Pradeep frown at each other. “Unexpected,” Pradeep finally manages. “I don’t feel like magic. Nor koosh.”
Jidadaa calls out to Wetchie-ghuy, shaking the doll, indicating that if he doesn’t let her go she will throw it in the stream. Finally, he appears to give up. With a final glare over his shoulder at her, he withdraws back up the gully out of sight.
Triumphant, she smiles at Pradeep and Jay. “I will kill his doll.”
“We know you will, sister.” Jay gives her a thumbs up. “Don’t need that jackoff in charge of the foxes anyway. Not when they’re the soul of each village. That’s crazy. So the foxes showed up like three hundred years ago, wiped out all the native populations, then the people wiped out the foxes but then they realized they majorly F’d up and now they got nothing but this strict breeding program like my cousin Becky and her French Bulldogs with the AKC?”
But Jidadaa isn’t really listening. She’s peering back the way Wetchie-ghuy went.
“This makes Morska Vidra a more important figure than we knew,” Pradeep reasons. “Or at least his fox. I’m shocked Wetchie-ghuy doesn’t try to steal his.”
The rain starts again. “Welp.” Jay waves at Jidadaa. “Time to get moving on. This has been crazy, as always. Thanks, I guess, for saving our asses again. Good luck with the doll and the foxes and all that. But we got to get back to our buddies. It’s been too long.” He steps back from the edge of the stone cliff, trying to abandon Jidadaa here and find a way to the open land ahead.
“You don’t have any more questions for her?” Pradeep feels like he could ask Jidadaa questions all day. “She’s the only one who knows what is happening here and has enough English to enlighten us. Like, who are the golden childs, eh? Are they the third village? Jidadaa? The golden man and his childs?”
Finally she turns back to look at them, her face filled with worry. “Secret village. Shidl Dít. Thunderbird House. Live in trees. Hiding tribe. Nobody know them.”
Jay has run out of patience and his exhaustion is threatening to drop him where he stands. “Look, Prad. She’s a thief. I’m not even sure we should believe anything she says about the villages or the foxes or any of the—”
But Pradeep isn’t going to let this opportunity pass. “Yes, I know. But her answers are better than nothing, aren’t they?” He turns back to the girl in the tree. “And what about Lisicans in general? Are they glad we are here? Angry? Are they against us or…? I mean, do they even understand what we’re trying to do here?”
Jidadaa looks across the way to them. “People are sad. Jay is lidass. I am Jidadaa. Time is end.” And then she twitches again. The limb shivers and leaves fall. But she is gone.
“Whoa. How’d she do that? Is she…?” Pradeep tries to get a different angle on the bay tree’s crown, “…still in there somewhere? I mean, she must be, right?”
“Don’t sweat it, Prad. She’ll find us when she finds us. Come on. I think we can get down this way. Let’s hurry back home before the rain starts pouring again.”
Pradeep’s gaze lingers on the green cloud of bay leaves hiding her. “Don’t disappear! Jidadaa! Come with us!”
“Fuck that.” Jay starts without Pradeep, who reluctantly follows after a brief interval. They can’t take the chance on Wetchie-ghuy finding them separated.
“Hold on, Jay. I’m coming.”
And just a few moments later they finally win free of the trees for the first time all day. A great green meadow spreads before them, its hillocks still obscuring the creek. Jay crosses the open ground, the tall green grasses streaking his legs with water. “Okay. Back in business. Now as soon as I find the river again I can navigate us back to the village. Then it’s just a hey-how-you-doing to the villagers and then it’s straight through to the tunnels and the bunker and a hot meal and hammock. Yeah, boy. Let’s do this.”
But Jay reaches one hillock higher than the rest and stops. He turns and turns, his face filling with first confusion, then fear, then despair. He groans and nearly collapses.
Pradeep hurries to his side. “What? What is it?”
Jay is too dispirited to speak. He just makes a weak gesture with his one working arm.
Pradeep turns and turns, looking for the way out. Perhaps he’s just seeing it all wrong. “What is it? Which way, Jay?”
“I don’t know!” Jay falls to his knees, fully spent. “I’ve never been here before! This isn’t the right valley! We’ve been following the wrong creek this whole time and came out in the wrong place! I don’t have a fucking clue where we are!”
Ξ
At the top of the tunnel, Mandy finds Morska Vidra and his fox waiting at the village’s boundary. “Hi…!” she calls out, as sweetly as she can. “Your new neighbors here! Super excited to, like, move in and be part of the community!”
Her bubbly delivery usually works to disarm whoever she points it at. But Morska Vidra appears to be immune to her charms. Bummer. She was hoping to get this started on a positive note. “Here. Triquet said I shouldn’t, but I brought you a little gift.”
Mandy holds out a small package she was able to wrap in a page of a medical device’s line-drawn diagrams and decorate with a bow she painstakingly fashioned from sliced strips of colored paper. He stares at her, making no move to take her offering. His fox darts forward instead, rising up and gently pulling the little box from her hands. The little silver creature scampers away, disappearing into the gray haze of light at the tunnel’s entrance.
Mandy’s reaction is a few seconds too late. “No! Oh, no! Come back! It’s chocolate. Oh my god. I don’t know if… It might be poisonous to a fox. Like you know how dogs and cats, they can’t have chocolate?” Mandy belatedly realizes Morska Vidra has no idea what a dog or cat is. “No, come on. I’m totally serious. It’s like a liver issue or something? We have to get it back.” Mandy hurries past the old man, who still hasn’t made a move. Then she recalls the traditional greeting. “Uh… Bontiik!” She hurries back to him and chucks him under the chin.
A paternal smile creases his face now that the proper forms have been observed. “Bontiik.” His knuckle touches her own chin and he gives her a wide smile.
“Okay. Now let’s find the fox before it hurts itself. I know it’s just a pet but you don’t want it to get sick!”
Mandy exits the cave, scanning the tracks ahead. They quickly disappear in the packed earth of the village proper. She studies the walls of the cliff on either side of the cave mouth, then all the brush crowding against the nearest houses.
A pair of children peek out from a house, no more than six and four years old. They chatter at her, one’s words atop the other. Then their words run together in a shared chant. They giggle.
“Hi! There was a fox…? Have you seen it? I gave it a present. A lovely… tasty… present.” But regardless of where she looks, she can find no sign of where the fox has gone. “Shoot.” She points into the village at random spots and asks the kids, “Where…? Like where does the fox live? Like, where’s its bed?” Mandy grew up with cats. She knows how they think.
But the kids just start another chant, laughing at her.
Mandy slowly enters the wide village square, realizing that she is making a spectacle of herself. Smiling weakly, she just really doesn’t want to be responsible for making their pet sick. That would be the opposite of a positive note. That would be a disaster.
The village is busy, with a small family outside their hut grinding something green and brown in a stone bowl with a rock. Another old man faces a loom, plaiting a long sheet of textiles of black and red bands. An old woman lounges outside her house, leaning back against a pole and chewing a piece of grass. Her eyes are red-rimmed and sad, as if she’s been crying. Mandy addresses her: “You see Morska Vidra’s fox run this way? The little fox? Uh, Lisica?” Yeah, she should have been using that word all along.
The old woman lifts her hand. In it is the gift the fox stole.
“Oh, thank god.” Mandy reels away in relief. Then she circles back to the woman and the gift. “You can have it. It’s for you. I wrapped it myself.” She kneels in front of the old woman and points with excitement at the little cube, its white paper now smudged with dirt and indented with tooth marks.
The old woman only looks at Mandy with her troubled gaze.
“Aw, are you having a bad day? Here. I’ll show you. Look. It’s a present! Do you guys do presents?” Mandy reaches out and gently takes the gift back. “Look. It goes like this.” She had no tape so the paper is folded back in on itself like the origami she was taught in elementary school. Mandy pulls out the corner and unwraps the gift, handing the sheet of paper to the old woman.
She turns it over in her hands, her eyes still sad.
“But wait. There’s more.” Mandy presents the stack of gold-foil wrapped off-brand chocolate squares she’d snared in the airport right before they’d taken off. This has been her stash, a carefully-preserved secret that has kept her going through the darkest days. She has enough for two chocolates per day, three on special days when she really needs the extra love. This is five pieces of dark chocolate, two whole days of her stash, that she’s willing to sacrifice for the good vibes. Now if she can just manifest those vibes…
Carefully peeling the foil from the first chocolate, Mandy hands it to her. The old woman takes the gold wrapping and stares at it in wonder. She gently crumples it around her fingertip and releases a single ‘huh’ as an exclamation.
“Yeah, but that’s not even the best bit. This is.” Mandy breaks off a tiny bit of the chocolate and hands it out to the woman. She dutifully takes it, another inexplicable object in her cupped hands.
“Eat it. Like this.” Mandy nibbles at the corner of the chocolate. “Quick! Before it melts! Yummm! So good!” She mimes bringing the chocolate to her mouth over and over until the old woman does so too.
The old woman tastes the chocolate. She makes a face and spits it out, then hands the little nib back to Mandy. But she keeps the foil and sheet of paper.
“Mandy! What are you doing without your mask and gloves?”
Esquibel stands at the cave mouth, Morska Vidra beside her. She wears her own, the hospital blue of her mask and gloves a shocking artificial color in this brown and green village.
“Oh, right. I didn’t remember…” Mandy searches her pockets for these articles. But before she can find them, she says, “I mean, tons of times we’ve been unmasked in front of the villagers by now. If they were gonna get sick, it would have happened by now.”
“It is policy. Mask use only works if it is consistent.”
With a final smile to the old woman and the kids watching her, Mandy puts the mask and gloves on and joins Esquibel at the edge of the village. “Did you say Bontiik to him?” Mandy indicates Morska Vidra, standing patiently beside Esquibel.
“Huh? Oh. Uh…” Esquibel performs the quick ceremony and allows Morska Vidra to chuck her chin in return. “Remind me to sanitize my chin when I get a chance.” Then she turns, a very large and imposing black woman in the middle of this village of little brown people. She seems not to understand how dramatic her impact is here. “So. This is the village? The outer village where they’re nice, yes? And there’s another village deeper in? And they all live in these sad little huts?” Esquibel stoops and peers in one, its occupants still and silent in the shadows.
“Esquibel. Stop.”
“Stop? Stop what?”
“You’re scaring them.”
“Scaring them?” Esquibel regards the villagers in their doorways and in the square. They all watch her with worry. “Hello. Bontiik. Didn’t I say the word properly? What is wrong with them?”
“You’re just too loud, too big…”
“Too dark?” Esquibel snaps off her glove and holds out her hand for Morska Vidra. He studies it but doesn’t touch it.
“Maybe. I don’t know if they’ve ever seen black skin.”
“Well, Morska Vidra and the Mayor have. Didn’t they tell the others about me? We don’t have time for this kind of culture shock. They need to understand that we’re here and we’re moving in. Or at least through. Where do you think we should set up camp?”
“Maybe they’ll tell us?” But the villagers are already withdrawing back into their houses, faces closed. The positive start is ruined.
“Why don’t I make everyone happy…” Esquibel decides, “and go find out myself. They obviously don’t want me here.” And with that she stalks across the village square and takes the wide path down toward the river.
“No!” Mandy calls out after her. “It’s not that! It’s just that you came in too fast and…” But Esquibel is gone. Mandy turns to the villagers and holds out the piece of unwrapped chocolate melting in her fingers. “Anyone, uh, want to try it?”
“Hello…?” Alonso’s rough voice comes from the cave entrance. He limps out, hair wild, clothes covered in mud. Gasping from the exertion of climbing the fallen tree up the tunnel shaft, he catches his breath. “Are we here? Did I make it? Eh, Morska Vidra. Good to see you again. Oh. Bontiik.” Alonso smiles at the old man as he chucks his chin, then laughs when the fox appears from within Morska Vidra’s robes and climbs on his shoulder to sniff at Alonso. “And this is the famous fox. Lisica. How are you, little friend?” Alonso extends a finger so the fox can smell it.
Evidently he smells fine. With a perfunctory sneeze, the fox makes a decision and sits, coiling its bushy tail around Morska Vidra’s neck. The old man returns the greeting to Alonso, gravely, and then evidently divining his suffering, suddenly steps beside him and supports Alonso’s weight with a strong arm.
The gesture is so unexpected Alonso laughs. It also feels good, to have someone help relieve the pain in his feet. “Gracias, muchas gracias, hermano.” Alonso has a thought that if they can’t grasp his English, he may be able to make his intent more clear in his native Spanish. But then it occurs to him they’ve heard a fair amount of English, and probably no Spanish. “Thank you, my brother. Thank you a million times.”
Morska Vidra leads Alonso to the doorway of the largest hut. The redwood bark planks covering it are black and green with age. It is an impressive structure, the only hut taller than Alonso. “Your house? Very nice. Thank you for all your kindness. Ah. Here?” Alonso grunts as he allows Morska Vidra to lower him onto a woven mat. The fox appears again, nickering in the old man’s ear. As if following its directives, Morska Vidra kneels at Alonso’s feet and pulls at his shoes, trying to take them off.
Alonso barks in pain, his hand reaching urgently for the feet he can’t reach. The sound freezes all activity in the village. Mandy finally rouses herself and hurries to Alonso’s side. “He wants your shoes off. Is that okay? Should we take them off?”
“Just gently. Gently…” Alonso pleads, leaning back, the sudden raw agony in his legs from getting yanked starting to lose its edge.
Mandy picks at the laces, pulling the right shoe wide open before slipping it off. She peels his wet sock off too. Together, she and Morska Vidra regard the swollen purple thing. It is painful merely to look at Alonso’s tortured foot. The toes bend wrong, dents run along the top. An angry red vein crosses his ankle.
The villagers gather to silently regard Alonso’s foot as Mandy gently removes his other shoe and sock. This foot is just as bad, purple as a grape. And his lower leg is scored with scars.
The villagers speak to each other, evidently trying to figure out how someone could sustain such injuries. Alonso watches them, his gaze baleful. “I hope, for your sake, that this kind of brutality is foreign to you. I hope, I pray, it shocks you.” Tears start in his eyes and he groans as Mandy puts a gentle hand on his left ankle.
The smallest of the two children Mandy met bursts into tears and turns to his mother, hiding in her arms.
The Mayor arrives and kneels, inspecting Alonso’s foot. She pokes it and he grunts. She tries to move his right heel and he barks again. Sitting back, she speaks a number of quiet commands.
Several of the young girls in the back of the crowd peel away to their own homes. They return with sheafs of herbs and black leaves and seeds in a pot.
“No no, that’s fine.” Alonso tries to wave the treatment away but he is no longer in charge of this situation. The Mayor pulls up his pant legs and inspects the scars she finds there.
She orders for the seeds to be ground into paste and for the black leaves to be separated, dripping, and placed on the mat beside him. A low hum of discourse surrounds Alonso, villagers discussing the treatment and holding forth on various points. Alonso looks around himself in wonder. He’s been in contact with primitive peoples before—a family of Mongolian nomads invited him into their yurt one night—but he’s never experienced anything like this before. The Lisican sing-song language surrounds him, each distinct voice and individual perspective made manifest. All of them are so unique, the middle-aged woman with the ear pierced with yellow bone, whose animated voice rises over all others. The nonbinary youth in a shawl who seems to dispute what she says with gentle deflections. The silly clown beside them, their hair a mat, who makes a quip that rhymes with the youth’s last words and everyone laughs. Why, it is just like any family anywhere. The crazy aunt, the know-it-all young man, the weird black sheep. And the children with their black and yellow curls, each as vocal as the others, pulling on each other’s arms and arguing in quiet and deferential tones. All do what they can not to interrupt the Mayor.
She taps Mandy’s shoulder and indicates she should get out of the way. Then the Mayor applies the brown paste to the skin of Alonso’s lower legs and feet. He feels very much like he is being spread with Nutella. It is not unpleasant and he finds he can exhale the breath he didn’t know he held. Then she carefully wraps his legs, first with the black leaves, then the green, keeping them snug with a brown cord. Finally she sits back.
“Thank you. Better already.” He can’t feel a thing but at least he isn’t suffering more damage. Alonso isn’t sure what he should do here. All he knows is he doesn’t want to move his legs at all. “Very good. Sitting is good.”
The Mayor gives him a more thorough inspection. She holds his hand and pokes at his belly, his chest, his throat. She has him open his mouth and she looks at his tongue.
“That bad, eh?” Alonso prompts the Mayor but her face remains a mask. “I know. Lose forty kilos and eat right. But don’t you dare mention my liver because I am not giving up my wine.”
Finally she kneels and puts one hand on his heart and one on his lower belly. The Mayor lowers her head and the crowd falls silent.
After a moment, Alonso feels his pulse beneath her hands. At the same instant, the fox yips and leaps from Morska Vidra’s shoulder, scampering into the nearby underbrush. Villagers exchange dark glances. Finally the Mayor sits back. She is drained.
“Ax̱dàataasdʼixʼdáakw,” she declares, and the villagers make dubious sounds, but they are unwilling to argue with her after her exertions. Now Morska Vidra and the others support the Mayor. They lift her to her feet and bring her across the square to her own house, where she is given her own measure of herbs and poultices.
“I am very sorry.” Alonso calls out his apology, watching them tend her. “I did not mean to introduce such…” and by this he means all the horrors of the modern world stitched up in his body. He leans back with a groan and confesses to the sky: “I despise spoiling innocence.”
Ξ
Triquet stages another pile of bags at the bottom of the tree trunk at the base of the tunnel shaft. Somehow they’ll eventually haul all that gear up to the top and out the cave mouth into the village. Just what the stone age Dzaadzitch villagers ever wanted, for sure.
Flavia and Maahjabeen drag muddy bins and boxes most of the way, with Triquet having to lift the containers up into a narrow passage for the last bit, requiring all their strength, again and again.
“Another.” Flavia deposits one more stack at the exchange. For a moment they both pause, breathing heavily in the cramped tunnel, staring at each other’s flushed faces.
“And this is why…” Triquet gasps, exercising their sore arm, “I reluctantly decided against manual labor as a career.”
“But think how strong you would be.” Flavia is beyond tired. Her words come out in a grunt.
“Isn’t there some Jack London quote about the value of a laborer being in his muscles? That’s his capital? But for the owners, their capital is money that increases over their lives while for the laborer their capital diminishes? Something like that? Of course, he put it better than that. Lord, that man could write.”
“I am not sure 19th century economic theory is applicable to us poor little independent contractors down here in this hole.”
“I mean, ultimately, this is a job and we’re wage slaves, I guess. I haven’t really thought about it that way but I did get a sizable honorarium. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. But this is the first day I feel like a coal miner.”
Triquet lifts their aching arms and lets them drop. “Well, all I know is that I started with less capital than most and now I’m all out. There’s been a run on this bank and all my savings are gone.”
“All I know is that I am hungry.” And with that, Flavia turns and trudges back the way she’d come, stepping aside for Maahjabeen, who drags a clutch of damp canvas sacks with one arm.
Triquet heaves Flavia’s goods up the tunnel to the base of the fallen tree. They return to find Maahjabeen depositing her sacks.
“Is there any chance…?” Maahjabeen ventures, “that we will not be able to transport all the items we selected for the move?”
“Chance? Honey, I’m about ready to crap out now. What’s in these? Anything necessary?”
“All our bedding.”
Triquet grabs the sacks. “Yeah. Necessary. Okay. But how about you go get Flavia and tell her we need a rest.”
“Sure. We will just find the tarps and come with you. I need to get out of the dark myself.” And Maahjabeen retreats down her tunnel one last time.
Triquet heaves the sacks up into the narrow passage. The bundled blankets and pillows and sleeping bags fill it completely and they have to push it through like a digestive blockage before the sacks spill out at the base of the shaft at the edge of the pile they’ve made.
Triquet squeezes past all the gear and grabs hold of the lowest branches of the fallen tree. They wrap the drawstrings of the canvas sacks around their wrist and haul them over their shoulder like a filthy misshapen Santa, then slowly scale the broken tree limbs like a ladder.
At the top their legs are shaking and their breath is coming in short gasps. They drag the sacks clear of the shaft and onto the broad floor of the cave mouth. Gray light greets them. Oh, joy. That means it’s still raining out there.
This is far enough. They can wait here until the others catch up. As long as they’re not working any more. Triquet stretches out on the gravel floor beside the muddy sacks, resting their head on one. Ah, bliss…
Moments later Katrina and Amy and Miriam arrive, arms laden, followed by Flavia and finally Maahjabeen, who carries nothing. Her face is a mask of pain, though, as she has needed her injured shoulder to haul herself up the makeshift ladder.
They all collapse with Triquet on the floor, their breaths and perspiration mingling, like they just won a rugby match—or more likely, from their dispirited depletion—badly lost.
“I’ve got the beds,” Triquet manages.
“I have tarps and tents,” Amy answers.
“All we need.” Triquet sits up. “Everything else can wait.”
Miriam hoists her containers. “I’ve got enough food for the night and the morning. And a couple liters of wine.”
“Yes, then we’re definitely all set.” Triquet pushes themself to their feet. “Now let’s see what kind of spot they’ve found for us.”
There is no one at the cave mouth to greet them. They emerge into the rain to find the village empty except for Alonso resting on a mat and the old woman with white hair leaning against her post. There is no sign of Mandy nor Esquibel.
“Yesiniy!” Katrina hurries to the old woman. “What is it? What’s wrong? Uh… šta nije u redu, bako?”
“Bako…?” The old woman peers up at Katrina with her red eyes. Then she accepts the designation, “Eh. Bako. Ua na o au dʼadalyoo ettu. Kam.”
“Ettu. Kam,” Katrina echoes, trying to commit these words to memory. She doesn’t have anything at hand to take notes. “Bako is Bosnian for grandma, yeh? I think that’s right.”
Miriam puts down her containers and hurries past the empty houses to her horizontal husband. “Alonso? What are you doing? Where is everyone?”
“I am resting. On the orders of multiple doctors. And they are all down by a creek, I understand, arguing over where we might have our camp. Esquibel is not… the calmest person right now.”
“Okay, Ames. I think we can chance it,” Miriam calls out. “Nearly empty here. It’s now or never.”
“Should I still wear the bag?” Amy’s muffled voice is anxious. “I’m gonna wear the bag. Just in case.” She slowly emerges from the cave, wearing her blue sleeping bag upside down to hide her head, with her feet sticking out of the opening, her entire body covered. Triquet leads her through the village to the far side.
Yesiniy doesn’t even look their way.
Quickly, Triquet brings Amy out of the village to the broad path heading down toward the river. “Okay. I think you’ve got to be safe here, Amy. We’re well out of the village and on more like neutral territory. At least I think it is.”
Amy pulls the bag off and looks around with worry, single strands of her black hair standing straight from the static charge. “Nobody here to yell at me? They’re all down at the river?”
“Yep. At least I hope so. And I hope we aren’t setting up camp by the loo. Too stinky. Come on, let’s go. Maybe they’ve reached an agreement.”
Katrina and Flavia join them as they walk down the path toward the broad meadow. There they find Esquibel in heated debate with the village elders. She stands, drenched by the latest deluge, at a corner of the meadow near the west treeline, as far upstream as the meadow allows. “Then, here. We will stay here. And that is final.”
“But they already said…” Mandy starts in an exasperated whine, but Esquibel immediately cuts her off.
“Yes. I heard. I heard that we cannot be here. Or there. Or there. Or there.” Esquibel points at locations across the meadow, where they have trampled the green grasses with their activity. “Or anywhere. So if we can’t be anywhere, then we will be where we want to be. And I want to be here.”
“Christ! What are you doing?” Katrina calls out, hurrying over to the congregated villagers as the rain eases and the winds pick up. “That isn’t any way to talk to the Lisicans! We’re their guests!”
“If we were their guests then they would accommodate us. But all I hear from them is ah-ah, which they have demonstrated quite clearly means no.”
“Yeh, that’s right. But did you ask them? Just ask them where we’re supposed to be?”
“What an idea? Why didn’t I think of that?” Esquibel’s temper is very short. “Oh, right. Because I don’t speak a single bloody word of their language. You think we didn’t try?”
“Here. Wait. Let me see. I might be able to stitch something together…” Katrina takes her backpack off. It holds a half dozen laptops. “Just one moment. Here. This one’s mine. And…” Flavia holds a folded tarp above her to keep the electronics dry as Katrina quickly navigates to her notes and starts scrolling through the pages of details she’s documented about the Lisican language. “Okay.” She turns to the Mayor standing beside Morska Vidra. “Uh, we need to… we are…” she encompasses her crew, “one sec here, just looking up versions of ‘to move’ and all I can find is this relational gobbledygook. Um… Oh, here we go. We duladaaw tlein. That’s ‘big move noisily,’ which is definitely us. Like all of us here need to duladaaw tlein.”
