Whirlwind

by David Klass

  Rat-tat-tat, the bursts of submachine-gun fire riddle the glacier above us, sending a snowstorm of ice flakes down on us. The bandits are hustling up the mountainside, stopping every so often to fire volleys.

  We’re sheltered by the rocks, but they’ll soon be close enough to blow us to bits.

  The cold wind is no longer blasting me. I feel it slacken and ease off, as it shifts. It seems to refocus itself in a new direction, gusting suddenly and with such power that its blast drowns out the last sad notes of my mother’s lullaby.

  The young lad of the mountains now stands directly in its way. The whistling wind unbraids his long black hair, which flies wildly behind him as he holds the balloon’s mouth over his head with both hands.

  The great nylon cavity fills up in a few seconds.

  My plan worked perfectly, Gisco observes, recovering from his melancholy ruminations on his final resting place with lightning speed. All we’ve gotta do is heat the air, get this thing off the ground, and the two of us can resume our southerly peregrinations.

  The three of us, I correct him.

  What?

  The boy’s coming with us.

  32

  The gondola is lying on its side, facing toward the balloon’s open mouth.

  My watch starts to grow warm on my wrist. I take it off, and toss it into the big wicker basket. Sure enough, it glows blue, and starts to flame. Within seconds the heat is so intense that Gisco and I have to step back. I worry that the gondola may burst into flame, but most of the heat is directed upward.

  Gisco glances at the boy. Travel light, travel fast, as the old saying goes. We can’t take on extra baggage.

  Take your pick. He’s coming or I’m staying.

  Don’t be melodramatic. He may not want to be “saved” by us. Those drug bandits may be the only family he has.

  You’re the one who said they enslaved him and cut his tongue out.

  The point is that charitable as your impulses may be, we have a responsibility to a greater cause—

  No, the point is that he risked his life to save us.

  As we debate his fate, the boy in question stares at the blue flame like he’s witnessing a miracle—the burning bush or the parting of the Red Sea. “It’s okay,” I reassure him. “Don’t be scared. This is our way out.”

  But the balloon is not rising. Gisco, are you sure this will work?

  The scientific principle is simple enough, the dog responds. Hot air rises through cold air. So when the air in the balloon reaches a high enough temperature vis-à-vis the air outside it, the balloon will be pulled skyward, and we’ll be on our way.

  But what if it doesn’t reach that temperature before we’re machine-gunned?

  That’s a whole separate calculation, Gisco admits, with variables beyond my control. But look! It’s starting to rise!

  Indeed it is. Now the balloon is an inch off the ground, now three inches. The gondola is pulled upright, and Gisco and I leap in. “Come,” I say to the boy.

  He backs away a step.

  Jack, he clearly doesn’t want to join us. And allow me to point out that our chances of lifting off and escaping before the submachine guns target us will be significantly reduced by the weight of an additional passenger.

  It’s a risk we’ll have to take. I’m not going to have another P.J. or yellow dinghy on my conscience. I reach out my hands to the boy, palms open. He can’t mistake my meaning—get in and join us.

  He still hesitates, fearful of the blue flame.

  Our gondola is now a foot off the ground and rising more quickly. In an instant we’ll be whisked away from him, the way the Wizard was separated from Dorothy when he made his sudden aerial departure from Oz.

  I reach out and grab the boy’s thin right wrist, and try to pull him in. He resists with surprising strength, and for a long second we’re looking each other in the eye. I don’t know what he sees in my face, but he suddenly stops trying to get away and steps toward our basket.

  Rat-a-tat, bullets chip away at the rock he’s standing on.

  The lad gives a desperate leap and reaches up to me. I grab both his arms, and haul him in.

  He clambers over the side, flops down onto the floor of the basket, crosses himself, and shuts his eyes tight.

  Even though we’re rising, the banditos don’t have a clear shot at us yet. Our angle of ascent allows us to hug the mountainside, and their fusillades are deflected by boulders and overhangs. But in a second we’ll be free and clear, and that will be the end for us.

