“Don’t let your prejudices blind you,” Leon said. “He’s shown you ample evidence his science is worthy of respect, even if it’s not the science you know.”
A tense silence greeted the stalemate between the two men. And like any void, it begged to be filled. The outpouring came from the audience.
“Shit, guys, you’re not talking to men anymore, you’re talking to supermen. Or soon to be supermen. Something tells me we’ll get around that old witch doctor just fine.” That was Ajax riding the wave of whistles and catcalls in support of his declaration.
“If he figures out how to get inside your heads…” Natty said.
Once again there was dead silence.
“If he takes control of you, either by the method Leon suggests, or by my method, then you’re his voodoo doll puppets. And the only way to defend yourselves will be to put someone down who’s probably closer to you than your own wife.”
More dead silence.
Just some painful body repositioning from people no longer able to get comfortable in their seats.
Finally DeWitt said, “So we just ignore whoever they throw at us and go straight for the witch doctor.”
Another reprise of whistles and catcalls and claps.
“Not the witch doctor,” Leon said, climbing over their voices. “That old man couldn’t possibly have the mental stamina to control so many human puppets. He’ll be saving his juice for one thing.”
“I’m frightened to ask what,” Ajax mumbled.
“You and me both,” Leon said. “But for now, we focus on the younger ones. I’m guessing they’re his son and daughter.”
“The ones we saw from the plane,” DeWitt interjected, “with similar body markings to the old man, but different than all the rest of the tribe.”
“You can bet they’ve got the juice to conduct a full orchestra.”
The others nodded.
All except for Natty. “If what you’re saying is true, Leon, then once the spirit is coaxed into the body, it does all the work. That would explain how the old man has the kind of sway he does over the tribe, even if he can’t match the vitality of his progeny.”
Once again a tense silence descended on the group. This time it was Leon who shattered it. “Fine, we go after all three of them with equal gusto.”
“The triple threat. Can we go with that?” Crumley said. “Has a nice ring to it.” He was greeted with rude silence. “Just saying.”
“One last thing,” Natty said. “I’m confident my nano will trump their relatively antiquated version. But voodoo-driven nano men, that’s another thing. It’s possible I just balanced the scales. In which case, they still have you grossly outnumbered.”
“We’re used to playing the underdogs,” Leon said. “You let us take it from here.”
He clapped his hands to dispel the defeatism. “Now, let’s get going with those injections.”
“Wait!” DeWitt shouted.
“Stop stalling, DeWitt!” Leon barked.
“Didn’t Natty say that The Puppet Master only takes you over if your mindchip is busted?” DeWitt said. “So, what about the chick with the invisibility cloak?”
Natty looked at Laney. “It stands to reason her chip would be intact,” he said.
“She did crack her head pretty hard against my chrome dome,” Crumley muttered. “I doubt the chip is in one piece after that.”
Not particularly assuaged, they all looked around for The Invisible Woman.
They didn’t find her but they saw her footsteps running away in the mud at their feet. Leon threw a knife just where the center of her back would be. She flashed visible for a second, showing the knife had caught its mark, before running on, undeterred, and returning to invisibility mode.
“I thought we covered this already,” Natty said. “If the mindchip isn’t busted, they’re nearly as capable as the next generation on line.”
“Yeah, I guess even the A-student gets to act stupid once in a while,” Leon mumbled. “And now she’s going to tell the enemy what they’re up against, and how to defeat us. Are we ready for that injection yet?”
“Hell yes!” came the chorus.
TWENTY
“I think you better handle the injections,” Natty said.
“Why me?” Laney’s tone was all about pushback.
“They’re going to look at it as the kiss of death, despite all their bluster and our pep talk. Put yourself in the shoes of a straight guy. Wouldn’t you want it coming from you?”
She took the handful of needles out of his hand and combined them with hers and trudged off in the direction of the soldiers.