She has the attention of the villagers. “Join. Uh, join… No join. They don’t use the word ‘join?’ Uh, together. Together is vooch. Vooch, you and us. Dóode? Here? Or dóode? Where can we camp? Just for a couple weeks.”
She seems to be making headway. The villagers argue with each other, trying to solve Katrina’s problems. But the way they go about it is as mystifying as anything else. They consult the sky, they talk about the meadow, as if representing it at trial, possessively stroking the grasses. One woman appears to be listening to a tree. Finally, Morska Vidra places his fox on the ground and everyone watches it bound from one spot to another. Eventually, it goes into the trees on a slope near the spot Esquibel had just claimed.
The villagers move under the trees and inspect the spot. It is a wide open patch beneath pine trees, their fallen needles a brown carpet preventing much undergrowth. The slope is shallow here and the wind is tamed by the high canopy.
The fox bounds back onto Morska Vidra’s shoulder. By that, they all understand that the deal has been struck.
“I love it!” Triquet calls out. “Thank you so much. Promise we’ll take care of it. You guys are the best.”
Esquibel frowns at the spot. “Not defensible in the slightest.” But she realizes this is the best she can get. “Well. At least it is out of the weather. Why was that so hard to understand? That is why I wanted to be on this side of the meadow.”
“Take your win,” Mandy counsels her, clutching Esquibel by the elbow. “And say something nice.”
Esquibel gives the Mayor a glassy smile. “Something nice.”
Amy and Flavia advance, poking around at the base of a few trees to see where they might build their platforms. The Mayor watches the scene, evidently unmoved by Esquibel’s apology or the tantrum that came before.
“Lucky for you, they’re used to loudmouths and hotheads.” Mandy claps her hands. “Yay. We’re all friends again.”
Several of the villagers answer her claps with their own burst of applause. Mandy and Katrina clap back. This delights them. Soon nearly everyone in the camp is applauding each other, with the exception of Esquibel. She has no time for this nonsense. A clean room needs to be built, and this time it will need to be on one of the platforms. There isn’t an inch of level ground in this entire camp. And these villagers will probably wander everywhere. “And no one is wearing a mask!” she belatedly cries out. But nobody listens. They’re all intermingling now, clapping and chanting and repeating each other’s words and moves, laughing in each other’s faces and touching each other, all laughing, so carefree…
The scene finally overwhelms Esquibel with its charm. These villagers are so genuine when they laugh and copy and tease. Their eyes are so sharp. But they have a gentleness, a tenderness she hadn’t seen in the brief visits from the Mayor and Morska Vidra. These Lisicans are actual people filled with joy and curiosity and love, not just columns of figures on a Navy spreadsheet. And they are worth protecting. Silently, Esquibel adds them to her mission objectives and increases her defensible perimeter to include them and their village. She shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with them. “I am sorry,” she tells the closest ones, who are laughing and playing with Mandy. “I should have been more patient but…”
Yet they are not listening. A young girl catches Esquibel by the hand and trills like a bird. Oh, Esquibel can do this one. It is a sound the Kikuyu make in their traditional songs. She trills right back and the girl screams with pleasure. Now they are all laughing, every single one.
“What is it? What did we miss?” Miriam leads Alonso into the new camp, his feet and calves still wrapped in black leaves and twine with his unlaced shoes over it all.
Triquet reaches out to them, buoyed by the villagers and their applause. “And here they are! Welcome to your new home, Doctor one and Doctor two. Your loan has been approved! Please sign the lease agreeement on the kitchen table and I’ll leave the keys on the mantle. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” Then Triquet claps. Everyone claps.
Alonso and Miriam clap and laugh with all the others in the rain.
Chapter 43 – I Miss Him So
October 21, 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:
43 – I Miss Him So
Flavia sits alone in the warrant officer’s cabin on a single pillow, her laptop balanced on her crossed legs. Its pale blue light is the room’s only illumination. She is deep inside a logic chain, a basic structure from which she will create another Plexity module.
A knock on the closed door interrupts her work. “Pronto,” she calls out absently. Maybe she can persuade whoever it is to set up her machine down here in the sub and make her an espresso.
Alonso enters with Katrina. “There she is. Come. Let’s tell Flavia our good news.”
“You have good news? We can leave? It is safe?” Flavia’s head snaps up so quickly she’s afraid she strained something in her neck. She rubs it, then stretches. “What time is it?”
“No no.” Alonso tempers her expectations with his soothing tone. “Nothing so exciting. Well. Actually, I think you will find this more exciting. It is almost 8 am. The good news is that I am giving up.”
Flavia frowns. “To the… Russians?”
Alonso’s mouth hangs open. He is so deep in the implications of his decision that it takes a moment for the emotional shockwave to hit him. Giving up to the Russians. The images run through his flesh like ice and he waits for them to pass before continuing. “No. To you. I surrender.” And he puts his hand to his heart and bows, like an old patrician handing over his saber.
Flavia frowns. “What is this all about, you two?”
“Plexity,” Katrina answers. “This is Alonso like surrendering to your wisdom and expertise.”
But Flavia is too cynical for this. “What the hell are you on about now? And why do I feel like I am about to be blamed for it?”
Katrina and Alonso both laugh, leaning against the wall and doorframe. Their presence crowds the tiny room. And they don’t smell great, especially their ripe exhalations when they laugh.
“Yes, I suppose I deserve that. No. No blame. I set an impossible goal so I cannot blame you for not reaching it. I am surrendering to the idea that we will not be able to characterize the entire island on this first, initial trip. We must focus only on the lagoon.”
“Oh thank god.” Flavia kisses her own fingertips. “You were making me crazy.”
“I was making myself crazy. But now we have to think about what comes next: a streamlined Plexity with harder bounds, a few more loose ends. But it is what it is. And we must also figure out our conception for the new grant proposal that will come, yes? We need to frame the data in such a way that any board will have to say yes. So our new puzzle is how can we optimize our pitch with the findings we already have? That is what we need to do now. Start putting it all in a package. Now I am not saying that we need to have a polished presentation ready to go when they pick us up on the beach, but we would be fooling ourselves if they didn’t start interrogating us pretty much immediately. And we really need to put our best foot forward.”
“Oh.” Flavia nods, looking down at the columns of data that will become a flow chart. “Well, I don’t even know if we will need this at all, then. This is… a big waste of time.”
“Why? What is it?” Alonso wheels around and bends down, stiff-legged, to peer at Flavia’s laptop.
“Oh, well, an adaptive filter. Plexity is having trouble placing a spectrum of samples among the Cnidarians and Ctenophores. I did a bit of research with your offline Wikipedia and learned a bit. You see, years ago, they used to be grouped together but now—”
“Pretty sure the ‘C’ is silent, mate. Nidarians and Tenophores.”
“Really?” Flavia makes a note of it. “I have never said the words aloud, so… I mean, why even put the Cs in front if they will just be silent anyway? Okay. Today, they are separate phyla but—”
“Plexity does not use phyla.” Alonso frowns at the screen. “What are you up to this time, Flavia, and what will it break?”
She waves his accusation away. “Of course. We are classifying connections, not organisms, but it is the connections that Plexity is having trouble with. And in certain historical examples, it was those connections that kept them from being classified properly. I mean there is one group called Myxozoa. They used to be like jellyfish but then they evolved into parasites you can find on other creatures. Pradeep would love them. Some are only one cell big now. Simple, tiny creatures. Say you have a Cnidarian like an anemone and a Ctenophore comb jelly and they are both feeding on the same phytoplankton, which ends up exchanging a cloud of proteins and acids in the water, which they both take up. And they are both infested with Myxozoa. It is nearly impossible to describe using maths, but these kind of edge cases will now be…” She lifts her shoulders and makes a face. “Too bad.”
“Why, this is all very necessary, if we are staying by the lagoon, my dear. All these marine interactions are very sexy.” Alonso pats Flavia’s shoulder. “You know, perhaps it is in the interaction of the water and the land that we can make our best pitch. Por su puesto, of course it is. What do you think, Katrina? Maybe we put a special focus on the tide line, the creekside, the waterfall? It will make for nice images at least.” A brittle irritation inside Alonso threatens to break out. He smiles even more widely instead. This isn’t their fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault but his own, for dreaming too big.
But Flavia isn’t willing to let Alonso so easily off the hook. “So… wait. Now you are saying that you can make a reasonable version of Plexity with just this initial shoreline data? Because according to you that was impossible. That is what—”
“Yes, well, perhaps I didn’t understand exactly how closed off the interior of the island was until I came down here and looked into that long dark tunnel Pradeep and Jay took. It is really something, isn’t it? Just how disconnected the edge of the island is from the rest of it. A perfect hermetically-sealed biome for us to—”
“Oh, now it’s perfect. I’m not sure I like this side of you, Alonso.”
“What? Which side?”
“The hustler. I like the data scientist better.”
Alonso’s laugh is a short cynical bark. “Yes. Well. I do too. But it is time we start thinking of the outside world again, and in that world, I am absolutely a hustler. Katrina, take note. If you want to advance in academia or, well, anything really. It is all politics and marketing, yes?”
“Oh, for sure. That’s why I don’t go by my first name.”
“Your first name?” Alonso raises his eyebrows. “It isn’t Katrina?”
“Olga.”
Ξ
“Miriam, are you working?”
Miriam stares at her screen. She hasn’t written a word in perhaps fifteen minutes. Instead, she’s gone off on a mental tangent about her subject here, the stratigraphy of that immense shaft that Mandy burned clear. It’s a real shame that the walls are covered in soot. And Katrina won’t let them fly the drone in there. Maybe the rains are washing the faces clean. It would be such a perfect use of the drone as a remote sampling tool, especially for geology. Unlike the biologists, her samples don’t fight back. It would save her countless days of work. Wait. Somebody spoke to her. She blinks at the dim shadows of the bunkbed frames. “Aye?”
“Then I will not bother you.” Maahjabeen lowers herself stiffly on the cot that has been placed in one of the old frames. All their gear is piled precariously in corners but the beds are empty. The others have moved on, to different corners of the boat.
Miriam shakes her head clear. “Sorry, love. I meant, ‘Aye, what is it?’ not ‘Yes, I am working.’ So what is it? Are you okay?”
“I am just waking up with a very sore shoulder. It will not move. And it is making me very angry. Would you please get Mandy?”
But instead, Miriam levers herself to her feet and hurries to her, kneeling at Maahjabeen’s side. “This one?” And she clasps both sides of Maahjabeen’s shoulder in her hands, compressing them.
“Ah. Yes. It… Ah… Yes, that is what it needed.” Maahjabeen settles once more on her back, Miriam’s warm hands holding the angry ball joint in place. She does not move her hands, she only holds it intimately, like a mother embracing her child.
“And breathe.” Miriam smiles down at Maahjabeen, whose wrinkled brow still holds back a storm. “Breathe…” There was a time in the 90s when Miriam had almost given it all up after a visit to the Tibetan Plateau. She’d been a yoga fanatic just like everyone else in those days and she became fluent in its language of physical metaphors. Now she imagines her own breath releasing through the bottom of her feet into the earth and her chakras opening.
Tears leak from Maahjabeen’s dark eyes.
“Do you still want me to get Mandy?”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. She takes a deep ragged breath and settles even more deeply into Miriam’s grasp, allowing herself to be held. But the jagged images from her restless sleep still haunt her. “I do not think I can do this any more. I need… I can’t be shut off from the ocean like this. Not now. Not will all these threats around. The open ocean is where I always escape the threats. But now I can’t. The ocean is where the greatest threat is coming from. And sure I can get to the sea cave from here, but I can’t fit my boat through the mud tunnel. And there’s no point being in the cave without a boat. From in there I can’t even see the sky…” Her sob shuts off any more words.
“Shh shh. There there.” Miriam just holds on, letting the fierce woman find her own way through it.
They stay like that for a long time. Up until they hear a noise from the chamber behind them. Footsteps.
Miriam turns, hoping it might be Mandy. Why, she could put her hands on Maahjabeen too and together they might make a difference. But it isn’t Mandy. It’s a bedraggled figure in a yellow rainsuit, covered in dirt and soaked to the skin, their fair face now deathly white. “Triquet!”
“They’re gone,” Triquet croaks. “You can come out now.”
Upon hearing this, Maahjabeen finally releases all her tension with a ragged sigh and sags against the cot.
Miriam withdraws her hands and claps them. Then she gets up and hurries to Triquet to care for them, suppressing a random flash of irritation at finding herself in such a maternal role today. “Here, dear one.” She picks at the zipper of their sodden yellow raincoat and pulls it open. The undergarments are all wet. “Oh, my days. You must be frozen.”
“Hug.” Triquet begins shivering uncontrollably, open to the air for the first time in ages. The stress of what they’ve endured now rattles through them.
But first, Miriam pulls the rest of Triquet’s layers off and scrubs their skin dry with a blanket, careful of the angry red welt on their upper arm. Then she wraps their hairless body in a sleeping bag. She zips it up around them and only then does she hold them in a deep clasp, breathing warmth into the crook of Triquet’s neck. Finally she leans back and makes a prim line with her mouth. “Now. Sit. Or lie down. I’ll go get everyone. You’re sure? It’s safe out there? There was… someone in camp and now they’re gone?”
Triquet nods, weary. “Good plan. Yes. Get everyone, so I can only tell this once.”
Miriam nods. “Of course, darling.” She presses a hand against Triquet’s cheek. “So very glad to have you back.” Then she ducks through the far hatch, deeper into the sub.
Only then does Triquet register Maahjabeen in her cot across the room. “Oh. Hi. How are you?”
“My shoulder hurts.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Otherwise I would get you a cup of tea.”
“Sounds lovely. You don’t have to. But where would I find such a thing?” Triquet considers crawling like a cocooned worm in the sleeping bag to anywhere hot water might be.
“I thought it was in that first room, where you just were. Did you see any stoves in there?”
“Ah. Right.” Triquet recalls that last moment again, that final excruciating moment of being alone, after they had finally cleared the bunker’s floor and opened the hatch and hurried down the narrow stairs they know so well, relishing the fact that they’d survived this latest ordeal. Triquet hadn’t even really looked at the contents of the first room. They’d only seen it was empty of people. Did they walk right past a pot of hot water?
Maahjabeen lifts her head. “Pradeep is not back yet. I am very worried. So the bad men are gone? We can go back upstairs and I can finally get back out on the water? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know about that. For one thing, it’s raining again. And, I mean, who knows how far they went. Men with guns, maybe right over the horizon?” The sleeping bag is finally starting to warm Triquet up. Their shivers subside. “I do not know how Milo does it, day in and day out.”
“Who’s Milo? One of the soldiers?”
“No. Good grief. I didn’t talk to any of them. Or who knows what they’d have done to me. No, Milo is one of the golden childs. Kept me alive last night. Ugh. That was definitely the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had at a Best Western. Zero stars. And the breakfast buffet was cold.”
“You were actually out there in the storm? All night?”
“Yeah. I just couldn’t bring myself to come back in, because then we’d never know what was happening out there. You know?”
Maahjabeen slowly nods, understanding the logic of it and profoundly impressed by the sacrifice Triquet has made. “You did that for us? What a good person you are. I do not know if I could have done the same.”
“There you are.” Alonso swings himself through the hatch with only a little groan, then hobbles his way over to Triquet. “Oh, dear one, we are so glad you are back. Pobrecito. You look like a kitten who got drowned in the rain.”
“I’ll get them some tea.” Amy pushes past Alonso to the stoves in the first room. But she comes back a moment later as the others pile in behind Alonso. Alarmed, Amy says, “Guys… The hatch is open. The first hatch. Leading up to the bunker.”
“Aye, that’s where Triquet came down from.” Miriam sits at the foot of Triquet’s cot and chafes their feet through the bag.
Amy frowns. “And you left it open? Is that… wise?”
Triquet shrugs. “They’re gone.”
“They? Who, they?” Alonso sits at the cot’s side and pulls the plastered hairs away from Triquet’s splotched face.
“Well, I never got a formal introduction. But… Miriam, could you find my phone? It was in my coat.”
“Doctor Daine? Can you reach it? It’s the yellow one right behind you.”
Esquibel lifts the coat and unzips a pocket. “Here is the phone.”
Triquet’s arms emerge from the sleeping bag and they tap at the screen to cue up a video. “Yeah. Just watch this.”
It is a close-up video of the beach, at the edge of the lagoon. Triquet’s blue boots can be seen at the bottom of the frame, the phone’s camera tilted down. Right at the narrow surfline, text has been scrawled in the dark sand. It is already being washed away by the lagoon’s gentle waves. But the words are not in English.
Alonso squints. “Is that Cyrillic? Katrina?”
Katrina grabs the phone and starts the video again. She reads the words aloud and translates them. “My znayem, ‘chto… We know that… We know that you are here… Uvidimsya snova… cherez dve nedeli… See you again in two weeks.”
“Oh my god, they really are gone and it really is over.” Alonso presses his hands together. “You are sure? No sign of them left?”
“All empty. Land and sea. Except for the golden childs. They came back out of hiding, right when the rain started up again.”
“Perfect. So they also think it’s clear. They should know. Well. Sounds like we can at least get back up in the bunker, yes?”
“That is all it says?” Esquibel frowns. “That is a threat, no? It is nothing but an explicit threat.”
“Or some kind of…” Miriam waves a hand, “…misdirection? Like they want us to think we’ve got the whole beach to ourselves for the next two weeks then they sneak up on us one night.”
“Who were they?” Esquibel asks Triquet. “Who did you see?”
“I heard a whistle and I realized that these like, kind of short fat silhouettes, I swear that’s all I was able to see, maybe soldiers I guess, gathered back on the beach. Maybe four? Maybe five? Then by the time I saw them next it was just a little gray boat on the far side of the breakers heading out to the open ocean.”
“Not back to a larger vessel?” If Esquibel could get Triquet to describe a blue water ship or craft, important clues might give her an idea of exactly which Russians she’s dealing with here.
“Not that I could see.”
“Maybe they are a sub crew. During my mission briefings there was never any mention made of possible new Russian interference. Not that it is impossible. Contact with the Soviets on this island had been documented since the 60s. Things got particularly bad in the 70s, with a number of murders and disappearances on both sides that remain classified, but the return of the Russian Navy is certainly a valuable intelligence data point.” Esquibel’s laugh is bitter. “Assuming we survive to communicate it.”
“But why is it in Russian?” Katrina frowns at the words in the video, watching the tide wash them away.
Esquibel shrugs. “It’s the only language their sailors knew.”
“Or they weren’t writing to us.” Katrina shrugs. “Maybe they think there’s some Russians here. I mean, how would they know we’d even understand it? Or maybe it’s some kind of crazy double-feint and they weren’t even Russians.”
“Now, wait. You were the one who said the golden man called them Russians, Katrina.” Esquibel can’t keep the accusation out of her voice, nor does she try very hard.
“He did. But maybe he was lying. Or maybe he doesn’t know the difference. It may be that they come back in two weeks and surprise us all. What do you think?”
“That is very unlikely. I think that if it is the Russians,” Esquibel frowns, “we cannot take any chances. All we know for certain is that a military squad was here and will be back in two weeks.”
“How did they know we’re here?” Mandy pinches her features together, the stress making her ill. “Are they just playing with us?”
“It’s a big ocean,” Maahjabeen says. “Maybe they needed some supplies. Fresh water. This will get them back to wherever they are based. Then they can recharge and come back again.”
“Well, not if they are any Navy I’ve served with.” Esquibel doesn’t like contradicting Maahjabeen but this is her field. “This isn’t like Magellan. This is the 21st century. They aren’t facing scurvy and spoiled water. At least they shouldn’t be.”
“And how did that golden man know,” Mandy asks, her voice rising, “that soldiers were coming? Have the Lisicans been spying on us? Do they have like a radio in those golden masks?”
“Or maybe,” Flavia says, “the Russians always come at this time of year. I think that is more likely, no?”
“Jay said Kula had a radio,” Katrina adds. “But he wasn’t sure if it worked.”
“Well.” Flavia stands. “I for one am looking forward to a shower in the waterfall. Anyone join me?”
“We can’t.”
A silent displeasure greets Esquibel’s words.
“No. Think about it. The soldiers can come back any moment. We now have proof, documented proof, that they were here. Good job, Triquet, capturing that message before it vanished.”
“Yes, but Doctor Daine…” Alonso needs to get back upstairs as much as anyone. “These bad guys, if they are bad guys, already know we are here. They could have come after us at any moment. But they didn’t.”
“Because maybe they couldn’t find us.”
“Then how did they know we’re here at all?” Mandy isn’t ready to hear all the reasons why they must still be under threat. She can’t handle any more. “I mean, we got to just, you know, trust the golden childs. If they’re out of hiding, then I’m out.”
“No…” Esquibel once again finds herself set against the entire rest of the crew. She raises her hands. “That is not how it works. Just because they were right about one thing does not mean they are right about everything. Katrina was just arguing that the golden childs can’t even tell the difference between us and the Russians. They are not the experts we need here.”
“So what are you saying?” Maahjabeen sits up, grimacing. “That we have to spend the next two bloody weeks in this—this coffin?”
“It is probably the most defensible structure we have left.”
Maahjabeen’s face drains of color. “I cannot. I am sorry. But you cannot expect me to—”
“What if we go further in?” Miriam catches up Maahjabeen’s hand, who snatches it away again.
“Further in? Like into the tunnels?” Maahjabeen can’t think of anything worse.
“No, please, Miriam,” Alonso shakes his head in displeasure. “Perhaps a geologist can spend two weeks underground, but…”
“I don’t mean the tunnels, Alonso. I mean the interior. Like a camp beside the Dzaadzitch village. It’s time. We’ve been on this bloody island for six weeks and we still haven’t gotten more than a few peeks at it.”
“No no no. Have you forgotten,” Flavia asks, “about the crazy shamans in there who are trying to take us as slaves?”
“Well, they already know exactly where we are, and the golden childs will just have to keep protecting us.”
“Yes.” Mandy likes this plan. She can set up weather stations wherever she wants, dependent upon no one. “Miriam’s right. We got stuck on the beach for too long. It was too comfortable.”
“Forgive me,” Maahjabeen scowls, “but I did not get ‘stuck’ on the beach and if you propose to take the oceanographer away from the ocean then I can’t even say what I am doing here any more.”
“Finding Pradeep.” Miriam says it quietly but it prompts bright tears in Maahjabeen’s eyes. “Just help us find him, love. Then all this madness will pass and the two of you can go back to romantic sunset paddles again, eh?”
Maahjabeen silently nods.
“No.” Flavia stands. “We just decided. We can’t leave the lagoon now. Plexity needs us to stay. Alonso realized… Tell them.”
But Alonso is spooked by this conversation. It feels as though the whole world is passing him by. “Yes, there are many problems with your plan, Miriam. I was about to… I mean, that is a different conversation, for sure. But for the sake of the science, yes, it would be best if we kept our focus for the time being on the beach. It is the only way to make use of Plexity in the short time we have left. And also, personally… I would just have to say that from the way you talk about these tunnels I am certain you would have to leave me behind. Which,” he holds up a hand to forestall their protests, “I understand. If that is what will keep my team safe, then that is what will happen. I am just not sure if that is what will happen.”
Esquibel stands. “It is, Doctor Alonso. It is what will happen. Doctor Truitt is right. We cannot stay down here. We have to move to the interior of Lisica. And we will find a way to get you through those tunnels. It will be possible, right?”
“Oh, right,” Triquet says. “Esquibel doesn’t know either. Both of you haven’t gone through, have you? Well, there’s a tight fit in one spot and a lot of climbing at the end. I mean, it isn’t easy. But you’ll be fine, Alonso.”
“Eh,” he pats his solid belly. “This fat man doesn’t like hearing anything about a tight fit.”
“Then this is what I shall do.” Maahjabeen sits up, ignoring the stiffness in her shoulder. “I will paddle my boats out of the lagoon and down the coast into the sea cave and leave them there. That is where you will find me. Then I will be able to join you when you need me through the tunnels. Yes?”
“I’ll paddle with you,” Amy volunteers. “Nobody should run that gauntlet alone. First break in the storm.”
“Fine.”
“But, Alonso…” Flavia turns to him, isolated now. “We can’t, right? We have to stay on the beach. We just decided.”
“It is not even a decision,” Alonso mutters, his insides queasy. “We are being forced by the demands of the project to remain on the beach. If Plexity will work at all we do need to focus our efforts there. But if it is the Russians…” He falls silent.
“Come on, Flavia,” Miriam tries. “Don’t make Alonso…”
“But it isn’t safe in the interior! I am telling you! I was the first one they attacked! And they aren’t done with us yet!”
“The problem, mate,” Katrina says, “is that nowhere is safe. It’s all danger. So we just got to pick our poisons.”
“Then I will stay in here. This will be my poison. I will stay in the sub with some crackers and energy bars and pee in a bottle!”
And nothing anyone says can change Flavia’s mind.
