by Warren Fahy
Thatcher stiffened.
Hender held up one finger. “Joke,” Hender said.
“I taught him that word.” Andy laughed. “Don’t panic, Thatcher!”
“Joke, Thatcher.” Hender nodded in agreement.
“He’s got a future on The Tonight Show,” Geoffrey said. The other hendros watched the humans laughing and looked at each other in amazement.
8:42 P.M.
Alien as they appeared, Hender’s kindred were each strangely beautiful, with graceful limbs that expressed different styles in motion. Able to locomote with two, four, or six limbs, either swinging from the ceiling or walking on the floor, each of the beings moved in ways disconcertingly different from the others. It was as if five antelope had discovered five completely different ways of walking using the standard four legs. Their fur varied widely, too—not so much like different breeds of cat, more like people wearing different clothes. Watching them, one could only conclude that each had a unique style, and, in this respect, were essentially human. Only humans—juggling, walking, crawling, swimming, skydiving humans—displayed so much individual choice simply through movement.
“See others.” Hender’s woodwind-like voice had a melodious tone. “Thank you thank you thank you. Emergency exit. Hazar-do-us!”
“Yes, Hender. Hazardous!” Geoffrey nodded. He gestured to himself, then pointed at the door. “When others come, emergency exit. OK? Yes?”
Hender smiled, revealing the three wide teeth that wrapped around his upper and lower jaws. He nodded vigorously. “Yes, hazardous! Emergency exit! Thank you, OK, Geoffrey!”
Hender translated for the four other hendropods, whose eyes flicked back and forth between him and the humans.
Under her breath, Nell told Geoffrey, “You speak pretty good Hender.”
“Hender uses only imperative verbs and simple nouns—probably from associating the words with pictures on directions and warning labels. They’re designed so no one has to be able to read to get the point, but often have a variety of verbal translations.”
“I’ll be damned,” Zero muttered. “And I always hated those things.”
Nell smiled, delighted. “Who would have thought warning labels would be the Rosetta Stone?”
Thatcher had been staring off into space, but he abruptly broke his silence. “I still don’t see how they could evolve here.”
“That’s easy,” Andy piped up. “They disappear.”
Nell looked at Andy, puzzled.
“I think their fur can sense light and somehow reflect it on the opposite side of their bodies. Hey, Hender. Disappear! Don’t worry—he likes doing it. He knows it freaks me out!”
Hender nodded at Andy and smiled as his thick fur fluffed out.
Although they were looking right at him, Hender…vanished. The background seemed to emanate through him, leaving only his grin and two eyes visible.
“Dear God,” Thatcher murmured.
“It’s the freakin’ Cheshire Cat, man!”
All of the hendropods followed suit, blending into the background except for their colorful eyes and smiling teeth.
“Holy shit.” Zero videoed as he laughed.
“That must be how their ancestors managed to slow down long enough to think in this environment,” Nell said, thoughtfully.
“And make tools,” Geoffrey added.
“They can step outside this crazy food chain.”
Geoffrey’s eyes lit up as a piece fell into place. “That’s it! Death by predation is so common here that none of these species needed a biological clock to enforce a life span. When these guys developed invisibility…” He turned toward Nell, excited. “They may have become virtually immortal. Which allowed them to preserve the integrity of their gene pool by minimizing procreation! Intelligent creatures could not reproduce very frequently on such a small island,” he murmured. “In a group this small, the risk of compromising the gene pool would be too great. So the longer each generation lasts the less opportunity for genetic corruption. It’s a scenario that I never imagined before!”
“So Hender’s kind might actually be immortal?” Nell whispered. “My God…”
“There are monkey versions of Hender in the jungle that disappear, too,” Andy said. “Quentin and I called them shrimpanzees. Hender doesn’t like them very much because they steal from his traps.”
“Sounds like a much safer species to rescue, if you ask me,” remarked Thatcher.
“Hey Hender saved all of our lives today, asshole!” Andy retorted. “Shrimpanzees would have had you for lunch. And dinner, maybe.”
