The Sensory Deception

by Ransom Stephens

  Finally something gives. In the instant, Farley thinks he’s pulled Manny’s arm out of its socket. Maybe he has, but the rest of Manny is still attached.

  Farley lifts Manny above the surface. He’s unconscious. Spencer hefts the stocky gay soldier from the badlands of Los Angeles over his shoulder.

  A flurry of shots rings out.

  Tahir stands on the boulder ramp, just above water level, pointing a smoking AK-47 into the cave. More gunfire emanates from inside the cave. Tahir drops to a knee, raises the rifle to his shoulder, and fires a single shot. He throws the gun aside and says, “Clear. Now move.”

  Spencer goes first, with Manny over his shoulder. Farley is right behind.

  They sprint for the ocean. Behind them a cloud of dust and gunfire provides ample notice of their escape. They clear the ridge and cut south, straight into the heart of Sy’s kingdom.

  Men emerge from Sy’s tent and raise their AK-47s but don’t fire. Farley sees Sy step out of his tent. The guards patrolling the ridge, now almost a hundred meters away, let loose automatic gunfire that kicks up dust in every direction. Farley’s team reaches the well at the center of camp and turns left toward the beach. Half the camp now lies between them and the ridge guards, who are still shooting. Some of those bullets could hit Sy’s people. Sy’s men, on the other hand, won’t fire in the direction of their homes and families. More proof that the guards at the prison are contracted mercenaries.

  At the beach, where the open fishing boats and pirate skiffs await and no one stands in the crossfire, Sy’s men take aim and shoot.

  Tahir yells, “Come around from the south.”

  The sand around Farley dances a dusty jig. They veer around the boats closest to the water and duck behind them. The gunfire stops for an instant. It doesn’t make sense to Farley. He grabs a bowline and pulls a boat into the water. Spencer drops Manny into the boat and climbs in, along with Farley and several other people. They drop to the floor of the boat. Bullets fly overhead. They’re sitting ducks now. Farley expects the thin fiberglass to explode in a hail of death, but it doesn’t. He works his way back to the engine. It makes sense: It’s Sy’s navy, and no way will he risk destroying these boats. Even if they’re stolen, he has a chance of getting them back.

  There are ten people in this boat, including the medic, Cai. At the stern, Farley checks the fuel line. It’s disconnected. This is the method Sy uses to prevent theft, a clever fuel-filter system that requires a simple adjustment to connect the line. Farley learned the system while making the documentary and described it to the others while planning the escape the previous night.

  He moves forward to the helm. Still no sign of Tahir. Damn, Tahir needs to be in this boat.

  He rises above the cover of the gunwales to navigate. The others have taken a second skiff. If Tahir is in that boat, they’ll have to find a way to reconnect.

  The gunfire resumes.

  The engine roars. Farley pushes the throttle and the bow leaps up and forward.

  Farley’s earliest memory is at the helm of a ship. He knows the language between boats and the sea. This boat is complaining. He looks back. Two hands hang onto the stern. Farley pulls back the throttle. The bow sinks into the water. Tahir flies over the stern. Farley pushes the throttle forward.

  Several minutes pass before Sy’s navy hits the water behind them. The instant Farley sees the rooster tails of pursuing boats, the two escaping skiffs curl off in separate directions. Farley heads east-southeast for the Lazy Sod, the anchored sailboat that Sy wouldn’t let him “have.” The other boat veers south, aiming to land as close to Kenya as possible. The level of discipline in the plan’s execution is attributable to Tahir’s insistence on selecting people with military experience for the toxic cleanup team.

  There is no way to know how many of them got away, the extent of their injuries, or when, how, or if they’ll reconnect. It weighs on Farley right next to the echo of Manny’s scream as the rock fell.

  It takes ten minutes to reach the sailboat. Farley maneuvers the skiff alongside and the others climb aboard. Still piloting the skiff, Farley pulls away from the sailboat and orients the motorboat directly back toward its pursuer, just fifty meters away. He then hammers the throttle all the way forward. The skiff rockets back toward Sy’s camp. Farley jumps overboard and swims to the sailboat, where Spencer pulls him out of the water.

