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 46 – Pork On The Barbie
November 11, 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:
Book IV – Hypotenuse Of Hope
46 – Pork On The Barbie
In the Dzaadzitch village the next morning, Mandy and Miriam try to share gifts and make plans. With Morska Vidra beside her, Miriam watches a trio of younger villagers emerge from the cave mouth, bearing fish from the beach. “Oh, that’s a lovely catch. Now that you’ve got the lagoon to yourselves it’s fish every day, eh? You were just waiting for us to leave before you went back down there, weren’t you?”
But the villagers don’t engage with her. They are intent on their feast, exclaiming over the shining fish.
“What I was saying,” Mandy repeats loudly and slowly, trying to regain Morska Vidra’s attention, “is that if it’s okay with you guys we want to get out to the cliff tops daily. Day-lee. Understand?”
The silver fox appears, scrambling up the leg of one of the youths to sniff at his catch. They all speak to the fox with deference, waiting for its blessing. With a sneeze the fox gives it, darting away, and the villagers call out, pleased. They disperse to gather their fixings. The Mayor starts building a fire while others bring baskets filled with mash wrapped in green leaves.
“And do you have any rope?” Miriam extends an invisible line through her hands, trying to communicate the concept to him. But he hardly takes his eyes from the fish. “I want to drop down that shaft up there. Study the rocks. The layers and the history of the island? The rocks?” She points at the cliffs visible through the trees. “Hanging from a long rope, tied to something solid at the top?”
But before they can gain his approval, a young girl appears from the far side of the village. She passes between the huts and enters the village square, chanting to them all about something she just saw. The village falls silent. The Mayor stops building her fire and listens. The girl stops, turning back again and again, to poke at the air behind her with the tip of her thumb or her little pointed chin. The Mayor finally stands and says something. Then she points with her own thumb at Miriam and Mandy, directing the girl to them.
The girl skips forward, as light as a fawn on her feet. Her small dark eyes are alive with excitement and her black and gold curls bounce like springs. She chatters at Miriam and Mandy, fearless, then waits for their answer.
Morska Vidra turns to Miriam. She shrugs at him, confused. He pushes her gently toward the young girl.
“Aye. You want me to…? right.” Miriam bends over, the girl is quite small up close. “Hello, love. How can we help you?”
The girl slips her narrow hand into Miriam’s and pulls her forward. “Oh. Come with you?”
“Not alone.” Mandy starts, nervous as a rabbit, delaying Miriam with a hand on her elbow. “Never alone. Not after Amy.”
“And all the other disappearances. So come with me, please.”
“Uh, where?” Mandy peers doubtfully into the woods from which the girl emerged. “This is how we get in trouble, isn’t it?”
The girl pulls more firmly on Miriam, ignoring her resistance. But then she stops, trying a new tack. She places her other thumb against her chin. “Xaanach.”
“Shah-nock. Xaanach. Oh my god, I remember Flavia talking about you.” Miriam stops struggling and falls in step with the girl. “You’re the one who saved her from Wetchie ghuy, aren’t you?”
“Wetchie-ghuy…” Xaanach makes a horrid face. She tears at her own windpipe, then crosses her eyes and lolls her tongue out the side of her mouth. Then she laughs and pulls on Miriam again. “Pođi sa. Hwai.”
“Come on, Mandy. She hates him as much as we do. And she wants to show us something. We’ll be fine. At least we know she isn’t leading us to that sour old bastard.”
But Mandy really doesn’t have it in her. She’s here to climb the cliff behind her facing the sea, to reset her weather station, and that will take all her energy. She’s sure of it. With a groan she collapses against her companion instead. “I just don’t think I can do this any more, Miriam. I mean, honestly. I didn’t sign up to be, like, hunted. Russians on the beach, shamans in the trees. Come on.”
“Don’t fret, darling. We always have our golden childs with us.” Miriam indicates the patient figure standing outside the village, waiting for his two charges to return.
Giving in with a growl of supreme irritation, Mandy clenches her fists and follows, knowing with every step she takes that she is heading further into danger. “Why do we keep doing this?” she wonders aloud. “We know this is just going to be trouble but here we go again anyway.”
“Not sure what our other options are.” Miriam is committed to this course now and her long strides keep up with Xaanach’s happy bounding. “Come on, Mandy.”