Upon her arrival, DeWitt pushed his way to the front of the line. “You always the one to jump on the grenade ahead of the rest of them?” she said.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m knee deep in ‘no guts, no glory.’ A person has to do something to stand out.”
Laney studied his face as she wiped the alcohol swab over his shoulder. “All the vaunted displays of courage? If you think about it too much, you’ll lose your nerve.” She stabbed him with the needle. “That’s why Leon made you his number two. He knows you draw strength from him. So he keeps you close.”
“Ouch, lady, that hurts worse than the needle.”
He snapped a picture of her giving him the shot. “For the ten-year-old back home,” he said.
“Playing director and cameraman also allows you to step out of the scene, so you’re no longer the actor caught up in the drama. It’s another distancing technique to keep you from being paralyzed by the horror of it all.”
DeWitt regarded her hang-jawed. “Lady, don’t ever become a shrink without first purchasing a mortuary, so you can benefit from the uptick in suicides.”
He stared at the bead of blood bubbling up from the injection site and said, “Look, you made a boo-boo. Now you need to kiss it and make it all better.”
She smiled at him, wiped the spot off with the alcohol swab, and planted her lips on the “wound.”
Ajax pushed DeWitt out of the way. “If I knew you were handing out kisses with the injections, I’d have been the first one in line.”
Laney went through the same ritual with the alcohol swab. As they locked eyes, he seemed to realize what she was doing and got the jump on her. Rather than let her pry the truth out of him about who he truly was, he just spilled. Though, she suspected, more by way of distraction.
“What’s the difference between a G-spot and a golf ball?” he said. She hit him with a leery look. “A guy will actually search for a golf ball.”
She bit her lips. “What does the sign on an out-of-business brothel say?” He just gave her a second. It was like some test to see how quick on her feet she was. “Beat it. We’re closed.”
“Why was the guitar teacher arrested?” Ajax was bouncing his eyes between her eyes now and how she was holding his arm. It was as if he didn’t want her to let go. She was flirting with him by squeezing, and rubbing, essentially copping a feel. “For fingering a minor.”
“What’s the difference between a tire and three hundred sixty-five used condoms?” He gave her just a half second this time. He was picking up the rhythm whether she could keep up or not. “One’s a Goodyear. The other’s a great year.”
“You’re toning it down now that you’re in polite company, aren’t you?” she said.
“Lady, you have no idea.”
She smiled at him. “What’s the difference between a dirty mouth and a dirty mind?”
“Don’t you dare tell me.”
She stabbed him with the needle. “Nothing. Both are pretty flimsy shields against innocence lost.”
“Ouch.” He rubbed his hand over the sore spot. “Not so flimsy. Take it back, what you said.”
With a smile she added, “If the shields are still holding after all these years it’s on account of something else. You’ll figure out what it is.”
He relaxed and smiled at her. “You can put my boo-boo patch job right
there, sweetheart,” he said, pointing to his lips.
She gave him a dry peck on the destination of his choice.
“And there,” he pointed to his dick.
“All right, move it along. One kiss per customer.”
“Yeah, choose wisely,” Ajax said over his shoulder before being pushed out of the way by Crumley.
Finally, it was Leon’s turn. “Figured you’d be the first in line,” Laney said.
He grunted as he rolled up his sleeve. “Up until today it’s just been a walk in the park. This is me admitting we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
As she jabbed the needle into his arm and depressed the plunger, he noticed the glowing night-time forest growing brighter. The pulse of life increasing in and around him.
ACT 2
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
TWENTY-ONE
“Sir, I thought you’d liked to be briefed on the bird men,” Satellite, one of Leon’s ALPHA UNIT members, said, walking up to him with an oversized iPad.
“You know I’m not much on collecting intel on the enemy, Satellite. Gives me too much of an advantage.” He chugged from his canteen and gasped. “Unless, of course, they’ve proven themselves worthy.”
“Does that mean I can go ahead, sir?”
