Quest for the Ark

by Taggart Rehnn

  “Interesting, though,” quipped the Empress, “that these men, no matter how macho-looking, go wanker around in a country where everyone—except Maduro’s cliques—starve and are often forced to steal, and would rape and slice you for some valuable to feed their families, wearing gold rings the size of cock rings, in plain sight. Maybe they just arrived here, on another tour. Maybe they are following you. Ever heard from Odessatron?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied David. “Do they have branches here in Venezuela too?”

  “Anyone who’s anyone and lives on the fringes of legality and wants to create an international dictatorship network, a sort of giant Auschwitz for anyone who objects, has branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, trunks and roots here, little bird. Plenty of easy oil, complete illegality, money laundering in every conceivable way—to them, this is…Valhalla!” replied the Empress. “So, tell me: did you kick any Odessatron nest lately, little bird? They’re far worse than hornets, if you ever do try. Maybe ask Tony some day.”

  “My family is in danger if Odessatron followed me even here! I have to go back a.s.a.p. and protect my family!” David protested.

  “Sure, dear, take my car. It’s parked in the driveway, with a tank full of gas!” chuckled the Empress. “Why not ask Tony for some help. He has long ‘tentacles’, you know? Also, if you have relatives with contacts in your ‘other’ home, maybe ask them too. They too have very long arms. Ever heard of Kidon?”

  “Kidon? It’s Hebrew for ‘tip of the spear’, or a bayonet. Isn’t that the section of Mossad that’s supposed to carry out strategic killings?” asked David, in a very neutral tone.

  “Shalom, sweetheart! Strategic killings, huh?” demurred the Empress. “You almost speak like them. Anyway, for your family to live happily ever after, you might need one of those killings to go very well. I’d say: ask Tony for help, and also tell him that you’d rather be a hubby and a daddy. That way he’ll do all he can so you won’t be risking death in filthy whorehouses, sitting on top of a highly flammable lake, hunted down by Nazis, drug dealers and such, instead of your lovely wife making you blintzes. Just a thought, little bird,” almost whispered the Empress. “Anyway, do you think these rings are worth something, then?”

  “A place in Hell, if there is one? And my name is David,” David replied.

  “Charmed to meet you. Mine is Arturo, but I prefer ‘La Emperatriz’ and also prefer ‘little bird’. In any case, out an abundance of caution, I won’t count the rings as offsetting Tony’s debt—after all, we harvested them risking our own lives. Now, we also sheltered you as agreed—and that isn’t free, little bird,” Arturo blurted out. “But since Tony has taken care of much of the mess, I will charge him just for the ammunition, the repairs to my sanctuary, and the penicillin and such, at cost—plus loss of business, of course. And if the rings are solid gold, as they seem, I might deduct them from my bill. Fair is fair. Anyhow, soon Tony’s ‘operatives’ will come ‘upstairs’ to pick you up, little dove.”

  David shook his head, trying not to laugh. The ‘Empress’ winked and then added, casually: “So, could you do me a little favor?”

  “What sort of favor?” asked David, fearing what it might entail.

  “No, dear. No worries. I have as much of that as I want, and ten times more,” chuckled the Empress, making David blush. “The favor I’d ask of you is that you take good care of my two palafitos and my four boats, the place where you and your colleagues are staying, your ‘Forward Operating Base’. Please leave them in good condition. I had to fuck too many of my tenants, which are also my suppliers, to get them to give up the place for a bit over week, so you can sample the lake and what not. I don’t plan to fuck them any more than that. Neither can I keep my other customers without inspiration, or they would go buy Colombian inspiration—and then, I would lose my revenues. Here a kilo of fresh meat can cost the same as a kilo of coke; so…you know…you need a lot of ice to keep the fresh meat coming.

  And my daughters…they need lots of meat to stay strong, so they can feather up like pheasants, fight like Greek phalanxes, and fuck like furies. So, all in all, I’d ask you, above all, keep my two palafitos and my boats in good condition. And…ah! One last thing: if you use up any of the underwater mines, please replace them. My tenants are very picky, that way.

