Chapter 58 – Saving The Baby
February 3, 2025
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
58 – Saving The Baby
“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Alonso confesses, his legs ready to give out from the pain. It clouds his mind, making it hard to think or make decisions or be brave. And the hillside ahead only goes more steeply down, each footfall an increasing stab of agony. “I am sorry, everyone. Here is where I reach the end of my limit.”
“Then here is where we pop you onto the travois.”
“Mirrie, I already told you…”
“Stop, Alonso. Just stop.” Miriam puts a calming hand on his hunched shoulder. “Look. It’s too far to turn back, eh? So if we’ve got to carry you, it might as well be forward as back.”
“I cannot abide the idea of being a literal burden. You know—”
“Zo. Darling. Sweetest?”
“Yes, mi amor?”
“Shut the fuck up and get on the travois.”
Once he finally does so, they follow their earlier tracks down the slope of loose soil under the trees, pine camp behind them. Miriam leads a large knot of the crew, six in all, back to the canyon and the lake. Back in the sub, she’d promised an evening swim. Everyone but Flavia, Mandy, and Esquibel had enthusiastically grabbed towels and followed. Now Amy and Jay range eagerly ahead, finding better paths on the hillside. Maahjabeen descends with Triquet and Miriam toward the stream at the bottom, as Pradeep and Katrina drag Alonso awkwardly downhill. He grunts at every impact and won’t stop complaining, loudly and bitterly, in Spanish.
“Why don’t you sing us something, love?” Miriam asks with forced cheer as she takes her turn at Katrina’s travois pole.
But the way she looks at him only makes Alonso feel more like a child. “No!” he shouts back, petulant. “No lo haré!”
They finally reach the banks of the stream. Alonso rolls out of his conveyance and scoots down the steep bank until he can soak his legs in the cold water. He groans with pleasure and falls back against the rocky shoal behind him. Time passes. He listens to their efforts to dismantle the travois of nylon straps and branches. The warmth of the day fills him. He nearly falls asleep. Then someone blocks the bright sky and he squints up at them. “Yes?”
“We have built a raft for you.”
“Now this is getting ridiculous…”
“Not a word, you ungrateful sod. We have three extra inflatable sleeping pads from storage. Never needed them. Two get used today. Everyone’s been working hard for you while you’ve dozed.”
“Yes, yes… How very kind.” Alonso heaves himself to his feet and stares at the long black avenue of the stream, curving into a canyon dark with woods. There stand Pradeep and Katrina, knee-deep in the shallows, proud to show dad what they made for him. The gesture touches him and he holds up a hand, resolving to act with more grace, regardless of what happens or how much it hurts.
They have bound the mats loosely into an X. He drops himself in the middle. The water is nearly shocking at first, but the streambed is dark, warming the water, and it is getting later in the season. Soon he finds the current refreshing. Amy tows him, wading hip deep upstream. Now he can sing. “Don’t cry for me, Argentina…!” But the ballad isn’t suitable and he lets the echoes fade to silence.
They enter the canyon, wading through the rushing stream. His bottom bumps against the rounded riverstones. Alonso hasn’t ever seen a forest like this. The grove at the beach was just a fringe of trees compared to this deep wilderness. The nooks and crannies of this canyon have never felt the tread of human feet. So this is the pure unspoiled natural world environmentalists rhapsodize about. It is hypnotically beautiful, with glowing mushrooms and hanging lichen and flitting birds and bugs. The winding side canyons they pass are chock full of redwoods and ferns. Their amount of organic wealth defies reason. The higher orders of emergent processes that he and Flavia spoke so persuasively about are writ large here, with such a degree of fineness in the clouds of buzzing gnats and haze of pollen dusting the leaves, that it scales up out of his ability to sense it. Now this is where actual magic is, where we can tell that even after we’ve reached the limits of our measurements, there is still something immeasurable beyond.
The eight people speak in a hush, as if in a cathedral. The water sounds fill the canyon instead, and the intermittent cries of raptors overhead. The sky cracks open just as Alonso looks up through the trees, and a banner of blue appears between the gray clouds. Rays fall on the stream, making its pale-green waters luminous. “Mira.” Alonso tugs on the strap Pradeep hauls on. “The sky. What do the locals think when the blue sky shows up like that, eh? You said you think their sky is a surface. So what is this? Their egg is cracking?”
“No, the idea, as far as I can tell,” Pradeep answers, “isn’t that there’s anything beyond the clouds. They are a ceiling. A dome. Therefore, the blue we see is only a dash of paint against that surface. Their cosmos is enclosed, according to what Jidadaa has told me, although she has nothing but scorn for Lisican beliefs. But what must they think on the rare occasion they see the blinding sun? Where does that light and heat come from? God has gotten angry, very angry indeed.”
“Or the phases of the moon?” Triquet asks, wading at Alonso’s floating shoulder. “Do they even recognize it as the same body when it’s all over the sky in different shapes and colors when they can catch a glimpse of it at all? Can they track the craters and think, ah yes… a planetoid lit from various angles! I doubt it. They’re all just in this big like room of island and water, however many kilometers wide, with a perpetual gray ceiling and people appearing every once in a while from what she called the line between the sea and the sky. How many kilometers is it? Someone do the math. On a clear day how far is the horizon away?”
“Well,” Alonso reasons, “first we must know the curvature of the earth. And then the height of their point of view. I think, standing on the beach, we could see no more than a kilometer or two.”
“Yes,” Maahjabeen adds, “even standing on that fallen log on the beach, you could double the distance. These cliffs, ehh. How high did we say? Four hundred meters? We have seen from the top. It is very far. Maybe a hundred kilometers or more.”
“I’m getting a radius of like 34, 35, if I’m calculating it right.” With one hand, Katrina consults her phone for the equation while she trails her other fingers in the stream, tapping its surface like a keyboard. “Distance = 1.226 x the square root of the height.”
“So that is the extent of your whole world. Seventy kilometers in diameter on a clear day. What is that, like a couple hundred square kilometers?” Triquet muses. “A tiny little universe indeed.”
“And only like twenty of those square kilometers are land. It is nearly all open ocean. But even so, these still aren’t any kind of seafaring people.” Maahjabeen luxuriates in this water, pushing against the strong current. keeping herself in the deeps up to her waist. It is so much warmer than the ocean. And just kinder to her in nearly every way. She has very little experience with fresh water. There wan’t much in Tunisia so she spent all her time on the beach and in the sea. “The Lisicans were always completely closed off from the ocean by the surf and currents just like we were so they could never learn to build boats. Just net fish in the lagoon. So, to people like them, the ocean must be as impassable and mysterious as the sky. What do they think happens beneath its waves? They must see whales and all the marine life break the surface. How do they…? I mean, do they know fish live down there? They must. Their ancestors were a whaling people, yes? Didn’t they teach their children how the world works before disappearing in here?”
“Who knows?” Katrina muses. “They didn’t bring music. I thought music was essential to being human. So that means all kinds of things can be lost or forgotten. Even the sea and the sky.”
They finally fetch up at the base of the deadfall that blocks the canyon, damming the rest of it upstream into the lake. But it is a serious climb, perhaps thirty meters up at a steep angle, on slick black logs poking out every which way. Alonso regards it, baleful. This is impossible. He gives up before he even thinks to try.
“I think the best route is over here,” Jay calls out from the far left of the dam. “Got to hug this side on the way up to avoid a big hole in the center. You don’t want to drop down into like dark rushing water and never be heard from again.”
“Yes,” Alonso declares loudly, “I think I will be just fine here. You can all go on. Please do not worry about me.”
“But we can’t leave our big papa behind!” Katrina pats his head and smiles down at him with love. “We’ll figure something out.”
The others have already started clambering up the wreckage. Miriam turns her back to the dam and sits, scooting upward, using her arms. “Look, Zo. You can do it like this.”
“It is too far, Mirrie.”
“Oh my god, listen to you.” Amy laughs at him in disbelief. “Can you believe this is Alonso, Mir? Our Alonso? Boy used to swing through the trees like Tarzan now you ask him to scooch a bit—”
“And he bawls like a baby.” Miriam joins in her laughter. Alonso scowls at them both. They don’t know how depleted he is.
“Be nice.” Katrina comes to his defense. “Good days and bad days. I learned with Pavel. Probably for a very long time.”
But the older women aren’t chastened. They both sit backwards and scoot their bums up the broken terrain, laughing as they go.
“Fine.” Alonso sits up in his floating mats and grabs the nearest broken branch. He hauls himself to his feet and wades toward the dam. He even manages to take a dozen steps upward before the cold wears off and the pain returns. Then he turns and sits as they did and scoots himself ignominiously backward up the fallen logs. Each move provokes a grunt, but he does find a rhythm, recalling once again the strength that remains in his arms and shoulders. Soon he is the only one left on the face of the dam, the only sounds a trickle of water and his echoing sounds of effort.
His gaze drops. Below, one of the Thunderbird clan stand at the edge of the stream, watching him. Seeing the youth makes Alonso’s breath catch in his throat. He had been lost in his misery, thinking he was alone. But there are few more powerful forces in the human heart than vanity. What a pathetic figure he is. They’ve surely never seen anything like him before, a pale gray man bloated with all the ills of the modern world, unable to climb a pile of logs.
Pride deeply stung, Alonso stands. Ignoring the shattering pain, he marches stiff-legged over the last logs to clear the top edge and behold the lake for the first time.
A patch of sun shines on it. Ancient primeval trees crowd its banks on both sides. The sunlight is luminous, blue and green and gold. All his toil is forgotten. This lake is a paradise. The pain and the humiliation have been worth it, indeed.
The others follow Pradeep, stringing along to the left at the base of the canyon wall where a fringe of lakeshore provides a narrow path further in. Except for Katrina. She’s already in the water, paddling happily beside them like a dog.
Alonso sighs in pleasure and rolls into the lake at his feet.
Their waterproof packs provide both Dyson readers and lunch. At the pocket beach ringed by willows, they find the gravel sharp but the logs plentiful. They set up a porch and benches and a camp chair for Alonso. But he refuses to get out of the water yet.
Maahjabeen does too. Now that she’s in the lake she relishes it. Fresh water has so many different properties from salt. She is less buoyant here and has to work harder to stay afloat. But the water is cool and crisp. So fresh. And she can drink directly from the lake. The best water she’s ever tasted. No, she will never get out. They will have to drag her kicking and screaming from this lake. From now on she is no longer a proud and noble orca, she is an eel slithering about in the mud. And it couldn’t feel better.
Her crew on the shore are busy setting up their day camp. Look at them. Her very own Pradeep, busy and serious as always. Amy, who has gently removed the weak little kit fox from where she kept it, in the chest zipper pocket of her windshirt. She now crouches at the shore, digging up grubs or any other nutrients she can get in its mouth. Katrina, standing unabashedly naked in a spot of warm sun, wringing her hair out. Miriam kneeling at the edge of the treeline, rearranging her backpack for geological work. Triquet in a sarong, picking their way barefoot to the shore, collecting flowers. Jay, scrambling restlessly further in. They are her family. They really are. It did happen. All those she cares about right now in the world are here, in this sacred little valley hidden away from the rest of the world. Sure, add Esquibel and Mandy and Maahjabeen’s Italian sister Flavia and she will be complete. This lake shall be her private little ocean, this canyon her temple to God.
Alonso floats beside her. His trailing hand accidentally snags a strand of her hair that has snuck out from under her wet scarf. “Oh, I am very sorry, Miss Charrad.”
“It is no problem,” she turns her body in the water to face him, “Papa.” And she favors him with a dimpled smile.
Alonso beams with satisfaction, like he just completed a jigsaw puzzle. Maahjabeen had surely been the last holdout, hadn’t she? They had all embraced the family, except for her. But now she has found her own way in, through the love she shares with Pradeep.
“I never want this to end,” she continues. “You are all too dear.”
“Here we have found our heaven,” he agrees.
And then they hear a distant cry, from above the canyon’s rim somewhere, a ragged scream of outrage and pain. It stops them all. Everyone stands and those in the water paddle over to a fallen log so they can stand too, hip deep. The cry comes again, from a voice they don’t know. It is human, certainly, but that is all they can tell.
“Dear lord. Impossible to say…” Miriam studies one rim then the other, “where that originates. Which side…”
“Yeah,” Jay agrees. “First I thought it was from the far side up there. Then our side. Now… I don’t know.”
They wait for another cry. They wait and wait. But it never comes. Five then ten minutes pass.
“Starting to feel foolish here…” Triquet mutters. “Who even was that? And what do we do now, people?”
“Are we sure that was human?” Amy asks. “I’ve heard some calls from rutting elk that didn’t sound too different.”
“Seen any elk on Lisica?” Miriam asks.
“Well, no, but…” Amy shakes her head, none of the catalog of life she has found here appropriate for that tortured sound. “I don’t know. Maybe it is human. But they can’t be looking for us. Right?”
“Maybe they are,” Pradeep shrugs, “but they just can’t find us. Maybe that is their frustration at losing our trail in the stream.”
“Well, I am getting cold,” Alonso decides. “Let us all keep doing what we were doing. Get to work. All we can do is keep our ears open. But I don’t think we should go anywhere. Doing anything rash like moving back to pine camp now will only expose—”
The cry reaches them again, like a white noise wolf’s howl from over the horizon. Its pain and rage is horrible to hear. Whoever it is must be tearing their throat to shreds.
“Yes,” Maahjabeen agrees, climbing up the submerged log until she can grab one of its upraised roots. She holds a hand out for Alonso to join her. “Let us carry on. You are right. Nothing else to do. But Jay, please don’t go any farther. Stay close.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Jay’s spidey sense is totally tingling. That sound is evil, like straight up dangerous. He had been about to skirt around an outcrop to see what the next inlet held but now he returns to the safety of their little pocket beach. Leaning down, he hauls first Alonso then Maahjabeen from the water.
Katrina dresses as they dry off. Jay locates a nice stout branch that would make a good club. Amy begins preparing lunch.
Alonso sits and listens, their watchdog. He leans back and scouts the broken edges of the canyon rims above, their dark shadowed slopes against the sailing clouds. Bits of sky still break through and patches of sun race across the redwood treetops of the far canyon wall. He hears nothing. Idly, he removes his laptop from a dry bag and arranges his workstation with the external hard drive and a pair of batteries. Might as well get some Plexity tasks done.
Miriam finishes ordering her kit and hauls her pack on, facing the wall of the canyon behind them. She only needs to go a few steps before she touches a formation of pale epidosite hiding behind a fern. Finally she might get to see the island’s interior ophiolites in all their glory. It is just further confirmation in her model of uplift and the remnants of the Kula plate beneath. “The Late Cretaceous,” she muses to herself, “was a happening place.”
Maahjabeen joins Pradeep in preparing the Dyson readers for lake organism collection. They have five with them and a couple aren’t charged. They plug those in and Jay takes one, leaving the two others for Pradeep and Maahjabeen. Pradeep crouches at the shoreline, looking under rocks for pale annelids and Belostomatidae waterbugs and Pacifastacus crayfish. She re-enters the water with a sigh, wading out into its velvety embrace. Now it doesn’t feel cold at all. She takes one sample of the lake’s surface water at the edge, then others at meter increments heading into deeper water.
AAAAACCCCCCHHHHH!
The cry echoes through the canyon again, this time closer and if anything even more wild and urgent. Triquet flinches, weaving the flowers into a garland, and scowls at the sky. Maahjabeen ducks her head under, instantly resolving to get water column samples from a place she can’t hear that awful scream. Reveling in the silence, she opens her eyes underwater. It is still and deep green, only turbid and dark below her feet. With her fuzzy vision she looks at her glowing hand and the white reader. Pressing a pair of buttons, she takes a sample at the depth of one meter, then two.
She surfaces just as another scream erupts from above. Yes, it is indisputably human now, there is a slur of inaudible words in the gaps between. Maahjabeen swims over to Pradeep. He looks up at the cliff tops with an anxious frown. No. She will not let him slip into the clutches of his panic. She will hold him tight.
Now there is no break in the screams. The unseen figure circles above somehow like a raptor, their cries splitting the air again and again. The crew share worried glances and draw close.
“There!” Jay shouts, pointing down canyon toward the top of the cliffs. They can all see the huddled figure atop the highest stone, lifting his face from where he found something at his feet all the way up to the sky. But he uncharacteristically sways, this barrel-shaped Lisican, and lifts his arms in triumph. With a final scream he steps confidently out into space, arms windmilling.
They all cry out in shock, watching him plummet over a hundred meters to the ground. His last scream is cut short by impact.
Alonso stifles a sob. Triquet cries out, burying their face in Miriam’s embrace. Maahjabeen can’t move. Her mind is blank. Pradeep whips an arm around her and turns them away.
“No way.” Jay edges back toward the dam. His breath comes in fast shallow gasps. “No fucking way. That just happened.” He can’t process the gruesome event. He doesn’t even want to. But his feet move him to the dam regardless. The man landed past it alongside the stream below on the same side of the canyon they occupy.
Pradeep joins him, as do Katrina, Miriam, and Amy. In silence they make their way down the slope of fallen logs back to the stream. It is the oxbow where they had stopped during their first exploration of the canyon that they halt again. “Yes,” Pradeep estimates. “It was directly up there…”
Jay finds the body a surprising distance from the cliff, in a field of rubble. The man lies still, on his side in a pool of blood and gore, quite dead. “Yooo. Oh my fucking god. It’s Wetchie-ghuy.”
Miriam joins him, clapping a hand over her mouth at the gruesome sight. One of his eyes burst from his skull on impact. His jaw is shattered and blood still leaks from his skull.
“Dear god.” Pradeep grips Miriam’s arm as nausea sweeps through him. Even his trained clinical detachment is challenged by this much carnage. He retches.
Amy stays back, looking up to the clifftop. “There’s still someone up there. Waving.” She waves back.
A tiny voice reaches them, repeating the same phrase again and again: “Ja sam sada íx̱tʼ! Ja sam sada íx̱tʼ!”
“It’s Xaanach.” Amy shades her eyes with her hand. “She’s got something in her hand. Like a paper. Oh! She dropped it!”
The small parcel flutters down to them with the weight of a leaf. It lands in the stream and Jay has to chase it down like a retriever. He returns with his prize, holding it up wordlessly for the others.
It is a small ziploc with a pair of pills and chalky residue in it.
“What am I looking at?” Amy asks.
“Oh my days,” Miriam sighs, recognizing it.
Jay’s voice is flat. “This is the bag of drugs Katrina brought. It was like pretty full when Jidadaa stole it.”
“And then it somehow ended up with Xaanach and…?” Pradeep falls silent, staring up at the cliff top, dark thoughts gathering.
“He lost our rap battle and took off. I didn’t see him again ‘til now…” Jay shakes his head in horror, his own part in this tragedy becoming clear. “I mean, fuck. This is seriously hardcore. Way way too messed up for me. They fed dude the whole freaking bag. “Tripping balls. That was like forty hits of acid and a whole handful of MDMA. He didn’t even know where he was. Or what he was doing when he fell off the cliff. Never even knew he died.”
“Oh, he knew… He knew what he was doing.” Pradeep backs away from Wetchie-ghuy’s corpse to the water’s edge. He can’t take his eyes from the clifftop. “See, that’s where Xaanach left my blood. On top of that rock. Then she filled him with drugs and led him here. That’s my blood on the rock.” His voice trembles, the anxiety clawing at him, impossible to deny. “This wasn’t accidental. He was hunting me.”
“And Xaanach killed him,” Amy tells him, in an attempt to allay his fears, to soothe his trembling limbs and startled eyes. “He’s gone now, Pradeep. He can’t hurt any of us any longer.”
Xaanach sees him from above. She lifts her own ring finger, the same one as Pradeep’s where she drew his blood. Xaanach laughs and calls out to him again in triumph, repeating the same phrase as before. “Ja sam sada íx̱tʼ!”
Ξ
Mandy finds she can move her arm again. It hurts, and it makes her ill thinking how torn and ruptured the fibers of muscle and flesh are, but she can move.
She sits up in the clean room. Esquibel has rebuilt it around her. Pine camp is quiet. It is amazing how exhausted she is from getting shot. Hollywood’s got it all wrong. It’s such an emotional event. There is somehow so much grief in it, like she’s lost a part of herself that she’ll never get back. Like her soul was just punched right out of her frame. And that makes her so tired. But now a bit of her energy has returned. Enough to get her moving.
She finds her sandals and shuffles out the slit door. Esquibel is at the stove, cursing a teapot. Flavia sits in Alonso’s camp chair on her laptop. She looks up in surprise when Mandy appears. “Eh, the soldier rises. She is ready again for battle!”
Mandy smiles at her weakly and waves with her right hand. She moves toward Esquibel, who watches her critically, with a doctor’s assessing eye. “How are you, Mandy?”
“Uhh… great. Fantastic.” A tear leaks from the corner of her eye and she wipes it away. “Hungry.”
“Ah. Well.” Esquibel sets the teapot down and steps away from the table. “That is one thing Flavia and I found we do not do well. Perhaps you can show me how to turn on this stove. And then I can try to make you a—”
“You don’t know how to turn on the stove? It’s been eight weeks.” Mandy doesn’t mean to sound so critical. Or maybe she does. She doesn’t know how she feels about Esquibel anymore.
“We all have our specialties, no?” Flavia calls out.
“You know how I feel about kitchens,” Esquibel says.
Mandy just shakes her head. Cooking is too essential. It’s like saying you don’t know how to bathe yourself or brush your teeth. She turns the stove on but even before she hits the electric ignition she can tell from its silence that its canister is empty. In a bin at her feet she finds a pile of them, the empties mixed with the few full ones left. “Could you please…” Bending hurts. Talking hurts. She nods at the bin. “A full one.”
