Diffusion

by Stan C. Smith

  And then he was in a forest, surrounded by foliage and steaming wetness. On the ground before him a familiar tree kangaroo sat on its haunches. Mbaiso led him to the village of the Papuans, their tree houses veiled in the branches far above. They stopped at an exceptionally large tree, and Quentin suddenly floated from the ground and entered a tree hut, smaller than the one in which he was sleeping. The room was dominated by something clinging to the large, splitting trunk of the tree. Quentin reached out to its gray-brown surface. It was soft, like moist clay. His fingers molded the surface, and he pulled a portion of it free.

  The stuff spread over his fingers and palm. It glistened with movement, as if thousands of tiny particles were at work. Abruptly it was gone, absorbed by his flesh. His fingers tingled. The sensation moved through his arm to his shoulder. He stood motionless, allowing the tingles to spread through his entire body.

  Quentin awoke. He lay in the dark hut listening to tree frogs and crickets, still feeling the sensation of the substance coursing through his system. Something within him was different. Memories, rich in detail, steadily began flooding his mind.

  He was sprawled on his belly under the summer sun, peering at the water’s edge. Two green turtles returned his stare. Their yellow-striped legs paddled gently in the clear water to keep their heads above the surface. He wanted to catch them and take them home. “Quentin, let’s go!” He turned and saw his father, looking very young, with a fistful of fishing poles in one hand and a metal tackle box in the other.

  Quentin hadn’t thought about that day in a long time. And there were others—long forgotten scenes, accessible as if they’d occurred only moments before. Many of them were gratifying, notable events of his life. Others were more dismal.

  The jet engines’ roar made it easier to concentrate and draw. Quentin’s picture of a Papuan hut was almost finished. He’d already drawn on sixteen pages and he wanted to fill the whole pad before they landed in California. He held the pad up. “Look, Dad. It’s a cooking hut. See the fire hole?” His dad just stared out the window. “Dad, see my hut?” Quentin’s mom turned the pad so she could see. “Nice job, kiddo. Why don’t you let your dad rest for now? He’s not feeling so good.” Quentin looked at his dad. “I liked them, anyway, Dad. Even if they’re not the same as before. I liked Gupy, and Amius too. They’re still nice.” His dad just stared at the clouds.

  Ten

  Bobby awoke. The tree house was quiet. Morning light pierced the walls and ceiling, speckling the sleeping bodies. His night had been full of dreams—the stars again, the forest and Mbaiso, and then the tree. But this time there had been more. He had dreamt he touched the object on the tree, and part of it had soaked into his body as if that were its purpose. Bobby rolled onto his back and stared at the tangled vines of the hut’s ceiling. He rubbed the scar on his chest. It didn’t even hurt. His mind drifted to the fight with the Papuan tribesmen the day before. Without warning the violent scene erupted in his mind with horrifying clarity. Startled, Bobby squirmed and then bolted upright. He was still in the silent, darkened hut. But for just a moment it had been like he was there again, confronting the tribesmen, seconds away from being stabbed with a spear. He sensed that it had been no more than a vivid memory. So he tried conjuring up another.

  The frog sat on his hand, looking back at him with round eyes on a flattened face. Its skin was turquoise, almost blue, and kind of dry for a frog. It looked like a plastic statue of a cartoon character. Bobby loved it. But his mom wrinkled her nose at it. “Mr. Darnell gave it to me,” he said to her. “He’s going to give me a male, too, so she can have babies. She can have a thousand tadpoles. This is a White’s treefrog and pet shops in the city will buy them for ten dollars each.” “Well, I can’t imagine why,” she said. “But I guess it might teach you some responsibility.” Bobby looked at the frog in his hand, the most wonderful thing he had ever owned.

  Back in the tree hut, Bobby smiled to himself. He could remember every detail. He tried it again, thinking of when Ashley pulled the stinging vine hairs out of his lips. Her face had been so close to his that he could smell her. He realized he could slow the memory down, and then he watched Ashley’s face as she worked at the task in slow motion. He saw details in her eyes and mouth he had completely forgotten.

