Fragment

by Warren Fahy

  “Follow me.”

  Nell led him through a corridor to the port pontoon and turned left down the passageway.

  “Here,” she said. “My room. Don’t worry. I’m tired, too.”

  “You’re full of surprises.” Geoffrey smiled wryly. “Aren’t there other empty cabins available?”

  “Maybe…” she answered. “I really don’t know.”

  She switched off the light as she climbed onto her double bed and pulled the pillows out from under the bedspread, tossing one to him.

  “It’s horizontal … I’ll take it!” Geoffrey climbed on, too, and rolled over on his side away from her.

  The air was chilly in the cabin and Nell turned and spooned against him.

  “It’s all right,” she told him. “Go to sleep. It’s just a cuddle instinct, as practiced by the North American wolf.”

  “Oh really?”

  “It’s common to all mammals.”

  He chuckled.

  “Go to sleep,” she whispered. “It’s for warmth!”

  “Hmmm,” Geoffrey wondered, feeling very good with this woman pressed against his back, her breath soft against his neck. Suddenly he felt the need to sleep tug him down hard and he yawned again. “Did you ever notice how many scientists’ names match their chosen field of study?” he asked drowsily. “I’m thinking of doing a statistical study and writing a trifling monograph on the subject…”

  She giggled, yawning too.

  “Bob Brain, the famous South African anthropologist who discovered all those big-brained hominids.”

  “Steve Salmon, the ichthyologist.”

  “Mitchell Byrd, the famous ornithologist.”

  “I had a dentist named Bud Bitwell.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he change it to that?”

  “I don’t think so, but knowing him, he actually might have. That would have to be a statistical factor.”

  “Then, of course, there’s Alexander Graham Bell.”

  “Silly, but it qualifies.”

  “That one always got me as a kid. Hey, and our own geologist, Dr. Livingstone.”

  “I had a geology professor named Mike Mountain.”

  “I had a botany professor named Mike Green.”

  “Yeah, that qualifies.”

  “Then there’s Charles Darwin.”

  “Uh…?”

  “A Darwinian biologist?”

  “Yeah, almost too obvious. And Isaac Newton, the Newtonian physicist.”

  “Let’s not even mention Freud.”

  “Not even mentioning Freud is like mentioning Freud.”

  She snuggled closer and sighed sleepily. “Exactly.”

  “You are so outside the box.”

  “Well, names do appear to be a common factor, Dr. Binswanger. You may be onto something,” she said against his neck, too tired to move her head. “Let’s see now. By your theory, I should be…”

  “By my theory, if you were subject to being influenced by your name, Duckworth, which I believe derives from ‘duckworthy,’ or someone who tends ducks, today you might well be studying duck-billed dinosaurs.”

  “I did go through a duck-billed dinosaur phase.” She chuckled.

  “Aha! I rest my case.”

  “You’re a genius. So what does Binswanger mean?”

  “Well,” he said.

  “I know: sometimes a Binswanger is just a Binswanger.”

  “Ho, ho.”

  Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she felt safe, and she knew he was safe, and that the hendros were safe. She needed to feel safe again, she thought with a pang. In less than nine hours, life on Henders Island would be no more.

  “You have to explain to me sometime why you think hen-dropods might be immortal…” she muttered.

  “I will, I will,” he said. “Sweet dreams, darling.” The word came, astonishingly, naturally.

  “Hmm, yes, thank you, you, too.” She smiled, and they both fell instantly asleep.

  SEPTEMBER 17

  2:29 A.M.

  Thatcher pressed the crown to light his Indiglo wristwatch in the dimly lit passageway and used the glowing watch face to illuminate the hatch handle.

  He pulled the handle and crept into the storage room where he had helped stow the aluminum cases. He removed his watch. Using its glowing blue face, he inspected the cases until he found the one with label streaks on the side.

  He took the case, then slipped quietly down the passageway to the Trident’s broadcast control room in the starboard hull.

  He tapped first on the door, to make sure no one was there. Hearing no response, he slipped inside.