Esquibel frowns at the bin. “How can I tell which are full?”
“They’re heavier. And they have caps. Please, Esquibel! Stop being so useless right now!”
Esquibel looks at her with a level gaze. “No one has ever called me useless before.” She bends down and grabs a canister, placing it silently on the table before retreating to the clean room.
But Mandy doesn’t have the ability to care. She is bruised, inside and out. She just wants some tea, then some soup, then—
“Phone.” As if by magic, Mandy’s lost phone appears in the air before her, gripped by a slender brown hand. She squeals and jerks back, hurting her shoulder and nearly losing her balance.
Jidadaa stands beside her, a simple smile on her face. She laughs at the physical comedy. “Mandy phone.”
Mandy gathers herself and snares the filthy phone. Its pink shell is cracked and the battery is nearly dead. “Why did you…? What did you do to it?”
“Vid-yo for you. See?” Jidadaa reaches for the phone again but Mandy wards her away.
“Video?” Mandy opens her phone to find a series of photos, most of them obviously unintentional blurred shots of green. But there are a pair of 41 second and 54 second videos near the end.
The first is a covert view of the Ussiaxan village from a distance. Jidadaa, watching over her shoulder, exclaims in disappointment. “Ai. People so little.” Mandy spreads her fingers on the screen to zoom in, eliciting another exclamation from Jidadaa. The people on the screen are now fuzzy blobs of dark pixels in their town square. But she is still able to identify them. “Chinese man. The Daadaxáats shaman. Kasáy.”
“The one we call Lady Boss. What’s her name? Kasay?”
Jidadaa nods. “Means ‘always sweaty.’ Here her men.”
Flavia stands and joins them. “Eh, what are they doing?”
“Kasáy, she make decision. Chinese man her koox̱ now. See?”
He wears a collar and they lead him like a dog. One of the villagers pounds a stake into the ground and they leave him there, leashed to it. The video ends.
“Seriously?” Flavia asks. “That is what Wetchie-ghuy hopes to do with me? Lead me around with a collar and leash?”
Jidadaa shrugs. “If you don’t act good.”
The next clip is from a closer vantage from above. Jidadaa must have taken refuge in a tree. The camera is canted, panning and tilting with frantic energy. Screaming people run beneath the tree. None think to look up. They are all focused on the edge of town.
Nearly a hundred people congregate, surging toward the treeline. They have left Jidadaa behind. Something gray flickers before them in the canopy and they all fall to their knees, like they’ve all been chopped down. The whole crowd falls silent, unmoving.
“What is this?” Flavia demands. “What are we seeing?”
“That is first time they see dla x̱ald, mother fox. First time for Ussiaxan since the eleventh mother. She will choose to give baby fox to one person in Ussiaxan.”
“Wait. The fox decides?” Flavia hadn’t believed this silliness until now. But here is the proof, digitized and indisputable.
Mandy points at the screen. “Look, here comes Kasay-jah like a big bully. Oh my god, even she falls to her knees? Wow, she looks like she’s starstruck. This must be like such a big deal.”
Flavia scowls. “No, do not give the fox to that mean woman…”
Jidadaa laughs as the video ends with the people crying out in shock and outrage. “She do not. The baby go to young girl. Starts big fight. Kasáy try to take baby fox. All people say no. She is sent out of village with her koox̱. Now they must find new home.”
The phone’s battery dies and the screen goes black. Mandy stares stupidly at it. What has she just witnessed? Somebody’s life was just really really fucked with. Two people, actually. The Chinese spy and Lady Boss. Things will never be the same for either of them.
Jidadaa claps, remembering another detail. “And the Ussiaxan wreck the Chinese man radio. No more orders. He is lost.”
Mandy doesn’t know how she feels about that. It brings her no joy that the man who shot her is now a bound slave to an outcast village chief on an undeveloped island thousands of kilometers from his home. Maybe a vindictive person would feel pleasure. But he must have a family and hopes and dreams of his own that have nothing to do with being discarded on Lisica like this. But at the same time, Mandy can’t quite bring herself to feel sorry for him. Fucker shot her.
“Who is there?” Esquibel calls out from the clean room door. “What do you want?”
“It’s just Jidadaa…” Mandy begins but Esquibel interrupts her.
“No. There. Out on the meadow. What do they want?”
Mandy and Flavia turn. Among the green and gold grasses a hundred meters away stand two women, the Mayor and Yesiniy. They watch pine camp, standing patiently in the open.
Jidadaa answers. “I tell them. You leave soon. Sewat and Yesiniy say no, they must tell woman story first. Woman to woman. They do not ever see woman on Lisica. Only Maureen Dowerd. Then only men. Now you are women.”
“Now we are women,” Flavia echoes. “Well, I didn’t know girl power mattered. I mean, if it did, they could have been a lot more nice about it before now. Okay. We have a sisterhood now. Fine. What is this woman story? Some secret?”
“Come.” Jidadaa beckons to Esquibel as well. “Come, please. They wait for you. To tell.”
“Brilliant,” Esquibel mutters. “More nonsense.” But she follows, bringing a chair.
As they approach, Flavia asks, “Ehh, where is Katrina? None of us speak their language. She is the one they want.”
“Maybe one of you could record it for her?” Mandy asks. “My phone’s dead.”
Both Esquibel and Flavia agree, taking out their phones. And not a moment too soon. Before they even reach the meadow, Yesiniy begins intoning a chant.
“Wait! Wait!” Flavia calls out. “We haven’t started recording yet!” They hurry into position as Yesiniy continues.
Jidadaa translates. Esquibel puts her chair down and turns her own camera on her. “It is the story of two sister. First mothers. In beginning they were Ganaaxteidee clan, hibernation frog. Before they are mothers. They are little girls. Two sisters only share little names. Names they only call each other. They forget their old names. They call each other Init and Ta.
“Init and Ta live in Qe’yiłteh. Alone on island. The people do not like Init and Ta. They make their family live alone. They are outcast family. There is no love. But then white men come in big ship. There is fight. Men from the village are killed. They take one white prisoner. This is Tuzhit. He is slave. They make him live with family outside town. He meet Init and Ta.”
“Wait,” Flavia interrupts. “You’re telling me this is their origin story from like three hundred years ago? Can they prove any—?”
Mandy hushes her as Jidadaa continues her translation.
“Hibernation frog clan do not like Tuzhit. Treat him like dog. Tuzhit and Init and Ta steal boat. They try to go down coast but storm take them out to sea. They think they die. Eh. Here is where Yesiniy tells about gods of water and wind. Many gods. Some love, some hate. Three people on the ocean and one mama fox, babies in her belly. Now there is more talk of the gods of wind and water. Sewat repeat what Yesiniy say. Repeat three times. The boat land on Lisica. Here they become big family. Init and Ta have many children. Children marry and have babies. Again and again.
“In the time of sixth mothers there is new shipwreck. Two men. One is dark from south islands named Mkuwelili. One is pale like Tuzhit named Kristaps. Lisica people take them as slave. But time is bad. Island is sick. Too many foxes. Mkuwelili and Kristaps say must kill foxes to save bird and little animal, so people do. They kill many many fox. Then there is almost no fox left and island lose its heart. They blame Mkuwelili and Kristaps. Make them exile in north canyon. Forget their words, forget their language. Only names remember of them.”
“So they were like off some nineteenth century whaling ship?” Esquibel wonders. “Grim end for them, I take it.”
But Jidadaa continues, keeping pace with the chant. “In the time of ninth mother first Japanese ship. They cruel. Lisican people hide. Then American soldier and Russian soldier, all bad. People of all village fight to keep them only on beach. But then Maureen Dowerd come. Everything change.”
“The woman story.” Mandy smiles at the Mayor, who continues her litany uninterrupted.
“Fox say,” Jidadaa tells them in an aside, “Lisica is for woman. First fox tell Init and Ta. They listen with their hearts. That is why, after Tuzhit give them babies, they push him into water and kill.”
“Wait, what? Init and Ta killed Tuzhit?”
“He was first bad man. Bad white man. Bad soldier. Init and Ta escape from bad village. Only after he gone, Lisica is good.”
“Escape from the village back on the Alaskan coast?” Flavia asks. Yesiniy and Sewat have fallen silent, realizing they’ve lost their audience. “So this is the lesson they learn? Murder solves your problems? Their whole lives were bad until they killed the father of their children? But these sisters are not like the Christians, are they? They do not call this murder their original sin. Instead they say it’s when things finally got better. Eh. A brutal age.”
But Jidadaa doesn’t understand the question. She repeats what they already know, just slower. “Init and Ta have clan that hate them. Hibernation frog. They escape with bad man. Come here. Start the people. Past is bad. Him and old clan. So they forget all. Teach children new way. New gods. New traditions. Follow the wisdom of fox.”
“Damn,” Mandy grimaces. “They went hard.”
Sewat, the Mayor, takes up the tale again. Jidadaa shares her words but they already know this part, about Aan Eyagídi the shaman and the love affair between Maureen and Shanno and the baby that came of it. The disputes with Ussiaxan and the advent of the Chinese. The burial of the sub, which cut off their access to the beach for a long cruel time. And how the cycle is coming to a close, with the arrival of the lidass and their inescapable Jidadaa ending this time of peace and prosperity once and for all.
“But why?” Mandy asks. “Why does it have to end? That’s what nobody’s told us. Everybody’s all ready for the good times to turn into the bad times. Why aren’t they like fighting against it?”
“Jidadaa you cannot escape,” the eponymous girl says with a sly smile. “It come when it come.”
“But why are they being punished?” Esquibel shakes her head in disapproval. “This is just a story. There is no real external factor here causing this change, is there? They could stop it if they really wanted to, eh?”
Jidadaa patiently explains. “In the days of third mother they forget to honor first mothers. First bad time. It start long string of curse. First Mkwelili and Kristaps. People from between sea and sky who come. Even Maureen is curse. Yesiniy is curse, all her life. Kula and me. The people deserve Jidadaa very long time. Curse split them into three village. Fox grow very few. Ussiaxan get dark in their chests. Divide island with the creek. Then you come.”
“Oh, yes? We are part of this story now?” Flavia would rather not be included as a co-author on any such disreputable paper.
“You are women,” Jidadaa responds with a simple shrug. “You hear the story and remember.”
Ξ
“No, really. Go on,” Amy tells the others on their return from the lake, stepping away from them. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Well… ask him if he like needs anything,” Katrina calls out as she and the others keep walking, heading back to pine camp. The dark mass of the crew disappear into the gloom. They are still mostly stunned from the tragic events of the day and none of them have the energy to argue with her about splitting up.
Amy watches them go, then turns back to the small fire Morska Vidra has built in front of his tiny hut. She approaches the grove of madrones in which he has built it. Her sandals make noise on the dried leaves. In response, his dark head pokes out of the narrow doorway. The old man watches her approach.
“Bontiik.” Amy chucks his chin. He does the same to her. “Where’s your fox?”
But Morska Vidra just looks glumly at her, his face closed.
“I know. Can’t live without them, can we?” Amy gently removes the fox kit she keeps in her pocket. The poor thing is fading. She just can’t find enough nutrients for it.
Its appearance makes Morska Vidra exclaim in shock. He pulls away, outrage flaring in his eyes. He begins to lecture her.
“No no. The mama rejected it. She told me I could have it. It would have died otherwise. I swear.”
But Morska Vidra won’t hear it. He tries to take the baby from her but Amy is afraid of what he might do with it. She clutches it close, daring him to fight her. Protective instincts surge in her.
Morska Vidra sees the ferocity in Amy’s eyes and hesitates. He goes back to appealing to her, his words coming out too fast for her to follow at all.
Amy pulls back and waves goodbye. “Uhh. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.” Perhaps she can catch the others before they get too far away.
The old man suddenly stops talking. He looks out at the gloom instead and asks a loud question.
“Oh, shoot.” Amy turns, dismayed. “Someone out there?”
But who emerges from the gloom isn’t human. It is two foxes, Morska Vidra’s fellow and the vixen he impregnated.
“Wait!” Amy cries. “Mama, what are you doing here? Where are your babies? Oh my god, you didn’t lose them…!” She can’t make sense of it. There isn’t hardly a single mammal in the world that will abandon her babies so soon after giving birth.
The vixen’s teats are swollen with milk. Amy drops to her knees as the silver foxes approach. She holds out the tiny kit, wriggling in her palm. Its mother blinks at the tiny thing and approaches. She nickers at it, licking its head, then nudges it toward a teat.
Morska Vidra carefully approaches as Amy encourages the tiny thing to latch and suck. He may have opinions about its life or death but he won’t gainsay its mother. But it may have already been too long. With a gentle pinch Amy coaxes a drop of milk from the teat and the little thing starts slurping greedily.
Morska Vidra’s fox sniffs his child, blessing it with a lick.
The man looks up at Amy, his face filled with wonder.
“Uh… This wasn’t my idea. I only did what she told me.”
It is dark now. Morska Vidra’s face is in shadow. She can only see his eyes. Still he stares at Amy. There is something coiled in him, as if he is about to pounce on her.
“What? What is it?”
His fox pounces instead, landing in Amy’s cross-legged lap. But she is too familiar with animals to react. Staying still, she allows him to crawl around, sniffing at her. The creature stands on her bent knee and watches the mother and baby nurse. Amy finally releases a held breath, which ends with a quiet laugh.
Morska Vidra laughs too, scratching his old boy between his ears.
As the infant finally gets the nourishment it needs, Amy’s maternal anxieties finally ease. “Thank you, Morska Vidra. And thank you, mama.” She reaches out and strokes the vixen’s head with a fingertip. “Thank you for saving the baby.”
Chapter 57 – A Straight Demon
January 27, 2025
Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
57 – A Straight Demon
“I have been thinking lately about time. How the present moment is a collision between the path stretching behind us and the future racing ahead. A perfect fusion.” Pradeep sits on the edge of the bunk, Maahjabeen at his side. “This is your realm more than mine, Triquet. Although in your case, maybe less about the future. But I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject.”
“Yeah… It’s weird.” Triquet sits further down the ward room on a bunk with Miriam and Alonso. But now they stand, pacing up and down the narrow aisle, weaving between the outflung arms and legs. Since Maahjabeen and Pradeep returned from the sea cave none of them have moved. They’ve all been in this ward room for hours, processing the events of the past few days. Now, after the most urgent subjects have been properly covered, their thoughts are turning more philosophical. “All these destiny and prophecy themes. Think about how all the Lisicans consider time and chronology. They have a hard date for the beginning of their world and evidently an equally hard date for its end. That’s got to change how you approach each day.”
“And the sky is a ceiling that contains only you and the ocean,” Pradeep adds. “Yes. We are in a place with different geometry. At home we think of the generations growing and developing, often in contrast or rebellion to the generation before. And this is a limitless line of progress stretching to a vanishing point ahead. But here? What would be the point to build or develop anything if your world will end in 72 days with a cataclysmic Jidadaa of doom?”
“Or, in this case,” Katrina chimes in, “72 hours.”
Pradeep nods. “Quite so. Why be curious about the outside world if it is invisible and impossible to reach? The arrival of outsiders must really mess with this cosmology.”
“Except,” Amy says, “that they themselves were once outsiders and I’m not sure there’s been like a real break in immigration since they first arrived. There’s always someone new here. Maybe the Lisicans are just ethnocentric and don’t think the rest of us are worth their time. And why would you, if you lived in paradise?”
“Eh, as far as islands go, I prefer Sardegna.” Flavia doesn’t even look up from her laptop.
“Yeah, it’s like…” Jay searches for the words. “I just went up top to get baked and I was thinking about that. Here I am in a bunker built in 1961 smoking a plant that was illegal when the soldiers were here. Imagine how much I could have blown their minds! You said they were all unhappy here, Triquet. Well, here comes Doctor Jay from the future with a jay.”
“Layers of time,” Triquet nods. “We make our own fleeting little depositions here in the sub and then in a few days we’ll pass on just like the sailors did. And someday someone else will sit in this bunk and wonder why it smells faintly of marijuana smoke.” The room fills with laughter. “Oh, I need this. Some unstructured thoughts. How about it? Breakout session, everyone. Let’s hear everyone’s most out-of-the-box ideas about these last few weeks. Nothing’s too wild. Come on. Miriam? How about you? What do you got?”
“Well…” Miriam smiles at Esquibel’s aggrieved glance to Flavia. “Nothing too crazy, ladies, I promise. But yes, I have been waiting to tell my own tale. Just a few things I found up in that canyon with a lake.” She pulls her backpack from its storage beneath the bunk and unzips it. From a hardshell container she removes a handful of white chip fragments and shows them to everyone.
“Fossils,” Triquet says. “Far older than what I usually handle.”
“Oh, far.” Miriam takes out another, a rounded lump with a series of short curved lines along its side. “This is a Trigonia clam. Unmistakable little ridges there, that look like eyelashes, aye?”
“Aye.” Katrina peers at the fossil. “It’s cute. How’s it taste?”
“Nobody knows.” Miriam holds it up. “The entire Trigonia genus has been extinct since the Paleocene, 56 million years ago. This lad solves my chronology riddle. So here’s my Plexity datum, right here, thank you very much. The limestone layers that make up so much of this island’s geology are at least 56 million years old. Certainly older, but that’s the nearest in time it can be. And I was able to get some pretty solid geomagnetic readings out there too. The bedrock below is rare stuff. It shows fragmentary clues of the theorized plate that existed here before the Pacific plate subducted it around 48 million years ago. Which means there was an eight million year window where the ancient plate and the limestone crust atop it still had exposure to the surface. So this is our time range. Now near the end of that window was the transition to a new geological epoch. I imagine the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum must have been a real pivotal time here, when ocean temperatures spiked and there was a mass die-off, leaving all these fossils. But that subducted plate… I’ve never really studied North Pacific plate formations before. You know what it’s name is?”
“Uh… Jerry?” Jay guesses.
“It is the Kula Plate, an ancient remnant that hasn’t been seen on the surface in 48 million years.”
“Kula!” Jay exclaims. “No way. What are the odds? All buried and covered up for sure.”
“And it turns out Kula is a Tlingit word,” Miriam continues, “a word that actually means ‘all gone.’”
“So is that her name or is that just what the villagers decided to call her when she got buried in the tunnels?”
“Subducted.” Katrina says the word with distaste.
“Poor Kula. What a life. Imagine being named ‘all gone.’ Yeah, you’re going to name your daughter ‘doom.’ This shit sounds like a Johnny Cash song.” Jay snorts. “Hey, Miriam, if you’re all finished can I go next?”
Miriam nods. “Aye. I’m done.”
“Right on. Now. Prophecy poems.” Jay nods slowly. “These are wild. So I started like researching them. And I came across the songlines of the Australian aborigines. Anyone heard of these?”
“Oh, yes. I had a seminar on them a few years ago.” Triquet still can’t sit still. They climb onto an empty top bunk and start doing exercises. “Love love love their dreaming tracks. But Lisica hardly compares. This place has only been inhabited for three hundred years. The aboriginal culture stretches back over sixty thousand years in Australia. Their dreamworld is unimaginably deep.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Jay agrees. “But I think it’s got some of the same like features. Rhythm. The aborigines would walk in these long rhythms for days, and the songs are sung in that rhythm. The chants here are something like that. And the Lisicans have woven all their plants and rocks and mountains into their chants, kind of in the same way.”
“I do not know,” Alonso tells them, “about these songlines. What makes them so significant in Australia?”
“Well,” Triquet answers, “say you live in your village in Australia and for various cultural or religious reasons you’ve got to travel like a thousand kilometers on a special journey. Off you go. You don’t ask anyone directions. You already know the way. It’s in the songs you’ve been taught since you were born. And this way-song is like literally a list of directions as well as a kind of literary description of the first ancestors who walked this way and created the land as they walked it. Created all the plants and animals with each step and word. And now you’re just re-tracing their steps while you sing their song. But that’s just the barest description of it. Their whole culture is based around these songs that are like baked in to the actual landscape. A mountain is a story is a dream is a journey.”
“I don’t understand,” Alonso confesses.
Triquet nods in agreement. “Oh, for sure. Nobody who isn’t aboriginal really does. I mean, it’s like the Eyat, where it just forces you to stand on your head and look at the world in a fundamentally different way. Time is different to them. Life and death. Same with the Lisicans, I’m sure. Totally unique beliefs.”
“I would guess,” Flavia contributes, still not looking up from her laptop screen, “that our Tuzhit founding father fellow mustn’t have been a very pious Christian, or we’d have Orthodox iconography all over the place. And these people would be a lot more tortured.”
Maahjabeen waves the insult away. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? Flavia, you think more about religion than I do.”
“So…” Jay interposes, in an attempt to head off the argument, “I decided I’d make my own prophet poem, about this island, and being lidass and all that. I mean, I know plants and animals. I can rap about like cliffs and forests all day. And I can’t just let all these others decide my destiny. I can’t just be a cameo guest appearance on someone else’s track. Time to get my own voice out there.”
“MC Jay on the mic!” Katrina crows.
“So what is the song?” Miriam asks. “Have you finished it?”
“Uh, still a work in progress, but…” Jay shrugs. “Takes a rhyme to beat a rhyme. You said you wanted wacky. Here’s wacky. The wackiest shit on this whole wack island.”
“It certainly is,” Esquibel sourly agrees.