As they pass the last huts and climb the forested slope behind them, Miriam examines the girl pulling her. There is something different about Xaanach, the particular weeds woven into her hair, the rattiness of her shift, her ebullience. And the way the Mayor spoke with her… There was a formality to it. It wasn’t how she speaks to any of her own people. Xaanach isn’t of the village. “Well, that must be right,” Miriam says to her aloud. “You pulled Flavia out of Wetchie ghuy’s hut in the middle of the night and by all accounts that’s like an hour or two from here. They wouldn’t let a… what are you, eight? nine year old girl? out alone, would they? All night, messing with the medicine man. Where the devil are your parents anyway? Just who are you, Xaanach?”
The girl stops and touches her chin with the tip of her thumb. “Xaanach.”
“Yes. Miriam.” She repeats the gesture on her own chin.
“Mandy. Nice to meet you. Please don’t hurt us.”
“Mee-yum. Man-dee. Hwai.” Xaanach waves them forward.
Somewhat mollified by the charming little pixie, Mandy allows herself to be led upward to the edge of a thicket. Down they go, crawling beneath its sharp branches, and out the other side to a rocky cliff face. Xaanach has been chanting this whole time, telling them all kinds of fascinating details about the world around them. Now she points at the cliff and finally releases Miriam’s wrist so they can both climb.
Mandy falls back and groans again. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“It would be…” Miriam peers at the cliff, picking at it with a fingernail, “if Xaanach hadn’t just led us to a deposit of plagioclase feldspar. What is this doing at the surface? My my my.” She croons at the crystal admixture. “You’ll be changing my island models for sure. See, Mandy? This is already a beneficial side-journey.”
“Yeah… I’m not sure how much climbing I’m good for.”
“Look. Xaanach’s already vanished up there in that cleft. Seems like it’s just a few meters then pop.” Miriam hauls herself onto the stone wall, the fractured face offering plentiful hand and foot holds.
Xaanach’s little face re-appears above, calling out, “Mee-yum. Man-dee. Hwai.”
“Why are you so, like, brave about all this?” Mandy really wishes she could let go of all this irritation but her unresolved fight with Esquibel has made her crabby and defensive, dragging her mindset back to the first few weeks of this trip, when she couldn’t ever get anything done. “Aren’t you worried about where she’s taking us?”
“Aye, for certain I am. But listen to yourself. You seem to have this notion that there’s an option here that gives you everything you want, and that’s just not how things are out here, love. It’s not like we say no to Xaanach and then just get to choose how the day goes. This is a… I mean, like, if we dropped ourselves into Times Square and said we’re going to live here for eight weeks, we’d have to spend a fair bit of time negotiating with the locals and making sure everyone was fine with us being there, aye?”
“It’s just…” Mandy drops her hands, knowing she’s lost yet another fight. “This has nothing to do with atmospheric science, okay?” With a muttered curse she hauls herself up the cliff face.
At the top, they find themselves at the top of a slope that drops away into a nice wide valley interspersed with oak groves and green meadows. Far away, there is a lighter bit of emerald moving against the dark green carpet of bushes. It is Jay in his softshell jacket, picking his way through dense growth. His face is burned red by the sun and wind and he is limping, his hand at his side.
“Jay!” Mandy calls out.
He is quite far away, hundreds of meters. Jay stops, unable to locate the voice, or even tell if it was an auditory hallucination or not. He blinks at his surroundings. Where is he now? Traversing this wide bowl, coming down from a steep motherfucking gradient behind him where he nearly got wrecked in a minor landslide. Its aftermath prevented Pradeep from following at a healthy clip.
“Jay! Over here!” The voice is so thin. It’s got to be one of the crew, though. Up ahead? He shades his eyes, the overcast sky still bright enough to matter. Are those figures up there? He waves.
Within moments, Miriam and Mandy and a little Lisican girl are down in the meadow with him. They drape his arms over their shoulders, and even though it stretches his scar, he lets them support his weight. “I am so so so happy to see you. Swear I could like kiss you both.”
“Deal.” Miriam laughs and kisses his cheek. “Ah. Maybe a wash-up first then I’m all yours.”
Mandy frowns. “But where’s Pradeep?”
“Yeah, he needs more help than me. Back this way.” Jay tries to turn them all around. Reversing course is the one thing he really hates doing. But it doesn’t matter now. He found help at last.
They tell Jay about their days and nights of labor and the move to the pine camp inland. He exclaims, “No way!” a dozen times at the proper intervals, shocked that the Russians or someone like them really did land on their beach. “The lagoon’s out of bounds? Like for the whole rest of the trip? Just when we set up the gill net? Aw, man. That is a major major bummer.”
