Chapter 48 – God, We Suck
November 22, 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!
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48 – God, We Suck
Triquet is monumentally annoyed. And the infuriating part about it is that they aren’t quite certain what it is annoying them. All they know is that things that normally don’t provoke any reaction in them are now enraging. The fiddly bits of the espresso maker. The disorganization of last week’s laptop files. These brown stains on their flower-fringed ankle socks that never seem to get truly clean. That’s what it is. Things have gotten so dingy here. The lovers are all quarreling. The villagers are stubbornly distant. Everything is covered in a layer of dirt. It’s enough to drive anyone batty.
With an immense effort, Triquet tries to shake off this ennui with a return to their tent. But none of their clothes hang on display any more. There’s no room in here. They sorely miss the bunker and its storage. And the sub. It’s basically lost as well. Getting to the sub now is a thirty minute crawl through mud. And Triquet can’t do it alone. So their investigations have slowed to a halt.
No. No more of this gloom and doom. It’s actually a pleasant morning after the gentle showers. The bees are buzzing. The sun even makes brief appearances and the dewy meadow glitters with refracted light. Come on, Triq. This is still paradise. Of course it’s dangerous. Everywhere is dangerous. Now put on some chiffon and find your courage, soldier. Even if the whole Lisica expedition ends tomorrow, it has still been one of the highlights of your life.
There. Triquet always looks better in green. Now, how to finish this look? Hmm. They left their really big pieces of costume jewelry at home. Otherwise it’d be that chunky fake jade necklace and bracelet set that’s half Cloris Leachman, half Flintstones. Here they’ll just make do with the wooden prayer beads and a fake garnet ring. They pull on a pair of booty shorts underneath for modesty, locate the pink slip-ons, and step back out into the fresh air feeling somewhat restored.
Makeup? No, not with the amount of sweating they’ll most likely do. Today is hopefully the last day of really putting this camp together. But it’s going to take all day. Triquet can see Flavia has already wired things to the solar panels. When Katrina gets back they can fly the parachute overhead again and get a little more protection from the rain. Then her lights can get strung and the little village will feel complete. But before then, Triquet has ideas.
First, a riverstone path to the trenches. Those have been dug a hundred meters upslope and away from the creek, over a rise and hidden in a cleft. It’s a better spot than they had on the beach but this isn’t sand beneath their feet. They’ll all quickly churn an ugly line of mud into the ground unless Triquet is able to prevent it.
Crossing the meadow to the creekside, Triquet is disappointed to find that the bank has no easily-removed rocks. They’d imagined this would be like most of the creeks they’re familiar with, mostly like the slate and flint banks of the Delaware Gap. But here it’s all loam and moss and ferns overhanging the banks and the water is running fast and black. No loose stones anywhere.
Following the creek upstream, Triquet unwittingly follows Amy’s footsteps up the canyon toward the tributary where she would have done their laundry. But they stop at the base of the cliff she ascended. Here is a pile of rounded rocks deposited during some long ago flood. Now it’s just a matter of transporting them. Triquet waves at the golden childs dogging them. “Care to lend a hand?”
But of course the youth makes no move to help.
Triquet unfolds a small tarp and loads as many of the big rocks onto it as they can safely manage. Then they drag it back to camp. Hm. These slip-ons are not the right shoes for the job after all. And maybe a flowing gown of tissue-thin fabric isn’t the best either. But it did unlock something about their mood. Now Triquet can see that it’s the unyielding pressure coming from the natives that’s making so many of them crack. It’s Jidadaa with her cryptic demands in the middle of the night, the shamans stalking them, the golden childs hovering. They are in an inexorable hydraulic press and its plates just keep squeezing closer and closer together.
Returning from their third trip with the stones, Triquet passes Mandy emerging from her tent, who looks completely out of sorts. “Good morning, sunshine.”
But Mandy doesn’t respond, peering at the sky instead. She steps further out from camp and crosses to the meadow.
Intrigued, Triquet drops their load on the pile and follows her.
Mandy holds a barometer. “Crap. Look at that.” She absently hands it to Triquet and scans the gray-mantled sky. This marine layer can often hide what’s happening above.
Triquet reads the barometer. “920 millibars. Very low. That’s what it says. Is very low bad?”
“920 now? OMG. Uh, that’s a lot more than very low. That’s like… one of the lowest recordings I’ve ever heard anywhere in the world. The world record is in the 890’s and that was a tropical cyclone in the West Pacific. My god. What’s coming our way?”
“You’re saying that means another storm’s coming? This is what they mean by a drop in barometric pressure? But like when? And how much? Can you retrieve your weather station first?”
“God! I haven’t been able to fetch it! I was going to, but then we found Jay and Pradeep instead. I mean, I’m super glad we found them, but… I need data!”
“Well, what’s your guess?”
Mandy accesses her newfound powers of observation. She smells the air deeply, noticing that it’s wet and perhaps a bit fruity, like it swept across continents of thawing tundra. Well, that will be its engine no doubt. Cold differentials. And the trees on the far ridge are riffling in a stiff breeze that has the character of a compressing wave, as if the air itself is being pushed hard from behind by an accelerating force. They don’t have long. An hour at the most. But this half-assed camp won’t be able to survive a real onslaught, not if it hits as hard as it promises. “So sorry. But my guess is that we will all have to go back into the sub for a few days.”
Triquet’s pile of rocks is still pathetically small. “No! I just got all this work done! And—and… Ah, hell.” They drop their head in defeat, a black mood descending again just like that.
“Ah! That’s why I’ve been so grumpy!” Mandy realizes in relief. “We’ve all been on edge! It’s because there’s a huge storm coming! This like looming threat feeling has totally been weighing on me. Oh, what a relief. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Triquet studies Mandy, uncertain about her conclusion. It’s eerie how much her analysis matches Triquet’s own, but it’s led them each in opposite directions. An oncoming storm somehow gives Mandy peace? Ye gods. No it doesn’t. Isn’t this just another compounding amount of pressure, to crush them all into bits?
Mandy waves at Miriam, still at work in her trench. “Hey, lady! Storm coming! The biggest!”
Miriam sighs in defeat. “Oh my days. Seriously? Turns out this place is as bad as Ireland. Great… When?”
Mandy squints at the sky. “Don’t know. Soon. We need a real roof over our heads for this one.”
Miriam uses the spade to clamber out of her trench, covered in dirt. “God forbid we ever get any actual work done.”
Ξ
Katrina unweaves the plaited cord that secures her to the trunk. Iwikanu smiles, encouraging her, tapping at her wrist with gentle fingertips. It is a long cord, stiff and thick as her finger. But she has depended this whole time upon its strength. Now it is time to go.
Finally it falls free and she is untethered, crouching on the fragile skein of this platform they’ve built high in the redwood canopy. Iwikanu smiles at the gap in the floor, the ground nearly a hundred meters below. She is expected to climb down through it and begin her long descent down the trunks and branches that form a woven series of living ladders all the way to the ground.
This fairy ring of redwoods is perched on the western slope of the interior bowl of the island. The land rises nearly vertically beside the trunks, with madrone trees pressing beneath, granting the irregular rungs for the ladders she climbs down.
Finally Katrina finds her way to the lowest trunk. This last ladder hangs down the trunk’s length in a long line of looped cords like the one that kept her safe above. But these are for her hands and feet, tied off at regular intervals. She supposes this ladder can be raised to prevent any attacks. She thinks once more of Singlung He and his aphorisms about attack and defense. “I don’t know. I’d be more worried about people shooting us from the hillside.”
The matted platform Katrina had spent the last day and night on was a marvel of construction, something she’d never conceived. It rocks quite strongly in the wind. Tall trees sway far more than she ever knew. When a gust pushes through this circle of columns, it hits one first and then the others at greater and greater delays, making the platform rock and oscillate with increasing force.
Those who live up here ride the rhythm with sea legs, never losing their footing, never tethered to the limbs. But Katrina could barely stay on her feet up there. She spent most of her time on her hands and knees, laughing and gasping in terror, trying to stay on the good side of her hosts as they finally gave up on her balance and tied her off with an umbilical cord to mother tree.
They did make it easy. The Shidl Dít were kind and patient with her, understanding her lack of experience being a bloody bird. It wasn’t that she was unwilling either. Or that she had a particular fear of heights. It was just… absolutely debilitating. Survival instincts kept shorting out her abilities. And gravity felt different up there, like it was on some sort of counterbalance or pendulum and if she didn’t watch herself her feet would kick out and she’d pivot from the waist and tip over some edge to her terrifying death.
Okay. Maybe she did have a fear of heights. But Katrina was fairly certain it was less the heights and more a fear of death. Or, as in the old joke, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.
Only as she nears the ground does she notice that Iwikanu has descended with her, waiting patiently in the loops above for Katrina to drop to the earth. She does so and soon the two of them are standing face to face, sharing one last smile. Iwikanu unslings a boarskin bag and presents it to Katrina. “Ohh, that’s so sweet. God, I don’t even know if I have anything for you. Um. Here.” She pulls off a hair tie and makes a short ponytail of his hair. She wraps it tight and steps back. “You look proper handsome now.”
They say farewell in Russian and Katrina tells him that she will never forget him and that he must visit her in Australia some day. But this is more of the language than he knows so his smile just freezes and his eyes dart. She breaks off, the strong impulse to give him a hug bringing her up short. It’s probably a bad idea. She does it anyway. He laughs.
Then Iwikanu puts his golden mask back in place and steps away from her. She understands now, that this is a ritual distance that she cannot break, even if she needed him. Iwikanu is no longer her sweet new friend with a little sister and two gentle parents who gave up their own bed to her last night. Now he is what they call kadánda dayadi, child of pollen, child of the spring. And to them, he is no longer human. He is transformed.
She would have understood none of this if his chief the Dandawu hadn’t spoken a fair amount of pidgin Russian. But through broken phrases and mime and a lot of patience on both ends, they talked long into the night and again in the morning. He is an old man with extensive knowledge of the island, but little of the outside world. She did what she could to avoid too many unfamiliar ideas, and he showed no appetite for exploring them.
Katrina wonders what her insatiable curiosity must have seemed like to him. Is it just the unfathomable luxury of a modern life, to pursue knowledge for its own sake, even on topics that will never be useful? Is it just her overactive first-world brain that would be happier harvesting nuts and making boarskin leggings? She recalls telling one of her university professors about a hike she had taken and how she felt like a Stone Age nomad but he had corrected her. She was, in fact, nothing like a paleolithic human. Their conscious minds were fixed in the present, watching the branches of each tree for a bird that might make a meal, scanning shadows for predators waiting to make a meal of them. They did not have any fancy ideas about social media or petrol prices running through their heads. They couldn’t afford to. She is not any kind of ancient ancestor. Katrina is instead very much a product of her generation.
The day is gray and gusty. She knows the plan must be to retrace her steps back to pine camp and she only hopes she can remember how to do it. For being a hidden village, getting here was pretty straightforward. Two ridgelines and then a drop to the trees. So after she climbs that drop and follows the two ridgelines back, she should be where Iwikanu slaughtered that boar who attacked them.
Mentally, she divides the hike into four sections. Actually it forms a cohesive narrative, like they are each chapters in a novella, a charming story called Katrina’s Hike. The first chapter must be the introduction to her return, reacquainting herself with the ground and climbing the steep slope up to the top of the ridge, from which she can briefly spy the ocean on the western horizon, between gaps in the farther ridge’s peaks.
The second chapter is that first ridge, which leads her up and down its broken spine and over knobs of reddish stone. Miriam would like it here with all its exposed geology. But Katrina would prefer to get back under the trees. This is too much sun and wind for her all day.
The third chapter is the second ridge, a transverse line across the south of the island that brings her back to the east and the valley at the bottom of the sloping Douglas Firs. But the weather is starting to sour here. The wind really sweeps through the trees now and each gust brings the crack of falling branches. Getting close now. This is the far end of the valley in which that boar lived. All she has to do is cross it again and she’ll be home in no time.
But… as if there’s a pressure-sensitive plate beneath this meadow, as soon as Katrina steps onto it, the skies open up and a deluge of rain drops on her head from out of nowhere. The meadow darkens and the temperature drops. She is instantly drenched.
Cursing at the icy water finding its way beneath her three light layers, her teeth start chattering. “Got to… keep moving…” If she can just get back to camp she’ll be able to dry out.
Katrina ascends the final slope as runnels of water race past her, tearing the soil out from under her soles. It is a grim half hour of struggling against the elements. The wind and rain lash at her, chilling her to the bone. The golden childs who is otherwise Iwikanu still paces behind, patiently watching but never helping.
When Katrina finally does get back to pine camp, water sheets across the ground, carrying away the pine needles, the tents are all soaked through, and no one is there.
Ξ
Alonso and Miriam limp into the village, holding a hopping and grimacing Triquet between them. They are all soaked to the skin and miserable. Just before entering the village Triquet had slipped in the mud and twisted their left ankle. Despite assuring their older colleagues that they can walk it off, they had fussed over Triquet and hauled them up by the arms, nearly carrying them the last few paces with care. Easing their patient down to the deck of Morska Vidra’s covered porch, the three refugees look around.
The village looks deserted in the purplish downpour. No smoke, no light in any door. Puddles are already forming pools in the village square. The only sound is the creak of the trees in the wind.
Alonso grabs a handful of Triquet’s clothing and wrings it out with strong hands. He shares a sidelong pleased look with Miriam. “Did you see?”
She is shivering, slicking back her hair to get the water to stop dripping into her eyes. “See what?” She scans the village again.
“No no…” Alonso stands again. “Mira.” Then he crouches. “I helped Triquet. I carried them. For the first time. I helped. I was the carrier instead of the carried.” His proud smile is so wide.
She nods, dumbly, knowing how significant this is but unable to find enthusiasm within her. She squeezes his hand instead and looks into his eyes, her breath ragged.
“Oh, Mirrie, you’re freezing.” Alonso reaches over Triquet’s legs and envelops her in a bearhug.
Triquet thinks of saying something, but then doesn’t. Instead, they fall back in regard to study the two dark figures in embrace. What must it be like to love so well, so long? It is outside Triquet’s experience. Their parents certainly never did. Growing up, they had a few friends with cool moms and dads but certainly nothing like this. There is a silence in the contact point between them, as if Miriam and Alonso have sealed themselves together. Dyadic withdrawal. Triquet remembers the term from a sociology course. They have just retreated into a world they alone populate where they are something larger than themselves alone. And now the storming world is beaten back, with Triquet sheltering beneath.
Finally they break free and Alonso blows on her fingertips. Then he places a strong hand across Triquet’s chest. “How is the pain?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. But I saw you, Alonso! I sure did! Big man on campus, carrying me away. How are you?”
“There is pain, certainly, yes.” Alonso considers what to say next about it. But nothing more is required. He holds out his hands and shrugs. “I am only glad I can help such a sweetheart.”
“Can we like… knock on his door?” Miriam stands, staring doubtfully at the hut. “What do you think, Zo?”
“I think they are not here. I mean, where even is the door?”
Miriam and Alonso step toward the black gap between the redwood bark boards that used to be covered by a door of smaller bark pieces. He leans his head in. “Hello…? Ah. Here is the door. They stowed it inside. I wonder why.”
“There’s no one in there?” Miriam steps inside, ducking low. The ceiling isn’t much more than Amy’s height. Alonso has to hunch over quite a lot.
“And nothing. There is only a door. And an old… eh, loom? Bedframe? I do not know what this is here in the corner.”
“But where did they go? I mean, the floor’s dry. Why would you leave your dry house in the middle of a huge storm? Madness.”
Another refugee arrives, stepping on the boards of the porch outside. It is Esquibel. She ducks in and looks around. “Good. This one is empty. And it has a firepit. Bring him in here.”
Alonso and Miriam go back outside to find Maahjabeen and Flavia unlashing Pradeep from the travois. Soon Esquibel helps them pull his unresisting body inside. His eyes are open and his face is slack. Mandy follows, carrying a sodden ball of sleeping bags and pillows. She disappears within as well.
“What the F?” Jay stands in the center of the the village, turning round and round. “Ghost town. Great. Where’d everybody go? And what do they know that we don’t?” The rain is cold but not frigid and he’s warmed up now. It’s just a lot. Even with his hood cinched tight, it’s hard to keep it out of his ears and eyes.
Alonso watches him from the porch. He beckons to Jay, in disbelief that the boy literally doesn’t have the sense to come in from out of the rain. “Come on. Get out of there and dry off.”
“Hold on, chief.” Jay pokes his head into each of the other huts first. They’re all empty, all the belongings gone except the doors. “So weird… Hey, Alonso. Why do they put the doors inside?”
“Maybe so they do not float away?”
“Seriously. I’m going to float away for sure.” Jay steps onto the porch, shakes like a dog, and unzips his rain parka. It kept him pretty dry except for a hefty leak at his neck. But he’s in shorts and sandals anyway. “You think we can all fit in there?”
Esquibel sticks her head out as Jay asks this. “Firewood,” she orders. “Before you get out of your wet things.”
Jay sighs. “Sure thing, Doc.” He zips his parka right back up and steps out into the downpour.
Once Esquibel withdraws from the small door, Alonso peeks in. Yes, they are all settled and now there is room for the rest of them. “Come on, Triquet. Let’s drag you in here too.”
“Oh, fine. I’m fine. I’m coming.” Triquet hauls themself to their feet and tries putting weight on the ankle. “Yes. Perfectly fine.” But then they try tilting their foot outward and pain runs up the outside of their lower leg. “Or, well, not entirely. But walking I can do. Careful walking. Or even crawling.” It does seem like the better option. They make a grand entrance, on hands and knees, but no one even looks up. The others are engaged in their own struggles. Triquet finds a spot in the far corner and eases their back against the blackened timbers.
Miriam also drops against the wall with a groan, still shivering. Triquet drapes an arm across her shoulders and she leans into it. “How about a fire? Anyone? That pipe’s a smoke hole, right?” An intact tube of bark is stuck in the roof at a shallow angle. Whenever the wind swirls a few raindrops spatter in.
Esquibel nods. “Jay is getting us some wood.”
“And here he is.” Alonso steps away from the door to give him room to enter.
Jay ducks in with an apologetic half-smile. He is empty-handed. “Nada. They took it all. Wherever they went, I guess they knew they’d need their firewood.”
“Well we need a fire too.” Esquibel is worried about Pradeep. She doesn’t know how he will deal with all these extreme changes in his environment, just on a metabolic level. She doesn’t know if he can generate enough heat. What are these bizarre narcotics the shamans keep using against them? They present in ways she’s never seen with any compound or heard about in any literature. Oh, yes. This is a new drug we discovered on an island called Lisica. It removes your soul.
Jay shrugs. “We can burn the door.”
Miriam barks a sarcastic laugh, appreciating the dark humor. But then she stops herself. “Oh, you’re serious. And how do you think our hosts will like us after we’ve done that?”
Jay shrugs again. “It’s the only dry wood around. I can build them another door when the storm dies down no problem.”
“Yes, do it.” Esquibel doesn’t have time for the niceties of outreach and community engagement right now. “We need the fire. And we need that door to last all night. So keep it modest.”
“Will do.”
Jay pulls the door away from the wall and makes a face. “Okay. Problem one. This is redwood bark, which is super flame-resistant. Good against rot too. But it’s going to be a bitch to burn. Problem two. No dry kindling. So that’s going to be fun. Not exactly sure how we’ll get this done yet… Aha! But the frame is another wood, like laurel. Now that’s some good firewood there. Okay. I got a plan.” He pulls a buck knife and collapsible saw from his pack.
They all work in silence at their various tasks. Mandy helps Maahjabeen out of her sodden jacket and squeezes out her thick hair for her. But Maahjabeen only has thoughts for Pradeep. He doesn’t shiver but there is a bluish cast to his skin that worries her. “Mandy, please cover the door with a blanket. Where is that fire?”
As if she invoked it, a flame blooms under Jay’s hand in a pile of sawdust and strips of kindling. They all turn to watch as he coaxes it to life, putting wafer-thin sheets of redwood bark atop it. These only blacken and smoke but refuse to catch fire. “Need to make it hotter…” Jay pushes more kindling into the blaze and soon it reaches a critical heat, igniting all the other fuel he carefully places on the growing pyramid.
The heat spreads into the wide room, smoke spiraling up into the canted smokehole. Firelight flickers against the dark walls. They all ease back, letting the fire give them its primeval comfort.
“I love a good plasma.” They are Flavia’s first words. She has been engaged in a long silent struggle against the deteriorating conditions of the day. But the sight of those bluish-orange twisting sheets of ionized heat soothe her. “Remember the bunker? How nice it used to be in there?”
“I loved the bunker!” Mandy clasps her hands under her chin. “It was like one big dorm room. And the sub?”
“We should go back to the sub.” Yet as Triquet says it they realize how impossible that would be right now. Descending the tree trunk down that shaft in the tunnels would be agony on their ankle. What a dope, stumbling in the mud like that.
“We are not going anywhere.” Esquibel says it firmly, cutting the foolish notion off before they can seriously consider it. “This fire is the most important thing right now. Keeping Pradeep warm.”
“Did anybody bring food?” Flavia presses a hand against her growling belly. “I didn’t realize how hungry I am until now.”
“Shh.” Alonso holds up a hand. “There is somebody outside.”