“Well, what about you then?” Jay asks with a frown. “You’re pretty good, Doc, at telling everyone where they’re wrong. But what about you? What’s the craziest most far-out weirdness you’ve seen here? Huh?”
Esquibel has to think about that. It is true that this island is a strange place, but she learned growing up on the outskirts of Nairobi that her future lay with the modern world, not with the ignorance and superstitions of her neighbors messing about in the bush. And she saw how many times their forecasts and warnings were wrong, and how easy it was for them to explain those misses away. But science and medicine do not make those same mistakes. They work or they do not, at least if properly applied. The clear problem here is that science is no longer being properly applied. They are falling into unreason and a kind of new age voodoo that she absolutely despises. “Weirdness… I only have concerns about what this place is doing to our objectivity. I think, if we had just been able to keep a solid internet connection, that most of this madness wouldn’t have affected us so strongly.”
“Oh now you would give my satellite phone back?” Flavia cries. “I cannot believe you.”
“Seriously?” Miriam laughs at Esquibel. “After all that has been done to us here, you’re still saying there’s really nothing out of the ordinary with Lisica? Are you blind?”
“I am saying there is no magic. No prophecy or omen or curse here that has any power in the least.” Mandy lies sleeping behind Esquibel on the bunk. The doctor turns and places a comforting hand over Mandy’s gunshot wound, indicating with her action what is really important here. “There are only imperfect humans with our imperfect senses.”
But Maahjabeen isn’t buying it. “So you have no faith.”
Esquibel sneers. “I never did. If I did I would be married and trapped in some man’s house giving him children and free labor.”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. “Oh, like me? I understand the challenges you faced and I am not saying it is easy. But you don’t have to run so far in the other direction that you would deny that a world exists outside science—” She speaks louder to override both Esquibel and Flavia’s objections. “And yes I understand that it cannot be properly measured or replicated or characterized by our brains. But you are crazy, willfully blind, if you insist that it doesn’t exist and we only live in your, ehhh, deterministic clockwork.”
“Says the average 16th century woman,” Flavia retorts, “on the subject of unsolvable mysteries such as gravity and medicine. Just because we don’t understand the phenomena yet, doesn’t mean—”
“Oh, we’ve solved the science of gravity now?” Miriam mock wonders. “That’s grand.”
“And medicine? Ha.” Maahjabeen grips Pradeep’s arm. “When we were poisoned Doctor Daine had no clue what was happening to us. No offense, you did the best you could to the limits of your abilities, but you weren’t the reason we were healed. It was those shamans and their spells. No, medicine is as much an art as a science and you know it.”
“So what you are saying, Flavia,” Alonso rumbles, “is that these things that some of us are interpreting as mystical events are actually real-world phenomena that can be characterized by physics and mathematics. We just don’t know how yet.”
“Exactly. My grandparents didn’t know about chaos theory. And now, without it, the whole modern world could not exist. Quantum mechanics is used in my laser pointer when I lecture. I have a whole bit about it with my phone, how we hold so much exotic computation so easily in our hands. There are even higher-order outputs, as systems get more and more complex and interact at more refined levels. These things might manifest to us as emotions and dreams and ideas like faith and destiny. But it is only because there are an innumerable amount of particles and interactions collapsing onto this moment in spacetime all at once that we have to abstract and simplify them just so we can see them. But our sight is imperfect, eh? And in the end we are all still drooling monkeys with monkey brains. So we hold on tight to these ideas rooted deep in our biological brains. Family. Sex. Fear of death. Belief in higher powers. I mean, until a few centuries ago, Maahjabeen, you would have told me lightning was your god being angry with me.”
“Sometimes it is.”
“Then you say things like that and I despair for our future…” Flavia holds up a hand, surrendering after that cheap shot. “No. I am done. The world is full of all kinds of people, that is for sure the truth. Some looking forward and some looking back. And some,” she leans to the side and rests her head on Jay’s broad shoulder, “who are happily here in the present.”
“Facts.” Jay nods judiciously, deciding it’s a compliment.
“Okay. I think what Flavia is describing,” Alonso ventures, “is ultimately a positive vision, an idea of progress where our greater understanding of crazy things like what is happening to us here can eventually fall under the domain of formal things like public policy and therapy, instead of shamans and curses and doom.”
“Yeh, that’s where I am,” Katrina agrees. “Except I like a bit more ghost in my machine. It ain’t mechanistic what Flavia and I do, Maahjabeen. That’s the thing. It’s both science and religion all at once. We’re all saying the same thing here, just with different terms. Remember, there wouldn’t even be any higher maths today without the great Arab thinkers like Al-Khwarizmi and Omar Khayyam. And they invented their mathematical concepts as a sacred language in glory to Allah, yeh?”
“Yes, I love maths,” Maahjabeen agrees. “I do. And I appreciate your understanding of the history—”
“All I’m saying is that the sacred language of maths just keeps getting closer and closer to god. We develop it like you develop your own sacred works, with more pronouncements coming out from your faith leaders on a regular basis, yeh? They’re trying to understand the world and the divine that much better. We’re on the same path, everyone. None of us here are trying to hide from the world, like nearly everyone I know back home. We’re the weird ones. That’s what I love about my big Cuban family here. We’re all looking for the truth, with our hearts and minds and everything at our disposal. We’re just hungry, you know?”
The sweetness pouring from Katrina mollifies them all. After a brief silence, Pradeep is the first to continue. “I really appreciate what you said, Katrina. But I want to circle back to something else Flavia mentioned before we change topics. Emergent phenomena. Yes, Amy is nodding her head. She knows what I mean. This is how emergence feels, what we are experiencing here. There is, like I said about time being a collision between the past and future, it’s like all of Plexity’s factors and metrics are colliding upon us all at once, and it is… breathtaking. Too much for my mind to track all at the same time. Never have I felt so…”
“Much like a horse wearing blinders,” Amy finishes for him. “Oh my god that’s exactly how it was in there with the vixen. After the first couple days I felt the rhythm. Remember how we were talking a few weeks ago about plants chirping like reef ecosystems? I could feel it. Not hear it. These old ears can’t hear much. But…”
“Yes,” Pradeep jumps back in, excited. “And that is what I was trying to show you last month, Alonso, with those mycorrhizal networks, the way they were speaking to each other, the grand networks that exist everywhere…”
“Yes…! Yes!” Alonso does remember. Pradeep’s insights had sparked visions that lasted his entire trip. “Networks everywhere! The flow of information! It can be unbearable at times!”
“And then I asked if you could hack the language of the trees so we could change the tune?” Katrina adds with a laugh. “What ever happened to that idea?”
“Yes…” Pradeep frowns, his enthusiastic charge halted by the audacity of the concept. “But I couldn’t imagine it would help then and I still can’t see how it would help now.”
“Oh my god.” The epiphany rises in Amy like a sleeper wave, flooding her with a holistic overview of the entire island. “When they say the foxes rule the island, this is what they mean. Keystone species. Gentle nudges of the ecosystems. Harmonics. Remember, Alonso? Way back at the beginning. We were talking about all the harmonics that Plexity can measure. The microfluidic channels of the Dyson readers being more analog than digital. Remember those arguments, Pradeep? Flavia?”
Alonso laughs, a deep sound filled with pleasure. “Ha ha ha. She has got you there, does she not, Flavia? Your harmonics were too mystical for this old data scientist, remember? We are all at the edge of our respective disciplines, and sometimes we step off. But this is what Katrina was just talking about, isn’t it? We are all striving toward the same goal with different languages?”
“Harmonics is a very well understood mathematical concept.” Flavia shrugs, defensive. “But if you want to make it like a Harry Potter spell or whatever, with like a long string of nonsense rhymes and wiggling fingers, then be my guest.”
“Wait.” Pradeep reaches across the aisle and grabs Katrina’s hand. She inhales sharply at the same instant, her eyes scanning the ceiling.
Then she sees it too. Katrina cries out, “Oh my god.”
Flavia holds up a hand, seeing what they see. “Oh, no no no.”
Pradeep tries to infect her with the beauty of his vision. “No, it’s everything, Flavia. It’s everything that we’ve just talked about. It’s not just… hacking the forest. It’s—”
“Wait.” Alonso scowls. “What is going on here with you three? You can actually do that?”
“Well,” Pradeep stops his runaway train of thought once more to address this. “I mean, it’s just communication. And the most direct means to speak with a forest, for example, would be with fire, yes? Trees react quite dramatically to the presence of—”
“No, you can’t!” Amy protests. “What are you thinking?”
“Or water,” Pradeep allows. “I’m not a monster. I’m just saying these are basic elements we can use. Sunlight. Cold. Parasites. But what I am really saying is that we all need to think much bigger here. Think like Jay.”
“Like Jay?” For Esquibel, this is too much. “You are joking.”
“What I am saying is that he’s writing a prophecy poem and the rest of us are providing him the language. But the audience for his poem isn’t the Lisican villagers. It is the flora and fauna of the island. The winds and the rain and the stars.”
“You are…” Esquibel bites her tongue, trying to find a gentle way to say it. She likes Pradeep and admires his intellect. “A romantic.”
But this is the final piece of the puzzle for Jay. His head rocks back. “Whoa…” He nods, his destiny locking in. “Ohh, this is what they meant by the whole lidass thing. Oh, man. Me myself and I. I’m the man of words and the man of action. Right place at the right time and all that. Dude. Fuck. Got to choose the right words, though. I can really get into some trouble out here, can’t I…?”
“What the hell are you all talking about?” Esquibel demands. “Talking to the trees? What? Singing to them? Changing their song? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I will begin with an analysis of some of these networks we’ve identified in Plexity,” Flavia tells Pradeep. “And tell you where the most likely entry points into the wider systems might be.”
He nods and points at Amy. “Ring the whole island like a bell. And Amy can help me identify what means we have to introduce permutations to the ecosystems. There are a few pheromones we can isolate and I think we can perhaps also trigger some reactions with compounds we currently have with us.”
“You are going to change the ecosystem of Lisica?” Alonso echoes, his heart dropping. “Isn’t that the one thing we said we would never do?”
“Well.” Pradeep takes a deep breath. It seems like every choice he’s ever had to make in his life is a devil’s bargain. “This is like climate change, Alonso. It is already happening, whether we do anything or not. This island will change in just a couple days, is already changing to hear Jidadaa tell it. The Russians are here, the Chinese are here. Wetchie-ghuy is enslaving people and trying to steal foxes. Everyone is already trying to change it. And this is the means we have to short circuit all their efforts.”
“But to what end?” Esquibel wonders. “Each mission must have a goal. This cannot just be an exercise for its own sake. Just to stop what others are trying to do? Is that why we’re here?”
“Yes, listen to this. Esquibel makes a very good point. What do we say the goal of such a project should be?” Alonso surveys the room. They are for the most part excited by this topic. Good. He loves that they are all once more working together.
“I don’t want to choose sides,” Flavia asserts, “between all the geopolitical monsters. China, America… I don’t care.”
Amy nods. “And I won’t do anything that contributes to the destruction of the habitats here. Not a single thing.”
“Perhaps,” Miriam offers, “our mission goal here is just that old medical guideline: do no harm. Eh, Esquibel?”
“Can’t it be more proactive than that?” Pradeep asks. “More like ‘we are here to de-escalate conflicts,’ or something like that. Like what the blue helmets do for the UN. ‘Send your wounded to us.’ I just want to be a force for actual harm reduction, not just avoidance.”
“I think,” Jay says in the silence, “that if this is like the songlines, what we’re supposed to do is dream up the most beautiful world we can, the world we really want to see, everybody all shiny and healthy and happy, and that’s what we sing into the trees. Show them the best possible world and have them yearn for it. Love not war, yo. It’s not just words or a concept. It’s a… vision. Now it’s up to us to speak it into existence.”
Ξ
Perhaps an hour later, the sub has fallen silent. Some work at their screens, others drowse. Katrina hums as she plays a game on her phone. Then she stops. “Hear that?”
“Hear what…?” Jay lifts his head, blinking away his runaway thoughts. “Oh.” The faintest knock comes from belowdecks. It repeats. “Shit. The spy found us?”
“Doubt he’d knock.” Miriam sits up. “He didn’t seem the polite type. More of a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of chap.”
“Then who is it?” Jay rises, frowning at the hatch leading further into the sub. “And what do they want?”
He takes a step but Esquibel grabs his leg. “Wait. He is armed. We can’t take any risks.”
“And what’s he knocking on?” Katrina wonders. “You didn’t barricade the way in down there again, did you, Esquibel?”
“I couldn’t. You people stole all my materials.”
Jay makes a decision. “Well, I’m going to see who it is. We can’t just hide in here for three days.”
“Why not?” Flavia demands. “That is exactly what we should do. We shouldn’t even go back into the island’s interior now that we have an honest-to-god spy after us.”
Jay appeals to authority. “Come on, Esquibel. Let me go check it out. Somebody might need us.”
Esquibel sighs, looking up at Jay with a total lack of confidence. She turns and regards Mandy for a moment. She has her eyes open and she watches Esquibel in turn. “Don’t worry, Mands. I won’t let anyone harm you.”
“See who it is,” Mandy tells her weakly. “We can’t just hide.”
Esquibel frowns, then stands. “Okay. But stay behind me, Jay.” She grabs her black satchel and steps toward the hatch.
She leads him down the narrow hall, past the door leading to the warrant officer’s cabin. Then as they pass the locked door of the radio room the knock is repeated, so close it startles them both and they fall against the far wall.
“It’s from in there.” Esquibel removes her pistol and points it at her feet, the safety still on.
“No way. How did somebody even get in there?” Jay is spooked. “I thought it was coming from below. Had to be. You know…”
“Like someone from the village, yes.” Esquibel’s eyes are wide. She is having trouble controlling her breathing. “But this…”
The knock repeats. It is a tentative sound, with a halting forlorn rhythm. Jay inspects the door. The steel panel is set into the frame with no gaps. He tries the knob. It doesn’t turn.
But his efforts have been noticed on the far side. The knock comes again, more urgent, and Miriam ducks through the hatch behind them. “Who is it?”
“Uh, the radioman, if we’re making guesses…” But Jay doesn’t like his own joke. He steps back. “Somebody trapped in there. We should like get them out.”
The knock sounds again.
The three of them share glances. “You could like shoot the lock off,” Jay suggests.
Esquibel looks at him as if he’s deranged. “Does the word ricochet mean anything to you? Anything at all?”
Jay ducks his head into the Captain’s cabin, looking for tools. “Just like need a crowbar or…” He searches the desk drawers, only finding a paper clip hidden in a corner. “Hold up. This might work. Did some larceny as a kid. Let’s see if I still got it.”
Jay pulls out his phone and kneels before the radio room door. He shines his light into the old-fashioned lock and starts poking at it with the paper clip. “Naah. Shit is frozen. Need some lubricant more than anything. See if Triquet can—”
And then a giant bang shakes the door and the door knob falls off. The seal cracks for the first time in decades, a sharp sound of rust flakes breaking off.
Jay pushes on the door. It swings inward with a billow of dust. Inside the cramped room stands Jidadaa holding a metal strut. She is panting, smeared in mud, eyes wild.
“What?” Jay is disappointed. “Aw, it’s just you. How the fuck did you get stuck in there?”
Jidadaa steps aside to show him the hole in the wall behind her and the tunnel leading down into darkness. “Jay lidass. I have been to Ussiaxan. Let me out.”
Jay turns away from the door in disgust. “Fuck. It’s just Jidadaa. Stirring up shit. I’ll be in my bunk.” He pushes past Esquibel and Miriam to return to the ward room.
Jidadaa hurries after him, smearing her mud on both women. “Wait, Jay. The Chinese man. I can tell.” She ducks through the hatch, Esquibel and Miriam following, to address the entire crew. “I can tell you all. He is in a cage.”
“It’s Jidadaa!” Katrina cries, scrambling to her feet and reaching for her, then pulling her hands back. “Who’s in a cage?”
“The Daadaxáats shaman argue with Chinese man. Ussiaxan decide Chinese man is wrong. They put him in cage. He is stuck in it. You are free to go.”
“Put him in a cage…?” Alonso asks. “They imprisoned him? They put the spy in jail? In Ussiaxan jail?”
“Yes.” Jidadaa is relieved to hear the right words. “Chinese spy in jail. No more sneak at night.”
“Ha! Seriously?” Katrina cackles. “Ha! Tried to get them to come after us and they were like, nah, mate. We’re looking for foxes now. Chill out.”
“Yes!” Jidadaa claps her hands. She steps forward and leans over Mandy. “No more spy. No more blood.” With her thumbtip she points at the gunshot wound, leaning close. Then she pulls back abruptly and addresses the room. “You are safe. Now I must go.”
Ξ
“We are here,” Katrina informs the Mayor, her words slow and deliberate, “to find Jidadaa. We think she stole Mandy’s phone.”
The Mayor’s expression does not change. She stares at Katrina and Jay with a flat expression of disbelief, or perhaps distaste.
“Uhh… Where is everybody?” Katrina peers past the Mayor to the village beyond, at least what she can see from the cave mouth. She can only see Yesiniy and the non-binary youth, who plucks the feathers from a dead bird the size of a partridge. She holds her own phone up. “Looks like this but with a pink case. Chinese model. Has all her stuff on it. Uh…” Katrina edges past the Mayor and slips into the village. “That Jidadaa’s sure got sticky fingers.” She nods at Yesiniy, who gapes irate at her. “Ma’am. Don’t mind us. Just passing through.”
Yesiniy’s response is a hoarse warble that reminds Katrina how close to the end the old woman is. She must be like seventy or more, which has got to be old here, without any modern medicine. Perhaps Katrina can find a time to persuade Yesiniy to record a few long interviews before they go. She can translate them when she gets back home. Her perspective would just be so invaluable to preserve. Then Katrina looks away, guilty at the appraising look she measured the crone with, as if she was already dead. Instead, she should focus on what Yesiniy’s saying. Her condemning tone. Okay. She is obviously telling Katrina that things are going wrong. And that she and her friends won’t win. The fox always wins.
Katrina emphatically nods back and uses all the Lisican, Eyat, and Slavic constructions she knows to signal her agreement. “Yes. Absolutely. We won’t win at all. Totally. That’s why we’re leaving in a couple days. Just need that phone first.”
Yesiniy’s response is even more heated and she tries to get to her feet, but that is difficult now without help. The youth hurries over and gives her their hands. But as they pull her up their own voice rises in contrast to whatever point the old woman is making. The two Lisicans argue face to face, in an embrace, shaking each other. Finally Yesiniy falls silent and looks away in surrender. All Katrina can tell the fight was about was some mention of Yesiniy’s sacred tree and, somehow, the allocation of water to each hut. Strange. Must be a list of random grievances getting worked out.
The youth turns their smooth brown face to the two trespassers and looks blandly at them. They have a stronger jaw than most of their kin, and a body trending toward stoutness in a few years. They also have the longest hair in the village, black ringlets intermixed with gold, braided loosely around their face to keep it out of their eyes. Their shift is a style that only the women wear. And their easy manner reminds Katrina of a brash middle-aged Filipina bar owner in Lidcombe she knows and loves. She decides she likes the youth, and nods, giving them her most brilliant smile. “Cheers.” She places a hand against her chest. “Katrina.”
After a long moment of consideration, the youth decides to share their own name. “Xeik’w.”
Xeik’w turns away and deposits Yesiniy back on her mat in front of her hut. Jay notices the streaks of drying bird blood that remain on Yesiniy’s upper arms from where Xeik’w grasped her. Wicked. “Man, now I get why you cats all decided Jidadaa wasn’t welcome in the village. Fucking thief. Mandy needs her phone back pronto. Mui importante.”
“They don’t speak Spanish, Jay. That’s been well-established.”
“They get what I mean.” But the three villagers have all returned to their tasks and are no longer paying attention. “But seriously. Where’d everyone else go? Pine camp?”
Following this assumption, they withdraw from the village and head down the path toward the creek. But as they go, they hear the mewling cry of a child echo around them, urgent and lost…
Katrina and Jay stop at the trailhead and look back up the slope of the hill behind the huts. Is that someone moving in the dense undergrowth? “Xaanach?” Jay calls out. “That you?” He turns toward the sound and moves toward it. “What’s wrong, kid?”
But the Mayor and Xeik’w hurry to intercept Jay. There is real fear in Xeik’w’s face. The Mayor has the blackest gaze Jay’s ever seen. “What is it? Is she okay? I just wanted to check on her.” Then Jay remembers that Xaanach doesn’t belong to the village. She’s an outcast like Jidadaa. Oh, is this like the pariah treatment they gave Amy? Man, these people sure do like kicking folks out.
“Uh… where is she?” Katrina asks, slowly returning to the village square, trying to puzzle out the Mayor’s response.
“I only saw the bushes moving up there.” Jay points at a spot, but as he does so he hears the cry come from a further spot, downslope at a diagonal, at a surprising distance. It is an uncanny sound. Even though it is filled with a child’s heartbreak, something about it makes Jay’s hackles rise. “Nah, dude. Stop. They’re right. Come back to me. Uhh. So creepy. That ain’t a child.”
“What do you mean it isn’t a…?” Katrina tries to reconcile his words with the cry for help that tugs at her heartstrings, and in the pause that it takes her to process, Wetchie-ghuy scuttles onto the trail between her and the village, cutting her off from the others.
“Aw, shit. Hey.” Jay strains in the surprisingly strong grip of both the Mayor and Xeik’w. “Hey, you leave her alone. Katrina. Stay back. Don’t get near him.”