“Dozens of people have died on this island in only a few weeks, Dr. Redmond,” Nell said. “We may seem safe right here for the time being, but we wouldn’t last more than a few minutes outside this tree.”
“By the way!” Andy rose and slid his glasses up his nose, raising his eyebrows at the ruddy zoologist. “Just out of curiosity, Thatcher, where the FUCK is our driver?”
“He should have been back by now,” Thatcher snapped back, hotly.
“What have you done with him, Thatcher?”
“What in God’s name are you suggesting?” the older man spluttered.
“I’m starting to wonder about you. I mean, just how far would you go to protect the biosphere from intelligent life, anyway? After all, people are the biggest danger on the planet, right?”
“I resent whatever you are trying to imply,” Thatcher shot back.
“If he doesn’t come back soon, Thatcher, we won’t stand a chance trying to cross this island!” Zero said.
“And even if we stay here, we’ll go out with a big bang.” Geoffrey studied Thatcher thoughtfully.
“Are you absolutely dead nuts positive you got the message across to that kid?” Zero said.
“Or should we start panicking now?” Nell asked.
“What exactly are you accusing me—”
Another quake wrenched the ground, twisting the fuselage around them.
The hendropods reappeared and moved closer to the humans.
“With this kind of seismic activity the military could already be evacuating the island for all we know,” Geoffrey said.
“Maybe the Army doesn’t want the hendropods to get off the island, and they’re just going to leave us behind!”
“He may have had an accident,” Thatcher conceded, realizing it might be true and gambling heavily that it wasn’t.
“Maybe he got ambushed by God-knows-what-out-there,” Geoffrey said.
“OK,” Nell said. “That’s too many maybes, guys. Zero, can your camera zoom in on the base so we can see what’s going on?”
8:47 P.M.
Zero set his camera up on a tripod outside Hender’s door. Switching to night vision, he saw a greenscape with the broken ring of jungle around the bottom of the island lit up like a galaxy. He zoomed in on the Trigon over a mile away and saw helicopters coming and going and Humvees speeding back to the base.
“Hell, it looks like they’re packing it in and getting out of here.”
Zero panned west. He saw that the crack in the far wall of the island had grown. Seawater had swelled the pool that had saved his life to the size of a lake.
“That crack’s opening up. The ocean’s coming in.”
“Shit!” Nell moved aside so Geoffrey could look.
“When water hits old dry fault lines…Bang! Instant earthquake,” Geoffrey peered through the viewfinder. “And every quake will just let more water into the island’s substratum.”
“Terrific,” Zero muttered.
“Do we trust Thatcher?” Geoffrey asked abruptly.
Nell frowned. “The answer lies in the question.”
“I don’t think he has the courage to kill himself along with us,” Geoffrey told her.
“You’re probably right. So he probably told Cane the right thing to say. But Cane might not have done it. And I’m beginning to wonder if, even if he did, we can count on being rescued. I know it’s an awful thing t
o have to think about, but we have to be realistic. Thatcher might not be the only one who doesn’t like the idea of intelligent life getting off this island. Maybe the news didn’t go down too well with the powers that be. Or maybe Cane just ditched us.”
“I was thinking the same thing. That kid was pretty freaked out,” Zero said.
“And we don’t have any means of communication or transportation,” Geoffrey said.
A swarm of glowing bugs swept over the moonlit purple fields. “Time to go back inside, kids,” Zero warned.
8:50 P.M.
Nell, Geoffrey, and Zero entered the B-29 and closed the door tight behind them.
A tense Thatcher sat surrounded by curious hendropods, who were fondling his red beard and peering into the pockets of his clothing. One discovered a peanut straggler that Thatcher had missed and one of its eyes bent down as it examined it closely— then it grabbed the peanut with its lips and crunched it while registering what seemed to be a smile of pleasure with its wide mouth. Between two arching fingers it offered Thatcher what looked like a miniature dried embryo.