  But then Addison’s voice broke his thoughts. “No… no. Gu laléo-lu. You need me.”24

  Addison was talking in his sleep. Bobby crept over to where he lay.

  “Senggile-lé. No… They’ll all die. Yanop khomile-lé-dakhu.”25

  Addison’s voice faded to a whisper, and Bobby leaned closer, his ear only inches away.

  “Don’t. Gu laléo-lu… I’ll make you help me…”

  “Bobby? What’s wrong?”

  Bobby drew back, startled. It was Mr. Darnell, sitting up on the other side of Addison.

  “I don’t know. Addison was saying weird stuff is all.”

  Suddenly Addison cried out. Bobby nearly fell over backward. The utter rage in Addison’s scream made Bobby want to cover his ears and purge it from his mind.

  Mrs. Darnell sputtered awake. “What? Quentin, what?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Miranda said. The others were awake now.

  Mr. Darnell reached for Addison to hold him, but then pulled back like he was afraid.

  Addison crawled away to a corner of the hut and then sat quietly watching them as if nothing had happened.

  Mr. Darnell eyed his son. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  Addison’s face was blank. “Dreams are real now, my father.”

  Mrs. Darnell groaned and pushed to one elbow. “They’re not real. They’re only dreams.” She fell back to the floor. “Oh God, Quentin, I don’t think I can get up.”

  Mr. Darnell felt her forehead. A beam of sunlight from a hole above fell directly on her face, and her skin was red and sweaty.

  “Addison’s right,” Bobby blurted out. “Our dreams are real. I dreamed that something got into my body and was changing me. And now I can remember everything.”

  These words shut everyone up. As Bobby waited for them to try it, a flock of parrots screeched in the distance. A snicker came from the back of Carlos’s throat, and Miranda whispered, “Oh my God.”

  “Jesus, it is real,” Mr. Darnell said.

  Mrs. Darnell was still lying on her back. “What’s real?”

  “We can remember stuff,” Bobby said. “Everything that ever happened to us.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “What?”

  A movement at the floor’s opening caught Bobby’s eye. Mbaiso climbed through. The kangaroo circled the opening to where the rope ladder lay coiled on the floor, turned away from it, and with a kick of his hind legs sent it tumbling. For a moment the rope hung loose from the ceiling, but then it went tight and the tree house shook from the weight of a climber.

  Bobby crept to the edge of the opening and watched. It was Samuel. Bobby looked at the tree kangaroo. He reached out, palm down, like he would to a dog. “Hey, boy. Mr. Darnell says you can talk. Can you teach me?”

  Mbaiso simply stared, and then moved out of the way as Samuel’s head appeared.

  “Sinanie claims that you are the noisiest creatures of the living world. I am inclined to agree.” He climbed the last few rungs into the tree house, and the rope ladder went tight again as someone else started climbing. “I trust you had adequate rest,” Samuel said.

  “We slept well,” Mr. Darnell said. “But we had dreams again, and this time—”

  Samuel held up his hand. “Explanations will come. Of particular concern now is your health.” He eyed Mrs. Darnell, still lying on the floor, and then Ashley, who was still sleeping. “There are two among you who yet suffer. You should allow them treatment. I offer the same ointments that have proven beneficial to the rest of you.”

  Mrs. Darnell moaned and said, “No, I don’t know what the stuff is.”

  Mr. Darnell frowned.
“Lindsey, you’re getting worse.”

  “Don’t try to make me.”

  Mr. Darnell sighed and shook his head at Samuel.

  Samuel seemed as if he were about to argue with this. Instead he hoisted a swollen bag from his shoulder to the floor. “I have brought food.” He pulled something the size of a person’s head from the bag. It was wrapped in green leaves, which he peeled away and laid flat on the floor. The stuff inside was mostly white and looked like oatmeal. “You may find khosül to be rather tasteless, but I assure you it contains sufficient nourishment.”

  “Looks like sago,” Miranda said.