Katrina puts her hands up, her breath suddenly fluttering in her breast like a trapped bird. He has divided her from the others like a sheep dog with his flock. But Wetchie-ghuy isn’t facing her. He confronts the others, hunched over, smelling ripe and evil. She steps further back, nearer the trailhead, to get out of his range.
Wetchie-ghuy mewls like a lost child one last time, then cackles and says something derogatory about Jay and Katrina, with a careless gesture behind him to include her.
“No, fuck you. You can just—” But Jay’s heated words are cut off by the Mayor’s even hotter response. She quivers in fury, spitting her words at the shaman, cursing his filthy bare feet. And Wetchie-ghuy just crouches there and takes it, face split into a malevolent grin. No, there’s no joy in that face. It’s a grimace of pain. He bares his teeth at the Mayor in challenge.
“Isn’t she his sister, yeh?” Katrina calls out.
“Oh, fuck. You’re right. Totally spaced that. Yeah, look at them. That’s how siblings and only siblings can—”
Wetchie-ghuy suddenly storms forward, holding up a talisman of bone and sinew. The Mayor meets his charge and tries to slap it out of his hand but he is too fast. They both are. In an eyeblink they have wrestled themselves into a deadlock, standing hip to hip holding each other by the wrists down by their ankles, trying to pull each other off balance.
Wetchie-ghuy springs free. The talisman has lost one of its sinew straps. He hisses in fury and backs away, chanting.
The Mayor marches after him, in the rhythm of her own chant. These must be their prophet poems, at war. “Oh, hell yeah. Full on rap battle.” Jay cheers. “Get him, sister. Chop him up.”
Xeik’w holds Jay back, calling out a chant in care of the Mayor. Yesiniy lends her own screeching cadence from her door. These rhymers don’t even take turns. It is pure cacophony.
But then Wetchie-ghuy steps past his sister and reaches for Jay, his rhyme ending in an unmistakable—lidass!
“Oh, you coming for me now? My turn?” Jay throws his arms wide, fronting, blood rushing to his brain. This dude wants a battle with him? Jay is up for it like he’s never been up for anything. But the noise is too much, all the fools yelling so nobody can’t hear nothing. Jay bellows, “You coming for me?” and the white-hot fury in his voice finally silences them.
His favorite MF Doom song springs unbidden to his lips. He quotes Megalon at the opening: “Who you think I am?”
The existentialist cry fills the air. Before Wetchie-ghuy or the Mayor or anyone else can respond, Jay drops into the rhymes.
“…Loved not for who you think I am,
but who you want me to be
A true thuggin emcee, true thugs, with no strings attached
I wanna give you my slugs and don’t wanna take em.”
Katrina screams in pleasure. She had no idea Jay could be so hot on the mic. She falls behind his bouncing figure, his hype girl, shouting out echoes and refrains of each line’s end. Opening an app on her phone as she bounces, she makes quick adjustments, and instrumental beats fill the square in time to Jay’s rhymes.
Wetchie-ghuy is dumbfounded. The Mayor falls back, amazed. The look on Xeik’w’s face is a mixture of amazement and horror. MF Doom is obviously unlike anything they have ever heard.
But the heat keeps rising in Jay. This motherfucker has been after them since they got here. No more. Jay drops the memorized lyrics and switches to a snarling freestyle, getting personal with his bars:
“You want Doom? I’m your doomsday killer.
Rap battle? Ain’t no MC sounds iller.
Cold clock? You been sneak up by my bed
Reach for me, homie, gonna wish you was dead.
The birds in the trees and the bees all know
That motherfucking Wetchie-ghuy is the one who’s got to go.
Lee-dass? Lid-ass? You want a piece of this?
When you coming for the chosen one you best not miss.”
The wall of hostility is too much for the shaman. He steps back with a scowl, his words just fragments, trying to find a way to force his way back in but Jay is too much.
“Got fools scared cause you call yourself the shaman,
but you’re the wicked one who should be feeling all the shaming,
so lame how you frame the facts to rig the game
accusing all others when you’re the one to blame.”
A strong hand pulls Jay back. It is the Mayor. She cautions him from following Wetchie-ghuy too deeply in his retreat. Now it finally dawns on him and his flow falters. Oh, shit. Jay isn’t defending the Mayor. Wetchie-ghuy didn’t come here to confront his sister, he came here for the lidass. And if Jay takes another couple steps out of her protection, the bastard might actually get him. Jay’s not anyone’s white knight coming to the rescue here. He’s the precious one they’re trying to keep alive. Crazy.
Now Wetchie-ghuy’s face collapses into an even more black scowl. All his attempts to confront or kidnap the lidass have been confounded. With a last curse and shake of his talisman he vanishes into the underbrush. But they can hear him for a long time as he departs, refusing to give up, shouting his prophecy poem in a shaking voice that sounds of nothing but futility.
With a wild cackle, Katrina opens a keyboard app and plays a final few chords, just to put a fine point of resolution onto the conflict. Then in the ensuing silence her laughter is the only sound. She squeezes Jay tight. “Aw, lad! Where’d you learn to spit like that? You’re a straight demon!”
Chapter 44 – In The Rain
October 28, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
44 – In The Rain
“God, look at that, Jay. Actual sunlight.” It streams through the trees ahead during a break in the storm, illuminating the pillars of redwood groves, which give way to a great expanse on the far side. “Almost there now.”
Jay limps along behind Pradeep, one eye squeezed shut, a hand plastered against his left side. “One sec.” He falls to his knees and heaves up the bile in his stomach. It is empty of food. Bile is all he’s got. Oh, yeah. That definitely makes the incision scream. And now his throat is so torn up it will never be the same. Pain everywhere, inside and out.
“Are you ill, my friend? Or just…” Pradeep makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, including all Jay’s injuries.
“Just…” Jay repeats the gesture, “exhausted.” But it is too painful to speak, the acid scoring his windpipe. He hauls himself to his feet and taps his chest pocket. “Least I got my phone back. Worth it.” He forces himself to move again. They are nearly there.
Dropping down a loose slope onto a wide basin, they shuffle across the forest floor as the groves give way to open ground. The creek has dropped off somewhere to their left. The woods are silent and still, the birds and insects continuing to hide from the storm.
“Weather coming back,” Pradeep observes. “That’s why they don’t come out. They know this is just a quick break. Ugh. Look at the clouds coming. So sick of the rain.”
“Who doesn’t come out?” Jay peers around.
“The animals. The fauna. That’s why it’s so quiet in here.”
Jay slurps a trickle of cold water off a lily’s broad leaf. It leaves a floral, sticky taste in his mouth. But it soothes his throat. Now he can speak again. “Study I read right before I left. Researchers have been listening to forests. In the ultrasonic range, just above human hearing. Plants talk.”
“With a bunch of tiny high-pitched voices? It is so cold today! Like that?” Pradeep is pleased with his joke but Jay doesn’t laugh. Oh, well. This is why he doesn’t crack jokes. Nobody expects humor from him. “Well, this is what I just proved with Plexity and the mycelium networks. Chemical signals travel along immense and far-flung networks carrying data…”
“Yeah, but this is through the air. Sounds like it does underwater. At a coral reef when you dive. All those pops and clicks and trills.”
“Really?” Pradeep listens but of course he can’t hear them.
“The more stressed the plants are the more clicks they make. If we just had a bit better hearing we’d hear them all the time. Know when to water our houseplants and such. Most critters must hear the plants chattering away like constantly. But happy plants only click like once an hour.”
“Well then this is indeed a quiet forest. These trees have to be pretty happy with all this rain and now sun.”
“Wait.” Jay stops, listening intently. “I do hear something.”
Pradeep listens too. It is a voice so distant that they can only sense its tones and textures against the edges of the silence. “Okay. Come on, this way. But quiet. Who knows who it is?”
They step in that direction, finding a gully dividing the ground choked with ferns. They follow it in the general direction of the voice, finally coming to a dead stop at a sudden drop.
A line of dark stone past the vegetation falls away nearly ten meters to a deeper cut in the ground, where their gully joins a larger one. This has running water at the bottom and a sandbar with a figure crouched on it. Wetchie-ghuy. But he isn’t looking at them. He is looking at a bay tree beside the water in which Jidadaa is perched out of reach.
She is speaking Lisican to the shaman. When Pradeep and Jay arrive she doesn’t stop or acknowledge them, nor does Wetchie-ghuy. Her voice ends in a question and his answer is abrupt.
She asks another question. “Xʼoon yadyee x̱ʼaadáx̱ sá?”
“Yax̱adoosh.”
“Ai eh.” Jidadaa finally turns to the two outsiders. “Seven days. That is how long.”
“How long until what?” Jay’s voice is filled with suspicion.
“The little babies are born. The fox babies.”
“Kits.” Pradeep studies this scene. It is some kind of standoff here, where Wetchie-ghuy waits for Jidadaa to, what, surrender? Give him back his little doll? Both? “We call baby foxes kits. But what does that have to do with anything? Don’t they have like five litters a year? I’m just shocked the island isn’t overrun with them.”
Surprisingly, Jidadaa translates Pradeep’s words for Wetchie-ghuy. He only pulls his lips back over his teeth and grimaces. Then, with the compulsion of a pedagogue, he begins to lecture them all on the subject.
Jidadaa says, “Foxes are old here. First fox came with Tuzhit. First man. Lisica beautiful then. All birds, all little mice. Then foxes eat all the birds. All the mice. All the snake and lizard. Then men say, no more fox. They kill. All fox gone. Then Lisica is very bad. Very bad time and all people are unhappy. But one fox is left, hiding. They find. She has baby kits. Eight. One for each village or íx̱tʼ…” She gestures at Wetchie-ghuy. “Long time ago. But now, only three fox left. One, she is gone right now. Hiding to have baby kits. Wetchie-ghuy and Daadaxáats look and look but they don’t find. They fight, to be the one to control fox baby kits.”
Wetchie-ghuy drops into a crouch upon hearing his rival’s name spoken aloud. He mutters darkly to himself.
“Wait…” Pradeep tries to digest all this information. “This is what their argument is about? Who gets custody of the silver fox kits? That’s… bizarre. They’re like kidnapping and poisoning people over it? Bloody hell. So Wetchie-ghuy used to have a fox of his own but it died? It ran away? And now he wants another?”
“He wants all. Make the decide. To decide who get fox. When fox can have baby kits, they are spirit of village. Without fox, village die. With new fox, new life.”
“Jidadaa, watch out!”
Jay barely has the first syllable of her name out before Wetchie-ghuy twitches forward, leaping for the lowest branches of the bay tree. But Jidadaa twitches as well, and seemingly without any effort at all she is crouched on an even higher limb.
Jidadaa holds out Wetchie-ghuy’s doll as a taunt and curses him, the Lisican words coming fast and furious. She threatens to pull the doll apart and the shaman below her relents, falling away from the tree and retreating to the sandbar, where he crouches once more.
“What is that thing you stole?” Pradeep calls out. “Why does he care so much for it?”
“This is magic doll. It tells Wetchie-ghuy where to find foxes.”
“Ah.” Pradeep nods. “That makes sense.”
“It does? In what universe does that make sense?” Jay rasps. “No. What I want to know is what the fucking shamans want with us? Why do they keep after us? Shouldn’t they focus on the fox?”
But Jidadaa doesn’t need to ask Wetchie-ghuy why. She already knows the answer. “You are magic. You are koox̱.”
Jay and Pradeep frown at each other. “Unexpected,” Pradeep finally manages. “I don’t feel like magic. Nor koosh.”
Jidadaa calls out to Wetchie-ghuy, shaking the doll, indicating that if he doesn’t let her go she will throw it in the stream. Finally, he appears to give up. With a final glare over his shoulder at her, he withdraws back up the gully out of sight.
Triumphant, she smiles at Pradeep and Jay. “I will kill his doll.”
“We know you will, sister.” Jay gives her a thumbs up. “Don’t need that jackoff in charge of the foxes anyway. Not when they’re the soul of each village. That’s crazy. So the foxes showed up like three hundred years ago, wiped out all the native populations, then the people wiped out the foxes but then they realized they majorly F’d up and now they got nothing but this strict breeding program like my cousin Becky and her French Bulldogs with the AKC?”
But Jidadaa isn’t really listening. She’s peering back the way Wetchie-ghuy went.
“This makes Morska Vidra a more important figure than we knew,” Pradeep reasons. “Or at least his fox. I’m shocked Wetchie-ghuy doesn’t try to steal his.”
The rain starts again. “Welp.” Jay waves at Jidadaa. “Time to get moving on. This has been crazy, as always. Thanks, I guess, for saving our asses again. Good luck with the doll and the foxes and all that. But we got to get back to our buddies. It’s been too long.” He steps back from the edge of the stone cliff, trying to abandon Jidadaa here and find a way to the open land ahead.
“You don’t have any more questions for her?” Pradeep feels like he could ask Jidadaa questions all day. “She’s the only one who knows what is happening here and has enough English to enlighten us. Like, who are the golden childs, eh? Are they the third village? Jidadaa? The golden man and his childs?”
Finally she turns back to look at them, her face filled with worry. “Secret village. Shidl Dít. Thunderbird House. Live in trees. Hiding tribe. Nobody know them.”
Jay has run out of patience and his exhaustion is threatening to drop him where he stands. “Look, Prad. She’s a thief. I’m not even sure we should believe anything she says about the villages or the foxes or any of the—”
But Pradeep isn’t going to let this opportunity pass. “Yes, I know. But her answers are better than nothing, aren’t they?” He turns back to the girl in the tree. “And what about Lisicans in general? Are they glad we are here? Angry? Are they against us or…? I mean, do they even understand what we’re trying to do here?”
Jidadaa looks across the way to them. “People are sad. Jay is lidass. I am Jidadaa. Time is end.” And then she twitches again. The limb shivers and leaves fall. But she is gone.
“Whoa. How’d she do that? Is she…?” Pradeep tries to get a different angle on the bay tree’s crown, “…still in there somewhere? I mean, she must be, right?”
“Don’t sweat it, Prad. She’ll find us when she finds us. Come on. I think we can get down this way. Let’s hurry back home before the rain starts pouring again.”
Pradeep’s gaze lingers on the green cloud of bay leaves hiding her. “Don’t disappear! Jidadaa! Come with us!”
“Fuck that.” Jay starts without Pradeep, who reluctantly follows after a brief interval. They can’t take the chance on Wetchie-ghuy finding them separated.
“Hold on, Jay. I’m coming.”
And just a few moments later they finally win free of the trees for the first time all day. A great green meadow spreads before them, its hillocks still obscuring the creek. Jay crosses the open ground, the tall green grasses streaking his legs with water. “Okay. Back in business. Now as soon as I find the river again I can navigate us back to the village. Then it’s just a hey-how-you-doing to the villagers and then it’s straight through to the tunnels and the bunker and a hot meal and hammock. Yeah, boy. Let’s do this.”
But Jay reaches one hillock higher than the rest and stops. He turns and turns, his face filling with first confusion, then fear, then despair. He groans and nearly collapses.
Pradeep hurries to his side. “What? What is it?”
Jay is too dispirited to speak. He just makes a weak gesture with his one working arm.
Pradeep turns and turns, looking for the way out. Perhaps he’s just seeing it all wrong. “What is it? Which way, Jay?”
“I don’t know!” Jay falls to his knees, fully spent. “I’ve never been here before! This isn’t the right valley! We’ve been following the wrong creek this whole time and came out in the wrong place! I don’t have a fucking clue where we are!”
Ξ
At the top of the tunnel, Mandy finds Morska Vidra and his fox waiting at the village’s boundary. “Hi…!” she calls out, as sweetly as she can. “Your new neighbors here! Super excited to, like, move in and be part of the community!”
Her bubbly delivery usually works to disarm whoever she points it at. But Morska Vidra appears to be immune to her charms. Bummer. She was hoping to get this started on a positive note. “Here. Triquet said I shouldn’t, but I brought you a little gift.”
Mandy holds out a small package she was able to wrap in a page of a medical device’s line-drawn diagrams and decorate with a bow she painstakingly fashioned from sliced strips of colored paper. He stares at her, making no move to take her offering. His fox darts forward instead, rising up and gently pulling the little box from her hands. The little silver creature scampers away, disappearing into the gray haze of light at the tunnel’s entrance.
Mandy’s reaction is a few seconds too late. “No! Oh, no! Come back! It’s chocolate. Oh my god. I don’t know if… It might be poisonous to a fox. Like you know how dogs and cats, they can’t have chocolate?” Mandy belatedly realizes Morska Vidra has no idea what a dog or cat is. “No, come on. I’m totally serious. It’s like a liver issue or something? We have to get it back.” Mandy hurries past the old man, who still hasn’t made a move. Then she recalls the traditional greeting. “Uh… Bontiik!” She hurries back to him and chucks him under the chin.
A paternal smile creases his face now that the proper forms have been observed. “Bontiik.” His knuckle touches her own chin and he gives her a wide smile.
“Okay. Now let’s find the fox before it hurts itself. I know it’s just a pet but you don’t want it to get sick!”
Mandy exits the cave, scanning the tracks ahead. They quickly disappear in the packed earth of the village proper. She studies the walls of the cliff on either side of the cave mouth, then all the brush crowding against the nearest houses.
A pair of children peek out from a house, no more than six and four years old. They chatter at her, one’s words atop the other. Then their words run together in a shared chant. They giggle.
“Hi! There was a fox…? Have you seen it? I gave it a present. A lovely… tasty… present.” But regardless of where she looks, she can find no sign of where the fox has gone. “Shoot.” She points into the village at random spots and asks the kids, “Where…? Like where does the fox live? Like, where’s its bed?” Mandy grew up with cats. She knows how they think.
But the kids just start another chant, laughing at her.
Mandy slowly enters the wide village square, realizing that she is making a spectacle of herself. Smiling weakly, she just really doesn’t want to be responsible for making their pet sick. That would be the opposite of a positive note. That would be a disaster.
The village is busy, with a small family outside their hut grinding something green and brown in a stone bowl with a rock. Another old man faces a loom, plaiting a long sheet of textiles of black and red bands. An old woman lounges outside her house, leaning back against a pole and chewing a piece of grass. Her eyes are red-rimmed and sad, as if she’s been crying. Mandy addresses her: “You see Morska Vidra’s fox run this way? The little fox? Uh, Lisica?” Yeah, she should have been using that word all along.
The old woman lifts her hand. In it is the gift the fox stole.
“Oh, thank god.” Mandy reels away in relief. Then she circles back to the woman and the gift. “You can have it. It’s for you. I wrapped it myself.” She kneels in front of the old woman and points with excitement at the little cube, its white paper now smudged with dirt and indented with tooth marks.
The old woman only looks at Mandy with her troubled gaze.
“Aw, are you having a bad day? Here. I’ll show you. Look. It’s a present! Do you guys do presents?” Mandy reaches out and gently takes the gift back. “Look. It goes like this.” She had no tape so the paper is folded back in on itself like the origami she was taught in elementary school. Mandy pulls out the corner and unwraps the gift, handing the sheet of paper to the old woman.
She turns it over in her hands, her eyes still sad.
“But wait. There’s more.” Mandy presents the stack of gold-foil wrapped off-brand chocolate squares she’d snared in the airport right before they’d taken off. This has been her stash, a carefully-preserved secret that has kept her going through the darkest days. She has enough for two chocolates per day, three on special days when she really needs the extra love. This is five pieces of dark chocolate, two whole days of her stash, that she’s willing to sacrifice for the good vibes. Now if she can just manifest those vibes…
Carefully peeling the foil from the first chocolate, Mandy hands it to her. The old woman takes the gold wrapping and stares at it in wonder. She gently crumples it around her fingertip and releases a single ‘huh’ as an exclamation.
“Yeah, but that’s not even the best bit. This is.” Mandy breaks off a tiny bit of the chocolate and hands it out to the woman. She dutifully takes it, another inexplicable object in her cupped hands.
“Eat it. Like this.” Mandy nibbles at the corner of the chocolate. “Quick! Before it melts! Yummm! So good!” She mimes bringing the chocolate to her mouth over and over until the old woman does so too.
The old woman tastes the chocolate. She makes a face and spits it out, then hands the little nib back to Mandy. But she keeps the foil and sheet of paper.
“Mandy! What are you doing without your mask and gloves?”
Esquibel stands at the cave mouth, Morska Vidra beside her. She wears her own, the hospital blue of her mask and gloves a shocking artificial color in this brown and green village.
“Oh, right. I didn’t remember…” Mandy searches her pockets for these articles. But before she can find them, she says, “I mean, tons of times we’ve been unmasked in front of the villagers by now. If they were gonna get sick, it would have happened by now.”
“It is policy. Mask use only works if it is consistent.”
With a final smile to the old woman and the kids watching her, Mandy puts the mask and gloves on and joins Esquibel at the edge of the village. “Did you say Bontiik to him?” Mandy indicates Morska Vidra, standing patiently beside Esquibel.
“Huh? Oh. Uh…” Esquibel performs the quick ceremony and allows Morska Vidra to chuck her chin in return. “Remind me to sanitize my chin when I get a chance.” Then she turns, a very large and imposing black woman in the middle of this village of little brown people. She seems not to understand how dramatic her impact is here. “So. This is the village? The outer village where they’re nice, yes? And there’s another village deeper in? And they all live in these sad little huts?” Esquibel stoops and peers in one, its occupants still and silent in the shadows.
“Esquibel. Stop.”
“Stop? Stop what?”
“You’re scaring them.”
“Scaring them?” Esquibel regards the villagers in their doorways and in the square. They all watch her with worry. “Hello. Bontiik. Didn’t I say the word properly? What is wrong with them?”