Ξ
“Come on, Jay. Quickly. This way.” Pradeep grabs Jay by the arm and hauls him through the brush. His only thought is that if he can get Jay back to the village before Wetchie-ghuy attacks again they might make it out.
“Fuck this…” Jay’s voice is muzzy, thick with concussion. Why’s he got to be in so much pain all the time? Now it’s his right ear, which stings so bad his eyes water. And the base of his skull where he like wrenched his neck.
“Oh god…” Pradeep pulls up short at a slick chute of gray rock pouring a tributary of water from the cliff on their right straight down into a cluster of dark broadleafs obscuring where it joins the wider creek. There is no clear way across it.
Over the hiss of the water and the drumming of the rain in the canopy above, a distant piercing giggle reaches them. It is manic and wild, a predator on the hunt careless if his prey hears him.
“That him?” Jay turns back and blinks at the steep slope and shadowed understory. “The fuck’s his deal, anyway?”
“He went crazy. He struck you.”
“He did? When?”
Pradeep has already told Jay this. Now he will need to tell him again. “When you got him high. And it made him… insane. Like a wild beast. What was in that joint you gave him?”
“Just some Sour Diesel, my dude. Why’d he hit me?”
“Gah. We need to get across here. Nowhere better. Come on, Jay. Do you think you can jump?”
“Sure…” Jay sways, the earth tilting under him like he’s at sea. “It’s just the landing part I’m not so sure about.”
“I’m afraid he really rang your bell. If we can just get across this part we might be able to put some distance between us. Here.”
Jay squares up at a cluster of gray boulders crowned with purple-dark lichen. “We should collect some of this for Plexity.”
“No, bhenchod! Not now! He is coming!” Pradeep pushes his mate up onto the rocks. “Jump across! I am right with you!”
Jay’s many years of experience with impaired movement serve him well here. He doesn’t struggle against the kaleidoscopic pain of the concussion. He rolls with it. It seems to have deadened a nerve circuit that runs all the way down his right side. So his arm and leg are just dead weight. He’ll have to somehow swing himself around that weight up over the gap. Just a couple meters…
Jay hurls himself through the air and lands heavily on the rocks on the far side, knocking his breath from his body and crunching his incision scar. The multipoint agony blanks his mind. He is nothing but pain.
Pradeep lands lightly beside him and pulls him to his feet. “Come on, Jay. We’ve got to keep running.”
“Running.” Merely moving is like stabbing himself with knives and this asshole wants him to start running? Pradeep grabs his wrist and pulls him ahead. “Wasn’t I just like… on acid?”
“Focus, Jay. I can’t do this alone.”
“But why aren’t we dead?” Jay stumbles down the sliding slope, his feet catching on roots and stalks. “He came at me so fast.”
“Somebody saved us.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see. It all happened in a blur. A dark blur. And then you were just crumpled at my feet and they were gone.” Pradeep slows. “Oh, no…” There is an outcrop here blocking their way, a sheer cliff that thrusts outward from the ridge above to drop in a vertical line to the rushing water below. “Can’t traverse. No way. We got to go back up. Fuck. That’s like a hundred meters.”
But Jay isn’t listening to Pradeep. He’s watching Wetchie-ghuy coalesce out of the shadows above. The shaman is playing with them, just toying with their sorry asses. Whoever got in his way back on the flat land is gone now and he’s ready for the kill. The old man looks hardly capable of such agile speed. His barrel body and short legs are full of terrifying power, though. After he held out that joint, Jay never even saw him coming. “This is heinous.”
But Pradeep and Jay aren’t alone. “Stand back.” Rushing silently up beside them, Jidadaa puts herself in front. She holds a warding hand up to Wetchie-ghuy and speaks a forceful incantation of some kind. It makes him blanch and turn his head to the side, but it doesn’t dislodge him from his position blocking their way.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay squawks as Wetchie-ghuy steps forward. But she pulls a cluster of twigs and feathers from the folds of her clothing and waves it at the shaman, calling out in a mocking voice, “Tu dah-ne, at udéine!”
The shaman pulls up short, his hand going to his belt, his actions indicating that she stole whatever that is from him and he’s just finding out now. He snarls, her name coming out as a curse, and leaps at her.
But she has already slipped away from him back in the shadows, retreating deeper into the ferns behind. Jidadaa leads him away.
“Now! We have to climb!” Pradeep churns at the loose soil that spills down beneath his soles to the creek far below. “She gave us a chance!” And he pushes Jay, who is still caught in a moment of stark terror.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay repeats, the only thing he can think to say or do for her. Then he starts to climb.
It is a motherfucker of an ascent. His legs are already dead and this is like scaling a wall of loose soil and thorns. And he has no adrenaline left. It’s all just tremors and gasping now, chased by the fear of an iron grip on a trailing ankle or a hand clamping his shoulder. But nothing like that happens. They both win free and swing up onto the rocky mount of the outcrop to catch their breaths before they continue their way down the canyon.
From up here they can see over the treetops of the canyon floor. It is a dense winding carpet of redwood for another five hundred meters or so, then they can barely see the beginning of a more open valley ahead. “That’s it, Prad. That’s the spot. Gotta be. Where I first saw golden childs. First time ever. Where I crossed the river. Super close now. We got this. Come on, brother.”
Ξ
“So many things…” Amy gasps, working hard, “…we can’t bring to the… the interior…”
“Alonso’s cask of wine.” Miriam stands straight, cheeks pink with exertion, pulling a stray curl from her face. “Maahjabeen’s boats. What else?” They work in the control room, Miriam stacking bags and containers, Amy’s head poking above the gap in the floor. She hauls another heavy load down to the lower level of the sub.
Esquibel hears them as she enters. “Bins. All our food. Medicine. I’ve been re-packaging what I can but we don’t have enough small containers to protect everything that needs to be protected.”
“All my lovely stacks,” Triquet sighs, entering with an armful of papers. They set it carefully down and wipe the perspiration from their brow. “Back to their original places belowdecks.”
“That is a big load. How is your arm doing?” Esquibel grabs it and pulls Triquet’s sleeve up without asking.
“Oh, frankly, I haven’t thought about it in…” Triquet falls silent and Esquibel goes still. The hardened resin that had covered the wound for the last few days is gone now. All that remains is a long red patch of irritated skin. There is no sign of the eagle bite. The incision has vanished as if it never was.
“Impossible.” Esquibel rolls Triquet’s arm back and forth. “We worked on this wound site for—for… It was so long! You had a deep cut in the flesh of your arm!”
“Yeah. I did.” Triquet is filled with disquiet. With a convulsive impulse, they drop to the deck and pull their sock and shoe from their left foot. “Oh, god… Look!” They hold out their foot, so all can see the dark dots of tattoo between each knuckle. “That’s like assault, isn’t it? Tattooing someone against their will?”
“How did your arm heal so quickly?” Esquibel is astounded. She knows of nothing that can heal like that. It must be the sap, that burning sap… Somehow it heals and doesn’t even leave behind scar tissue. Why, every surgery incision, every bullet wound, every dog bite… This is how researchers and doctors become rich. If she can find what bioactive compound that shaman used and patent it before anyone else even knows about it, she’ll become the richest woman in the world. No. This is too wild. Her eyes narrow and she takes a step back. Life is never so easy. There must be some cost. Those tattoos? What are they doing to Triquet? “Why did you check your foot? Could you feel the tattoo?”
“No!” Triquet is near tears. “That’s the problem! I can’t feel anything wrong at all! My arm! My foot! Whatever Sherman did, it’s all inside me now. Ugghh. Doctor Daine, you’ve got to get it out of me. Now.”
“I would very much like to.” Esquibel is torn. Did she preserve any of that resin? After all the packing and moving she can’t recall. She wants to inspect Triquet more closely but she knows this isn’t the place. What is that sap? The implications of its use whirl through her head, making her dizzy.
“Come on, Triquet.” Miriam kneels beside them, helping to put the sock and shoe back on. “We need to find new laces for your shoe. I’m surprised it isn’t falling off. That’s it, darling. All will be well. We’ll just get it all moved first and then we’ll take care of you. Just a few more hours of the drudgery.”
Her calm words help, if only a little. “Yes, Miriam.” Triquet is miserable. Claimed. Experimented upon. This is the nightmare they had always managed to avoid.
“Come on, everyone!” Mandy’s voice, too bright, breaks the mood. She enters carrying a stack of bins, happy about this plan and eager to put it into action. “Got to keep moving! Time to go inland!”
“That’s it. Just a few more paces and you’re there.” Katrina leads Alonso through the passage opening into the sea cave.
He stops, wiping the mud from his hands, taking in the luminous water and walls shimmering with refracted daylight. He shakes his head in wonder. “I am an idiot.”
“What? No.” Katrina’s laugh echoes in the cavern. “Why do you say that?”
“That waterfall…” Alonso traces its route upward. “That is our creek, no? This is where it drops into. Miriam was right.”
Katrina waits patiently for Alonso to take it all in.
“I thought…” Alonso lifts his hands and lets them drop. “I saw the map that Colonel Baitgie shared and… it was like a cartoon. Just a little drawing. And I thought the island was the perfect size. I actually worried that it might be too small and wouldn’t hold our attention for eight whole weeks. But of course that simple map didn’t show all the cliffs or canyons or the tunnels or the villages or the caves. What a fool I am, Katrina. An arrogant fool.”
“Nah, mate. There was no way to tell until we got here. In order to measure something you got to interact with it.”
“Well, like my dear friend Arthur Limas the quantum physics professor is fond of saying, measuring something changes it. Always. So not only did we blunder into this place with little to no idea of what we are doing, we stained everything we touched with our own essence. I thought we would study Lisica as objective and empirical scientists, but instead we are ruining it.”
The guilt is unbearable. Alonso shuffles to the water’s edge, where the rusted remains of the pier rock in the waves. He grabs one of the remaining pylons, cold and unforgiving in his grip. Iron. This is how he has to be. If he is going to survive he needs to be iron. No, not only survive… If he is going to lead.
It had been an appalling amount of pain and effort to get him to this point. He had barely pushed his way through the mud tunnel and now he is filthy. But his ordeal is not over. There is more crawling and climbing ahead and his feet and legs are already burning. “Do any of your party drugs do anything for pain?” He sits at the edge of the rock shelf and pulls his shoes and socks off. With a sigh he drops his feet into the water.
“That’d be something, wouldn’t it? An anaesthetic party drug. Well. I guess that’s what ketamine is but I didn’t bring any of it. Or like any of the opiates. That shit’s nasty. Ruins your life. But yeh. I think about designing my own drugs all the time and I could never think of an effect better than sex with gods, but that’s just cause I’m young and carefree, innit? I can see that now. After a little more life lived there’s nothing better than pain relief and a clear mind. Maybe that’s what I should spend my time on.”
Alonso hardly hears Katrina’s chatter. As the pain subsides he begins to gain another sensation, one that surprises him. It is pride. He did it. He overcame his broken body and made it down through the sub and past the worst of their obstacles. He really didn’t think he’d be able to squeeze through but Katrina had been right, he had lost more weight than he knew. And there was more strength in his arms and back than he remembered. It had been ages since he’d tried to do anything with his muscles. He’d thought he’d be as weak as a baby, but accumulating mass appears to be what middle age is all about. He is still strong.
“Eh! See?” Maahjabeen enters the sea cave. She is wincing and working on her shoulder, but her face is relieved. “Isn’t it so nice in here? Better than being inland and away from the water. I do not trust the native people, either.”
“Yes, it is very nice.” Alonso gasps as a splash runs further up his leg than he wanted. “A bit cold, but a nice spot out of the rain.”
“You got to give the islanders a chance,” Katrina says. “Most of them are totally fine. It’s like anywhere else. There’s always a couple assholes ruining things for everyone.”
“As a matter of fact,” Maahjabeen declares, “I don’t have to give them a chance. Not if I am living in here. And it is probably a good idea for us to have at least one or two of us out of their clutches.”
“Two. Yes.” Alonso turns, worried at the misanthropic edge in Maahjabeen’s voice. He would rather appeal to her humanity. “You and Pradeep. Together again.”
A brief sob escapes before Maahjabeen can suppress it. “Yes. My Mahbub. I miss him so.”
Chapter 42 – A Basketball Game
October 14, 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:
42 – A Basketball Game
“Jay. Jay, stop…” Pradeep has been repeating the words for a long time now but this time they work. Jay stumbles to a halt in front of him, seeing it too. Silver light shines indirectly into their tunnel. “We did it. We got out.”
Jay’s breathing is ragged. Holy hell. He took one look at those demon eyes and got the F out of there. Who knows how long he’s been charging forward, dragging Pradeep behind him? But now he can smell the plants and the soil and the fresh air leaking in from ahead. “Jeee-zus, this acid is sooo strong. It’s been like a seventeen hour trip so far. Thanks a fucking bunch, Katrina.”
“Let us stop, please.” Pradeep removes his hand from Jay’s belt, where he held on for dear life. The webbing has cut into his palm and it is a burning pain that keeps him from otherwise thinking clearly. “Why are you so crazed? What did you see, anyway?”
Jay turns back to regard the darkness. Yep, the demons are still lurking back there, staring malevolently at the two escapees. The tunnel’s darkness encompasses one of their infernal hells, with tiers upon tiers of crypts in the pit’s walls, countless fiends staring out. How did he and Pradeep ever survive that? “Uh, there’s, uh, something down here. But we got away. Lots of somethings.”
“What, like… badgers?”
The question is so random and ludicrous Jay can’t help but wheeze with laughter. Oh, yeah. He feels that in his ribs. “The fuck? Badgers? There’s no badgers on this island. Dude. Don’t be dense. We’d have seen sign or spoor by now. No. Demons. Now come on. Maybe there’s some water out here.”
Jay continues forward. Pradeep stands there, dumbstruck, feeling a fool for running around all night fleeing Jay’s acid trip. Damn. Well at least he didn’t lose the bloody moron. And they did finally find a way out. But where are they?
They emerge from a natural crevice on a nearly vertical slope, the opening almost completely obscured by fern fronds. Nearby redwoods are gigantic black columns against an empty sky. Framed between two of the largest is a nearly full moon. Its harsh light bathes this narrow canyon in monochrome light and shadow.
Jay blinks. He’s been underground so long his eyes are super sensitive. This moonlight is like full daylight to him. “I can’t even remember… the last time I saw the moon.” The cloud cover of Lisica hadn’t been getting to him. He hadn’t thought it had, at least. But seeing the full clear night sky again, with the vaulting Milky Way and planets shining in all their brilliant hues… It rocks him. He stumbles from the crevice, wisps of black demon smoke dispersing in the crystal air around his head like bats winging away from their cave. Free. He groans aloud and raises his hands to the shimmering sky. “Free!”
Pradeep claps his hands over his mouth. The shining face of the moon is a profound sight, so bright he can’t look directly at it. The ground falls away before him, purple and black, with dazzling patches of silver that catch the light. He can’t navigate through that. Finding a solid foothold and handhold where he stands, he carefully leans out and looks upslope. No, that is even worse, a massive stone overhang disappearing out of sight above. He’s a climber but he isn’t a reckless fool. That would be like five dynos in a row just to get up what he can see, and his arms are already blown from wrestling all night with Jay. “So… down?”
“Down?” Jay shakes his head and frowns at the sudden motion. His thoughts are clear again but a massive headache is starting up. Oh, fuck. Not now. Not here. Owww! He’s gonna kill Katrina when he sees her again. Absently, his fingers find a fresh joint and his lighter. Soon he is sparking up.
Pradeep exclaims at the sudden flare of light then hisses in disapproval. “Put that away. No idea who might see us here.”
“Good point.” Jay takes a huge hit and rubs the space between his brows with a knuckle. Now he needs water more than ever. His throat is like made of sand and the hot smoke goes down like fire. “Well, water is always down.” And with no more consideration, he drops onto a shelf he can barely see about three meters below.
Pradeep mutters anxiously, his legs trembling. Then he grits his teeth and follows with a halfhearted crouching leap.
Now the weed finally does its job and Jay’s poor brain unlocks. He is able to escape his mind for the first time in ages and reside in his body. Drop. Scramble. Swing. This is real exercise again, the good kind. Not that claustrophobic hell with Pradeep. This is bouldering by moonlight, yo. Not the first time he’s done such a thing. Come on, demons. See if you can catch me now. He patrols the edge of the shelf, then finds a bit of a route on a more shallow slope to his left. Down he goes, his shoes filling with sandy soil.
The ferns are thick. They give way to rhododendron. This is a wet canyon. Jay can tell just by the plant life. More redwoods tower above, stabilizing the cliff walls with their immense roots. They are so slippery, though, and Jay falls from one network into the duff below, sliding into a blackberry bush, where he’s pierced by a hundred thorns. “Oww. Watch that, Prad. It… Fuck! Ow!”
Pradeep perches on the redwood roots above, listening to Jay crash and bellow in the underbrush, all attempts at stealth forgotten. The last thing he wants is to continue this descent. “Shouldn’t there be a traverse across somewhere? Are you sure we want to get to the bottom?”
“Ah. Ahh…” Jay groans as a dozen thorns or more break off in his skin. But he’s still got to push through. He’s past the thick of it now. Just a few more sliding steps, with a few more thorns in his calf, then he’s free. He calls back up to Pradeep. “Yeah, dude. The bottom’s where the water is. Wouldn’t even be a canyon here without water. ” He tilts his gaze back down into the darkness below, the trees obscuring the way down from the moon, and mutters to himself, “And I need a drink bad.”
“But then how will we ever get back up?”
Pradeep’s voice is distant. Jay stops and struggles to find his patience. Can’t lose his buddy now. “No getting back up, homie. Down and out. We’ll have to find another way back.”
“Ugh. I do not like that answer.”
“Come on, Prad. Swing yourself over this way. You can avoid the blackberries if you drop over here. Just watch out for rocks.”
Jay takes another drag on his joint. Even though it majorly tears up his throat it sure does good things to his mental state. He’s back in business now. And if he strains to listen he can hear the gurgle of a creek. “Fuck yeah, there’s a creek. This is a deep canyon and that was a big storm.” Jay drops onto a boulder and hurries down a broadening slope into a dark grove. Finally. The redwoods hold the soil here on a forest floor that is flattening out. Mossy banks and ferns are barely visible in the tiny bit of light that penetrates.
Jay worms his way forward, using the toes of one foot to sense his path forward. There is no path, just a jumble of fallen logs covered with moss and clumps of ferns. But the water is closer now, a full liquid gargle that promises an end of thirst. It urges him forward until he is at its side hanging over the wide creek, the dangling roots of the redwoods an impassable barrier above the rushing water. He needs to find a sandbar or something. Unless he fully throws himself in the creek he can’t reach it from here. And he isn’t willing to do that yet. He just got his phone back, for fuck’s sake.
But he’s so thirsty.
Jay pulls back and picks his way further downstream, the thorns in the heels of his hand and the skin of his calf stabbing him with every move. But finally he finds a spot where the dirt slopes steeply to the water. By holding onto a root and lowering himself headfirst he’s able to dip his chin into the frigid stream and gulp down some of the best water he’s ever tasted. Drenching his front, the cold sobers him further. Finally he has to pull away, even though he feels like he could drink forever.
When Jay regains his balance he finds Pradeep above, navigating down to him with his phone light. “Water,” Jay calls out, perhaps unnecessarily. But it is the only thing that matters.
Pradeep pauses, his head whirling. This precipitous slope is nearly as bad as being in the tunnels. At least in there he had no chance of pitching himself forward and drowning in a rain-swollen creek. “Where are we?” he demands. “Which way should we go?”
“You think I know?” Jay’s answer is querulous, followed by a sharp laugh that verges on hysterics. “Feels like I’ve spent half my waking moments on this fucking island lost in the dark.”
“Yes. Well. We need to make a choice, and I am not going to drop down any further to you until…”
“You ain’t thirsty? Damn. Well, it’s a simple call. Downstream. Duh. That’s where we’ll eventually like get back to where we once belonged.”
“Okay. Which way is that?”
“To the right.”
“And what is upstream?”
“Well, come on, don’t stop using your brain here. That must be the high country, right? The ridgeline that collected all this water.”
“No… I am asking… Wasn’t it on a hill top that Triquet escaped from? And Flavia? The shamans are above somewhere.”
“All the more reason to go down. Oh, fuck. I soaked the last of my joint. Goddamnit. Now I’m gonna have to roll a new one. Shine your light—”
“No! I will not!” In response, Pradeep turns off his light. “There is only two percent battery left. I was just getting very angry about how you made me use more to come down here. We can’t use the last on your drug habit. It’s the drugs that got us into this mess!”
“Fine. I’ll just suffer in silence then. At least until we find a patch of moonlight. Come on.”
They follow the course of the creek as well as they can from the slope above, about ten meters up. But the canyon walls are cut by endless rills and streams of side canyons that bring water down to add to the larger creek. It is in the second of these that Pradeep finds a spot where he can drink. And Jay is right. It is amazingly restorative. Now the prospect of hiking the entire rest of the night doesn’t seem quite so daunting. And the moonlight certainly helps.
Jay certainly thinks so. He’s crouched down and balanced his kit on his knee. After carefully rolling a pair of joints, one for energy and one for relaxation, he slides them into a dry pocket. Then with the last of the dust he makes a little binger that he smokes to ash. “We might want to find a spot to hole up for the rest of the night.”
Pradeep shrugs. “Let us walk while we can.”
The canyon eventually opens onto a wider valley. The trees do not cover the entire forest floor, leaving wide patches of silver light they pick their way through. The creek has flooded here, filling the flat ground with pools and puddles, making progress difficult. Eventually they have to give up trying to keep their shoes and pants dry, and start wading along its verge in the icy water.
Finally, a solid rise clears the floodwaters ahead like an island, featuring a pair of giant bay trees and little more. Pradeep throws himself down onto its dry banks, panting from the exertion and the anxiety, needing a break from banging his shins against submerged logs and squinting into the dark. Now he’s got a headache too.
Jay’s is also getting worse. He worries about the return of his headaches. This would be the worst place for them, by far. “At least it’s dark,” he grunts, kneading the back of his neck.
“What is wrong?”
“Migraines are worse in bright light. So at least I got that going for me, which is nice.”
“You have a migraine? Shit. I didn’t know you got migraines.” Pradeep makes a worried face. His mother has this curse. He learned early on what to do for her. “Here. Turn a bit. Now breathe.” Pradeep buries his knuckles in the straps of muscle connecting Jay’s back and neck. He certainly has a lot more mass than Pradeep’s mom but hopefully the principle is the same. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Pradeep’s strong fingers are like fangs piercing his flesh. But Jay knows to keep still and relaxed if it’s going to be helpful. He’s just got to breathe through the added pain. “Yeah,” he grunts. “Got them pretty much under control. Except I guess when I wrestle with demons on acid.”
“Underground. In the cold and dark.”
“With no food or water.”
“It does make sense. Jay, I’m worried.”
“Not now, chief. Trying to clear my mind of worry.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep has no such avenue for himself. “My mind is primarily composed of worry, perhaps 98% by weight. I’m only thinking about this creek. If we are on the right bank, and it is eventually the same river that divides the two warring villages, then which bank do we want to be on?”
“Oh, man, are you trying to break my brain?” But Jay knows this is a valid concern. There’s no point in fighting their way through hours of forest only to throw themselves on the spearpoints of the Katóok tribe, after Jay had sworn to never return to their territory. “Yeah, let’s see. Downstream is like this… We stay on this side. Yeah, we’re on the correct bank. The good side, the west side where they won’t kill us. Pretty sure.”
“Good. Because I don’t think we can cross that creek anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s like the whole idea about it, for sure. No crossing allowed. And I guess that holds true all the way up to the top of the island. Fucking weirdos.”
“So hungry.” Pradeep finds a fallen log that would make a good chair. He sits and takes off his shoes, clearing them of all the debris.
“For sure. You think I can get a pizza delivered?” Jay decides if he can’t eat he’ll smoke more weed. Sativa it is. Bolster his energy.
“Oh. No.” Pradeep’s words are so harrowed that they interrupt Jay, mid-inhalation. “It’s him.”
“Him? Who him?” Then Jay’s eyes adjust from the flare of the lighter to spy the dim hulking figure here on this rise with them, just a few paces away. “Oh, is it that Wetchie-ghuy fucker? What up, dude? You sure been causing us a metric fuck-ton of trouble.” With force, Jay blows the remainder of his smoke at the distant figure, who remains still, watching them.
Pradeep groans. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand… How could I know what he looked like in my mind if I’d never seen him in real life? And now when I see him, he looks the same? How did he get inside my mind?”
“Don’t let him fool you, Prad. This dude’s got tricks.”
“No. It is no trick. A bargain has been made. Somehow. He knows it as well as I. And now he is coming to collect.”