  “Indeed, young lady. Sago paste is the foundation. But only the foundation, for khosül contains animal matter from the sago beetle larva. It is more palatable and nourishing.”

  Miranda’s shoulders slumped. “Grubs. We’re eating grubs.”

  “Thank you for the food, Samuel,” Mr. Darnell said.

  Just then the other climber’s head appeared. The now familiar pincushion of green feathers indicated it was Sinanie. Almost against Bobby’s will, a vivid scene appeared in his mind: Sinanie’s confident face and grunt of effort as he plunged a spear into Bobby’s chest. Bobby gasped and forced the memory from his mind.

  Sinanie climbed through the opening, removed a container that hung from his neck, and set it next to the khosül. It was a gourd, wet from water that must have spilled during the climb. Sinanie moved to the only corner of the tree house not occupied. He squatted there and quietly watched them. His eyes met Bobby’s, and he flashed a white smile. Bobby tried to smile back.

  Samuel nodded to Ashley, whose eyes were still closed. “May I treat the young lady?”

  Mr. Darnell nodded. “Please.”

  The khosül was almost tasteless, but Bobby was hungry enough to eat mud. The others didn’t seem to mind it either, and they all ate in silence. Bobby knew another reason they weren’t talking. They were busy with their own memories. Giggles and murmurs of surprise were mixed with eating sounds as they relived forgotten experiences. In his mind, Bobby saw his mom and dad long before the divorce. For the first time he realized they were never very happy together. When he was younger he couldn’t have known. They had laughed and played with him and he felt safe. But now he saw that they laughed only with him, never with each other. There was something between them—a coldness.

  “Holy crap, I can remember right after I was born!” Carlos said.

  This was followed by more silence as the others tried it. But Bobby had done that already. The visions were blurry, with voices he didn’t understand and shapes he didn’t recognize. Memories from infancy were too baffling to make sense of.

  “Oh, you’re kidding me!” Everyone turned to Miranda. “I found my journal,” she said. “My baking journal—like a diary but with all the recipes I invented. I lost it a year ago, and I just remembered I hid it in the wall in my closet.”

  “You’re such a Barbie, Miranda,” Ashley said. Ashley still looked pale, but apparently she was already feeling better.

  Carlos was frowning. Finally he said, “When I was four, Roberto got sick. He was gone for like two weeks, and I didn’t know what my parents were talking about then. But now I know. His appendix burst and he got infected. He almost died. No one ever talked about it after that.” Carlos laughed quietly like there was something funny about that.

  “Maybe we forget some things for a reason,” Mr. Darnell said to Carlos. He then turned to Addison. “Son, do you remember anything?”

  “I had two mothers,” Addison said, his dark eyes staring at the wall.

  “What do you mean, two mothers?”

  “Two mothers when I was abül, a boy. Lindsey was my mother. And Koina was my mother. She brought me to be with the yanop lop.”

  “Yanop lop?”

  “The people of the trees. Koina brought me from the place of ancestors to live with the yanop lop.”

  Mr. Darnell frowned. “You think you have a mother named Koina?”

  “Quentin! We have to go!” It was Mrs. Darnell. Every few minutes she would wake up and say something like this. She was getting worse.

  For some time they all sat in silence. Bobby scooped another handful of khosül and shoved it into his mouth. He felt something hard. He worked the object out of his mouth and onto his palm. It was a shiny black oval the size of a quarter. He turned it over, and his stomach tightened at the sight of two large mandibles. It was the head of an insect. The head alone was larger than any beetle he had ever seen.

  “What you got there?” Carlos asked.

  Bobby couldn’t answer. He dropped the black head onto the floor for Carlos to see. Samuel had told them the khosül contained sago grubs. But Bobby had seen sago grubs in the market in Wamena, with their tiny black heads. An image popped into Bobby’s mind of an enormous white, legless, squirming sago grub with a head this huge. This was too much. He barely made it to the hut’s opening in time. He heard his vomit strike the ground just as he finished retching. Bobby sat back, panting from the effort. He had just ejected nutrients that he desperately needed. He would have to start again.