“You’re just too loud, too big…”
“Too dark?” Esquibel snaps off her glove and holds out her hand for Morska Vidra. He studies it but doesn’t touch it.
“Maybe. I don’t know if they’ve ever seen black skin.”
“Well, Morska Vidra and the Mayor have. Didn’t they tell the others about me? We don’t have time for this kind of culture shock. They need to understand that we’re here and we’re moving in. Or at least through. Where do you think we should set up camp?”
“Maybe they’ll tell us?” But the villagers are already withdrawing back into their houses, faces closed. The positive start is ruined.
“Why don’t I make everyone happy…” Esquibel decides, “and go find out myself. They obviously don’t want me here.” And with that she stalks across the village square and takes the wide path down toward the river.
“No!” Mandy calls out after her. “It’s not that! It’s just that you came in too fast and…” But Esquibel is gone. Mandy turns to the villagers and holds out the piece of unwrapped chocolate melting in her fingers. “Anyone, uh, want to try it?”
“Hello…?” Alonso’s rough voice comes from the cave entrance. He limps out, hair wild, clothes covered in mud. Gasping from the exertion of climbing the fallen tree up the tunnel shaft, he catches his breath. “Are we here? Did I make it? Eh, Morska Vidra. Good to see you again. Oh. Bontiik.” Alonso smiles at the old man as he chucks his chin, then laughs when the fox appears from within Morska Vidra’s robes and climbs on his shoulder to sniff at Alonso. “And this is the famous fox. Lisica. How are you, little friend?” Alonso extends a finger so the fox can smell it.
Evidently he smells fine. With a perfunctory sneeze, the fox makes a decision and sits, coiling its bushy tail around Morska Vidra’s neck. The old man returns the greeting to Alonso, gravely, and then evidently divining his suffering, suddenly steps beside him and supports Alonso’s weight with a strong arm.
The gesture is so unexpected Alonso laughs. It also feels good, to have someone help relieve the pain in his feet. “Gracias, muchas gracias, hermano.” Alonso has a thought that if they can’t grasp his English, he may be able to make his intent more clear in his native Spanish. But then it occurs to him they’ve heard a fair amount of English, and probably no Spanish. “Thank you, my brother. Thank you a million times.”
Morska Vidra leads Alonso to the doorway of the largest hut. The redwood bark planks covering it are black and green with age. It is an impressive structure, the only hut taller than Alonso. “Your house? Very nice. Thank you for all your kindness. Ah. Here?” Alonso grunts as he allows Morska Vidra to lower him onto a woven mat. The fox appears again, nickering in the old man’s ear. As if following its directives, Morska Vidra kneels at Alonso’s feet and pulls at his shoes, trying to take them off.
Alonso barks in pain, his hand reaching urgently for the feet he can’t reach. The sound freezes all activity in the village. Mandy finally rouses herself and hurries to Alonso’s side. “He wants your shoes off. Is that okay? Should we take them off?”
“Just gently. Gently…” Alonso pleads, leaning back, the sudden raw agony in his legs from getting yanked starting to lose its edge.
Mandy picks at the laces, pulling the right shoe wide open before slipping it off. She peels his wet sock off too. Together, she and Morska Vidra regard the swollen purple thing. It is painful merely to look at Alonso’s tortured foot. The toes bend wrong, dents run along the top. An angry red vein crosses his ankle.
The villagers gather to silently regard Alonso’s foot as Mandy gently removes his other shoe and sock. This foot is just as bad, purple as a grape. And his lower leg is scored with scars.
The villagers speak to each other, evidently trying to figure out how someone could sustain such injuries. Alonso watches them, his gaze baleful. “I hope, for your sake, that this kind of brutality is foreign to you. I hope, I pray, it shocks you.” Tears start in his eyes and he groans as Mandy puts a gentle hand on his left ankle.
The smallest of the two children Mandy met bursts into tears and turns to his mother, hiding in her arms.
The Mayor arrives and kneels, inspecting Alonso’s foot. She pokes it and he grunts. She tries to move his right heel and he barks again. Sitting back, she speaks a number of quiet commands.
Several of the young girls in the back of the crowd peel away to their own homes. They return with sheafs of herbs and black leaves and seeds in a pot.
“No no, that’s fine.” Alonso tries to wave the treatment away but he is no longer in charge of this situation. The Mayor pulls up his pant legs and inspects the scars she finds there.
She orders for the seeds to be ground into paste and for the black leaves to be separated, dripping, and placed on the mat beside him. A low hum of discourse surrounds Alonso, villagers discussing the treatment and holding forth on various points. Alonso looks around himself in wonder. He’s been in contact with primitive peoples before—a family of Mongolian nomads invited him into their yurt one night—but he’s never experienced anything like this before. The Lisican sing-song language surrounds him, each distinct voice and individual perspective made manifest. All of them are so unique, the middle-aged woman with the ear pierced with yellow bone, whose animated voice rises over all others. The nonbinary youth in a shawl who seems to dispute what she says with gentle deflections. The silly clown beside them, their hair a mat, who makes a quip that rhymes with the youth’s last words and everyone laughs. Why, it is just like any family anywhere. The crazy aunt, the know-it-all young man, the weird black sheep. And the children with their black and yellow curls, each as vocal as the others, pulling on each other’s arms and arguing in quiet and deferential tones. All do what they can not to interrupt the Mayor.
She taps Mandy’s shoulder and indicates she should get out of the way. Then the Mayor applies the brown paste to the skin of Alonso’s lower legs and feet. He feels very much like he is being spread with Nutella. It is not unpleasant and he finds he can exhale the breath he didn’t know he held. Then she carefully wraps his legs, first with the black leaves, then the green, keeping them snug with a brown cord. Finally she sits back.
“Thank you. Better already.” He can’t feel a thing but at least he isn’t suffering more damage. Alonso isn’t sure what he should do here. All he knows is he doesn’t want to move his legs at all. “Very good. Sitting is good.”
The Mayor gives him a more thorough inspection. She holds his hand and pokes at his belly, his chest, his throat. She has him open his mouth and she looks at his tongue.
“That bad, eh?” Alonso prompts the Mayor but her face remains a mask. “I know. Lose forty kilos and eat right. But don’t you dare mention my liver because I am not giving up my wine.”
Finally she kneels and puts one hand on his heart and one on his lower belly. The Mayor lowers her head and the crowd falls silent.
After a moment, Alonso feels his pulse beneath her hands. At the same instant, the fox yips and leaps from Morska Vidra’s shoulder, scampering into the nearby underbrush. Villagers exchange dark glances. Finally the Mayor sits back. She is drained.
“Ax̱dàataasdʼixʼdáakw,” she declares, and the villagers make dubious sounds, but they are unwilling to argue with her after her exertions. Now Morska Vidra and the others support the Mayor. They lift her to her feet and bring her across the square to her own house, where she is given her own measure of herbs and poultices.
“I am very sorry.” Alonso calls out his apology, watching them tend her. “I did not mean to introduce such…” and by this he means all the horrors of the modern world stitched up in his body. He leans back with a groan and confesses to the sky: “I despise spoiling innocence.”
Ξ
Triquet stages another pile of bags at the bottom of the tree trunk at the base of the tunnel shaft. Somehow they’ll eventually haul all that gear up to the top and out the cave mouth into the village. Just what the stone age Dzaadzitch villagers ever wanted, for sure.
Flavia and Maahjabeen drag muddy bins and boxes most of the way, with Triquet having to lift the containers up into a narrow passage for the last bit, requiring all their strength, again and again.
“Another.” Flavia deposits one more stack at the exchange. For a moment they both pause, breathing heavily in the cramped tunnel, staring at each other’s flushed faces.
“And this is why…” Triquet gasps, exercising their sore arm, “I reluctantly decided against manual labor as a career.”
“But think how strong you would be.” Flavia is beyond tired. Her words come out in a grunt.
“Isn’t there some Jack London quote about the value of a laborer being in his muscles? That’s his capital? But for the owners, their capital is money that increases over their lives while for the laborer their capital diminishes? Something like that? Of course, he put it better than that. Lord, that man could write.”
“I am not sure 19th century economic theory is applicable to us poor little independent contractors down here in this hole.”
“I mean, ultimately, this is a job and we’re wage slaves, I guess. I haven’t really thought about it that way but I did get a sizable honorarium. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. But this is the first day I feel like a coal miner.”
Triquet lifts their aching arms and lets them drop. “Well, all I know is that I started with less capital than most and now I’m all out. There’s been a run on this bank and all my savings are gone.”
“All I know is that I am hungry.” And with that, Flavia turns and trudges back the way she’d come, stepping aside for Maahjabeen, who drags a clutch of damp canvas sacks with one arm.
Triquet heaves Flavia’s goods up the tunnel to the base of the fallen tree. They return to find Maahjabeen depositing her sacks.
“Is there any chance…?” Maahjabeen ventures, “that we will not be able to transport all the items we selected for the move?”
“Chance? Honey, I’m about ready to crap out now. What’s in these? Anything necessary?”
“All our bedding.”
Triquet grabs the sacks. “Yeah. Necessary. Okay. But how about you go get Flavia and tell her we need a rest.”
“Sure. We will just find the tarps and come with you. I need to get out of the dark myself.” And Maahjabeen retreats down her tunnel one last time.
Triquet heaves the sacks up into the narrow passage. The bundled blankets and pillows and sleeping bags fill it completely and they have to push it through like a digestive blockage before the sacks spill out at the base of the shaft at the edge of the pile they’ve made.
Triquet squeezes past all the gear and grabs hold of the lowest branches of the fallen tree. They wrap the drawstrings of the canvas sacks around their wrist and haul them over their shoulder like a filthy misshapen Santa, then slowly scale the broken tree limbs like a ladder.
At the top their legs are shaking and their breath is coming in short gasps. They drag the sacks clear of the shaft and onto the broad floor of the cave mouth. Gray light greets them. Oh, joy. That means it’s still raining out there.
This is far enough. They can wait here until the others catch up. As long as they’re not working any more. Triquet stretches out on the gravel floor beside the muddy sacks, resting their head on one. Ah, bliss…
Moments later Katrina and Amy and Miriam arrive, arms laden, followed by Flavia and finally Maahjabeen, who carries nothing. Her face is a mask of pain, though, as she has needed her injured shoulder to haul herself up the makeshift ladder.
They all collapse with Triquet on the floor, their breaths and perspiration mingling, like they just won a rugby match—or more likely, from their dispirited depletion—badly lost.
“I’ve got the beds,” Triquet manages.
“I have tarps and tents,” Amy answers.
“All we need.” Triquet sits up. “Everything else can wait.”
Miriam hoists her containers. “I’ve got enough food for the night and the morning. And a couple liters of wine.”
“Yes, then we’re definitely all set.” Triquet pushes themself to their feet. “Now let’s see what kind of spot they’ve found for us.”
There is no one at the cave mouth to greet them. They emerge into the rain to find the village empty except for Alonso resting on a mat and the old woman with white hair leaning against her post. There is no sign of Mandy nor Esquibel.
“Yesiniy!” Katrina hurries to the old woman. “What is it? What’s wrong? Uh… šta nije u redu, bako?”
“Bako…?” The old woman peers up at Katrina with her red eyes. Then she accepts the designation, “Eh. Bako. Ua na o au dʼadalyoo ettu. Kam.”
“Ettu. Kam,” Katrina echoes, trying to commit these words to memory. She doesn’t have anything at hand to take notes. “Bako is Bosnian for grandma, yeh? I think that’s right.”
Miriam puts down her containers and hurries past the empty houses to her horizontal husband. “Alonso? What are you doing? Where is everyone?”
“I am resting. On the orders of multiple doctors. And they are all down by a creek, I understand, arguing over where we might have our camp. Esquibel is not… the calmest person right now.”
“Okay, Ames. I think we can chance it,” Miriam calls out. “Nearly empty here. It’s now or never.”
“Should I still wear the bag?” Amy’s muffled voice is anxious. “I’m gonna wear the bag. Just in case.” She slowly emerges from the cave, wearing her blue sleeping bag upside down to hide her head, with her feet sticking out of the opening, her entire body covered. Triquet leads her through the village to the far side.
Yesiniy doesn’t even look their way.
Quickly, Triquet brings Amy out of the village to the broad path heading down toward the river. “Okay. I think you’ve got to be safe here, Amy. We’re well out of the village and on more like neutral territory. At least I think it is.”
Amy pulls the bag off and looks around with worry, single strands of her black hair standing straight from the static charge. “Nobody here to yell at me? They’re all down at the river?”
“Yep. At least I hope so. And I hope we aren’t setting up camp by the loo. Too stinky. Come on, let’s go. Maybe they’ve reached an agreement.”
Katrina and Flavia join them as they walk down the path toward the broad meadow. There they find Esquibel in heated debate with the village elders. She stands, drenched by the latest deluge, at a corner of the meadow near the west treeline, as far upstream as the meadow allows. “Then, here. We will stay here. And that is final.”
“But they already said…” Mandy starts in an exasperated whine, but Esquibel immediately cuts her off.
“Yes. I heard. I heard that we cannot be here. Or there. Or there. Or there.” Esquibel points at locations across the meadow, where they have trampled the green grasses with their activity. “Or anywhere. So if we can’t be anywhere, then we will be where we want to be. And I want to be here.”
“Christ! What are you doing?” Katrina calls out, hurrying over to the congregated villagers as the rain eases and the winds pick up. “That isn’t any way to talk to the Lisicans! We’re their guests!”
“If we were their guests then they would accommodate us. But all I hear from them is ah-ah, which they have demonstrated quite clearly means no.”
“Yeh, that’s right. But did you ask them? Just ask them where we’re supposed to be?”
“What an idea? Why didn’t I think of that?” Esquibel’s temper is very short. “Oh, right. Because I don’t speak a single bloody word of their language. You think we didn’t try?”
“Here. Wait. Let me see. I might be able to stitch something together…” Katrina takes her backpack off. It holds a half dozen laptops. “Just one moment. Here. This one’s mine. And…” Flavia holds a folded tarp above her to keep the electronics dry as Katrina quickly navigates to her notes and starts scrolling through the pages of details she’s documented about the Lisican language. “Okay.” She turns to the Mayor standing beside Morska Vidra. “Uh, we need to… we are…” she encompasses her crew, “one sec here, just looking up versions of ‘to move’ and all I can find is this relational gobbledygook. Um… Oh, here we go. We duladaaw tlein. That’s ‘big move noisily,’ which is definitely us. Like all of us here need to duladaaw tlein.”
She has the attention of the villagers. “Join. Uh, join… No join. They don’t use the word ‘join?’ Uh, together. Together is vooch. Vooch, you and us. Dóode? Here? Or dóode? Where can we camp? Just for a couple weeks.”
She seems to be making headway. The villagers argue with each other, trying to solve Katrina’s problems. But the way they go about it is as mystifying as anything else. They consult the sky, they talk about the meadow, as if representing it at trial, possessively stroking the grasses. One woman appears to be listening to a tree. Finally, Morska Vidra places his fox on the ground and everyone watches it bound from one spot to another. Eventually, it goes into the trees on a slope near the spot Esquibel had just claimed.
The villagers move under the trees and inspect the spot. It is a wide open patch beneath pine trees, their fallen needles a brown carpet preventing much undergrowth. The slope is shallow here and the wind is tamed by the high canopy.
The fox bounds back onto Morska Vidra’s shoulder. By that, they all understand that the deal has been struck.
“I love it!” Triquet calls out. “Thank you so much. Promise we’ll take care of it. You guys are the best.”
Esquibel frowns at the spot. “Not defensible in the slightest.” But she realizes this is the best she can get. “Well. At least it is out of the weather. Why was that so hard to understand? That is why I wanted to be on this side of the meadow.”
“Take your win,” Mandy counsels her, clutching Esquibel by the elbow. “And say something nice.”
Esquibel gives the Mayor a glassy smile. “Something nice.”
Amy and Flavia advance, poking around at the base of a few trees to see where they might build their platforms. The Mayor watches the scene, evidently unmoved by Esquibel’s apology or the tantrum that came before.
“Lucky for you, they’re used to loudmouths and hotheads.” Mandy claps her hands. “Yay. We’re all friends again.”
Several of the villagers answer her claps with their own burst of applause. Mandy and Katrina clap back. This delights them. Soon nearly everyone in the camp is applauding each other, with the exception of Esquibel. She has no time for this nonsense. A clean room needs to be built, and this time it will need to be on one of the platforms. There isn’t an inch of level ground in this entire camp. And these villagers will probably wander everywhere. “And no one is wearing a mask!” she belatedly cries out. But nobody listens. They’re all intermingling now, clapping and chanting and repeating each other’s words and moves, laughing in each other’s faces and touching each other, all laughing, so carefree…
The scene finally overwhelms Esquibel with its charm. These villagers are so genuine when they laugh and copy and tease. Their eyes are so sharp. But they have a gentleness, a tenderness she hadn’t seen in the brief visits from the Mayor and Morska Vidra. These Lisicans are actual people filled with joy and curiosity and love, not just columns of figures on a Navy spreadsheet. And they are worth protecting. Silently, Esquibel adds them to her mission objectives and increases her defensible perimeter to include them and their village. She shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with them. “I am sorry,” she tells the closest ones, who are laughing and playing with Mandy. “I should have been more patient but…”
Yet they are not listening. A young girl catches Esquibel by the hand and trills like a bird. Oh, Esquibel can do this one. It is a sound the Kikuyu make in their traditional songs. She trills right back and the girl screams with pleasure. Now they are all laughing, every single one.
“What is it? What did we miss?” Miriam leads Alonso into the new camp, his feet and calves still wrapped in black leaves and twine with his unlaced shoes over it all.
Triquet reaches out to them, buoyed by the villagers and their applause. “And here they are! Welcome to your new home, Doctor one and Doctor two. Your loan has been approved! Please sign the lease agreeement on the kitchen table and I’ll leave the keys on the mantle. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” Then Triquet claps. Everyone claps.
Alonso and Miriam clap and laugh with all the others in the rain.
Chapter 43 – I Miss Him So
October 21, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
43 – I Miss Him So
Flavia sits alone in the warrant officer’s cabin on a single pillow, her laptop balanced on her crossed legs. Its pale blue light is the room’s only illumination. She is deep inside a logic chain, a basic structure from which she will create another Plexity module.
A knock on the closed door interrupts her work. “Pronto,” she calls out absently. Maybe she can persuade whoever it is to set up her machine down here in the sub and make her an espresso.
Alonso enters with Katrina. “There she is. Come. Let’s tell Flavia our good news.”
“You have good news? We can leave? It is safe?” Flavia’s head snaps up so quickly she’s afraid she strained something in her neck. She rubs it, then stretches. “What time is it?”
“No no.” Alonso tempers her expectations with his soothing tone. “Nothing so exciting. Well. Actually, I think you will find this more exciting. It is almost 8 am. The good news is that I am giving up.”
Flavia frowns. “To the… Russians?”
Alonso’s mouth hangs open. He is so deep in the implications of his decision that it takes a moment for the emotional shockwave to hit him. Giving up to the Russians. The images run through his flesh like ice and he waits for them to pass before continuing. “No. To you. I surrender.” And he puts his hand to his heart and bows, like an old patrician handing over his saber.
Flavia frowns. “What is this all about, you two?”
“Plexity,” Katrina answers. “This is Alonso like surrendering to your wisdom and expertise.”
But Flavia is too cynical for this. “What the hell are you on about now? And why do I feel like I am about to be blamed for it?”
Katrina and Alonso both laugh, leaning against the wall and doorframe. Their presence crowds the tiny room. And they don’t smell great, especially their ripe exhalations when they laugh.
“Yes, I suppose I deserve that. No. No blame. I set an impossible goal so I cannot blame you for not reaching it. I am surrendering to the idea that we will not be able to characterize the entire island on this first, initial trip. We must focus only on the lagoon.”
“Oh thank god.” Flavia kisses her own fingertips. “You were making me crazy.”
“I was making myself crazy. But now we have to think about what comes next: a streamlined Plexity with harder bounds, a few more loose ends. But it is what it is. And we must also figure out our conception for the new grant proposal that will come, yes? We need to frame the data in such a way that any board will have to say yes. So our new puzzle is how can we optimize our pitch with the findings we already have? That is what we need to do now. Start putting it all in a package. Now I am not saying that we need to have a polished presentation ready to go when they pick us up on the beach, but we would be fooling ourselves if they didn’t start interrogating us pretty much immediately. And we really need to put our best foot forward.”
“Oh.” Flavia nods, looking down at the columns of data that will become a flow chart. “Well, I don’t even know if we will need this at all, then. This is… a big waste of time.”
“Why? What is it?” Alonso wheels around and bends down, stiff-legged, to peer at Flavia’s laptop.
“Oh, well, an adaptive filter. Plexity is having trouble placing a spectrum of samples among the Cnidarians and Ctenophores. I did a bit of research with your offline Wikipedia and learned a bit. You see, years ago, they used to be grouped together but now—”
“Pretty sure the ‘C’ is silent, mate. Nidarians and Tenophores.”
“Really?” Flavia makes a note of it. “I have never said the words aloud, so… I mean, why even put the Cs in front if they will just be silent anyway? Okay. Today, they are separate phyla but—”
“Plexity does not use phyla.” Alonso frowns at the screen. “What are you up to this time, Flavia, and what will it break?”