Another swallow of refreshing water, and another gasp. “Oh, yeah. The rest of you gather round, listen up.”
Satellite read off his computer screen, having fished the intel off the net. “They’re known as the Ubuku, or, as you prefer, The Bird Men. It is rumored they breed and train jaguars to hunt for them, getting them to overcome their fear of big game. And to hunt in packs.”
“Bullshit,” Crumley said.
“It’s true.” Leon scooped out a dollop of passion fruit with his bowie knife and shoved it in his mouth.
“What do you mean, it’s true?” the rest of them said, talking over one another, and smelling a rat.
“Look, let’s just take it on faith, okay, based on what we’ve seen so far, that everything we hear about these guys is true until proven otherwise. I’d rather overestimate the enemy than underestimate them. We made that mistake already.”
“The idea of making the big cats fear the birds of color that they tattoo to themselves,” Satellite continued, “is attributed to their philosophy of turning the natural order on its ear. In order to protect the most colorful wildlife, the birds.
“But over time they’ve come to protect all creatures of color, from poison dart frogs to glow-in-the-dark worms. They are renowned, what’s more, for interbreeding plants to get them to glow at night, in reverence of the fire flies and glow worms. These days, they crossbreed all varieties of animals to get more color into them, extending the color palate of the plants and animals that phosphoresce at night as well.”
“You’re saying they don’t just protect this strange section of rainforest that glows in the dark? They created it?” Crumley said.
Satellite ignored the rhetorical question, continuing with his reading, “Their long-term intent is to stamp out the darkness by making all that is beautiful impervious to it, which is why they make things glow at night. It is believed the practice was learned from observing glowing life forms in the deep ocean and how they use their fluorescence and brightness to warn potential predators of the dangers they pose.”
“Bullshit,” Crumley said, loading up on Camu Camu by squeezing the slices into his mouth, using his fingers as a fruit juicer.
“Though how the Ubuku obtained such firsthand knowledge remains controversial,” Satellite continued. “Some argue, mostly their own shamans, that their oral tradition takes them back nearly to the time when humans crawled out of the water, a living history. And their rebirthing rituals and meditative practices permit them further to remember all of their past, including past lives, and their more primitive incarnations as these glowing lifeforms. Which they revere most of all.”
“And the Grand Prize for triple-A bullshit goes to…” Crumley said.
“Guess we better learn how to walk without stepping on so much as a glow worm, and how not to make the mistake of swatting a firefly, if we ever plan to make peace with these guys,” DeWitt said. He glanced down at his boot as he pulled up a foot from the mattress of glow worms beneath them.
Leon glanced around the circle and noticed they were unwittingly going native themselves with their glow-in-the-dark arm bands, head bands, and wrist bands, to help push back the darkness, all emitting at bug-repelling frequencies. He nodded at Ajax who was adding glow-in-the dark earrings, snap-on nose-rings, lip rings, eyebrow rings, and necklaces to the mix. As with traditional glow sticks, he had to apply pressure to get the chemicals to mix in order to give him a good six to twelve hours of radiance.
Ajax glanced up at the troop staring at him, his face drawn away from his makeup mirror by the sudden silence. “Hey don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. I sleep like a baby all done up like a drag queen.” The others laughed. “I’m serious. Even the frog croaking and insect whining dies down around me. I think the critters are conditioned to react accordingly to the Ubuku glow warriors.”
Leon smiled. “You may be on to something, Ajax. Go on, Satellite.”
Satellite continued. “Other historians claim that the Ubuku encountered sea men at some point in their history who had possibly fished these glowing sea monsters out of the ocean in their nets or encountered them in their travels, perhaps after a storm at sea had dredged them to the surface. And, with evidence in hand, the bird men’s tall tales were rehearsed until they took hold of the Ubuku imagination in a time when all natives revered one animal god or another. Most tribes in this region revere the jaguar as one would a god. But for the Ubuku, it is brightly colored and glowing life forms, for whatever reason.”