Andy had been keeping watch through the cockpit at the far end of the fuselage.
“Hey, you guys,” he yelled. “They’re leaving without us!”
The humans and the hendropods moved forward and looked out through the patchwork windshield of the B-29.
Thatcher stayed, sitting near the door, and checked his watch.
8:51 P.M.
Two Navy ships were leaving glowing green wakes of bioluminescent phytoplankton churned up by their propellers as they shipped out. Rounding the cliff below, a ship appeared, heading north.
“The Trident !” Nell shouted.
Geoffrey raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”
“It’s the ship from SeaLife,” Zero explained.
“Oh,” Geoffrey said.
“I never thought I’d be so glad to see her!” Nell said.
“Wait a minute!” Zero pulled out a palm-sized short-range video transmitter from one of his pants pockets and unfolded the transmission dish.
He quickly hooked up a jack to the camera and another to a speaker and handed the transmitter to Geoffrey.
“Aim the antenna at the Trident,” he said. “There may be just enough juice left! This thing’s only got a seven-hundred meter range but we might get a bounce off the water. Come on, Peach!”
8:52 P.M.
Peach was playing Halo 5 with earphones on, listening to “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys and crunching spicy cinnamon Red Hots between his molars.
He vaporized a gallery of monstrous aliens with furious efficiency and, suddenly, his Spider Sense detected a status message in the upper right corner of the computer screen:
INCOMING TRANSMISSION.
Peach lifted an earphone. “What the—”
He jockeyed the keyboard and swiftly brought up the feed.
Nell, Andy, and Zero waved frantically in a window on the screen. Behind them stood a cluster of creatures that looked like something from his videogame.
He was stunned for a beat, then fumbled for the volume.
“Peach! Peach! Are you there? Help!”
Peach could not unravel his tongue. He fumbled with a microphone jack. “Zero? Is that you, man?”
Peach pulled an extra wireless headset mike out of his hair and positioned it in front of his mouth. “Boss! Boss! You better get in here!”
8:54 P.M.
The door of the bridge banged open and Cynthea ran in, startling Captain Sol and First Mate Warburton.
“Stop the ship, Captain,” she said breathlessly. “Drop the anchor!”
“Are you insane? Not when the U.S. Navy just told us to reach minimum safe distance from a NUCLEAR BLAST.”
“It’s Nell and Zero and Andy. They’re stranded on the island, Captain! They need help!”
Captain Sol cocked his head at her. “Andy? The poor lad is dead.”
“We’ll be out of range of their transmission if you go any farther,” Cynthea pleaded. “Stop the ship!”
Captain Sol frowned but reluctantly nodded at Warburton to cut the engines, testing the sincerity in Cynthea’s eyes with a hard look. “Radio Enterprise and tell her we’ve got a distress call,” he ordered Warburton.
“No!” Cynthea shouted. “You better come see this first.”
Captain Sol’s frown deepened. “Lady, so help me if this is some kind of publicity stunt—”
“What should I tell them, Captain?” Warburton asked.
Captain Sol gritted his teeth. “Tell them…we’ve got engine trouble.”
“You are my god, Captain Sol!” Cynthea kissed both whiskery cheeks. “My sea god!”
“All right, that’s enough of that now!”
Captain Sol shook his head at Warburton, then hurried off the bridge after Cynthea.
The first mate spoke to the Enterprise in the smooth voice of a late-night dee-jay: “Hello there, Enterprise, we’ve got a little engine trouble and we’re working on it right now. We should have the problem fixed momentarily.”
8:55 P.M.
Captain Sol and Cynthea watched the monitor above Peach as he patched in the audio. The picture was frazzled by static.
“Now why the hell shouldn’t I tell the Navy to send a rescue crew, damn it, Zero?” the captain demanded.
“Maybe because they don’t want to rescue what we found,” Zero said.
“They may be deliberately abandoning us, Captain,” Andy said.