“Why did you leave Pradeep behind?” Mandy’s worry grows. “Don’t you know we can’t do that any more?”
“Yeah…” How to communicate what the last day has been like? How they’ve woven their own paths, despite all their best attempts to stay together, across the southwest of the island? “It’s just, like, really choked with vegetation in there. Like really choked. Like, we haven’t seen a real trail in days.”
Jay leads them to another slope, this one carpeted with soaring Douglas firs like a proper Oregon forest. He just spent all morning coming down that way on feet and knees screaming with agony. It wasn’t that he’d put a lot of steps in, really, it was more that he just hadn’t been able to ever stop and rest them.
“Is Pradeep injured?” Miriam is starting to feel Jay’s weight. Just how far back are they going to have to go?
“Nah. Just… I get into a zone and… I should have waited but…” He shakes his head. There was so much he was going to tell these people! But now that he sees them, all the words he’d prepared in his endless hours of walking lack any meaning or power.
They walk under the tall firs, their brown needles carpeting the ground. After a few minutes of steady climbing, Jay stops.
On the slope ahead, a tableau:
Pradeep’s long dark form is face down on the hillside, unmoving. A golden childs stands on the far side of him, his back to Pradeep, arms raised. Wetchie-ghuy is crouched on a stone above, clutching a forked stick. Jidadaa is at a right angle to their stand-off, holding Wetchie-ghuy’s fetish. They are all stone still, so the newcomers also fall silent. No one speaks, not even Xaanach.
“Prad!” It is Jay who finally breaks the spell and charges forward, lumbering uphill with a bad limp.
Twitch. Wetchie-ghuy vanishes from the boulder.
In three bounds, the golden childs stands where Wetchie-ghuy had just crouched but the shaman is nowhere to be seen. Twitch. The golden childs also vanishes from view.
With a smile, Jidadaa turns to Miriam and Mandy. “Ah, hello, friends. Wetchie-ghuy, he almost gets this one,” she points at Pradeep, who still doesn’t move, “but we say no no no.”
Ξ
The racks that hold the solar panels were damaged in the move, struts now bent and bolts missing. Flavia tries to fix them with sticks and twine, but it is slow-going. She has placed the array at the edge of the trees facing the sun to the southeast. Finally she is able to make it sturdy, although it no longer has the ability to be adjusted. This will impact their recharge rate. Yet another thing to slow their research down.
Regardless of this frustrating task, Flavia likes it here in pine camp. Or, more precisely, she prefers it. She doesn’t actually like anything having to do with Lisica. She hasn’t felt any actual pleasures of satisfaction or desire since she left home. But that is probably due to the fact that home is Italy. She has heard this from Italian migrants before. Nowhere in the whole world is quite so warm, so bright, so emotional as the Italian Peninsula. Outside the borders of Her sea and mountains, people grow cold, the food bland and ingredients cheap. Even politics are more interesting and fierce in Italy than other countries, although they drive her crazy. But that’s the thing, other places don’t drive Flavia crazy. They only inconvenience her, like with these branches and this twine on this godforsaken frozen island in the middle of nowhere.
And yet, it is far better at pine camp than at the beach. That ocean wind had been driving her mad, the relentless movement of air that robbed her of peace and steadiness and the basic ability to think. Now, here in this protected valley, she can hear the songbirds trill instead of the waves boom, and she is mollified.
Flavia returns to camp. She checks her laptop to find it is now charging, the skeletal power network she has built for the camp now alive with solar-derived electricity. She loves technology that is so clean, with no moving parts. Moving parts are so… industrial revolution. Flavia likes her tech more elegant than that.
Alonso is at work in his camp chair, hunched over the laptop balanced on his knees. Now that she has checked off her first task of the day, it is time to move on to the second one before she gets hungry for lunch. Flavia locates an empty bin and turns it upside-down for it to be used as a chair. Then she places it facing Alonso and joins him at his platform, their knees nearly touching.
He is deep in Plexity. He grunts at her but his fingers don’t stop typing. She knows better than to interrupt him.
By the time Flavia arranges her laptop’s windows into her standard workflow, Alonso is able to break away.
“Yes, Flavia?”
“Buongiorno, Dottore. How are you?”