They can all hear tentative footsteps on the planks of the porch. A tension winds in the air. Jay stands, gripping his knife. Is this it? Is this his moment? Is Wetchie-ghuy about to come barrelling in here with his potions and his spells? Where will Jay even stab him? He should probably decide before the whole thing goes down so he knows how to hold his knife. In the neck, like a stab down from above? Or a slash across his belly, which means he should reverse his grip and…
A figure leans in, dark and hidden, and a breathless voice hisses the Lisican greeting, the final syllable rising in hope. “Bontiik…?”
It is Katrina.
Mandy squeals and throws herself at her, pulling Katrina into the hut and squeezing her tight. The space is suddenly charged with everyone’s heat and movement, their exclamations and questions. They all have to hug Katrina, or at least touch her or pet her hair. For a long sweet interlude, it’s nothing but chatter and laughter and most of the sounds they make aren’t even words.
Finally they settle again. Katrina scans their faces. “Still no Amy? Blimey. Out somewhere in this storm? Poor dear. I hope the shamans are keeping her dry.”
“Jidadaa told us,” Alonso informs her, “that the shamans do not have her and neither she nor the golden childs know where Amy is. We are very worried. Very worried.”
“I mean… She’s an outdoors person, right? Probably living better than we are right now.”
“Where are the golden childs anyway? Have we seen them?”
“Oh, yeh.” Katrina points back out the door. “They’re out there a few houses down. Just watching. They’re kadánda dayadi, like the children of pollen. Don’t worry about them.”
“Why?” Triquet asks. “What does that mean?”
“So… From the beginning… They brought me to their village in the trees. Crazy place. Way up high in the redwoods. And they had this long ceremony to remove their masks up there. Lots of colored powders smeared on their skins then washed off. And when it was all over the bloke next to me took off his golden mask and he was just this guy. He introduced himself as Iwikanu. We were totally best buds. He took me to his parents’ house and they fed me some nice eggs and mash and his little sister couldn’t get over my pale white weirdness. Just like prodded me all night. She was so cute. But yeh. When he put his mask back on he wasn’t Iwikanu any more. They told me he transformed into an agent of the gods. The springtime god, to be exact. They’ve only got a couple more weeks of this before summer comes and the kadánda dayadi vanish like pollen on the wind.”
“So poetic.” Miriam unlaces Katrina’s shoes and peels off her socks for her. “And how did you learn all this?”
“Their chief speaks a bit of Russian. I learned so much. But here. Look. Check this out first.” Katrina holds up her prize, the sack that Iwikanu gifted her at the base of the tree. It is large and heavy and she is tired of carrying it.
Jay goggles. “What the hell? What is that made of?” He grabs the sack. “This is like pigskin. Feels like some giant hairy NFL football. Ew. Where’d you get that?”
“There’s boars, Jay. On the island. One attacked me. That’s why he took me back to their village. I needed to help him carry—”
“I knew it!” Jay crows. “Remember when the bad village showed up and they had those cross-braces on their spears? I just knew there had to be big-game hunting! And what’s in here?”
“Go ahead and open it.”
Jay unfolds the irregular flaps of the sack to find ingots of raw flesh, gleaming and purple, inside. Dozens. “What the…? Oh, baby! We’re eating like kings tonight!”
The hut fills with their joyful clamor once again. Nobody is happier than Flavia. She grabs Katrina and kisses her face over and over. Jay hops up and down like a child at Christmas. Only Alonso sighs, doleful, and Triquet sees it. “Ah, what’s wrong, boss man? Not a pork guy?”
“I love it. But I miss my wine. It would pair so well.”
Triquet giggles. “And bring me some truffle oil while we’re at it.”
Alonso laughs, appreciating the teasing. “Yes, I’m a wretched alcoholic, it’s true. Very spoiled. Eh. Mira. This bag is made from a single pig, just stitched up the sides. Kind of gross.”
“I don’t think that meat is very hygienic,” Esquibel cautions. “How long has it been out? Over 24 hours, yes?”
“Well they didn’t carve it up until this morning if that makes you feel any better. Then they rubbed this oil all over it and packed it away. I didn’t think I was going to get to taste it. Was kind of broken up about it, to be honest. But they were just waiting to give me my share! Oh, he was such a brute. His tusks were so scary, just like these pointed broken giant teeth coming at you.”
“Ehh…” Esquibel is unconvinced. “What kind of oil?” But then Jay gently drops the first steaks directly on the burning coals and the sizzle fills the night air with heady scents. “Just make sure you sear all the edges at least.” Then Esquibel has to stop talking because there is suddenly too much saliva in her mouth.
They all watch in silence as Jay cooks. He is a timeless figure, stooped over the flames, tending to the first feast of the hunt. From time to time he pokes at the sizzling meat with his fingers, testing its consistency. Within a few minutes he’s pulling the first ones free, knocking the ash from the charred crust.
Flavia has found a small flat tray in her belongings that can serve as a plate. “Here, Jay. Right here. Come to mama.”
With a grimace he drops it onto her plate and waves his fingers to cool them. Jay grins at Flavia, wolfish. “Let me know how it is.”
Flavia kisses him. “I have never been so attracted to you as I am right now.” They all laugh at her but now there is a sharp edge of anticipation in it as they crowd round. Flavia doesn’t even offer to share. She picks at it, blowing on the steak to cool it, and tears a bit off the corner. “Oh. Che meraviglia. So good. A little chewy. Gamey. Is that the word? But who cares.”
She hands the plate to Esquibel, who wrinkles her nose, inspects it minutely, then takes a bite. “Ah. Very hot. That is good.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “To kill the bacteria so… Oh.” Then she starts chewing in earnest. “Oh. This is amazing.”
“Yeah, I bet that oil is really helping lock in the juices.” Jay giggles, dropping the next finished steak on top of the first. Mandy finds another lid as a plate and soon they’re all eating and groaning in pleasure, falling back against the walls of the hut with dirt and ash and grease smeared on their chins.
“But what did you learn from this chief of theirs?” Alonso finally asks Katrina, licking his fingers. “You say he speaks Russian. That is another thing Jidadaa told us, that Russians visit them regularly. The tree village. What did you learn about that?”
“Oh, you saw Jidadaa? How is she?”
“Same as ever. She rescued Prad from Wetchie-ghuy at least.” Jay allows some grudging admiration to color his words.
Esquibel repeats, “Katrina. Tell us of the Russians.”
“It’s not a very good relationship.” Katrina is still eating. She can’t stop and there’s still three steaks they haven’t finished. “Lots of distrust. Strictly transactional I think, although I can’t figure out what the Russians give the Thunderbirds in return. The Shidl Dít. Like I didn’t see any modern stuff anywhere up on their platform. Maybe like some winter coats from Siberia or something.”
“And what do the Russians want from the Thunderbirds?” Esquibel locates a notepad and pen. She wants to make sure she gets what Katrina tells her recorded word-for-word. This is the most valuable intelligence she can bring back.
“And why are they even called the Thunderbirds?” Jay wonders. “I mean, like there are only a few birds in the whole world that can strictly be called thunderbirds and we haven’t—”
“Jay.”
“Sup, Doc?”
“Let her answer my question first please. National security and all that.”
“Oh. For sure.”
Katrina shrugs. “Well, like I said, there’s a lot of distrust. And like layers, you know? So I didn’t get what you’d call a straight answer. But they really opened up after I sang them some Marvin Gaye. They think I’m some kind of wizard.”
“That is so wild that they don’t have music.” Jay shakes his head. “I mean, can you imagine what your daily life would—?”
“Jay! Please!” Esquibel glares at him.
Katrina shakes her head in memory of the painstaking dialogue. “We went back and forth. Lots of miming. After a couple hours of that, what I was finally able to figure out is that what the Russians want here more than anything is the foxes.”
Esquibel’s pen is poised above the blank sheet of note paper. She blinks. “Eh? The foxes? What do you mean?”
“You mean like for their fur?” Jay frowns. “That’s so, like, 19th century. Nobody wears fur any more.”
“Okay… Eh…” Miriam can make no more sense of it than any of the others. “So did the Thunderbirds give them the foxes?”
“On that point,” Katrina manages through a full mouth, “they were quite clear. Absolutely not.”
They all consider this in a perplexed silence.
“But what did the Russians have to say about the Americans or the Chinese? Anything on that?” Esquibel can’t tell her superiors that the Russians were here like English bloody lords hunting foxes for sport. They’d tell her this whole mission was a waste.
“They don’t know. I tried to get kind of geopolitical for a bit but the Thunderbirds are like wildly incurious about the world outside. They know Lisica and its three tribes and that’s about it. But they know Lisica better than anyone else, I’m pretty sure. Even better than the shamans. The Dandawu has the deep cuts, that’s for sure. Like, they recognized the name Maureen Dowerd, Triquet. They like fully remember her.”
“Oh my god. The modern mystery. Yes,” Triquet groans. “Can we please get back to that?”
“She was a friend to all the tribes. The only one who could speak to everyone, even the great shaman at the time, Aan Eyagídi. It was the first time they had met an outsider who was a woman and not a soldier. And he spoke of her great heart. She sounds like a lovely woman. Very charming.”
“And then she fell in love with a local.”
“Yes, and that is when the fractures appeared. The Shidl Dít had no problem with their affair and the child she had. But those nasty Ussiaxan condemned them both. He said they’re the ones who caused her death. And for years they hunted her lover too. Killed him when he was old. But their lineage lives on. All those blond curls. Morska Vidra’s village mostly had no problem, but some did and left them to go live across the river. Reactionairies and their racial purity. Tale as old as time.”
Jay calculates. “So it was the, like, grandparents of the Lady Boss and that whole crew who killed Maureen? Poor thing.”
“Not exactly. We went round and round about this all night. The Dandawu used different words for what the Ussiaxan did to Maureen and her lover. They killed her lover. That was clear. But for her he used a more complex phrase, like ‘they brought about the reasons for her death.’ Like they set some kind of trap.”
“That’s wicked.” Triquet shakes their head. “And this is how the past informs the present. I wasn’t sure the bad tribe would hold their grudge forever but it sounds like that’s exactly what they do.”
“And the Dandawu confirmed the Ussiaxan kept all the secrets. On Maureen Dowerd and the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese. When Wetchie-ghuy deposed Aan Eyagídi during the time of the twelfth mothers, the Ussiaxan took all the island’s maps and diaries and keepsakes to what they call the treasure house—”
Triquet claps their hands to their mouth. “Oh my god there’s actual diaries out there? Plural? Mine mine mine! Ooo baby. That’s like textual chronology primary source white gold.”
“Yeah, but all surrounded by about like sixty warlike spear-warriors,” Jay reminds them. “We’d need like Seal Team Six to drop on their heads if we want to snag their shit.”
Now Esquibel is writing. “It is in their village, you say?”
But Katrina hesitates. “Ehm, you aren’t going to like call in a missile strike or anything, are you?”
“Are you serious? No. I can’t do that. This is just information-gathering. A big part of my job here.”
“I mean he didn’t tell me exactly, but yeh. I figure it’s in there with all their holy holies.”
“Do any of the Ussiaxan speak Russian?” Alonso doesn’t like how close this aggressive tribe is. Just across the creek. How much will their taboo to cross it matter if they are impelled by a greater need to kill the foreigners? “Can we reason with them?”
“No. Chinese. They’ve been contacted regularly by the Chinese, who come in from the north and always avoid the Russians and the Americans.” Katrina looks everywhere but at Esquibel. “They also used to be the contact tribe for the Japanese, like 80 or 90 years ago during the war.”
“That was the bunker I found on the west coast during that first storm.” Maahjabeen shakes her head at the memory. It seems like it was from six years ago, not six weeks. “Definitely old. Definitely Japanese. And Soviet too. So there’s some crossover.”
“I really need to get a look at that site.” Triquet flexes their ankle. “Some day. Could you like tow me on a raft?”
“Oh, the breakers would never allow it.”
“And the other really cool thing he told me,” Katrina continues, “is about the founding of the island. He said it was one man and two sisters. They were Eyat but he was Rumelian.”
“Rumelian?” Alonso wonders. “What is Rumelian?”
“I have no idea,” Katrina answers. “I was hoping one of you would know.”
But none of them do.
“What are you doing?” Flavia asks Jay, as he shakes as much water off his coat as possible and pulls it back on.
“Just thinking. One place I haven’t looked. Maybe it would be a good idea before it gets too late.”
“Where’s that?” Miriam asks.
“In the caves. That’s got to be where they’re hiding, right?”
“The sub,” Triquet grumbles. “Scattering all my sorted piles.”
“Who knows?” Jay goes to the door and pulls Mandy’s blanket wide. The loud drumming of the rain is disheartening, convincing all the others to stay by the fire. “Back in a sec.”
“That boy is a lunatic,” Alonso announces. “But I am glad we have him back.”
Jay returns nearly instantly. “Yep. Cave mouth is just full of all their belongings. But no villagers to be seen. They got no faith in their huts during a storm like this, I guess. And look!” He pulls a bundle of sticks through the door. “Stole some of their firewood!”
All the others are pleased, but Katrina thinks back on her time with the Dandawu and all the kindnesses his people showed her. She shakes her head in despair. “God, we suck.”
Chapter 45 – The USB Stick
November 5, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
45 – The USB Drive
Persistent birdsong penetrates the dense canopy. What bird is that? Jay doesn’t recognize its calls. It switches from buzzing to chirping to long melodic lines of warbling. Is that all one bird? Fascinating. It must be a mimic, like a mockingbird.
Jay opens his eyes. It is evening. The rain has stopped and their little hollow no longer drips maddeningly at arrhythmic intervals. Pradeep still sleeps beside him, their legs entangled for warmth.
“In my experience…” Jay mutters, his voice thick, “mockingbirds don’t sing at night. Just in the morning.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep’s voice is muffled. His face is tucked down, toward the pit of the hollow where redwood roots gather. He lifts his face. Jay is surprised to see how worn he looks, like he’s gained decades in the last couple days. Jay must look the same.
“Bird. Crazy song.” Jay pulls himself free. It’s too cold to lie here any longer. “We got to get moving, bro-him.”
“My legs. They really don’t want to.”
“Freeze our asses if we stay. Come on, Prad. Be the change you want to see…” Jay stands and grabs Pradeep’s upper arm, “…in the world!” And he hauls his groaning friend to his feet.
“Wow. I hate you for doing that.”
“Got to climb. Remember the plan? That’ll warm us up.”
“Perhaps I am not as cold as you. I could have stayed in that hole for another couple hours with no complaints.”
“Yeah, I’m freezing.” Now that he’s standing, Jay can see that it isn’t evening yet. The canopy just blocks most of the light. It is late afternoon and a golden glow suffuses the blue sky.
“Well we could just switch positions. I am still utterly exhausted.”
“We should hit this hill while we still got a little light.”
“It is true I don’t want to wait until morning. And now my phone is dead. No more flashlight.”
“Yeah mine too.”
“Fine then. Lead on. But don’t stop anywhere too long. Or I will pass out on my feet.”
“No doubt.” Jay surveys their surroundings, the pain of his many injuries making him feel like a badly-stitched-together golem. The sun is just setting over the far ridge, the meadow in shadow below with its low grassy hillocks, the very spot where they learned that they had dropped all the way into the wrong valley. Yep. There it is right there where his heart broke in fucking half. Good times. Anyway… After their tragic discovery they’d climbed up this way in a kind of daze, just to get away from it, and then they’d crapped out at the base of this tree. Said they’d just get a minute of shut-eye. That was like… six hours ago? Seven?
“The shadows…” Pradeep points at the nearby trees that are still lit by the setting sun. “From the shadows the sun is setting there,” he points at the slope across the meadow and then tracks a fair bit further south toward the equator. “We’re at like fortieth parallel so we’ve got to adjust the compass like so, and I’d say true west is about there. Hooray for one brief moment of sunshine.”
“Yeah, good call. That’s west. So north, east, south.” Jay rotates, pointing at each in turn. “Yeah. So I’m thinking that western ridge is the rim of the island. That west coast we’ve never seen.”
“Except Maahjabeen. In the first storm.”
“Right. But that’s like exactly the wrong way. We got to get back to our beach and our bunker and our… babes?”
“No. You will never call her a babe. She will tear your head right off. Yes, if the island is a clock, then the lagoon is at like 5:30 and we are currently at sort of… 7:30 or 8 on the dial?”
“Got to be. Which isn’t that far at all as crows fly. But you know it’s gonna be a fucking maze between here and there.”
“It always has been. You know, next time I take a posting on an island, I will make sure it is a flat sandbar. With one palm tree.”
“And a killer break. Come on, Prad. We’ll know more if we get up top here. We can chase the sun.”
“How… mythological.” Pradeep falls in line behind the limping, gasping Jay, who attacks the hillside with little forethought. “Wait. Wait. We can’t just charge this slope, Jay. We have to follow some contour lines. Bring us northeast for a bit first. Switchbacks.”
“Right on. Yeah. Get up top wherever. From the main ridge. We can get anywhere. On the island. In no time at all.”
“Yes. But climb. Out of the valleys. They are killing us.”
Then they speak no more, their energy turned to their poor feet and legs. Pradeep’s shins are covered in bruises. His climbing muscles scream with stiffness. But as he slowly warms up it all turns into a barely-tolerable throbbing ache and somehow he generates more mental fortitude from endocrine releases and conductive salts in cell walls and he keeps up with the mad Californian above.
Jay pivots them on the slope, making a switchback that heads more properly east-by-southeast where they need to go. Contours are only helpful if they actually take you to your destination. Sometimes you got to just take a mountain on its own terms.
For an hour they climb, passing out of the redwoods and through a stand of madrones and rhododendrons, then oak and sorrel, and finally grasslands near the spine of the ridge, which is marked by jagged lines of dark brown rock. They achieve the summit while the setting sun is just visible hanging over the western horizon, now distant and dim and pink, bisected by a pair of thin clouds. The wind whips them up here, bringing the marine chill. Vast and immaculately empty, the ocean surrounds them.
Now Jay looks down to regard the island. They are indeed on a ridgeline that connects with a larger main ridge up behind them, perhaps another eight hundred meters higher. Wow. This island’s got some walls on it for sure. But if they manage to stay on the ridges then they can skip all the ups and downs and meandering mazes. “Yes. Here’s our shortcut, yo.”
Pradeep frowns at the higher ridge. “Due north? That far? May I remind you that we’re trying to go southeast?”
“Yeah but once you get up top it runs east-west. We get on that ridge and head east, then when we get to the right valley, we follow that like sub-ridge down and boom, we’re home by supper.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“Man, I’m glad we agree about all this. Imagine if we were like fighting all the time. I’ve been in that situation before when—”
“Or if like one of us was high on acid.”
“Yeah yeah. That wasn’t my finest hour.” Jay picks his way along the spine of rocks, the slope they just climbed falling away before them. The ridge is broader than he expected and he doesn’t even see the far slope yet or into what it must descend. “Oh, no way!”
“What is it?” Pradeep steps past the outcrop Jay just vanished around and joins him in delight at the sight of a tiny waterfall, surrounded by lilies and ferns, splashing strongly from the recent rains. “Wow. That must be one full water table to get a waterfall going this strong this far up the slope. And I bet it’s quite clean.” Pradeep leans in and cups his hand under it. He lifts the cold water to his mouth and slurps. “Delicious.”
“Fuck yeah it is.” Jay is on all fours at the edge of the little pool below, drinking directly from it like a dog. “Best water ever.”
Movement. Pradeep cringes, his primal instincts unleashing anxiety that disperses the peace of this moment like a knife through smoke. He squawks, turning back the way they came, to confront one of the golden childs sneaking around the outcrop after them. “Oh. It’s just you. One of you.”
“What the…?” Jay rolls over, blinking at the silhouette of the golden childs against the bright sky. “Hey, what’s up, dude?”
“How long have you been following us?” The masked figure stops and drops their arms. The youth was obviously surprised to find his quarry here, but he shows no reaction to being caught out.
“Oh, that’s just swell. Do you think he started with us from the beginning? Like he secretly followed us through the tunnels and everything? Dude, you could have helped out sooo much, so many times. Do you even know we’re completely fucking lost and we’re just trying to get back? I mean, just show us the way. Which way…?What are some of their names? Uh, Lisica. Morska Vidra.”
“Yes. Let’s get some directions. Jidadaa. Wetchie-ghuy.” Pradeep points where Jay is pointing. “That way?”
The youth only watches them through his golden mask, their inscrutable bodyguard.
“Right.” Now Pradeep feels the urge to lead. “Let’s head out then.” He tries one last attempt at communication, pointing out their route. “We’re climbing the north ridgeline up there then heading west, and finally southeast. Back home, eh?”
But the youth hurries past them and turns to bar their way. He holds up his hands as if to block them.
“Oh, no way. You won’t let us climb that ridge? Why not?” In frustration Jay scrubs water into his hair and steps away from the pool. “ Come on, G money. We got to go that way. Got to.”
“Closed to foreigners?” Pradeep crosses the width of the spine to study the new valley that is revealed to the east and the main ridge overlooking it all. From this angle he can see a bit more of the ridge’s profile. Is that a thin filament of smoke he sees behind its central peak? “Aha. Look, Jay.”
“What? Where. A bird?”
“Smoke. I think.”
“Do not see it.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I do. Just the briefest… Well, anyway, do you think that’s what our masked protector here is doing? Keeping us from crossing paths with whoever is up there?”