  Gisco, we’ll be out in the open, silhouetted by the rising moon. They can’t possibly miss us. We’ll be the biggest, easiest target in the history of submachine guns.

  What choice do we have? Our only way out is up.

  The balloon is now level with the highest rocks of this Andean pinnacle. The golden orb of moon glows above us. In different circumstances it would be beautiful, but now it looks deadly. In seconds it will backlight us, and the bandits will blast us into human nacho chips.

  Then a tiny corner of the moon grows dark, as if it really is cheese and a rat has nibbled off a crumb. Soon it’s a third gone. Then half has vanished. A dark cloud trailing across the sky is slowly covering the lunar surface like a well-placed veil! The cloud will blow off in seconds, but that may be all the time we need.

  The winds catch us and lift the balloon away from the rocky crag. We spin wildly, gaining speed, heading right for a neighboring snowcapped peak.

  Jack, we’re going to smash into it!

  There’s a jolt and a grinding sound, but it’s only the bottom of our gondola kicking ice off the crest.

  Then we’re on the other side of it, out of danger from submachine guns and rising quickly into the starry vista of the clear and cold Andean sky.

  33

  The night grows stormy. Claps of thunder boom all around us, like angry Inca gods roaring at three interlopers in their preposterous balloon. Needle-sharp flashes of lightning stitch together a blanket of black clouds that soon covers the mountains.

  The boy with the braid responds to this climatic chaos by curling into a fetal position. Is he praying for his life, the way Gisco does when he’s desperate? Or is this his way of dealing with the unknown—to hide in himself, the way a turtle pulls its head inside its shell?

  Gisco and I stand quietly in the gondola, recovering from our Andean escapade.

  My mother’s lullaby still echoes faintly in my ears. As I recall her sad voice, I’m also aware that the watch from my father is now powering our hot-air balloon. It feels strange that these two parents from the far future who I’ve never met, and who abandoned me, have somehow come together to take care of me.

  Lightning strobes Gisco’s shaggy face, and rolling thunder makes his sensitive ears twitch back and forth.

  We spin and dip, and the boy with the braid whimpers.

  What are you planning to do with him? Gisco asks.

  I don’t know, I admit. But wherever we’re headed, it has to be better than leaving him where he was.

  Not necessarily, the dog conjectures gloomily. First, we may not make it through this storm. And second, if your spider dream was a premonition of who’s waiting for us, the poor kid might have been better off on the mountaintop.

  You don’t really believe that.

  It was foolish and reckless to bring him, Jack. Now we’re responsible for him, and it’s going to slow us down and endanger our mission. I understand why you did it. But the moral equation here is all a matter of proportion.

  How can saving a kid’s life not be moral?

  It’s just one life. The entire future is threatened by what the Dark Lord is doing in the Amazon. You haven’t seen it. I have. A world stripped of its lungs today is a world wheezing its way to a terrible death a thousand years from now. Millions of people are suffering horribly and depending on us. Your duty is to the many, Jack, and not to the few, and especially not to the one.

  No, I tell Gisco. Saving the life of one
person is just as important as saving the entire world. In fact, if you don’t save one person, you can’t save the entire world.

  How can that be?

  I don’t know, but it is.

  For a while we’re both silent, watching as the cloud cover begins to change color, from black to inky purple. We’re traveling at great speed now. It also feels like we’re descending—I hope our nylon Band-Aid isn’t leaking.

  Okay, Gisco, I say, you’ve seen this awful future and I haven’t. Explain the contradiction. How am I supposed to save the day? According to you, I can’t fight this Dark Lord who’s doing so much damage to the Amazon now, and to the future a thousand years from now. You made me come on this trip, but at the same time you say I don’t have a prayer of stopping him.

  No one has a chance against him. Except for one man.

  And who is that?

  Gisco’s descriptions of people from the future are sometimes tinged with emotions. When he talks about my parents, I can sense his love and respect. When he alludes to the leader of the Dark Army, I pick up on his fear. Now the veneration in his telepathic tone approaches awe: The only person who has a chance to stop him is the greatest wizard-scientist who ever lived, the Mysterious Kidah. He came back in time for that express purpose.

