The Halcyon Dislocation

by Peter Kazmaier

  “I’m going to send you down the coast with Linder to try to find a path through the swamp or a pass through these mountains to the west of us. When you’re reasonably sure you’ve found a way out of this box, report back and we’ll be set for our next move in the spring.”

  “Why aren’t you sending the naval guys?” asked Dave.

  “Good question. I can already see I have a real problem here,” said O’Reilly. “The addiction to Happy Berries is much deeper than I’d figured, and Henderson is part of the conspiracy. His spies are all around me. I really don’t know who I can trust. I’m convinced the berries are dangerous, and I’m going to stop the practice, but I don’t know how many people are hooked. In any case, I’ll need all of the naval personnel here to support me. I’m counting on the fact that I’m an ex-navy guy to help.”

  Chapter 10 The Expedition Heads South

  On the third of September the exploration party assembled on Boomerang Island for departure. Dave was wearing full gear, with his short sword fastened onto his hip, his pack on his shoulder, and a stout ash staff in his hand. He’d been elated to hear that Glenn and Al were coming along on the trip. He also knew Floyd Linder from Socrates and Vlad Sowetsky from that fateful television interview that had led to the riot. There were five in the expedition he did not know: Tom Chartrand, Dwight Larsen, Kyle Jensen, Brendon Monk, and Stan Bigelow. Bigelow, a powerfully built youth who was a biology major, had volunteered for the expedition in order to catalog the flora and fauna encountered on the journey.

  Dave was chatting with Glenn about the new crossbows they had received from the Halcyon armory when Al and Floyd arrived at the shore carrying rifles.

  “We got ’em!” said Floyd, holding up his rifle. “But we only have 200 rounds of 9 mm ammo and we were told to bring back the empty shells. Are we all here? Let’s get started.”

  Four small dinghies had been commandeered for the journey south along the coast. Floyd dispersed the expedition members among the craft. Al and Glenn joined Dave in the third boat.

  They had no sooner started their journey, than Glenn began to complain. “Why don’t we have any women on this expedition?”

  “I’m sure Governor O’Reilly, ever protective of the gentler sex, knew you were coming along and made plans accordingly,” said Al, chuckling.

  “Yeah, but in these days of equality, having ten men and no women on an expedition is simply not right,” lamented Glenn. “In fact, it’s downright indecent!”

  “Governor O’Reilly is from the old school, and I’m sure in his view, having women along on an expedition like this would be an added complication we don’t need,” said Al in a more serious tone.

  “I still think it’s undemocratic and inegalitarian. It’s also not going to be much fun,” muttered Glenn.

  The shore passed by slowly as they sailed south in the gentle breeze. That evening, after a long day in which they had covered only about fifteen miles, they camped on a small island just off the mainland. In two more uneventful days they completed the rest of the sixty-mile trip to the edge of the southern swamp. When they had unloaded their supplies on a sandy beach in a cove sheltered from the breakers, they bid the dinghies goodbye and organized their supplies for the trek inland.

  Floyd called them together. “I want us to use the buddy system. No one is to be out of sight of their buddy for any reason.”

  Floyd had a compass and had been conscientiously mapping the coast on the voyage south. In his journal, he was making approximate notes of their position by dead reckoning. He made one final notation in his notebook and then indicated the direction they were to take and led the way into the forest.

  Dave walked with Glenn. The ground was covered with leaves accumulated from the passage of many seasons in a forest of oak, alder, and beech. The canopy was so dense that only small bushes grew in the gloom of the forest floor. The land rose gently toward the west, and the walk was easy. In the first two hours they crossed only one stream, which flowed southeast, and they refilled their water bottles from a clear pool.

  Soon thereafter the land began to rise more steeply as they approached a ridge of rock running north to south. When they reached the top of the ridge, Dave could see the same spine of rock breaking out of the green forest like a monstrous sea serpent, with loop after loop of its coils breaking out of a green sea. The spine of rock jutted into the fetid fens to the south, a narrow stone peninsula, and then disappeared as if it too had sunk into the swamp. The wasteland of pools and cypress groves stretched before them south and west until lost in a distant mist at the edge of sight.

  The sunlight on the ridge top was so refreshing after the gloom of the forest that Floyd decided they should take a break. They gathered in a tight group and opened their packs for a bite to eat.

  “Have you seen any new species?” Floyd asked Stan.

  “No, I haven’t,” said Stan with his mouth full. “I saw one Happy Berry bush at the coast, and since then everything else, as far as I can tell, is the same as at home.”

  “Well, isn’t that mighty unusual?” asked Floyd.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Stan. “It just means that life here has evolved very much the same as on Earth. Besides, it’s not as if things are completely identical. There are some new species here, like Happy Berries and the opera bird.”

  “But don’t you think,” asked Al, “that if you had made an evolutionary prediction before you had the facts, you would have predicted a very different set of species here than at home?”

  “It seems to me you could argue it both ways,” said Stan. “On the one hand, you could argue that the isolation would produce very different species, but on the other hand, since the environment is the same you could argue that the optimally adapted species would be the same.”