“I mean, their entire job is to protect us from Wetchie-ghuy and Sherman the shaman as far as I know. So… yeah.”
“I guess we aren’t taking the north ridge.”
Jay can’t stand the sight of the winding valley at the base of their ridge to the east. Its cleft is hidden in darkness. “Bro, if we drop into whatever canyon that is down there I guarantee you we won’t get out of it before nightfall.”
“Well, contours. Maybe we don’t need to stay up on the ridge. But maybe we don’t need to drop all the way down into the creeks. Maybe this golden childs will let us advance the way we want if we just drop a hundred meters or so below the top and get back in the trees. We can still follow the ridge, just in a more hidden way.”
“I don’t know.” The complaint sounds querulous to Jay’s own ears. “That’s a shit ton more climbing. But yeah. Not like they’re giving us a choice.” So much for being home by dinner. “Well. It is what it is. Lead on.”
Ξ
“You know what I’m thinking?” Amy asks Triquet, who builds a platform beside her in their new camp. Amy has already finished her own platform and tent and worries there is still so much to be done in the waning hours of this day.
“Uhh. Tea. Got to be something about tea. Like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong? None for me, thanks.”
“No.” Amy straightens, peering at the patchy sky. “Laundry.”
From the far side of the camp, Mandy calls out, “Oh my god, yes! I’ve got a whole load!”
“Where? Like in the river?” Triquet frowns at it, the impassable natural barrier with its fast-moving dark currents dividing this side of the island from the other. “I don’t think the Lisicans would like that. Don’t want anyone hucking a spear at my head.”
“No, I was thinking we could just climb up its bank here until we found a little tributary. So many streams are running right now. Don’t have to get anywhere near the main river. Just a tiny dab of biodegradable soap and some elbow grease and we might even get them to line dry before it gets too dark.”
“I wish,” Miriam sighs, erecting the tent on a new platform, “that we could wash our sleeping bags. They are so foul. But there’s no way they’ll ever dry out here and then what do we do at night?”
“I have thought that again and again.” Esquibel emerges from within her clean room. “I dream of turning my sleeping bag inside out and strip-cleaning its fabrics with alcohol.”
“Okay, crew.” Amy empties her big expedition backpack into her tent, returning the articles of dirty clothing and accessories she should wash back into it. “You guys keep working. I’ll be the washing machine and dryer. Put your things in there with any special instructions. I can’t promise perfection, but…”
“Oh, you’re the best. Thank you so much. I think the weather might even hold all night.” Mandy appears with a small handful of things, followed by Triquet and Miriam and Esquibel. Amy’s pack is quickly full. She’s glad the others aren’t here to take her up on the offer. Laundry by hand takes forever. With any more to wash, Amy wouldn’t get back until midnight.
“You sure… you’re okay going alone?” Triquet has returned to building their platform.
“Who says I’ll be alone?” Amy nods at the golden childs who stand deeper in the woods above. Five of them had re-appeared once the villagers had left, watching over the new camp from a distance. And as Amy hauls the pack onto her back and buckles the waistbelt, one of the crouching masked youths rises to follow her.
She aims for the north edge of the meadow, where it gives way to trees. The black rushing river to her right is even more swollen than before. There is a point on its bank where the meadow ends and the pines begin. Amy pauses here for a bit. Such a delicious spot for a wildlife biologist, the intersection of three biomes in one place—forest, meadow, and water. Insect and fungal life probably exists in this ten square meters that exists nowhere else. If she has time, she will certainly collect every sample she can. Why, it’s like Plexity in miniature. “No. Actually…” Amy stands, reasoning aloud. “It’s the opposite of Plexity, which is a closed system. This transition zone has no boundaries at all. Its openness is its main characteristic. Huh.” Keeping the river to her right, she climbs up the north slope, a suddenly difficult outcrop of soil and brown pine needles sliding under her boots. The river begins to gargle beside her, dropping from the hills she’s climbing to the flat of the meadow behind. Maybe up this way she’ll find more falls.
The golden childs hovers behind her like a concerned parent, waiting patiently for her to navigate this crumbling obstacle. Amy reaches for the base of a sapling and hauls herself upward. Finally, the top. A bank of budding Osmaronia cerasiformis greets her on this bluff, while the river is now hidden in a cut that is a good five meters below, making all kinds of noise.
Amy pushes her way through the dense woody branches and wins through to a cloistered glade of clover and vetch, coated in rain. No more than a dozen paces wide, it is like a little chapel of light and life. The scene is so idyllic and pure that she doesn’t want to disturb it. Perhaps she should be like those Shinto monks who apologize to each creature they crush before taking a step.
The little glade bespells her. Unlike the transition zone below, this remote notch is far removed from the rhythms of the world. Purple blossoms and green leaves glow in the light of the setting sun. A pair of green-tailed towhees flicker in the branches of the pines above. Quiet and peace reign here. If she wasn’t the product of a modern education she would swear the glade is sentient.
During Amy’s childhood, Shinto had been a kind of strict folklore tradition she’d learned to hate. The rites and details of the rituals had seemed to always obscure the life it was supposedly praising. In Shinto, Japan has a mythological dimension, with gods and demons and fairies hiding in glens like this one. But Shinto is immutably Japanese, so there can be no such thing as a Lisican version of Shinto. It must just be its own magic here, its own unique power connected to place with its own secret name.
Amy has been pursuing this elusive nature of nature her entire life. Back in the 80s she had really gotten into complexity theory and for an entire generation the concept of emergent behavior was her specialty. Once complex systems reach a critical mass then new harmonics emerge, new behaviors and effects that are not always predictable based on the inputs, like steam from a kettle or human consciousness itself. Has that happened here in this glade? Has it… embodied somehow the essence of its nature? Does it have a giggling sylph or dryad hiding in the pines?
This elusive emergent property is the phenomenon of life itself, a rare miracle in the universe, firmly affixed to this tiny green and blue rock hurtling through the void. The study of emergence is the end result of the connections Plexity is trying to make. This is the evanescent heart of the matter here. Each scoop of dirt and rock that took billions of years to become soil and life has made unique interactions manifest in higher orders such as birds sipping nectar from beckoning flowers. And their song is its secret name…
Dark eyes stare back at Amy from within the stand of sword ferns across the glade. Wide and staring, round and beady… The inexact descriptors echo through her mind as she goes still. Yellow. Shiny. Quite certainly inhuman, perhaps canine? Oh, it’s a fox. Is that Morska Vidra’s fox? No… This one has a reddish lip and a narrow snout. The ears are different too, now that she can see them.
The little silver fox slowly waddles out from under the fern boughs onto the clover. Its belly is swollen and at first Amy thinks it’s diseased. Then she realizes she’s looking at a vixen, a female, and that she’s very pregnant.
This is wildly unheard of behavior. Foxes expecting litters like this will generally withdraw and be impossible to find. For one to seek her out is… preposterous. But then again, why do animals hide themselves to give birth? To protect against predators. If there are no predators of foxes on Lisica, then she can build a nest wherever she pleases. Astounding. But this one needs something from her? The pregnancy isn’t going well? Some veterinary surgery will be required out here in the middle of nowhere with no proper tools?
The vixen looks gravely at Amy with her yellow eyes. Then she turns and heads to the edge of the glade away from the creek, uphill. She pauses before she disappears once again into the ferns.
“You’re asking me…? Oh. You want me to come with you. Uh. Yeah. Hold on. I’ll just leave the bag here for a sec.”
Amy unbuckles the expedition backpack, trying to think if there’s anything she can use as rags if she finds herself attending a birth here. She snags a pair of someone’s socks from the top of it before closing it back up and resting it beside the bole of an old stump. There will be some crawling ahead, of that she is sure. Good thing her phone is fully charged if she needs light.
Ducking into the bushes, Amy disappears from view. After a long moment the fronds of the ferns stop shaking and return to stillness. Lavender butterflies flit across the opening. The towhees begin to sing again.
A moment later, the golden childs appears, looking for her. They find the backpack filled with dirty clothes and nothing else.
Ξ
Miriam finds Alonso in the meadow, studying the far hills. He has just enraged Maahjabeen again, who is stomping away from him back through the grass to what they’ve started calling pine camp.
Maahjabeen’s face is dark and her eyes are full of fire. She scowls at Miriam as she passes her. “Your husband can be so mean. He doesn’t have to be so mean.”
“Mean? Alonso?” Miriam blinks at her, but Maahjabeen doesn’t stop to hear her answer. She is too angry. “My Alonso? Never.”
Miriam joins her husband in the meadow. “You’re standing.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Alonso is preoccupied, though. Fighting with Maahjabeen always leaves such a bad taste in his mouth.
“What did you do to her this time?”
“Told her to stop making preparations to live in the sea cave and help us find missing people first and make this camp here.”
“You monster.”
“And I didn’t tell her she couldn’t do it. Oh, no. She would have killed me for that. I just told her to stop making it her top priority, especially when she will need help. We have no time to spare Amy or whoever for a dangerous kayak adventure. Not now.”
“She said living inland makes her crazy. I guess this is what she meant.” Miriam studies Alonso. Despite his current displeasure he is standing straight again and his shoulders have settled. This is how she always knew him before, but these last six weeks have been life with a fat old man hunched over his pain. Now he is starting to regain himself. Miriam never thought he might recover quite so quickly. “How’s the… what is it? Peanut butter and banana leaves treatment? How’s the wrap?”
“Not banana. Amy said maybe lily. It feels very odd. Warm, like warmer than it should, all the way inside. There is definitely an active compound or two in the Mayor’s treatment. I just hope there aren’t any serious side effects.”
“How long are you meant to leave it on?”
“I have no idea.”
They both laugh, a careworn sound. With a sigh, Alonso pulls Miriam close and they lean against each other, foreheads touching. The sky is filling once again with clouds, about to obscure the evening star. When it vanishes behind the rolling bank of gray the air begins to chill and they turn back, arm-in-arm, to camp.
There they find more arguing. Mandy storms from the clean room carrying her own bag. “She’s too much! I can’t take it any more. I’ll just—”
“You don’t have to like break up with me,” Esquibel exits as well, standing in the slit door entrance holding a white hand towel, “just because I asked you to move a few things that—”
“You’re hounding me! You’re always hounding me!” Mandy finds her own platform and drops her things on it. Now she’ll need to put up her own tent. At least maybe she can do it in peace.
“Well pardon me for being a doctor in a medical clinic!” Holding her hands up, Esquibel makes a visible effort to rein in her temper. “Perhaps I could have said it more nicely, and for that I am sorry, dearest Mandy, but please don’t make me apologize out here in front of everybody. It isn’t…”
“I’m not making you do a single thing. Ever notice that?” Mandy doesn’t know where this monumental irritation has come from. But she just can’t take the constant badgering and criticism any more. She needs her own space.
“You are…” Esquibel lifts a helpless hand and lets it drop, “…a wonderful partner. It is true. I am sorry.”
“Oh, Mandy loves you. It’s just, I think what she’s trying to say is that sometimes you…” Katrina offers in a helpful voice.
But Esquibel blazes once more. “Oh, don’t you dare put yourself in the middle of this. Not you.”
Katrina retreats, stung, the light of innocence dying in her eyes.
Miriam calls out, “Ladies, ladies. Please don’t let your frustration and exhaustion turn things sour. It’s just been a long few days. We’re frightened and at the ends of our ropes. That’s all. Things will be better after a nice hot dinner and full night’s rest.”
“Right. I can’t build my tent.” Mandy drops its aluminum poles with a clatter and stands, still quivering with indignation. “I have to cook dinner. Amy can’t. Jay isn’t even fucking here. It’s all on me. God! How did I end up with so much still to do?”
“I’ll put up your tent, sweetie,” Triquet offers. “I’d help you in the kitchen too but I’m not…”
“I can help in the kitchen.” Alonso moves toward it. He is not without pain and stiffness, but it is not corroding him. There is no timer on him standing up anymore. Now he has stamina. “Where is Amy, anyway?”
“Doing laundry.”
“Ohh… I have a few things… Where is she?”
Miriam points upstream. It is getting dark now and the slope is obscured in shadow. “Somewhere up there.”
“Well. Then I will wait until morning. Coming, Mandy. I will be your prep cook and dishwasher.”
Ξ
“So, this time we are neighbors, eh?” Flavia finally finishes putting her platform together, wrapping twine around the sawn pine branches and testing it with her feet. She smiles at Triquet. “Perhaps that means I can borrow some of your fabulous clothes.”
“Whenever you want, girlfriend.”
They work side-by-side for a long while in companionable silence. Triquet reaches for something more to say. Flavia is pretty much the only one Triquet hasn’t established a deeper relationship with and all they know of her is that she’s an Italian nerd who spends the whole day on her laptop. “You know, I have a cousin who’s a research math professor. Smart as a whip.”
Flavia isn’t too excited by this awkward small talk but she does appreciate the effort. “Oh? What does she study?”
“Uh. Mainly insurance? She wrote a book called ‘The Hidden History of Deductibles.’ Fascinating stuff, I’m sure.”
“Well, it can be. There is good work being done characterizing human behavior using maths. When done properly, it is actually kind of scary. We really aren’t that much more complex than a paramecium, if you get right down to it. People can be reduced to a few simple equations and interactions no problem. ”
But for a humanist such as Triquet this is a bit much. “We can? Just a few? I always thought I was a bit more… I don’t know, mystifying than that. I mean, in my case, I got a little coy with my internal motivations years ago when everyone tried to convince me that my choices don’t make sense.”
“Oh, they do. You are just… Triquet my friend you are outside the frame of reference. I would say most researchers are running maths simulations that you do not properly fit into. But the problem is not with the maths, it’s with their definitions.”
Triquet makes a face. This reductionism doesn’t sit right with them. As an archaeologist, the historical record of humanity is a rich and bewildering tapestry of unique characters and actions that can never be so neatly encapsulated. “So you’re telling me that all my behavior is… computable? That the reason I built a platform here as opposed to against another tree—say, that one—is just a basic function of mathematics?”
Flavia shrugs and pushes her hair from her face, taking a break from erecting her tent. “I mean, sure. Don’t you see? There are a finite number of factors that caused you to choose that tree. Each factor has values that can be assigned and those values…”
“But what if some of those factors remain hidden? Maybe I don’t quite know why I chose this tree. Maybe my father was killed by an oak tree and I’ve like subconsciously avoided them for years.”
“Your knowledge of the factors that shape your decision are not necessary for computation to occur. The calculations still happen independently of your self-regard.” She suppresses a sigh. To Flavia, this ontological perspective is painfully self-evident and at this point in her life, automatic. But she has also had enough of these conversations to know how unpopular they are. “Look. A lot of people thinks this means we must live in a horrible clockwork universe without free will, but I am not saying that. I am just saying these maths are the tools we use to make our way in the world. But there is no destined solution these tools are leading you toward. They are just another way we make decisions and express them.”
Triquet shrugs agreeably. “Okay. Then let’s say we’re able to identify all these factors that make me choose this particular pine tree to build my platform around. It makes sense, your numbers all add up, and the results are clear. But what if, at the last moment, I decide to randomly choose another tree. What if I stop what I’m doing for no reason at all, and just build a platform around this little sapling instead? Then what?”
Flavia narrows her eyes and expels her breath through her nose, trying not to groan aloud in exasperation. Why must maths be so hard for people to understand? “It is still a rational expression. Even if it is randomly generated. Especially if it is. If you roll the dice for your decision, that is very simple arithmetic. We generate random values all the time in my field.”
“But it isn’t rolling dice, it’s…” Triquet puts their hand to their heart, trying to find words for the chaotic welter of emotions and desires that flow through them. “My heart isn’t made of numbers. It’s made of feelings, many of them contradictory, yeah? I’m afraid that all you…” Ah, but how to mention ‘computer nerds’ without hurting her feelings? “It’s just that life isn’t as neat as you want it to be. Look at the golden childs. Why are they protecting us? Some kind of prophecy? Why do they believe in the prophecy? Faith, I guess. But how do you measure faith? How do you turn it into a quadratic equation or whatever? Don’t you feel like you’d miss out on essential elements of the whole thing?”
Flavia shakes her head no. “Quadratic equations are not the best tool for these jobs because they are univariate. No. Listen. This is a linguistic thing I know. The ‘es’ in ‘essential’ is one of the oldest roots in Indo-European languages, from thousands of years before the Latin ‘essentialis.’ It means ‘to be.’ So our essence is that which makes us be. Not how we imagine ourselves in a different universe based on magical thinking, not how we wish to be, but how we are in this physical world. The physical world can only be described by physics, which means maths, so…” she shrugs, “I do not know what to tell you except this is starting to sound like the arguments I have with Maahjabeen about god.”
“No, I’m not like a religious…” Triquet objects, then falls silent, realizing that the subjectivity they are championing will eventually lead to that spiritual conclusion. Religion. Myth. Magic. Triquet’s always given a kind of formal academic honor to those concepts, making sure that they are properly respectful of the cultures they study without needing to make a final decision about whether those myths and religions are actually provably true. But if it came down to it, does Triquet actually believe in any of the the ritual traditions their subjects practice? When the Yanomami of Brazil eat their hallucinogenic Yopo plants do they really gain access to hekura spirits that rule the physical world? When orphans in Crimea have nightmares about Baba Yaga does the old crone actually manifest or is it just their imagination? And what about those beliefs that conflict, such as when sects of Christianity turn on each other like in, oh, The Hundred Years War? Are both of their interpretations of the Bible true? Neither? Can two contradictory things be true at the same time? Can things be true only on the local or individual level? Perhaps acts of faith are the opposite of universal, especially in this age of tribalism. “I have always…” Triquet gathers their thoughts, sitting on the end of their platform struggling to put their unstated policy into words. “I guess the way I try to think about it is that we are each of us different kinds of magicians.”
“What? No.”
“Yes! Haven’t you ever thought of things this way? I had Dia, an old great-aunt who swore she had dreams that could tell the future. Did you have anybody in your family like that growing up?”
“Of course. In Italy, anyone over the age of sixty has some kind of supernatural power.”
“Right. And our first reaction to Dia’s dreams would always be disbelief. Cynicism. My parents would argue with her about her crackpot soothsaying dreams and astrology readings long after dinner was over. And at first I was on my parents’ side.”
“Only at first? Then what?”
“Then it occurred to me one day that maybe universal laws just aren’t so universal. I know that my dreams can’t tell the future. But can I really authoritatively assert that nobody’s dreams can tell the future? Maybe that’s just the kind of magic that Dia can practice. My magic is, like, in my costumes. I can turn an entire party on its head by showing up dressed as Cher. And I don’t mean that it’s the sequins and lipstick. It’s that I cast a spell, honey, and people fall under that spell and it really works. What’s your magic?”
“My magic? Eh.” Flavia tries to forcibly shift her perspective for the sake of this conversation. “Alonso with his big Cuban family magic. Katrina with her DJ magic. I mean, aren’t those just other words for wine and drugs?”
“You know there’s more to it than that.”
“Is there? I am Flavia. I have no magic. Full stop. I am entirely a creature made of numbers. Is that magical to you? Because to me it is not. It is just like graduate-level seminar statistics. These things you are talking about are mathematical probabilities, not voodoo.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that, in my humble estimation, I can’t be certain of the empirical universality of anything. Sure, every star we’ve discovered so far fuses hydrogen into heavier elements. But does that mean all stars will, everywhere, forever? I can’t know that, so I have to stay humble and not get tempted by calling things absolutes. Ultimately my subjectivity trumps all. I mean, I can’t be a religious worshipper because I have no faith. But for those who do, maybe their universe is truly so different that I honestly can’t speak to whether they are actually talking to their god or not. I just don’t have that talent. But I do have other talents. You have your numbers, but that doesn’t preclude Maahjabeen’s access to Allah or whatever. That’s just her own inimitable talent. The Lisicans. They live in such a different reality we can’t just slap our Western number system, our analytics, on them and say we get it. We’ve been trying to understand their life and culture for six fucking weeks and gotten no closer.”
“Maybe they have their own maths.”
This stops both of them, the notion that all Lisican behavior might be described by an indigenous mathematical structure that is separate and unique from the numerical traditions they know.
Triquet rubs their chin, mind sparking with half-formed insights. “Well there’s another career’s worth of study right there. No, it’s just that I’ve always given space to people and their traditions. Respecting them allows us to see more of the humanity in our subjects. In other words, post-colonial guilt, and lots of it. See, to me, the very definition of humanity is something that transcends math and science. This is why in every one of our cultures we talk of spirit and soul. There is something else to it, in ways that we all interpret in our own unique subjective ways. I mean, we had some pretty wise ancestors and they tried to teach us things, yeah? So like celebrate diversity, sister. We are all of us, all eight billion humans, individuals with unique patterns and points of view.”
Flavia laughs. “Or, as your aunt the insurance researcher has proven, we are no more than five major personality types with billions of us fundamentally identical. Not that there is anything wrong with that… That is how biological agents interact with environments to create what look like unique phenomena, but are really just the same base integers in different combinations, and our own ability to remember these patterns or even correctly identify them is very bad because really we are still just a bunch of apes.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.” Triquet scratches their ribs in caricature of a primate. “Oo oo. Aah aah.”