  Are we kosher, then?” finished the Empress.

  “Of course! Thank you, your Imperial Highness. I’ll take good care of your palafitos. Thank you also for saving my life, and my ‘teddy bear’,” replied David, obviously relieved the attack was over, his ‘gizmo’ safe, and he, able to start doing what he had come for.

  “I usually don’t ask many questions, but…I’m curious: What the fuck is that thing for?” asked the Empress, signaling the object inside the tarpaulin.

  “It’s part of equipment to measure chemicals. It will let us know if Catatumbo is in good health…” David said.

  “It would be the only thing in good health in this country; and in this lake in particular… Did you know Huntington’s disease average incidence in the world is 1:10,000 and in Lake Maracaibo is 1:2, and it’s about 40% of genetic and 60% of environmental origin? Small wonder here people die young, get shaky before they wrinkle, and are mentally fucked up even when they don’t do drugs…it’s sad…” spat the Empress.

  “Wow!” exclaimed David, “So…you’re a doctor?” he asked, going back to sit on his bed. As he did, the Star of David and the ‘chai’ he was wearing dangled out of his tattered shirt and glimmered.

  “I once was. Then the country imploded, and I had to survive…Ah! And you are a man of faith, I see,” replied the Empress.

  “I guess you’re not…” suggested David.

  “My family used to be. My brother, very much, still is. I lost my faith when Venezuela imploded. You see, David: to many, faith is hope. To others, it’s just prescriptions, rituals. To yet others, it’s just a moral code. To some, it’s all three. To many others, rich and powerful, it is, instead, a way to get even more rich and powerful. To the masses, more often than not, its an answer to a yearn to know the unknowable—a dream, an escape from misery and violence; a way to become one with someone or something far removed from human limitations…” the Empress continued.

  “You’re quite the philosopher,” commented David.

  “Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting an ignorant whore. You speak rather decent English—for an IDF soldier, little bird…” the Empress snarled.

  “I am no longer an IDF soldier. And I’m sorry if I offended you. My wife and I try to speak clean English at home so our children don’t grow up grunting slang. I can swear like a trooper too, but bad habits die hard,” apologized David.

  “You’re forgiven—for speaking decent English; and also, for having a wife,” joked the Empress. “Have you read Heinrich Böll?”

  “Not really,” admitted David.

  “Well,” explained the Empress, “in 1974, I believe, he ridiculed the Germans experiencing labor shortages during reconstruction, saying they expected to get just Italian ‘workers’, and instead ended up getting—shockingly!—real people. Worry not, little bird: you didn’t invent prejudice. Our family was rather uptight in that sense as well, when we were growing up in England and France.

  My father also used to say that religion is a form of personal philosophy: if it can inspire us to make this world a better place, it is a blessing; but if it’s used to destroy, repress, or steal, it’s a curse. He also believed greed is a sort of quasi-religious worshipping of money, one that justifies anything—from lies, to mass murder. So you see,” continued the Empress showing David the surroundings by a sweep of his hand in the direction of the window, “when, say, your religion is oil, everyone but the bosses starve, and everything dies. Even knowing that, after completing my British medical degree, I decided at one stupid point to come back home, to help. We’re supposed to be charitable, you see?

  And I did come back. I, the faithless man—while my very r
eligious brother stayed in Europe, to live like an emperor. And at first, aside from my gayness—which was tolerable in Caracas when all was well—my country welcomed me.

  Then came Chavez and all went to hell in a basket. But, by then, it was a bit too late for me to leave. I was in love with someone; and then, ‘the someone’, got killed. So I got my revenge, and then became this ‘thing’—my way to tell my beloved country: ‘Eat me! Eat me, if that’s what you want! You know I’ll first choke you; and then, I’ll give you the mother of all indigestions.’”

  “I’m sorry…” quipped David.

  “Don’t be!” continued Arturo, “Of course, I have no illusions about how I’ll emerge at the end of the process. And of course, there is light at the end of this digestive tunnel. However, when I finally get pushed out into that light, I know exactly what I’ll be. That’s why I stay here, where everything stinks and nobody cares. In any case, talking about floaters, I see your floating limo is coming to get you, little bird.

