by David Klass
A large bushel basket’s worth of grubs is gathered up and lugged back to the huts with great anticipation. I’m wondering how I’m going to be able to force myself to eat the loathsome larvae. But they’re not served up right away.
Before the banquet, there’s a performance. The warriors who found us, wearing war paint and brandishing weapons, act out a dramatic version of the event. They sing and dance and mime how they spied our canoe, how they aimed their blowguns and we surrendered, and then the great miracle of Eko drawing her picture in the air.
The women and kids listen, enthralled. I watch the spellbound children and realize that since they don’t have any TV or movies, this is their entertainment and education rolled into one.
Finally it’s time for dinner. I’m famished, but I’m also dreading this particular meal. But Eko was right—we’re their guests and if this is their delicacy, we have to find a way to eat it.
First the heads are bitten off the still-squirming grubs, and their guts are yanked out. Then they are wrapped in leaves and roasted. With great fanfare the first two grubs of the day are pulled from the fire and handed to Eko and me.
I unwrap the leafy package and hesitate. It’s sizzling but it still looks alive and very … grubby.
I glance at Eko. I’ve seen her face bull sharks and Dark Army assassins without blanching, but as she holds the leafy grub taco she looks like she could throw up for a week. Hey, I’ve finally found the Ninja Babe’s weak spot!
Bon appétit, Eko, I shout out to her telepathically, and force myself to take a bite. At first I gag, but the truth is, it’s not utterly awful. It tastes like low-grade Canadian bacon. I smile and take another bite, and our hosts whoop and whistle.
Then I turn dramatically to Eko, drawing the attention of the whole tribe to their female guest. Your turn, I remind her telepathically as they all watch expectantly. Remember to join the clean plate club, Eko.
Her panicked eyes flick to me and then refocus on the greasy white grub like it’s a grenade that may detonate at any second. Her hands shake as she raises it to her mouth. Somehow she manages to produce a feeble smile for the onlookers as she opens her mouth and takes a tentative bite.
I see her barely suppress vomiting with sheer willpower and instead force the muscles of her throat to swallow it down.
“She likes it,” I tell the tribe members, who don’t understand my English, but figure out my enthusiastic licking of lips and rubbing of belly and miming that they should send a second helping in Eko’s direction.
Children cheer and jump up and down and then selflessly scoop more grubs out of the fire and unwrap them for Eko, who soon has a daunting stack in front of her.
We can’t risk offending them, I remind her. Better finish them all.
I’ll get you for this, Beacon of Hope, Eko replies. Don’t think that I won’t.
72
The early bird gets the worm and I suppose the early tribesman must get the grub, because the People of the Forest go to sleep shortly after darkness falls.
They sleep in hammocks made from hemp, strung up inside the huts. I told them we were married, Eko informs me as we follow them into the dark hut. Otherwise, they’re very curious about both of us and things might get uncomfortable. They’re not at all inhibited about sex.
Posing as a married couple is probably a good idea, I agree.
But when Eko and I crawl into the hammock together, things become uncomfortable precisely because they are so comfortable. I try to keep a discreet distance from her, but soon tumble out onto the floor. Laughter erupts from hammocks on all sides. Helpful tribe members mime that we have to sleep in each other’s arms for stability.
I crawl back into the hammock, and Eko and I hold each other. “Good night, husband,” she whispers.
“Sweet dreams, wife,” I whisper back, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the heat and closeness of her body, not to mention the feel of her breasts against my chest.
“You don’t seem like you’re that tired,” Eko teases. “In fact, your body feels extremely awake.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” I mutter back. “Good night, Eko. Sleep tight. I don’t think the bedbugs are going to bite because our hosts have probably eaten them already.”
I shut my eyes and try to sleep, but it’s a sham and we both know it. A sound soon makes things even worse.
A couple is making love. We can hear their gasps, and see their hammock lurch in the moonlight that filters in from outside.
No one else seems to pay them any attention. All around us men, women, and children are starting to nod off, except for the amorous pair, who are panting loudly.
They’re doing well. It’s hard to make love in a hammock, Eko tells me, as if she’s had lots of experience.
I’ll take your word for it.
You don’t have to.
Meaning?
We could let nature take its course. She kisses me. I’m not the kind of high priestess who kisses and tells.
If I was ever tempted, I reply, kissing her back on the forehead and then gritting my teeth and turning away. We better save our strength, Eko. How long do you think the savages will let us visit with them before they eat us?
She registers shock telepathically. You really think they’re savages?
Oh, come on, I respond. They eat grubs, they wear bones in their ears and dance around the campfire waving clubs, they go around butt-naked all day, and they make love in public.
As if to punctuate my thought, the couple in the hammock finish up loudly, and then sink into silence.
I don’t mean to be judgmental, I add, but you have to admit they’re not civilized or technologically advanced.
I’ve seen the end result of civilization, Eko fires back angrily. Before I came back on this mission I smelled it and heard it and even tasted it. I saw what the advanced technologies of the self-described smartest species to ever walk the earth did to this green and beautiful planet. And if I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to label these tribesmen, who treat the trees and animals around them with such respect, as savages.