Ξ
In the middle of the night her eyes open, belatedly realizing Amy never came back from doing laundry. Is that true? She’s pretty sure it is. Casting off her sleeping bag with a silent curse, she slips from her tent with her phone in hand. She pads over to Amy’s tent and shines its light within. Yep, still empty.
But someone is awake. Through the trees she can see their dim silhouette out on the meadow, standing tall and silent in the gloom. Stepping closer, she turns the light off and peers through the obscuring branches to see if it is who she fears it might be.
Clouds stripe the sky, their edges lit by an intermittent moon. Shadows roll across the meadow. When they retreat the figure is gone. No… Just crouching, closer to the trees now. And someone else is with them, a small dark figure dressed all in black.
She eases forward to see what they’re doing. Their heads lean together for a long moment and then the second figure rises to a crouch and scurries away. But this is no native, and definitely no one in her crew. They move like some lethal video game character, like an assassin or a spy. After a moment they are swallowed by the shadows. The second figure stands, tall and dark.
Esquibel.
Wrapping her black coat around herself, Esquibel steps quietly back into camp. She wishes for nothing more than a long hot shower to wash all this grime away. But she will not have one of those for two more weeks. She must stay filthy until then.
Stepping from the quiet grasses of the meadow to the dry twigs and needles of the pine forest requires all her care. She takes it extremely slowly, lifting and dropping each foot in slow motion. The camp is ahead, cloaked in darkness. If she can just get back to her cot in the clean room she will know she is home free.
It had taken so much nattering of Mandy to get her to leave her side tonight the pangs of guilt poke at her, again and again. Well. She is doing all this for Mandy and the others. Someday they will hear of her sacrifices and maybe understand. And now that it is over she can go back to treating Mandy like the princess she is.
Resisting an impulse to cross the camp and join Mandy’s lovely sleeping form right now, Esquibel takes another careful step.
Wait. Someone is there, in the darkness, watching her. Esquibel is sure of it. She can’t see a figure but she knows deep in her bones they are there. She stops, like a fool, her hand straying to the back of her waistband, and stares at where their eyes must be.
“Identify yourself.” Esquibel’s whisper tries to sound forceful without waking anyone else up.
But whoever it is doesn’t speak or move. They only dwell in the center of the darkness. She can’t even see their eyes.
Esquibel hesitates. Is it one of the golden childs crouching in the bushes? Almost certainly. Or maybe one of those odious shamans who are causing so much trouble. “Go ahead. Just try to kidnap me,” she mutters. “Just try it.”
Still no movement. She can see nothing but the dark. It’s just a presence she can sense, an unbearable prickling a millimeter under her skin. Someone is there. Isn’t there?
Or is it just her imagination? Another dimension of her rampant guilt? No, there is no one there, surely. She took every precaution. These people are all dead tired. None of them are awake. And none of them crouch in the dark like this, like a panther… No. This is just her fear of being found out.
“It isn’t what you think,” she mutters, surprised at how much she needs to confess to this knot of darkness. “I am not doing this for myself, but for those I love. I am not a traitor.”
This is the one thing Esquibel told herself she could never do. Say the words aloud. As long as she keeps them within the confines of her own skull she is safe, never to be discovered. But she didn’t know how difficult that would be, how it would contort every one of her thoughts and actions to hide the little secret inside, like that one unknown dark sliver Pradeep found in the knot of seaweed. She is bloated by her secret and just needs the relief of the pressure. Just a bit, just by whispering her secret to a spot of darkness.
“The money is good but it’s not about that. We’re playing a very deep game here. A very necessary game with geopolitical interests. And besides, it’s just the Japanese. They’re harmless.”
The darkness absorbs the sentences. But a bitter judgment still somehow emanates from it. Esquibel can tell her words are insufficient. Espionage is espionage, no matter how you cut it. Ah, well. She feels no better for confessing. “What a bloody mess.”
Esquibel shakes her head and finally drops her hand from her waistband. She steps past the knot of darkness feeling wretched and misunderstood. Thoughts of her cold hard cot fill her head. Yes, oblivion is all she can hope for now.
And then, to her utter dreadful surprise, a whisper emerges from the darkness, a voice she knows. “Fucking hell. I knew you were up to something. Well, guess what. I switched the USB drive.”
Chapter 42 – A Basketball Game
October 14, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
42 – A Basketball Game
“Jay. Jay, stop…” Pradeep has been repeating the words for a long time now but this time they work. Jay stumbles to a halt in front of him, seeing it too. Silver light shines indirectly into their tunnel. “We did it. We got out.”
Jay’s breathing is ragged. Holy hell. He took one look at those demon eyes and got the F out of there. Who knows how long he’s been charging forward, dragging Pradeep behind him? But now he can smell the plants and the soil and the fresh air leaking in from ahead. “Jeee-zus, this acid is sooo strong. It’s been like a seventeen hour trip so far. Thanks a fucking bunch, Katrina.”
“Let us stop, please.” Pradeep removes his hand from Jay’s belt, where he held on for dear life. The webbing has cut into his palm and it is a burning pain that keeps him from otherwise thinking clearly. “Why are you so crazed? What did you see, anyway?”
Jay turns back to regard the darkness. Yep, the demons are still lurking back there, staring malevolently at the two escapees. The tunnel’s darkness encompasses one of their infernal hells, with tiers upon tiers of crypts in the pit’s walls, countless fiends staring out. How did he and Pradeep ever survive that? “Uh, there’s, uh, something down here. But we got away. Lots of somethings.”
“What, like… badgers?”
The question is so random and ludicrous Jay can’t help but wheeze with laughter. Oh, yeah. He feels that in his ribs. “The fuck? Badgers? There’s no badgers on this island. Dude. Don’t be dense. We’d have seen sign or spoor by now. No. Demons. Now come on. Maybe there’s some water out here.”
Jay continues forward. Pradeep stands there, dumbstruck, feeling a fool for running around all night fleeing Jay’s acid trip. Damn. Well at least he didn’t lose the bloody moron. And they did finally find a way out. But where are they?
They emerge from a natural crevice on a nearly vertical slope, the opening almost completely obscured by fern fronds. Nearby redwoods are gigantic black columns against an empty sky. Framed between two of the largest is a nearly full moon. Its harsh light bathes this narrow canyon in monochrome light and shadow.
Jay blinks. He’s been underground so long his eyes are super sensitive. This moonlight is like full daylight to him. “I can’t even remember… the last time I saw the moon.” The cloud cover of Lisica hadn’t been getting to him. He hadn’t thought it had, at least. But seeing the full clear night sky again, with the vaulting Milky Way and planets shining in all their brilliant hues… It rocks him. He stumbles from the crevice, wisps of black demon smoke dispersing in the crystal air around his head like bats winging away from their cave. Free. He groans aloud and raises his hands to the shimmering sky. “Free!”
Pradeep claps his hands over his mouth. The shining face of the moon is a profound sight, so bright he can’t look directly at it. The ground falls away before him, purple and black, with dazzling patches of silver that catch the light. He can’t navigate through that. Finding a solid foothold and handhold where he stands, he carefully leans out and looks upslope. No, that is even worse, a massive stone overhang disappearing out of sight above. He’s a climber but he isn’t a reckless fool. That would be like five dynos in a row just to get up what he can see, and his arms are already blown from wrestling all night with Jay. “So… down?”
“Down?” Jay shakes his head and frowns at the sudden motion. His thoughts are clear again but a massive headache is starting up. Oh, fuck. Not now. Not here. Owww! He’s gonna kill Katrina when he sees her again. Absently, his fingers find a fresh joint and his lighter. Soon he is sparking up.
Pradeep exclaims at the sudden flare of light then hisses in disapproval. “Put that away. No idea who might see us here.”
“Good point.” Jay takes a huge hit and rubs the space between his brows with a knuckle. Now he needs water more than ever. His throat is like made of sand and the hot smoke goes down like fire. “Well, water is always down.” And with no more consideration, he drops onto a shelf he can barely see about three meters below.
Pradeep mutters anxiously, his legs trembling. Then he grits his teeth and follows with a halfhearted crouching leap.
Now the weed finally does its job and Jay’s poor brain unlocks. He is able to escape his mind for the first time in ages and reside in his body. Drop. Scramble. Swing. This is real exercise again, the good kind. Not that claustrophobic hell with Pradeep. This is bouldering by moonlight, yo. Not the first time he’s done such a thing. Come on, demons. See if you can catch me now. He patrols the edge of the shelf, then finds a bit of a route on a more shallow slope to his left. Down he goes, his shoes filling with sandy soil.
The ferns are thick. They give way to rhododendron. This is a wet canyon. Jay can tell just by the plant life. More redwoods tower above, stabilizing the cliff walls with their immense roots. They are so slippery, though, and Jay falls from one network into the duff below, sliding into a blackberry bush, where he’s pierced by a hundred thorns. “Oww. Watch that, Prad. It… Fuck! Ow!”
Pradeep perches on the redwood roots above, listening to Jay crash and bellow in the underbrush, all attempts at stealth forgotten. The last thing he wants is to continue this descent. “Shouldn’t there be a traverse across somewhere? Are you sure we want to get to the bottom?”
“Ah. Ahh…” Jay groans as a dozen thorns or more break off in his skin. But he’s still got to push through. He’s past the thick of it now. Just a few more sliding steps, with a few more thorns in his calf, then he’s free. He calls back up to Pradeep. “Yeah, dude. The bottom’s where the water is. Wouldn’t even be a canyon here without water. ” He tilts his gaze back down into the darkness below, the trees obscuring the way down from the moon, and mutters to himself, “And I need a drink bad.”
“But then how will we ever get back up?”
Pradeep’s voice is distant. Jay stops and struggles to find his patience. Can’t lose his buddy now. “No getting back up, homie. Down and out. We’ll have to find another way back.”
“Ugh. I do not like that answer.”
“Come on, Prad. Swing yourself over this way. You can avoid the blackberries if you drop over here. Just watch out for rocks.”
Jay takes another drag on his joint. Even though it majorly tears up his throat it sure does good things to his mental state. He’s back in business now. And if he strains to listen he can hear the gurgle of a creek. “Fuck yeah, there’s a creek. This is a deep canyon and that was a big storm.” Jay drops onto a boulder and hurries down a broadening slope into a dark grove. Finally. The redwoods hold the soil here on a forest floor that is flattening out. Mossy banks and ferns are barely visible in the tiny bit of light that penetrates.
Jay worms his way forward, using the toes of one foot to sense his path forward. There is no path, just a jumble of fallen logs covered with moss and clumps of ferns. But the water is closer now, a full liquid gargle that promises an end of thirst. It urges him forward until he is at its side hanging over the wide creek, the dangling roots of the redwoods an impassable barrier above the rushing water. He needs to find a sandbar or something. Unless he fully throws himself in the creek he can’t reach it from here. And he isn’t willing to do that yet. He just got his phone back, for fuck’s sake.
But he’s so thirsty.
Jay pulls back and picks his way further downstream, the thorns in the heels of his hand and the skin of his calf stabbing him with every move. But finally he finds a spot where the dirt slopes steeply to the water. By holding onto a root and lowering himself headfirst he’s able to dip his chin into the frigid stream and gulp down some of the best water he’s ever tasted. Drenching his front, the cold sobers him further. Finally he has to pull away, even though he feels like he could drink forever.
When Jay regains his balance he finds Pradeep above, navigating down to him with his phone light. “Water,” Jay calls out, perhaps unnecessarily. But it is the only thing that matters.
Pradeep pauses, his head whirling. This precipitous slope is nearly as bad as being in the tunnels. At least in there he had no chance of pitching himself forward and drowning in a rain-swollen creek. “Where are we?” he demands. “Which way should we go?”
“You think I know?” Jay’s answer is querulous, followed by a sharp laugh that verges on hysterics. “Feels like I’ve spent half my waking moments on this fucking island lost in the dark.”
“Yes. Well. We need to make a choice, and I am not going to drop down any further to you until…”
“You ain’t thirsty? Damn. Well, it’s a simple call. Downstream. Duh. That’s where we’ll eventually like get back to where we once belonged.”
“Okay. Which way is that?”
“To the right.”
“And what is upstream?”
“Well, come on, don’t stop using your brain here. That must be the high country, right? The ridgeline that collected all this water.”
“No… I am asking… Wasn’t it on a hill top that Triquet escaped from? And Flavia? The shamans are above somewhere.”
“All the more reason to go down. Oh, fuck. I soaked the last of my joint. Goddamnit. Now I’m gonna have to roll a new one. Shine your light—”
“No! I will not!” In response, Pradeep turns off his light. “There is only two percent battery left. I was just getting very angry about how you made me use more to come down here. We can’t use the last on your drug habit. It’s the drugs that got us into this mess!”
“Fine. I’ll just suffer in silence then. At least until we find a patch of moonlight. Come on.”
They follow the course of the creek as well as they can from the slope above, about ten meters up. But the canyon walls are cut by endless rills and streams of side canyons that bring water down to add to the larger creek. It is in the second of these that Pradeep finds a spot where he can drink. And Jay is right. It is amazingly restorative. Now the prospect of hiking the entire rest of the night doesn’t seem quite so daunting. And the moonlight certainly helps.
Jay certainly thinks so. He’s crouched down and balanced his kit on his knee. After carefully rolling a pair of joints, one for energy and one for relaxation, he slides them into a dry pocket. Then with the last of the dust he makes a little binger that he smokes to ash. “We might want to find a spot to hole up for the rest of the night.”
Pradeep shrugs. “Let us walk while we can.”
The canyon eventually opens onto a wider valley. The trees do not cover the entire forest floor, leaving wide patches of silver light they pick their way through. The creek has flooded here, filling the flat ground with pools and puddles, making progress difficult. Eventually they have to give up trying to keep their shoes and pants dry, and start wading along its verge in the icy water.
Finally, a solid rise clears the floodwaters ahead like an island, featuring a pair of giant bay trees and little more. Pradeep throws himself down onto its dry banks, panting from the exertion and the anxiety, needing a break from banging his shins against submerged logs and squinting into the dark. Now he’s got a headache too.
Jay’s is also getting worse. He worries about the return of his headaches. This would be the worst place for them, by far. “At least it’s dark,” he grunts, kneading the back of his neck.
“What is wrong?”
“Migraines are worse in bright light. So at least I got that going for me, which is nice.”
“You have a migraine? Shit. I didn’t know you got migraines.” Pradeep makes a worried face. His mother has this curse. He learned early on what to do for her. “Here. Turn a bit. Now breathe.” Pradeep buries his knuckles in the straps of muscle connecting Jay’s back and neck. He certainly has a lot more mass than Pradeep’s mom but hopefully the principle is the same. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Pradeep’s strong fingers are like fangs piercing his flesh. But Jay knows to keep still and relaxed if it’s going to be helpful. He’s just got to breathe through the added pain. “Yeah,” he grunts. “Got them pretty much under control. Except I guess when I wrestle with demons on acid.”
“Underground. In the cold and dark.”
“With no food or water.”
“It does make sense. Jay, I’m worried.”
“Not now, chief. Trying to clear my mind of worry.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep has no such avenue for himself. “My mind is primarily composed of worry, perhaps 98% by weight. I’m only thinking about this creek. If we are on the right bank, and it is eventually the same river that divides the two warring villages, then which bank do we want to be on?”
“Oh, man, are you trying to break my brain?” But Jay knows this is a valid concern. There’s no point in fighting their way through hours of forest only to throw themselves on the spearpoints of the Katóok tribe, after Jay had sworn to never return to their territory. “Yeah, let’s see. Downstream is like this… We stay on this side. Yeah, we’re on the correct bank. The good side, the west side where they won’t kill us. Pretty sure.”
“Good. Because I don’t think we can cross that creek anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s like the whole idea about it, for sure. No crossing allowed. And I guess that holds true all the way up to the top of the island. Fucking weirdos.”
“So hungry.” Pradeep finds a fallen log that would make a good chair. He sits and takes off his shoes, clearing them of all the debris.
“For sure. You think I can get a pizza delivered?” Jay decides if he can’t eat he’ll smoke more weed. Sativa it is. Bolster his energy.
“Oh. No.” Pradeep’s words are so harrowed that they interrupt Jay, mid-inhalation. “It’s him.”
“Him? Who him?” Then Jay’s eyes adjust from the flare of the lighter to spy the dim hulking figure here on this rise with them, just a few paces away. “Oh, is it that Wetchie-ghuy fucker? What up, dude? You sure been causing us a metric fuck-ton of trouble.” With force, Jay blows the remainder of his smoke at the distant figure, who remains still, watching them.
Pradeep groans. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand… How could I know what he looked like in my mind if I’d never seen him in real life? And now when I see him, he looks the same? How did he get inside my mind?”
“Don’t let him fool you, Prad. This dude’s got tricks.”
“No. It is no trick. A bargain has been made. Somehow. He knows it as well as I. And now he is coming to collect.”
“The fuck he is. Sit down, Prad. Dude doesn’t get to just roll up and claim people. It doesn’t work like that. The only reason you needed any help in the first place is because his buddy tried to kill you with poison. Fuck both of them. You owe him nothing.”
Now Wetchie-ghuy holds out a loop of braided leather. They both know what that is for. Pradeep’s shoulders slump, accepting his fate. He knew Maahjabeen and his exciting new career were too good to be true. He just knew it, deep inside. And there is a gleam in that old man’s eye, a curious little opening into a larger truth. This is the siren song Pradeep heard in the darkness last night that originally made him leave the sub. It is here, in this shaman’s knowledge, the universal truths Pradeep has always sought. See? This transaction has further benefits for him. He will only sit at his new master’s feet and take in whatever crumbs and morsels Wetchie-ghuy cares to share. It will be worth it…
“Prad! I said sit the fuck back down.” Jay pulls on Pradeep, who has risen again to go to the awful old man. But Jay has another idea. “No. Wait. Let’s make a deal, Wetchie-ghuy. You want my boy but you can’t have him. You can’t have either of us. But I got something even better. Bigger juju, dude. Look.” And Jay gets between the shaman and the man he has claimed, blowing another billow of smoke at Wetchie-ghuy.
The shaman coughs, waving his hand in front of his face, then he mutters something in reaction and cocks his head.
“Yeah, smells good, don’t it? Here’s the deal. You can have the joint. But I get to keep Pradeep. Right? Fair and final, yeah?”
Wetchie-ghuy lifts a gnarled hand. Jay puts the joint in it. “That’s it. Smoke up, bro. Like you saw me do. Then we’re square.”
Wetchie-ghuy inhales, the end of the joint crackling cherry red. He does not exhale.
Ξ
Katrina is in a febrile dream. She is so thirsty. There’s a park of red sandstone near her house she’s been going to as a child but now it’s drought season and all its pools are dusty dry, like the inside of her poor wretched mouth.
Someone wakes her. She gratefully pulls herself out of the vision. It was absolutely no fun, filled with loops of thought she’s been around and around so many times they’ve worn grooves in her brain. And now she’s awake, the curving shadows of the sub’s hull over her head, waking in the Captain’s bed with Alonso sitting at her side. He looks at her with paternal care, holding water.
“Here.”
He feeds it to her like a bottle to a baby. She slurps greedily, a rivulet running down her chin and pooling in the hollow of her neck. Finally she breaks away. “Thanks, mate. Glorious.”
“You were muttering for water and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeh. Brilliant. What time is it?”
“It is near morning. And we are still alive. So.” He pats her head and gives her a pitying smile. “How is the come down? Bad?”
“The worst. Usually I have a lot more control of how my trips end. Lots of hot water and vitamins and meditation. Not… Well. Whatever the fuck that was.”
Alonso’s response is a full belly laugh. He smooths the fine strands of blonde hair away from her forehead. “Yes. The bugout. The big bugout of May Second. It will go down in history.”
“And somehow you’re in a good mood about it?” Katrina sits up, somewhat resentful of Alonso’s tone. Then she remembers how irritable she will be today and remembers to keep it to herself.
“Yes, well… I have always, during crisis, you know, at least before the last crisis, the big one, the long one, the five years…” He shrugs, re-setting himself. “I was always at my best in a crisis. I can put my feelings away and take care of all the problems and needs of others. So. My colleague asks for water, I get water. My Doctor tells me to hide in a sub, I hide in a sub. And I take care of people. It is one of the things I do best. You wouldn’t know it from meeting me now, but I assure you it is true. Is there anything else I can get you?”
Katrina shakes her head no. “Any sign of… you know, anyone? Jay and Pradeep? The golden man? Russian Marines?”
“No one. Maahjabeen and Flavia convinced Esquibel to move her barrier further up the tunnel so they could visit the sea cave. So they were gone for like an hour. But they’re back now. Everyone else is still asleep.”
“He was real, you know. It wasn’t the drugs. We really did see the golden man and he really did tell us the Russians were coming. I mean, Pradeep and Jay didn’t just vanish for fun.”
“We know. And we know which way our two wayward sons went. But nobody is allowed to follow them. It’s a new tunnel.”
“New tunnel. Fucking fantastic.” Katrina groans and falls back against the wall, bumping her head. “Yeh. Coming back online now. Ah, sobriety. You were not missed. Any coffee anywhere?”
“Not yet. But I can start a pot. Just not in here. The ventilation is not so good.”
“So like no boots tramping around above? No gunfire or…?”
Alonso shrugs. “The bunker’s concrete floor is too solid.”