She waves his accusation away. “Of course. We are classifying connections, not organisms, but it is the connections that Plexity is having trouble with. And in certain historical examples, it was those connections that kept them from being classified properly. I mean there is one group called Myxozoa. They used to be like jellyfish but then they evolved into parasites you can find on other creatures. Pradeep would love them. Some are only one cell big now. Simple, tiny creatures. Say you have a Cnidarian like an anemone and a Ctenophore comb jelly and they are both feeding on the same phytoplankton, which ends up exchanging a cloud of proteins and acids in the water, which they both take up. And they are both infested with Myxozoa. It is nearly impossible to describe using maths, but these kind of edge cases will now be…” She lifts her shoulders and makes a face. “Too bad.”
“Why, this is all very necessary, if we are staying by the lagoon, my dear. All these marine interactions are very sexy.” Alonso pats Flavia’s shoulder. “You know, perhaps it is in the interaction of the water and the land that we can make our best pitch. Por su puesto, of course it is. What do you think, Katrina? Maybe we put a special focus on the tide line, the creekside, the waterfall? It will make for nice images at least.” A brittle irritation inside Alonso threatens to break out. He smiles even more widely instead. This isn’t their fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault but his own, for dreaming too big.
But Flavia isn’t willing to let Alonso so easily off the hook. “So… wait. Now you are saying that you can make a reasonable version of Plexity with just this initial shoreline data? Because according to you that was impossible. That is what—”
“Yes, well, perhaps I didn’t understand exactly how closed off the interior of the island was until I came down here and looked into that long dark tunnel Pradeep and Jay took. It is really something, isn’t it? Just how disconnected the edge of the island is from the rest of it. A perfect hermetically-sealed biome for us to—”
“Oh, now it’s perfect. I’m not sure I like this side of you, Alonso.”
“What? Which side?”
“The hustler. I like the data scientist better.”
Alonso’s laugh is a short cynical bark. “Yes. Well. I do too. But it is time we start thinking of the outside world again, and in that world, I am absolutely a hustler. Katrina, take note. If you want to advance in academia or, well, anything really. It is all politics and marketing, yes?”
“Oh, for sure. That’s why I don’t go by my first name.”
“Your first name?” Alonso raises his eyebrows. “It isn’t Katrina?”
“Olga.”
Ξ
“Miriam, are you working?”
Miriam stares at her screen. She hasn’t written a word in perhaps fifteen minutes. Instead, she’s gone off on a mental tangent about her subject here, the stratigraphy of that immense shaft that Mandy burned clear. It’s a real shame that the walls are covered in soot. And Katrina won’t let them fly the drone in there. Maybe the rains are washing the faces clean. It would be such a perfect use of the drone as a remote sampling tool, especially for geology. Unlike the biologists, her samples don’t fight back. It would save her countless days of work. Wait. Somebody spoke to her. She blinks at the dim shadows of the bunkbed frames. “Aye?”
“Then I will not bother you.” Maahjabeen lowers herself stiffly on the cot that has been placed in one of the old frames. All their gear is piled precariously in corners but the beds are empty. The others have moved on, to different corners of the boat.
Miriam shakes her head clear. “Sorry, love. I meant, ‘Aye, what is it?’ not ‘Yes, I am working.’ So what is it? Are you okay?”
“I am just waking up with a very sore shoulder. It will not move. And it is making me very angry. Would you please get Mandy?”
But instead, Miriam levers herself to her feet and hurries to her, kneeling at Maahjabeen’s side. “This one?” And she clasps both sides of Maahjabeen’s shoulder in her hands, compressing them.
“Ah. Yes. It… Ah… Yes, that is what it needed.” Maahjabeen settles once more on her back, Miriam’s warm hands holding the angry ball joint in place. She does not move her hands, she only holds it intimately, like a mother embracing her child.
“And breathe.” Miriam smiles down at Maahjabeen, whose wrinkled brow still holds back a storm. “Breathe…” There was a time in the 90s when Miriam had almost given it all up after a visit to the Tibetan Plateau. She’d been a yoga fanatic just like everyone else in those days and she became fluent in its language of physical metaphors. Now she imagines her own breath releasing through the bottom of her feet into the earth and her chakras opening.
Tears leak from Maahjabeen’s dark eyes.
“Do you still want me to get Mandy?”
Maahjabeen shakes her head no. She takes a deep ragged breath and settles even more deeply into Miriam’s grasp, allowing herself to be held. But the jagged images from her restless sleep still haunt her. “I do not think I can do this any more. I need… I can’t be shut off from the ocean like this. Not now. Not will all these threats around. The open ocean is where I always escape the threats. But now I can’t. The ocean is where the greatest threat is coming from. And sure I can get to the sea cave from here, but I can’t fit my boat through the mud tunnel. And there’s no point being in the cave without a boat. From in there I can’t even see the sky…” Her sob shuts off any more words.
“Shh shh. There there.” Miriam just holds on, letting the fierce woman find her own way through it.
They stay like that for a long time. Up until they hear a noise from the chamber behind them. Footsteps.
Miriam turns, hoping it might be Mandy. Why, she could put her hands on Maahjabeen too and together they might make a difference. But it isn’t Mandy. It’s a bedraggled figure in a yellow rainsuit, covered in dirt and soaked to the skin, their fair face now deathly white. “Triquet!”
“They’re gone,” Triquet croaks. “You can come out now.”
Upon hearing this, Maahjabeen finally releases all her tension with a ragged sigh and sags against the cot.
Miriam withdraws her hands and claps them. Then she gets up and hurries to Triquet to care for them, suppressing a random flash of irritation at finding herself in such a maternal role today. “Here, dear one.” She picks at the zipper of their sodden yellow raincoat and pulls it open. The undergarments are all wet. “Oh, my days. You must be frozen.”
“Hug.” Triquet begins shivering uncontrollably, open to the air for the first time in ages. The stress of what they’ve endured now rattles through them.
But first, Miriam pulls the rest of Triquet’s layers off and scrubs their skin dry with a blanket, careful of the angry red welt on their upper arm. Then she wraps their hairless body in a sleeping bag. She zips it up around them and only then does she hold them in a deep clasp, breathing warmth into the crook of Triquet’s neck. Finally she leans back and makes a prim line with her mouth. “Now. Sit. Or lie down. I’ll go get everyone. You’re sure? It’s safe out there? There was… someone in camp and now they’re gone?”
Triquet nods, weary. “Good plan. Yes. Get everyone, so I can only tell this once.”
Miriam nods. “Of course, darling.” She presses a hand against Triquet’s cheek. “So very glad to have you back.” Then she ducks through the far hatch, deeper into the sub.
Only then does Triquet register Maahjabeen in her cot across the room. “Oh. Hi. How are you?”
“My shoulder hurts.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Otherwise I would get you a cup of tea.”
“Sounds lovely. You don’t have to. But where would I find such a thing?” Triquet considers crawling like a cocooned worm in the sleeping bag to anywhere hot water might be.
“I thought it was in that first room, where you just were. Did you see any stoves in there?”
“Ah. Right.” Triquet recalls that last moment again, that final excruciating moment of being alone, after they had finally cleared the bunker’s floor and opened the hatch and hurried down the narrow stairs they know so well, relishing the fact that they’d survived this latest ordeal. Triquet hadn’t even really looked at the contents of the first room. They’d only seen it was empty of people. Did they walk right past a pot of hot water?
Maahjabeen lifts her head. “Pradeep is not back yet. I am very worried. So the bad men are gone? We can go back upstairs and I can finally get back out on the water? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh, well, I don’t know about that. For one thing, it’s raining again. And, I mean, who knows how far they went. Men with guns, maybe right over the horizon?” The sleeping bag is finally starting to warm Triquet up. Their shivers subside. “I do not know how Milo does it, day in and day out.”
“Who’s Milo? One of the soldiers?”
“No. Good grief. I didn’t talk to any of them. Or who knows what they’d have done to me. No, Milo is one of the golden childs. Kept me alive last night. Ugh. That was definitely the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had at a Best Western. Zero stars. And the breakfast buffet was cold.”
“You were actually out there in the storm? All night?”
“Yeah. I just couldn’t bring myself to come back in, because then we’d never know what was happening out there. You know?”
Maahjabeen slowly nods, understanding the logic of it and profoundly impressed by the sacrifice Triquet has made. “You did that for us? What a good person you are. I do not know if I could have done the same.”
“There you are.” Alonso swings himself through the hatch with only a little groan, then hobbles his way over to Triquet. “Oh, dear one, we are so glad you are back. Pobrecito. You look like a kitten who got drowned in the rain.”
“I’ll get them some tea.” Amy pushes past Alonso to the stoves in the first room. But she comes back a moment later as the others pile in behind Alonso. Alarmed, Amy says, “Guys… The hatch is open. The first hatch. Leading up to the bunker.”
“Aye, that’s where Triquet came down from.” Miriam sits at the foot of Triquet’s cot and chafes their feet through the bag.
Amy frowns. “And you left it open? Is that… wise?”
Triquet shrugs. “They’re gone.”
“They? Who, they?” Alonso sits at the cot’s side and pulls the plastered hairs away from Triquet’s splotched face.
“Well, I never got a formal introduction. But… Miriam, could you find my phone? It was in my coat.”
“Doctor Daine? Can you reach it? It’s the yellow one right behind you.”
Esquibel lifts the coat and unzips a pocket. “Here is the phone.”
Triquet’s arms emerge from the sleeping bag and they tap at the screen to cue up a video. “Yeah. Just watch this.”
It is a close-up video of the beach, at the edge of the lagoon. Triquet’s blue boots can be seen at the bottom of the frame, the phone’s camera tilted down. Right at the narrow surfline, text has been scrawled in the dark sand. It is already being washed away by the lagoon’s gentle waves. But the words are not in English.
Alonso squints. “Is that Cyrillic? Katrina?”
Katrina grabs the phone and starts the video again. She reads the words aloud and translates them. “My znayem, ‘chto… We know that… We know that you are here… Uvidimsya snova… cherez dve nedeli… See you again in two weeks.”
“Oh my god, they really are gone and it really is over.” Alonso presses his hands together. “You are sure? No sign of them left?”
“All empty. Land and sea. Except for the golden childs. They came back out of hiding, right when the rain started up again.”
“Perfect. So they also think it’s clear. They should know. Well. Sounds like we can at least get back up in the bunker, yes?”
“That is all it says?” Esquibel frowns. “That is a threat, no? It is nothing but an explicit threat.”
“Or some kind of…” Miriam waves a hand, “…misdirection? Like they want us to think we’ve got the whole beach to ourselves for the next two weeks then they sneak up on us one night.”
“Who were they?” Esquibel asks Triquet. “Who did you see?”
“I heard a whistle and I realized that these like, kind of short fat silhouettes, I swear that’s all I was able to see, maybe soldiers I guess, gathered back on the beach. Maybe four? Maybe five? Then by the time I saw them next it was just a little gray boat on the far side of the breakers heading out to the open ocean.”
“Not back to a larger vessel?” If Esquibel could get Triquet to describe a blue water ship or craft, important clues might give her an idea of exactly which Russians she’s dealing with here.
“Not that I could see.”
“Maybe they are a sub crew. During my mission briefings there was never any mention made of possible new Russian interference. Not that it is impossible. Contact with the Soviets on this island had been documented since the 60s. Things got particularly bad in the 70s, with a number of murders and disappearances on both sides that remain classified, but the return of the Russian Navy is certainly a valuable intelligence data point.” Esquibel’s laugh is bitter. “Assuming we survive to communicate it.”
“But why is it in Russian?” Katrina frowns at the words in the video, watching the tide wash them away.
Esquibel shrugs. “It’s the only language their sailors knew.”
“Or they weren’t writing to us.” Katrina shrugs. “Maybe they think there’s some Russians here. I mean, how would they know we’d even understand it? Or maybe it’s some kind of crazy double-feint and they weren’t even Russians.”
“Now, wait. You were the one who said the golden man called them Russians, Katrina.” Esquibel can’t keep the accusation out of her voice, nor does she try very hard.
“He did. But maybe he was lying. Or maybe he doesn’t know the difference. It may be that they come back in two weeks and surprise us all. What do you think?”
“That is very unlikely. I think that if it is the Russians,” Esquibel frowns, “we cannot take any chances. All we know for certain is that a military squad was here and will be back in two weeks.”
“How did they know we’re here?” Mandy pinches her features together, the stress making her ill. “Are they just playing with us?”
“It’s a big ocean,” Maahjabeen says. “Maybe they needed some supplies. Fresh water. This will get them back to wherever they are based. Then they can recharge and come back again.”
“Well, not if they are any Navy I’ve served with.” Esquibel doesn’t like contradicting Maahjabeen but this is her field. “This isn’t like Magellan. This is the 21st century. They aren’t facing scurvy and spoiled water. At least they shouldn’t be.”
“And how did that golden man know,” Mandy asks, her voice rising, “that soldiers were coming? Have the Lisicans been spying on us? Do they have like a radio in those golden masks?”
“Or maybe,” Flavia says, “the Russians always come at this time of year. I think that is more likely, no?”
“Jay said Kula had a radio,” Katrina adds. “But he wasn’t sure if it worked.”
“Well.” Flavia stands. “I for one am looking forward to a shower in the waterfall. Anyone join me?”
“We can’t.”
A silent displeasure greets Esquibel’s words.
“No. Think about it. The soldiers can come back any moment. We now have proof, documented proof, that they were here. Good job, Triquet, capturing that message before it vanished.”
“Yes, but Doctor Daine…” Alonso needs to get back upstairs as much as anyone. “These bad guys, if they are bad guys, already know we are here. They could have come after us at any moment. But they didn’t.”
“Because maybe they couldn’t find us.”
“Then how did they know we’re here at all?” Mandy isn’t ready to hear all the reasons why they must still be under threat. She can’t handle any more. “I mean, we got to just, you know, trust the golden childs. If they’re out of hiding, then I’m out.”
“No…” Esquibel once again finds herself set against the entire rest of the crew. She raises her hands. “That is not how it works. Just because they were right about one thing does not mean they are right about everything. Katrina was just arguing that the golden childs can’t even tell the difference between us and the Russians. They are not the experts we need here.”
“So what are you saying?” Maahjabeen sits up, grimacing. “That we have to spend the next two bloody weeks in this—this coffin?”
“It is probably the most defensible structure we have left.”
Maahjabeen’s face drains of color. “I cannot. I am sorry. But you cannot expect me to—”
“What if we go further in?” Miriam catches up Maahjabeen’s hand, who snatches it away again.
“Further in? Like into the tunnels?” Maahjabeen can’t think of anything worse.
“No, please, Miriam,” Alonso shakes his head in displeasure. “Perhaps a geologist can spend two weeks underground, but…”
“I don’t mean the tunnels, Alonso. I mean the interior. Like a camp beside the Dzaadzitch village. It’s time. We’ve been on this bloody island for six weeks and we still haven’t gotten more than a few peeks at it.”
“No no no. Have you forgotten,” Flavia asks, “about the crazy shamans in there who are trying to take us as slaves?”
“Well, they already know exactly where we are, and the golden childs will just have to keep protecting us.”
“Yes.” Mandy likes this plan. She can set up weather stations wherever she wants, dependent upon no one. “Miriam’s right. We got stuck on the beach for too long. It was too comfortable.”
“Forgive me,” Maahjabeen scowls, “but I did not get ‘stuck’ on the beach and if you propose to take the oceanographer away from the ocean then I can’t even say what I am doing here any more.”
“Finding Pradeep.” Miriam says it quietly but it prompts bright tears in Maahjabeen’s eyes. “Just help us find him, love. Then all this madness will pass and the two of you can go back to romantic sunset paddles again, eh?”
Maahjabeen silently nods.
“No.” Flavia stands. “We just decided. We can’t leave the lagoon now. Plexity needs us to stay. Alonso realized… Tell them.”
But Alonso is spooked by this conversation. It feels as though the whole world is passing him by. “Yes, there are many problems with your plan, Miriam. I was about to… I mean, that is a different conversation, for sure. But for the sake of the science, yes, it would be best if we kept our focus for the time being on the beach. It is the only way to make use of Plexity in the short time we have left. And also, personally… I would just have to say that from the way you talk about these tunnels I am certain you would have to leave me behind. Which,” he holds up a hand to forestall their protests, “I understand. If that is what will keep my team safe, then that is what will happen. I am just not sure if that is what will happen.”
Esquibel stands. “It is, Doctor Alonso. It is what will happen. Doctor Truitt is right. We cannot stay down here. We have to move to the interior of Lisica. And we will find a way to get you through those tunnels. It will be possible, right?”
“Oh, right,” Triquet says. “Esquibel doesn’t know either. Both of you haven’t gone through, have you? Well, there’s a tight fit in one spot and a lot of climbing at the end. I mean, it isn’t easy. But you’ll be fine, Alonso.”
“Eh,” he pats his solid belly. “This fat man doesn’t like hearing anything about a tight fit.”
“Then this is what I shall do.” Maahjabeen sits up, ignoring the stiffness in her shoulder. “I will paddle my boats out of the lagoon and down the coast into the sea cave and leave them there. That is where you will find me. Then I will be able to join you when you need me through the tunnels. Yes?”
“I’ll paddle with you,” Amy volunteers. “Nobody should run that gauntlet alone. First break in the storm.”
“Fine.”
“But, Alonso…” Flavia turns to him, isolated now. “We can’t, right? We have to stay on the beach. We just decided.”
“It is not even a decision,” Alonso mutters, his insides queasy. “We are being forced by the demands of the project to remain on the beach. If Plexity will work at all we do need to focus our efforts there. But if it is the Russians…” He falls silent.
“Come on, Flavia,” Miriam tries. “Don’t make Alonso…”
“But it isn’t safe in the interior! I am telling you! I was the first one they attacked! And they aren’t done with us yet!”
“The problem, mate,” Katrina says, “is that nowhere is safe. It’s all danger. So we just got to pick our poisons.”
“Then I will stay in here. This will be my poison. I will stay in the sub with some crackers and energy bars and pee in a bottle!”
And nothing anyone says can change Flavia’s mind.
Ξ
“Come on, Jay. Quickly. This way.” Pradeep grabs Jay by the arm and hauls him through the brush. His only thought is that if he can get Jay back to the village before Wetchie-ghuy attacks again they might make it out.
“Fuck this…” Jay’s voice is muzzy, thick with concussion. Why’s he got to be in so much pain all the time? Now it’s his right ear, which stings so bad his eyes water. And the base of his skull where he like wrenched his neck.
“Oh god…” Pradeep pulls up short at a slick chute of gray rock pouring a tributary of water from the cliff on their right straight down into a cluster of dark broadleafs obscuring where it joins the wider creek. There is no clear way across it.
Over the hiss of the water and the drumming of the rain in the canopy above, a distant piercing giggle reaches them. It is manic and wild, a predator on the hunt careless if his prey hears him.
“That him?” Jay turns back and blinks at the steep slope and shadowed understory. “The fuck’s his deal, anyway?”
“He went crazy. He struck you.”
“He did? When?”
Pradeep has already told Jay this. Now he will need to tell him again. “When you got him high. And it made him… insane. Like a wild beast. What was in that joint you gave him?”
“Just some Sour Diesel, my dude. Why’d he hit me?”
“Gah. We need to get across here. Nowhere better. Come on, Jay. Do you think you can jump?”
“Sure…” Jay sways, the earth tilting under him like he’s at sea. “It’s just the landing part I’m not so sure about.”
“I’m afraid he really rang your bell. If we can just get across this part we might be able to put some distance between us. Here.”
Jay squares up at a cluster of gray boulders crowned with purple-dark lichen. “We should collect some of this for Plexity.”
“No, bhenchod! Not now! He is coming!” Pradeep pushes his mate up onto the rocks. “Jump across! I am right with you!”
Jay’s many years of experience with impaired movement serve him well here. He doesn’t struggle against the kaleidoscopic pain of the concussion. He rolls with it. It seems to have deadened a nerve circuit that runs all the way down his right side. So his arm and leg are just dead weight. He’ll have to somehow swing himself around that weight up over the gap. Just a couple meters…
Jay hurls himself through the air and lands heavily on the rocks on the far side, knocking his breath from his body and crunching his incision scar. The multipoint agony blanks his mind. He is nothing but pain.
Pradeep lands lightly beside him and pulls him to his feet. “Come on, Jay. We’ve got to keep running.”
“Running.” Merely moving is like stabbing himself with knives and this asshole wants him to start running? Pradeep grabs his wrist and pulls him ahead. “Wasn’t I just like… on acid?”
“Focus, Jay. I can’t do this alone.”
“But why aren’t we dead?” Jay stumbles down the sliding slope, his feet catching on roots and stalks. “He came at me so fast.”
“Somebody saved us.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see. It all happened in a blur. A dark blur. And then you were just crumpled at my feet and they were gone.” Pradeep slows. “Oh, no…” There is an outcrop here blocking their way, a sheer cliff that thrusts outward from the ridge above to drop in a vertical line to the rushing water below. “Can’t traverse. No way. We got to go back up. Fuck. That’s like a hundred meters.”
But Jay isn’t listening to Pradeep. He’s watching Wetchie-ghuy coalesce out of the shadows above. The shaman is playing with them, just toying with their sorry asses. Whoever got in his way back on the flat land is gone now and he’s ready for the kill. The old man looks hardly capable of such agile speed. His barrel body and short legs are full of terrifying power, though. After he held out that joint, Jay never even saw him coming. “This is heinous.”
But Pradeep and Jay aren’t alone. “Stand back.” Rushing silently up beside them, Jidadaa puts herself in front. She holds a warding hand up to Wetchie-ghuy and speaks a forceful incantation of some kind. It makes him blanch and turn his head to the side, but it doesn’t dislodge him from his position blocking their way.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay squawks as Wetchie-ghuy steps forward. But she pulls a cluster of twigs and feathers from the folds of her clothing and waves it at the shaman, calling out in a mocking voice, “Tu dah-ne, at udéine!”