Eko trembles and I hold her tighter. Okay, what did you see? I ask. You haven’t told me anything about what happened after you blinked out over the Atlantic. Gisco said he was called back. Is that what happened to you?
Yes, she admits reluctantly. She’s always hated talking about herself or revealing details of a mission.
But I need to know what’s going on. We seem to have reached a dead end, not only to her mission but also to my hopes of saving those I love. P.J. is in hiding and maybe dead. Gisco has had his mind twisted. The Mysterious Kidah is a washout. We’re going to have to improvise our own way out of this mess, and to do that I need to understand what’s going on.
How did the future get so messed up? I demand. How could cutting down trees in this rain forest lead to such a global hell? And, by the way, if we can’t revive Kidah, what’s plan B? Is there some way we can fight the colonel ourselves? Surely, with the whole future at stake, the Danns had a clever backup plan?
Eko’s heart is racing. She presses her body close to me and I can feel her desperation. There was no backup plan, Jack. No one can do this but Kidah. He’s our only hope, the only chance we have. We’ve got to find a way to wake him up.
73
We stay with the People of the Forest for three days. They don’t use calendars, but I’m acutely aware of the passage of time. By now the colonel and his highly motivated search parties have probably found P.J. I’m tormented by the idea that he’s taking out his fury at not being able to locate me on the girl I love.
Eko spends a lot of time in the medicine lodge, trying to revive Kidah. She meditates near him and sings sacred songs to him, she mixes potions and drizzles them onto his lips, and she burns concoctions of flowers and herbs in the fire pit. Kidah slumbers on, unaware of all the fuss.
I make my own journeys to the medicine hut. I tell him about P.J. and why he needs to wake up and help. I try to
dial him up telepathically. When no one’s looking I even try to slap the old wizard awake.
Nothing works. He lies motionless, barely breathing.
As the days pass, we become rain forest celebrities. More and more tribesmen keep arriving on foot and in flimsy bark canoes to get a look at us. Eko explains that they’re from different nomadic clans, and that our hosts are enjoying showing us off to all their cousins.
I get to know the People of the Forest better, and I slowly become convinced that Eko was right, and that I should be careful in labeling them savages.
They’re all healthy and mentally alert. I’ve never seen a parent punish a child, or a child rebel against a mother or father. Even the little kids come and go through the dark trees as they please—they are the masters of their world, romping through a vast playground. They learn from their parents to use everything and to waste nothing, and they treat the forest with great respect.
I recall my old classmates in Hadley who grew up in air-conditioned houses, addicted to television, computers, and cell phones. Many of them barely noticed the world around them. They had no sense that they were at all linked to their environment, let alone responsible for it.
As I watch the tribe’s pure and simple life, I keep wondering if technological progress must necessarily lead humanity to ruin. When Eve bit the apple, did it all have to turn out so badly? Or did we just jump ahead too quickly, and make a few wrong turns?
Weighty questions, no time for answers. Every day that we lose increases the chance that P.J. and Gisco will be caught and killed, and that the colonel will extend his power and destruction to the point where it’s irreversible.
After three days, I reach my breaking point. Eko has just spent hours in the medicine lodge, trying to rouse Kidah. When she leaves, I enter.
She must have been burning something in the pit—the place smells foul. I sit down next to the slumbering wizard, and a bird perches on my shoulder. I put my ear to Kidah’s bony chest. I can feel his faint breaths.
Suddenly I know for a certainty that we’re never going to be able to wake him. We could stay here for a month, and Eko could try every possible incantation and potion, and none of it would work.
P.J. will die. Gisco will be skinned for a rug in the colonel’s library. The trees will all be burned down. The future will go up in the smoke of the present. We have to try something else.
I go in search of Eko, to confront her with this bitter reality, but I can’t find her. A six-year-old boy I’ve made friends with watches me search and guesses who I’m looking for. He points downriver, to a hidden spot near the pool beneath the waterfall.
I follow his finger, leave the village behind, and soon spot Eko sitting by herself on a log above the still water. She’s not meditating. I think she may be crying.
74
I walk over and sit down next to Eko.
She turns her face away, and blinks back tears.
“He’s never going to wake up, is he?” I ask softly.
She shakes her head. “It’s over. We’ve lost. The Dark Lord has won. The future will be as he wills it.”
“And what does he want?” I ask. “You might as well tell me. What did you see when they called you back?”
She hesitates and gazes out at the water spilling down the rocks, and then at the still pool at our feet. “One minute we were flying over the Atlantic, and you were holding me tightly,” she whispers. “Then, in the snap of a finger, I was catapulted through space-time. I thought maybe I had died and was on my way to an afterlife. But instead of heaven or hell, I ended up on an operating table with masked figures hovering over me.”
“The Dannites brought you back to try to save you?” I guess.
Eko nods. “I was barely conscious. I remember thinking that if I survived their medical procedures I was going to wake up in paradise because you and I had used Firestorm to turn the future into a new Eden.”
“But when you woke up, you weren’t in Eden?”
Eko is silent, but her beautiful black eyes brim with regret. She looked this way on the Outer Banks, on the rooftop of our beach house, when she first explained to me why she had come back a thousand years. She wanted to turn the future in a better direction, but she was tormented by memories of the ravaged, dying planet she had left behind.