Katrina looks more closely at his silhouette. “Are you sure I was just out for a few hours? Not like… days?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just skip this whole unpleasant episode and wake up when it’s safe again. Why? What is it?”
“You’re… I mean, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but you look really good, Doctor Alonso. I think you’ve lost some weight.”
“This is quite the time to turn into a flatterer.” Alonso stands straighter, sucking in his belly. “Well, a man can only drink so much wine. Really? You think so?”
“I really do.” The transformation is fairly striking. His hair is growing out as well, a leonine mane of silver and black sweeping back from his forehead. And his jawline has returned.
“You are so sweet. Let me just get the water going and I will be right back for more compliments.” With a soft chuckle he turns and vanishes, leaving Katrina alone with her chaotic thoughts.
He returns a moment later, bearing a bag of dried fruit and a handful of supplements. “Here. Electrolytes for what you lost. And more water. Your coffee is coming.” He makes sure she swallows the pills and drinks more water and eats a handful of fruit. “Now. Tell me more nice things about how I look.”
Katrina laughs for his sake, her insides made of sand. She doesn’t think she can sleep any more but she also can’t offer much more in the way of social niceties. “You do look fab. I love your hair.”
Alonso passes a self-conscious hand over his curls. “You are such a doll. You have no idea how vain I am.”
Katrina pauses, mid-sip. She lowers the water bottle and looks at him. “Now I’m remembering my last great insight from last night. And it’s a real doozy. Are you ready?”
Alonso isn’t sure he likes the strange look in Katrina’s eyes. “Yes, I suppose, if it has merit.”
“Well, not much, but it’s still interesting regardless. So… I guess in the back of my mind I was chewing on our data collection issues and how the clock is really ticking down and we’re no closer to getting what we need for Plexity.”
Alonso leans back. “Yes, I have been thinking very much about the same thing. And my solutions so far are not very good. Mostly about hiding here when they come to pick us up so I have enough time to finish my initial assay of the island. What is your solution?”
“Well, it’s really just kind of a philosophical word game my brain was playing while tripping. Semantics. But, I mean, remember how the basis of Plexity is the interconnectedness of all life?”
“Certainly.”
“And how we’ve been working our asses off trying to get as many samples of life and examples of that interconnection as we can? Well, what I started thinking… Right! It started as a way to extend the deadline, like what you’re saying. And in my cracked-out state I was tripping on the possibility of a terrarium, you know those glass bowls with all the plants and a bit of sand and water and—?”
“Yes, I know what a terrarium is.”
“So on acid, you can get really obsessive. And I was imagining stuffing my own terrarium with all the samples we couldn’t get to on Lisica, so that when we left we’d still have a tiny little replica of the island we could work on. You know? Not that it would be representative or accurate or…”
“Well, yes, that is the thing, isn’t it? You have forty species in your little glass globe and that can’t replicate the richness—or, rather, by the choice of which species we bring we could absolutely misrepresent the baseline activity for everything in the bowl and also misrepresent the profile for life on the island.”
“Yes. Of course. That’s why I said it has little worth… Anyway. It’s really nothing more than a thought experiment but what if we lean a little bit more into that interconnectedness concept?”
“What do you mean? How?”
“Well, like,” Katrina grabs Alonso’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his. “Think about, I don’t know, the seagulls.”
“You can’t fit a seagull in a terrarium.”
“Yeh, that’s kinda what I’m getting at. So maybe we don’t need to. The seagull eats what, fish? Then it discards the carcass and flies away. But the fish guts give rise to bacteria in the water. So then we come along and harvest the bacteria and find proteins in it that came from fish blood. We also find traces of seagull saliva. But we only have the bacteria.”
“I don’t think even the Dyson readers are this powerful.”
“No, mate. No chance. But gentle reminder: I was tripping balls. And like I said, this may not have much merit. But here’s another word we should be looking at more closely: life.”
“Okay. Life. Are you saying expand the definition?”
“Well, sort of. I mean that we keep talking about life on Lisica but we keep forgetting to add a whole new component: us. We are life on Lisica. You and me and the whole gang. And we are making impacts on it and it is making impacts on us. Maahjabeen and Pradeep getting poisoned. I mean, now that we’re fishing the lagoon we’re consuming all the local bugs.” Katrina has been speaking to her own toes, her legs stuck straight out before her on the bed. She hazards a glance at Alonso and finds that his gaze is troubled. “So then I realized we don’t need no stinkin’ terarria. We are the fragile glass globes containing all the bits and bobs of Lisica within us. The bacteria, the proteins, the dynamic interactions. They’re already all inside us. It’s just a shame we didn’t like start with bloodtest baseline records or something. That would make it much easier at the end to compare one result with the other…”
“Yes, now that is something that would be very interesting. I wonder if any of the military hospitals I stayed in have kept any of my many blood samples? Probably not. Because I could get a blood draw taken when we get back and I would be very curious about the results. Not your results, with the thirdhand bacteria and proteins. There is just… I think you are dramatically overestimating the specificity and sensitivity of modern instruments—”
“Yeh, that’s why I agreed there wouldn’t be very many merits.” Katrina clamps her mouth shut and puts a leash on her irritation. But it’s too late. Alonso registers it. And now she’s embarrassed. Doing drugs around squares, or even just a bunch of sober people, is hard work. You can’t put any of the downsides onto them, not like if you were actually sick or heartbroken. This was your choice and now the resulting shit is all your own to handle, haiku triplet. Just keep your mouth shut until you can be nice again.
Yet Katrina’s next impulse is to carry on. “Sorry. I mean, it’s definitely science fiction, but it really is the ultimate goal of Plexity, eh? That we’re not just interconnected, we’re like intershot with all the matter and the interactions that wash through us. Collisions like galaxies in my bones and blood. But the work we’re doing here will someday allow it. The specificity will be there. The sensitivity to detect quantum fluctuations that happened in a faraway star system but eventually flutter my heart. Linear thinkers like talking about the butterfly effect but nobody wants to discuss the billion butterflies effect, the billion-butterflies-every-second-since-the-big-bang-effect. They think it all just dissolves into noise but—”
“No!” Alonso halts her train of thought with an upraised finger. “It dissolves into life! That is the nature of life, all those interactions hitting us from a million different angles at all times, enriching us and mutating us and giving complexity to every subatomic unit and all the higher-order processes they create. Yes. I have nibbled around the edges of those thoughts. And I am glad you’re the one who took the acid and had the experience yourself so now I will not need to. It does not seem to have made you happier.”
“It just makes me wonder what we’re doing here. It’s really easy to lose the thread of our work when we collect and record and all data just kind of generalizes out to an infinite number of bits, none more interesting than the other. But, oh well. Just thought I should share the vision before I lost it. Thought it might help.”
Alonso’s eyes are dark, introspective. “It does, actually. I have been having trouble with this deadline in a couple weeks, for sure, but I have also been having an equal amount of trouble with the suggestion Flavia made that we only characterize the life of the lagoon and beach and, as Miriam agreed with her, that the rest should be a grant proposal to return as soon as possible with more teams and greater resources and maybe a fucking helicopter so we can actually get inland for once. And I think your idea… It is wild and crazy and impossible, and will most likely remain impossible forever barring the revocation of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, at which point we might as well free ourselves from causality entirely and start time-traveling, forget about just finding the record of an entire island in a drop of blood. But no. No… Your idea does not need to be possible for it to have merit. And the merit it has is the prospect that Flavia is right, and that we can legitimately gain an accurate snapshot of the wider island in the samples of the lagoon.”
“Oh.” Katrina doesn’t know if she’s helped or hurt him with this line of thought. He doesn’t seem very pleased with it. “I’m sorry, Doctor Alonso. Plexity and Lisica is for sure the most thrilling thing I’ve ever been involved with and I don’t want it to end. Except this scary part, where all our lives keep getting threatened. But barring that, I’d stay here for ages working on this with you.”
“Thank you. I have no idea if we will have the chance, later.”
“You know, people get this idea that just because you do certain drugs, it must mean that you’re stupid, but I’ve had the most—”
“No.” Again Alonso interrupts Katrina. “It doesn’t make you stupid. Obviously. But it makes you unreliable. Like my wine. And Jay’s weed. As long as you understand that, then you are having a more honest relationship with whatever is the vice of your choice.”
“I’m just in it for the visions.” Katrina shrugs. “Which makes me even more unreliable. Just this mad woman of Sydney. But I guess in the long run I’m not really looking for anyone’s approval.”
Alonso stands and pats her leg. “No. No, you certainly are not.”
Ξ
Triquet crouches in a bush. Milo is in front of him, seated on the ground with his feet planted on either side, knees as high as a frog. The youth’s legs are thin to the point of malnutrition, the muscles like cords along each femur. Yes, there is something paleolithic about these golden childs. Triquet wonders if they’re perhaps nomadic. Maybe that’s the difference between them and the people of Morska Vidra’s village.
Triquet is tired of sitting here. Their brain is far too active to fall into this kind of endless pre-modern reverie that people like Milo can effortlessly achieve. And it’s been, what, all night and into the morning now? Fifteen hours? Something like that? And their eagle bite is throbbing.
Milo had scared the hell out of them in the dark, finding Triquet by touch, who was only comforted when their own fingers found the golden mask. Then they had roughly clasped each other in the dark and the cold, both bodies shivering, and finally fallen asleep.
It was upon waking that Triquet decided this golden childs needed a name. It was a longstanding policy to know at least the first name of those Triquet had slept with and they didn’t want to break it now. So. The little man had become Milo.
It hadn’t gotten any drier or warmer but Triquet had finally disentangled themself from the warm embrace to crawl forward and peer out from under the thick eaves of the underbrush. Its small, almond-shaped leaves with serrated edges drip endless drops onto the black earth, which sheets with water.
“Well, Milo.” Triquet now addresses his back. “Moment of truth and all that. How’s your Russian?” Then they fall forward stiffly on all fours and stifle a groan. They are so stiff and sore. Crawling forward, they lower their chin to the dead leaves, which prickle, and peer out. There’s some dark vertical surface out there, covered in networks of lichen and algae. From a slightly different vantage it resolves into a wall—the back of the bunker, stained and blackened by time. Oh, well. That’s good. The bushes back here are a nice safe place to be, for sure. Just miserable-as-can-be is all.
On the far side of that wall was their home for the last few weeks, now returned to an unassuming bare ruin. It had been filled with their cute little cells and the kitchen and all the laptops at the work tables in a row. It had been nice. And the hatch leading to the sub must be just a few meters away. If Triquet could somehow get to it and slip down there with the others, dry and safe and hidden… It seems like the greatest possible luxury. Maybe they can just start with the dirt beneath their feet and dig straight down, hoping the sub runs under here. But they know it doesn’t. It starts at the bottom of the stairs, ten meters off to Triquet’s left and down another eight, before heading off under the beach at an angle. Not a passage they can scrape away with their hands. And then there’s the matter of the concrete and the steel hull. No getting through them with just like elbow grease and fingernails. They’re still trapped out here. So close and yet so far.
Well. Then it is a matter of being a scout again. Be optimistic. There’s a strong chance that no Russian soldiers ever arrived here. That’s what we call the reality-based chance. And if Triquet can confirm that now, then hooray, we can all resume our daily lives and just like lock Katrina and Jay in the warrant officer’s cabin for the remainder of the stay.
Triquet recalls the placement of the window in the back, and how they’d heard that a fox jumped out it when they first arrived. That fox probably had a trail… Triquet pulls back and scans the forest floor for any sign of one. There: an unsteady depression running generally in the right direction, thin as thread.
Triquet crawls carefully along this game trail, finding that it ends at a woody bush whose main limb serves as a springboard to the empty window ahead. Triquet can see claw marks and dirty paw prints on the limb, clear as day. They are pleased that for once an educated guess actually turns out to be true.
Triquet looks back at Milo, who seems to be watching them from behind the blankness of the golden mask. “Just going to take a peek,” Triquet silently mouths to him, pointing at the window. Then they slowly rise…
Thunk. Triquet stops. Something heavy bumped against another object in the bunker. Just on the other side of the wall, not even their own body’s length away. Then they hear breathing, a heavy snuffling, and an indistinct muttering. Somebody is in there. Unmistakably. It isn’t a fox. It’s a man. A Russian? Triquet can’t hear enough of the words. Whoever it is, they are obviously alone, muttering to themself with idle observations. Could it be one of the Lisicans? It doesn’t really sound like them. This person is less… healthy? Or maybe it’s one of the shamans. It could very well be. Talking to themselves is very on brand for them, poking around in the bunker after getting their golden mask buddies to spook the researchers away for whatever malevolent reason. Yes, paranoia argues that this has all just been a game to them. Or, like some complex side tactic in their great argument. Those assholes.
Or maybe it’s a Russian soldier after all and if Triquet pops their head up to see, it gets blown off. No real way to tell.
The body shifts within. Steps are taken, dried ferns brushing against the floor. Yes, there is a heaviness to the steps, perhaps a bit of a waddle or limp. They only take like three so it’s hard to tell. Then a long exhalation and a word that sounds like shivyit.
The figure moves through the bunker and out the door, their movement tapering to silence. Now Triquet doesn’t know what to do. Should they try to confirm the person’s identity? How are they supposed to do that when any movement will likely be too much?
A gout of rain solves that issue. It suddenly falls with such force that Triquet is easily able to withdraw deeper into the bushes without fear of being heard. It really pounds down, a trickle of cold water worming its way around the collar of their coat and down their neck. Their feet are already made of ice, probably as blue as the boots they wear. And the rain doesn’t let up.
Emboldened, Triquet uses the downpour to crawl around the building counter-clockwise, still staying in the bushes close to the ground. They ease wide so their sightline is clear of the corner of the building. There is no one there. Well, obviously. Who in their right mind would stand in the middle of this deluge if there’s a building right there beside them? They must have gone back inside and Triquet couldn’t hear it over the battering the corrugated steel roof endures.
Too many unknowns. What will prove that camp is unsafe? Well. A mental checklist appears in Triquet’s mind. If they find out it’s a Russian. Check. If they find more than one person. That means it isn’t a shaman so therefore it has to be soldiers. Check. If they hear any metal sounds. Lisicans don’t wear metal. Check. If their feet leave tread like the lugs of boot soles. Check. If Triquet can figure out what the fuck shivyit means. Check.
And what would prove that camp is safe? Prove? That is much harder, proving a negative. Hard to prove an absence of threat when there’s obviously someone in there prowling around. And there’s very little chance it’s someone who looks on Alonso and his crew kindly, either way. So no checklist there.
And what if it’s just one of the golden childs in the bunker? Maybe they didn’t know Triquet was close and let their guard down a bit, dropping the whole silent mask routine? Maybe they’re still just patrolling the empty camp because they wouldn’t go into the sub? That prospect suddenly seems the most likely and Triquet pushes forward, eager to catch sight of a gold mask in the bunker’s door. But they can’t see anyone out there and moving forward any more would take them out of the bushes entirely and that’s a big no thank you from Triquet.
Triquet schools themself to patience and pulls back to the window to peek within. The bunker is empty, rain pouring in shining columns through the gaps in the roof. It looks so cozy. They are sorely tempted to crawl through and hide. Perhaps if they covered themself with some dead ferns and just kept still? They could happily sleep the day away.
But that would never do.
The rain eases. A break in the sky suddenly appears above the cliffs and an eerie golden light filters through the drizzle. The wind picks up and the trees shed their soaked dead leaves. And in the cathedral light that slants down into the bushes, Triquet can now see a wider path through the thicket behind them leading away from camp, back toward the cliffs. This must be one of the paths to the secret tunnels. They slept like not two steps away from it and they’re only just seeing it now.
Fabulous.
Well, no time like the present. Bye bye bunker. They can retreat from these dangers and dive down into the dark now to find their way back to the sub and the loving embrace of Miriam and Alonso and all the others.
But can they? It is still an open question if it is safe for the others to come out. And without Triquet’s eyes and ears out here, they’ll never know if it gets any safer. No, they can’t retreat and put that burden on someone else. They need to figure this out once and for all. So no tunnel for them. Yet.
Triquet rocks back on their heels and tries to think strategically. Okay. The storm is breaking up and the beach is getting a patch or two of sun. Gusts of wind chase clouds from the sky. Sneaking off to the right, toward the trenches and Tenure Grove, will provide good cover but take Triquet further from camp, and maybe make it harder for them to see what might be occurring out there. But if they go the other way, alongside the creek to the left, staying in that deep underbrush and peeking out every few minutes to see, they could probably get a good survey from the door of the bunker all the way to camp and down to the beach.
And that’s when they hear the whistle, faintly from the lagoon. Three short blasts. Not a bird whistle, but the sound made from a small metal object, like a referee uses at a basketball game.h1 { color: #000000; letter-spacing: 2.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-align: center; page-break-inside: avoid; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; border: none; padding: 0in; direction: ltr; background: transparent; text-decoration: underline; page-break-after: avoid }h1.western { font-family: “Wallington”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.cjk { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.ctl { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }p { color: #000000; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; background: transparent }p.western { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt }p.ctl { font-family: “Times New Roman”, serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: ar-SA }em { font-style: italic }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text
Chapter 39 – Nonsense I Mean
September 24, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
39 – Nonsense I Mean
“How did Jidadaa get you back anyway?” Amy sits beside Flavia on her platform in camp. The fog has not let up and a dank chill creeps up from the ground through their feet and legs. She murmurs the question, conscious of the masked golden childs, as Jay calls them, squatting at compass points on the camp’s perimeter. These figures are never still. They shift and scratch itches and follow sounds. But they don’t respond to any questions or offers of food and drink and they evidently aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Spooky.
Flavia shrugs. “A lot like the first time. Then it was the girl child Xaanach. This time Jidadaa. Both woke me in the middle of the night and led me quietly out of his camp. I guess he needs better security, but I am glad he does not have it!”
“That’s amazing. And did Jidadaa lead you right back here or did you go somewhere else first?”
“Somewhere else?”
“Like maybe she has some hidey-hole of her own? See, last night, after you got back, Jidadaa disappeared again. Right before these golden childs appeared. I think maybe she knew they were coming and she wants to avoid them. Jay says to the Lisicans they’re like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They scare her. But if we could find her now, like if you know where she might be hiding, we sure could use more answers.”
“They are pretty scary.” Flavia is empty. She wants to just give up. Completely surrender. Why can’t she? Everything here is an arduous epic adventure. Nothing is as simple here as settling down to her workstation with her dog across her feet and a steaming espresso in her hands. She misses big Boris. And she is sure he must miss her. She tilts her head back. “Ehh… Amy. I can’t do this any more. I have to go home.”
Amy throws a comforting arm over Flavia’s shoulders. “Soon, my dear. We’re nearly into May now.”
“You think that is some kind of help? We still have weeks of this! Weeks! And now the villagers are coming in and like taking over! We can’t do anything outside of their view! There is no privacy! Who cares if it is Wetchie-ghuy or these…” She gestures at the nearest golden child, who twitches when they hear the name Wetchie-ghuy. “These… I don’t even know what to call them. But what happens if we try to leave? Eh? Has anyone tried yet?”
“One goes with. When anyone goes to the trenches. Or like when Jay went down to the lagoon. Perhaps they’re protecting us.”
“I don’t want them protecting me,” Flavia declares loudly. Defiantly. “I just want them to leave me alone. All of them.”
Amy nods, patient and sympathetic. “See, if we can figure out where Jidadaa went then she could help answer some of these questions. If they are protecting us, then toward what end?”
“So we end up in their pot instead of someone else’s.”
“Cannibalism. Wow. Huh. There hasn’t been any sign of it here. Unless you know something that Wetchie-ghuy…”
“No.” Flavia waves a disgusted hand. “I don’t. Don’t worry. It is just me stereotyping your beloved natives, right?”
“Beloved? Ha. They won’t even talk to me. I’m too unclean.”
“Well, Amy my dear, I would be happy to switch roles with you at any time. They can’t seem to get enough of me.”
“Did Wetchie-ghuy try to put that loop over your hand again?”
“Oh, yeah. Like five times. Finally I took it and threw it off a cliff. And you know what he did? He giggled. Then he made another one out of some branches and tried again. Such a creep.”
“I feel like the two shamans are trying to claim us. Each one is taking as many of us as they can get. And if they can’t have us, then it’s better to poison us so the other one doesn’t get us.”
Flavia scowls. “We are just like… trophies to them.”
“I don’t know if we can continue to work under these conditions. Although I have no idea what else we can do.”
“Amy?” Miriam exits the bunker with Triquet and waves. “Come with us?”
“Sure thing, Mir.” Amy gets up and squeezes Flavia’s arm. “Well. I guess I get a chance to see. You just stay here and rest up, Flavia. Be Alonso’s partner. That means don’t let him go anywhere alone. Otherwise, nobody needs anything from you today.”
“Good. Because I swear to you I have nothing left to give.”
Amy grimaces, her inability to raise Flavia’s spirits grating on her, and joins Miriam and Triquet at the edge of the camp. They head toward Tenure Grove, one of the golden childs following.
“Do you think we can put this one to work?” Triquet wonders. “Ask how handy they are with a spade and trowel?”
“I mean, you can try…”
Miriam looks up at the cliff face they approach. “Right back at it. It’s important to Alonso that we continue the work today.”
Amy nods. “I’d say it’s important for all of us. We have to keep our routines or we’ll go crazy under these conditions.”