  Al looked skeptical but said nothing. Dave could tell by Stan’s grimace that he didn’t like Al and they’d obviously argued about this before.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” said Stan, looking at Al, “how the fact of evolution explains everything so well? Don’t you agree, Al?”

  Al hesitated, as if debating whether he should answer or not. “I suppose I agree,” he said slowly, “but not in the way you think. I think that anyone who wants to explain any biological fact by calling on convergent evolution to explain similarities and divergent evolution to explain differences has so many degrees of freedom available that he can use them to explain anything. The real test of a theory is the ability of that theory to make a nontrivial prediction. That’s why I asked what you would have predicted.”

  Stan went scarlet and grew angry. “I’m not stupid! I can see where you’re heading. You’re challenging one of the most thoroughly established principles of science. What are you, some kind of religious fanatic who doesn’t believe in the theory—”

  “Hold it!” interrupted Floyd. “I asked a simple question and don’t want to get into any philosophical debates—”

  “It’s not philosophy—” cut in Stan.

  “Nevertheless, let’s get going. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” With that Floyd rose and headed off down the west side of the ridge. The others followed in single file.

  They traveled inland for the rest of that day. The woods, now predominantly maple and ash with the occasional basswood, was open and crisscrossed with game trails. Late in the afternoon, at the far edge of a meadow, Dave saw a doe and a fawn moving along the margin of a quiet brook. The doe stopped to look at them for a moment and then bent over for a drink from the stream before she continued on.

  She’s never seen humans before.

  During the course of the afternoon the wind veered to the south and the heavy smell of decaying plant matter filled their nostrils. The land leveled off, and they crossed a broad plateau of copse-fringed meadows. Floyd directed them south. When they reached the edge of the plateau and looked to the south and west, they saw an unbroken vista of stagnant pools, swamp grass, and clusters of cypress trees stretching as far as the eye
could see. There was no option but to continue west.

  They walked along the edge of the plateau. The open country made walking easier, although the smell of the swamp was overpowering. Their path was cut by several small creeks that splashed down the steep slope to join that reeking mosaic of fetid pools and masses of decaying plant matter.

  That evening they approached a tall hill, an outlier from the mountains that they could see in the distance. The north side of the hill was a steep treed slope, but the south side was a jagged cliff, as if a giant had riven the hill with a sword stroke to the rock beneath. Floyd decided they needed to climb the hill to get their bearings, to search for the best route, and hopefully to make camp above the noisome smell of the fens. They toiled up the steep eastern slope, scrambling over patches of loose soil, grabbing vines and branches to bring them over the treacherous spots. When they finally reached the top, they were exhausted and sat down to get their bearings. They searched the swamp for any sign of a route south.

  “There is nothing but stinking swamp as far as the eye can see!” said Floyd as he spat to clear his throat of the choking stench wafting toward them in the gentle south wind.

  “I don’t see any sign of higher ground or even a water channel we could navigate for any distance,” said Al.

  Floyd continued to scan the swamp with his binoculars.

  “No, nothin’. I can’t even see the other side from the top of this hill. Just one reeking pool after another, surrounded by hummocks of trees and swamp grass. I don’t even see any birds.”

  “So now what do we do?” asked Brendon Monk.

  “Let’s get some rest and keep pushing westward along the edge of this morass. I sure would be happy to see the end of it,” said Floyd.

  They searched for a level area to make their camp and settled on a hollow partway down the northwest slope of the hill. They were so tired that they had a quiet supper and then fell asleep, exhausted.

  The next morning, while Glenn was still snoring peacefully in his sleeping bag, Dave scrambled out of their tent and worked his way back up the hill to look at the surrounding terrain in the morning light. The air was already warm, and with a gentle wind blowing from the north, the air was free from the smell of decay. The morning was beautiful. Bushes of hibiscus peeked out from among the sycamores covering the northern slope of the hill. The large trumpet-shaped flowers were a stark contrast to the green foliage. When he reached the crest, Dave looked north and saw fog, like a gray garment, covering the plateau. In the distance, first hills and then the purple ramparts of mountains reared above the mist in the morning light. In the immediate vicinity, their hill was an island rising out of a sea of fog. The stillness and beauty took his breath away.

  He walked over the crest to the southern cliff. A thick ghostly mist also covered the swamp. Farther south the gentle northern breeze collided with a wind from the distant ocean, stirring the mist so that it boiled like a caldron with only the occasional cypress tree appearing and disappearing in it.

  As Dave walked along the edge of the cliff he heard a voice. Rounding a rock face, he was surprised to see Al sitting on a stone with a leather-bound book in his lap. He was praying. Across from him sat Tom Chartrand and Dwight Larson in silence.

  Dave felt awkward and embarrassed, as if he’d intruded on a private conversation. He quietly backed away, wondering if they would meet together every morning before breakfast.

  Later, Dave told Glenn about what he’d seen, and asked him what he thought.

