Diffusion

by Stan C. Smith

  “That was but a demonstration within controlled conditions. There were no such controls for the initial event of four days past. I believe the effects of the event extended for miles. Any object, or beast, or human soul that was at rest at the time was not affected. But those that were moving about, such as birds and insects flying—”

  “And airplanes,” Quentin said.

  “Indeed. Joamba and two of his companions were hunting at the time. In pursuit of a cassowary, his surviving companion told me. Making hasty chase at precisely the fateful moment.”

  Quentin considered Samuel’s demonstration. “The talisman I threw—there were two of them after it passed over the table. Is that what happened to Joamba?”

  “That possibility seems to be subject to the object’s quickness. Recall the arrow you tossed lightly. I have concluded that a man could not run quickly enough to result in an undamaged duplicate. Instead, Joamba’s duplicate is wretchedly merged with his own body. Joamba’s other companion, Ahea, was not so lucky as this.” Samuel’s voice became a whisper. “There are conditions beyond even the power of the Lamotelokhai to heal. It is a rare thing indeed to have to dispose of a member of this tribe. It makes the tribesmen nervous.”

  Quentin looked at the horrifying form before him. How could Samuel call Joamba lucky? Surely death would be better than this.

  As if to answer his thoughts, Samuel continued. “The medicinal effects of the Lamotelokhai have taken hold. We have but to wait for Joamba’s complete recovery.”

  Quentin was skeptical. “You believe he’s going to be normal again?”

  “It is but a matter of time.”

  After a final look, Quentin rose and turned away from Joamba. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to control his breathing. “Why did you bring me to see this?”

  “I wish you to understand, Quentin, that the Lamotelokhai is as dangerous as it is miraculous. I am but one man, compassionate and educated in comparison to many others, even in civilized society. And yet in a moment of despair I have abused the powers I have discovered here, resulting in great suffering. Imagine what might happen if the Lamotelokhai were to be taken from this place and put in the hands of less reasonable men.”

  Samuel gripped Quentin’s shoulders. “Whether or not you hold faith in God, you must surely see that men are better served by dreaming of an invisible God than to have the power of God placed into their own hands.” Samuel seemed to realize he was touching Quentin, and he pulled away. “For many years it has been upon my shoulders to assist my indigene hosts in keeping their secret. But I fear that my recent actions have set into motion events that cannot now be undone, and the burden of this secret may no longer be my own.”

  Quentin studied him for a moment. “I don’t think I can handle any more burdens.”

  “It is upon you, nevertheless.” Samuel pointed to the tunnel opposite of where they had entered the room. “We are now very near to the Lamotelokhai itself. Perhaps if you were to confront the source of your consternation—to touch it with your own hands.”

  “I need to get back to Lindsey.”

  “Indeed. She will need healing ointments. I will show you how to gather them from the Lamotelokhai yourself, and you may take them to her.” Samuel moved to the opening.

  Quentin looked once more at the disfigured man lying at his feet. Guttural breathing pervaded the silence of the hut, but Quentin could not tell where the respiratory opening was. In fact, for a moment he was sure that the sounds came from both ends of the figure, as if it had two heads. Oddly, he was reluctant to leave, feeling that he should somehow offer comfort to this mass of flesh that was once Joamba, the skilled hunter.

  But then Quentin heard another sound. Was it shouting? He turned to Samuel as the two villagers slipped into the tunnel and disappeared. They must have heard it, too. The sound came again. It was definitely shouting—angry shouting. “Samuel, what’s going on?”

  Samuel’s seemed to be straining to hear, and he did not answer.

  One of the distant voices screeched in anger or pain, and Quentin suppressed a cry. It was Addison.

  Quentin plunged into the tunnel, Addison’s distress calls pulling him forward with savage force. He was only vaguely aware of Samuel following him. Before long the tunnel gave way to another room, and Quentin entered. Addison stood in the center of the hut with his back against the Lamotelokhai, which was molded to a branching tree just as it had been in Quentin’s dream. Papuan tribesmen wielding spears and clubs surrounded Addison. He was now naked, and fresh wounds covered his body. Nevertheless, he stood straight and defiant, and his previously stick-like limbs now looked more formidable. He stared down his attackers, his eyes dark with anger so palpable that it seemed to hold them back like a force field.