“The fuck he is. Sit down, Prad. Dude doesn’t get to just roll up and claim people. It doesn’t work like that. The only reason you needed any help in the first place is because his buddy tried to kill you with poison. Fuck both of them. You owe him nothing.”
Now Wetchie-ghuy holds out a loop of braided leather. They both know what that is for. Pradeep’s shoulders slump, accepting his fate. He knew Maahjabeen and his exciting new career were too good to be true. He just knew it, deep inside. And there is a gleam in that old man’s eye, a curious little opening into a larger truth. This is the siren song Pradeep heard in the darkness last night that originally made him leave the sub. It is here, in this shaman’s knowledge, the universal truths Pradeep has always sought. See? This transaction has further benefits for him. He will only sit at his new master’s feet and take in whatever crumbs and morsels Wetchie-ghuy cares to share. It will be worth it…
“Prad! I said sit the fuck back down.” Jay pulls on Pradeep, who has risen again to go to the awful old man. But Jay has another idea. “No. Wait. Let’s make a deal, Wetchie-ghuy. You want my boy but you can’t have him. You can’t have either of us. But I got something even better. Bigger juju, dude. Look.” And Jay gets between the shaman and the man he has claimed, blowing another billow of smoke at Wetchie-ghuy.
The shaman coughs, waving his hand in front of his face, then he mutters something in reaction and cocks his head.
“Yeah, smells good, don’t it? Here’s the deal. You can have the joint. But I get to keep Pradeep. Right? Fair and final, yeah?”
Wetchie-ghuy lifts a gnarled hand. Jay puts the joint in it. “That’s it. Smoke up, bro. Like you saw me do. Then we’re square.”
Wetchie-ghuy inhales, the end of the joint crackling cherry red. He does not exhale.
Ξ
Katrina is in a febrile dream. She is so thirsty. There’s a park of red sandstone near her house she’s been going to as a child but now it’s drought season and all its pools are dusty dry, like the inside of her poor wretched mouth.
Someone wakes her. She gratefully pulls herself out of the vision. It was absolutely no fun, filled with loops of thought she’s been around and around so many times they’ve worn grooves in her brain. And now she’s awake, the curving shadows of the sub’s hull over her head, waking in the Captain’s bed with Alonso sitting at her side. He looks at her with paternal care, holding water.
“Here.”
He feeds it to her like a bottle to a baby. She slurps greedily, a rivulet running down her chin and pooling in the hollow of her neck. Finally she breaks away. “Thanks, mate. Glorious.”
“You were muttering for water and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeh. Brilliant. What time is it?”
“It is near morning. And we are still alive. So.” He pats her head and gives her a pitying smile. “How is the come down? Bad?”
“The worst. Usually I have a lot more control of how my trips end. Lots of hot water and vitamins and meditation. Not… Well. Whatever the fuck that was.”
Alonso’s response is a full belly laugh. He smooths the fine strands of blonde hair away from her forehead. “Yes. The bugout. The big bugout of May Second. It will go down in history.”
“And somehow you’re in a good mood about it?” Katrina sits up, somewhat resentful of Alonso’s tone. Then she remembers how irritable she will be today and remembers to keep it to herself.
“Yes, well… I have always, during crisis, you know, at least before the last crisis, the big one, the long one, the five years…” He shrugs, re-setting himself. “I was always at my best in a crisis. I can put my feelings away and take care of all the problems and needs of others. So. My colleague asks for water, I get water. My Doctor tells me to hide in a sub, I hide in a sub. And I take care of people. It is one of the things I do best. You wouldn’t know it from meeting me now, but I assure you it is true. Is there anything else I can get you?”
Katrina shakes her head no. “Any sign of… you know, anyone? Jay and Pradeep? The golden man? Russian Marines?”
“No one. Maahjabeen and Flavia convinced Esquibel to move her barrier further up the tunnel so they could visit the sea cave. So they were gone for like an hour. But they’re back now. Everyone else is still asleep.”
“He was real, you know. It wasn’t the drugs. We really did see the golden man and he really did tell us the Russians were coming. I mean, Pradeep and Jay didn’t just vanish for fun.”
“We know. And we know which way our two wayward sons went. But nobody is allowed to follow them. It’s a new tunnel.”
“New tunnel. Fucking fantastic.” Katrina groans and falls back against the wall, bumping her head. “Yeh. Coming back online now. Ah, sobriety. You were not missed. Any coffee anywhere?”
“Not yet. But I can start a pot. Just not in here. The ventilation is not so good.”
“So like no boots tramping around above? No gunfire or…?”
Alonso shrugs. “The bunker’s concrete floor is too solid.”
Katrina looks more closely at his silhouette. “Are you sure I was just out for a few hours? Not like… days?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just skip this whole unpleasant episode and wake up when it’s safe again. Why? What is it?”
“You’re… I mean, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but you look really good, Doctor Alonso. I think you’ve lost some weight.”
“This is quite the time to turn into a flatterer.” Alonso stands straighter, sucking in his belly. “Well, a man can only drink so much wine. Really? You think so?”
“I really do.” The transformation is fairly striking. His hair is growing out as well, a leonine mane of silver and black sweeping back from his forehead. And his jawline has returned.
“You are so sweet. Let me just get the water going and I will be right back for more compliments.” With a soft chuckle he turns and vanishes, leaving Katrina alone with her chaotic thoughts.
He returns a moment later, bearing a bag of dried fruit and a handful of supplements. “Here. Electrolytes for what you lost. And more water. Your coffee is coming.” He makes sure she swallows the pills and drinks more water and eats a handful of fruit. “Now. Tell me more nice things about how I look.”
Katrina laughs for his sake, her insides made of sand. She doesn’t think she can sleep any more but she also can’t offer much more in the way of social niceties. “You do look fab. I love your hair.”
Alonso passes a self-conscious hand over his curls. “You are such a doll. You have no idea how vain I am.”
Katrina pauses, mid-sip. She lowers the water bottle and looks at him. “Now I’m remembering my last great insight from last night. And it’s a real doozy. Are you ready?”
Alonso isn’t sure he likes the strange look in Katrina’s eyes. “Yes, I suppose, if it has merit.”
“Well, not much, but it’s still interesting regardless. So… I guess in the back of my mind I was chewing on our data collection issues and how the clock is really ticking down and we’re no closer to getting what we need for Plexity.”
Alonso leans back. “Yes, I have been thinking very much about the same thing. And my solutions so far are not very good. Mostly about hiding here when they come to pick us up so I have enough time to finish my initial assay of the island. What is your solution?”
“Well, it’s really just kind of a philosophical word game my brain was playing while tripping. Semantics. But, I mean, remember how the basis of Plexity is the interconnectedness of all life?”
“Certainly.”
“And how we’ve been working our asses off trying to get as many samples of life and examples of that interconnection as we can? Well, what I started thinking… Right! It started as a way to extend the deadline, like what you’re saying. And in my cracked-out state I was tripping on the possibility of a terrarium, you know those glass bowls with all the plants and a bit of sand and water and—?”
“Yes, I know what a terrarium is.”
“So on acid, you can get really obsessive. And I was imagining stuffing my own terrarium with all the samples we couldn’t get to on Lisica, so that when we left we’d still have a tiny little replica of the island we could work on. You know? Not that it would be representative or accurate or…”
“Well, yes, that is the thing, isn’t it? You have forty species in your little glass globe and that can’t replicate the richness—or, rather, by the choice of which species we bring we could absolutely misrepresent the baseline activity for everything in the bowl and also misrepresent the profile for life on the island.”
“Yes. Of course. That’s why I said it has little worth… Anyway. It’s really nothing more than a thought experiment but what if we lean a little bit more into that interconnectedness concept?”
“What do you mean? How?”
“Well, like,” Katrina grabs Alonso’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his. “Think about, I don’t know, the seagulls.”
“You can’t fit a seagull in a terrarium.”
“Yeh, that’s kinda what I’m getting at. So maybe we don’t need to. The seagull eats what, fish? Then it discards the carcass and flies away. But the fish guts give rise to bacteria in the water. So then we come along and harvest the bacteria and find proteins in it that came from fish blood. We also find traces of seagull saliva. But we only have the bacteria.”
“I don’t think even the Dyson readers are this powerful.”
“No, mate. No chance. But gentle reminder: I was tripping balls. And like I said, this may not have much merit. But here’s another word we should be looking at more closely: life.”
“Okay. Life. Are you saying expand the definition?”
“Well, sort of. I mean that we keep talking about life on Lisica but we keep forgetting to add a whole new component: us. We are life on Lisica. You and me and the whole gang. And we are making impacts on it and it is making impacts on us. Maahjabeen and Pradeep getting poisoned. I mean, now that we’re fishing the lagoon we’re consuming all the local bugs.” Katrina has been speaking to her own toes, her legs stuck straight out before her on the bed. She hazards a glance at Alonso and finds that his gaze is troubled. “So then I realized we don’t need no stinkin’ terarria. We are the fragile glass globes containing all the bits and bobs of Lisica within us. The bacteria, the proteins, the dynamic interactions. They’re already all inside us. It’s just a shame we didn’t like start with bloodtest baseline records or something. That would make it much easier at the end to compare one result with the other…”
“Yes, now that is something that would be very interesting. I wonder if any of the military hospitals I stayed in have kept any of my many blood samples? Probably not. Because I could get a blood draw taken when we get back and I would be very curious about the results. Not your results, with the thirdhand bacteria and proteins. There is just… I think you are dramatically overestimating the specificity and sensitivity of modern instruments—”
“Yeh, that’s why I agreed there wouldn’t be very many merits.” Katrina clamps her mouth shut and puts a leash on her irritation. But it’s too late. Alonso registers it. And now she’s embarrassed. Doing drugs around squares, or even just a bunch of sober people, is hard work. You can’t put any of the downsides onto them, not like if you were actually sick or heartbroken. This was your choice and now the resulting shit is all your own to handle, haiku triplet. Just keep your mouth shut until you can be nice again.
Yet Katrina’s next impulse is to carry on. “Sorry. I mean, it’s definitely science fiction, but it really is the ultimate goal of Plexity, eh? That we’re not just interconnected, we’re like intershot with all the matter and the interactions that wash through us. Collisions like galaxies in my bones and blood. But the work we’re doing here will someday allow it. The specificity will be there. The sensitivity to detect quantum fluctuations that happened in a faraway star system but eventually flutter my heart. Linear thinkers like talking about the butterfly effect but nobody wants to discuss the billion butterflies effect, the billion-butterflies-every-second-since-the-big-bang-effect. They think it all just dissolves into noise but—”
“No!” Alonso halts her train of thought with an upraised finger. “It dissolves into life! That is the nature of life, all those interactions hitting us from a million different angles at all times, enriching us and mutating us and giving complexity to every subatomic unit and all the higher-order processes they create. Yes. I have nibbled around the edges of those thoughts. And I am glad you’re the one who took the acid and had the experience yourself so now I will not need to. It does not seem to have made you happier.”
“It just makes me wonder what we’re doing here. It’s really easy to lose the thread of our work when we collect and record and all data just kind of generalizes out to an infinite number of bits, none more interesting than the other. But, oh well. Just thought I should share the vision before I lost it. Thought it might help.”
Alonso’s eyes are dark, introspective. “It does, actually. I have been having trouble with this deadline in a couple weeks, for sure, but I have also been having an equal amount of trouble with the suggestion Flavia made that we only characterize the life of the lagoon and beach and, as Miriam agreed with her, that the rest should be a grant proposal to return as soon as possible with more teams and greater resources and maybe a fucking helicopter so we can actually get inland for once. And I think your idea… It is wild and crazy and impossible, and will most likely remain impossible forever barring the revocation of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, at which point we might as well free ourselves from causality entirely and start time-traveling, forget about just finding the record of an entire island in a drop of blood. But no. No… Your idea does not need to be possible for it to have merit. And the merit it has is the prospect that Flavia is right, and that we can legitimately gain an accurate snapshot of the wider island in the samples of the lagoon.”
“Oh.” Katrina doesn’t know if she’s helped or hurt him with this line of thought. He doesn’t seem very pleased with it. “I’m sorry, Doctor Alonso. Plexity and Lisica is for sure the most thrilling thing I’ve ever been involved with and I don’t want it to end. Except this scary part, where all our lives keep getting threatened. But barring that, I’d stay here for ages working on this with you.”
“Thank you. I have no idea if we will have the chance, later.”
“You know, people get this idea that just because you do certain drugs, it must mean that you’re stupid, but I’ve had the most—”
“No.” Again Alonso interrupts Katrina. “It doesn’t make you stupid. Obviously. But it makes you unreliable. Like my wine. And Jay’s weed. As long as you understand that, then you are having a more honest relationship with whatever is the vice of your choice.”
“I’m just in it for the visions.” Katrina shrugs. “Which makes me even more unreliable. Just this mad woman of Sydney. But I guess in the long run I’m not really looking for anyone’s approval.”
Alonso stands and pats her leg. “No. No, you certainly are not.”
Ξ
Triquet crouches in a bush. Milo is in front of him, seated on the ground with his feet planted on either side, knees as high as a frog. The youth’s legs are thin to the point of malnutrition, the muscles like cords along each femur. Yes, there is something paleolithic about these golden childs. Triquet wonders if they’re perhaps nomadic. Maybe that’s the difference between them and the people of Morska Vidra’s village.
Triquet is tired of sitting here. Their brain is far too active to fall into this kind of endless pre-modern reverie that people like Milo can effortlessly achieve. And it’s been, what, all night and into the morning now? Fifteen hours? Something like that? And their eagle bite is throbbing.
Milo had scared the hell out of them in the dark, finding Triquet by touch, who was only comforted when their own fingers found the golden mask. Then they had roughly clasped each other in the dark and the cold, both bodies shivering, and finally fallen asleep.
It was upon waking that Triquet decided this golden childs needed a name. It was a longstanding policy to know at least the first name of those Triquet had slept with and they didn’t want to break it now. So. The little man had become Milo.
It hadn’t gotten any drier or warmer but Triquet had finally disentangled themself from the warm embrace to crawl forward and peer out from under the thick eaves of the underbrush. Its small, almond-shaped leaves with serrated edges drip endless drops onto the black earth, which sheets with water.
“Well, Milo.” Triquet now addresses his back. “Moment of truth and all that. How’s your Russian?” Then they fall forward stiffly on all fours and stifle a groan. They are so stiff and sore. Crawling forward, they lower their chin to the dead leaves, which prickle, and peer out. There’s some dark vertical surface out there, covered in networks of lichen and algae. From a slightly different vantage it resolves into a wall—the back of the bunker, stained and blackened by time. Oh, well. That’s good. The bushes back here are a nice safe place to be, for sure. Just miserable-as-can-be is all.
On the far side of that wall was their home for the last few weeks, now returned to an unassuming bare ruin. It had been filled with their cute little cells and the kitchen and all the laptops at the work tables in a row. It had been nice. And the hatch leading to the sub must be just a few meters away. If Triquet could somehow get to it and slip down there with the others, dry and safe and hidden… It seems like the greatest possible luxury. Maybe they can just start with the dirt beneath their feet and dig straight down, hoping the sub runs under here. But they know it doesn’t. It starts at the bottom of the stairs, ten meters off to Triquet’s left and down another eight, before heading off under the beach at an angle. Not a passage they can scrape away with their hands. And then there’s the matter of the concrete and the steel hull. No getting through them with just like elbow grease and fingernails. They’re still trapped out here. So close and yet so far.
Well. Then it is a matter of being a scout again. Be optimistic. There’s a strong chance that no Russian soldiers ever arrived here. That’s what we call the reality-based chance. And if Triquet can confirm that now, then hooray, we can all resume our daily lives and just like lock Katrina and Jay in the warrant officer’s cabin for the remainder of the stay.
Triquet recalls the placement of the window in the back, and how they’d heard that a fox jumped out it when they first arrived. That fox probably had a trail… Triquet pulls back and scans the forest floor for any sign of one. There: an unsteady depression running generally in the right direction, thin as thread.
Triquet crawls carefully along this game trail, finding that it ends at a woody bush whose main limb serves as a springboard to the empty window ahead. Triquet can see claw marks and dirty paw prints on the limb, clear as day. They are pleased that for once an educated guess actually turns out to be true.
Triquet looks back at Milo, who seems to be watching them from behind the blankness of the golden mask. “Just going to take a peek,” Triquet silently mouths to him, pointing at the window. Then they slowly rise…
Thunk. Triquet stops. Something heavy bumped against another object in the bunker. Just on the other side of the wall, not even their own body’s length away. Then they hear breathing, a heavy snuffling, and an indistinct muttering. Somebody is in there. Unmistakably. It isn’t a fox. It’s a man. A Russian? Triquet can’t hear enough of the words. Whoever it is, they are obviously alone, muttering to themself with idle observations. Could it be one of the Lisicans? It doesn’t really sound like them. This person is less… healthy? Or maybe it’s one of the shamans. It could very well be. Talking to themselves is very on brand for them, poking around in the bunker after getting their golden mask buddies to spook the researchers away for whatever malevolent reason. Yes, paranoia argues that this has all just been a game to them. Or, like some complex side tactic in their great argument. Those assholes.
Or maybe it’s a Russian soldier after all and if Triquet pops their head up to see, it gets blown off. No real way to tell.
The body shifts within. Steps are taken, dried ferns brushing against the floor. Yes, there is a heaviness to the steps, perhaps a bit of a waddle or limp. They only take like three so it’s hard to tell. Then a long exhalation and a word that sounds like shivyit.
The figure moves through the bunker and out the door, their movement tapering to silence. Now Triquet doesn’t know what to do. Should they try to confirm the person’s identity? How are they supposed to do that when any movement will likely be too much?
A gout of rain solves that issue. It suddenly falls with such force that Triquet is easily able to withdraw deeper into the bushes without fear of being heard. It really pounds down, a trickle of cold water worming its way around the collar of their coat and down their neck. Their feet are already made of ice, probably as blue as the boots they wear. And the rain doesn’t let up.
Emboldened, Triquet uses the downpour to crawl around the building counter-clockwise, still staying in the bushes close to the ground. They ease wide so their sightline is clear of the corner of the building. There is no one there. Well, obviously. Who in their right mind would stand in the middle of this deluge if there’s a building right there beside them? They must have gone back inside and Triquet couldn’t hear it over the battering the corrugated steel roof endures.
Too many unknowns. What will prove that camp is unsafe? Well. A mental checklist appears in Triquet’s mind. If they find out it’s a Russian. Check. If they find more than one person. That means it isn’t a shaman so therefore it has to be soldiers. Check. If they hear any metal sounds. Lisicans don’t wear metal. Check. If their feet leave tread like the lugs of boot soles. Check. If Triquet can figure out what the fuck shivyit means. Check.
And what would prove that camp is safe? Prove? That is much harder, proving a negative. Hard to prove an absence of threat when there’s obviously someone in there prowling around. And there’s very little chance it’s someone who looks on Alonso and his crew kindly, either way. So no checklist there.
And what if it’s just one of the golden childs in the bunker? Maybe they didn’t know Triquet was close and let their guard down a bit, dropping the whole silent mask routine? Maybe they’re still just patrolling the empty camp because they wouldn’t go into the sub? That prospect suddenly seems the most likely and Triquet pushes forward, eager to catch sight of a gold mask in the bunker’s door. But they can’t see anyone out there and moving forward any more would take them out of the bushes entirely and that’s a big no thank you from Triquet.
Triquet schools themself to patience and pulls back to the window to peek within. The bunker is empty, rain pouring in shining columns through the gaps in the roof. It looks so cozy. They are sorely tempted to crawl through and hide. Perhaps if they covered themself with some dead ferns and just kept still? They could happily sleep the day away.
But that would never do.
The rain eases. A break in the sky suddenly appears above the cliffs and an eerie golden light filters through the drizzle. The wind picks up and the trees shed their soaked dead leaves. And in the cathedral light that slants down into the bushes, Triquet can now see a wider path through the thicket behind them leading away from camp, back toward the cliffs. This must be one of the paths to the secret tunnels. They slept like not two steps away from it and they’re only just seeing it now.
Fabulous.
Well, no time like the present. Bye bye bunker. They can retreat from these dangers and dive down into the dark now to find their way back to the sub and the loving embrace of Miriam and Alonso and all the others.
But can they? It is still an open question if it is safe for the others to come out. And without Triquet’s eyes and ears out here, they’ll never know if it gets any safer. No, they can’t retreat and put that burden on someone else. They need to figure this out once and for all. So no tunnel for them. Yet.
Triquet rocks back on their heels and tries to think strategically. Okay. The storm is breaking up and the beach is getting a patch or two of sun. Gusts of wind chase clouds from the sky. Sneaking off to the right, toward the trenches and Tenure Grove, will provide good cover but take Triquet further from camp, and maybe make it harder for them to see what might be occurring out there. But if they go the other way, alongside the creek to the left, staying in that deep underbrush and peeking out every few minutes to see, they could probably get a good survey from the door of the bunker all the way to camp and down to the beach.
And that’s when they hear the whistle, faintly from the lagoon. Three short blasts. Not a bird whistle, but the sound made from a small metal object, like a referee uses at a basketball game.h1 { color: #000000; letter-spacing: 2.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-align: center; page-break-inside: avoid; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; border: none; padding: 0in; direction: ltr; background: transparent; text-decoration: underline; page-break-after: avoid }h1.western { font-family: “Wallington”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.cjk { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.ctl { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }p { color: #000000; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; background: transparent }p.western { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt }p.ctl { font-family: “Times New Roman”, serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: ar-SA }em { font-style: italic }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text
Chapter 41 – To The Sub
October 7, 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:
41 – To The Sub
Pradeep descends the narrow set of concrete stairs. Jay’s back, silhouetted by the light coming from the sub below, bends nearly double before vanishing through the hatch. Well. Pradeep has mostly done a good job avoiding the sub and the tunnels and the entire bloody interior of the island but now his help is needed. His clarity. His common sense. Pradeep takes a deep breath to calm himself but the growing knot of anxiety in his guts can’t be so easily released. It is beyond his control.
Yes. So is everything. Lisica has robbed him entirely of self-rule. And some of that is fantastic. He will happily worship Maahjabeen for the rest of his days. He is thrilled to be working with Doctor Alonso, the luminary. But the rest of it… Actually living out these fearsome experiences might be too much for his faint heart.
“There it is!” Jay crows from within. Heartened, Pradeep ducks through the hatch and straightens in the cramped chamber, its curving walls tapering together near his head, increasing his claustrophobia, sepia and yellow light everywhere. Jay stands proudly, holding the remains of a dead roach. He searches his pockets for his lighter. Nope, no lighter. But ah! There it is on the ground, red and chrome, like a child’s forgotten toy.
He sparks up, hoping the weed can ground him a bit. Having to do actual real-world shit while peaking on acid fucking sucks.
Jay realizes Pradeep is talking to him. And the weed isn’t hitting at all, it just got yeeted straight out of his brain by the stronger drug. Fuck. “What’s that, Prad?” Oh, weird. Did he actually say those words out loud or imagine them?
“So where is it?”
“Huh?” Jay notices the way Pradeep purses his lips when he’s upset. He sure is a stress case. “Oh! Uh… I just had it.” With a triumphant smile he presents the lighter to Pradeep. “Ta-daa.”
“No, abe saale,” Pradeep snatches the lighter from Jay’s hand and shoves it back into his front pockets. “The evidence. Where is the evidence?” Jay only looks at him, stupefied. Pradeep shakes him by the shoulders. “No no no. You have to stay here with me. You have to tell me. This golden man. Where did you see him?”
“Right! The golden man!” Jay grabs Pradeep by the elbows, his face filled with revelation. “Dude! It was right here! I was sitting here buzzing. And Katrina wanted to go down on me but I said, hold up. We’re like not alone in here. So she—”
“Wait. She what?” Pradeep is scandalized. “Is that what you two were doing down here? Isn’t she like seventeen?”
“Aw, come on, Prad. She’s twenty-two. She’s only like nineteen months younger than me. Why’s everybody gotta disrespect the one and only DJ Bubblegum?”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t know you were…” Pradeep makes a vague back-and-forth gesture with his hands, “into each other.”
“Are we?” The overwhelmed look on Jay’s face indicates that this is a calculation that is way beyond his abilities at the moment.
“So anyway…” Pradeep hauls his friend back to the here and now. “Where did you see the golden man?”
“I was here. Katrina was here. Golden man was here.”
“Okay. Did he ever come into this room or did he stay in that doorway there? That hatch?”
“He stayed in the hatch. Oh, shit. That’s right, Prad. The Russians. They’re on their way. We got to hide.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep can’t think how to finish that sentence. He supposes it is within the realm of possibility that Russian military forces still visit the island. Katrina had detected Slavic words in Lisican speech. They must have gotten it somewhere. But he dreads the notion. Armed soldiers prowling through camp, with orders to shoot anyone they find there. It’s terrifying. They are so utterly alone and defenseless here, so far from any help at all. “What exactly did he say?”