  One man cuts the anchor line as Farley yells instructions to the others for raising the sails—mizzen, main, and jib, with spinnaker nearby. The instant the main catches the wind, a moderate westerly breeze, the boat pulls forward and picks up momentum. The mizzen and jib fill. Farley raises the spinnaker and the sailboat cuts through the waves.

  Looking back, he sees Sy’s speedboat chasing the runaway skiff. Finally, something has gone right.

  Farley watches the telltales on the sails: perfect laminar flow. An exuberant feeling pushes away the soured adrenaline of the escape. It’s good to be back at sea. With the sails perfectly set, Farley monitors the currents. The jet stream flows north, in the opposite direction; it’s prevailing but not strong.

  Farley settles behind the oversize steering wheel.

  Two days later, the Lazy Sod and its hungry crew arrive at Manda Island in Kenya’s Lamu Archipelago. The little harbor is adjacent to a small industrial airport.

  Manny’s injuries include a broken clavicle, two cracked ribs, and a pretty good concussion—not to mention the bullet still in his shoulder. “Hey man, next time you leave me in the casa, huh? It’s safer in South Central, you know?”

  As they tie down the boat, Farley pulls Tahir aside. “It’s you and me.”

  Tahir says, “I would like an army.”

  Farley puts a hand on Tahir’s arm and says, “The logistics of ten people will slow us down. It’s you and me.”

  Tahir glances at Farley’s hand but doesn’t pull away. “Time is a strange adversary.”

  Farley assembles the others. “This is where we part.” He makes sure that they know how to contact Bupin and VISHNU and says, “See you in California.” Then, to Cai and Spencer, “I need you to take care of Manny.”

  Manny says, “Good thing not to ask me to come with you, man; workin’ for you sucks.”

  Farley turns to Manny. “We’ll get you some first aid.”

  “First aid? Here? I don’t think so, man. I be lucky to get me second or third aid. Same-old same-old, second-best is good enough for the Chicano.” He says it with a sparkle in his eyes. “I bet you get the white girl first aid.”

  Tahir, who has clearly not recognized the sarcasm, says, “My daughter is not a white girl. We are Persian Jews.”

  “Yeah, whatever, Shah.”

  Tahir and Farley run across a dusty field to the airport. Within five minutes of entering the warehouse-like terminal, Farley has Ringo on the phone quoting a credit card number to an extraordinarily tall man wearing an Air Kenya jacket.

  The flight from Lamu to Nairobi takes less than two hours in a thirty-seven-passenger turboprop. In Nairobi, a man wearing an Emirates Airlines jacket holds a sign that says “Farley Rutherford.” He directs them to the appropriate terminal. Their flight to São Paulo by way of Dubai leaves in twenty minutes.

  With a twelve-hour layover in Dubai, Farley has time to visit an American Express office. He picks up a credit card and some cash for clean clothes and food.

  That out of the way, he calls Ringo again.

  Ringo grabs the phone. Hearing Farley’s voice is like seeing Superman step out of a phone booth. He’s spent the last two hours configuring analyses. The monitors on his desk include a live display of incoming data in one window, his calculation of Gloria’s position overlaid on a map in another, and deforestation data on a third.

  “I’ve got three guys monitoring the DAQ system in shifts,” Ringo says. “The sensors on Gloria are still transmitting. She seems to be protecting a little girl and has acquired an entourage of monkeys. For some reason we can’t figure, she’s been
separated from the rest of the villagers. My triangulation calculation of her position has a hundred-meter uncertainty—I should have put a GPS chip in the transmitter. But shit, the—”

  “Give me what you have, facts and locations,” Farley says. The control in his voice is a salve to Ringo’s feeling of helplessness.

  “Bupin got me access to deforestation data from the Rain Forest Action Network. The region they’re in is being converted to either sugarcane or coca. There could be some nasty villains when you get there.” Ringo is pacing now. “She’s on the slope of a river a few miles upstream from the Amazon proper. We haven’t seen Chopper in two days. But Farley, something’s really fucked up.” Ringo takes a breath and adds, “Chopper is hunting Gloria.”