  “Mr. Darnell, they’re going to kill him!” It was Bobby. He stood across the room at the entrance to another tunnel.

  “Bobby, what are you two doing here?” Without waiting for an answer, Quentin stepped forward and bellowed, “Hey! Leave him alone!” It was a standard teacher ploy, designed to break up fights. The Papuans hesitated.

  Samuel entered the room, took in the scene, and stopped short.

  “Samuel, help us,” Quentin said.

  One of the tribesmen pointed a club at Addison. “Gu laléo-lu!” Quentin recognized the white feathers in the man’s hair. It was Matiinuo, the elder tribesman who had questioned him.24

  Addison stood taller, his face such a frightening visage of hatred that Quentin barely recognized him. “Nu be-khomilo-n-din-da,” he said, his voice seething. “Nu khén-telo!”38

  But there were six tribesmen closing in on Addison.

  “For God’s sake, Samuel, stop them,” Quentin said. “He’s my son.”

  Samuel shook his head. “On this point, you are wrong. Your son has already been taken from you. The indigenes know this to be true.”

  Quentin stared in disbelief. “Samuel, please!”

  Samuel watched the tribesmen, avoiding Quentin’s eyes. “I am but a guest here. I have little influence over Matiinuo.”

  The Papuans attacked. Their weapons blurred as they pummeled and punctured Addison’s body and face. All that could be heard were grunts of effort and the sickening sounds of weapons striking flesh. Quentin moved in to stop the assault, but it felt as if he were moving in slow motion.

  Suddenly Addison ripped Matiinuo’s club from his grasp. With shocking speed he leapt upon the elder tribesman and drove him to the floor, his knee against the Papuan’s chest. Addison’s bloody, sinewy arms shoved the club into Matiinuo’s neck, forcing a wet gurgle from his throat and rendering him helpless. The other tribesmen halted their onslaught and stood frozen in place. In the seconds that followed, the only sounds were Matiinuo’s attempts to breathe. Quentin’s eyes were drawn to Addison’s ravaged face. A spear point had torn his forehead, leaving a strip of scalp dangling in front of one eye. His visible eye bored into the tribal elder.

  “Gekhené khup lefu. Gekhené wola-maman-é,” Addison growled. “You don’t know what it is.” He leaned forward, putting all his weight onto the club. Matiinuo’s eyes bulged.39

  The others raised their weapons again, but Addison sprang from the elder’s chest and darted into one of the tunnels. Matiinuo writhed on the floor, clutching his crushed throat. The Papuans gathered around to help him.

  “Bobby, follow me!” Quentin skirted the tribesmen and entered the corridor where Addison had disappeared. With Bobby on his heels he charged ahead. After rounding two bends, Quentin called out, “Addison!” There was no answer. They rounded another bend and stopped. The tunnel ahead was straight for some fifty meters, but there was no sign of Addison.

  A dark figure suddenly dropped from above and landed like an ape just in front of them. Addison then stood upright.

  Quentin reached for him. “Son, you’re hurt. We’ll get you out of here now, and—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Addison sa
id. With one hand he lifted the strip of scalp dangling before his eye and pressed it against his forehead. It stayed in place. Both eyes were now visible, and they turned to Bobby. “He knows what it is. He can talk to it, too.” Addison pointed down the tunnel, toward his attackers. “It’s not for them anymore.”

  “Addison, it’s time to go,” Quentin said. “We’ll get the others and leave this village.”

  Addison moved toward them. “It doesn’t matter!”

  Quentin instinctively stepped back. The look in Addison’s eyes—the same anger he had shown Matiinuo—was fearsome.

  Addison said, “You know what it is, Bobby. They can’t use it. It’s a computer.”

  Quentin blinked at him. “What? A computer?”

  “He’s right,” Bobby said. “We can talk to it, because it uses Kembalimo.”

  “Kembalimo? The game?”

  Bobby shook his head. “It’s not a game.”