The shaman pulls up short, his hand going to his belt, his actions indicating that she stole whatever that is from him and he’s just finding out now. He snarls, her name coming out as a curse, and leaps at her.
But she has already slipped away from him back in the shadows, retreating deeper into the ferns behind. Jidadaa leads him away.
“Now! We have to climb!” Pradeep churns at the loose soil that spills down beneath his soles to the creek far below. “She gave us a chance!” And he pushes Jay, who is still caught in a moment of stark terror.
“Careful, Jidadaa!” Jay repeats, the only thing he can think to say or do for her. Then he starts to climb.
It is a motherfucker of an ascent. His legs are already dead and this is like scaling a wall of loose soil and thorns. And he has no adrenaline left. It’s all just tremors and gasping now, chased by the fear of an iron grip on a trailing ankle or a hand clamping his shoulder. But nothing like that happens. They both win free and swing up onto the rocky mount of the outcrop to catch their breaths before they continue their way down the canyon.
From up here they can see over the treetops of the canyon floor. It is a dense winding carpet of redwood for another five hundred meters or so, then they can barely see the beginning of a more open valley ahead. “That’s it, Prad. That’s the spot. Gotta be. Where I first saw golden childs. First time ever. Where I crossed the river. Super close now. We got this. Come on, brother.”
Ξ
“So many things…” Amy gasps, working hard, “…we can’t bring to the… the interior…”
“Alonso’s cask of wine.” Miriam stands straight, cheeks pink with exertion, pulling a stray curl from her face. “Maahjabeen’s boats. What else?” They work in the control room, Miriam stacking bags and containers, Amy’s head poking above the gap in the floor. She hauls another heavy load down to the lower level of the sub.
Esquibel hears them as she enters. “Bins. All our food. Medicine. I’ve been re-packaging what I can but we don’t have enough small containers to protect everything that needs to be protected.”
“All my lovely stacks,” Triquet sighs, entering with an armful of papers. They set it carefully down and wipe the perspiration from their brow. “Back to their original places belowdecks.”
“That is a big load. How is your arm doing?” Esquibel grabs it and pulls Triquet’s sleeve up without asking.
“Oh, frankly, I haven’t thought about it in…” Triquet falls silent and Esquibel goes still. The hardened resin that had covered the wound for the last few days is gone now. All that remains is a long red patch of irritated skin. There is no sign of the eagle bite. The incision has vanished as if it never was.
“Impossible.” Esquibel rolls Triquet’s arm back and forth. “We worked on this wound site for—for… It was so long! You had a deep cut in the flesh of your arm!”
“Yeah. I did.” Triquet is filled with disquiet. With a convulsive impulse, they drop to the deck and pull their sock and shoe from their left foot. “Oh, god… Look!” They hold out their foot, so all can see the dark dots of tattoo between each knuckle. “That’s like assault, isn’t it? Tattooing someone against their will?”
“How did your arm heal so quickly?” Esquibel is astounded. She knows of nothing that can heal like that. It must be the sap, that burning sap… Somehow it heals and doesn’t even leave behind scar tissue. Why, every surgery incision, every bullet wound, every dog bite… This is how researchers and doctors become rich. If she can find what bioactive compound that shaman used and patent it before anyone else even knows about it, she’ll become the richest woman in the world. No. This is too wild. Her eyes narrow and she takes a step back. Life is never so easy. There must be some cost. Those tattoos? What are they doing to Triquet? “Why did you check your foot? Could you feel the tattoo?”
“No!” Triquet is near tears. “That’s the problem! I can’t feel anything wrong at all! My arm! My foot! Whatever Sherman did, it’s all inside me now. Ugghh. Doctor Daine, you’ve got to get it out of me. Now.”
“I would very much like to.” Esquibel is torn. Did she preserve any of that resin? After all the packing and moving she can’t recall. She wants to inspect Triquet more closely but she knows this isn’t the place. What is that sap? The implications of its use whirl through her head, making her dizzy.
“Come on, Triquet.” Miriam kneels beside them, helping to put the sock and shoe back on. “We need to find new laces for your shoe. I’m surprised it isn’t falling off. That’s it, darling. All will be well. We’ll just get it all moved first and then we’ll take care of you. Just a few more hours of the drudgery.”
Her calm words help, if only a little. “Yes, Miriam.” Triquet is miserable. Claimed. Experimented upon. This is the nightmare they had always managed to avoid.
“Come on, everyone!” Mandy’s voice, too bright, breaks the mood. She enters carrying a stack of bins, happy about this plan and eager to put it into action. “Got to keep moving! Time to go inland!”
“That’s it. Just a few more paces and you’re there.” Katrina leads Alonso through the passage opening into the sea cave.
He stops, wiping the mud from his hands, taking in the luminous water and walls shimmering with refracted daylight. He shakes his head in wonder. “I am an idiot.”
“What? No.” Katrina’s laugh echoes in the cavern. “Why do you say that?”
“That waterfall…” Alonso traces its route upward. “That is our creek, no? This is where it drops into. Miriam was right.”
Katrina waits patiently for Alonso to take it all in.
“I thought…” Alonso lifts his hands and lets them drop. “I saw the map that Colonel Baitgie shared and… it was like a cartoon. Just a little drawing. And I thought the island was the perfect size. I actually worried that it might be too small and wouldn’t hold our attention for eight whole weeks. But of course that simple map didn’t show all the cliffs or canyons or the tunnels or the villages or the caves. What a fool I am, Katrina. An arrogant fool.”
“Nah, mate. There was no way to tell until we got here. In order to measure something you got to interact with it.”
“Well, like my dear friend Arthur Limas the quantum physics professor is fond of saying, measuring something changes it. Always. So not only did we blunder into this place with little to no idea of what we are doing, we stained everything we touched with our own essence. I thought we would study Lisica as objective and empirical scientists, but instead we are ruining it.”
The guilt is unbearable. Alonso shuffles to the water’s edge, where the rusted remains of the pier rock in the waves. He grabs one of the remaining pylons, cold and unforgiving in his grip. Iron. This is how he has to be. If he is going to survive he needs to be iron. No, not only survive… If he is going to lead.
It had been an appalling amount of pain and effort to get him to this point. He had barely pushed his way through the mud tunnel and now he is filthy. But his ordeal is not over. There is more crawling and climbing ahead and his feet and legs are already burning. “Do any of your party drugs do anything for pain?” He sits at the edge of the rock shelf and pulls his shoes and socks off. With a sigh he drops his feet into the water.
“That’d be something, wouldn’t it? An anaesthetic party drug. Well. I guess that’s what ketamine is but I didn’t bring any of it. Or like any of the opiates. That shit’s nasty. Ruins your life. But yeh. I think about designing my own drugs all the time and I could never think of an effect better than sex with gods, but that’s just cause I’m young and carefree, innit? I can see that now. After a little more life lived there’s nothing better than pain relief and a clear mind. Maybe that’s what I should spend my time on.”
Alonso hardly hears Katrina’s chatter. As the pain subsides he begins to gain another sensation, one that surprises him. It is pride. He did it. He overcame his broken body and made it down through the sub and past the worst of their obstacles. He really didn’t think he’d be able to squeeze through but Katrina had been right, he had lost more weight than he knew. And there was more strength in his arms and back than he remembered. It had been ages since he’d tried to do anything with his muscles. He’d thought he’d be as weak as a baby, but accumulating mass appears to be what middle age is all about. He is still strong.
“Eh! See?” Maahjabeen enters the sea cave. She is wincing and working on her shoulder, but her face is relieved. “Isn’t it so nice in here? Better than being inland and away from the water. I do not trust the native people, either.”
“Yes, it is very nice.” Alonso gasps as a splash runs further up his leg than he wanted. “A bit cold, but a nice spot out of the rain.”
“You got to give the islanders a chance,” Katrina says. “Most of them are totally fine. It’s like anywhere else. There’s always a couple assholes ruining things for everyone.”
“As a matter of fact,” Maahjabeen declares, “I don’t have to give them a chance. Not if I am living in here. And it is probably a good idea for us to have at least one or two of us out of their clutches.”
“Two. Yes.” Alonso turns, worried at the misanthropic edge in Maahjabeen’s voice. He would rather appeal to her humanity. “You and Pradeep. Together again.”
A brief sob escapes before Maahjabeen can suppress it. “Yes. My Mahbub. I miss him so.”
Chapter 42 – A Basketball Game
October 14, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!
Audio for this episode:
42 – A Basketball Game
“Jay. Jay, stop…” Pradeep has been repeating the words for a long time now but this time they work. Jay stumbles to a halt in front of him, seeing it too. Silver light shines indirectly into their tunnel. “We did it. We got out.”
Jay’s breathing is ragged. Holy hell. He took one look at those demon eyes and got the F out of there. Who knows how long he’s been charging forward, dragging Pradeep behind him? But now he can smell the plants and the soil and the fresh air leaking in from ahead. “Jeee-zus, this acid is sooo strong. It’s been like a seventeen hour trip so far. Thanks a fucking bunch, Katrina.”
“Let us stop, please.” Pradeep removes his hand from Jay’s belt, where he held on for dear life. The webbing has cut into his palm and it is a burning pain that keeps him from otherwise thinking clearly. “Why are you so crazed? What did you see, anyway?”
Jay turns back to regard the darkness. Yep, the demons are still lurking back there, staring malevolently at the two escapees. The tunnel’s darkness encompasses one of their infernal hells, with tiers upon tiers of crypts in the pit’s walls, countless fiends staring out. How did he and Pradeep ever survive that? “Uh, there’s, uh, something down here. But we got away. Lots of somethings.”
“What, like… badgers?”
The question is so random and ludicrous Jay can’t help but wheeze with laughter. Oh, yeah. He feels that in his ribs. “The fuck? Badgers? There’s no badgers on this island. Dude. Don’t be dense. We’d have seen sign or spoor by now. No. Demons. Now come on. Maybe there’s some water out here.”
Jay continues forward. Pradeep stands there, dumbstruck, feeling a fool for running around all night fleeing Jay’s acid trip. Damn. Well at least he didn’t lose the bloody moron. And they did finally find a way out. But where are they?
They emerge from a natural crevice on a nearly vertical slope, the opening almost completely obscured by fern fronds. Nearby redwoods are gigantic black columns against an empty sky. Framed between two of the largest is a nearly full moon. Its harsh light bathes this narrow canyon in monochrome light and shadow.
Jay blinks. He’s been underground so long his eyes are super sensitive. This moonlight is like full daylight to him. “I can’t even remember… the last time I saw the moon.” The cloud cover of Lisica hadn’t been getting to him. He hadn’t thought it had, at least. But seeing the full clear night sky again, with the vaulting Milky Way and planets shining in all their brilliant hues… It rocks him. He stumbles from the crevice, wisps of black demon smoke dispersing in the crystal air around his head like bats winging away from their cave. Free. He groans aloud and raises his hands to the shimmering sky. “Free!”
Pradeep claps his hands over his mouth. The shining face of the moon is a profound sight, so bright he can’t look directly at it. The ground falls away before him, purple and black, with dazzling patches of silver that catch the light. He can’t navigate through that. Finding a solid foothold and handhold where he stands, he carefully leans out and looks upslope. No, that is even worse, a massive stone overhang disappearing out of sight above. He’s a climber but he isn’t a reckless fool. That would be like five dynos in a row just to get up what he can see, and his arms are already blown from wrestling all night with Jay. “So… down?”
“Down?” Jay shakes his head and frowns at the sudden motion. His thoughts are clear again but a massive headache is starting up. Oh, fuck. Not now. Not here. Owww! He’s gonna kill Katrina when he sees her again. Absently, his fingers find a fresh joint and his lighter. Soon he is sparking up.
Pradeep exclaims at the sudden flare of light then hisses in disapproval. “Put that away. No idea who might see us here.”
“Good point.” Jay takes a huge hit and rubs the space between his brows with a knuckle. Now he needs water more than ever. His throat is like made of sand and the hot smoke goes down like fire. “Well, water is always down.” And with no more consideration, he drops onto a shelf he can barely see about three meters below.
Pradeep mutters anxiously, his legs trembling. Then he grits his teeth and follows with a halfhearted crouching leap.
Now the weed finally does its job and Jay’s poor brain unlocks. He is able to escape his mind for the first time in ages and reside in his body. Drop. Scramble. Swing. This is real exercise again, the good kind. Not that claustrophobic hell with Pradeep. This is bouldering by moonlight, yo. Not the first time he’s done such a thing. Come on, demons. See if you can catch me now. He patrols the edge of the shelf, then finds a bit of a route on a more shallow slope to his left. Down he goes, his shoes filling with sandy soil.
The ferns are thick. They give way to rhododendron. This is a wet canyon. Jay can tell just by the plant life. More redwoods tower above, stabilizing the cliff walls with their immense roots. They are so slippery, though, and Jay falls from one network into the duff below, sliding into a blackberry bush, where he’s pierced by a hundred thorns. “Oww. Watch that, Prad. It… Fuck! Ow!”
Pradeep perches on the redwood roots above, listening to Jay crash and bellow in the underbrush, all attempts at stealth forgotten. The last thing he wants is to continue this descent. “Shouldn’t there be a traverse across somewhere? Are you sure we want to get to the bottom?”
“Ah. Ahh…” Jay groans as a dozen thorns or more break off in his skin. But he’s still got to push through. He’s past the thick of it now. Just a few more sliding steps, with a few more thorns in his calf, then he’s free. He calls back up to Pradeep. “Yeah, dude. The bottom’s where the water is. Wouldn’t even be a canyon here without water. ” He tilts his gaze back down into the darkness below, the trees obscuring the way down from the moon, and mutters to himself, “And I need a drink bad.”
“But then how will we ever get back up?”
Pradeep’s voice is distant. Jay stops and struggles to find his patience. Can’t lose his buddy now. “No getting back up, homie. Down and out. We’ll have to find another way back.”
“Ugh. I do not like that answer.”
“Come on, Prad. Swing yourself over this way. You can avoid the blackberries if you drop over here. Just watch out for rocks.”
Jay takes another drag on his joint. Even though it majorly tears up his throat it sure does good things to his mental state. He’s back in business now. And if he strains to listen he can hear the gurgle of a creek. “Fuck yeah, there’s a creek. This is a deep canyon and that was a big storm.” Jay drops onto a boulder and hurries down a broadening slope into a dark grove. Finally. The redwoods hold the soil here on a forest floor that is flattening out. Mossy banks and ferns are barely visible in the tiny bit of light that penetrates.
Jay worms his way forward, using the toes of one foot to sense his path forward. There is no path, just a jumble of fallen logs covered with moss and clumps of ferns. But the water is closer now, a full liquid gargle that promises an end of thirst. It urges him forward until he is at its side hanging over the wide creek, the dangling roots of the redwoods an impassable barrier above the rushing water. He needs to find a sandbar or something. Unless he fully throws himself in the creek he can’t reach it from here. And he isn’t willing to do that yet. He just got his phone back, for fuck’s sake.
But he’s so thirsty.
Jay pulls back and picks his way further downstream, the thorns in the heels of his hand and the skin of his calf stabbing him with every move. But finally he finds a spot where the dirt slopes steeply to the water. By holding onto a root and lowering himself headfirst he’s able to dip his chin into the frigid stream and gulp down some of the best water he’s ever tasted. Drenching his front, the cold sobers him further. Finally he has to pull away, even though he feels like he could drink forever.
When Jay regains his balance he finds Pradeep above, navigating down to him with his phone light. “Water,” Jay calls out, perhaps unnecessarily. But it is the only thing that matters.
Pradeep pauses, his head whirling. This precipitous slope is nearly as bad as being in the tunnels. At least in there he had no chance of pitching himself forward and drowning in a rain-swollen creek. “Where are we?” he demands. “Which way should we go?”
“You think I know?” Jay’s answer is querulous, followed by a sharp laugh that verges on hysterics. “Feels like I’ve spent half my waking moments on this fucking island lost in the dark.”
“Yes. Well. We need to make a choice, and I am not going to drop down any further to you until…”
“You ain’t thirsty? Damn. Well, it’s a simple call. Downstream. Duh. That’s where we’ll eventually like get back to where we once belonged.”
“Okay. Which way is that?”
“To the right.”
“And what is upstream?”
“Well, come on, don’t stop using your brain here. That must be the high country, right? The ridgeline that collected all this water.”
“No… I am asking… Wasn’t it on a hill top that Triquet escaped from? And Flavia? The shamans are above somewhere.”
“All the more reason to go down. Oh, fuck. I soaked the last of my joint. Goddamnit. Now I’m gonna have to roll a new one. Shine your light—”
“No! I will not!” In response, Pradeep turns off his light. “There is only two percent battery left. I was just getting very angry about how you made me use more to come down here. We can’t use the last on your drug habit. It’s the drugs that got us into this mess!”
“Fine. I’ll just suffer in silence then. At least until we find a patch of moonlight. Come on.”
They follow the course of the creek as well as they can from the slope above, about ten meters up. But the canyon walls are cut by endless rills and streams of side canyons that bring water down to add to the larger creek. It is in the second of these that Pradeep finds a spot where he can drink. And Jay is right. It is amazingly restorative. Now the prospect of hiking the entire rest of the night doesn’t seem quite so daunting. And the moonlight certainly helps.
Jay certainly thinks so. He’s crouched down and balanced his kit on his knee. After carefully rolling a pair of joints, one for energy and one for relaxation, he slides them into a dry pocket. Then with the last of the dust he makes a little binger that he smokes to ash. “We might want to find a spot to hole up for the rest of the night.”
Pradeep shrugs. “Let us walk while we can.”
The canyon eventually opens onto a wider valley. The trees do not cover the entire forest floor, leaving wide patches of silver light they pick their way through. The creek has flooded here, filling the flat ground with pools and puddles, making progress difficult. Eventually they have to give up trying to keep their shoes and pants dry, and start wading along its verge in the icy water.
Finally, a solid rise clears the floodwaters ahead like an island, featuring a pair of giant bay trees and little more. Pradeep throws himself down onto its dry banks, panting from the exertion and the anxiety, needing a break from banging his shins against submerged logs and squinting into the dark. Now he’s got a headache too.
Jay’s is also getting worse. He worries about the return of his headaches. This would be the worst place for them, by far. “At least it’s dark,” he grunts, kneading the back of his neck.
“What is wrong?”
“Migraines are worse in bright light. So at least I got that going for me, which is nice.”
“You have a migraine? Shit. I didn’t know you got migraines.” Pradeep makes a worried face. His mother has this curse. He learned early on what to do for her. “Here. Turn a bit. Now breathe.” Pradeep buries his knuckles in the straps of muscle connecting Jay’s back and neck. He certainly has a lot more mass than Pradeep’s mom but hopefully the principle is the same. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Pradeep’s strong fingers are like fangs piercing his flesh. But Jay knows to keep still and relaxed if it’s going to be helpful. He’s just got to breathe through the added pain. “Yeah,” he grunts. “Got them pretty much under control. Except I guess when I wrestle with demons on acid.”
“Underground. In the cold and dark.”
“With no food or water.”
“It does make sense. Jay, I’m worried.”
“Not now, chief. Trying to clear my mind of worry.”
“Yes, well…” Pradeep has no such avenue for himself. “My mind is primarily composed of worry, perhaps 98% by weight. I’m only thinking about this creek. If we are on the right bank, and it is eventually the same river that divides the two warring villages, then which bank do we want to be on?”
“Oh, man, are you trying to break my brain?” But Jay knows this is a valid concern. There’s no point in fighting their way through hours of forest only to throw themselves on the spearpoints of the Katóok tribe, after Jay had sworn to never return to their territory. “Yeah, let’s see. Downstream is like this… We stay on this side. Yeah, we’re on the correct bank. The good side, the west side where they won’t kill us. Pretty sure.”
“Good. Because I don’t think we can cross that creek anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s like the whole idea about it, for sure. No crossing allowed. And I guess that holds true all the way up to the top of the island. Fucking weirdos.”
“So hungry.” Pradeep finds a fallen log that would make a good chair. He sits and takes off his shoes, clearing them of all the debris.
“For sure. You think I can get a pizza delivered?” Jay decides if he can’t eat he’ll smoke more weed. Sativa it is. Bolster his energy.
“Oh. No.” Pradeep’s words are so harrowed that they interrupt Jay, mid-inhalation. “It’s him.”
“Him? Who him?” Then Jay’s eyes adjust from the flare of the lighter to spy the dim hulking figure here on this rise with them, just a few paces away. “Oh, is it that Wetchie-ghuy fucker? What up, dude? You sure been causing us a metric fuck-ton of trouble.” With force, Jay blows the remainder of his smoke at the distant figure, who remains still, watching them.
Pradeep groans. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand… How could I know what he looked like in my mind if I’d never seen him in real life? And now when I see him, he looks the same? How did he get inside my mind?”
“Don’t let him fool you, Prad. This dude’s got tricks.”
“No. It is no trick. A bargain has been made. Somehow. He knows it as well as I. And now he is coming to collect.”
“The fuck he is. Sit down, Prad. Dude doesn’t get to just roll up and claim people. It doesn’t work like that. The only reason you needed any help in the first place is because his buddy tried to kill you with poison. Fuck both of them. You owe him nothing.”