  The room was dark. The troll that inhabited it had finally gone to his quarters directly across the hall to sleep, and had left his banks of machines in sleep mode. Their red status lights flickered in the shadows like eyes.

  Thatcher unlatched the aluminum case and poured out the contents of Pandora’s box.

  Six dead-looking Henders rats tumbled onto the floor. Their legs immediately started twitching and clawing.

  “Welcome aboard the S.S. Plague Ship, you little bastards,” Thatcher whispered. “Go forth and multiply.”

  He closed the door quietly behind him. The passageway was empty and silent except for the thrum of the ship’s engines. He ran toward the stern.

  A minute later, he was jumping into the large Zodiac that still trailed the Trident between the port and central pontoons. He took out a Leatherman tool from pocket number eleven and used its serrated knife to slice through the nylon towline.

  The Zodiac slipped away on the Trident’s wake into the spring night.

  “Survival of the fittest, Dr. Binswanger,” he murmured triumphantly at the ship as it motored forward into the gloom.

  He pulled out the satphone he had taken from the Hummer, then fished out a GPS locator from another pocket in his vest. Gazing at the shrinking Trident on the dark sea, he punched a number into the satphone.

  A grouchy voice answered after a few rings.

  “Stapleton! I just knew you’d be up, old friend! What’s that? Well you’re up now. It’s Thatcher. Yes! I need help, mon frère! I had to abandon ship and I am currently on a raft in the South Pacific. Yes, I’m serious! You can’t imagine how serious! It’s a long story. Take down my GPS coordinates before I lose you: Latitude 46.09, 33.18 degrees south, Longitude 135.44, 44.59 degrees west. Send the Navy! I’ll fill you in on the details later! I need your help, my friend! OK, you have a pen? Latitude…”

  7:09 A.M.

  The spring sun of the southern hemisphere warmed the cheeks of the sleeping Thatcher Redmond as it rose.

  The satphone in his vest pocket rang, waking him up from a strange dream in which he was floating in a raft on the open ocean…

  He sat upright at the stern of the big Zodiac and was astonished to see the vast broadside of the guided missile frigate U.S.S. Nicholas cutting into the sea beside him. Stapleton had come through! He had to think fast.

  “Yes, hello!” Thatcher said into the phone. “I am Dr. Thatcher Redmond. I must have hit my head and fallen overboard last night into this raft,” he improvised, breathlessly. “Unless someone else struck me!”

  “Is that the ship, sir?” came the voice, apparently from the giant ship.

  Thatcher turned and saw the Trident on the horizon. He had expected the damn ship to be miles away by now.

  “Yes, that’s it!” he said, thinking fast as probabilities shifted in his mind. “That ship is infested with dangerous animals illegally smuggled off Henders Island. I am an award-winning scientist, and I’m simply appalled that this sort of thing can go on and no one is doing anything about it!”

  “Did you say animals are being smuggled on that vessel, sir?”

  “Yes, yes! Dangerous animals! From Henders Island!”

  There was a long silence as the raft rolled up and down on the ship’s wake.

  Over the ship’s loudspeakers came an answer:
“A RESCUE HELICOPTER FROM THE U.S.S. STOUT WILL COME FOR YOU WITHIN THE HOUR, SIR! JUST HANG TIGHT!”

  The Navy frigate sliced through the water toward the Trident with alarms sounding.

  As he propped himself against the stern to watch the U.S.S. Nicholas close in on the Trident, Thatcher sat back and repressed a smile. He reached into his pockets to see if he still had anything to snack on squirreled away.

  7:15 A.M.

  The ship’s klaxon sounded, and all hands emerged groggily on the Trident’s foredeck. Three Navy ships bore down on the Trident from three points on the horizon.

  Captain Sol’s voice reverberated over the intercom: “All hands on deck! The Navy is ordering us to abandon ship!”

  Geoffrey and Nell ran to join Peach, Cynthea, Zero, Andy, Warburton, and Captain Sol on the bridge.