“Eh.” He makes a face. “You really don’t want to know. Really. I mean, I feel like… I’m a chef who has to feed two hundred people tonight and only half my ingredients have been delivered. Not even half. Just a tenth. Just… the eggs. And some water. Feh. What am I supposed to make with that?” He shakes his head in despair. “No, I am not looking for your pity. I understand that it is my fault. What I asked of the team here is impossible. The sheer number of unique inputs required is staggering. But Plexity is… I mean, I have to keep working on it. Can’t you see? Nothing else matters. Not really. As soon as I had the epiphany about it in the gulag and I saw it in all its glory, what it could become and the answers it could provide, then there was no point in ever working on anything else. Because the fundamental answers to nearly every problem can be found in Plexity, in its connections, in the web of life. So. How am I? Not very well, thank you. I just keep banging my head against this very firmly shut door, trying to salvage something from our six weeks in that lagoon. But the gaps in the data are too large. I can’t establish any of the baselines necessary to derive meaningful measurements. You of all people must understand what I mean.”
Flavia only stares at Alonso, mute. If she was the one feeling such frustration, any possible response he made would only end with shouting. She would lash out with all that anger. And she doesn’t need to be Alonso’s target, so she keeps her mouth shut.
Alonso nods, bitter. “Of course you do. This is what you’ve been trying to tell me since we got here. And now,” he gestures at his screen, “it is all ashes. Worse than ashes. At least ashes used to be wood, and when you burned them, the fires warmed you. This… this was all just a fool’s errand, with no benefit in the least. Just chasing our tails for six weeks.”
Flavia shrugs. “The American generals will not think so.”
“You don’t know. I got us here with some very big promises. Bold promises of what Plexity will be able to do.”
“Oh, yes? Like what? How would the military even use it?”
“Well, they had those two biologist contractors who were very impressed with the scalable resolution we should be able to offer. They could see its promise, especially at macro levels. With enough collectors and boots on the ground, they are certainly right. In the end Plexity will still probably be what I was able to promise. I will just never be the person who is seeing it. They will cast me aside and it will be someone else who—”
“Wait, wait.” Flavia holds up an urgent hand. “Cast aside? Are you telling me you don’t own the rights to Plexity any more?”
Alonso does not look up from his screen.
Her head rocks back, the implications hitting her like a truck. “Are you telling me all this work we are doing is for the American military, for a new technological platform that the American military will control? Ai, Alonso…”
“It is a very generous license they have given us for academic use and publishing.” His voice is quiet. “It is not something I wanted, for sure. And… they said it was a change in the contract that came down from the top at the last second, but no, I didn’t believe them. They probably knew how they were going to play me all along. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in a bargaining situation where the terms were changed just as I was about to sign. But what could I do? I had to sign the rights away. I had no leverage.”
Flavia slams her open hand down onto her knee. “You say no. You walk away when that happens.”
Tears spring into his eyes and Alonso holds his shaking hands out, pleading. “But I couldn’t walk. Flavia, I was in their hospital, after they had rescued me. And healed me. And their scientists said I could be of use. You don’t know. After five years, hearing those words… Being of use. Nothing sounded better.”
Flavia shakes her head, disgusted by the machinations of large bureaucracies. Che pazzo. She had been about to make his day brighter by proposing a new approach to Plexity, a modest way to salvage what they could of their enormous project. Flavia thought they might use the data they’d already collected as a massive filter for what they found next, screening every life form and compound from pine camp against what they’d found before in the lagoon, focusing on the scientifically-significant differences between biomes instead of the connections, per se. Then they might at least return with a handful of deep insights for their masters. But now she knows how much her masters the military men are. No. She will not work for them, not when they will enjoy all the data and share nothing with the wider academic world. Flavia has refused all military industrial complex work during her career and she has no intention of starting now. “But Alonso… The problem, as I’m sure you know, is that this… ehh, we should have known that… Well. I guess this just forces us to realize what the end-result of all this data collection will be. You must realize if we find anything too valuable with Plexity it will never be published, yes? It will disappear into their black budgets. Let us show them a failure instead. Or at most just the smallest amount of progress. We need to be thinking much much more strategically about what we are doing on this project. And you need to share with us the terms of your ‘generous academic license’ so we can figure out what we can tell them and what we cannot. Oh, Alonso. Were you really going to give them a fully-operational Plexity? And expect them to keep their promises about what you would be able to share?”