“Hell, if they get their way,” Leon said, clearing a path through his stash of overripe caju fruit and cashews, “they’ll turn this place into an even bigger tourist attraction, with people content to take pictures for fear of touching anything that draws the eye. Thus balancing protecting the wildlife—plant and animal—with a growing influx of tourists.”
Leon sucked the life out of a wedge of passion fruit before continuing, “Maybe they felt they couldn’t forestall the advance of civilization. And found a creative way to keep things in balance between the old world and the new for time immemorial.”
“Speaking of,” Satellite said, “the Ubuku have their own version of the Aborigine Dreamland. Communing with spirit entities that act as go-betweens between our physical world and the spiritual realm. Thus acting to create a perpetual present that blends past, present, and future. In keeping with the timeless spirits they revere.”
Leon snorted. “They sound like you, Natty. Isn’t that what you’re doing with your nextgen technologies pulled from the future and the past into the present? Maybe you’re a reincarnation of one of these guys.”
“Hey, I’ll take the free press.”
“You say the past inspires your inventions as much as the future?” DeWitt said.
“Hell, yes.” Natty nodded. He interrupted his pacing and his nail-biting, listening to Satellite’s monologue, to address the group. “The nano-infused body camo you wear works from my studies of primitive cyanobacteria that haven’t lived on this Earth for billions of years; they perished long before the age of man. Just one of countless examples. You could say I build the future out of the past.”
“Any favorite epochs?” Leon asked.
“Yeah, the here and now. Roaming the dreamland while I sleep, I take from all potential pasts and futures in any and all timelines that I can scavenge. I thereby make the present the waist of the hourglass through which the entire multiverse can be accessed.”
Dead, tense silence. Then…
“Ubuku shaman reincarnated. Definitely,” Cronos said, sounding a bit spooked. “Definitely” was quickly echoed by the chorus of souls around the campfire.
“I was thinking the same thing when we first got here and I was
up in the trees,” Natty said, filling the next void in the conversation. “How wrong it is that the darkness is swallowing up all the color. The predators are black and grey and brown. While the rainbow colors of the beautiful birds and lizards and frogs they prey on are so very vibrant and beautiful.”
“Maybe when the white man invaded the jungle, the Ubuku went from feeling like predators at the top of the food chain to prey,” Leon suggested. “And they too started identifying with the creatures of color. The ones at the bottom of the food chain.”
“I know I felt that way as an artist,” Natty said, “looking at hummingbirds being swallowed by spiders and gobbled up by Harpys. An artist more readily relates to the more colorful wildlife because we’re exotic and we stand out too. So we’re easy pickings.
“Didn’t you say, moreover, Satellite, that the Ubuku were the true artists of the jungle, interbreeding plants and animals? Reinventing and redesigning nature, recombining, part of the creative force that is the jungle itself.”
“To do what we’re suggesting,” Leon said, “they would likely study the most deadly creatures in the forest, and impart their chemical and biological warfare secrets to the colorful innocents.” He shifted his attention to the rest of the group. “So do yourself a favor, don’t touch anything pretty.”
“Maybe the predators that get a pass are the colorful ones like the jaguars,” Natty speculated, “who are hunted to extinction just like the pretty birds. Maybe that’s why the Ubuku have gone beyond protecting the birds, which may have been how they started out, to protecting the entire forest by prettifying more and more of it. Replacing all the drab with a rainbow of colors. Even the things that glow at night.”
“Some of the pretty creatures are already quite deadly, but they’re collected anyway by poachers because their beauty is so prized,” Leon explained. “The green tree boa, the yellow pit viper, the poison dart frogs.”
“So, the Ubuku would have had to find a way to make them even deadlier to overcome the urge to stick them in a burlap sack and cart them off,” Natty said, his eyes vacant as he thought it through. He’d returned to his pacing and nail-biting.
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 18