“Uhh…” Jay scrubs his forehead. Visual memories turn into words and back again, forming some abstract orthogonal space in his head that refuses to resolve into speech. “You know, he was speaking Russian. And I don’t understand Russian.”
“Right. So Katrina was translating. And how did that go? Was he nice? Was he angry? Did he threaten you?”
Jay giggles. “Show me on the doll where he touched you.”
Pradeep claps his hands. “Jay. Let us be serious here. They are upstairs waiting for us.”
“Be vewy vewy quiet. We’re hunting wabbits!” Jay falls forward onto all fours and Pradeep is afraid he’s lost him again. But no. Jay crawls slowly forward, scanning the deck. All things considered, it’s probably what they should both be doing. Pradeep inspects the walls instead. Triquet has done a nice job, putting up a gallery of portraits in a row here, the uniformed men in black and white who served on this sub and perhaps buried it here. Their postwar faces look so simple, the light in their eyes so certain. Well. Life was far more straightforward back then, that’s for sure.
Jay crawls through the hatch, still not looking up. It is dark on the far side, something Pradeep isn’t yet willing to encounter. He takes out his phone and lights the chamber beyond. Then he closely inspects the frame of the hatch. But the frame is clear of pollen. Pradeep fights his impatience down. Careful, now. Don’t jump to any conclusions yet. Frankly, he hadn’t believed Jay’s story of the golden childs and their strange rituals at first until he was shocked to find them surrounding the camp a few nights ago. All kinds of bizarre things happen here. This might be one of them. “You must understand. Because of your condition, we can’t just take your word for it. It is too important. We need to know.”
Jay rolls over, nodding. “Knowledge. Not just like opinions but…” He wants to make a speech on the value of true knowledge but an ire blazes in Pradeep’s shadowed face that makes him hesitate. “What? What did I do?”
“Just stay on task. The golden man. We need to find him.”
“Yeah. But we don’t speak Russian. We should have brought Katrina. She could have—”
“Not on your life. I’m having enough trouble with one of you.” Pradeep scans the dark chamber. Lit by just his narrow white beam, it seems far more spooky. “Come on. Figure it out!”
“Will do. I think he went this way.”
Pradeep follows Jay through the next hatch into the narrow corridor and its three doors. It is only getting more dark and scary. Each of the offices and ward rooms are empty. In the Captain’s cabin a twisted blanket still lies on the mattress. That was where Alonso was when Pradeep found him. Also on drugs. He came on to Pradeep quite hard… That was awkward. What is it with these crazy people? For the first time he’s happy about Maahjabeen’s strict temperance. He needs at least one stable person in his life.
They creep through the corridor, Jay scouring the grate of the deck and the stained walls of the hallway. The end of the passage is lit by an indirect light. Pradeep recalls that Triquet leaves work lights on down here quite a lot.
They step through into the control room. Jay is quite pleased with himself. He’s been able to stay on task for a whole five minutes now. Perhaps the peak is already passing. Then he’ll just have to deal with coming down, which is horrible. But hopefully they’ll be back up in the bunker by then.
The work light in the corner is tilted upward, making crazy shadows that expand the higher they go. The shadows all converge on the ceiling, which troubles him. It seems significant somehow. Malevolent. “Shit.” The last thing Jay needs while hallucinating his nuts off is an actual confrontation with one of the evil spirits of the island. He’s sure they’re here. It’s almost like he can sense them. The acid gives him a second sight. But, thankfully, the control room is clear. And there’s no sign that anyone went down the hole in the deck in the corner onto the jumble of stacked furniture below. “If there’s gonna be pollen anywhere, it’d be here…”
They both inspect the ragged hole, the rusted edges of expanded steel clean of anything resembling gold dust. “Can we say this is proof, then?” Pradeep studies Jay’s bleary face. “Will you accept that this golden man wasn’t real? That it was the drugs and only the drugs?”
An immense weariness washes through Jay. He recalls that his side was slashed open. That was a real thing. The pain he still feels in his skin is a real thing. Maybe the golden man was not? Who even knows any more? The last few hours are nothing but a jumble in his fatigued brain. Perhaps he doesn’t know anything about anything at all. “Sure, man. Whatever you say.”
Pradeep nods, pleased with Jay’s mumbled concession. “Fine. Good. Then let’s get back and tell them before…”
And that’s when they both see the far hatch in the control room, the one that had been welded shut and convinced them in the days early on that this was the end of the sub, is now cracked open.
“What in the world…?” Pradeep edges up to it. “But how…?” He runs his light along the edges of its door. It is still welded shut. Yet there is a seam outside the door frame that has been broken open. It may not even be on a hinge. The entire bulkhead is just a giant heavy panel made of rusted steel that has now been heaved aside, with a gap wide enough for a man to pass through.
“Oh, shit. I knew it…” All Jay’s fears become manifest, coalescing in the darkness on the other side of this hatch. “I fucking knew it. This is too freaky, bro. We got to pull back and come at this with a little more…”
But Pradeep is absorbed by something he sees through the gap. He peers more closely, listens more intently. “Hang on.”
Then he steps through, into darkness.
Ξ
Triquet wakes with a start. Then a deep shiver. Oh, that’s right. Here they are. Alone and lost. At their lowest point yet.
It is dark, maybe already dawn. They lie face down in the mud outside the bunker beneath a bush somewhere by the creek and the pool. The waterfall is a steady rushing white noise beside them, with the slap of falling water on flat stones nearby.
They’re soaking wet and freezing, eagle bite throbbing, wrapped imperfectly in their rain suit. How did they manage to actually fall asleep out here? Oh. Right. They are utterly exhausted.
It had been a race to break down the camp and the bunker, some kind of awful marathon filled with rising anxiety and shouting matches and Esquibel’s outrageous threats. At least they’d already done half the work, back when the rains had started. They’d already struck the tents and hammock and lowered the camp tarps and stowed the solar panels. If those things had still been up last night, there was no way they could have finished in time.
They’d begged the golden childs to help them, Katrina even haranguing them all in Russian, using the exact same phrases the golden man had said to her. But the childs remained unmoved. They evidently had their orders and were sticking to them.
Then there had been the bunker. Amy’s reed panels had all been pulled apart and carried down into the sub, where they’d decided they could hide. The clean room had taken a godawful amount of time to disassemble, as did the kitchens and all their food. But then finally the bunker had stood bare, the holes in the roof once again uncovered, and rain had poured in.
Then they’d had the final argument.
They all realized that if they just pulled the trap door shut behind them, it would stick out like a sore thumb to anyone who came looking. One of them needed to remain behind and cover their tracks so that the trap door wouldn’t be discovered. And after an argument, a few rounds of rochambeau, and another yelling match that had gotten painfully personal, Triquet had been selected as the lucky one to be left behind.
At 4:45 am they had closed the trap door on every other person they knew on this island and scattered a sheaf of rotting fern leaves atop it. Perhaps the coconut crabs would even move back in.
Then, as a final task, Triquet had gone out to the trenches and done their best to fill them in. The trenches themselves would be hard to find, but the smell definitely needed to be controlled, or all their concealment would go to waste.
And how much work it had been. A whirlwind of activity. Their hands are cut and bloody, with bone bruises in their wrists and knees from wrestling heavy objects, all fueled by adrenaline and rising terror….
Then it had been up to Triquet to find their own way back into the tunnels from the hidden openings in the base of the cliff. But it had been such a long struggle. And it was so wet and dark that they soon got lost in the maze of narrow trails beneath the underbrush.
At a certain point they’d given up, closing their eyes to conserve energy. Now they’re waking up, who knows how much time later. It might be well after dawn. There might be soldiers patrolling the trail beside their head. If they take out their phone to check on the time, one of them might see the glowing screen and open fire.
Triquet strains to listen. There is nothing but the unbroken white noise of the waterfall. No other sound can break through. Shoot, so much for stealth. Triquet could sing an entire Depeche Mode album at the top of their lungs and nobody would hear them.
And then they strain to see. Afraid to move, they slowly roll their head to the side and peer along the length of the forest floor. It is all black, but after a while they can see a variegated pattern of gray and deep purple. Either moonlight or dawnlight. But with this rain it can’t be the moon. It must be morning. And the Russians must already be here.
Where did the golden childs go? Do any still watch over Triquet? Or is that whole psychotic shaman game called off until the even more psychotic Russians leave? Maybe one or more of the childs hide nearby, silently watching over Triquet. Wouldn’t that be nice?
But now what do they do? Can they move? Do they have to stay here? For how long? There’s no end date on this Russian visit. Nobody said if they’re staying for an hour or a month. How will Triquet know when it’s over if all they’re doing is squeezing their eyes shut, face down in the mud?
Triquet realizes their fate isn’t to escape into the tunnels and find their way back up into the sub with the others. It is to be their scout while they safely hide. Well, crap on a stick. This is turning out to be a much worse bargain than expected. Amy and Miriam had both volunteered to be the one left behind, but Triquet’s youth and experience with these tunnels out near the waterfall had won the argument. At the time, they had felt so gallant.
Now they just feel wretched. What exactly do they think they can accomplish here? They’re no soldier. They’re hardly an athlete. All their physical reserves were blown breaking down the camp. They need a good forty-eight hours of nothing but hot cocoa and a full season of Househunters. But instead they somehow have to turn into a ninja.
That’s where it always starts with Triquet. If they ever need to transform themself for any reason, it begins with the costume. But they have no access to yards of black silk so their imagination will just have to do. They will swath their entire body in it, with one of those ninja headbands and a black kerchief covering everything but their eyes. Their hands and feet will be covered in those cute little traditional Japanese gloves and shoes with soft leather soles. And they’ll carry nothing but a short sword and a blowgun. Then they’ll run along rooftops on their way to assassinate the Shogun…
Okay. Well, the mindset is there. Now they’re ready to strike out, back toward camp, stealthy as a cat. Too bad they’re actually wearing a yellow vinyl rainsuit and blue patent leather boots. They’ll get spotted the instant they come out from under cover.
So the answer must be to stay under cover. These little fox trails that wind every which way must provide for routes around the back of the camp. They appear to be everywhere else.
“No time to be frightened. Just do it.” Triquet mouths the words out loud, then slips off to their left, down a dark tunnel of bare branches under brown leaves.
Ξ
“Where does this go?” Pradeep’s light fades to black past twenty meters or so, and yet the low and narrow hand-carved tunnel continues straight on, its walls sandstone, its floor pale sand.
“No way…” Jay is astounded by what he sees, even though it’s just a forced perspective of rough walls disappearing into the dark. He’s still firmly in his peak so lights shimmer along the length, first outward in a wavy rainbow pattern, then back to him, crawling up his feet and legs, suffusing him with warmth and certainty. It’s like being in a birth canal, and he’s reliving his own delivery. He shivers. “No fucking way.”
Pradeep peers ahead as far as he can. “I mean, I figure it has to go under the cliffs to the island’s interior. Obviously. Yet another of the many ways the Lisicans access the beach here. But so much work! And it can’t be too stable…” Pradeep stops, convinced. “Yes. This is enough. We can go back, as you said, and tell the others. This is the evidence we needed.” Pradeep listens to the patter of water draining through the tunnel. Right, the storm is soaking the ground above. This thing could collapse at any moment. And yet… despite his rising anxiety, something alluring beckons to him in the heart of that darkness. There is some great intellectual itch to be scratched through there. He can tell, that if he continued on, that he would be able to delve into the greater secrets of this island and maybe even life itself…
Pradeep shakes himself, breaking the reverie. “Yes, well, but that would be foolish. And say what you like of Pradeep Chakrabarti, no one can call him a fool.”
“Okay.” Jay has no idea what Pradeep is talking about. He just realized that he suddenly needs to piss like a race horse. How’s he going to accomplish that down here?
Pradeep turns away from the darkness and pushes past Jay. “Come on. Let’s get back to Maahjabeen and the others. We can explore this more later.”
“Yeah. Good call.” Jay can hustle back to the surface and empty himself out and maybe crash in his hammock for a bit. He turns, swaying, and then stampedes forward with urgency, his bladder his only thought. Once he gets past Pradeep he pushes on into the darkness back to the sub. The light swings up once behind him, offering a glimpse of the tunnel ahead, and then it swings to the floor so Pradeep can light his own footsteps.
Jay charges forward, breaths short, doing all he can to keep from wetting himself. The way back to the sub is just a few steps ahead now. And then it’s just a bunch of rooms and stairs til he can finally get outside and water a bush. Ugh! Don’t think about it! Just move!
“Jay! Slow down!” Pradeep is more uncertain in the tunnel. He hadn’t realized how wet it was in here on the way in. The clay of the tunnel floor sucks at his feet. “You don’t have a light! Stupid hophead. You can’t just blunder off into the dark.”
Pradeep trudges behind, cursing Jay. Then he realizes he’s gone more than a hundred paces on his way back to the sub. There is no chance that they walked more than a hundred paces into this tunnel at the outset. Far less. And now they’ve done far more. “Wait. Jay?”
“I come from the land down under…” Jay’s song lyrics are nearly grunted aloud from far ahead.
“Jay, we have to stop.”
“Can’t really do that right now, homie.” And with that apology, Jay redoubles his efforts and hurries ahead, about to burst.
Pradeep yelps, hearing Jay disappear into the distance. “Jay, stop! Please! You can’t…” Pradeep stops moving. They went the wrong way. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There must have been a branch in the tunnel they didn’t see on the way in. And Jay went down it, continues to go down it, away from the sub. And the last thing Pradeep wants to do is go further in after him. But he also can’t go back alone. For one, he doesn’t know which way they turned wrong. He could easily get even more lost, and then it’d just be him alone wandering under the surface of the island along a separate path until he dies of starvation. Pradeep shivers. No, he can’t go back alone. “Jay, wait!” He hurries down the tunnel.
After a long timeless ordeal, during which the tunnel grows more ragged and small, dropping and rising in the clay and gravel and forcing Pradeep to twist himself through the constricted passage, he finally comes upon Jay leaning against a wall, pissing into a small pool. “Oh. Yuck. Do you have to, Jay? We might step in it and—”
“As a matter of fact,” Jay answers loudly, “I do. Very much. Have to. Sorry.” And the stream continues, a shocking amount. Jay sags with relief against the wall. Finally he finishes, putting himself away and groaning in relief. “Yeah, we’re lost. But at least with this smell we’ll be able to tell if we ever come back this way. Come on, Prad.” And Jay steps past the puddle to continue on.
“Wait. Why are you still going that way? We should go back.”
“I am going back.”
“Oh, no no no. Don’t do that to me, Jay. We came from this way. I just came from this direction. I am sure of it. You were leaning against that wall. Making a puddle right there.”
“Really? I would have sworn it’s the other side. I just stepped away from the wall. Look. The puddle’s already gone in the sand.”
“It’s this way, Jay. Please. Don’t make us even more lost. This is a big island.”
“Don’t I know it. But are you sure…?” Jay studies their footprints in the clay. There are tracks in both directions. Many of them. “Aw, hell. Look, Prad. They’re everywhere. We’re boned.”
“What? How? I thought I had the only other footprints here. Maybe these are the tracks of your golden man.” Pradeep tries to make out whether the tracks have the imprint of modern soles or if they are from bare feet or whatever the hell the man must be wearing. “But I am still telling you, our way back is this way. Do not make me go any further in.”
Jay knows Pradeep is wrong but he also knows he won’t win the fight. Ah, well. People don’t just build tunnels to nowhere. They must all eventually head somewhere. So it doesn’t really matter. He’ll just have to see where this one pops out. Dutifully, he falls in behind and lets Pradeep lead.
They walk in silence for a long time. Pradeep consults the time. It’s 10:51pm. They’ve been out for over an hour. The others back in the bunker must be getting worried. I am so sorry, babi! Pradeep silently mouths, sending his love to Maahjabeen.
For Jay, an outcrop of rock under his hand sends him spinning into the deepest revelations he’s ever had. That rock has formed down here, unseen by any eyes, for millions of years. Then busy little men had formed this channel in the mud, revealing it. And now there are tunnels shot through the mud and rock everywhere. They’re like the wrinkled passageways of a brain. God’s brain. He is walking through the mind of a deity. And what makes God so all-powerful is how ancient God is. Formed of the earth’s living crust, the thoughts that arise and coalesce in the divine mind are these rocks, which form over eons, millions upon millions of years. This is what God’s speech looks like, these mineral accretions. And that’s why humans will never understand the language of divinity. Because God speaks so slow. Little humans live and die in a flash, just as God is forming the beginning of a syllable that leads to a word that someday will be a sentence, a profound statement about the nature of the universe. But humans will never hear it. “Dude. We can only ever hear the briefest little snippet.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep can make no sense of the non sequitur. “Don’t worry, Jay. I think we’re nearly back now. The tunnel is straightening out.”
But Jay is satisfied to be here now, crawling around in the mind of the immortal. It doesn’t matter if he’s above ground or below any more. All of it is within God’s loving embrace. “Hey. Man. I just wanted to tell you… I think it’s cool your girlfriend is so religious. It’s like, I never really thought about it much before, but I get it. Now I get it.”
“She will not want to hear that you equate your drug trip to her faith. But I’m, uh, I guess I’m glad you like her.”
“Oh, sure. She’s awesome. I just wish she liked me.”
Pradeep searches for a way to refute that statement but can’t think of one. Jay is right. Poor bastard. He sure seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Even Pradeep can’t wait to separate from him and get back to Maahjabeen. She is still recovering from her poisoning. She needs him by her side.
And that is when he realizes he’s been walking down this straight passage for too long. Again. He stops. This isn’t the way back to the sub? He is somehow getting further from it. And now they have been gone for almost ninety minutes. And his phone battery is only half-full. Pradeep turns and turns again. Now what?
“Hey, man.” Jay stumbles to a stop and gives him a sleepy grin. “You as thirsty as me?”
“Improbable. You just lost half your bodyweight in urine.”
“I did?” Then Jay remembers. “Oh yeah. Highlight of my night.” Jay pushes past Pradeep, who is entirely at a loss. “Then let’s get going, homie. I need a drink.”
“But Jay, I don’t…” And that’s when they see the golden man, bent nearly double, coming toward them from the darkness ahead. The gleaming pollen of his mask refracts in the phone’s harsh light.
“Well, shit. There he is. See? We told you…” Jay shakes his head, confounded. “Now what? You speak any Russian?”
“No.” Pradeep speaks in a hush, spooked by the appearance of the figure. It appears that he really will have to trust Jay’s wild statements more than he has. That doesn’t make him happy. It opens up an entire psychedelic kaleidoscope of realities that he would prefer to keep unreal. “Hello. Uh. Sir. Nice to meet you.”
The golden man’s muffled voice, deep and guttural, fills the tunnel. Yep. Russian. Crazy. All of this is intolerably crazy.
“Can’t understand, dude.” Jay jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Katrina’s back at the sub. That way? Yeah, how do we get out of here, anyway?”
“That’s it,” Pradeep encourages Jay. “Have him lead us out of here. He must know…”
But the golden man only speaks more Russian, heavily, as if reciting a long unhappy speech. He points at Jay with the tip of his thumb and makes another statement. Then, when the two young men before him seem to lack understanding, the golden man switches to Lisican. Jay hears the words Wetchie-ghuy and lidass but registers nothing more. “Whoa. Hold on, hold on there, big fella. We don’t… We can’t—Hey! That’s my phone!” The golden man holds out Jay’s phone to him and he snatches it. “Aw, damn! She cracked the screen! Look at that, Prad! Fucking Kula. And now that it’s broken, of course that’s when she hands it back. No, wait. I think it might actually…” Jay is startled to find it remains on, the smallest amount of power still in its battery.
Someone had been in the process of composing a text. “It’s in English so it must be Kula. Or Jidadaa. But word on the street is she’s hiding from the golden childs so… Yeah. This sounds like Kula for sure. It says, ‘Jay leedass, you byand bye gota stop Wetchie-ghuy. End the argument. Leedass. Kill. Jay kill Wetchie-ghuy.’ Oh, fuck all the way off. What the hell?”
The golden man is speaking again, once he hears the words he himself had been saying. Now he urges Jay, the words lidass and Wetchie-ghuy coming fast and furious.
“No. Absolutely not. I ain’t killing nobody. That ain’t my job here. I’m just a… I mean, have your Russian soldiers do it, if you’re so buddy buddy with them.”
The golden man falls silent.
Pradeep asks one of his incisive questions, his tone demanding attention. “So when will the Russians leave? When…? Ah. When will…?” Pradeep acts out the Russian soldiers landing on the beach, looking around, then leaving. He has no idea if any of that was clear at all. “When?”
But the golden man pushes Pradeep firmly away with the flat of his hand against his sternum. Pradeep stumbles back and the golden man makes another speech, mentioning Wetchie-ghuy twice. Then, jabbing at Pradeep with the tip of his thumb, he snarls, “Lisica. Na Daadaxáats giuxhe dan. Lisica.” And he turns and points at his own tailbone. “Lisica.”
“Oh, damn.” Jay shakes his head in wonder. “Dod-ah-shats was Jidadaa’s name for Sherman the shaman. And looks like he knows about your fox tramp stamp. But what does any of that have to do with Wetchie-ghuy and why is he so aggro about you—?”
A sudden sob escapes Pradeep. That dreadful vision swims up in front of his eyes, here in the dark, of the shaman looming over him in the space between life and death, making a deal for his soul. “Because I belong to him. The shaman attacked me and filled me with his cold mud. Wetchie-ghuy saved me, but only for a price.”
To Jay, nearing the end of his acid trip, reality is a tattered cloth and now he’s falling through the holes. Did Pradeep actually say what Jay thought he said? Jay turns to the masked figure to ask, and finds him on his knees scrubbing his hand against the wet sand where he pushed Pradeep. Unclean. “What the F? What’s going on here, grandpa?”
The golden man stands and grasps Jay by the wrist, pulling him forward, evidently to do battle against Wetchie-ghuy. His speech is urgent, decisive. But Jay digs in his heels.
“Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on.” Jay pulls his wrist away and turns back to Pradeep, who is hunched around the impact on his chest, head down. “We aren’t leaving Pradeep. We aren’t leaving you, Prad. Not ever.”
“We should go back to the sub.” Pradeep’s voice is reedy, distant, as if something brittle deep inside him has snapped. “I don’t want to be down here any more.”
“Yeah. For sure. Me either. But we still don’t know which way that is. Golden dude here wants us—or, me—to go further down this tunnel with him. So that’s probably not where our crew is. But that way, back the way we just came, is where we just were! And we know there’s no sub back there.”
Pradeep only stares at Jay, shorn of all bravery. He is empty and frail. A febrile panic attack announces its arrival and he almost rushes to it, the one familiar thing amongst all this madness. Like a freight train it roars through this tunnel, picking up Pradeep and carrying him away on the fast track to hysteric madness. Tears leak out from his squeezed-shut eyes and his limbs quiver, dropping him to the tunnel floor. His hands go to his throat. He can’t breathe.
Jay hauls on Pradeep. “Fuck. That.” He holds him tight, as close as lovers, Pradeep’s legs not bearing any of his weight. “And fuck you, golden dude. I ain’t going with you. I’m staying here and taking care of my buddy. And fuck Wetchie-ghuy for doing this. You can go kill him yourself. Go!”
Jay’s meaning is plain. The golden man retreats in defeat, still muttering. He withdraws down the tunnel until the darkness swallows him. Soon they are alone in the dark and all they can hear is Pradeep’s gasping breath.
“Jay. Jay! We’re going to die down here.”
The incision in Jay’s side starts to complain and he grimaces. “No way, Prad. You’re just spooked. And this is the dark part of the trip. When all the demons come out to play. That’s all.”
And as if Jay invoked them, the darkness surrounding him fills with infernal pairs of slanted teardrop eyes, blazing red.
Ξ
“Here. I’ll go first and then you will see that it is safe.” Her friend Maahjabeen disappears into the dark ahead as Flavia hangs back, unwilling to enter the sea cave. “See?”
“No. I don’t see. It is cold. And wet. And I need to sleep, not explore all these fucking caves.”
“There is no exploration. It is already explored. Yala, Flavia. Get out of that little tunnel. It is nice in this cave.”
Finally Flavia emerges, blinking distrustfully at the gloomy reaches of the cavern. “More darkness. Fantastico.”
“No, off to the left. That is where it opens to the sea. Just take two more steps. Look.”
“Yes, that is gray light. Hooray. You have convinced me. What a wonderful cave.” Flavia’s flat voice echoes against the far walls. Then a wave rushes in and fills the cave with its hiss. She listens as it departs, registering the deep churn of the low curtain fall behind her to her right, where the water comes in from above.
“That is your river there. When you take a shower in the cold waterfall every morning, that water washes down to here.”