  There’s Tony!” he exclaimed, shrieking and pointing to a silhouette on one of the approaching boats. “Hola, criatura de la laguna negra! Aquí tengo a tu novio, sano y salvo! Te envío la cuenta—sea al Vaticano o a Los Ángeles, cariño!” the Empress screamed, opening a crack on another window—which was now missing all its glass panes. Then he turned around and told David: “Time to fly away, little bird!”

  David snorted, shook the Empress’ hand, bowed to the others, and slowly but determinedly started on his way to the exit, carrying his bundle.

  39—Back to the Base, More Trouble

  Moments later, he was back with Tony and some of the FOB operatives, on his way to their base of operations, firmly clutching the no-longer-missing ‘gizmo’—still bagged in the still folded, still stinking, piece of tarpaulin. All along the return trip, they kept dodging confrontations, trying to keep casualties to a minimum, fighting only when cornered. Fortunately, despite a rather long drive, they returned to FOB with only a couple of bullet grazes and a handful of easy to repair holes on the side of the boats.

  David was dying to have a good sleep. But faced with a whole day’s worth of samples to process, after a short nap he decided to ‘go local’ to stay awake, and so was able to work non-stop until he finished assembling the equipment. Upon installation, the once missing ‘gizmo’ earned a special: “Gotcha, bitch!” When time came to calibrate the assembled instruments, however—probably because of going ‘too local’—noticing he was shaky, he opted for a short bunking brake to doze off. Eventually, though, he woke up, head still resting on a small cushion, still sitting on his workbench, with an epic headache.

  His head was indeed a shambles, and his heart wasn’t ready to just sit and load the auto-sampler. True the backlog of samples awaiting analysis was massive. True he could nap after loading the auto-sampler. But he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to take a few series of samples by himself. Depending exclusively on mercenaries acting as trained scientists, no matter how detailed his instructions, made David worry about systematic bias, shortcuts, all sort of things that could ruin his entire model’s validation, he told Tony. Tony replied that a zombie scientist probably should introduce ‘zombie bias’. So David loaded the auto-sampler, and napped, and loaded it again, and napped some more, until the backlog had been processed. That had seemed to somehow, almost miraculously, restore his lucidity, and, fortunately for everybody else, also made him a lot less grumpy, able to crack jokes again.

  Most in the group, however, were still as grateful for, as they were uneasy about, those inexplicably dead pirates. Tony and David were taking it all too lightly, someone had protested behind Tony’s back. He’d turned around and suggested whoever said that should put on a fresh pair of panties. That changed nothing: who or what had slaughtered those pirates—the ones killed when the base was attacked, and those Neo-Nazi bastards, skinned alive, beheaded, torn to pieces, and bloodless, they had found scattered all around ‘El Putafito’, spread like an all-you-can eat buffet for caimans?

  Everyone but Tony and David made no bones they would rather go take samples and reconnoiter during the day. When ordered to do it at night, lightning or no lightning, they would, of course, obey, but their faces be tense, and all act very skittishly as they did. On and on they would ask questions; and on and on Tony would dodge answering them.

  Then, they would turn to David, who invariably would reply that he wasn’t there to investigate dead pirates—only glad that they were the ones dead, and not him. He sometimes reminded the others, that, in fact, the compound’s attackers had been “killed so dead” that no more serious attacks had occurred since. What if the ‘caimanes’ had a feast? That part of the lake’s ecological system seemed to appreciate the extra nourishment! That joke rarely got David any smiles, even before if became intolerably trite and overused as an exit line. When, after another heated debate the atmosphere became too tense, David would usually leave, pretexting he’d better work harder, so the group could leave before they run out of fresh panties to put on.

  Oftentimes, the entire evening conversation routine seemed to loop, like some Kafka-inspired ‘groundhog day’-type of movie. And each time, shrugging off the palpable tension, David kept nevertheless analyzing sample after sample, and plugging his measures in his more elaborate model—and finding solace in finally doing what he had originally intended to do, encouraged by Tony’s occasional unobtrusive questions about his progress.