  They heard the stern voice of a Navy officer on the radio now: “All passengers are ordered to abandon ship with nothing but their persons! The Trident will be scuttled. All passengers are ordered on deck now!”

  The voice did not wait for an answer but continued to repeat its implacable demands.

  “Tell him we need to speak to the President!” Nell cried.

  Captain Sol cut in. “This is Trident. We have a special request and would like to appeal directly to the President—”

  “Trident, you will comply with our demands immediately. Is that understood?”

  “We’re screwed,” Zero muttered.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Geoffrey said. “We’re on a floating television studio!”

  Cynthea looked tortured as she shook her head. “The Navy took away all our satellite transmission equipment after we lost Dante—”

  “I still have a videophone,” Peach interrupted.

  “Peach!” Cynthea gripped his shoulders.

  Peach handed her a spare wireless headset from around his neck.

  “You’re my hero!” Cynthea yelled.

  “I know, boss.”

  “Go get it, go set it up!” Cynthea shouted after him as Peach and Zero ran out the hatchway down the stairs.

  Cynthea put on the headset and adjusted the mike.

  “Set it up on the bow, Peach! Make sure to get the battleships in the frame,” she commanded through the headset. “We’ll make a human shield!”

  She grabbed the satellite phone in the bridge and punched in a number. She winked at Nell as she said, “Hi, Judy, this is Cynthea Leeds. Put me through to Barry, sweetie!”

  Captain Sol grimaced as the Navy ships grew rapidly on the horizon in the wide window of the bridge.

  7:16 A.M.

  Peach and Zero tore down the passageway. Zero opened the hatch of the control room—only to see five Henders rats leaping straight at him.

  Zero’s reflexes were barely fast enough to slam the hatch in time. A cold sweat washed over him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He looked at Peach with wide eyes.

  Hender popped out of a hatch farther down the companion-way and Copepod jumped out behind him. Hender yawned, scratching his head and belly with four hands, and saw the two humans. Suddenly, he heard or smelled something that made him leap down the passageway on four legs toward them. Copepod stayed at his heel, snarling.

  “Ooooooh,” Hender said, and he made a staccato call like a rising clarinet scale.

  The other hendropods burst from their rooms and ran down the hall to join him, shooing the humans away.

  The five hendros huddled around the hatch to the control room and then they rushed in one after another, banging the hatch closed behind them.

  “Come on, Peach,” Cynthea urged over Peach’s headset.

  “Um, there’s a delay, boss,” Peach said.

  “There’s no time for delays!” she snarled.

  Zero shook his head at Peach.

  Peach winced. Then, ignoring Zero’s objections, he opened the control room hatch and ran in, slamming it shut behind him.

  He grabbed the videophone, camera, laptop, and microphones while the hendropods, appearing and disappearing around him, fought off the rats launching viciously at him. One scratched Peach’s forehead with a raking claw arm but another hendro shot the rat through its arching center with a whirring obsidian disk. A few severed locks of hair revealed Peach’s brow, where a thin cut started bleeding. But Peach didn’t shout. He focused instead on the equipment he needed.

  Peach lurched out the hatch with gear under his arms. Still inside, the hendropods slammed the hatch behind him, the bottom of his pant leg caught with two rat arms pierced through the jeans. He yelled and jerked his foot to rip free and the hatch opened for an instant as the rat was pulled back in before the hendros slammed the hatch shut again, freeing his leg.

  “Come on!” Zero yelled.

  “What about them?” Peach gestured at the hatch.

  Copepod barked at the hatch, his body rigid as he jumped and clawed frantically at the door.

  Andy came running in. “Where’s Hender?”

  “In there,” Zero answered.

  Andy reached for the hatch. But Zero stopped him.

  “No,” he shouted, then turned and ran after Peach. “Get the hendros up here as fast as you can but don’t open that goddamned door, Andy!”

  7:18 A.M.

  Thatcher munched trail-mix as he watched artillery shells prick white plumes off the Trident’s bow.