“I see. Then maybe I will be able to find that hair tie I lost.” But despite her black mood, she can’t help but be impressed. Flavia takes another couple steps inside. She uncrosses her arms. The air is cool but pleasant. What a strange place. It feels like a theme park ride, with the collapsing pier and sunken boat and everything. “You and Pradeep, you rowed your boats into here? Madness.”
“Oh, yes. More than once.” Then Maahjabeen giggles, her tough exterior cracking. “I’m sorry. This cave has become very dear to us. It is one of our favorite places. I just wish I could get the boats through the mud tunnel. Then it would be so easy to launch from here. But it is always… kind of a death-defying process to get out of the lagoon and along the coast here. Don’t tell Alonso. Or he won’t let us do it any more.” Not that the storm will allow it these days. She is surprised that the sea level remains so low. If there had been a significant surge, it must have already passed.
Flavia realizes how tense she is. Now that they’ve reached the end and found no threats, she can finally relax. And, oh, how sore her muscles are! She sags against Maahjabeen. “Oh my god I need to pass out. Breaking down the camp. That was more physical work than I have done in… well, more than I have ever done. Ever ever. In my entire life. I mean, seriously! I must have gone up and down those steps a hundred times!”
“I worry about Triquet.” Sudden tears fill Maahjabeen’s eyes and she hugs Flavia tight. “And Pradeep. Of course.”
“And Jay?”
“Sure.”
They stand in silence, hearing another sweep of white noise that echoes from the sea cave’s entrance to them. It adds layers to the other water sounds in this cavern: the curtain fall; the slap of waves against the rock shelf; the boom of the distant surf. “It is the rainfall on the ocean,” Maahjabeen finally realizes, the water sounds acting like a siren’s song upon her. “Come. Let me show you.”
They pick their way closer to the sea cave entrance, following a narrow path along the left wall that eventually widens into a manmade cavern. Flavia steps on the worn concrete pilings, unwilling to go much farther. It sounds like an angry ocean out there, one that could tear them to pieces. But Maahjabeen strides confidently forward toward the diffuse gray light.
“It would have to be a sudden epic storm swell to sweep us off these rocks. We will be fine. But listen.”
Flavia studies Maahjabeen’s rapturous face. She is dubious. What about this situation could possibly inspire such a reaction? “Is this a religious thing? It must be. Because I do not understand—”
“Listen.” Maahjabeen grabs Flavia’s forearm and they go silent.
The sheeting of rain on the water rises and falls over the regular slap of the tide. Flavia lifts her eyes to the gray light, happy to have something to look at, and patiently waits for Maahjabeen’s special moment to end. “Did you hear, Flavia? That is the voice of God.”
“I heard sh-shhhh-shhhhhh and that is all. It is just water.”
“No, listen with your heart for once. Not your head. Listen to the world with your soul.”
Flavia makes a face and stands in cold silence for another ten seconds. “Ah. There it is. God is telling me to stop being such a stupid fool and to go back to the sub.”
“Flavia…” Maahjabeen grasps her by both hands. “You cannot be deaf to it anymore. It is happening all around us. The golden childs and their prophecies. The signs everywhere. The attack on me and Pradeep. These are happening. And they aren’t… they can’t be fully understood by science and the rational mind.”
“Well I am glad we agree you are not being rational.”
“Of course I am not! Because the world isn’t entirely rational! It is mysterious and strange and divine! Just because experiments are the only thing we can reproduce does not mean they encompass every facet of life. Don’t you see? Sure, science is a wonderful tool. The best. But we need other tools as well to really understand the nature of the universe. Be honest with yourself.”
“Honest? You want to talk about honest? Okay. How about you tell me why it is that in brainscans of religious people, they are found to have a circuit in the brainstem that fires more than a normal person’s does? That is all your religion is. You have built yourselves a self-reinforcing feedback loop in your heads that sees omens and all kinds of weird subtexts and your god circuits fire off these learned sensations to make you feel holy. It is very simple. You are not hearing the voice of god. It is just a cognitive module you were given by others, most likely your parents.”
Maahjabeen has never heard this. But it does make sense. At least the first part. “Okay, I can accept that our brains are wired different, but has it occurred to you that this may not be a closed circuit but instead like a—an… antenna? Actually connecting us to the divine? And when we pray, we are strengthening the antenna as we broadcast and receive.”
Flavia looks at her strangely. “Okay, that’s halfway sensible. If you please put that hypothesis in the language of Information Theory, especially with a quantum field emphasis, you might get me to listen. But guess what. Your hypothesis is inherently untestable. That is the problem with what you are saying. Yes, experiments always need to be reproduced, or what? Or it is all nonsense. It is whatever you want to say the world is and there is no foundation, no underlying truth. Just feelings. And what is the point of talking about feelings? They are ultimately subjective. They cannot be shared. I mean, we use language and all kinds of art forms to try, but no. You cannot truly share an experience like two computers share files. So what you are talking about is the ultimate subjective experience. The one that is between you and whatever private biological interface you are having with the world around you. It is not the infinite. It is the opposite. The isolated number. The more you talk of god the further you get from the world around you and the more you sink into yourself. And please, Maahjabeen. Do not tell me about the wonders of religion. There is a reason it has fallen out of favor in more and more of the world. It is because the wrong people do the wrong things with it. The reason we need science at all is because there are so many people with bad intentions who try to tell us the world is ruled by their god. Science says no. It is like the laws in a government. We need to understand and all agree that the world works in a certain way or guess what? We get insane religious wars again about who goes to heaven and who does not. No. I do not hear any voices or music in the wind. I hear water on water. I only see light. Ai ai ai. Do not make me question your intelligence. You are too nice for that.” And with a somewhat disgusted shake of her head, Flavia breaks away from Maahjabeen and retreats out of the cave back into the dark tunnels leading to the sub.
Chapter 39 – Nonsense I Mean
September 24, 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:
39 – Nonsense I Mean
“How did Jidadaa get you back anyway?” Amy sits beside Flavia on her platform in camp. The fog has not let up and a dank chill creeps up from the ground through their feet and legs. She murmurs the question, conscious of the masked golden childs, as Jay calls them, squatting at compass points on the camp’s perimeter. These figures are never still. They shift and scratch itches and follow sounds. But they don’t respond to any questions or offers of food and drink and they evidently aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Spooky.
Flavia shrugs. “A lot like the first time. Then it was the girl child Xaanach. This time Jidadaa. Both woke me in the middle of the night and led me quietly out of his camp. I guess he needs better security, but I am glad he does not have it!”
“That’s amazing. And did Jidadaa lead you right back here or did you go somewhere else first?”
“Somewhere else?”
“Like maybe she has some hidey-hole of her own? See, last night, after you got back, Jidadaa disappeared again. Right before these golden childs appeared. I think maybe she knew they were coming and she wants to avoid them. Jay says to the Lisicans they’re like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They scare her. But if we could find her now, like if you know where she might be hiding, we sure could use more answers.”
“They are pretty scary.” Flavia is empty. She wants to just give up. Completely surrender. Why can’t she? Everything here is an arduous epic adventure. Nothing is as simple here as settling down to her workstation with her dog across her feet and a steaming espresso in her hands. She misses big Boris. And she is sure he must miss her. She tilts her head back. “Ehh… Amy. I can’t do this any more. I have to go home.”
Amy throws a comforting arm over Flavia’s shoulders. “Soon, my dear. We’re nearly into May now.”
“You think that is some kind of help? We still have weeks of this! Weeks! And now the villagers are coming in and like taking over! We can’t do anything outside of their view! There is no privacy! Who cares if it is Wetchie-ghuy or these…” She gestures at the nearest golden child, who twitches when they hear the name Wetchie-ghuy. “These… I don’t even know what to call them. But what happens if we try to leave? Eh? Has anyone tried yet?”
“One goes with. When anyone goes to the trenches. Or like when Jay went down to the lagoon. Perhaps they’re protecting us.”
“I don’t want them protecting me,” Flavia declares loudly. Defiantly. “I just want them to leave me alone. All of them.”
Amy nods, patient and sympathetic. “See, if we can figure out where Jidadaa went then she could help answer some of these questions. If they are protecting us, then toward what end?”
“So we end up in their pot instead of someone else’s.”
“Cannibalism. Wow. Huh. There hasn’t been any sign of it here. Unless you know something that Wetchie-ghuy…”
“No.” Flavia waves a disgusted hand. “I don’t. Don’t worry. It is just me stereotyping your beloved natives, right?”
“Beloved? Ha. They won’t even talk to me. I’m too unclean.”
“Well, Amy my dear, I would be happy to switch roles with you at any time. They can’t seem to get enough of me.”
“Did Wetchie-ghuy try to put that loop over your hand again?”
“Oh, yeah. Like five times. Finally I took it and threw it off a cliff. And you know what he did? He giggled. Then he made another one out of some branches and tried again. Such a creep.”
“I feel like the two shamans are trying to claim us. Each one is taking as many of us as they can get. And if they can’t have us, then it’s better to poison us so the other one doesn’t get us.”
Flavia scowls. “We are just like… trophies to them.”
“I don’t know if we can continue to work under these conditions. Although I have no idea what else we can do.”
“Amy?” Miriam exits the bunker with Triquet and waves. “Come with us?”
“Sure thing, Mir.” Amy gets up and squeezes Flavia’s arm. “Well. I guess I get a chance to see. You just stay here and rest up, Flavia. Be Alonso’s partner. That means don’t let him go anywhere alone. Otherwise, nobody needs anything from you today.”
“Good. Because I swear to you I have nothing left to give.”
Amy grimaces, her inability to raise Flavia’s spirits grating on her, and joins Miriam and Triquet at the edge of the camp. They head toward Tenure Grove, one of the golden childs following.
“Do you think we can put this one to work?” Triquet wonders. “Ask how handy they are with a spade and trowel?”
“I mean, you can try…”
Miriam looks up at the cliff face they approach. “Right back at it. It’s important to Alonso that we continue the work today.”
Amy nods. “I’d say it’s important for all of us. We have to keep our routines or we’ll go crazy under these conditions.”
“Yeah, but Alonso… He had a very bad night. You saw him, Ames. He thought he was back in the gulag.”
Amy’s face falls. “Oh yeah, in bed I could hear him. And when he got up… At first I didn’t think it was a bathroom call. He looked desperate, like he was trying to escape.”
“Escape?” Triquet frowns. “Uh, where? Forgot he was on an island, did he?”
“Escape… life. I don’t think…” Amy answers quietly, “his mind was working all too well. Oh, Mir. He really is damaged.”
Miriam nods, sad. “And I don’t know how to fix him.”
“Time.” Amy and Triquet both say it and Triquet follows it with a giggle. “Jinx! Time, Miriam, and loads of chocolate.”
“So what are we working on today, boss?” Amy rolls up her sleeves as they near the base of the cliff. It is choked with brush and a fallen skirt of loose stone.
“I want to inventory who lives in that scree pile, if anyone. Got to be a dangerous place to call home, rocks sliding all over the place and crushing you. But still, if we are going to be thorough for Plexity, then it is a habitat we have to sample…”
“Life finds a way!” Triquet boldly pushes past the first branches of the manzanita and immediately squawks, ensnared, arms held above their head. “Except this life. Me. I’m stuck.”
“Life didn’t find a way?” Amy chortles, pulling the branches away from Triquet and allowing them to continue.
Miriam has paused in her examination of the scree pile to study the golden child, who has turned three-quarters away, their mask pointed up at an angle. “What do you think they’re looking at?”
“Well, Pradeep and Jay think Sherman the shaman hides up in those trees with his osprey. Maybe our protector here is on the lookout for them.”
Triquet scowls at the golden child. “What do you think that mask does for them? I mean, how do they see or anything?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know.”
“Lord, I am so sick of being hopelessly confused.” Triquet lifts their arms and drops them again. “I mean, yes it’s the first step in scientific inquiry, yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah. But, I mean, can’t we just get a tiny bit of clarity every once in a while?”
“Not a chance.” Amy pushes past Triquet and climbs to the top of the scree pile. Small flat rocks shoot out from under her feet in all directions. “Well, this is… Hm. I can’t get on this without…”
“Yeah, careful. You’re killing all our specimens up there, Ames.”
“Okay, but how…?” Amy hurries back down to the clawing branches and solid ground underfoot. “I mean, how else can we do it? We have to climb it. If we don’t start at the top, the loose rocks will just slide down onto whatever we uncover.”
“Well, according to him,” Triquet indicates a robin hopping along the scree slope to their left, “the scree pile is good hunting. So I guess there’s something in there.”
“You’re right.” Miriam sighs. “Anything moves and the rest just slides. Ugh. This is going to be hard.”
“Miriam?” Amy turns to study her old friend, gaze troubled. “What happens to Alonso if we aren’t ever able to make anything of Plexity? Like if, by the time we’re finished here, we don’t have enough samples and he isn’t able to get it up and running?”
“I do not know, Amy dear.” Miriam shakes her head again, watching the robin pull a winged insect from the gaps in the rocks. “I do not know.”
Ξ
A shadow darkens Maahjabeen’s cot. Pradeep squints, dazed from lack of sleep, at the silhouette looming over him and his beloved. “Jidadaa! There you are. Everyone has been looking for—” He falls silent as the Lisican girl’s hand urgently clamps his arm.
Jidadaa casts a worried glance at the square of blurred gray daylight visible through the sheets of hanging plastic. Once she’s certain that Pradeep will remain quiet she removes a white plastic package from folds in her clothes and unwraps it. It is an old shopping bag carrying blackened leaves, mashed and pulpy. Juices have collected in the bottom.
Jidadaa kneels beside Maahjabeen and awkwardly struggles to figure out how to get the concoction in the woman’s slack mouth.
Pradeep helps, whispering, “Does Doctor Daine know you’re doing this? Is this like a prescribed medication or…?” But the answer is apparent and he feels a fool for even asking.
Pradeep pinches Maahjabeen’s mouth open and Jidadaa makes a spout of the bag’s corner to pour a trickle of brown and black liquid past her lips.
Maahjabeen gags, expelling it.
“Shit!” Pradeep hisses, warding the bag away. “Shit! No! Stop! You’re choking her.”
Maahjabeen quickly settles. It was only a few droplets. Mandy’s voice comes from the far side of the bunker. “Everything okay in there, Pradeep?”
“Yes! Fine!” Pradeep’s eyes dart back and forth across the ceiling. What does one say in this situation? “Uh… No worries in here. Just past it now. All is well. Back to Do Not Disturb please.”
Mandy giggles. “This hotel maid hears and obeys.”
Jidadaa straddles Maahjabeen, pushing on her belly, kneading upward with strong fingers. Then she leans on her patient’s ribs, as if she’s squeezing the last of the toothpaste out. Finally, she gets off and rolls Maahjabeen over, so her face is off the cot’s edge pointed at the ground. Then she pushes on her back.
Gray goo dribbles from Maahjabeen’s mouth. Pradeep watches in mute horror, knowing he must have expelled the same mucous. Lumps drop out, like little owl pellets or dried clumps of gray oatmeal. Jidadaa keeps pushing. More and more emerges, landing with disgusting wet smacks on the plastic. Soon there is a pile on the floor like a cat’s foul vomit that needs to be cleaned.
Then Jidadaa rolls her back face-up. She pulls a juicy fingerful of black leaves from her plastic bag and pushes it into Maahjabeen’s empty mouth. Then she sits back and wipes a strand of hair away.
Pradeep quivers, fully anticipating another choking episode. But his darling dearest seems to tolerate the leaves fine this time. Her breathing steadies, if anything, and she slips into a deeper sleep. “I think that’s good. Is that good?”
Jidadaa shrugs, the movement awkward to her. She holds up her fingers stained with gray mucous and black juice. “The argument. See? Here it is. Gray on black.”
Pradeep makes a face. “Ugh. Let’s get your hands clean. There’s no way that’s sanitary.”
“First I clean the…” Jidadaa gestures at the gray pile Maahjabeen expelled. She uses an empty tissues box and some wipes. Then she cleans her own hands, although the perfume on the wipes makes Jidadaa blanch. “Ew. Need water.”
“Yeah, the creek’s your best bet to get all the smells…” Pradeep begins but her head twitches sideways no. “Ah. Okay. Not the creek. Are you hiding…? From the Doctor?”
“From golden childs. They are bad sign.”
“Ah. Yes. I see. I think. Well I won’t tell anyone you’re here. The golden childs. Are they… on our side or…? I mean, what are they doing here anyway?”
“Protect. All many want to stop Jidadaa. People in village. Sky people. Underground people. Golden childs. They think they can. But Lisica ends now.” Maahjabeen shudders and her body heaves forward. Pradeep throws his arms around her. “Listen to the bird,” Jidadaa demands.
Pradeep hears the familiar peal of an outraged eagle. The bird flies far above, winging its way home. “The osprey. But why is the bird screaming this time…?” His attention is split between its sudden appearance and Maahjabeen’s convulsions.
“He knows. I take his slave away.” Jidadaa lifts Maahjabeen’s twitching hand. She places it in Pradeep’s grasp. With her other hand she passes him the plastic bag filled with leaves. “Give to her, every bit. She will be strong. Give it all. Do not leave camp. Ever. Keep here with golden childs.”
“Wait. Where are you going?”
Jidadaa whispers over her shoulder, “Kula. She is my mother.” Then she slips out the clean room to the left and hurries silently to the steps leading down to the sub.
“Mahbub…” Maahjabeen’s weak hand reaches for his face.
“Oh! Babi.” He kisses her trembling fingertips.
“Where…?” Her eyelids unstick and her pupils slowly dilate.
“You’re here with me. Safe. Nothing will ever harm you again.”
“The taste… in my mouth…”
“Yeah. Must be pretty bad. Not the last of that I’m afraid. But I think we finally found you some medicine that works.”
“Good. I was trapped…” She falls heavily against his embrace, her eyelids fluttering, “in quicksand.”
“I know.” He kisses her brow. “But you’re safe now.”
“Tell me a story. Let me…” Maahjabeen trembles again. “Let me hear your voice. It… helps.”
“Yes. Of course. I remember. Your voice was the only thing that kept me alive. Your touch.” Pradeep opens his mouth and then closes it again. “But what shall I say? I mean… I could talk about, well, anything. What sounds interesting? Tunicates? Spongiform encephalopathies? Uh, pinniped eye parasites?”
She waves his jargon away. “Tell me… of yourself.”
“Oh. Right. Well that is far more difficult.” But he shifts, making himself comfortable, reviewing all his memories. This is something he doesn’t often do. There is little to be gained from the practice. “You know, I have always thought of my life in two parts. The first part was India, with all the good and bad. Then I turned 18 and got into University of Houston and moved to Texas. And that was the second part. Two years there. Two years in Indiana. Then grad school with Amy in Monterey. Almost six years in the second part. But now…” He sighs, thinking of all those lonely days and nights in sterile buildings with neither friends nor family. “I think now… Meeting you, my life is in a third part, the part where I am not lonely anymore. You see, moving to Houston was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You know me. How hard change is for me, how fragile I am. Well imagine me as a 17 year-old grappling with the fact that I was going to move to the big bad United States all by myself to go to college. It is so hard for Indian students. We are used to a very different culture. And then, after a couple long plane flights you are suddenly taken to a place where nobody is your friend, there are no parties you are invited to, nobody reaches out to you. There is racism. I mean, I shut down. For like the first whole year, I was just like sleepwalking through my time in the dorms and in my classes. I made no friends. I only thought about going back home. Desperately. I missed the rich food, the loud streets, the laughing people. I mean, Houston has some of that, but mostly only for its own community and it is very different. And yes, there are all kinds of Indian student clubs and things that I should have joined but I just couldn’t find anyone… Especially those Indian students who adored it there. They fell in love with the fast cars and the shiny buildings and the American football. So I made no friends there. And frankly it never got any better. Not at Purdue or CSUMB. America is a wonderful place in a lot of ways but in so many other ways it is so, so lonely.”
A figure appears in the door. It is Doctor Daine.
Pradeep leans down and kisses Maahjabeen’s soft cheek. “But then I found you, my little babi girl,” he whispers into her seashell ear. “And the third part of my life started. Now I will never be lonely again.”
Ξ
“Oh… Just look. It’s so beautiful.” Mandy leans back from the workstation screen at the long tables in the bunker and claps her hands with joy. Then she stretches. She’s been sitting here a long damn time.
Amy leans over her shoulder, eager to share the enthusiasm. But all she can see are graphs and charts she doesn’t recognize. “Great job, Mandy! Uh, what am I looking at here?”
“My first official data-driven forecast for the next ten days!”
“Oh! Really? What does it say? Is that X axis temperature or…?”
“Well, no, that one’s actually a humidity reading. Sorry. I haven’t properly labeled anything yet. I’m just so happy! Finally!” she groans, collapsing against the keyboard.
Amy is happy to see Mandy feel productive for the first time. “Hooray for you! So should I schedule a beach party or…?”
“No. God, no. Here, it’s this one. Look. Precipitation. Huge storm coming. In like eighteen hours? I mean, this is still just a single weather station with no satellite or network help. So I can’t get any more exact than that. Should be a cold one too.”
Amy nods. “You know, frankly, I’ve been surprised how dry we’ve generally been here. I mean, have you ever spent a spring in Oregon? Especially on the coast. It like never stops raining.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too…” Mandy’s fingers fly fast on the keyboard. “Look. Some figures we have here offline. Lisica is only at about 65% precipitation of Tillamook, Oregon over the last five weeks, although I figure we’re pretty much around the same latitude.”
“Oh, I thought we were a bit further south. More like Brookings or somewhere around there. But it just pours there, on like a daily basis, until summer. And even then.”
“Yeah, the biggest storms in North America are generated out here. The thing, look, here’s a satellite gif of a storm developing in the Bay of Alaska. Watch how it spirals outward. I think Lisica might just be too far from the coast. See how ragged the bands get by the time they’re this far south? All the main moisture patterns are usually drawn to the east, toward North America. And then these others kind of wither away over the open ocean. It’s like the main cells propagate on either side of us but rarely right here.”
“San Francisco is like this. The whole town is just stuck out on a peninsula facing the ocean but somehow it magically gets way less rain than the coast to the north and to the south. They just get the howling fog.”
“Well, we’ve certainly had plenty of howling fog here.” Mandy doesn’t want to correct all the inaccuracies in Amy’s comparison so she just changes the subject by bringing up another page of data. “Here are the locations of all the permanent oceanic buoys that NASA and NOAA manage. I figure one or two should be close. Actually, look. They didn’t drop a single buoy within a thousand kilometers of here. This is a really under-studied spot in the ocean, kind of a transition zone between the storm nursery in the Bay of Alaska and the open ocean of the North Pacific. Now that I’m actually getting some readings of my own, I’m seeing a possible paper analyzing this area in my future. Maybe many papers.”
“Publish, by all means!” Amy rubs Mandy’s back, excited for her. “That is, if the Air Force will let you. You know, I wonder if that’s part of the reason this spot remains under-studied. I bet the Navy and Air Force turned whole generations of researchers away from focusing on this area.”
“Well, not any more! Ooh, hear that?” Mandy pops up, cocking her head. “A gust front coming! Wind already in the trees!” She hurries outside, followed by Amy. The gusts are bitter and dry. “Yep, it’s pretty cold. I wish I could see the northern horizon. It must be getting active.”
Amy takes a deep breath. It’s nearly twenty-hundred hours, a bit after dinner. What she can see of the sky is purple, banded with gray clouds. A few stars peek through. “Look. Is that Venus? That must be like only the third time I’ve seen it since we got here. Good thing we didn’t bring an astronomer along. This would be like their least favorite place on the planet. Can you even think of a place that gets more cloud cover than Lisica?”
“There’s a spot in the North Sea north of Iceland, and another at the edge of Antarctica. But yeah. This area is like top five for sure. I wrote a paper on global cloud concentrations as an undergrad. I remember the least cloudy regions were Arizona and North Africa. By like a lot.”
They walk out of camp toward the beach and scale the fallen redwood trunk. Mandy takes a deep breath. “Oh, I love my new superpower though! I hope I don’t ever forget how to taste the air! I thought I understood weather before but I really only did through my computer screen. Now I get to combine both!”
Amy nods, the old sage. “This is why people do fieldwork.” She turns back to the cliffs behind them but they are lost in darkness. One of the golden childs stand in the whipping wind facing them, guarding Amy and Mandy from unseen threats. “Oh, hello. Nice night.” The golden child only presents its blank face to her, like a giant insect’s eye. At a loss for words, she turns back to Mandy. “So what do you think a big storm might do to the whole war between Sherman the shaman and Wetchie-ghuy?”
“Something Jidadaa said a couple nights ago…” Mandy jumps back down, shivering in the wind, and retreats to camp with Amy at her side. “It’s really stuck with me. She said that Wetchie-ghuy gets his power from people’s fear. Shadows and deceit. But Sherman is a sorcerer of the sky. That’s where they get their magic. So I figure a big storm will, uh, definitely favor one or the other.”