  Great, I say, then let these two titans of the future battle it out—the Wizard against the Dark Lord. Why do you need me?

  Because Kidah disappeared, Gisco admits sadly. He may be dead or in hiding. No one can find him. And sand is slipping through the hourglass, Jack. Now and a thousand years from now, time is running out.

  Suppose he doesn’t want to be found? It sounds to me like your great wizard doesn’t want to tangle with the spidery Dark Lord either. Maybe he made himself disappear.

  Kidah’s courage is indisputable.

  Okay. Then where is he? Where was he last seen?

  Gisco looks back at me and then raises a paw dramatically and thrusts it down at the purple cloud cover beneath our balloon. We think he’s there.

  I look down. The clouds are no longer purple. Shafts of morning sunlight now make them glow a remarkable shade of green.

  Then I realize that I’m not looking down at cloud cover but rather tree cover! Except that it can’t possibly be tree cover because forests have boundaries and limits, they thin out and give way to grasslands, but the expanse of rippling green below me seems to go on forever.

  The green is laced and flecked with silver that glints in the noonday sun. There are glowing veins and flashing arteries, and millions of tiny, twisting capillaries. Water! The almost impenetrable forest canopy conceals a second, hidden world of rivers, lakes, and swamps.

  “The Amazon?” I whisper.

  Yes. We’re pretty sure he’s somewhere down there in Pará or Amazonas state. And if he is, you and I have to find him and get him back on his feet.

  Sure, I mutter, staring down at the forbidding tree canopy. We’ll track the greatest and also apparently the most cowardly mind of the future down in the biggest, wildest, and most dangerous swamp in the world. Talk about trying to find a wizard in a haystack. Count me out.

  Kidah’s no coward. And don’t worry about the Amazon, Gisco assures me. Predatory reptiles and giant insects and fish with teeth are only dangerous when they can sink their teeth into you. That’s why we came airmail. You’re totally safe up here with me.

  No sooner has Gisco given me this reassurance than I hear the concussive thuds of antiaircraft fire. Luckily, we seem to be out of range.

  Unluckily, whoever they are, they seem to have a variety of weapons, and they’re not shy about using them.

  A heat-seeking missile streaks up through the treetops and rips a nasty gash in our hot-air balloon.

  Gisco, we’re hit! We’re going down!

  I know, and there’s nothing to be done!

  Into the uncharted Amazon.

  Uncharted because no one could survive long enough to map it.

  Do something!

  Don’t panic. Remain steadfast as the evening star.

  You’re the one crying and shivering.

  Can’t help it, old fellow. Have you ever heard the unfortunate expression “dog-eat-dog”? Well, in the place we’re headed, everything eats dog. There are army ants that eat dog. Giant catfish that can swallow a dog whole. Spiders and snakes and even plant species that feed on dog!

  Try to calm down, Gisco. Steadfast as the evening star, remember? Anyway, the impact will probably smash us to smithereens before the animals can devour us.

  Thanks for the kind thought. You’re a true friend.

  We’re almost in free fall. Once again I reach for my father’s watch, and put it on.

  The boy stands up and looks around wildly. When he realizes what’s happening, he makes a frightened sound and grabs Gisco.

  The dog tries to shake him off, but he can’t break the kid’s iron grip. Get this mountain boy off me.

  If we make it through the trees we’ll splash down in the water. He must sense how buoyant you are.

  I’m a dog, not a lifeboat. Here come the trees!

  Maybe they’ll cushion our fall.

  More likely rip us apart!

  34

  It’s like being in five different car accidents at one intersection. We’re hit this way and spun that way, tumbled forward and jerked back.

  There are loud crashing sounds and flashes of light and dark as branches splinter beneath us and curtains of leaves whip against the sides of our gondola. Outraged birds squawk. Monkeys howl.