Alonso shrugs. “Look, those biologists were the only ones in the room who understood anything of what I was saying. The others didn’t have a clue. They could just tell the eggheads were very impressed and the general in charge really trusted both them and Colonel Baitgie. So I thought maybe I’d go back and if I’m lucky the contractors wouldn’t be there and I’m presenting to a room full of nothing but morons in uniform. Even Baitgie wouldn’t really understand Plexity’s implications if I kept it technical enough. They would just say, ‘Yes, great job. Mission accomplished,’ and I would leave with all my licenses and prototypes intact. And sure, maybe that is a little naive, but it is the best I was able to do.”
They stare at each other, two individuals trapped in the decisions they’d made with their lives. Neither feel there are any options for them to change their circumstances. Neither see any way forward.
The corner of Alonso’s mouth twitches. “This is when Amy is supposed to swing between us with an offer of tea. I miss her very much. Do you think she is okay?”
Flavia knows Alonso means that he wants her insight into what Wetchie-ghuy must be doing to Amy. It must be Wetchie-ghuy who took her, despite the efforts of the golden childs and their retreat to the pine camp. And nobody knows more about Wetchie-ghuy’s enslavement than Flavia. So Alonso wants her to relive that madness. She shivers and shakes it off. No. She won’t. “I have no idea, Alonso. I just hope they are a very happy couple.”
“Esquibel…!” A distant voice comes from the meadow near the creek. “Maahjabeen…! Esquibel…!”
“Is that Miriam?” Alonso tries to twist in his chair but his legs have fallen asleep. With a grimace he gets them working again and he stands. Flavia rises beside him.
“Who is calling my name?” Esquibel pokes her head out of the plastic slit door of the clean room. “Who is that?”
Maahjabeen emerges from her tent and stands atop her platform, shading her eyes. She squawks. “That is Pradeep! Alhamdulillah! They have Pradeep! Come!”
She rushes through the trees to him, Esquibel on her heels.
Miriam and Mandy drag Pradeep’s black-clad body through the grasses toward the camp on a crude travois, Jay limping beside them. There is no sign of Xaanach nor the golden childs who left with them.
Maahjabeen throws herself down beside them when they are still fifty paces from camp. Pradeep is unconscious, his head lolled to one side. She gathers him with a sob in her arms and holds him. “What is it? What happened to him?”
“Wetchie-ghuy…” Miriam is gasping. It has been a long journey. “He did something horrid to him, some voodoo bullshit…”
Maahjabeen wails and hauls on Pradeep, pulling his slack torso forward and tugging at his clothes. Alonso arrives, hurried across the meadow by Triquet and Flavia’s strong arms.
“No, there’s no fox or whatever on his tailbone.” Mandy reels away from her handle of the travois, her palms burning, her arms exhausted. She shakes her arms and groans. “We checked.”
“And Jidadaa told us,” Miriam adds, “that the fox was a symbol of the other one anyway, not Wetchie-ghuy. That Sherman the shaman. They’re the one who poisons people and puts the stamp on our spines, not Wetchie-ghuy. She told us a lot.”
“Then what is it?” Maahjabeen kisses Pradeep’s slack face, trying to transfer her love into him like she did before, when he was dying of that cold mud. She chafes his frozen hands.
“Uh…” Miriam shares a furtive look with Jay. “Well, according to Jidadaa, she said Wetchie-ghuy took Pradeep’s soul.”
“Not true.” Jay’s first words are a rasp. “I bought it back from him with a joint. Fair deal. Pradeep doesn’t belong to Wetchie-ghuy any more. He smoked that whole reefer to his head.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Triquet can’t make sense of any part of Jay’s statement.
Jay tries to recap but his head is buzzing with fatigue. His own words echo in his skull. “Pradeep knew that Wetchie-ghuy had claimed him and the first time that old asshole showed up he was just going to like go with him. But I made a deal to give him my weed instead and that’s when Wetchie-ghuy started smoking like a chimney and he just went apeshit and attacked me. Then…”
Jay falls silent, remembering what the golden man had begged of him all those nights before in the tunnels: Kill Wetchie-ghuy. Jay is lidass. It is his destiny. But he turned his back on that, didn’t he? And now his buddy got taken instead, despite all Jay’s best efforts. He failed Pradeep. He was supposed to take care of him, defend him from Wetchie-ghuy even if it meant killing the old man. As if Jay’s actually capable of taking a life. As if he could actually get his hands on the old man. And what that would have done to Jay, all that blood on his hands… Well. Looks like it’s one soul or another, Jay’s or Pradeep’s. That’s the price Lisica is demanding.