“Sky magic.” Amy shakes her head. “Really? That’s where we are here? Because what does that even mean? They call the sun and moon? Make them do their bidding? I don’t think so. They both rise and set the right times every day. I mean, as a scientist, I fail to grasp exactly what sky magic entails.”
Mandy nods in agreement. “Jidadaa said Sherman controls the fog. I was like, uh, actually the convective cycle controls the fog but go ahead girl. You do you.”
“Yeah and I’d say Sherman’s more into poison anyway with all the shit they’ve pulled on Triquet and Maahjabeen and Pradeep.”
“Exactly! Thanks but no thanks, dude. We got enough poison in the sky where we come from. That’s why we came here. Cause it’s supposed to be clear and pure out here.”
Amy stops, cocking her head. “Well, isn’t that a thing.”
Mandy stops as well, at the edge of camp. “What?”
Amy shakes her head, bemused. “As a professor I often say my biggest job is to point out blind spots in my students’ perceptions so that data-gathering and data-interpretation can be done free of bias. So. What you just said. I think it’s a bias that we still consider Lisica pristine. Know what I mean? We keep finding examples that contradict that assumption. Again and again. But so far we only see them as disconnected data points instead of a wider pattern. The fault is in us. We want Lisica to be undisturbed by the modern world but it really isn’t.”
“What are you saying?” Mandy sniffs the air. “That Lisica is like a toxic dump site? That poison is in the air? I don’t really get…”
“No. It must be less direct than that. I mean, actually, you’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a toxic dump. Ruining land is what militaries do best. But no, these shamans aren’t like slipping radioactive isotopes into our drinking water. At least I don’t think they are. Biases are less visible than that. This is us not seeing what is right in front of our own faces because we’ve convinced ourselves it doesn’t exist. And what I’m saying is this is a developed island.”
Mandy blinks. She isn’t sure what that insight gets them. But she’s also pretty sure the lack of understanding is on her part, not in Amy’s explanation. She flounders, hoping to think of something useful to add. “Remember when we scanned the sub with our radon sensors? We thought it worked at the time, right?”
“God, that seems like six months ago now. But it was clean. No, I think it’s actually safe here on Lisica. It’s just that we can’t keep operating on the false supposition that this is some Garden of Eden and we’re the first ever explorers. But so far we’re only like, ‘Okay, well sure there’s mysteries and secret graves and hidden villages and weird natives, but we’re still these great explorers in a virgin land.’ It’s a fallacy and I think our frustration is just our inability to see what is actually here.”
“So what is actually here?”
“I’ve got a feeling that this place is far more advanced than we know. I mean, like politically. We’re getting plots and sub-plots as deep as these tunnels. But for some reason we just can’t accept it. You know, I think there’s just a real need for a lot of us to feel that we are the very first ones somewhere. It like removes a whole layer of moral ambiguity and guilt. If we aren’t taking Lisica away from anyone, if in fact it’s our own island and nobody lives here, then we get to be the heroes in our own story. But it’s almost never like that. In fact, it probably hasn’t been like that for anyone anywhere since like a million BCE. We’re always kicking someone out or committing genocide or, well, being the villains instead of the heroes. We’re always destroying a local habitat, no matter how careful or high-minded we think we are. I guess that’s what the villagers probably mean by Jidadaa. They knew we’d eventually come. And when we did, that the old ways would all end. They’re right. Jay is the leed-ass or whatever they call him. We all are. Harbingers of doom.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen wakes with a clear head. She is present again. Rested. Whole. Oh, praise Allah! She fiercely squeezes Pradeep’s hand in gratitude and love.
“Ow.” Alonso gently extricates his hand. “I mean, what a grip!”
“Oh! Doctor Alonso! Forgive…! I thought you were…!”
“No no. I’m sure. But Pradeep is busy. He made me promise to hold your hand until he gets back. In just another bit.” He glances upward, where several people crawl on the roof fixing the tarps in preparation for the storm.
“Ehh. What time is it?”
“About four o’clock in the morning. More rain coming. Mandy made us get up early to fix what the wind has broken and make final preparations. But I was already…” Alonso shrugs. Another night of horrors. He’d been more than happy to be roused.
“Another storm? But I want to get in my boat.”
“To hear Mandy talk you will not need to move. The deluge will come and everything will all wash away. This cot will float, no?”
Despite herself, Maahjabeen giggles. This life she is returning to is so good, better than she has ever known. Pradeep is the sun. He is the brightest and purest thing she has ever known. Before him her life was in shadow. It always was. Even her happiest memories from before held darkness. Yelling. Anger. Guilt. Her family is a very contentious lot. And she was always nursing some resentment or other over the insult of the day. It is how she became so fierce, in proud opposition to their challenges. And not just from her family, it was also her sexist professors and the unhappy students that made up her whole life. They would all throw their pitiful and infuriating self-inflicted issues in her face. And that was why she always escaped to the utter serenity of the ocean.
But then Pradeep arrived. And he is bearing gifts. His love is so pure she cannot doubt it, even for a moment. So the dark thoughts she has always had about herself just sound indulgent and paranoid in her own ears now. And the ferocity. She can lay that aside as well. She can laugh. She can dance. As long as he is with her, she is complete. She doesn’t ever need this to end and she has no need of Heaven. Eternal bliss is already hers.
She blinks at the apostasy. That is the very first time such a thought has ever entered her head. And she doesn’t like it.
“What?” Alonso studies her worn face. “A shadow passed over you. What is it?”
“Oh. Nothing. ” Maahjabeen has to very carefully not fall back into her familiar hectoring resentment. She sighs to release the tension and seeks out Alonso’s hand again. For once, she is happy to have him interrupt her wayward thoughts. “Thank you, Doctor Alonso,” she squeezes his big rough hand, “for watching over me. I am not sure I have had too many bosses who would do that.”
“You are very welcome. It is my…” Pleasure is the wrong word here. So is duty. Alonso pats their joined hands with his other. “I am very glad we get to be friends, Miss Charrad.”
“Please. Maahjabeen.”
“Of course. I just always wanted to respect your professionalism.”
“Yes. Thank you, Doctor Alonso.”
“I think we are both people who yell. And when we met…” He releases her hand so he can make an explosion between his own. “Boom. You know?”
She chuckles, and in her depths she can feel how depleted she is. She tries to sit up but finds it to be a struggle. Ah. Not a full return to health yet after all.
Alonso helps her. “Pradeep said there is a tincture I am supposed to feed you if things go bad. Some herbal concoction of his from India, I gather?”
“Ugh. That stuff tastes so bad.”
“So you don’t think you need it?”
Maahjabeen tries to recall the circumstances around that black liquid. Hadn’t there been leaves in it the first five or six doses? And where had it come from? All she knows is that it is a component of her recovery. So she blanches and beckons silently to him. “The last bit. Come on. Let nobody say that I don’t finish my medicine.”
He tilts the little container into her mouth and she gags. It is so alkaline it feels like it strips the cells from the surface of her throat. But she feels it as a clean heat in her belly, killing off whatever that pit of mud was in there. How horrible.
Now, after a brief struggle, she is able to sit up. But her back is immediately cold. She wraps her arms around her knees, fragile and vulnerable in the night air.
Alonso drapes a blanket over her shoulders when he sees her shiver. Then he looks away. Even in her distress she is achingly beautiful. And this from a man who still considers himself gay! But Alonso has always worshipped beauty wherever he finds it. It is how Miriam stole his heart. It is how he learned that he is properly bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. He loves love. He flies to it like a moth to flame.
“I seem…” Maahjabeen’s teeth chatter, “to be in recovery here on this island as often as I am standing on my own two feet. I am sorry. My work is suffering. I am falling behind.”
“No no. It is I who must apologize for putting you unwittingly in such danger. I have been thinking about… Well. Everything. This whole venture. The naïve idea that I could trust the military about anything is… I mean, I guess I was desperate and only heard what I wanted to hear. But I should have known that there would be this entire other reality here, one that did not want us on its shores. And then I forced the issue, until the villagers had to push back. And now we are in this mess. And it is all because of me. Do you know the English word hubris? My dangerous pride?”
“Yes, it has been used by supervisors about me on their reports. But you could not know, Doctor Alonso. This is the Americans. If they can use you they will and there is nothing you can do about it. You are good. It did not occur to you how bad others can be.”
But an entire montage of dark episodes flickers through his head. He was not a good man in the gulag. He was a beast, a rat among other rats. His goodness had been altogether lost.
Now she registers his distress. Maahjabeen recalls how wounded he is. No matter what she has gone through, it is nothing compared to what he endured the last five years. Compassion wells up in her, a nearly unfamiliar sensation. She cups his face. “You are… very strong. Amazing.” The halting words seem insufficient but they prompt a tear to slide down his cheek.
Alonso ducks his head. “Yes, I am so happy we get to be friends, Miss… Maahjabeen.”
“Ooo, I like that. Yes. Miss Maahjabeen from now on.”
They both laugh, listening to the white noise of rain approaching from over the water. Others tumble inside, chatting and shaking their clothes dry. Life fills the bunker.
Pradeep is the first one back in the clean room. “Ah! You’re up!” He throws himself at Maahjabeen, only holding back at the last instant so he doesn’t tackle her. He holds her gently in his arms, kissing her face again and again.
Maahjabeen laughs, pushing at him, reveling in his passion. “I am. I think it is gone now, Mahbub.”
Alonso informs him, “She is just waking. And her strength is back. She nearly broke my hand.”
They all laugh more. Pradeep is flooded with relief and joy. Oh, paradise is not lost. He gets to return to it after all.
“Ehh, what is going on in here?” Esquibel backs into the clean room holding a stack of dripping tubs. She turns and sees her patient sitting up, bracketed by the two smiling men.
“She is back!” Alonso feels the little room is crowded now so he stands with effort, his knees balking and his feet groaning with pain. He hides a grimace and moves aside, edging toward the door slit. “And that medicine may just be why.”
“What medicine?”
Pradeep’s smile goes glassy. He supposes there’s no harm in telling the Doctor now. “I am sorry, Doctor. Jidadaa was here. About, uh, sixteen hours ago? And she gave me some leaves and stuff, like an herbal recipe, for me to give Maahjabeen. And it immediately improved her. Now, she is doing so well—”
But Esquibel can’t hear another word. “And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think the doctor should maybe test this ‘medicine’ of hers? Do the words contra-indicated mean anything to you? Oh, my god. You could have killed her.”
Alonso reaches out. “Now now.”
But Pradeep flares. “She was dying anyway. And you had given up. She wasn’t on any other drugs to contra-indicate, Doctor.” When someone attacks Pradeep he normally shuts down but this is Maahjabeen she is talking about. The ferocity that he puts into her title startles all of them, including him.
“You do not know if I would have started administering drugs. It could have been very fast, during an emergency. You have to tell your doctor when you want to try a new—”
“And you wouldn’t have given the herbs to her! You would have taken them away for your bloody stupid tests while she drowned in her own…” Pradeep gestures vaguely, the remembered sensation of cold bubbling mud robbing him of his words. “She needed it immediately. And Jidadaa swore me to silence.”
Esquibel pushes Pradeep out of the way. “Give me room. Tell me. How do you feel, Maahjabeen?”
“Okay. Like I have run a marathon or two. But getting better. Don’t be angry with Pradeep. He did what—”
“Yes, I know. He is your own true love and this is all so special. You are some of the worst patients I have ever had, I swear! So insubordinate. It is ridiculous trying to keep you healthy under these conditions.” Esquibel takes the woman’s pulse and prompts her to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. It is still a bit gray.
“We appreciate everything you do, Doctor Daine.”
“And don’t you try that political bullshit with me, Doctor Alonso. You knew about this too? Was I the only one kept from…?”
“No no. It is the first I’ve heard. If I’d known you hadn’t ordered it I would have never given her the final dose.”
“You gave her some too? Ai! Please. This is appalling.” Esquibel finds her stethoscope and starts listening to Maahjabeen’s thoracic cavity. Still congested. Things still seem a bit turgid. But far better than they had been. Esquibel could hardly detect her breath the last time she listened in. “And what if it is coincidence? Or what if these herbs have side effects that do not show up for six years? You cannot just eat any plant in the forest. That is how people die of toxic shock and renal failure. Does that sound like fun?”
Maahjabeen only silently regards Esquibel. What a powerful figure the Doctor is. But sometimes she is tiresome. Can’t she see that Pradeep made the right choice? He saved her life. “It is only your pride talking now, Doctor Daine.”
“No it is not!” Esquibel slams her hand against one of the tubs and pulls a tablet free of the same pile that held her stethoscope. “You think we just operate without any medical procedures? No best practices developed over the last one hundred bloody years of modern medicine? Why can’t people just shut up and do what they are told for once? There is a very disturbing trend in the world these days. Nobody trusts an expert any more. There is a growing amount of foolishness here in this camp, where trained scientists are beginning to believe in some very silly things. But you don’t know. None of you do. This is how the bush people are. They have no power of their own so they must magnify it through voodoo and superstition. Only if you believe in it, can it harm you.”
“We didn’t believe in anything, Doctor.” Pradeep wishes she would just leave them alone. “But we still ended up with the faces of foxes on our tailbones and pits of muds inside.”
“Yes.” Maahjabeen clutches him. “That is exactly how it felt.”
“Poison, as I have said. Most likely injected by a pad of needles in the pattern of a fox face. Perhaps for some ritual reason. Ask Doctor Triquet. No. Listen. You allowed an untrained village girl to give you a folk remedy for a deadly condition. Why do you not understand how dangerous that is?”
“What would you have me do, when she is dying? What were you doing, eh? What big plans did you have to save her?”
“I was monitoring her.”
“Monitoring…” Pradeep lifts his hands and lets them fall. “Great. Thanks. So much. For all your efforts. You had no plan. Doctors never understand. If you were able to heal us we’d be happy to stay in your care. But when you run out of ideas we are forced to take greater risks, to trust those we wouldn’t otherwise trust. Without this medicine, Maahjabeen would have died. I am sure of it.”
“What makes you sure?” Esquibel pinches Maahjabeen’s toes. “You didn’t need any medicine, Pradeep. And you survived. You came back even more rapidly than she did. So what healed you?”
They all look at Pradeep. A sudden image of Wetchie-ghuy fills his vision. He recalls for the first time who really saved him, in the twilight space between life and death, and at what cost. A sob bursts from Pradeep and he covers his mouth with his hand.
“What is it, love?” Maahjabeen kisses his hand.
He looks up, eyes drained of hope. “I… I, uh…” He finds himself incapable of putting it all into words. “I’ve been… claimed.”
Esquibel breaks the silence with a snort. “Yes, this is the exact kind of nonsense I mean.”
Chapter 29 – Kill Him
July 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:
29 – Kill Him
“Has anyone seen Jay?” Mandy addresses the wider bunker, then parts the slits of the clean room to check in on Esquibel.
She is reading an official report of some kind, which she dismisses from her phone as Mandy enters. “Jay? Eh, no. I am sure he is out somewhere collecting Alonso’s million samples.”
“Yeah… That’s what I figured. That flake. He said he’d help me with my elevator idea today and I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Mandy enters the clean room and kneels beside Esquibel, kissing her temple and dragging her nails through the tight curls of her lover’s scalp. She rests her head on Esquibel’s shoulder. “So tired. I danced so hard last night. And now we’ve got an MDMA session set up for Alonso tonight. Poor me and all my excesses. Maybe instead of working on the elevator I should disco nap instead.”
“Yes, that is a good idea.” Esquibel turns to her laptop and opens a research paper that she has been meaning to study on the treatment of dermal fungal infections. “You go ahead and I’ll be in there soon. Rub your feet. Then I’ll wake you when he gets back.”
“Mm.” Mandy likes the sound of that. “You’re the sweetest. What are you working on?”
“I am starting to see an incidence in foot problems. My own, and Miriam has made a complaint. We may be picking up new types of infection from the sand and everything. We have no idea about the microbes here, despite Alonso and his Plexity. It doesn’t matter, all of the information it gives us, none of it can tell us yet if these new strains of fungus or bacteria will actually harm us, or how to treat them. Not even in a petri dish or a clinical setting, to say nothing of disease in the real world. No, Triquet…” Esquibel addresses their imagined presence, “the social sciences do not win. Medicine, biology, chemistry, and physics still rule us all.”
Mandy blinks at Esquibel. “Are you okay?”
Esquibel’s smile turns to glass and her insides go cold. There is something so incisive about the way Mandy asks that it seems to shine light into all her shadows. She pretends to misunderstand. “Oh, yes. It’s just a bit of itching and cracking between the toes. Frankly, it could be that the skin is getting dried out by the wind and saltwater that we are constantly exposing them to.”
“That’s good. But, no. I mean…” Mandy grasps for the words that might describe the dissonant vibe coming off Esquibel. It’s something she’s noticed more and more over the last… three days? Four? Something is bothering Skeebee and she isn’t letting on. Mandy shakes her head. “If you were having any problems, you’d like share them with me, right? You wouldn’t be the protective big sister or anything to protect my feelings, would you?”
“No.” Esquibel covers Mandy’s hand with her own. “I mean, yes. I wouldn’t hide things from you, Mandy. Not anything I’m… required not to. But that’s just military stuff. Nothing to do with you. With us. I guess if you’re sensing anything it’s just that I wish I had more to do. I’m happy to take samples for the project all day every day but it just seems…” Esquibel shrugs. “It is something that a grad student could do. Most of my skills remain… unused.”
“Ooo, what kinds of skills? Are you like a, what do they call them, a general practitioner? Sorry I’ve never asked. Almost all the doctors I know are specialists but you haven’t mentioned any…”
“If you recall, I was always interested in surgery so that has become my specialty. Combat medicine. Field surgery. Pulling bullets and shrapnel out of muscle and bone. But we do not get very many of those injuries when we are not at war. So it is a lot of training and simulation. So, yes. I am, for the most part, a GP like you thought. Dispensing Tylenol and referring sailors to physical therapists and psychologists. You, know, the real fun stuff.”
“God, are they scared of you? I bet they must be scared of you, coming to you with their problems.”
“What do you mean?” This is a safer conversation and Esquibel giggles, reminding herself how much she loves Mandy. “I am an excellent doctor.”
“You’re just so fierce. Nobody would want to tell you their problems. I can’t imagine wondering if I had, like, chlamydia and having to talk to judgmental old Doctor Daine about it. You’d probably yell at them for not wearing condoms.”
“Of course I would! That is my job! And these aren’t normal civilians you have to coddle. They are military personnel. I give them orders. They follow them or get written up. It is… very different from this situation here.”
Mandy laughs at her. “That’s what I thought, you big bully.” She cups Esquibel’s sculpted cheek in her hand. “It’s good to see you laugh. Don’t forget to.” Then Mandy kisses her marvelous full lips and stands. “Off to find someone, anyone who might help me figure out my elevator.”
“Yes, but after your nap. I’ll be right there.” Esquibel watches Mandy’s lithe form slip away, overwhelming fondness rushing through her. She is the heart of what Esquibel fights for, the prize who is easily worth all the sacrifices. As long as Mandy and all these other dear ones remain safe, Esquibel doesn’t mind whatever eventually happens to her own self. As Mandy’s brown and black silhouette dissolves in the semi-opaque plastic sheet of the clean room, Esquibel chuckles sadly. Because, make no mistake, there will be no happy fairy-tale ending for me.
In the bunker, Mandy finds Katrina at the work tables. She leans over the golden girl and rests her chin in the notch of her clavicle. Katrina, deep in a column of Python, absently reaches back and pats her head. The soft sheen of the long hair identifies who it is. “Mmm. Mandy Dandy.”
“Katrina, my dream-a.” Mandy kisses her ear and sits back. “Sorry to interrupt. You haven’t seen Jay, have you?”
“Noper.” Katrina just wants to resolve this last bit of logic before she tears her attention away. “Maybe he’s, uh, fishing?”
“Oh! That’s a good thought. Hey, we need to talk about our upcoming session tonight sometime. Coordinate some things, I figure. Let me know when you’re free.” Mandy kisses her again, unable to get enough of the feeling of Katrina’s soft skin against her lips. Her smell. She kisses the edge of her hairline one last time.
“Mm.” Katrina waves in the air, wanting Mandy to feel seen and heard, but she is already gone.
Through the door and across a mostly empty camp, with only Alonso and Flavia working on their laptops in silence, Mandy shuffles through and onto the beach. She crosses to the redwood trunk and scales it, squinting against a band of silver-white afternoon light against the horizon. It’s almost easy to forget there’s this huge, impossibly vast ocean out here. Mandy realizes that the redwood trunk falling across the beach and blocking their view of relentless infinity has done wonders for them. It’s allowed them to turn inward and get to know each other. It’s like some kooky feng shui principle. All their energy was leaking out into the open sea before, lost to this cold uncaring oblivion. Now they can conserve it and build something here. Hopefully… an elevator!
On the beach, Maahjabeen helps Pradeep haul the kayaks free of the lagoon’s lapping tides. He swoons and falls to his knees. Oh, no! What’s wrong with Pradeep? She scrambles down toward them. There’s no sign of Jay, not on the sand or in the shallows. Maybe he’s hiding in the little lean-to beside her, taking the nap that Mandy is fighting so hard against.
She drops onto the sand and finds the driftwood lean-to empty, although a blue fleece blanket almost entirely covered in sand has survived at least one high tide. Mandy pulls it out and twists the seawater out of it. She hurries toward Maahjabeen and Pradeep. “Hey there. Are you guys okay? How’s the water?”
Maahjabeen laughs, a short unhappy bark. “Very cold. Very… adventurous.”
“We fell asleep on this pocket beach over there.” Pradeep points east, along the coast beyond the sea cave entrance. “Got hit by a wave. Totally doused. Still feel…” He shakes his head, eyes blank.
Maahjabeen pulls the blanket from Mandy’s hands a little too roughly. It is evidence of a tryst she needs to hide. “Thank you. Sorry. I left it in there and forgot it.” She tosses it into the hatch of the kayak and drags it further up the beach. “Ehh. So hungry.”
“Yeah, I really need something warm. Has Jay cooked any more feasts today?” Pradeep moves like a zombie, his limbs stiff.
“I can’t find him! I hoped he was down here fishing.”
“Probably in the trees somewhere like a… simian.” Pradeep stumbles and drops his kayak. “Woo-ooo. I’m sorry. I can’t seem to… I think I might be getting sick.” Pradeep stands again, face ashen, and takes a deep breath, trying to marshal his reserves.
“Oh, no!” Mandy hurries to him and relieves him of the plastic handle at the yellow kayak’s prow. She hauls on it, following Maahjabeen around the end of the trunk in the woods.
Pradeep shuffles behind.
“How can he be sick?” Mandy asks Maahjabeen as she catches up to her. “There’s no new bugs on this island, nobody to even catch anything from.”
“I don’t know, but it is my fault.” Maahjabeen seems more upset about this than Mandy thought she’d be. “I felt the water hit but I kept sleeping. We both did. I should have realized what was happening and gotten him up earlier. But of course we were so far apart from each other, sleeping nearly on opposite sides of the beach, really. Now it is a shock to his system I think. Exposure or something. Maybe Esquibel should look at him. Ugh. So stupid!”
Maahjabeen lets her anger at herself fuel her march through the sand, which is difficult when she is so tired and hungry. She finally deposits Aziz under the big platform and directs Mandy to do the same with Firewater. But Pradeep struggles through the sand to get to them. Throwing caution to the wind, Maahjabeen hurries to him and puts an arm around his shoulder to support him as they make their way to the bunker and Esquibel in the clean room.
Mandy watches them go. There’s a whole host of strange vibes coming off them, enough to make whatever is afflicting Esquibel seem innocuous. When did everyone start getting so mysterious? She thought they’d reached some kind of transparency and fellowship here in the last few days. Mandy shrugs, letting it go. Who ever even knows with Maahjabeen? She’s always unhappy about something. “And I still haven’t found Jay!”
Ξ
“Now this is more like it.” Jay thinks he may have rediscovered the trail taken by the pollen people on this downward slope into a small canyon. It’s no more than a game trail but at least he can convince himself the depressions in the soft soil were made by human feet.
Tracking them was easy at first. The pollen of their masks left a trail like magic fairy dust, at least for the first few hundred paces. But as the woods grew more dense and the trunks of the fir trees crowded together into a gloomy, witchy canopy no more than a meter off the ground, the golden dust appeared less and less frequently until it disappeared entirely.
At the edge of the thicket Jay had to make a guess, dropping onto all fours and crawling through a dense stand. His backpack off, pushing it ahead of himself through the low passage, he was quite certain he’d lost his quarry when he spied one last faint streak of pollen on a branch above.
