Rembrandt's Ghost

by Paul Christopher

  Finn didn’t know whether to be pleased or frightened. She thought of somehow being the only survivor, like some female Tom Hanks in a twenty-first-century version of Cast Away. She shrugged the thought off and turned again, staggering a little on the sand. She had more important things to think about, like finding out if there was anyone else with her here. She stripped off the sodden sweater Run-Run McSeveney had given her and tossed it on the sand. Then, instinctively, she bent and picked it up again, knotting it around her waist. There might well be cold nights ahead.

  She moved farther along the beach, her back to a high, rising, jungle-covered headland and the distant blur of what might be a river flowing into the sea a mile or so in front of her. A hundred yards farther, she came to a body. It was Kuan Kong, the Korean who had assisted McSeveney in the engine room. Finn had barely exchanged ten words with him, but seeing him on the beach was a horrible shock.

  He lay stretched out on the sand, his short gray hair tangled with seaweed that lay around his face in long wet strings. The skin of his hands and feet was a sickly pale purple and already his limbs and belly were beginning to swell in the morning sun. He lay on his side, with his head twisted at an odd angle, both eyes already pecked away by birds. Finn felt like vomiting.

  She silently told herself to calm down, then dropped onto her knees beside the body. She forced herself to go through the pockets of his loose trousers and his shirt, but there was nothing she could use. She thought about burying him and then saw how ridiculous that was, especially when she realized that when the tide came in he’d almost certainly be swept away to sea. She had to think of herself now, and her own uncertain future. There was one other thing. Gritting her teeth she crouched down at the dead man’s feet and slipped off his soaking Nikes. They were huge on her, but walking barefoot in a place like this was asking for trouble.

  She continued down the beach. A hundred yards farther on, she came upon more things swept off the Queen. The first was a foam pillow and pillowcase. The second was an orange garbage bag Toshi the cook had used to store recyclables. She used the pillowcase and a strip of plastic from the garbage bag to make herself a makeshift head covering to ward off the effects of the hot sun that was now almost directly overhead. She stuffed one of the empty Coke cans in the zip pocket of her jacket. She tore the rest of the pillowcase into rags and stuffed them into the shoes. She laced them tightly and took a few experimental steps. Not good, but not bad, either. They’d have to do for the time being.

  She started back along the beach. Next on the list were water and some kind of shelter, even if it was only short-term. It was hot enough now, but who knew what the night would bring?

  Another half hour brought Finn to the indentation in the landscape she’d seen from far down the beach. It was a mangrove swamp that went inland for quite a distance. On the far side of the swamp, she could see more sand beach stretching off to the north. To the east, out to sea, she could see the breakers that marked the hidden reef the Queen had struck. Finn looked across the mangrove swamp and considered trying to wade across it.

  She hesitated; she’d read enough to know that swamps like that could contain any number of dangerous things, from tiny poisonous snakes and bloodsucking leeches to huge crocodiles. The swamp could wait until another time. Instead she headed inland along the narrow strip of beach that stood between her and the gnarled forest of trees, their muscular roots standing out of the brackish water almost as though they were walking toward the sea.

  Another twenty minutes brought her to the apex of the cove and there she found the outlet of a narrow river, really no more than a broad creek, less than fifty feet across at its mouth. She made her way a few yards upstream, dropped down onto the low bank, and lay facedown, drinking deeply from cupped hands. The water was clear and cold, tasting just faintly of some mineral.

  After drinking her fill, Finn spent a few more moments dashing more water over her face and tenderly bathing the small puncture wound in her neck. That done, she stood up and began heading deeper into the interior of the island. The land rose steadily, the creek water flashing and burbling over stones and boulders. She could see fish pointed upstream like gold and green arrows, tails beating back and forth to keep their station against the current, mouths wide to catch whatever came their way. They looked like some kind of pale catfish, tendrils around their bony mouths waving softly in the stream; not hard to catch if you knew how.