  “No,” Farley says, “he wouldn’t do that.”

  “Chopper freaked out when you died—or we thought you died. Didn’t you see the video I sent Tahir?”

  “I saw it, but it can’t be the whole story.”

  “Watch the video again. Farley, that’s Chopper shooting the villagers.”

  Farley pulls the video back up. The man shooting the rifle is only visible as a silhouette, but there’s something familiar in the way he stands. Then he hears Gloria say, “No! Chopper, stop!”

  “Farley, something bad is happening.”

  The phone is quiet. Farley clears his throat and finally says, “What have you got?” in his assured morning-meeting baritone.

  Ringo says, “You need to understand the accuracy of the data I give you or you’ll make mistakes. The deforestation data tells us how these fires burn. It’s kind of obvious—the driest land goes up first.” He has built his model of rain forest burn rates from a combination of local geographic structure and his recollection of geologic theory from a freshman survey course and then tuned the parameters by back-testing with a decade of deforestation data. “Remember, these are rain forests so they’re wet all the time. The burn rate decreases along rivers so there are green regions along the waterways that are surrounded by devastation. But! There seems to be a critical point where so much heat builds up that the fire can’t be stopped no matter how much groundwater there is. Are you getting this?”

  “It would be easier to follow if I could see a map,” Farley says. Now he sounds tired.

  “Gloria is staying along the river. But listen, what I’m trying to tell you is that staying next to the river only delays the inevitable. It probably seems safe to her, but it’s more like being in the eye of a hurricane. Best case: she’s on a green stretch and has a chance to escape through green jungle. Worst case: she’s on an island of green forest surrounded by fire without realizing it.”

  “Ringo,” Farley asks, “how much time have I got?”

  “Based on burn rates, her position, and the visual feed, my best guess is two days, maybe three—I set a ninety-five percent confidence level upper limit at four days. But Farley, I can’t account for whatever is going on with Chopper.”

  The fifteen-hour flight to São Paulo pulls into the gate twenty minutes ahead of schedule. They’re on another jetliner within the hour and land in Manaus two hours after that. Ringo has arranged a hotel room. As they check in, Farley is given a package that includes a satellite phone, more cash, and a complete list of expenditures made on Chopper’s VirtExArts credit card, including names and addresses. One expenditure jumps out: payment to a company called “Van O’Reilly Travel Services” made in a town called Uarini, Amazonas.

  Tahir has a list of equipment they need: ropes, packs, rifles and ammunition, a hatchet, machetes, light and dry food, water purification tablets, and toilet paper. Farley’s list is shorter: airplane tickets to Uarini.

  With the help of the concierge, they split up in the sprawling city and manage to assemble everything except the firearms.

  “I’ve never fired a gun,” Farley says.

  Tahir starts to speak. His mouth hangs open for a few seconds, and then he laughs. He grasps Farley’s forearm and pulls the larger man into a hug. “Any other situation, Farley, any other. It is a dream to me, that my Golie can marry a man who never needs to fire a weapon—it would be a dream.”

  The constant threats—not just from flames and gunfire but from sinkholes, carnivorous fish, disease-toting insects, and snakes ranging from meter-long corals to giant anacondas and boas—limit time for reflection. Still, each instant of peace brings Gloria closer to the woman she once was. She has recovered enough to realize that she’ll never make it all the way back.

  Gloria and the little girl don’t share a language, of course, but they communicate through facial expression, signs, sounds, and affection. The child’s name is Iara, and Gloria trusts her judgment in every area where she can’t trust her own. Iara rappels up vines into trees and knows the jungle the way Gloria once knew Silicon Valley. She guides Gloria along shadowed paths away from reptile predators. She indicates which plants to eat and safe places to sleep, way up in trees. She’s not perfect. The white fruit they ate two days ago gave them both cramps, and it’s a good thing they’re strong swimmers or what she judged to be the best spot to cross a creek could have swallowed them. A few days after her reawakening to reflective sentience, Gloria realizes that Iara is following the song of screaming monkeys. The little primates sound like a call to safety, but right now she hears them in every direction.