That led to the slope and this little hidden canyon. It is a cleft in a limestone cliff hidden by black oaks. There are no more signs or tracks leading to it but this must be where they headed. It’s that or they scaled the vertical cliffs and he sees no way to do that.
“Into the mouth of the monster.” Jay reads too much fantasy to think about this in any way other than epic adventure. Gird thyself for battle, young hero. But what kind? He’s never seen himself as like a classic fighter type. He’s more of a druid or a ranger. He’d like carry a spear and speak with the animals. If there was any magic in the world at all, he’d be a ranger of the mountains, sand, and sea. Ensconced in his daydream, he pushes his way through a stiff stand of ceanothus, preparing himself for conflict. Maybe he should get his knife out. Or at least keep it handy. “Bah. Who am I kidding? I’m not a fighter or a ranger or anything like that.” Jay takes out his phone instead. “I’m a wizard.”
Now he pauses at the entrance to the canyon. He really doesn’t want to surprise anyone. Not after his last interaction. He’d get his ass feathered with a dozen arrows before he took a step. “Actually, haven’t seen any bows and arrows. It’s all spears and nets so far. Wonder why? Whoa… Uh. Ding dong.” Jay has stepped between the sheltering trees into the canyon to find a lovely little glen, filled with madrone trees and butterflies and wildflowers. “So beautiful.” Jay brushes a hand over the flowers and inspects his palm. Next to no pollen. So, they must have played their games here first before going further afield. What is that all about, anyway? “Some kind of… spring festival? Rite of passage? Pollen collection service? Hello? Anyone home…?”
Jay edges his way into the glen, keeping up his nonsensical chatter. He’s never seen irises so gigantic, with varieties he’s pretty sure exist nowhere else. Also, the luxuriant dark green ferns have a weird extra bend in their sprouting fiddleheads. Neat. He might get something named after himself here after all. But stop goggling at everything, you dope. Now is not the time to do fieldwork.
He parts the fronds of the ferns to push deeper into the glen. “Guys? I just have questions, more than anything. What’s all that pollen for? And were those hunters gonna spear you too? Or are you like part of their tribe? Sorry if tribe isn’t the right word…”
A small grove of mature redwoods stands at the head of the canyon, hoarding nearly all the water and leaving a meager muddy stream for the rest of the glen. There is no sign of human presence or activity anywhere he looks. It remains entirely untouched. Despite his anxieties over being lost in what appears to be enemy territory, Jay allows himself a pleased smile. Alone in nature, getting up to trouble. That’s been his whole life. And it’s just so got damn beautiful in here. If this is where he dies, so be it.
Jay steps into the fairy ring of the redwoods and pulls up short. “What the…?” There is a ragged pit at his feet, leading down into darkness. The roots of the redwoods have been manipulated around it over the decades in an irregular woven ring. He drops to his knees, to make out recent disturbances in the duff from several pairs of feet. This is it. He did it. He tracked them all the way back. “To what, though? What is this?”
Jay turns on his phone’s light and shines it into the hole. “No way. That’s impossible. Isn’t it?” The light shines on the rusted steel structure of a ladder’s top rungs. He inches closer and tilts his phone further down, careful not to hold it directly above the hole in case he drops it. Yeah, that’s a long ladder alright. Dropping way way down into pitch blackness.
Jay rolls back onto his heels. “Well. That’s creepy as shit. But what am I going to do? Sit here and wait for the hunters to track me down? No way. I bet this is another one of those uncrossable borders, like, between these people and the others. Like we got the river as a border between the two villages, right? A super strong border. Cause who in their right minds would go down this thing unless they know what’s at the bottom?” He takes a deep breath, surprised how disappointed he is to find an artifact of the modern world here in this wilderness. “Yeah… Just when I’d thought I was getting away from all the madness of civilization.” As he talks he senses a bit of white noise from the vegetation on the far side of the redwoods, further up the glen but heading close. When he stops talking the noise also stops.
The hunters. They’re coming.
Jay shivers and pulls his pack back on. “Yeah. Okay. Fuck. That didn’t take long. Oh, well. It’s been a nice life. Bit short, but at least I got to discover some plants.” And then, holding his breath like a scuba diver rolling off a boat, Jay thrusts his legs through the hole and starts climbing down the rungs as fast as he safely can.
He counts his steps, eyes squeezed shut. When he gets to thirty he realizes he’s still holding his breath. He lets it out in a silent stream, unwilling now to give any more clues to the hunters above where he may have headed. Not that there’s any doubt where he went.
After just two more steps he finds himself on a concrete shelf. The hole mouth is a small gray opening far above. He wants to move away from it as fast as he can but he isn’t sure how. He feels forward with his feet, hoping against hope that the hunters’ heads don’t appear in the hole above.
The shelf is narrow with a sharp drop off, only a meter wide. Jay edges away from the ladder and the hole above, feeling with his hands along the dirty concrete wall at his back. What in the ever-loving Cold War of his grandparents is all this concrete doing down here? Just how many wildernesses around the world did those busy bastards ruin? Looks like the answer is all of them.
His fingers reach the flaking rust of a steel frame. A doorway. And it’s wet for some reason. If he ducks through then he’ll be out of sight of the hole above and he can use his phone’s light.
The door is smaller than he estimated and his pack gets caught on a ragged piece of steel. It tears the ripstop nylon a bit before the old rusted flake falls off with a clatter.
Cursing under his breath, Jay kicks the bit of metal through the door and carefully feels his way along the frame where his pack caught. He doesn’t want to leave any fibers in the frame for trackers to find. That’s what he’d be doing, if he was hunting himself. He’d be looking at all these choke points for any bits and bobs of hair or cloth.
Now he’s through and his hands are shaking. His breath’s a bit ragged too. “Turns out,” Jay whispers to himself, “it’s hella stressful to get hunted in the dark. Who knew?”
He lifts his phone and turns on his light. “Holy smokes.”
Jay stands in a grand curving tunnel. The tunnel has rails and a couple small derelict carts pushed up against the end of the line to his right. Like mine carts but with specific fasteners and brackets atop. Long unused. Like decades. “Are they even American…?” Jay wipes the grime from one cart, looking for serial numbers or anything. He can only find a few raised symbols at the base of the steel brackets, but those could belong to anyone.
“Damn, I don’t want to be down here with all this industrial crap. I want to be outside.” He stands unhappily in the middle of the tunnel, looking back and forth over and over. “You know, where I can be spitted like a pig and they can nail my hide to the front gate as a warning to all others.”
Jay sighs unhappily, cinches his waistbelt tight, and marches resolutely down the curving tunnel to his left.
Ξ
“Gah, I need a better shaker table for the amount of material we’re talking about here. Something bigger and automated. This little tray is taking forever!” Miriam stands back from her worksite at the far edge of the camp, and tilts the corner of the multi-layered tray into a plastic cup, where a fine sand has been separated from the dross. “I got one reading from the Dyson reader with a dry sample but I should see what a wet one does.”
Triquet stands to the side, leaning on a shovel, trying to recall what motors they might have on hand that could be repurposed into an automatic shaker. “We just need one really good vibrator strapped to one of the legs. We should ask everyone.”
Miriam wasn’t listening closely. She makes a shocked face. “Uh, what? A vibrator? Whose legs?”
“No. To the table leg. Get your mind out of the gutter, you catty old thing. I’m just trying to figure out your problem.”
“Ohh. Not a terrible idea. Who do you think might have one?”
“Well. If I was a betting person, First I’d bet on myself. But…” Triquet flutters a modest hand over their chest, “it is one of my regrets that I did not bring with me the toy I affectionately refer to as my bone flute. There wasn’t any room in my bag and I thought we’d be in more dorm-like sleeping arrangements so…”
Miriam is unable to stop laughing. She needs to sit, holding a hand in front of her mouth. “Oh my god, Triq. You just rocked my world. If I ever hear the phrase ‘bone flute’ again I’ll probably wet my pants.”
“Well, what do you call yours in Ireland? Your… your tea and crumpets? Your bangers and mash?”
Now Miriam is laughing so hard she can hardly breathe. “Stop! Stop! I’m already dead!”
“So, then, definitely not me. I’d say you and Amy are up there in terms of vibrator candidates. Everyone knows how you old ladies love playing with your cootchies.”
Miriam’s laugh turns rueful. “Well, I can’t answer for Ames, but I haven’t… I mean, I kind of went cold for a few years. It was all too emotional and intimate so I just threw myself into my work…”
“Wait. Girl. Are you telling me you’re not taking care of yourself? Tell me. When was the last time you had an orgasm?”
Miriam blushes. “Uh, two nights ago? No, don’t worry about me. Alonso is a very considerate lover. Very. But it’s true, there was a long dry spell, there. And I do mean dry.”
“Oh, you poor thing. So no for Miriam. Yeah, and I don’t think I know Amy well enough to ask her. Despite all that bubbly cheer she’s actually quite private, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, that’s her mask. The bubblier she gets the more upset she is. She can never figure out how I know, but when she’s gotten me a third cup of tea in five minutes I can tell she’s upset.”
“The tea! Seriously. What is up with that? Okay. Well. We’ll skip her. My next guess would be Jay. He probably puts all kinds of things up his butt. What? Don’t you think?”
But Miriam is laughing too hard again. “Or, god, Pradeep. If he has one it’s probably made of ice or something.”
“Ice pick as vibrator. Dangerous but exciting. Yeah, he’s a weird one. Not sure he’s ever touched himself, or had anyone touch him. I wonder if he’s still a virgin.”
“Him and Flavia and—”
“No, there’s no way, sister. I don’t think Italian women are even virgins when they’re born. Ew. Wait. Sorry. That came out wrong. They’re just so… worldly. I just think that Flavia has such a math brain that she can’t be bothered to have sex with a human being. Maybe her vibrator is like an entire robot that she’s constantly re-programming to get her off better.”
“Who’s left? I can’t imagine Katrina even needs one.”
Triquet makes a judicious face. “No, that chick is like a walking vibrator. Just being near her gets everyone hot and bothered. Imagine what living a day in her shoes would be like.”
Miriam sighs. “Exhausting! No, I doubt there are any vibrators here. If Mandy and Esquibel are using any then I can’t in good conscience take their toys away.”
“Not without washing them at least.”
They laugh again, until Miriam is wiping the tears away. She hugs Triquet. “Oh, thank you so much, dear Doctor. I haven’t had such a good laugh in ages. God… Now that I’m climbing out of my hole I’m seeing how deep and dark it was. But no more holes!”
“Well, especially if there aren’t any vibrators around…”
They laugh even more. Miriam pushes herself away from the worksite, exhausted by the problem-solving and the labor. “And just like that, it’s dinner time. Come wash up with me, Triq-star.”
“Ooo, I like that.” Triquet strikes a pose. “I am the Triq Star. Falling down from above. Like some David Bowie character.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Bowie live?”
“Oh my GOD I’m just going to cut open your skull and take like a bath in all your memories.” Triquet grabs Miriam’s head and playfully squeezes it. “Was it Ziggy Stardust? Please tell me it was Ziggy. Although if it was, oh my god, I’d have to kill you.”
“No. It was in the 80s. The Let’s Dance tour. So much fun. I dressed as his Little China Girl for Halloween one year. Christ. Can’t believe how racist that is now…”
“Uh, where is everyone?” They’ve made their way to the wash basin at the kitchen tables in camp. But the platforms and tents are all empty. “We weren’t that far away, were we? Are they in the…? Hello?” Triquet opens the door to the bunker.
Everyone is in there. Alonso and Amy, Katrina and Flavia and Maahjabeen, who looks like she’s been crying. They all stare at the clean room, where Esquibel and Mandy’s blurry figures bend over Pradeep’s prone form.
Miriam’s carefree smile fades as she enters. Alonso reaches out to her. His face is a storm. “Ah, Mirrie. Please.”
“What? What is it, Zo?”
He kisses her hands over and over, tears in his eyes. “Pradeep. He-he just suffered a cardiac arrest.”
“He WHAT?” Miriam cries out in grief, her knees buckling.
Triquet is struck dumb. Their face closes and their spine folds, as if they’ve been punched in the gut.
“Is he…? I mean…?” Miriam can’t say the words.
“Esquibel has stabilized him.” Amy’s voice is entirely without inflection. Miriam has never heard it sound like this before. “He’s out of danger now. She says.”
Miriam throws her arms around Amy, who can’t seem to find it in herself to respond. “But what happened? A heart attack? Really? But… how? He’s like twenty-four. Perfect health.”
“It was our nap on the beach.” Maahjabeen’s face is fearsome to behold. Her eyes are so sharp with pain Miriam can’t hold her gaze. “My fault. All my fault. I should have woken him sooner.”
“What, just some cold water…?” Miriam shakes her head. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, I think he was maybe stung by something in the tides.” Amy says this quietly. Alonso and Katrina nod in support. “Urchin or sea snail or… But so far we can’t find any site on his skin where he might have…” She shrugs as Maahjabeen wails aloud in guilt.
“But… will he be okay?” Miriam’s voice is tiny, hopeful.
“We don’t know yet.” Alonso’s mood is as dark as it’s ever been. “We don’t know how long his brain had to go without oxygen. Hopefully no time at all but… We just don’t know.”
“No imaging equipment here,” Katrina murmurs. “Doc said she’s just got to go off visible symptoms and old-fashioned manual diagnoses. But right now she’s having him rest.”
A glottal sound is expelled from Pradeep’s throat and his body convulses. Esquibel raps out an order and Mandy holds him down. Maahjabeen wails again and Amy drops her head in anguish.
“I can’t get him to stop shaking.” Esquibel’s voice is a bit strident, out of patience. “If that happens again it’s recommended to put him in a medical coma, but I don’t have nearly the monitoring—”
Pradeep convulses again.
“No, Pradeep! Please! La tamutu, ‘ana ‘uhibuk jdaan!”
Katrina glances at Maahjabeen. She’s learned enough Arabic to know Maahjabeen has just professed aloud her love for Pradeep. But she doesn’t know if anyone else could translate her cry of grief. She doesn’t think so. Oh, what a tragedy.
Pradeep’s face twitches and he settles again. “Perhaps I will just try sedation. We can take turns watching his vitals. I will just try diphenhydramine first. Intra-muscular.” Esquibel opens a series of small plastic boxes, preparing the injection.
“Is that safe?” Alonso has always held the medical superstition that the longer a thing’s name is, the more dangerous it must be.
“Yes. It’s just Benadryl. They use it for outpatient procedures all the time. Like a colonoscopy. Very safe…” Esquibel bends over the form of Pradeep. He grunts, then his breath rattles in his throat. “Turn his head. Clear his… Here.” Esquibel puts down her implements and with a hooked finger pulls Pradeep’s tongue clear of his airway. “Such barbaric conditions. But there. He’s already doing better now.” She checks his wrist pulse with her fingertips while consulting her watch. “I think your guess about a neurotoxin from a marine creature is a good one, Amy. Even if we can’t find a site where it bit or stung him. Who knows? Maybe he ingested it. Either way, I just want to calm his nervous system down.”
“He didn’t eat anything.” Maahjabeen stands, unable to sit out here any longer without him. She approaches the clean room and parts the slit with her hand.
“Please don’t,” Esquibel tells her, holding up a hand. “It might be infectious. You might make him worse. Or he might infect you. I’m sorry, but we will let you know when you can…”
But Maahjabeen doesn’t wait to hear the rest of Esquibel’s official visitation policy. With a ragged sob, she turns and flees from the bunker.
“Gor blimey, we’ve been here, what? Four weeks?” Miriam shakes her head in wonder. “Who knew this place would be so dangerous?”
Ξ
“They say you don’t know what you don’t know…” Katrina and Mandy sit beside the creek, tossing pebbles in, “…but sometimes I think I don’t even know what I do know. You know?”
Mandy sighs. “No, I don’t know. I didn’t know very much before I came here. Just enough atmospheric science to make a career of it, maybe get a state or federal job in the next couple years. But now… I mean… I guess I know how to start a fire. Screw up a science mission. Turns out those are the only things I’m good at.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, babe.” Katrina playfully kicks Mandy’s foot. “You’re a world-class arsonist. Biggest fire this island’s ever seen. They could see that shit from space.”
“Ugggh. I can’t believe you’re teasing me about it. I thought you liked me. But you’re so mean.” Mandy kicks her back.
“I do like you, Mandy Dandy. You should hear what I say about people I hate.”
“Everyone thinks you’re just this sweet little Australian blonde girl, don’t they? But you’re a raging bitch under there, aren’t you?” Mandy holds up a hand to forestall any protest. “I mean, as a closet raging bitch myself…”
“Closet? You sure about that?” Katrina cocks her head to one side, closing one eye in a grimace of disbelief.
Mandy squeals in outrage and swats Katrina, who giggles, then sighs and checks the time on her phone. “Looks like I’m stood up.”
“What? Damn it, is the dude just like hiding from me at this point? What did I say to him?”
“Well, a closet bitch wouldn’t ever say anything bad, would they?”
Mandy swats Katrina again. “I wish I was like you. Get to work on anything you want, just following your brilliant little ideas. But I. Can’t. Do. Any. Work. Here and it’s driving me insane. I have like six thousand dollars worth of software on two pretty new laptops and I can’t use any of it. And everyone else is like earning Nobel prizes every day while I sit here picking my nose.”
“Maybe he meant 6pm California time. Which is probably more like 7pm. But where is he? He asked me to do him the favor. It wasn’t like I was pining for his attention.”
“No. God. How could you? Jay is so goofy. Even if I was into guys, I wouldn’t be able to even like finish a first date with him.”
“Aw, I think he’s cute. But he’s got the self-awareness of like a yellow lab. Definitely not husband material. But I bet you could have a killer spring break with him. I love surfer bodies. To me, that’s the ideal human shape. Male or female or whatever. Yum. I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”
“Oh my god,” Mandy curls a lip in distaste. “Are you crushing on Jay? I thought I respected you and your taste.”
“No! Not crushing at all, Mandy. I think maybe I just have a… less discriminating palate than you. Like you’re a super taster and I’m one of those chicks that just eats everything. If it looks good and it’s in front of me, then it’s all mine.”
Mandy giggles, tossing another rock in the stream. But her ego takes a hit. She thought Katrina felt the same way about Mandy as Mandy did about her. Now Mandy realizes that even though she just got past the first audition, everyone else did too. She ain’t as special as she thought she was…
Amy appears, ducking her head around the broad green leaves of the creekside vegetation. “Oh! Hello hello. Anyone seen Jay?”
They laugh at her.
“What? You’re waiting for him too? This is like some Agatha Christie scene. Where is the murderer?”
“I think Mandy sees it more like Waiting for Godot.”
Mandy lifts helpless hands. “I’ve been looking for him all day!”
“And he told me on the dance floor last night to meet him out here tonight at sunset,” Katrina adds, “cause he wanted to show me something totally boss.”
“Hm. Yeah. We’ve been doing creek samples for the last couple days at different hours and under different weather conditions. Tonight is supposed to be eighteen hundred hours. I thought I was going to be apologizing to him for being late.”
“So where could he be?” Katrina asks. “Last time I saw him he was on the dance floor trying to teach his new mates to twerk.”
“Did anyone see if he slept in his hammock?” Mandy wrinkles her nose, a growing unease trickling into her.
“Oh, god.” Amy realizes the implications and hisses with worry. She turns back to camp and hastens to it. As they cross the sand she sees that Mandy and Katrina have caught up to her. “I was in Jay’s things earlier, looking for one of the Dysons. And at one point I was like, ‘huh, this pile seems light,’ but I didn’t think any more about it.” The day’s light fades as Amy leads them to his hammock and its small platform where he keeps his gear. She rifles through it. “No pack. No water bottle. Yeah, that’s fine if he’s just out collecting all day. But there’s a bivy I gave him for his birthday that is missing here. You only take that out for overnights. Ugh. No no no. What are you doing, Jay?”
“Wait. You think he went back to sleep with the Lisicans last night? He wasn’t that drunk.”
“I think we can all agree,” Amy says tightly, walking slowly back toward camp, “that Jay doesn’t make the best decisions all the time. Come on. Somebody hold my hand when I tell Alonso. This isn’t going to be very much fun.”
Ξ
Pradeep regains consciousness in darkness. It’s as if he is dragging himself with all his strength from a deep airless pit of sucking mud. He is first aware of his breath, catching it with his diaphragm and bearing down with all his might so he can build the resolve to drag himself another millimeter clear of the mud. But he knows it is just a metaphor. He is trapped somewhere deep within his body. And he is so weak and cold…
He bears down again, pulling himself clear of whatever is dragging him down. He realizes it’s dark because his eyes aren’t open. Lifting his lids will take another herculean effort and he doesn’t know if he’s up for the task. His inexhaustible curiosity scratches at some outside door of his mind like a cat wanting to be let back in. But he can do no more than listen to it scratch.
These metaphors are quite useful. Let’s see. What happens if he lets that cat in? Then his curiosity can re-engage. But does he have the energy for it? Somewhere, floating in this febrile trembling sea of ink, a measure of vitality must still survive somewhere…
Pradeep braces himself and pushes his eyelids flutteringly up, the muscles of his brow and nosebridge spasming from the effort. He is surprised to find himself in the clean room. It is well-lit. Esquibel dozes in a camp chair at his side.
Pradeep is blank. His head totters on his neck and his fingers tremble. What is wrong with him? His eyes focus on the gleaming outline of Esquibel’s sculpted cheek. Her skin somehow reflects the harsh LED light of the lantern, lending her a halo. His holy protector. What do they call those…? He gropes for the word. “You’re… my… angel.” It comes out as a slurring mess. Pradeep stops, appalled at how he sounds.
But the noise wakens Esquibel. Her eyes clear and she looks intently at Pradeep, surprised to find him looking back at her. “Eh. Pradeep. Nice to see you here with us.”
He only stares at her. Her words fall down into that mud pit in his center, pulling away any meaning or impetus to act.
“How are you. Thirsty, I imagine?” She holds a water bottle with a straw up to his face. He blinks slowly as she tries to push his lips apart to insert the straw. “Drink. Come on, now.”
Pradeep can only watch her. But she is right. His mouth is so dry it is sealed shut. Maybe he should obey her.
Sucking is hard, but probably easier than any other activity. It is perhaps the first instinct a baby has. His esophagus and cheeks contract and a drop of water reaches his mouth.
It clears the dryness from the tissues but when it trickles down his throat it seems to feed the mud pit deep within him. A bloated pressure of nausea builds in his guts. He stops and closes his eyes.
Pradeep feels Esquibel’s hand on his forehead checking for fever. Her fingertips press against his pulse on his right wrist. But he can’t seem to get his eyes back open. “What is wrong with me?” Well, the intention of his statement at least is recognizable in the moan and grunt that come out.
“Something stung you, we think, when you were out at the beach with Maahjabeen. Were you stung? Do you remember?”
But Pradeep hears no word after Maahjabeen. It is like a spell that unlocks something deep and preserved within him. There he is, way far away, hidden in a tiny little cavern deep inside himself. Why is he down there, when he can be out in the world again with the most beautiful woman alive? “Mach.” It is very important for him to say her name and have it come out right. “Mach. Jah. Bean.” Like a prayer against vampires, compelling them to withdraw from his holy words, her name finally forces the pit of cold mud to recede and lessen its grip on him.
Now he takes a deeper breath, opening his eyes again. “She… is… here…? She’s… okay?”
Esquibel marvels at his resolve. “Uh, yes. Everyone else is fine. Maahjabeen is fine. Except we appear to have lost Jay and now everyone is out in the middle of the night looking for him. Some of them have even gone through the tunnels to talk to the Lisicans. Madness. So, just you and me left here. We obviously couldn’t leave you alone.”
“Why…? am I sick?”
Esquibel hides her worry behind the professional mask she long ago adopted. Pradeep looks like a stage four cancer patient. His cheeks and eye sockets are bruised hollows. His skin is ashen. “Well. Not as sick as we feared. Looks like you’re getting better as we speak. But you don’t remember anything biting you? Stinging you? Did you step on anything? Eat anything? No?”
Pradeep shakes his tottering head. He thinks back to what he recalls last. Nothing about getting here. Only being at that lovely little pocket beach, Maahjabeen’s hip in the palm of his hand, her dimpled smile for him, a tenderness building… Ah! That’s right! He was having a panic attack. He was worried that the Lisicans would… would… He feels a trickle of that old familiar anxiety. But it seems to call the mud. Oh, no. His energy is fading again. It bubbles up once more from within him, this disgusting enervating affliction that someone has laid upon him. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt. Not the pneumonia or dysentery or malaria he struggled through as a child, none of them felt this way. They burned and sizzled in him, dragged on his guts in different ways. But there is something calculated and malevolent about this… this thing he feels inside him. He knows deep in his bones that it was laid upon him intentionally, and that if he cannot find a cure, it will kill him.
DW Draffin -- Lisica 