But the others aren’t listening to him any more. They’ve moved on without him, hurrying back to camp, Esquibel racing ahead. Jay stops and looks around, his face bitter. Well here it is. This is the meadow he’s been seeking for days, this broad expanse from weeks before where he first saw the golden childs and the Katóok tribe and all the rest. And now the crew lives here, up in the trees a good hundred paces from the creek. Well well well. Plenty of places to hang a hammock, for sure. Almost back to normal.
But now they said Amy’s gone. The one person he’s closest to in like his whole life right now. Man, she’s not just a boss. She’s his mentor and friend and guide. Without her, Jay wouldn’t even be in grad school, and he knows it.
“If I’d killed Wetchie-ghuy when I saw him… Pradeep and Amy would both be here.” He shakes his head in wonder at the surreal nature of the universe. Him. A killer. And not of just anyone, a shaman of an endangered Pacific Island tribe. At the request of another shaman from another endangered tribe… I mean, that’s who that golden man was, yeah? A third shaman? But so far him and his kids have been good to the team, watching over them and protecting them, for whatever reason. He was the one to beg Jay to kill Wetchie-ghuy. He must have known what was coming.
“I got to talk to that dude again. Maybe with Katrina in tow. Get some answers.” Jay shakes his head at how much they are up against. He takes one last look at the cold gray sky before stepping under the trees. “That’s what we need now. Answers. Information war, my peeps. It’s where we at.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen hurries from her tent back to the clean room, her head empty. She realizes distantly that for the first time in memory she has no thought of the sea. Or of God. Only Pradeep fills her heart and soul. She knows it is blasphemy but she is quite close to not caring. Maahjabeen has never known love before. She thought she had, but those were the first tottering steps of a child compared to the—the splendid dances they share. And love is all.
These disquieting revelations about her true nature almost make her stumble. She isn’t pious after all, but an imperfect creature of passions both romantic and sexual. Yet she hurries on regardless, back to the clean room with a clutch of socks, to give Pradeep a bit of a sponge bath and make him more comfortable, even in a coma.
She slips through the plastic slit, relieved to find the clean room empty of others. Only Pradeep is here, covered in blankets, an IV drip feeding him, and his eyes are open!
Maahjabeen rushes to him and covers his face with kisses. He only stares at the ceiling, hardly responsive. “Pradeep! Pradeep…!”
“Yes.” The word is like a pebble dropped into a pond, cold and inert. His eyes remain distant.
Maahjabeen pulls back. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“No.” He says it in the same empty way. His eyes do not move from their point on the ceiling.
“What is it? What is it, Mahbub?” She encircles him in her arms, pressing his slack face against her. But when he doesn’t respond she holds him at arm’s length again. “Tell me. Is it the cold mud?”
“No.”
She frowns. He doesn’t struggle. He is awake, just merely not present. And he apparently only answers yes and no questions. “Is it something else?”
“No.” Wherever she moves his head it stays, same with his arms and body. They are all heavy and inanimate.
“It’s… nothing else?” Unlike all the atheists here, Maahjabeen knows it is the soul that animates the body. So when she heard that Wetchie-ghuy had claimed Pradeep’s, she’d taken it quite seriously. And now, this dispassion is what one would expect of a man whose soul has been taken. He is nothing now but a golem. “Nothing at all in there…?”
Maahjabeen grabs his hand and spreads both hers and his against his chest over his heart. He blinks. “Yes.”
“Oh, where is it, Lord? Where has he taken it?” Maahjabeen laces her fingers with Pradeep’s and kneels by his side, in prayer.
This is how Esquibel finds them a timeless interlude later. She puts the packages she carries down and crosses to the cot. “Eh, he is awake. I knew he just needed some rest and fluids. How are you, Pradeep? Eh?” Esquibel is surprised by the storm in Maahjabeen’s eyes. She had expected to find relief there. “What is wrong?”
“He can only answer yes and no questions!” After this inexplicable statement, Maahjabeen dissolves into tears.
Puzzled, Esquibel turns to Pradeep. “Nonsense. He is just tired. How are you feeling? Can you tell me your name?”
Pradeep looks dully ahead, into the middle distance.
Esquibel takes out her phone and shines its light into Pradeep’s eyes. He has no pupil reflex, none at all. No reaction to the light response test, the swinging flashlight test, nor the near response test. Both pupils remain unchanged, with a median pupillary aperture, despite any stimulus. She leans into his field of view, frowning. “Can you… can you see me?”
“Yes.”