  The Zodiac drifted into the wide foamy plain of the Nicholas’s wake. The salt was thick in the air as the billions of bubbles churned by the frigate’s propellers fizzed on the surface of the sea around him.

  He squinted with grim satisfaction at each delayed concussion that rolled over the waves. He was betting that after the chaos subsided, anyone on the Trident would be lucky to be alive. Certainly none of them would be able to exonerate themselves even if they were. It was also extremely likely that the hendropods would be killed along with the rats when the ship was finally boarded by the Navy and they were discovered.

  Thatcher knew his story was rock solid, that his reputation would win the battle of credibility, and that history would forever cast the others in shades of doubt, no matter the outcome. The odds were that he would gain even more stature before all was said and done simply by opposing them, even if by some miracle they did survive. He had, after all, witnessed them smuggling live, extremely dangerous specimens off Henders Island, in direct violation of a Presidential order, a crime tantamount to global terrorism. And the scene of the crime was about to be vaporized forever by a nuclear weapon.

  He had been hoping that he would not have to call any attention to the Trident—the long shot he had pictured was the voracious rats taking over the ship, which would have eventually run aground or been boarded so that the rats would then start spreading at some port of call or random landing point. And the seeds of mankind’s destruction would have been planted, though too slowly to ever reach him in Costa Rica. What a show it would be to watch the Earth’s man-centric ecosystem collapsing across whole continents during the last twenty years of his life.

  But he could settle for the crew and passengers of the Trident discredited as terrorists and quite possibly killed in a confrontation with the Navy; there was really no downside.

  “Free will, Dr. Binswanger,” Thatcher goaded the younger scientist from afar, reciting the Redmond Principle, “can and will do anything.” He bit his lower lip as he realized that he wasn’t a fraud, after all, and the notion seized him with a paroxysm of laughter. After doing away with his own son, and now possibly an entire intelligent species, if not his own, he had categorically proven the Redmond Principle, all by himself.

  7:20 A.M.

  The Navy ships continued to close on the Trident as another warning shot erupted off her starboard side.

  “Hurry it up, Cynthea,” Captain Sol urged. Then, on the radio, he said, “We are complying! We are complying!”

  “All hands on deck now, Captain!” came the response.

  Cynthea still clung to the phone. “Barry, this is television his
tory! No—it’s BIGGER THAN TELEVISION, sweetie! Come on! Say yes!”

  7:21 A.M.

  As the crew gathered at the prow of the Trident, Zero and Peach set up the videophone equipment, looking over their shoulders at the two huge Navy ships bearing down port and starboard.

  7:21 A.M.

  “Hender,” Andy shouted through the door of the control room. “We have to go!”

  7:21 A.M.

  The Zodiac rolled over a series of high swells, as Thatcher watched the Navy ships closing in on the Trident.

  He recognized the bottom of a jar of Planters cashews buried under some rubber fins and scuba gear. He dug it out and was disappointed when he twisted off the lid to see that there were only three left.

  7:21 A.M.

  Cynthea furiously negotiated with the SeaLife producers on the phone and finally played her trump card: “We could all get KILLED, Barry—on LIVE television!”

  7:22 A.M.

  Cynthea ran down the stairs from the bridge toward the bow, screaming, “OK, set it up! Set it up! We’re going live right now! Don’t ask! Where are they?”

  The crew of the Trident was clustered on the prow, with the two ships looming in the background, perfectly framed. But no hendropods.

  Running to the prow at full tilt, Cynthea stepped in front of the camera and played reporter. “What remains of the crew of the Trident is now being threatened by the United States Navy. Abandon ship or go down with the ship is their order. Why?” She looked in vain toward the companionway but saw no sign of the hendros as she vamped. “Because today we have saved a remarkable species from total destruction!”

  Another shot exploded directly off the bow.

  7:23 A.M.

  “We have to exit, Hender,” Andy shouted. “Go now! Now, now, now!”

  Andy reached for the door handle and the hatch opened inward.