“Well, what in God’s name could you possibly have found?” the captain asked. “Everything on the island’s about to be nuked! How much worse can it get, for Chrissakes!”
“Captain Sol, please take a big breath,” Andy said. “Did you take one? OK. Now close your eyes and when I tell you, open them…”
Captain Sol did no such thing.
“Andy,” Nell sighed.
Moving Hender into view, Andy yelled, “OK, open them!”
Hender’s fur flushed with fireworks of green and pink light as his eyes darted in different directions.
Peach whispered, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
Captain Sol swallowed a curse. “I am not allowed to make a decision like this, people. The Navy’s orders are to shoot first and ask questions later if anything is smuggled off this island!”
“But these beings are intelligent,” Nell insisted.
“Go ahead, Hender,” Andy urged, and whispered to Hender.
“Hello, Captain Sol,” Hender fluted, and he waved two hands human-style. “Please. Help. Us.”
Captain Sol grabbed the back of a chair to keep from keeling over.
Cynthea put an arm around him, looking at the screen. “You’re recording this, right, Peach?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, Boss.”
8:58 P.M.
“These new tri-engines are temperamental as heck, and I guess they’re a bit rusty,” Warburton crooned on the radio to the Enterprise. “One of them gets out of sync, it sets off a chain reaction, and before you know it, they all just… freak out!”
The first mate winced at his own B.S.
“What’s the ETA on engine repairs, Trident?” came the response from the Enterprise. “Over?”
“Uh, not sure, Enterprise.”
“OK. Trident, you are drifting closer to shore, there, copy?”
“Yes, Enterprise, we copy. We’ll drop anchor and continue to effect repairs.”
“Marcello!” Warburton gestured to the seventeen-year-old crewman, who was kissing his St. Christopher’s medal.
Marcello let go of his medal and dropped anchor at the same time.
The steel claw bit into a solid rock holdfast two hundred feet below the surface.
“Copy that, we think that’s a good idea, Trident! Uh, you’re going to need to get moving within one hundred nineteen minutes or abandon ship. Is that well understood?”
The anchor bit rock and the line stretched taut as Warburton started letting it out farther toward th
e shore.
“Understood, Enterprise,” he answered, gritting his teeth. “It takes a lot less time than that to fix these things, usually!”
“OK, Trident. Keep us informed. Enterprise out.”
8:59 P.M.
“So they might not want us to get off the island, Captain Sol,” Andy said. “Do you get it now, what we’re trying to say?” “Yes, Andy,” the captain said. “I think I get it!” “Can’t we launch the mini-sub?” Cynthea asked. “With two Sea-Wolf anti-sub attack submarines listening for exactly that? Christ, they can probably hear what we’re saying right through the hull of this ship.”
“We gotta do something, man,” Peach said.
Captain Sol nodded, stroking his beard. “Maybe we can let out the winch on the Zodiac and let the tide carry it in closer….But how the heck can you get down to us?”
Everyone in the B-29 cockpit turned to the right to look at the basket hanging from the branch of Hender’s tree.
“Hender,” Geoffrey pointed. “Exit?”
“Water hazar-doo-us. Hender no water.”
“Of course, they go at low tide!” Nell said.
“Exit OK Hender,” Geoffrey said. “Exit safety OK?”
“Dane-jer! Dane-jer!” Hender shouted, pointing down.
“Humans below help,” Nell said. “Safety. Raft. Safe!” She pointed down and nodded.
“Rescue, raft!” Geoffrey added. “Safety!”
“Raft.” Hender nodded at Nell with what she could have sworn was skepticism. He closed his eyelids for a moment, then looked at Nell with both eyes. “OK. Safety.”
Hender turned and spoke to the other hendropods.
“OK, Captain Sol,” Andy said. “We’re going to be coming down in a basket sort of elevator thing…”
“What?” Captain Sol said.
“Go on deck and look up at the cliff. We’ll wave some lights so you can see us.”
Geoffrey motioned to the other humans, and they each scooped up some bug-jars.