  Quentin turned from one boy to the other, bewildered. The tribesmen were coming; their bird-like voices grew louder, and the hanging tunnel shuddered with their footsteps. They would surely kill Addison—perhaps kill them all.

  “Let’s go, now!” Quentin ordered. He started forward but Addison blocked the way.

  “It is not for them,” Addison said. “Their time is over.” Then he leapt up, straight through a hole in the tunnel’s roof.

  Through the hole, Quentin saw Addison crouched on the tree limb that supported the tunnel. The tunnel shook as Addison launched himself into the air, out of view. Quentin moved to the side to see, and then gasped. Addison now hung from a limb at least six meters above them. With astonishing grace he swung to his feet and leapt out of sight.

  Quentin stared, trying to comprehend what he had seen. Finally he turned back to Bobby, but it was too late to flee. Four tribesmen were upon them, their spears ready.

  Samuel came up behind them. “It appears, Quentin, that the indigenes are correct in their notions of the being who was once your son.”

  As the tribesmen led them through the hanging passageway, Bobby’s fear began to subside. After all, the Papuans hadn’t killed them on the spot. They reentered the Lamotelokhai hut, and Matiinuo was still on the floor. Another tribesmen held his hands against the injured man’s throat. Mr. Darnell asked if Matiinuo would be okay, and Samuel said that the Lamotelokhai would repair him.

  Mr. Darnell grabbed Samuel by the shoulders. “What has happened to my son?”

  “Sinanie has told me your son had been badly wounded when he found him,” Samuel said. “As Sinanie put it, Addison’s body did not yet know it, but his spirit had returned already to the land of your ancestors. Your son’s body still lived, but his mind was beyond healing.”

  “But what about the man you showed me, Joamba? He was hurt far worse than Addison. Yet you seem to think the stuff will cure him.”

  “With one critical difference, Quentin. Joamba has been exposed to the Lamotelokhai before.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Joamba is known to the Lamotelokhai, both his mind and his body. That which is known can be rebuilt. To a limited extent, I should say. Joamba’s companion, Ahea, was beyond rebuilding.”

  Bobby spoke up. “Did you say Ahea? Addison said that name to me today. He said he had Ahea’s memories, like he was two people.”

  Samuel frowned. “Ahea’s memories?” He rubbed his chin, apparently puzzled.

  As Samuel and Mr. Darnell continued discussing this, a tribesman nudged Bobby toward the Lamotelokhai. This time Bobby’s hands were steady. He pressed against it, digging in with his fingers. Again the symbols appeared in his mind as if they were floating before his eyes. More than a hundred of them: rectangles and triangles, a three-dimensional tetrahedron, a hexagon, quadrilaterals. And there were irregular shapes: spirals, zigzags, loops. Bobby knew them all. Most recently, he realized, he had seen them painted on the Papuans’ spears. But more importantly, they were the symbols of Kembalimo. He didn’t count them, but he knew there would be a hundred and twenty-eight. That’s how Kembalimo worked.

  The symbols floated before Bobby, waiting. In his two years of playing Kembalimo, he had worked on only one lingo, and he was far beyond the initial sorting tasks. But now he remembered all of it, even the very first level. First you sort all hundred and twenty-eight symbols into piles based on how you think they are alike. The first level starts with sorting groups of four. Then you sort groups of eight, and then sixteen, and so on.

  If he were starting a new Kembalimo lingo on his smartphone, Bobby would clear the screen and begin sorting. But here he wasn’t sure how to do that. He put a hand out toward the symbols—nothing but air. On a gut feeling, he pretended to swipe them to the side. The symbols disappeared—all but four, hanging there, waiting to be sorted. He swept two of them into a pile. The two had round edges. The other two had corners, and he swept them to their own pile. The symbols disappeared, replaced by four more to be sorted.

  Now there was no doubt. The Lamotelokhai was a computer, and it wanted him to start creating a Kembalimo lingo. Kembalimo was all about creating your own lingo to communicate with people who don’t speak your language. The Lamotelokhai wanted him to learn to talk to it.