  Finn paused and watched them, frowning. She wondered how she was supposed to catch them without a hook, then put the thought aside for the moment. Tom Hanks and Robinson Crusoe again, with a bit of an NYU summer internship at a neolithic dig in Alaska thrown in. If she could find the right geology here, she could easily chip herself a stone knife—a skill she’d never really thought would ever have any practical application. Like her mother once telling her you never could tell when algebra might come in handy. That at least was still in the future.

  Continuing up the stream she looked around for some likely place that might offer shelter nearby. The foliage was thick and close to the bank, sometimes leaning over it. Strange-looking trees bent close to the water. Huge ferns spread over the ground with banks of broad-leafed shrubs. Long dangling vines and some heavy mosslike substance drooped from the upper limbs of trees that arched overhead like canopied umbrellas.

  She continued upstream, and a few minutes later, she found what she was looking for. The bank of the waterway fell back, leaving a small crescent of sand. Above it, capped by a mass of foliage, was a large, pockmarked outcropping of pale limestone. Her view partly screened by several trees, Finn saw what she first thought was a sun-dappled shadow on the limestone but which she then quickly realized was the entrance to a cave.

  Finn hesitated for a moment, remembering just about everything she’d ever heard about vampire bats and things that lived in caves, then stepped forward and ducked inside the opening. She’d just lived through a typhoon and a near drowning. What was there to be afraid of inside a cave? She stopped again and remembered the scorpions that had run over her booted foot the last time she had been in a cave. A scorpion sting would probably kill her. But so could a lot of things. She went deeper into the cave.

  It was dry and well aired with a river gravel floor and no sign of scorpions or bats or anything else. There was a skin of old lichens on the walls of the entrance. The opening was as wide as her arms held apart and a little higher than her height. Beyond the entrance it opened up into a broader room, the ceiling ten feet above her head and made of limestone rather than roofed with dirt and roots from the jungle overhead.

  At the far end of the cave was another opening leading to a second chamber. It was too dark to see anything except shadows. Finn turned her cheek to the opening and felt cool air against her skin, so she knew there had to be another exit. The opening was more than wide enough for her to slip through, but to explore farther she’d need to light her way. She smiled briefly at the thought; like the stone tools, she had that covered, and a lot better than Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

  She went back outside and spent the better part of an hour gathering together a supply of relatively dry branches from the undergrowth above the creek. She found a small piece of flat rock and used it as a scraper to gather some of the dead lichen from the head of the cave and brought it all together at the entrance. She stripped off her all-weather jacket, took out the chocolate bar Toshi had given her and the empty Coke can, and got down to work.

  With an archaeologist for a father and an anthropologist for a mother, Finn knew, at least in theory, of at least a half dozen ways to make fire, from the ‘‘fire plow’’ method used by Tom Hanks in the movie, to the slightly more sophisticated North American Indian bow method, and even the wonderfully simple fire piston she’d discovered in an old wood lore text in her father’s library called Cache Lake Country, a treasure trove of information about everything from snaring rabbits to pemmican recipes.

  One thing she’d learned about all these fi
re-making methods was that none of them was guaranteed. The fact that Tom Hanks got a little bit of tinder going overlooked the fact that any wood he gathered to make his fire machine needed to be bone dry and of two distinct types: a hardwood for the pusher and a softwood for the base. The bow method also required absolute dryness, extreme patience, something to make the bowstring out of, and once again, two kinds of wood. She was never able to get the fire piston right even though the neat little drawing in Cache Lake Country was perfectly clear.

  Without a match or a lighter or a handy-dandy magnifying glass the only way that Finn knew to make fire was the tried-and-true Coke-can-and-chocolate method she’d learned from her friend Tucker Noe in the Bahamas a year or so ago. It was the kind of thing bar bets were made of, but lo and behold the old man’s idiotic method actually worked, and without too much effort at all.

  Tucker had used the bottom of a can of Kalik beer and a block of baker’s chocolate, but Coke and a Hershey’s bar would work just fine. Using a smear of chocolate and a piece torn off the bottom of her makeshift pillowcase headpiece, Finn began to polish the slightly concave aluminum underside of the can. After five minutes of a steady circular motion, the fine marks on the base of the tin were beginning to smooth out, and after twenty minutes, the base was as bright and reflective as a mirror.