“Yeah, but Alonso… He had a very bad night. You saw him, Ames. He thought he was back in the gulag.”
Amy’s face falls. “Oh yeah, in bed I could hear him. And when he got up… At first I didn’t think it was a bathroom call. He looked desperate, like he was trying to escape.”
“Escape?” Triquet frowns. “Uh, where? Forgot he was on an island, did he?”
“Escape… life. I don’t think…” Amy answers quietly, “his mind was working all too well. Oh, Mir. He really is damaged.”
Miriam nods, sad. “And I don’t know how to fix him.”
“Time.” Amy and Triquet both say it and Triquet follows it with a giggle. “Jinx! Time, Miriam, and loads of chocolate.”
“So what are we working on today, boss?” Amy rolls up her sleeves as they near the base of the cliff. It is choked with brush and a fallen skirt of loose stone.
“I want to inventory who lives in that scree pile, if anyone. Got to be a dangerous place to call home, rocks sliding all over the place and crushing you. But still, if we are going to be thorough for Plexity, then it is a habitat we have to sample…”
“Life finds a way!” Triquet boldly pushes past the first branches of the manzanita and immediately squawks, ensnared, arms held above their head. “Except this life. Me. I’m stuck.”
“Life didn’t find a way?” Amy chortles, pulling the branches away from Triquet and allowing them to continue.
Miriam has paused in her examination of the scree pile to study the golden child, who has turned three-quarters away, their mask pointed up at an angle. “What do you think they’re looking at?”
“Well, Pradeep and Jay think Sherman the shaman hides up in those trees with his osprey. Maybe our protector here is on the lookout for them.”
Triquet scowls at the golden child. “What do you think that mask does for them? I mean, how do they see or anything?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know.”
“Lord, I am so sick of being hopelessly confused.” Triquet lifts their arms and drops them again. “I mean, yes it’s the first step in scientific inquiry, yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah. But, I mean, can’t we just get a tiny bit of clarity every once in a while?”
“Not a chance.” Amy pushes past Triquet and climbs to the top of the scree pile. Small flat rocks shoot out from under her feet in all directions. “Well, this is… Hm. I can’t get on this without…”
“Yeah, careful. You’re killing all our specimens up there, Ames.”
“Okay, but how…?” Amy hurries back down to the clawing branches and solid ground underfoot. “I mean, how else can we do it? We have to climb it. If we don’t start at the top, the loose rocks will just slide down onto whatever we uncover.”
“Well, according to him,” Triquet indicates a robin hopping along the scree slope to their left, “the scree pile is good hunting. So I guess there’s something in there.”
“You’re right.” Miriam sighs. “Anything moves and the rest just slides. Ugh. This is going to be hard.”
“Miriam?” Amy turns to study her old friend, gaze troubled. “What happens to Alonso if we aren’t ever able to make anything of Plexity? Like if, by the time we’re finished here, we don’t have enough samples and he isn’t able to get it up and running?”
“I do not know, Amy dear.” Miriam shakes her head again, watching the robin pull a winged insect from the gaps in the rocks. “I do not know.”
Ξ
A shadow darkens Maahjabeen’s cot. Pradeep squints, dazed from lack of sleep, at the silhouette looming over him and his beloved. “Jidadaa! There you are. Everyone has been looking for—” He falls silent as the Lisican girl’s hand urgently clamps his arm.
Jidadaa casts a worried glance at the square of blurred gray daylight visible through the sheets of hanging plastic. Once she’s certain that Pradeep will remain quiet she removes a white plastic package from folds in her clothes and unwraps it. It is an old shopping bag carrying blackened leaves, mashed and pulpy. Juices have collected in the bottom.
Jidadaa kneels beside Maahjabeen and awkwardly struggles to figure out how to get the concoction in the woman’s slack mouth.
Pradeep helps, whispering, “Does Doctor Daine know you’re doing this? Is this like a prescribed medication or…?” But the answer is apparent and he feels a fool for even asking.
Pradeep pinches Maahjabeen’s mouth open and Jidadaa makes a spout of the bag’s corner to pour a trickle of brown and black liquid past her lips.
Maahjabeen gags, expelling it.
“Shit!” Pradeep hisses, warding the bag away. “Shit! No! Stop! You’re choking her.”
Maahjabeen quickly settles. It was only a few droplets. Mandy’s voice comes from the far side of the bunker. “Everything okay in there, Pradeep?”
“Yes! Fine!” Pradeep’s eyes dart back and forth across the ceiling. What does one say in this situation? “Uh… No worries in here. Just past it now. All is well. Back to Do Not Disturb please.”
Mandy giggles. “This hotel maid hears and obeys.”
Jidadaa straddles Maahjabeen, pushing on her belly, kneading upward with strong fingers. Then she leans on her patient’s ribs, as if she’s squeezing the last of the toothpaste out. Finally, she gets off and rolls Maahjabeen over, so her face is off the cot’s edge pointed at the ground. Then she pushes on her back.
Gray goo dribbles from Maahjabeen’s mouth. Pradeep watches in mute horror, knowing he must have expelled the same mucous. Lumps drop out, like little owl pellets or dried clumps of gray oatmeal. Jidadaa keeps pushing. More and more emerges, landing with disgusting wet smacks on the plastic. Soon there is a pile on the floor like a cat’s foul vomit that needs to be cleaned.
Then Jidadaa rolls her back face-up. She pulls a juicy fingerful of black leaves from her plastic bag and pushes it into Maahjabeen’s empty mouth. Then she sits back and wipes a strand of hair away.
Pradeep quivers, fully anticipating another choking episode. But his darling dearest seems to tolerate the leaves fine this time. Her breathing steadies, if anything, and she slips into a deeper sleep. “I think that’s good. Is that good?”
Jidadaa shrugs, the movement awkward to her. She holds up her fingers stained with gray mucous and black juice. “The argument. See? Here it is. Gray on black.”
Pradeep makes a face. “Ugh. Let’s get your hands clean. There’s no way that’s sanitary.”
“First I clean the…” Jidadaa gestures at the gray pile Maahjabeen expelled. She uses an empty tissues box and some wipes. Then she cleans her own hands, although the perfume on the wipes makes Jidadaa blanch. “Ew. Need water.”
“Yeah, the creek’s your best bet to get all the smells…” Pradeep begins but her head twitches sideways no. “Ah. Okay. Not the creek. Are you hiding…? From the Doctor?”
“From golden childs. They are bad sign.”
“Ah. Yes. I see. I think. Well I won’t tell anyone you’re here. The golden childs. Are they… on our side or…? I mean, what are they doing here anyway?”
“Protect. All many want to stop Jidadaa. People in village. Sky people. Underground people. Golden childs. They think they can. But Lisica ends now.” Maahjabeen shudders and her body heaves forward. Pradeep throws his arms around her. “Listen to the bird,” Jidadaa demands.
Pradeep hears the familiar peal of an outraged eagle. The bird flies far above, winging its way home. “The osprey. But why is the bird screaming this time…?” His attention is split between its sudden appearance and Maahjabeen’s convulsions.
“He knows. I take his slave away.” Jidadaa lifts Maahjabeen’s twitching hand. She places it in Pradeep’s grasp. With her other hand she passes him the plastic bag filled with leaves. “Give to her, every bit. She will be strong. Give it all. Do not leave camp. Ever. Keep here with golden childs.”
“Wait. Where are you going?”
Jidadaa whispers over her shoulder, “Kula. She is my mother.” Then she slips out the clean room to the left and hurries silently to the steps leading down to the sub.
“Mahbub…” Maahjabeen’s weak hand reaches for his face.
“Oh! Babi.” He kisses her trembling fingertips.
“Where…?” Her eyelids unstick and her pupils slowly dilate.
“You’re here with me. Safe. Nothing will ever harm you again.”
“The taste… in my mouth…”
“Yeah. Must be pretty bad. Not the last of that I’m afraid. But I think we finally found you some medicine that works.”
“Good. I was trapped…” She falls heavily against his embrace, her eyelids fluttering, “in quicksand.”
“I know.” He kisses her brow. “But you’re safe now.”
“Tell me a story. Let me…” Maahjabeen trembles again. “Let me hear your voice. It… helps.”
“Yes. Of course. I remember. Your voice was the only thing that kept me alive. Your touch.” Pradeep opens his mouth and then closes it again. “But what shall I say? I mean… I could talk about, well, anything. What sounds interesting? Tunicates? Spongiform encephalopathies? Uh, pinniped eye parasites?”
She waves his jargon away. “Tell me… of yourself.”
“Oh. Right. Well that is far more difficult.” But he shifts, making himself comfortable, reviewing all his memories. This is something he doesn’t often do. There is little to be gained from the practice. “You know, I have always thought of my life in two parts. The first part was India, with all the good and bad. Then I turned 18 and got into University of Houston and moved to Texas. And that was the second part. Two years there. Two years in Indiana. Then grad school with Amy in Monterey. Almost six years in the second part. But now…” He sighs, thinking of all those lonely days and nights in sterile buildings with neither friends nor family. “I think now… Meeting you, my life is in a third part, the part where I am not lonely anymore. You see, moving to Houston was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. You know me. How hard change is for me, how fragile I am. Well imagine me as a 17 year-old grappling with the fact that I was going to move to the big bad United States all by myself to go to college. It is so hard for Indian students. We are used to a very different culture. And then, after a couple long plane flights you are suddenly taken to a place where nobody is your friend, there are no parties you are invited to, nobody reaches out to you. There is racism. I mean, I shut down. For like the first whole year, I was just like sleepwalking through my time in the dorms and in my classes. I made no friends. I only thought about going back home. Desperately. I missed the rich food, the loud streets, the laughing people. I mean, Houston has some of that, but mostly only for its own community and it is very different. And yes, there are all kinds of Indian student clubs and things that I should have joined but I just couldn’t find anyone… Especially those Indian students who adored it there. They fell in love with the fast cars and the shiny buildings and the American football. So I made no friends there. And frankly it never got any better. Not at Purdue or CSUMB. America is a wonderful place in a lot of ways but in so many other ways it is so, so lonely.”
A figure appears in the door. It is Doctor Daine.
Pradeep leans down and kisses Maahjabeen’s soft cheek. “But then I found you, my little babi girl,” he whispers into her seashell ear. “And the third part of my life started. Now I will never be lonely again.”
Ξ
“Oh… Just look. It’s so beautiful.” Mandy leans back from the workstation screen at the long tables in the bunker and claps her hands with joy. Then she stretches. She’s been sitting here a long damn time.
Amy leans over her shoulder, eager to share the enthusiasm. But all she can see are graphs and charts she doesn’t recognize. “Great job, Mandy! Uh, what am I looking at here?”
“My first official data-driven forecast for the next ten days!”
“Oh! Really? What does it say? Is that X axis temperature or…?”
“Well, no, that one’s actually a humidity reading. Sorry. I haven’t properly labeled anything yet. I’m just so happy! Finally!” she groans, collapsing against the keyboard.
Amy is happy to see Mandy feel productive for the first time. “Hooray for you! So should I schedule a beach party or…?”
“No. God, no. Here, it’s this one. Look. Precipitation. Huge storm coming. In like eighteen hours? I mean, this is still just a single weather station with no satellite or network help. So I can’t get any more exact than that. Should be a cold one too.”
Amy nods. “You know, frankly, I’ve been surprised how dry we’ve generally been here. I mean, have you ever spent a spring in Oregon? Especially on the coast. It like never stops raining.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too…” Mandy’s fingers fly fast on the keyboard. “Look. Some figures we have here offline. Lisica is only at about 65% precipitation of Tillamook, Oregon over the last five weeks, although I figure we’re pretty much around the same latitude.”
“Oh, I thought we were a bit further south. More like Brookings or somewhere around there. But it just pours there, on like a daily basis, until summer. And even then.”
“Yeah, the biggest storms in North America are generated out here. The thing, look, here’s a satellite gif of a storm developing in the Bay of Alaska. Watch how it spirals outward. I think Lisica might just be too far from the coast. See how ragged the bands get by the time they’re this far south? All the main moisture patterns are usually drawn to the east, toward North America. And then these others kind of wither away over the open ocean. It’s like the main cells propagate on either side of us but rarely right here.”
“San Francisco is like this. The whole town is just stuck out on a peninsula facing the ocean but somehow it magically gets way less rain than the coast to the north and to the south. They just get the howling fog.”
“Well, we’ve certainly had plenty of howling fog here.” Mandy doesn’t want to correct all the inaccuracies in Amy’s comparison so she just changes the subject by bringing up another page of data. “Here are the locations of all the permanent oceanic buoys that NASA and NOAA manage. I figure one or two should be close. Actually, look. They didn’t drop a single buoy within a thousand kilometers of here. This is a really under-studied spot in the ocean, kind of a transition zone between the storm nursery in the Bay of Alaska and the open ocean of the North Pacific. Now that I’m actually getting some readings of my own, I’m seeing a possible paper analyzing this area in my future. Maybe many papers.”
“Publish, by all means!” Amy rubs Mandy’s back, excited for her. “That is, if the Air Force will let you. You know, I wonder if that’s part of the reason this spot remains under-studied. I bet the Navy and Air Force turned whole generations of researchers away from focusing on this area.”
“Well, not any more! Ooh, hear that?” Mandy pops up, cocking her head. “A gust front coming! Wind already in the trees!” She hurries outside, followed by Amy. The gusts are bitter and dry. “Yep, it’s pretty cold. I wish I could see the northern horizon. It must be getting active.”
Amy takes a deep breath. It’s nearly twenty-hundred hours, a bit after dinner. What she can see of the sky is purple, banded with gray clouds. A few stars peek through. “Look. Is that Venus? That must be like only the third time I’ve seen it since we got here. Good thing we didn’t bring an astronomer along. This would be like their least favorite place on the planet. Can you even think of a place that gets more cloud cover than Lisica?”
“There’s a spot in the North Sea north of Iceland, and another at the edge of Antarctica. But yeah. This area is like top five for sure. I wrote a paper on global cloud concentrations as an undergrad. I remember the least cloudy regions were Arizona and North Africa. By like a lot.”
They walk out of camp toward the beach and scale the fallen redwood trunk. Mandy takes a deep breath. “Oh, I love my new superpower though! I hope I don’t ever forget how to taste the air! I thought I understood weather before but I really only did through my computer screen. Now I get to combine both!”
Amy nods, the old sage. “This is why people do fieldwork.” She turns back to the cliffs behind them but they are lost in darkness. One of the golden childs stand in the whipping wind facing them, guarding Amy and Mandy from unseen threats. “Oh, hello. Nice night.” The golden child only presents its blank face to her, like a giant insect’s eye. At a loss for words, she turns back to Mandy. “So what do you think a big storm might do to the whole war between Sherman the shaman and Wetchie-ghuy?”
“Something Jidadaa said a couple nights ago…” Mandy jumps back down, shivering in the wind, and retreats to camp with Amy at her side. “It’s really stuck with me. She said that Wetchie-ghuy gets his power from people’s fear. Shadows and deceit. But Sherman is a sorcerer of the sky. That’s where they get their magic. So I figure a big storm will, uh, definitely favor one or the other.”
“Sky magic.” Amy shakes her head. “Really? That’s where we are here? Because what does that even mean? They call the sun and moon? Make them do their bidding? I don’t think so. They both rise and set the right times every day. I mean, as a scientist, I fail to grasp exactly what sky magic entails.”
Mandy nods in agreement. “Jidadaa said Sherman controls the fog. I was like, uh, actually the convective cycle controls the fog but go ahead girl. You do you.”
“Yeah and I’d say Sherman’s more into poison anyway with all the shit they’ve pulled on Triquet and Maahjabeen and Pradeep.”
“Exactly! Thanks but no thanks, dude. We got enough poison in the sky where we come from. That’s why we came here. Cause it’s supposed to be clear and pure out here.”
Amy stops, cocking her head. “Well, isn’t that a thing.”
Mandy stops as well, at the edge of camp. “What?”
Amy shakes her head, bemused. “As a professor I often say my biggest job is to point out blind spots in my students’ perceptions so that data-gathering and data-interpretation can be done free of bias. So. What you just said. I think it’s a bias that we still consider Lisica pristine. Know what I mean? We keep finding examples that contradict that assumption. Again and again. But so far we only see them as disconnected data points instead of a wider pattern. The fault is in us. We want Lisica to be undisturbed by the modern world but it really isn’t.”
“What are you saying?” Mandy sniffs the air. “That Lisica is like a toxic dump site? That poison is in the air? I don’t really get…”
“No. It must be less direct than that. I mean, actually, you’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a toxic dump. Ruining land is what militaries do best. But no, these shamans aren’t like slipping radioactive isotopes into our drinking water. At least I don’t think they are. Biases are less visible than that. This is us not seeing what is right in front of our own faces because we’ve convinced ourselves it doesn’t exist. And what I’m saying is this is a developed island.”
Mandy blinks. She isn’t sure what that insight gets them. But she’s also pretty sure the lack of understanding is on her part, not in Amy’s explanation. She flounders, hoping to think of something useful to add. “Remember when we scanned the sub with our radon sensors? We thought it worked at the time, right?”
“God, that seems like six months ago now. But it was clean. No, I think it’s actually safe here on Lisica. It’s just that we can’t keep operating on the false supposition that this is some Garden of Eden and we’re the first ever explorers. But so far we’re only like, ‘Okay, well sure there’s mysteries and secret graves and hidden villages and weird natives, but we’re still these great explorers in a virgin land.’ It’s a fallacy and I think our frustration is just our inability to see what is actually here.”
“So what is actually here?”
“I’ve got a feeling that this place is far more advanced than we know. I mean, like politically. We’re getting plots and sub-plots as deep as these tunnels. But for some reason we just can’t accept it. You know, I think there’s just a real need for a lot of us to feel that we are the very first ones somewhere. It like removes a whole layer of moral ambiguity and guilt. If we aren’t taking Lisica away from anyone, if in fact it’s our own island and nobody lives here, then we get to be the heroes in our own story. But it’s almost never like that. In fact, it probably hasn’t been like that for anyone anywhere since like a million BCE. We’re always kicking someone out or committing genocide or, well, being the villains instead of the heroes. We’re always destroying a local habitat, no matter how careful or high-minded we think we are. I guess that’s what the villagers probably mean by Jidadaa. They knew we’d eventually come. And when we did, that the old ways would all end. They’re right. Jay is the leed-ass or whatever they call him. We all are. Harbingers of doom.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen wakes with a clear head. She is present again. Rested. Whole. Oh, praise Allah! She fiercely squeezes Pradeep’s hand in gratitude and love.
“Ow.” Alonso gently extricates his hand. “I mean, what a grip!”
“Oh! Doctor Alonso! Forgive…! I thought you were…!”
“No no. I’m sure. But Pradeep is busy. He made me promise to hold your hand until he gets back. In just another bit.” He glances upward, where several people crawl on the roof fixing the tarps in preparation for the storm.
“Ehh. What time is it?”
“About four o’clock in the morning. More rain coming. Mandy made us get up early to fix what the wind has broken and make final preparations. But I was already…” Alonso shrugs. Another night of horrors. He’d been more than happy to be roused.
“Another storm? But I want to get in my boat.”
“To hear Mandy talk you will not need to move. The deluge will come and everything will all wash away. This cot will float, no?”
Despite herself, Maahjabeen giggles. This life she is returning to is so good, better than she has ever known. Pradeep is the sun. He is the brightest and purest thing she has ever known. Before him her life was in shadow. It always was. Even her happiest memories from before held darkness. Yelling. Anger. Guilt. Her family is a very contentious lot. And she was always nursing some resentment or other over the insult of the day. It is how she became so fierce, in proud opposition to their challenges. And not just from her family, it was also her sexist professors and the unhappy students that made up her whole life. They would all throw their pitiful and infuriating self-inflicted issues in her face. And that was why she always escaped to the utter serenity of the ocean.
But then Pradeep arrived. And he is bearing gifts. His love is so pure she cannot doubt it, even for a moment. So the dark thoughts she has always had about herself just sound indulgent and paranoid in her own ears now. And the ferocity. She can lay that aside as well. She can laugh. She can dance. As long as he is with her, she is complete. She doesn’t ever need this to end and she has no need of Heaven. Eternal bliss is already hers.
She blinks at the apostasy. That is the very first time such a thought has ever entered her head. And she doesn’t like it.
“What?” Alonso studies her worn face. “A shadow passed over you. What is it?”
“Oh. Nothing. ” Maahjabeen has to very carefully not fall back into her familiar hectoring resentment. She sighs to release the tension and seeks out Alonso’s hand again. For once, she is happy to have him interrupt her wayward thoughts. “Thank you, Doctor Alonso,” she squeezes his big rough hand, “for watching over me. I am not sure I have had too many bosses who would do that.”
“You are very welcome. It is my…” Pleasure is the wrong word here. So is duty. Alonso pats their joined hands with his other. “I am very glad we get to be friends, Miss Charrad.”
“Please. Maahjabeen.”
“Of course. I just always wanted to respect your professionalism.”
“Yes. Thank you, Doctor Alonso.”
“I think we are both people who yell. And when we met…” He releases her hand so he can make an explosion between his own. “Boom. You know?”
She chuckles, and in her depths she can feel how depleted she is. She tries to sit up but finds it to be a struggle. Ah. Not a full return to health yet after all.