  “Al’s an okay guy, but you don’t want to get mixed up in this religious thing,” said Glenn.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You know! If you’re religious, your life is all about rules. ‘Don’t do this.’ ‘Don’t do that.’”

  “Maybe the rules have a purpose? Maybe they help you tell right from wrong. Don’t you have a sense that one of the problems we have at Halcyon is that now that we’re cut off from the rest of the world, and Blackmore has started to make up our rules, we’ve lost our sense of right and wrong?”

  “Look, Dave,” said Glenn. “You worry too much about right and wrong and the goings-on at Halcyon. What you need to do is have a little time for yourself. If you think about it, it won’t be too many years before we’re both crotchety old men. We need to get as much out of our twenties as we can. Look out for number one; squeeze as much fun and happiness out of this world as you can, and forget the Blackmores. They’ll set themselves up so they’re talking for God, and if you’re listening to them you’ll end up being their dupe.”

  “You could be right,” said Dave. “I feel like I’ve been living under a rain cloud. I guess that’s what you’re seeing. I excused it because I was missing my family and I was worried about Uncle Charlie. Is that wrong?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s wrong exactly, but you’ve got to snap out of it.” Glenn lowered his voice. “Look, Dave, if you don’t stop taking life so seriously you could end up spending your mornings sitting on a cold rock talking to a make-believe friend, just like Al does. What you need, Dave, is a girlfriend—no, at least two girlfriends.”

  Dave burst out laughing. “Glenn, you’re so predictable!” Then he continued in a more serious tone. “My life is complicated enough. I don’t see how making it more complicated would help. Besides, there isn’t a female within six days of strenuous hiking from here, so you’re prescribing medicine that just isn’t in the cabinet.”

  “Maybe so, but in a couple of weeks when we find the passage out of this box, we’ll head back home and you can take my advice.”

  “Glenn, my parents fell in love and stayed together to raise us, and they’re still in love. If I meet a girl that I could love forever, then what you say makes sense and I’d be after her like a terrier after a bone.”

  Glenn looked at Dave critically. “Terrier after a bone? I can see you’re going to take an awful lot of work until you’re presentable.”

  Glenn stooped down, broke off a blade of grass, and thrust it between his teeth. “Loving forever, as you put it, is precisely what you don’t want. You want to have a bit of fun, with no entanglements. That’s why I said ‘two’ girlfriends. It helps a young whelp like you keep things in perspective.”

  “I just think you’re fooling yourself Glenn, if you really believe you have no entanglements. I think we often don’t know the value of people until we lose them. I’m missing my family now, and maybe that’s a good thing. Rather than find a girlfriend to help me get over my loneliness, perhaps I should use this time to appreciate my family the way they deserve. Maybe I should be glad I’m under a cloud.”

  Dave sat down on a rock and wiped the sweat from his brow with his kerchief. “I never told you about my older brother.” Dave felt his eyes filling with tears. “We used to fight like cats and dogs. He seemed to always be first and in my way. I sometimes wished I could be the oldest in the family. Then one day we were climbing up a quarry wall near home. We weren’t supposed to, but we just did it and didn’t tell Mom and Dad. Joe was ahead of me up the wall. He lost his footing and slid down past me. He caught a rock not six feet from me. He looked at me with eyes the size of saucers, pleading for help. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Then he lost his hold and fell. I can still hear the thud that followed a few seconds later. How I miss Joe. How I wish I could have grabbed him!” Dave’s voice cracked, and he wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “You know I rue all those times I wished I were the oldest. I only really grew to value him after he was gone.”

  Glenn was quiet until it became awkward. “Hey, Dave, I’m really sorry about your brother. But don’t you see how that entanglement has caused you great pain? Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? The more distance you can keep, the less vulnerable you are.”

  “I know what you’re saying, Glenn, but somehow the pain has to be worth it. I don’t know how it’s going to come out, and I can’t really explain it. I’d rather feel this pain of missing him, dreadful as it is, than to
feel nothing. There has to be a reason for this. I just have to discover what it is.”

  Chapter 11 The Southern Fens

  The next three weeks were spent skirting the edge of the swamp. They managed to shoot a few wild turkeys with their crossbows, and each night they set lines with bait in the streams they came across. Invariably they would catch several trout for the next morning’s breakfast.

  The mountains in the west grew closer and larger with each day’s journey. They passed through a country of rolling hills filled with pine forests. The fragrance of the pine and spruce masked the smell of the swamp. The best part of the day for Dave was always evening, around the campfire when the nightlines were set, potatoes had been dug, and supper was digesting with the help of Halcyon tea. As they got to know each other, the group talked about anything and everything; they talked of the families they missed, their hopes for the future, and of course, with Glenn around, they talked about girls.

  On this night, Dave was just settling back when Brendon asked Floyd about a girlfriend at home. Then a debate began about “the ideal woman.” “The ideal woman,” began Glenn in his best imitation of Professor Aberhardt, “is one who dedicates all of her energy to fulfilling every whim and desire of her man.”