  Finn found a short length of twig, split the end with her thumbnail, and inserted a dusty little wad of the old lichen in the fork. It took a minute or two to find the right angle to hold the can to catch the sun and get the distance right between the improvised ‘‘matchstick’’ and the can, but eventually the tinder smoked, flared, and fired. Finn pushed the flaming tinder into a larger clump of the lichen she’d arranged under a little lean-to of twigs and a few moments later she had a comfortable fire blazing in front of the cave mouth.

  Pleased that she’d accomplished this basic survival feat, she spent the rest of the morning exploring the general vicinity around the cave. After a noontime siesta in the cool confines of her new home she spent the afternoon putting together a simple tool chest of a few pieces of stone splintered or ‘‘knapped’’ into cutting knives and axes.

  She then used these minimal tools to fashion a fish spear out of a long piece of bamboo, the split end sharpened, then hardened in the fire. As the sun began to set and darkness fell over the island, Finn used the spear as a spit for the foot-long catfishlike creature she’d caught in the stream only a few feet from her new front door. The fish was delicious. She finished off with a dessert of half-melted Hershey’s bar and gave a small sigh of contentment.

  Fire, food, abundant fresh water, and shelter. The basics had been taken care of. Tomorrow she’d see if anyone else had been castaway on the island with her, or if she was alone. She piled some more branches on the fire, curled up close to its comforting warmth, and finally let sleep take her, trying hard not to think of her missing friends.

  It was still dark when she was wrenched out of sleep by a crashing in the jungle. She barely had time to pick up the fish spear before a rushing pair of immense shadows leapt toward the flames of her hard-won fire and began scooping handfuls of the fine river sand on top of the lowering coals. She pulled herself upright and jumped forward with the spear, but one of the shadows whirled, wrenching the spear from her hands. She started to yell but a broad hand fell across her mouth and gripped hard. Somewhere close by was the foul smell of stinking, rotting meat. There was a fierce whisper in her ear.

  ‘‘Not a sound or they’ll hear you! We have to get you out of here, fast!’’ It was Billy Pilgrim.

  20

  They slipped into the jungle, Billy leading Finn by the hand, the other figure moving on ahead. Whoever it was had some kind of furry cape around his shoulders and an odd-looking hat. Kong’s sneakers slid around on her feet and she stumbled as they raced along the dark, narrow pathway through the sleeping forest. Some kind of bird screeched loudly and a monkey chattered. The terrible smell seemed to be following them.

  ‘‘Who’s your new friend?’’ Finn whispered, struggling along behind Billy. ‘‘And why does he smell like a dead goat?’’

  ‘‘Because I am wearing the skin of just such an animal,’’ said the man without pausing. ‘‘I also have acute hearing.’’ The accent was educated Australian, perhaps even from New Zealand. ‘‘My name is Benjamin Winchester. Professor Benjamin Winchester. I was a conservation biologist at the University of Auckland until three years ago.’’

  ‘‘What happened three years ago?’’ Finn panted.

  ‘‘A tsunami and a typhoon like the one you just experienced. One caused the other. It is rare but it happens.’’ He paused, sniffing the air, and then moved forward again. ‘‘I was on a French research vessel, the Tumamotu. FREMER.’’

  ‘‘Fremer? What’s that?’’

  ‘‘French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Seas. I was on a grant from the University of Toulon. Pteropods. I’m an expert on the subject.’’

  ‘‘Pteropods?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘It’s a kind of plankton, a flagellate pseudosnail that has little tiny wings. It swims with like a sea-horse, except microscopic. You kill them to find out about the CO2 levels in the water they live in. They’re a barometer to the chemistry of entire oceans. Interesting little things. Been slaughtering them for years.’’

  ‘‘So how’s the chemistry of the ocean?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘Like the air over Manchester or Los Angeles,’’ said Winchester. ‘‘Not healthy.’’

  Wherever they were going, it was in a steep upward direction. It was getting more and more difficult for Finn to keep her footing. The trail was muddy and seemed to be getting narrower and narrower. After a few minutes Finn was completely soaked by the water dripping from the foliage of the undergrowth on either side of the muddy track. Finally the path leveled out and Finn was vaguely aware that they were on some kind of ridge; she could see a lighter section of night sky against the deeper darkness of the jungle that lay in the bowl of a narrow valley on their right.