Alonso helps her. “Pradeep said there is a tincture I am supposed to feed you if things go bad. Some herbal concoction of his from India, I gather?”
“Ugh. That stuff tastes so bad.”
“So you don’t think you need it?”
Maahjabeen tries to recall the circumstances around that black liquid. Hadn’t there been leaves in it the first five or six doses? And where had it come from? All she knows is that it is a component of her recovery. So she blanches and beckons silently to him. “The last bit. Come on. Let nobody say that I don’t finish my medicine.”
He tilts the little container into her mouth and she gags. It is so alkaline it feels like it strips the cells from the surface of her throat. But she feels it as a clean heat in her belly, killing off whatever that pit of mud was in there. How horrible.
Now, after a brief struggle, she is able to sit up. But her back is immediately cold. She wraps her arms around her knees, fragile and vulnerable in the night air.
Alonso drapes a blanket over her shoulders when he sees her shiver. Then he looks away. Even in her distress she is achingly beautiful. And this from a man who still considers himself gay! But Alonso has always worshipped beauty wherever he finds it. It is how Miriam stole his heart. It is how he learned that he is properly bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. He loves love. He flies to it like a moth to flame.
“I seem…” Maahjabeen’s teeth chatter, “to be in recovery here on this island as often as I am standing on my own two feet. I am sorry. My work is suffering. I am falling behind.”
“No no. It is I who must apologize for putting you unwittingly in such danger. I have been thinking about… Well. Everything. This whole venture. The naïve idea that I could trust the military about anything is… I mean, I guess I was desperate and only heard what I wanted to hear. But I should have known that there would be this entire other reality here, one that did not want us on its shores. And then I forced the issue, until the villagers had to push back. And now we are in this mess. And it is all because of me. Do you know the English word hubris? My dangerous pride?”
“Yes, it has been used by supervisors about me on their reports. But you could not know, Doctor Alonso. This is the Americans. If they can use you they will and there is nothing you can do about it. You are good. It did not occur to you how bad others can be.”
But an entire montage of dark episodes flickers through his head. He was not a good man in the gulag. He was a beast, a rat among other rats. His goodness had been altogether lost.
Now she registers his distress. Maahjabeen recalls how wounded he is. No matter what she has gone through, it is nothing compared to what he endured the last five years. Compassion wells up in her, a nearly unfamiliar sensation. She cups his face. “You are… very strong. Amazing.” The halting words seem insufficient but they prompt a tear to slide down his cheek.
Alonso ducks his head. “Yes, I am so happy we get to be friends, Miss… Maahjabeen.”
“Ooo, I like that. Yes. Miss Maahjabeen from now on.”
They both laugh, listening to the white noise of rain approaching from over the water. Others tumble inside, chatting and shaking their clothes dry. Life fills the bunker.
Pradeep is the first one back in the clean room. “Ah! You’re up!” He throws himself at Maahjabeen, only holding back at the last instant so he doesn’t tackle her. He holds her gently in his arms, kissing her face again and again.
Maahjabeen laughs, pushing at him, reveling in his passion. “I am. I think it is gone now, Mahbub.”
Alonso informs him, “She is just waking. And her strength is back. She nearly broke my hand.”
They all laugh more. Pradeep is flooded with relief and joy. Oh, paradise is not lost. He gets to return to it after all.
“Ehh, what is going on in here?” Esquibel backs into the clean room holding a stack of dripping tubs. She turns and sees her patient sitting up, bracketed by the two smiling men.
“She is back!” Alonso feels the little room is crowded now so he stands with effort, his knees balking and his feet groaning with pain. He hides a grimace and moves aside, edging toward the door slit. “And that medicine may just be why.”
“What medicine?”
Pradeep’s smile goes glassy. He supposes there’s no harm in telling the Doctor now. “I am sorry, Doctor. Jidadaa was here. About, uh, sixteen hours ago? And she gave me some leaves and stuff, like an herbal recipe, for me to give Maahjabeen. And it immediately improved her. Now, she is doing so well—”
But Esquibel can’t hear another word. “And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think the doctor should maybe test this ‘medicine’ of hers? Do the words contra-indicated mean anything to you? Oh, my god. You could have killed her.”
Alonso reaches out. “Now now.”
But Pradeep flares. “She was dying anyway. And you had given up. She wasn’t on any other drugs to contra-indicate, Doctor.” When someone attacks Pradeep he normally shuts down but this is Maahjabeen she is talking about. The ferocity that he puts into her title startles all of them, including him.
“You do not know if I would have started administering drugs. It could have been very fast, during an emergency. You have to tell your doctor when you want to try a new—”
“And you wouldn’t have given the herbs to her! You would have taken them away for your bloody stupid tests while she drowned in her own…” Pradeep gestures vaguely, the remembered sensation of cold bubbling mud robbing him of his words. “She needed it immediately. And Jidadaa swore me to silence.”
Esquibel pushes Pradeep out of the way. “Give me room. Tell me. How do you feel, Maahjabeen?”
“Okay. Like I have run a marathon or two. But getting better. Don’t be angry with Pradeep. He did what—”
“Yes, I know. He is your own true love and this is all so special. You are some of the worst patients I have ever had, I swear! So insubordinate. It is ridiculous trying to keep you healthy under these conditions.” Esquibel takes the woman’s pulse and prompts her to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. It is still a bit gray.
“We appreciate everything you do, Doctor Daine.”
“And don’t you try that political bullshit with me, Doctor Alonso. You knew about this too? Was I the only one kept from…?”
“No no. It is the first I’ve heard. If I’d known you hadn’t ordered it I would have never given her the final dose.”
“You gave her some too? Ai! Please. This is appalling.” Esquibel finds her stethoscope and starts listening to Maahjabeen’s thoracic cavity. Still congested. Things still seem a bit turgid. But far better than they had been. Esquibel could hardly detect her breath the last time she listened in. “And what if it is coincidence? Or what if these herbs have side effects that do not show up for six years? You cannot just eat any plant in the forest. That is how people die of toxic shock and renal failure. Does that sound like fun?”
Maahjabeen only silently regards Esquibel. What a powerful figure the Doctor is. But sometimes she is tiresome. Can’t she see that Pradeep made the right choice? He saved her life. “It is only your pride talking now, Doctor Daine.”
“No it is not!” Esquibel slams her hand against one of the tubs and pulls a tablet free of the same pile that held her stethoscope. “You think we just operate without any medical procedures? No best practices developed over the last one hundred bloody years of modern medicine? Why can’t people just shut up and do what they are told for once? There is a very disturbing trend in the world these days. Nobody trusts an expert any more. There is a growing amount of foolishness here in this camp, where trained scientists are beginning to believe in some very silly things. But you don’t know. None of you do. This is how the bush people are. They have no power of their own so they must magnify it through voodoo and superstition. Only if you believe in it, can it harm you.”
“We didn’t believe in anything, Doctor.” Pradeep wishes she would just leave them alone. “But we still ended up with the faces of foxes on our tailbones and pits of muds inside.”
“Yes.” Maahjabeen clutches him. “That is exactly how it felt.”
“Poison, as I have said. Most likely injected by a pad of needles in the pattern of a fox face. Perhaps for some ritual reason. Ask Doctor Triquet. No. Listen. You allowed an untrained village girl to give you a folk remedy for a deadly condition. Why do you not understand how dangerous that is?”
“What would you have me do, when she is dying? What were you doing, eh? What big plans did you have to save her?”
“I was monitoring her.”
“Monitoring…” Pradeep lifts his hands and lets them fall. “Great. Thanks. So much. For all your efforts. You had no plan. Doctors never understand. If you were able to heal us we’d be happy to stay in your care. But when you run out of ideas we are forced to take greater risks, to trust those we wouldn’t otherwise trust. Without this medicine, Maahjabeen would have died. I am sure of it.”
“What makes you sure?” Esquibel pinches Maahjabeen’s toes. “You didn’t need any medicine, Pradeep. And you survived. You came back even more rapidly than she did. So what healed you?”
They all look at Pradeep. A sudden image of Wetchie-ghuy fills his vision. He recalls for the first time who really saved him, in the twilight space between life and death, and at what cost. A sob bursts from Pradeep and he covers his mouth with his hand.
“What is it, love?” Maahjabeen kisses his hand.
He looks up, eyes drained of hope. “I… I, uh…” He finds himself incapable of putting it all into words. “I’ve been… claimed.”
Esquibel breaks the silence with a snort. “Yes, this is the exact kind of nonsense I mean.”
Chapter 38 – Pollen’s Gold
September 24, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
38 – Pollen’s Gold
On his way back from the trenches after lunch, Jay finds the path blocked by Jidadaa. Or, well, not blocking him so much as waiting for him. Great. He considers turning around and taking a different route to camp but that would be stupid. Childish.
“Oh. Hey, Jidadaa.”
“Hello, Jay.” She holds her hand out to shake his but he holds his own hands awkwardly away from her.
“Should wash up before, you know… heh.” He indicates the trenches behind him.
Jidadaa only nods and falls in beside him. Her voice is gentle. “Jay is not happy to see me.”
It’s not often Jay gets angry. When he does it’s an icy sharpness that he hates. He spits the words out. “No. I mean. That’s not it. I… I should really thank you. For getting my shoes back to me.”
Jidadaa stops and stares at him and he is reminded of how still she went when he grabbed her arm. Great. Now he’s triggering all her abuse. He wheels away.
“Auugh. I just wish you hadn’t stolen my shit!” He shouts it at the trees and a burst of songbirds wings away. Tiny. Dark-eyed juncos? This far north?
He looks back at her. Jidadaa is downcast, offering nothing.
“I just want my phone. You know? It’s got all my stuff on it.”
“Kula uses it.”
“Yeah I bet. Well. She will until the battery goes out. She know how to recharge it?”
Jidadaa only looks at him.
Jay lifts his hands. “What do you want from me, Jidadaa? You already took all my good shit. I got nothing left.”
Her gray eyes burn into him. He realizes her ferocity is back. “You are lidass. You are end of Lisica. I will help.”
“Yeah… I don’t really know what that’s all about, sister.” He shakes his head, sad. “I mean, I kind of get it. I’d be pretty pissed off at the world if I was you too. Revenge tour 2000 for sure. But I’m not him. You think I’m gonna do some like apocalyptic shit and the whole island burns and everyone pays for what they did to you but that just isn’t happening, dude. The worst you’re probably looking at is some lawyers and developers showing up in a year or so and locking up all the island resources. Which, I mean, yeah, it could get pretty dire, but…”
“Jay is new. They are old.”
“Okay cool but what does that even mean? You think I’m gonna like show up and burn them out Far Cry style? Declare war against three villages? Just you and me and a sharp rock on a stick?”
“No. Not against villages. The old is the… the argument. Struggle between Wetchie-ghuy and the other.”
“The other. Right. Shaman on shaman violence. What’s his name, anyway?”
“We do not know name. We do not know if man or woman or both. We only call them…” Jidadaa leans forward with sincere confidentiality, whispering: “Daadaxáats’. Means skies are clear.”
“And you’re saying you want me to go to war against them?”
“I help.”
Jay laughs. “Uh, both of them? Is one worse than the other?”
“Both bad.”
“And what am I supposed to do, kill them?” He laughs, this hypothetical getting a little too absurd, even for him.
She makes a decisive gesture. “Stop the argument.”
“Oh, so I can just convince them? Just invite them to a chillout sesh and get them to bro down together and smoke a peace pipe?”
“No. I think we kill them.”
Jay laughs again. “Uhh. Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that’s against all our Star Trek laws. I’m not supposed to kill anybody here.”
“I help.”
“Jidadaa.” Jay lifts his hands to grab her by the shoulders but he stops a half-pace away as she stiffens. He slumps. “Look. We got a lot of smart people here with us. Let’s bring it up with the whole crew and see if we can get some different ideas here. Things that don’t involve capping anyone’s ass. Deal?”
Jidadaa nods. “Yes. They are all in argument too. Sometimes you get to say things when it is your own life.”
“Yeah, but only sometimes. Okay. Good. Cause I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m supposed to do with you.”
Ξ
“…and I’m as celibate as a nun for five years. Don’t even think about sex. Just obsess over my long-lost husband. Then I finally have him back for like three weeks and next thing I’m shagging the junior professors like—like some old hag!”
Amy nods in sympathy. They’re in the sea cave, coated in mud. Miriam has dug a series of sandy trenches in different geological contexts here: one by the base of the falls, one at the stone shelf by the collapsed pier, and this one in the side of the tunnel that leads in where the wall is a crumbly gray clay. Amy scrapes with her trowel at the aggregate of sand and gravel, collecting some in a repurposed sock. “Yeah yeah yeah. You’re a bad wife. So how was it? I bet Triquet was pretty hot in bed.”
“The hottest! That’s the thing. I feel… It’s almost… Youth is so soft, so sweet, so erotic. And I’m not young. It’s cheating. It’s not fair. It’s inherently unbalanced. It’s like I’m skipping the main course and just eating dessert. And poor Triquet. They’re stuck with… my dusty biscuits and weak tea.”
They laugh, leaning against each other. “Oh, I don’t know. Triquet obviously has a thing for ancient history. What does Alonso think? Wait. Let me guess.”
“It’s the orgy he always wanted.”
“Of course. And Triquet?”
“They adore Alonso. Lionize him.”
“And you love them both?”
“Do I love Triquet? Well, they are absolutely worthy of love. I’m just moving a little slower than that. Maybe that’s it. It’s all just going so fast. I’m a fucking geologist, Ames. The only timescales I understand last hundreds of millions of years.”
“Are you… maybe… afraid to share?”
Miriam stops, a pretty little frown on her face. She brushes back a loose curl and leaves a stripe of gray mud on her cheek. “Ooo, Amy coming in with the deep cuts. Share? Which?”
“I don’t know. Either. Both. Maybe you’re afraid, or you can sense, that it’s not a good idea. I mean, if things went south… here on this island where we can’t even get away from each other. Maybe it’s just your old hag wisdom kicking in. Leave the fireworks for after, when we’re all decompressing on the mainland.”
“Perhaps. Nobody’s in any hurry. And Alonso’s got enough on his plate. I don’t know. Thanks for letting me say it all out loud. You know, all those years he was gone I kept telling myself not to let it change me and to maintain my inner balance and all that crap. But it does change you, no matter how hard you try. And then, when this phase hits and you’re able to let go of it all… That’s when you realize how much there is to release! Maybe that’s why sex with Triquet was so important. It’s transformative sex. And with Alonso it’s, well, these days it’s like healing love. I guess I’m not sure how to mix those two.”
“It sounds like sex with Triquet is for you and sex with Alonso is for him.” Amy grimaces in the dark. That came out harsher than intended.
“No… I mean, yes sex with Triquet was about me. For sure. But sex with Alonso isn’t just for him. You know how he is. He’d never allow that. Sex with Alonso is always for both of us. For our future together and like building the rest of our doddering lives.”
“Yeah. But that’s not very erotic. I’ve heard there’s two types of sex, and they each activate different reward centers in the brain. One is promiscuous sex, or sex that has an element of risk or danger or novelty to it. This excites our adrenal glands and we get addicted to the adrenaline high just like with anything thrilling. But the other type is emotional sex with longterm partners. And this releases oxytocin, the same hormone that nursing mothers and babies get hooked on. It’s basically a choose-your-addiction type deal. Lucky Miriam. She’s getting both highs at once.”
“And what about you, Ames? Hmm? Anybody climbing into your bag at night?”
“Heh. Me? Never. I mean, who would? The kids are… I mean, they’ve all said nice things to me. I’ve come out to a few of them. But, no… To them I’m still just little Auntie Amy and I’m happy to keep it that way.”
“Are you?” Miriam gooses Amy and she squeals.
“Who’s that?” Amy turns away from their work in the tunnel to peer further down its length. She hears voices.
Katrina and Mandy emerge from the darkness, faces drawn with worry. When Mandy sees them, her eyes light up. “Amy! Is Flavia with you?”
“Flavia? No. Just me and Miriam. Didn’t she go with you?”
“Yes! But we lost her! She disappeared at the top of the cliff! We’ve looked everywhere! The villagers couldn’t help us. We saw your light and thought maybe you were her.”
“No. We haven’t seen her.” Miriam leans out, studying the two young women. “What do you mean disappeared?”
“At the top of the cliff, the trail down was too much for her.” Katrina says. “I should have stayed with them but I got a chance to interview Yesiniy and I let them go without me. So so stupid.”
“It isn’t your fault.” Mandy is hoarse from all the calling out. “It’s mine. She was my responsibility.”
“Mandy…” Amy recognizes the guilt in the young woman’s voice. Best to head it off before it consumes her. “You couldn’t—”
But Mandy waves her kindness away. “I just left her! All alone at the top of the cliff! How is that not my fault?”
Katrina interrupts: “The villagers think it was Wetchie-ghuy.”
“Oh my god.” Amy claps a hand over her mouth. “That rotten little fink. He’s just been waiting…!”
“It’s really my fault and I am so so sorry…” Katrina turns away. “Now we have to make sure she didn’t go back to camp but… I mean, how long have you been down here?”
“Half an hour? More?” Miriam looks at her phone. It is 2pm.
“Yeh, she’s been missing for hours. You would have seen her.”
“Oh, not again…” Miriam groans and rests her forehead against the rough stone of the tunnel wall. “Alright. Let’s go tell everyone and do what we can to get her back.”
Amy scowls at the darkness above them. “Fucking Wetchie-ghuy.” She doesn’t have much of a temper. But the few times she has ever lost it, those brief moments when she has accessed all her rage have terrified her. With wonder she regards her trembling hands. She hopes she doesn’t find Wetchie-ghuy alone somewhere. She isn’t sure she can guarantee his physical safety.
Ξ
A tendril of smoke curls upward from the windless canyon below. Blue gray. Everything is blue and gray. The nearby hillsides hold clumps of blueish brush against gray grass. And the sky. The sky is the essence of gray. There is no break in it.
Triquet can’t even tell where the sun is.
Their head drops back to level with a loose jolt. Nausea washes through them and they sway, putting a hand onto the cold ground to steady themself. Hoo child. Slow down there, partner. Hoo. With gulping breaths of the cool air they beat the nausea back. Wasn’t that a party. The words echo again and again in their mind, the letters of the phrase rotating in glittering light, holding their attention for who knows how long. Wasn’t. That. A. Party.
Something is combusting of fire and heat down below. And those ionized molecules are pushing straight up through airspace in a stream of ash and soot. Smoke. It wavers and Triquet does too.
The shaman appears. Not Wetchie-ghuy, the other one, waddling up the hillside from the location of the smoke toward Triquet’s feet. Kneeling with a grunt, their dark goblin face is creased by a self-satisfied smile. They struggle with Triquet’s left shoe, finally taking out a stone knife and slicing through the laces.
Triquet can only watch.
The shaman peels Triquet’s sock off and scrubs their foot with a wet rag. Then they dip a bone needle in watery ichor and carefully tattoo black dots between each of Triquet’s toes.
Triquet feels nothing. Their mind is empty. Empty as smoke.
A massive bird sails toward the two figures perched on the hilltop from across the sky. The shaman stands, squinting, muttering under their breath. A dead mouse appears in their hand, held by the tail. The bird lands, snapping the mouse up.
The shaman screeches and wheezes interrogatively at the dark bird. Sea eagle. The words run through Triquet’s mind. Sea… Eagle… They’ve never seen one so close. It’s enormous.
The eagle screeches back, as if they’re having a dispute.
The shaman scowls and turns away, studying the horizon. They lift a hand to the air and bare the inside of their wrist to the sky. They close their eyes and stand still. Triquet watches. Only the eagle moves, hopping close to the shaman’s captive.
The eagle pecks at Triquet’s shoulder and the beak’s edge slices neatly through their shirt-sleeve and opens the skin of their left shoulder. The pain divides the fog within them and Triquet yelps. In an instant they return to themself, blinking away the dissociative smoke that had ensorcelled them. “Ow. Back off, bird. I ain’t dead yet.” Triquet claps a hand to their bloody shoulder. They look around. “Where are we?” They stand and approach the shaman, who has lowered their hand and is grumbling again. “What have you done to me?”
The shaman pulls a hand from a pouch at their belt and speaks a pair of unintelligible words that sound an awful lot like, ‘Oh, shut up.” The shaman lifts their hand and blows a bluish gray powder into Triquet’s face.
Staring at the dark ceiling of the bunker, lying on their cot in their cell, Triquet has no memory of intervening time. Whoa. They were just at the shaman’s side, like six heartbeats ago. Their eagle had just bitten them. It had just broken the spell. And now they’re all the way back in the dark bunker. How…?
Triquet reaches for the eagle’s wound. It is rough and swollen, red and painful. Infected? Already? No… the texture of the skin is different. “Doctor…?” Triquet finds speaking painful and their voice is hoarse. They sit up. Yes, it’s night. Triquet removes their phone and stares at the screen. 10:12 pm. “Doctor Daine?”
The details of their time with the shaman are already slipping away. How long were they sitting on that hill lost in la-la land? How long have they been gone?
“Yes?” Esquibel appears in Triquet’s door.
“I’m back.” Triquet nearly weeps with relief.
“Good. You missed dinner.” Esquibel turns in the door to leave, preoccupied with her own work.
“I… I’m hurt.”