  At one point, while Tony and he were alone, David finally started sharing preliminary results with him. It was then when he told Tony he had started wondering whether poor maintenance, so pervasive at these oil installations, might lead to leaks of hydrogen—because of ozone-induced cracking of fuel lines, gaskets, O-rings and such. “No matter how much electrolysis hydrogen or hydrogen peroxide your meth cooks might use here, I doubt this place—or a few others like this, for that matter—could deplete the mounds of ozone Catatumbo generates,” David told Tony on the fourth day.

  “My…meth cooks? What are you talking about…?” Tony faked some indignation.

  “Well, if people who ‘live’ in this palafito smoke this much, they’d probably also walk over water, so they’d need no boats. The Empress was quite clear about what her/his ‘tenants’ do here. Among those who still have any teeth left, many people here can probably just swim faster than our boats, all across the lake, catching fish in their mouths as they go…” David retorted, snarkily.

  “For a scientist, you seem to know an awful lot about meth…” Tony was shocked. “All around here there is violence, misery and hunger. I don’t like it one bit—but ‘ice’ lessens their worries, numbs their pain, and calms their hunger; so, I don’t judge them. And I can’t change their world either, so…I got off my high horse, long time ago.”

  “My brother in law did meth and went through an horrible phase, with interventions, clinics and what not. Cost us an arm and a leg, but we pulled him out of it. He’s now been clean eight years. Hope he stays that way. So, you realize how vicarious all this is to me. Ironies aside, I’d recognize the stench a mile away, even if the Empress hadn’t said anything,” David replied.

  “Ah! OK,” said Tony, nodding. “What they do is their business. Why did you bring up the subject, then?”

  “For one, I’m terrified the ‘cooks’ might decide to come back before we leave, to reclaim their lab. The ‘Empress’ said he had to fuck too many too much to get that, and wasn’t going to any more for us—so I assume the usual ‘tenants’ resent our presence here. Correct me if I’m wrong. On the other hand…” David admitted tentatively.

  “On the other hand…?” Tony asked.

  “On the other hand, hydrogen is used to refine petroleum, to produce diesel and gasoline, to remove sulfur, and a few other impurities—even to make solvents to produce ‘ice’, huh? Depending on how massive this operation here might be…I wonder how much hydrogen would leak from it…” David suggested.

  “Do you think they get so m
uch hydrogen to make meth they release it to react with all the Catatumbo’s ozone, just for the heck of it—and then they get nothing left for them to produce their ‘product’? Or do they do that to get the ‘caimanes’ horny? That is simply ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s just a lab, producing some hydrogen—not enough hydrogen to build Jupiter another nucleus! Also, wouldn’t that be very inefficient, even for a meth lab in this hell? And explosive as well…especially with electrical discharges?” retorted Tony.

  “Well, it isn’t that simple. Any hydrogen donors formed can chain-react with ozone and turn it into oxygen…” corrected David.

  “So a tiny…catalytic amount…could destroy lots?” asked Tony, trying to remember what he had read when the ozone layer woes had truly caught the world’s attention.

  “Yes, they could,” replied David, “but…”

  “But that should be happening far above the Earth’s surface, where cosmic radiation generates so many…free radicals, shouldn’t it?” asked Tony.

  “That is why I wish I could ask—yet am terrified to, at the same time—if it would be possible to see the ‘chemist’ of this place,” dared David.

  “Why? You need more hits to get through your sample backlog?” chuckled Tony.

  “Right! No, not precisely. The levels of radiation and the types of radiation we’re monitoring map very strangely. The amount of hydrogen produced by radiolytic decomposition of water in a reactor is a complicated function of water temperature, absorbed fraction of radiation, and extent of impurities in the water. But here…there shouldn’t be a reactor…an exposed nuclear reactor…so, that part is quite baffling. And there is this: it is the type of hydrogen I’m finding that worries me most,” said David.

  “The type of hydrogen? As in…deuterium or…tritium? There shouldn’t be any more than normal amounts here, or should there?” Tony replied, pinching his chin, pensively.