  Down, down, down we plunge.

  Water flashes below. River, swamp, or lake? Can’t tell. I prepare for a bellyflop into a piranha pool.

  But then we stop suddenly. Gently. And hang in the air, swaying slightly like a decorative mobile.

  I peer over the side. The top branches of the forest canopy slowed us, and the understory snagged us. Our gondola now dangles thirty feet above the swampy forest floor. Looking down, I can see tree trunks rising and vines descending, and lots and lots of water.

  But there is an island nearby.

  Someone else has found it first. Three enormous jet-black caimans lie motionless on the water’s edge. They look like mini-dinosaurs working on their suntans.

  Gisco, we survived the fall!

  Is that good news or bad news?

  Come on. I admit there are a few caimans below and God knows what other critters, but at least we’re going to have some time to figure out our next move.

  Yes, maybe you’re right. A forest is just a forest, after all. As long as we remain calm and logical, we’ll be just fine. What’s that?

  What?

  That sound.

  What sound?

  That buzzing. Gisco glances uneasily at the tangle of vines and branches all around us.

  I myself do not hear a buzzing, possibly because of the trilling birdcalls and outraged monkey chatter and a thousand other strange barks, whistles, and shrieks that I can’t even begin to separate and identify. They ebb and flow around us, beneath us, and above us, an ever-present yet constantly changing cacophony.

  A two-inch black bird hovers near Gisco. The dog backs up quickly. Swat it. Club it. Kill it!

  Calm down. It’s just an Amazon hummingbird.

  It’s not a small bird. It’s a giant wasp!

  No way. Wasps don’t grow that big.

  They do here, the entomologically expert dog tells me, visibly trembling. There are more than seven hundred species of wasps in the Amazon. Their stings are supposed to be the most painful imaginable.

  I’ve been stung by a bee. It’s not so bad.

  Wasps in the Amazon hunt tarantulas! When they attack in a swarm of thousands, nothing can stand before them!

  Well, the good news is the one that saw us flew away.

  Then why is the buzzing getting louder?

  I hear it, too. The boy with the braid lifts a large leaf and points to what looks like a five-foot-long inverted ice cream cone, made of thin
whitish bark.

  That’s the mother of all wasp nests! Gisco announces with a telepathic shriek, backing away to the far corner of the gondola. The boy has also retreated as far as possible from the droning, vibrating hive. Each of us is trying to get behind the other, but somehow Gisco always seems to be the one with his back to the gondola’s far wall.

  Maybe they won’t hurt us, I suggest hopefully. I remember reading that many wasps are vegetarians.

  When their nest is threatened, they’ll kill anything. The one that saw us must have been a scout. He’s letting the swarm know we’re in the neighborhood. We’ll be stung to death in seconds.

  I glance at the swampy river below and spot the three caimans lying motionless on the island. Something tells me they won’t remain quite so still if we splash down into the water near them. Okay, Gisco, what can we do?

  That boy brought a machete. Hack their nest off the tree! It’s our only chance.

  I tiptoe forward and see that the giant nest is attached to a branch that’s three inches in diameter. Slicing it off would be like trying to hack through the barrel of a baseball bat. There’s no way, Gisco.

  It’s the only way! If I had fingers I’d do it. But I don’t. You’re the one who is anatomically best suited to this battle. All for one and one for all—get to it!

  The shrill whine from the nest rises in volume. A few wasps fly out of a hole at the bottom. I see their bright red stingers, razor sharp and nearly an inch long. There’s no doubt that they know we’re here. I take a deep breath and then step forward. Okay, Gisco, I’ll try it your way.

  That’s the spirit. There’s really nothing to be afraid of, the dog assures me, practically burrowing into the gondola’s wicker wall to get as far as possible from the enormous insects, who have taken up what sounds like an Indian war cry inside their nest. I have the strong sense that any second the swarm is going to attack in full force.

  I feel a surge of adrenaline. Gisco’s right—hacking off the branch is our only chance. The boy seems to understand and hands over his machete.