  Quentin returned alone to their tree house, easily remembering the way. Bobby’s excitement over the Lamotelokhai had prompted the villagers to insist that Quentin leave him there to continue his work with it. Samuel assured him that Bobby was perfectly safe if Quentin wished to return to Lindsey. Although doubtful of this, Quentin felt that he had little choice.

  Bobby apparently had discovered how to talk to the Lamotelokhai. Quentin had placed his own hands on the stuff, and was shocked to see a hallucination of objects appear before him. The objects did indeed resemble the symbols he had seen in Kembalimo, but he didn’t play the game, so it made no sense to him. It seemed Samuel was wrong—it was not Quentin’s capacity to communicate with the Lamotelokhai that the Papuans had been waiting for. It was Bobby’s.

  As he made his way back to the tree house Quentin called out for Addison but saw no sign of him. The rope ladder still dangled from the tree. He removed his boots and his hands and feet gripped the ladder as if he had been climbing it all his life. When he entered the hut, a Papuan tribesman with paint across his eyes stood between him and the others. The man smiled.

  “We were starting to worry about you, Mr. D,” Ashley said. “That’s Ansi. He brought medicine. Addison got mad and left, and Bobby went with the Papuans. They’re still gone.”

  “I’ve seen them both,” Quentin said. He warily circled the villager to where Lindsey lay. Ashley, Miranda, and Carlos were at her side.

  “She’s been sleeping, but she looks better now,” Miranda said.

  Lindsey stirred as Quentin touched her face. Her skin was dry and cool. No fever. And she did look better. The insect bites and scrapes were all but gone. Even her hair seemed less tangled and matted. He spoke softly to her, but her eyes remained closed.

  Quentin ate some khosül and drank from the water supply in the corner of the hut. He paced back and forth. He left the tree house again and made his way back to the Lamotelokhai tree, but he saw no sign of Addison. It was growing dark and starting to rain, so he returned to the tree house.

  As the remaining light faded to emerald shadows, Quentin sat by the opening in the floor with his back to the others. He watched the rope ladder, hoping it would go tight. The weight of the entire day was upon him, and a sob rose to his throat, but he forced it back. The students were watching, and he could not break down now.

  Quentin was pulled from his thoughts by a warm hand on his shoulder. He glanced up and saw that it was Lindsey. They gazed at each other, silent. The slightest smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.

  She sat on the floor at his side. “I told you I didn’t want their medicine.”

  “Yeah, well, it seems we don’t have much say in what happens here.”
/>   Lindsey looked around the hut at each of the kids, at the tribesman called Ansi, and then at Quentin. Her smile faded. “Where’s Addison? And Bobby?”

  Quentin gazed through the entryway. “Bobby is safe. He’s with Samuel and some of the villagers. It’s a long story, but he’s learning to talk to a lump of clay by playing Kembalimo.”

  “The thing from space,” she said.

  Quentin glanced at her. “You had the dream?”

  “It was more than a dream.”

  Quentin was silent.

  She put her hand on his. “Quentin, where is Addison?”

  His eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know. He was with me, and then he was gone.”

  She slid closer and laid her head against him. Her presence allowed him to finally let go, and his tears ran down his face to his chin and dropped through the hole in the floor.

  Fifteen

  Bobby made remarkable progress with the Lamotelokhai, partly because he recalled the choices he had previously made with Kembalimo on his smartphone. In almost no time he had sorted the symbols into groups, and then into a specific order. Once he had decided on the symbols’ order, they were like numbers, and the next level was to solve hundreds of puzzles using the symbols. This way the rules of logic for his lingo were established. The next level beyond that was the hardest part—coming up with combinations of the 128 symbols to represent meanings. It was like creating a language using 128 numbers, and the logic of grouping them was completely different from a typical language. Once you got used to the process it was easier than learning any other language because it was based on rules you created yourself in the earlier stages. On his smartphone, Kembalimo would show him pictures, and he would group symbols together to have those meanings. But with the Lamotelokhai, instead of pictures on a screen, there were visions in his head, and sounds—even feelings. It was easy.

  Samuel and the Papuans had silently watched him until after dark. Finally, Samuel approached Bobby.