Now she’s looking down at the smooth surface of the black-bottom pool. I sense that as she sits here watching a water bug crawl across the mirrored branches, in her mind she’s flashing forward through the centuries to the world she found herself in when the Dannites saved her life.
I take her hand. “Tell me what you saw.”
When Eko finally speaks, it’s in a haunted whisper. “Ground so parched that every step was fire-walking. Hot oceans boiling up endless typhoons with winds strong enough to knock down mountains. Air that could not be breathed, and unfiltered sunlight that could kill.”
“How did it get that way?” I press. “How could cutting down trees in the Amazon do that to the future earth?”
Her fingers close around my hand. She speaks very softly: “If we were flying through space right now, looking down at the earth together, we would see that it has two thin and vulnerable layers, the oceans and the atmosphere. Both are crucial for life. When we destroyed Dargon’s trawler fleet, we saved the oceans. So the colonel has come back to the Turning Point to attack and destroy the other layer—the atmosphere.”
I recall photos of the earth from space—the shimmering blue oceans and the puffy white clouds. It makes sense—his son targeted one, and now he’s come back to destroy the other. “How does cutting down trees in the Amazon destroy the atmosphere?”
“Along with the destruction of the oceans by bottom trawling, the greatest damage to the earth at the Turning Point was to the atmosphere,” Eko replies. “Great quantities of greenhouse gases, and especially carbon dioxide, were released.”
“Sure, I studied global warming in school,” I agree. “But even now people are trying to find ways to reduce gas emissions and repair the damage.”
“And nature has its own defenses, its own cleaning system,” Eko tells me. “The trees of the rain forest cleanse the air of carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. If you burn the rain forest, the trees can never do their cleaning job again. At the same time, you convert millions of them into vast clouds of carbon dioxide.”
“It’s a double whammy,” I suggest softly.
“Yes. At a certain point, the earth just gives up.”
“You make the earth sound like a person.”
She nods. “It is, in a way. And that’s what Kidah was going to do. He couldn’t fight the colonel on his own, either. He was going to try to find the spirit of the rain forest, and harness its force, just the way you partnered with Firestorm. But only you could locate Firestorm, and only Kidah knew where the spirit of the forest dwells. And we can’t wake him. So it’s over.”
I look down at the placid pool and see that the water bug has made it safely to a floating leaf, and is now sailing along on his own green yacht.
“No, it’s not over,” I tell Eko softly. “I know also. I saw it in a dream.”
75
We set out with Kidah in a convoy of fragile canoes. The People of the Forest don’t burn and chisel dugouts from trees for long voyages. They patch together flimsy canoes of bark that last only a few days. I hope that will be long enough.
The members of our expeditionary force are an eclectic bunch—Eko, Jack Danielson, the shaman, two strong young warriors, and the oldest surviving member of the People of the Forest tribe. She’s a bent old woman who looks to be at least a hundred, although she’s probably just in her seventies. She has no teeth, she’s missing three fingers, and she’s blind in one eye. But she’s the key to the whole puzzle.
I had Eko use telepathy to tell the shaman about my out-of-body journey to a wondrous diamond-shaped valley. I described it for him carefully—the imposing cliff walls, the four rivers with cataracts, and the giant me
n with shadowy faces who guard a lush and mysterious island.
The shaman immediately nodded and gave the place a name. It is part of their lore, their oral history, passed down from generation to generation. He said he had never been there himself, but he knew someone who had.
A mighty shaman years and years ago had found the fabled spot, and had taken his daughter along. The daughter still lived, and might be able to show us the way.
Now we are in three small canoes, following a winding river through forest so thick that even the tribesmen seem spooked. Eko and I are in one small canoe, with the Mysterious Kidah laid out between us on a bed that may become his bier if we don’t find the valley soon. I can tell that the wizard is losing his tenuous grasp on life. He is sinking deeper into himself, and his breathing is now so shallow that I can barely see his chest move.
We’re not traveling through flat rain forest anymore but moving into hill country. As the river narrows, the trees on either side link branches to weave a green-brown ceiling that completely obscures the sky. The tribesmen begin chanting—it’s creepy to be on a tiny and fragile craft, sailing along into ever-darkening gloom.
The Mysterious Kidah never moves or makes a sound, but he’s very much a part of this trip because of the effect he has on the wildlife around us. We’re accompanied by an ever-changing escort of forest well-wishers. Dusky-headed parakeets swoop over us and bawl their favorite karaoke ballads. Squirrel monkeys turn trapeze tricks for our benefit. A bearlike tamandua genuflects from the bank.
Suddenly we burst from darkness to daylight. The ceiling of branches retracts as leafy banks give way to rocky embankments. The river flows faster, pressed between cliff faces. We hear a roaring up ahead, and I’m now an experienced enough canoer to know what that sound means.
The shaman steers quickly to a rocky bank, and we follow. Soon all three canoes have been dragged out of the water and stowed safely in the brush. The two young warriors pick up Kidah on an improvised litter, and our party creeps toward the thunderous sound.