  ‘‘Where are we going?’’ Finn asked as they suddenly veered downward on the three-foot-wide trail.

  ‘‘Away,’’ said the professor. ‘‘If we saw your fire, they might have as well.’’

  ‘‘They?’’

  ‘‘Zangs Shuai-chiao,’’ muttered Winchester. ‘‘Or maybe the Taisho’s Itto-Suihei.’’

  ‘‘Chinese?’’ Finn said, confused. ‘‘Japanese?’’

  ‘‘Both,’’ answered the man in the goatskins. ‘‘In this place it really doesn’t matter. They’ll both hack off your head and stick it on a pole if you give them the slightest opportunity.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand,’’ said Finn, her brain whirling.

  ‘‘You will,’’ answered Winchester. ‘‘Believe you me, young lady, you will.’’

  They were now walking carefully along a ledge no more than a yard or two wide with a long steep slide down a nearly vertical precipice if they slipped. On the far side of the valley, Finn thought she could see water glistening in the faint light of the stars. There was no moon. Suddenly Winchester stopped, turned, and vanished into thin air. Finn and Billy were alone on the narrow ledge.

  ‘‘Where did he go?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘Here,’’ said Winchester’s voice, echoing.

  ‘‘Where?’’ Finn asked, frustrated, peering into the darkness. All she could see was jungle foliage and the steep wall beside her. Billy was right behind her.

  ‘‘Turn to your left and take a step forward,’’ the voice instructed. Finn did as she was told. The foliage parted and she suddenly found herself standing in the narrow cleft of a high-ceilinged cave.

  Unlike the ledge outside, the floor of the cave was perfectly dry, made out of some kind of limestone. There was a small flare of light and suddenly Winchester was visible, a grinning apparition in the light from a flickering lamp made out of a deep bowllike shell and a cotton wick. From the smell Finn knew he was us
ing fish oil for fuel.

  ‘‘This way,’’ he said, grinning. He turned and headed deeper into the cave. Finn followed the wavering light as it reflected off the smooth stone walls for another hundred feet or so. Suddenly the passage ended and she found herself in an immense cavern at least the length of a football field and half as wide. The roof spiraled up at least fifty feet above her head, long spikes of stalactites flowing down like hundreds of organ pipes in some incredible underground cathedral. There was just enough light from the flickering oil lamp to make out something that looked like a dark, narrow ribbon of oil at the far end of the cavern.

  ‘‘A river?’’

  Winchester laughed, a strange, dry, rasping sound like a rusty hinge that reverberated and echoed through the giant chamber. ‘‘A stream. Pure, cold water. My own river Styx. It flows out of here and down into the valley.’’ He led Finn and Billy across the cave and up to a small stone plateau that rose against the far wall, close to the quietly flowing stream.

  Here Winchester had made himself a neat little home, although even in the huge cave the smell of rotten meat, rotten fish, and rank body odor was almost suffocating. There was a hearth made from a large flat rock and a circle of smaller stones, and something that might have been an oven made out of gray, natural clay and an assortment of tools and weapons.

  Some were homemade, like the blowpipes and the bamboo spears tipped with sharpened stones that lay in a pile on the far side of the hearth, and some that looked like they’d come from a museum, including an ornate sword with a carved bone handle and a large, roughly made iron ax that had obviously been hand-forged and hammered, but still looked dangerously sharp.

  There were also several entirely modern rock hammers, a few rusty screwdrivers, a pipe wrench, and hanging from a makeshift bamboo spit were at least fifty hot-water bottles in a variety of colors. Ranged on a shelflike ledge were a number of amateurishly constructed wicker storage baskets, a wooden crate with the sticker from a pineapple plantation on the side, and an economy-sized red plastic jug of Tide laundry detergent. There appeared to be a pair of brass-cased old-fashioned binoculars hanging by a leather strap from a spiky rock outcropping. Hanging above this assortment of domestic treasures was a large naval pennant, orange on white of an idealized sun with odd-looking rays.