  It’s their second day on this island. At least Gloria thinks it’s an island; every direction they’ve walked has led to the river. It’s also been two days since they last saw Chopper. It’s a big jungle, maybe big enough to hide from Chopper forever, but way too big for a city girl like Gloria to survive.

  Hoping that the sensors attached to her head and back are transmitting to a DAQ receiver in Santa Cruz, Gloria describes her predicament as well as she can reconstruct it to whoever might be listening. She does this over and over again. It feels like she’s praying to some distant god, and she pictures Ringo in the Santa Cruz garage listening. Maybe someday she can thank him for answering her prayers. If not, she doesn’t have much chance here. But Iara does, and so Gloria perseveres.

  Just after noon, the twin-prop, 1950s-era plane sets down on Uarini’s gravel runway. Farley and Tahir are in the outback now. Where the Somali coast had been hot and dry and plants had to be coaxed into surviving, they are now in thick, wet air, a place where life appears everywhere.

  Farley jogs from the plane to a whitewashed house at the edge of the airstrip. There are two people inside: a fat man who operates a radio, and his wife, an equally large woman who recognizes the name Van O’Reilly when Farley asks about him.

  “Van O’Reilly,” she says, riffling through a pile on her desk. “He come back tomorrow, maybe next day.”

  Farley asks for other air-travel options and she gives him a well-handled brochure advertising “adventure tours.” Its cover has a picture of a shiny yellow amphibious biplane floating on a river. She says something he doesn’t understand. She repeats it twice and then motions out the window to a few haphazardly parked planes. Most are covered in tarps. He looks back at the woman. She stands up and again points to the row of planes. Farley shakes his head. She takes his hand and walks him out the door. Now he sees it. He can tell that it was once yellow. It’s gray now. He walks over and around it. It looks sound. It looks fine. Back in the building, she draws him a map of the town and tells him the name of the pilot and where to find him.

  Farley turns to Tahir and says, “We need to locate the pilot and be ready to move.”

  “This O’Reilly is due back tomorrow?” Tahir asks.

  “Or the next day,” Farley replies. “We need to leave today.” Farley holds out the map. “There’s not much to it, a couple of streets and one building marked with an x. Let’s split up. The guy’s name is Aluino Senona.”

  Tahir says, “I’ll procure the rest of our equipment.”

  “Let’s try to get out of here by three.”

  An hour later, Farley returns to the airstrip with the pilot, a short man w
ith a large mustache.

  Tahir is sitting on a bench in the shade amid two disassembled rifles.

  “It’s not perfect,” Farley says. “Aluino doesn’t understand what I mean by GPS coordinates, but he knows the river and I have the satellite phone—Ringo can get us there. It’ll have to do.” He offers Tahir a hand up and adds, “Let’s go.”

  Tahir’s gaze dwells on the pilot for several seconds. The pilot stares back. Farley can feel Tahir reading the lines in the man’s face. Tahir shakes his head and in a calm, quiet voice says, “We will wait one day for Van O’Reilly.”

  “By Ringo’s calculation we have one, maybe two days, at most three,” Farley says. “We have to get out there now.”

  “No. We’re not ready.” Tahir raises a rifle barrel to his eye, stares down it, sets it aside, and begins disassembling the chamber.

  “What?” Farley asks.

  “We must assure that we are going to the right place with the right tools or we might as well stay here.”

  “Ringo’s calculations will get us within a hundred meters of Gloria.”

  Tahir shakes his head and then applies oil to different pieces of the rifle, checking each moving part.

  Farley looks around as though he’s not seeing something. “We have to get in and get it done. Damn it, Tahir, we’re talking about Gloria!”

  Tahir turns slowly to Farley, his eyes narrowed against the sunlight. “I would have you remember that this is not the first time I have rescued her.” His gaze lingers a few seconds longer before his attention returns to the gun.

  “Tahir,” Farley says, “I’m leaving. Are you coming or not?”

  “Success is more important than action. What is it that I have heard Gloria say about you people in Silicon Valley?” Tahir strokes his chin, trying to remember.

  To Farley it looks like an intentional delay.