Now Wetchie-ghuy holds out a loop of braided leather. They both know what that is for. Pradeep’s shoulders slump, accepting his fate. He knew Maahjabeen and his exciting new career were too good to be true. He just knew it, deep inside. And there is a gleam in that old man’s eye, a curious little opening into a larger truth. This is the siren song Pradeep heard in the darkness last night that originally made him leave the sub. It is here, in this shaman’s knowledge, the universal truths Pradeep has always sought. See? This transaction has further benefits for him. He will only sit at his new master’s feet and take in whatever crumbs and morsels Wetchie-ghuy cares to share. It will be worth it…
“Prad! I said sit the fuck back down.” Jay pulls on Pradeep, who has risen again to go to the awful old man. But Jay has another idea. “No. Wait. Let’s make a deal, Wetchie-ghuy. You want my boy but you can’t have him. You can’t have either of us. But I got something even better. Bigger juju, dude. Look.” And Jay gets between the shaman and the man he has claimed, blowing another billow of smoke at Wetchie-ghuy.
The shaman coughs, waving his hand in front of his face, then he mutters something in reaction and cocks his head.
“Yeah, smells good, don’t it? Here’s the deal. You can have the joint. But I get to keep Pradeep. Right? Fair and final, yeah?”
Wetchie-ghuy lifts a gnarled hand. Jay puts the joint in it. “That’s it. Smoke up, bro. Like you saw me do. Then we’re square.”
Wetchie-ghuy inhales, the end of the joint crackling cherry red. He does not exhale.
Ξ
Katrina is in a febrile dream. She is so thirsty. There’s a park of red sandstone near her house she’s been going to as a child but now it’s drought season and all its pools are dusty dry, like the inside of her poor wretched mouth.
Someone wakes her. She gratefully pulls herself out of the vision. It was absolutely no fun, filled with loops of thought she’s been around and around so many times they’ve worn grooves in her brain. And now she’s awake, the curving shadows of the sub’s hull over her head, waking in the Captain’s bed with Alonso sitting at her side. He looks at her with paternal care, holding water.
“Here.”
He feeds it to her like a bottle to a baby. She slurps greedily, a rivulet running down her chin and pooling in the hollow of her neck. Finally she breaks away. “Thanks, mate. Glorious.”
“You were muttering for water and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeh. Brilliant. What time is it?”
“It is near morning. And we are still alive. So.” He pats her head and gives her a pitying smile. “How is the come down? Bad?”
“The worst. Usually I have a lot more control of how my trips end. Lots of hot water and vitamins and meditation. Not… Well. Whatever the fuck that was.”
Alonso’s response is a full belly laugh. He smooths the fine strands of blonde hair away from her forehead. “Yes. The bugout. The big bugout of May Second. It will go down in history.”
“And somehow you’re in a good mood about it?” Katrina sits up, somewhat resentful of Alonso’s tone. Then she remembers how irritable she will be today and remembers to keep it to herself.
“Yes, well… I have always, during crisis, you know, at least before the last crisis, the big one, the long one, the five years…” He shrugs, re-setting himself. “I was always at my best in a crisis. I can put my feelings away and take care of all the problems and needs of others. So. My colleague asks for water, I get water. My Doctor tells me to hide in a sub, I hide in a sub. And I take care of people. It is one of the things I do best. You wouldn’t know it from meeting me now, but I assure you it is true. Is there anything else I can get you?”
Katrina shakes her head no. “Any sign of… you know, anyone? Jay and Pradeep? The golden man? Russian Marines?”
“No one. Maahjabeen and Flavia convinced Esquibel to move her barrier further up the tunnel so they could visit the sea cave. So they were gone for like an hour. But they’re back now. Everyone else is still asleep.”
“He was real, you know. It wasn’t the drugs. We really did see the golden man and he really did tell us the Russians were coming. I mean, Pradeep and Jay didn’t just vanish for fun.”
“We know. And we know which way our two wayward sons went. But nobody is allowed to follow them. It’s a new tunnel.”
“New tunnel. Fucking fantastic.” Katrina groans and falls back against the wall, bumping her head. “Yeh. Coming back online now. Ah, sobriety. You were not missed. Any coffee anywhere?”
“Not yet. But I can start a pot. Just not in here. The ventilation is not so good.”
“So like no boots tramping around above? No gunfire or…?”
Alonso shrugs. “The bunker’s concrete floor is too solid.”
Katrina looks more closely at his silhouette. “Are you sure I was just out for a few hours? Not like… days?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just skip this whole unpleasant episode and wake up when it’s safe again. Why? What is it?”
“You’re… I mean, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but you look really good, Doctor Alonso. I think you’ve lost some weight.”
“This is quite the time to turn into a flatterer.” Alonso stands straighter, sucking in his belly. “Well, a man can only drink so much wine. Really? You think so?”
“I really do.” The transformation is fairly striking. His hair is growing out as well, a leonine mane of silver and black sweeping back from his forehead. And his jawline has returned.
“You are so sweet. Let me just get the water going and I will be right back for more compliments.” With a soft chuckle he turns and vanishes, leaving Katrina alone with her chaotic thoughts.
He returns a moment later, bearing a bag of dried fruit and a handful of supplements. “Here. Electrolytes for what you lost. And more water. Your coffee is coming.” He makes sure she swallows the pills and drinks more water and eats a handful of fruit. “Now. Tell me more nice things about how I look.”
Katrina laughs for his sake, her insides made of sand. She doesn’t think she can sleep any more but she also can’t offer much more in the way of social niceties. “You do look fab. I love your hair.”
Alonso passes a self-conscious hand over his curls. “You are such a doll. You have no idea how vain I am.”
Katrina pauses, mid-sip. She lowers the water bottle and looks at him. “Now I’m remembering my last great insight from last night. And it’s a real doozy. Are you ready?”
Alonso isn’t sure he likes the strange look in Katrina’s eyes. “Yes, I suppose, if it has merit.”
“Well, not much, but it’s still interesting regardless. So… I guess in the back of my mind I was chewing on our data collection issues and how the clock is really ticking down and we’re no closer to getting what we need for Plexity.”
Alonso leans back. “Yes, I have been thinking very much about the same thing. And my solutions so far are not very good. Mostly about hiding here when they come to pick us up so I have enough time to finish my initial assay of the island. What is your solution?”
“Well, it’s really just kind of a philosophical word game my brain was playing while tripping. Semantics. But, I mean, remember how the basis of Plexity is the interconnectedness of all life?”
“Certainly.”
“And how we’ve been working our asses off trying to get as many samples of life and examples of that interconnection as we can? Well, what I started thinking… Right! It started as a way to extend the deadline, like what you’re saying. And in my cracked-out state I was tripping on the possibility of a terrarium, you know those glass bowls with all the plants and a bit of sand and water and—?”
“Yes, I know what a terrarium is.”
“So on acid, you can get really obsessive. And I was imagining stuffing my own terrarium with all the samples we couldn’t get to on Lisica, so that when we left we’d still have a tiny little replica of the island we could work on. You know? Not that it would be representative or accurate or…”
“Well, yes, that is the thing, isn’t it? You have forty species in your little glass globe and that can’t replicate the richness—or, rather, by the choice of which species we bring we could absolutely misrepresent the baseline activity for everything in the bowl and also misrepresent the profile for life on the island.”
“Yes. Of course. That’s why I said it has little worth… Anyway. It’s really nothing more than a thought experiment but what if we lean a little bit more into that interconnectedness concept?”
“What do you mean? How?”
“Well, like,” Katrina grabs Alonso’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his. “Think about, I don’t know, the seagulls.”
“You can’t fit a seagull in a terrarium.”
“Yeh, that’s kinda what I’m getting at. So maybe we don’t need to. The seagull eats what, fish? Then it discards the carcass and flies away. But the fish guts give rise to bacteria in the water. So then we come along and harvest the bacteria and find proteins in it that came from fish blood. We also find traces of seagull saliva. But we only have the bacteria.”
“I don’t think even the Dyson readers are this powerful.”
“No, mate. No chance. But gentle reminder: I was tripping balls. And like I said, this may not have much merit. But here’s another word we should be looking at more closely: life.”
“Okay. Life. Are you saying expand the definition?”
“Well, sort of. I mean that we keep talking about life on Lisica but we keep forgetting to add a whole new component: us. We are life on Lisica. You and me and the whole gang. And we are making impacts on it and it is making impacts on us. Maahjabeen and Pradeep getting poisoned. I mean, now that we’re fishing the lagoon we’re consuming all the local bugs.” Katrina has been speaking to her own toes, her legs stuck straight out before her on the bed. She hazards a glance at Alonso and finds that his gaze is troubled. “So then I realized we don’t need no stinkin’ terarria. We are the fragile glass globes containing all the bits and bobs of Lisica within us. The bacteria, the proteins, the dynamic interactions. They’re already all inside us. It’s just a shame we didn’t like start with bloodtest baseline records or something. That would make it much easier at the end to compare one result with the other…”
“Yes, now that is something that would be very interesting. I wonder if any of the military hospitals I stayed in have kept any of my many blood samples? Probably not. Because I could get a blood draw taken when we get back and I would be very curious about the results. Not your results, with the thirdhand bacteria and proteins. There is just… I think you are dramatically overestimating the specificity and sensitivity of modern instruments—”
“Yeh, that’s why I agreed there wouldn’t be very many merits.” Katrina clamps her mouth shut and puts a leash on her irritation. But it’s too late. Alonso registers it. And now she’s embarrassed. Doing drugs around squares, or even just a bunch of sober people, is hard work. You can’t put any of the downsides onto them, not like if you were actually sick or heartbroken. This was your choice and now the resulting shit is all your own to handle, haiku triplet. Just keep your mouth shut until you can be nice again.
Yet Katrina’s next impulse is to carry on. “Sorry. I mean, it’s definitely science fiction, but it really is the ultimate goal of Plexity, eh? That we’re not just interconnected, we’re like intershot with all the matter and the interactions that wash through us. Collisions like galaxies in my bones and blood. But the work we’re doing here will someday allow it. The specificity will be there. The sensitivity to detect quantum fluctuations that happened in a faraway star system but eventually flutter my heart. Linear thinkers like talking about the butterfly effect but nobody wants to discuss the billion butterflies effect, the billion-butterflies-every-second-since-the-big-bang-effect. They think it all just dissolves into noise but—”
“No!” Alonso halts her train of thought with an upraised finger. “It dissolves into life! That is the nature of life, all those interactions hitting us from a million different angles at all times, enriching us and mutating us and giving complexity to every subatomic unit and all the higher-order processes they create. Yes. I have nibbled around the edges of those thoughts. And I am glad you’re the one who took the acid and had the experience yourself so now I will not need to. It does not seem to have made you happier.”
“It just makes me wonder what we’re doing here. It’s really easy to lose the thread of our work when we collect and record and all data just kind of generalizes out to an infinite number of bits, none more interesting than the other. But, oh well. Just thought I should share the vision before I lost it. Thought it might help.”
Alonso’s eyes are dark, introspective. “It does, actually. I have been having trouble with this deadline in a couple weeks, for sure, but I have also been having an equal amount of trouble with the suggestion Flavia made that we only characterize the life of the lagoon and beach and, as Miriam agreed with her, that the rest should be a grant proposal to return as soon as possible with more teams and greater resources and maybe a fucking helicopter so we can actually get inland for once. And I think your idea… It is wild and crazy and impossible, and will most likely remain impossible forever barring the revocation of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, at which point we might as well free ourselves from causality entirely and start time-traveling, forget about just finding the record of an entire island in a drop of blood. But no. No… Your idea does not need to be possible for it to have merit. And the merit it has is the prospect that Flavia is right, and that we can legitimately gain an accurate snapshot of the wider island in the samples of the lagoon.”
“Oh.” Katrina doesn’t know if she’s helped or hurt him with this line of thought. He doesn’t seem very pleased with it. “I’m sorry, Doctor Alonso. Plexity and Lisica is for sure the most thrilling thing I’ve ever been involved with and I don’t want it to end. Except this scary part, where all our lives keep getting threatened. But barring that, I’d stay here for ages working on this with you.”
“Thank you. I have no idea if we will have the chance, later.”
“You know, people get this idea that just because you do certain drugs, it must mean that you’re stupid, but I’ve had the most—”
“No.” Again Alonso interrupts Katrina. “It doesn’t make you stupid. Obviously. But it makes you unreliable. Like my wine. And Jay’s weed. As long as you understand that, then you are having a more honest relationship with whatever is the vice of your choice.”
“I’m just in it for the visions.” Katrina shrugs. “Which makes me even more unreliable. Just this mad woman of Sydney. But I guess in the long run I’m not really looking for anyone’s approval.”
Alonso stands and pats her leg. “No. No, you certainly are not.”
Ξ
Triquet crouches in a bush. Milo is in front of him, seated on the ground with his feet planted on either side, knees as high as a frog. The youth’s legs are thin to the point of malnutrition, the muscles like cords along each femur. Yes, there is something paleolithic about these golden childs. Triquet wonders if they’re perhaps nomadic. Maybe that’s the difference between them and the people of Morska Vidra’s village.
Triquet is tired of sitting here. Their brain is far too active to fall into this kind of endless pre-modern reverie that people like Milo can effortlessly achieve. And it’s been, what, all night and into the morning now? Fifteen hours? Something like that? And their eagle bite is throbbing.
Milo had scared the hell out of them in the dark, finding Triquet by touch, who was only comforted when their own fingers found the golden mask. Then they had roughly clasped each other in the dark and the cold, both bodies shivering, and finally fallen asleep.
It was upon waking that Triquet decided this golden childs needed a name. It was a longstanding policy to know at least the first name of those Triquet had slept with and they didn’t want to break it now. So. The little man had become Milo.
It hadn’t gotten any drier or warmer but Triquet had finally disentangled themself from the warm embrace to crawl forward and peer out from under the thick eaves of the underbrush. Its small, almond-shaped leaves with serrated edges drip endless drops onto the black earth, which sheets with water.
“Well, Milo.” Triquet now addresses his back. “Moment of truth and all that. How’s your Russian?” Then they fall forward stiffly on all fours and stifle a groan. They are so stiff and sore. Crawling forward, they lower their chin to the dead leaves, which prickle, and peer out. There’s some dark vertical surface out there, covered in networks of lichen and algae. From a slightly different vantage it resolves into a wall—the back of the bunker, stained and blackened by time. Oh, well. That’s good. The bushes back here are a nice safe place to be, for sure. Just miserable-as-can-be is all.
On the far side of that wall was their home for the last few weeks, now returned to an unassuming bare ruin. It had been filled with their cute little cells and the kitchen and all the laptops at the work tables in a row. It had been nice. And the hatch leading to the sub must be just a few meters away. If Triquet could somehow get to it and slip down there with the others, dry and safe and hidden… It seems like the greatest possible luxury. Maybe they can just start with the dirt beneath their feet and dig straight down, hoping the sub runs under here. But they know it doesn’t. It starts at the bottom of the stairs, ten meters off to Triquet’s left and down another eight, before heading off under the beach at an angle. Not a passage they can scrape away with their hands. And then there’s the matter of the concrete and the steel hull. No getting through them with just like elbow grease and fingernails. They’re still trapped out here. So close and yet so far.
Well. Then it is a matter of being a scout again. Be optimistic. There’s a strong chance that no Russian soldiers ever arrived here. That’s what we call the reality-based chance. And if Triquet can confirm that now, then hooray, we can all resume our daily lives and just like lock Katrina and Jay in the warrant officer’s cabin for the remainder of the stay.
Triquet recalls the placement of the window in the back, and how they’d heard that a fox jumped out it when they first arrived. That fox probably had a trail… Triquet pulls back and scans the forest floor for any sign of one. There: an unsteady depression running generally in the right direction, thin as thread.
Triquet crawls carefully along this game trail, finding that it ends at a woody bush whose main limb serves as a springboard to the empty window ahead. Triquet can see claw marks and dirty paw prints on the limb, clear as day. They are pleased that for once an educated guess actually turns out to be true.
Triquet looks back at Milo, who seems to be watching them from behind the blankness of the golden mask. “Just going to take a peek,” Triquet silently mouths to him, pointing at the window. Then they slowly rise…
Thunk. Triquet stops. Something heavy bumped against another object in the bunker. Just on the other side of the wall, not even their own body’s length away. Then they hear breathing, a heavy snuffling, and an indistinct muttering. Somebody is in there. Unmistakably. It isn’t a fox. It’s a man. A Russian? Triquet can’t hear enough of the words. Whoever it is, they are obviously alone, muttering to themself with idle observations. Could it be one of the Lisicans? It doesn’t really sound like them. This person is less… healthy? Or maybe it’s one of the shamans. It could very well be. Talking to themselves is very on brand for them, poking around in the bunker after getting their golden mask buddies to spook the researchers away for whatever malevolent reason. Yes, paranoia argues that this has all just been a game to them. Or, like some complex side tactic in their great argument. Those assholes.
Or maybe it’s a Russian soldier after all and if Triquet pops their head up to see, it gets blown off. No real way to tell.
The body shifts within. Steps are taken, dried ferns brushing against the floor. Yes, there is a heaviness to the steps, perhaps a bit of a waddle or limp. They only take like three so it’s hard to tell. Then a long exhalation and a word that sounds like shivyit.
The figure moves through the bunker and out the door, their movement tapering to silence. Now Triquet doesn’t know what to do. Should they try to confirm the person’s identity? How are they supposed to do that when any movement will likely be too much?
A gout of rain solves that issue. It suddenly falls with such force that Triquet is easily able to withdraw deeper into the bushes without fear of being heard. It really pounds down, a trickle of cold water worming its way around the collar of their coat and down their neck. Their feet are already made of ice, probably as blue as the boots they wear. And the rain doesn’t let up.
Emboldened, Triquet uses the downpour to crawl around the building counter-clockwise, still staying in the bushes close to the ground. They ease wide so their sightline is clear of the corner of the building. There is no one there. Well, obviously. Who in their right mind would stand in the middle of this deluge if there’s a building right there beside them? They must have gone back inside and Triquet couldn’t hear it over the battering the corrugated steel roof endures.
Too many unknowns. What will prove that camp is unsafe? Well. A mental checklist appears in Triquet’s mind. If they find out it’s a Russian. Check. If they find more than one person. That means it isn’t a shaman so therefore it has to be soldiers. Check. If they hear any metal sounds. Lisicans don’t wear metal. Check. If their feet leave tread like the lugs of boot soles. Check. If Triquet can figure out what the fuck shivyit means. Check.
And what would prove that camp is safe? Prove? That is much harder, proving a negative. Hard to prove an absence of threat when there’s obviously someone in there prowling around. And there’s very little chance it’s someone who looks on Alonso and his crew kindly, either way. So no checklist there.
And what if it’s just one of the golden childs in the bunker? Maybe they didn’t know Triquet was close and let their guard down a bit, dropping the whole silent mask routine? Maybe they’re still just patrolling the empty camp because they wouldn’t go into the sub? That prospect suddenly seems the most likely and Triquet pushes forward, eager to catch sight of a gold mask in the bunker’s door. But they can’t see anyone out there and moving forward any more would take them out of the bushes entirely and that’s a big no thank you from Triquet.
Triquet schools themself to patience and pulls back to the window to peek within. The bunker is empty, rain pouring in shining columns through the gaps in the roof. It looks so cozy. They are sorely tempted to crawl through and hide. Perhaps if they covered themself with some dead ferns and just kept still? They could happily sleep the day away.
But that would never do.
The rain eases. A break in the sky suddenly appears above the cliffs and an eerie golden light filters through the drizzle. The wind picks up and the trees shed their soaked dead leaves. And in the cathedral light that slants down into the bushes, Triquet can now see a wider path through the thicket behind them leading away from camp, back toward the cliffs. This must be one of the paths to the secret tunnels. They slept like not two steps away from it and they’re only just seeing it now.
Fabulous.
Well, no time like the present. Bye bye bunker. They can retreat from these dangers and dive down into the dark now to find their way back to the sub and the loving embrace of Miriam and Alonso and all the others.
But can they? It is still an open question if it is safe for the others to come out. And without Triquet’s eyes and ears out here, they’ll never know if it gets any safer. No, they can’t retreat and put that burden on someone else. They need to figure this out once and for all. So no tunnel for them. Yet.
Triquet rocks back on their heels and tries to think strategically. Okay. The storm is breaking up and the beach is getting a patch or two of sun. Gusts of wind chase clouds from the sky. Sneaking off to the right, toward the trenches and Tenure Grove, will provide good cover but take Triquet further from camp, and maybe make it harder for them to see what might be occurring out there. But if they go the other way, alongside the creek to the left, staying in that deep underbrush and peeking out every few minutes to see, they could probably get a good survey from the door of the bunker all the way to camp and down to the beach.
And that’s when they hear the whistle, faintly from the lagoon. Three short blasts. Not a bird whistle, but the sound made from a small metal object, like a referee uses at a basketball game.h1 { color: #000000; letter-spacing: 2.0pt; line-height: 150%; text-align: center; page-break-inside: avoid; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; border: none; padding: 0in; direction: ltr; background: transparent; text-decoration: underline; page-break-after: avoid }h1.western { font-family: “Wallington”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.cjk { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }h1.ctl { font-family: “Droid Serif”; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal }p { color: #000000; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; orphans: 0; widows: 0; margin-right: 0.5in; margin-top: 0.17in; margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; background: transparent }p.western { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: en-US }p.cjk { font-family: “Calibri”, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt }p.ctl { font-family: “Times New Roman”, serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: ar-SA }em { font-style: italic }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text
DW Draffin -- Lisica 