Oh, she doesn’t like the sound of Pradeep’s voice at all. Cold as a corpse. Frowning, Esquibel finds his pulse. It is like… footsteps in sand. Not weak, just… contained, with no real resonance to it, like a machine is pumping his heart instead of contractile muscle. She passes a hand over his brow. “Can you tell me what the day of the week is?” Silence. Esquibel tells Maahjabeen lightly, “I’d have been surprised if he knew it. I’d have to check to know, myself.” Then back to Pradeep, “So can you tell me your name?”
He only stares ahead. She snaps his fingers beneath his nose. No reaction. She taps the sharp edge of her phone against the patellar tendon of his knee. No reflex response. “What in the world?”
“Pradeep,” Maahjabeen forces out his name from between sobs. “Tell us, Mahbub. Do you have a soul?”
He turns his hollow eyes to them. “No.”
An icy chill runs down Esquibel’s spine. Forcefully, she shakes her head in cynical rejection of it. “These god damn medicine men and their hallucinogens, I swear. But this one seems to be more of a dissociative, I would guess. Shutting down the perfectly good brains of my colleagues. Why don’t any of these dangerous substances come with antidotes?”
“Oh… They do.” Maahjabeen remembers Pradeep telling her of how she had been brought back by a foul-smelling concoction of rotten black leaves when she was suffering. “That girl. Jidadaa. She brought me those herbs. We need her to…”
But Esquibel is shaking her head. “No. No more drugs on top of drugs. And Jidadaa was already with Pradeep, anyway. She saw what had happened to him and she was the one who said he had a, what? A soul-ectomy? Some kind of metaphysical amputation? So she obviously can’t be of any more use.”
“Then this is a matter of faith.” Maahjabeen resumes her prayer.
But Esquibel interrupts it with a firm hand. “No, this is the time for modern medical interventions. I was too worried about contra-indications and unknown side-effects when you were both poisoned but with hindsight I don’t think being so tentative did anyone any favors. So this time I will respond more strongly. First, deactivated charcoal, and then perhaps some epinephrine.” She puts a hand on Pradeep’s arm. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Well that’s a relief. Maahjabeen, I need you to do your religious practice somewhere else. Here is where his monitor must go.”
“There is nothing medically wrong with him.”
“Oh, here we go again.” Esquibel rears back, hands on hips, about to deliver another lecture on the dangers of superstitious thinking, when she is caught by the torment in Maahjabeen’s face. It reminds her of the day workers she used to see in Kenya when she was a resident, the young women with hopeless eyes and faces worn twice their age from brutal lives in factories and workhouses. And that forces her to recall what originally made her become a doctor: to ease suffering. The world is filled with so much of it. Palliative care is the best one can do for the bleeding world.
With a sigh, Esquibel rearranges the clean room so the monitor can be placed on Pradeep’s other side. She drapes a blanket around Maahjabeen’s shoulders, pats her bowed head, and leaves the two lovers alone.
Ξ
“What if I grab your hand? What then?” Katrina reaches for the hand of the golden childs accompanying her. The youth pulls away and she is delighted by his meekness. It is one of the only really human responses she’s ever seen from them.
They sit in a narrow cleft of gray stone, a fissure running down into the next valley to the northwest of pine camp. Katrina needs to be alone today, as much as is safe, and at first the golden childs gave her the solitude she craved. But the knots in her mind became no less untangled. Finally, surrendering to the impossibility that she could find any solutions to her troubles, she’d set a bit of an ambush here for the golden childs following her. She needs to talk to someone about this.
“A ty govorish’ po russki?” The youth just hides quietly behind his bloody golden mask and doesn’t say a word. “Okay, can you speak any language besides Russian? And I know you can speak behind your mask. The golden man did. Zolotoy chelovek sdela.”
Katrina takes a deep breath, trying to clear her head. “Why does your chief speak Russian, though? They must come here often. But not to the south? Not to the beach? The Russians must have some other way to access the interior of the island? One the Yanks don’t know? Okay, but why? Listening post… Regional base… Look. Mr. Singlung He was my sponsor for the Singapore Conferences and he used to go on and on about maritime supremacy being the foundation of regional hegemons. But the Americans must have known the Russians were here. They must. Their own little Cold War, yeh? Right here in paradise, murdering each other in their sleep. God, the spooks always think they’re so fucking clever…”
She tosses a rock from her perch in the fissure down the slope into the bushes below. A cluster of dark birds wing away.