  Samuel had left, saying that he would talk to the village elders about their situation. While they waited for his return, Bobby had eaten what he could and decided to explore every inch of the tree house. He even climbed the walls. There wasn’t really a ceiling. Instead, the walls sloped inward until they came together to form two points. He pushed his hand through the sticks and living vines of the walls and felt a rope above each point. The hut seemed to be hanging by these two ropes. Although thicker than the rope ladder, the cords seemed too thin to support the weight.

  Mrs. Darnell was getting worse, while Ashley seemed to be improving. After Samuel had treated her with his medicine, Ashley had slept. She awoke after a short time and reported having the same dream, about stars and the forest and the thing in the tree house. This got everyone talking about it again.

  “Do you think they’ll take us to the dream-tree?” Carlos asked.

  Mr. Darnell said, “It was a dream. It may not even exist.”

  “But the dream felt real,” Bobby said. “It’s like someone is trying to show us where it came from, and where it is now. The stuff came from space. It ended up here in the jungle. Maybe the Papuans found it and hid it in a tree so no one would take it.”

  “Guys, you’re not thinking like scientists,” Mr. Darnell said. “We shouldn’t consider the most bizarre explanation first. It’s the simplest that usually turns out to be true.”

  “Like what?” Carlos asked. They all waited for his answer.

  “Like maybe it’s a medicine the villagers mixed together from things they got from the forest. That could happen. People are creating new drugs from rainforest products all the time.”

  “When was the last time they found one that fixes broken legs?” Miranda said.

  “And makes you remember your whole life,” Bobby added.

  “And keeps people alive who should be dead,” Carlos said. He then looked at Addison.

  Addison regarded Carlos without expression. But Bobby thought he saw something menacing in the blackness of his eyes. Although barely noticeable, it made Bobby avert his gaze so Addison wouldn’t look at him is such a way.

  Mr. Darnell broke the silence. “I don’t doubt that we’ve been given an amazing medicine. And obviously it does more than heal wounds. That doesn’t mean it’s from space.”

  “Perhaps soon you will have answers.” Samuel had returned. He climbed the last few rungs and stepped onto the floor of the hut. He spoke to Mr. Darnell. “You are to accompany me. Perhaps you may satisfy your curiosities while the indigenes satisfy theirs.”

  “Lindsey is weak,” Mr. Darnell said. “She can’t climb down the ladder.”

  “Your presence is sufficient at this time, Quentin. Your wife will be safe here.”

  Mrs. Darnell tried to sit up. “Quentin, don’t leave.”

 
Samuel said, “Lindsey, you are as safe here as any place upon this world. The villagers demand to see your husband. There would be consequences should he refuse.”

  Mr. Darnell hugged her and whispered something in her ear. He stood and faced the rest of them. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  As Mr. Darnell climbed down the ladder, Samuel waited in uncomfortable silence.

  “Samuel, what’s going to happen to us?” Mrs. Darnell asked. “The truth.”

  “The truth, Lindsey, is that I do not know.”

  “What will it take for them to help us get home?”

  “That would require the merciful hand of God himself. But as I’ve told your husband, God does not inhabit this place.” He gripped the rope ladder, but Mr. Darnell was still climbing.

  Mrs. Darnell didn’t give up. “Samuel, you seem like a civilized person. Why won’t you help us?”

  “You misunderstand me, dear Lindsey. It is for the sake of the civilized world that I believe you should not leave this place.” The rope ladder went limp, and he stepped into a rung. “You should not judge me too harshly. Nor should you judge the Papuans. The civilized world, which you speak of so fondly, would be a changed place were it not for their secretive nature. It may not be wise to reveal what they hold secret.”

  And then he was gone. Bobby watched the rope twitch as Samuel descended.

  “He won’t listen.” Addison spoke so quietly that Bobby almost missed it.

  “Who won’t?” Mrs. Darnell said.

  “Father won’t. The Lamotelokhai will talk to him, but he won’t know how to listen.”

  Carlos said, “What’s the lamb-oh tell-oh kye?”