Now Esquibel catches the roughness in Triquet’s voice. She peers more closely at the archaeologist in the dim light. Yes, they don’t look well. “Hurt? What is it?” Triquet uncovers the eagle’s wound and Esquibel recoils. “Dear god. What is that?”
“A bird bit me. An osprey. Couldn’t recall… the name…”
“You need to come to the clean room. That is not a bite. What did you do to it? Mandy!”
Once Mandy arrives, the two women are able to help Triquet to the clean room and the cot that is still warm from Mandy’s use.
“How long have I been gone?” The bite is now a searing burn on their shoulder. Triquet lifts a protective hand to it but Esquibel pushes it away, inspecting the site with a light and tweezers.
“What is that black stuff?” she demands, picking at it.
“Black stuff?” Triquet cranes their neck to see the wound better. “It’s burning me.”
“Yes, your skin is very angry. Ah. There is the incision. That is what you are saying is a bite? It is quite long…”
“Osprey. Do they carry diseases? Where’s the—? Get the biologists in here. No. Seriously. How long have I been gone?”
Mandy just shakes her head. “Uh… I mean, we saw you for breakfast. Then you went somewhere. Down into the sub maybe?”
“And that was all today?” Triquet stiffens, their logical sense of time challenged. “There’s got to be a way…”
“This tar or whatever it is…” Esquibel pulls back from Triquet’s arm and makes a face. “It is cauterizing your wound. There seems to be a chemical reaction happening. A burning of the skin.”
“Yes! That’s what I’m telling you!” Triquet snaps. “What do you mean, cauterized? Does that mean it’s clean?”
“I do not know, maybe if it is antibiotic or antiviral. Perhaps with some tests. But your arm is a mess. I am not sure how to get that stuff off without hurting you even more.”
“I just don’t want an infection. And I’d rather not have a huge ugly scar. But if the tar is keeping the wound clean, then…”
“I do not know. Who did this to you?”
“The osprey’s owner.”
Esquibel and Mandy share a perplexed glance. Has Triquet lost their mind?
Triquet sees it and realizes they have just a few moments left to convince these two of their sanity. “No no. I know it sounds crazy. Just.” They emit a short explosive sigh and collect their thoughts. “Sorry. I was attacked. Kidnapped. Drugged.”
Mandy gasps. “You were? Who? Wetchie-ghuy?”
Esquibel hisses in fury and redoubles her efforts, giving Triquet a much closer exam. “Are you okay?”
“That’s what I’m… I don’t know. I don’t know how I am. The drugs, I mean, it just turned me into this totally passive victim. Like they didn’t even need to bind me. No. It wasn’t Wetchie-ghuy. There’s another.”
“That’s what Jidadaa was saying last night. Two shamans locked in battle. Using the rest of us as bait and sacrifices and unwitting soldiers in their war.” Mandy shakes her head. “Creepy.”
“What happened to your shoe?” Esquibel lifts Triquet’s left foot, so they can all see the sliced laces.
“The shaman did that. And then they… Right! They tattooed dots on my foot! Oh my god, you got to look…!”
Esquibel removes Triquet’s shoe and sock and looks at their pale foot. “Where…?”
“Dots between my toes. You can’t see them?” Triquet sits up and pushes Esquibel’s hands away. There, as tiny as pinpricks, the faint black marks are fading into their skin. “You see? All four in a row? Between the toes for—for who knows why!”
“I don’t see any marks, Triquet.” Esquibel shines her phone’s light onto Triquet’s foot.
Triquet look again. Now the dots are gone, vanished inside their foot. “Heavens to Betsy. Well now that isn’t good.”
“Are you… sure all of this is what happened?” Esquibel sits back, regarding Triquet with her unreadable professional mask. “The shaman, the bird, the drugs? Or maybe you fell and hit your head and this wound and tar came from a tree you fell against?”
“I’m sure of nothing. I can only tell you what I saw and felt and, and remember. I remember this greasy little golem laughing at me, with all these little bones and twigs in their ratty hair. Old. Like probably sixties. No gender. Skin like fucking leather. I mean, if it was all a hallucination it was really clear.”
Esquibel shakes her head in disapproval. “This is non-viable. First Flavia and now Triquet. I think it is time…” she decides, “for another camp security meeting.”
Triquet and Mandy would have groaned—even a few minutes ago—at this news. But now, they just share a pensive look and say not a word.
Ξ
It is nearly midnight before they get everyone congregated in the clean room around Maahjabeen on the cot. Pradeep sits at her side, his hand gripping her slack wrist. She stares at him, dull and nearly unresponsive.
Finally Alonso arrives, having detoured to fill his wine glass to the brim. This will not be a short meeting. “Everyone here?”
“Everyone but Flavia,” Mandy answers, bitter.
“Of course. That is what…” Alonso takes in all their frightened, tired faces. “Yes. Not so much of a paradise now, eh, is it? I am very sorry to you all.”
“Where’s Jidadaa?” Katrina wonders. “We could use her here.”
Amy puts out a calming hand. “It may be too much for her, poor thing. She’s probably never been in a room with so many people in her life. But… where is she?”
Katrina shrugs. “I didn’t see her after dinner.”
“So…” Alonso frowns. “Do we now say that two are missing?”
“No. No way.” Jay’s voice rises above all the rest. “She can come and go as she pleases. Just, like… check your pockets. She takes whatever she wants without even asking.”
“The innocent savage?” Amy clucks in disapproval. “Jay, you sound like Rousseau.”
“Innocent? Ha! She knows what she’s doing. She just doesn’t care.” Jay glares, sullen. He knows he’s the lone voice against rolling out the red carpet for Jidadaa here. Well. They’ll learn.
“I have misplaced a USB stick,” Katrina mutters. “Classic black thumb drive. Let me know if anyone’s seen it.”
Jay throws up his hands. “She’s already getting started.”
Esquibel shushes them. “Please. No arguments over my patient. We finally got her to stabilize.”
“The sign of the fox.” Miriam places a hand on Maahjabeen’s forehead. It is clammy. “Same place and everything? Right at the base of the spine?”
Pradeep nods, head bowed. I do not have the strength for this. It is the only refrain going round and round in his head, like a pop song’s chorus. He is helpless, useless, and teetering at the edge of his own panic. He is no less a control freak than Mandy and he can’t imagine a situation where he’d be under less control. This is intolerable. Impossible. I do not have the strength for this. He remembers the pit of cold gray mud in his vitals. Now his beloved Maahjabeen struggles with it, and there’s nothing he can do.
Esquibel straightens, an invisible military mantle settling over her. “We are under attack. It is impossible to deny any longer.”
Alonso nods, thoughtful. Everyone else remains silent, some saving their arguing for whatever draconian measures Esquibel is about to announce.
“As one of the recent victims, I have to agree.” Triquet is careful not to use their injured arm. The tea they sip rises in an unsteady grip. “This second shaman… I mean… they need a name, people, right? We can’t just keep talking around it. I say they’re Sherman. Sherman the non-binary shaman, okay? Wetchie-ghuy versus Sherman. And they’ve evidently both known we’ve been here for weeks and they’ve been watching us, trying to steal one or two of us away and,” they gesture at Maahjabeen, “straight-up attacking us when they want. I mean, I have no illusions about Sherman’s plans for me. These weird tattoos on my feet were just the start. Slavery, right? That’s what we keep hearing?” Triquet shivers. “And I don’t even remember how they nabbed me. I just stepped through the dark hatch in the sub and… and the next thing I knew I was staring at a valley at sunset, somewhere in the interior. And I couldn’t move or think. It was horrible.”
“Nobody goes anywhere alone.” Esquibel holds up a finger. “I think we can agree on that, yes?”
Miriam nods. “I think that’s sensible.”
Pradeep shrugs, needing them to understand how hopeless it is. “I mean, Maahjabeen and I were together when we were both attacked. Somehow in our sleep? I have to say, it feels very much like this, this Sherman, is coming at us in our dreams.”
“Slow down. Hold on.” Alonso pats the air.
Esquibel scowls. “Wait. I would very much appreciate if we can keep this subject rational and logical, please. That is an interesting observation about your subjective experience with this toxin, but as an objective piece of the puzzle to help solve these mysteries, it is just nonsense. You do understand that, right?”
Pradeep shrugs. They don’t understand. He can’t make them understand. This Sherman figure is slowly sucking the life out of them, one by one.
“So they’re the one we saw up in the tree feeding the osprey?” Jay asks Triquet. “You say this dude fed the osprey a dead mouse before it bit you? Same as our guy, right, Prad?”
Pradeep nods again. “I do want to get out and try that climb again. Just not now. I can’t believe the handholds go all the way up to the crown. That would be some kind of bizarre miracle, a fire that can burn away a tree’s entire heartwood and yet it still lives.”
“That sounds like a dangerous kind of mission.” Alonso shakes his head in negation. “Not the kind of thing we should be doing right now, mi amigos. Even as a pair.”
“Yes, my next proposal is that we do not leave the beach. Ever.” Esquibel looks at each of their faces, expecting the fight to come now. But Triquet’s account has sobered them all.
“So who has Flavia?” Katrina makes a note in her laptop. “We can assume it was Sherman for Doctor Triquet, as well as Pradeep and Maahjabeen. But why did Sherman the shaman kidnap one and try to poison the others?”
Pradeep groans and buries his face in Maahjabeen’s listless arms.
“So does that mean Wetchie-ghuy has Flavia? We know he’s been trying. Or… here’s a…” Katrina flashes a quirky smile. “Just thinking outside the box here. But when these two got poisoned it’s an unmistakable fox head tattooed on their backs, yeh? And, I mean, the only one we know who has a fox on the whole island is Morska Vidra. Maybe he’s the one, he’s behind it all, and the rest of it is all classic misdirection.”
“Uhh, I can assure you,” Triquet sniffs, “that Sherman and his fucking bird were not any kind of misdirection, nor was Wetchie-ghuy assaulting me after watching me wee a couple weeks ago. Remember that? No, I think Morska Vidra and the Dzaadzitch villagers are just trying to stay out of the fight and keep the peace.”
“Okay, okay…” Katrina allows. “I just… so far… Nothing’s been as it seems here. So I’m trying to get ahead of it. See what’s coming down the pike before it gets here for once. Trying to be active instead of reactive here. That’s good tactics, yeh, Doctor Daine?”
“It is. But it doesn’t matter how active we are because we have no offensive capability. That is the problem. We hardly even have anything for defense. It would be nearly impossible to make the bunker secure, for example. Especially if they’re using things like smoke and dust and other inhalants as intoxicants and paralyzing agents. Perhaps we hole up in the sub, seal off the hull breach as I tried to do before, and only come up in small squads for food and bathroom breaks.”
“For, like,” Mandy consults her phone, “twenty-four days? We’ve got to live like that for twenty-four days before they come get us?”
This dissent comes from an unexpected quarter. Esquibel frowns at Mandy. “Or…? I am happy to hear your ideas instead on how to survive getting poisoned or kidnapped.”
“I don’t know. This is just like playground politics as far as I can tell. My Aunt Nancy is a fourth-grade teacher. She says it doesn’t matter how bad the fight is, eventually everybody’s got to talk to each other. Maybe we should try talking to them.”
“The shamans…?” Miriam considers. “Well, first we’d have to find them.”
“Oh, I think I know where Wetchie-ghuy lives.” Amy frowns. “Or at least the path to get there. Let’s do it. In the morning. Like six of us, brandishing fishing spears.”
This is so uncharacteristic of Amy that Alonso frowns. If even Amy is starting to lose her cool then this situation is getting out of hand. “No. No… We can’t. It is too fragile here. This is like Israel/Palestine or whatever. We can’t just show up and start making demands. The whole thing could blow up.”
“Blow up?” Amy stands, hands on hips. “What could be worse than losing Flavia, not once but twice on an eight week project?”
“Inter-village warfare.” Alonso holds her irate gaze.
Amy finally drops her eyes, nodding. “Yes. Okay. Maybe not brandishing spears and making demands. But Mandy’s right. We’ve got to talk to these fuckers. See what they want from us. Maybe there’s a way they get what they need without…” Amy gestures vaguely at the group.
“Enslaving us?” Esquibel finishes for her. “I doubt that. Katrina is right. We need Jidadaa here to answer all these questions. We need to find her before we do anything else. But nobody goes anywhere without, say… Here. Let us do it this way. Everyone gets a partner. We go out in two teams of two. Each team member stays in visual range but not ever close enough to each other to inhale a cloud of smoke or dust. So…”
“I think that might be a little much,” Alonso amends. “But everyone absolutely has to be careful.”
“Two teams of two,” Esquibel stubbornly maintains. “Flavia is gone. Maahjabeen is fighting for her life. Triquet and Pradeep have been attacked.”
“Okay. Okay. Two teams of two. Everyone listen to Lieutenant Commander Daine now.” Alonso stands and drains his glass. “We are all sleeping in here tonight. Should we set watches?”
“Yes. So partner up. Maahjabeen is with Pradeep.” Esquibel encourages the others to name who they want.
“Miriam and Triquet.” Alonso pushes the two of them together. He throws his arm around Amy. “Right, partner?”
Katrina looks right through Mandy. “Jay, you my homeboy.”
He flashes her a peace sign. “Forever and a day, sister.”
Mandy squeezes Esquibel’s arm. “You and me, Skeeb.”
Esquibel nods, satisfied with their choices. “Now don’t ever go anywhere without your partner. The threats are too bad. And while we move everyone in from outside let’s have a couple people just on watch, at the edge of the perimeter with lights. Perhaps we even keep a watch throughout the night.”
“Every night?” Mandy again. Why is she contradicting so many of Esquibel’s orders? “Ugh. How long are these watches?”
“Usually two hours. We take turns and if you see anything at all strange or threatening you scream loud enough to wake everyone. One of the only things we have is our strength in numbers. So we must use it. Prepare to spend a lot more time together in close contact. I am sorry. This is… not how this mission was meant to go, but I can assure you there isn’t a single command unit anywhere in the world who knows a thing about the dispute between these two island medicine men. Nor would they care. So this is our fight. Ours alone. But if we are careful then we can…”
A noise at the bunker’s door. They all fall into a tense silence. A soft voice calls out, “Hello? Yes?”
“Jidadaa!” Katrina bounds to her feet and slips out of the plastic enclosure. “Where have you been?”
“Through tunnel. Ah. I make enemy.” Her voice is sad, fatigued.
Now they all file in a rush out of the clean room. Jidadaa is in the bunker’s door, mud-streaked, leaning against the frame. Katrina wants to pull her into a hug but she knows better. Her hands flutter at her sides instead. “Enemy? What enemy?”
“Wetchie-ghuy.” Jidadaa moves out of the doorway into the bunker, pulling Flavia after her from the darkness.
Ξ
It is the middle of the night and there is a wire cutting into Alonso’s back. He cannot shift or it will wake his cellmate, and if that man wakes then the rats will stir, and then no one will sleep. Alonso must remain still and accept the pain of the wire cutting into his back so the rats do not come. Pain is life.
He can hear the men stirring in the next building. The hour must be later than he thought. The rats have already come and gone and the torturer is here again. His crude joke and the deferential laughter of the guards splits the silence. Laughter greets anything he says. They’ve seen what this bastard can do with a pair of tongs.
Alonso must move. Quietly. Slowly. Do not rouse the prisoner pressed up against him. Just work on tensing your core and arching your back to get it off that wire. Only this one cot in this one cell has this wire across it. Its particular pain is what places him here. Otherwise, in the dark, he wouldn’t know where he is.
These are the most hopeless hours, in the pre-dawn of a winter morning, just waiting to be perfunctorily brutalized. But why do the torturers do it? They don’t even interrogate Alonso any more. Is it just to keep their skills up? Show each other new techniques? Train the new guy on the team? The soul-crushing reason why they really do it is impossible to ignore: they enjoy it. These men are sadists. They can’t get enough of Alonso’s blood and screams and tears. It is the unfortunate way of the world.
This Earth is a terrible Earth. Alonso can prove it from primary sources in the historical record. Over the decades he has taken part in many excavations of ancient burial sites, in Europe and Central Asia and North Africa. He has seen thousands of broken bones, pierced skulls, smashed digits. Crime scenes from eons ago, just uncovered now. The three youths they found in Cappadocia will always haunt him. Nearly three thousand years before they had been buried alive up to their necks and left to die of exposure. As he brushed the dirt from their bones he couldn’t help but relive their panic and despair. What a horrible way to die.
Using this remembered claustrophobia to collect his meager strength, Alonso heaves and lifts himself from the wire cutting into his back. He slides away from the man lying across him and tries to settle into a more comfortable position. But no. There is a wooden bar here, pressing his left shoulder down. Where did that come from? There was never any wooden bar in this cell. In any cell. They couldn’t leave such a useful bit of lumber. The prisoners would kill each other with it, or the guards.
Can Alonso hide it somewhere? His hand sneaks up and grasps it. The squared edges of the bar are wrapped in taut nylon. Now there is nylon? What horrors do they have planned for him today?
He runs his hand over it more carefully. Wait. This is a new cot. The wooden bar is part of a frame. The nylon is its webbing. He just shifted to the edge. But they never get new cots.
Alonso opens his eyes. Dark squares and trapezoids float above him. Ah. He is not in the gulag. He is in the bunker on Lisica. That is not a torture victim lying sprawled across him, it is Miriam.
His adrenaline quickly spent, he falls back in on himself. Yes, he is on Lisica and it is proving to be no less terrifying than the gulag of the Altai Mountains. And once again, it is all his fault. He got Charlie and Nadya killed in that border town and he’s about to get more people killed here. What the fuck is wrong with him?
Perhaps it is all the law of averages catching up to him. His first fifty years were so wonderful, so sweet and magical. Success had come so easily to him. He had that aura, that wonderful ability to charm everyone in a room without opening his mouth. And all the doors were so easily opened. He stayed right at the leading edge of data science and all its fresh discoveries, making him a rising star in several fields. He presented at a score of conferences every year and spent too many nights in a drunken fraternal haze with all the great minds of the world, outlining the new paradigms of processes and informatics. Ahh. What a lovely time that was. A lovely life. Now he has been relegated to something less charmed, more beleaguered, and far more realistic than the fairy tale he had lived.
At least he gets to keep Miriam through the transition. Or does he? After the first few days here where they were each other’s sun and stars, her eye has already strayed and he is old news. Well, of course he is. Look at him. He is a sagging fat mess, crippled beyond repair. Gray inside and out. Who would ever desire that?
Pity. It must be little more than pity that keeps her coming back to him. Yes, she smiles just like she used to, but what must be going on in her mind? Miriam loves beauty as much as he does. But now she is the only one who has any. Oh, what a nightmare. She would be far better off if he would just die. Disappear without a trace and die, that is what would be best. Not only best for her but for all of them. It is his damn obsession with Plexity that makes them put themselves in harm’s way each day. Remove Alonso and perhaps the rest can actually save themselves…
Alonso slides out from under Miriam and gets dressed in the cold morning air. Maybe he will just walk into the sea. That would be suitable. He could gain one more moment of painless bliss before succumbing to the waters. They could bury him next to that old woman in the redwoods and get on with their lives.
“Hey.” His hand is on the bunker door and the voice startles him. Another hand, as familiar as any he has ever known, falls on his. It is Amy. “Remember. We’re not supposed to go anywhere alone, partner.”
“Why are you awake?” Now what is Alonso going to do?
“Counting sheep. I heard you groan. Bad dreams?”
“I…” He shakes his head, unable to lie to Amy. “I just need the trenches and I didn’t want to…”
“Esquibel will dice us into bloody squares if we disobey any more of her orders.”
But this image is uncomfortably close to things Alonso actually witnessed in the gulag and he grimaces. “Where are my sandals?”
“Hold on. I’ll help you with them. Let me just get mine on first.”
Then Amy is kneeling before him, forcing his swollen feet into the loose straps. Alonso grunts, trying to figure out a way he could still vanish from this scene and abandon all his impossibly heavy responsibilities once and for all.
They open the door and shuffle out into the frigid night, a thick fog obscuring the camp. Only after they close the door behind them does Amy turn on her phone’s light. They can see no more than three meters ahead.
Amy giggles. “Groovy. This can’t go wrong at all, can it?”
Alonso sees that Amy carries one of their fishing spears. “What will you do with that? Tickle someone?”
“If they get too close, I will.”
“Amy… Amy… I have not seen this side of you, maybe ever. I did not expect you to be so…”
“Violent? Angry? Shades of my past haunting me, for sure. You know, violence is never the answer, Alonso. Until it is.”
“Yes, I have heard this phrase. And it is true the world is a very violent place. I have the scars to prove it.” He grips her muscled forearm. “But what if they would take a sacrifice instead? What if we do not fight and we give them the slave they so desperately want? Perhaps if I offer myself that could…” Alonso trails off, stopped by the look Amy gives him.
“Are you serious? Listen to yourself, Alonso. That’s not even… coherent. And I don’t like the way your thoughts are headed. I…”
But Amy stops. There is a figure in their path.
It is so expected that it hardly surprises them. Yes, the Lisicans are everywhere now, crawling out of every hole and casting them in their comedies and tragedies. Alonso idly considers, not for the first time, that it would all make for a great opera.
They do not recognize this figure. This one is slight, youthful, with bare narrow arms and an oblong mask covering their face.
When Amy’s light hits the mask it glitters with pollen’s gold.
DW Draffin -- Lisica 