“Multi-polar. A multi-polar island, with at least four axes. The way I see it you got your Americans here…” Katrina places a jagged piece of quartz in the dust at her feet. “Your Russians. Your Lisicans, who can be further divided into the competing villages and shamans with all their different agendas…” Then she picks up a small flat stone. “And the Japanese.”
Katrina watches the golden childs to see if the word triggers any reaction. But the pollen-laden mask remains impassive.
“I said what I said. She told me last night it was the Japanese. I told her that I hope they like show tunes because that’s all I put on the USB stick she gave them. She said I didn’t understand.” Katrina pushes herself again to her feet. “Thought she was going to kill me then. Wouldn’t take her hand from her gun. So I didn’t push it. But Christ how many players are there at this table? We thought Lisica was all remote and empty but now we can hardly spend a day without finding a whole new nationality has arrived. What, do you get the Hawaiians here too?”
Katrina entertains herself with images of barechested Polynesians paddling longboats through the waves at the mouth of the lagoon.
She sighs, studying the youth. “You’re a good bloke. Don’t talk too much. I like that in a man. But the big problem is what am I going to do? Should I tell Alonso? Mandy? I mean, yeh, I definitely will. I don’t hold any allegiances to Esquibel. Kind of a bitch, to be honest. But I don’t need to like ruin her life with one ill-considered confession to the wrong people at the wrong time…”
Katrina reflects on how it had ended last night in the dark. They had been so close, whispering urgently in each other’s ears, gripping each other. Full darkness. The only sensations were Esquibel’s stale exhalations against her cheek and her strong hand encircling Katrina’s arm. She had just finished a breathless tale of subterfuge, insisting that selling the Plexity secrets to the Japanese had been an order from her superiors. She shared how it had all started six months before, when a very nice elderly Japanese naval officer had made an initial contact with Esquibel at a medical conference in Jakarta. He’d made an offer so oblique she didn’t even understand what he was asking until she’d had time to consider it. But when she did she’d gone straight to the spooks at Langley and they’d ordered her to keep quiet and string the Japanese intelligence agency along. They told her the Plexity data wasn’t significant but sharing it would build trust. She was one of the good guys, she swore. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but Katrina had to understand that they must keep up appearances.
It occurs to Katrina now that Esquibel might have very well killed her and hidden the body in pursuit of her mission’s goals. Yet what stopped her most likely wasn’t decency but the presence of the golden childs, four of them crouched at the edge of camp. So instead she implored Katrina to forget what she’d seen and to keep her mouth shut. Otherwise there might be a real nasty mess when they got picked up in two weeks. If, say, at the Air Force debriefing, Katrina suddenly starts going on about a Japanese soldier in the night then all kinds of hell could break loose. Be discreet, Esquibel had begged her. I love you all and I am here to protect you, she’d finally confessed, emotion choking her voice. Then she’d stepped close, a leg sliding between Katrina’s to press up intimately against her, and kissed her. Then she’d repeated, “I do love you, Katrina,” which put her in a state of wordless shock, before Esquibel had disengaged and slipped off into the cold dark night.
Katrina hadn’t slept a wink since then.
She picks up the dark flat rock that signifies the Japanese. “Just… like… We got enough going on here, folks. Don’t come back and everything will be fine.” She tosses the rock into the bushes below.
This time, the rock hits an animal in the bushes and it squeals, a dreadful baritone rattle. The bushes shake with violence.
Now the golden childs beside Katrina stirs. He leaps forward and puts himself between the creature in the bushes and her. The animal storms out from under the branches, still outraged. A boar. It’s a huge boar, like the size of a moped. And not much slower. It charges up the slope toward them with dreadful speed.
“Climb. I’ll climb.” Katrina hears her own breathless words in her ear. They sound faint and weak and tardy. This monster and its ragged tusks are going to wreck them both. She hauls herself onto the fissure’s wall, trying to swing herself up and clear of the ground below. But she isn’t fast enough. The boar is beneath them now, tossing its head against the golden childs.
The youth leaps at the last instant, clear of the splintered tusks, and lands on the opposite wall of the fissure. He scrambles up before the boar can turn and charge again.
“There’s boars…” Katrina pants, over and over, “boars here on Lisica. There’s boars… on Lisica…” Finally she climbs to a safe perch and crouches there. The golden childs pulls himself up, nearly to the top edge of the cliff. “When were you ever going to tell me? Come on, then. Time for some pork on the barbie.”
DW Draffin -- Lisica 