“Trails like this one,” Orion replied.
She nodded. “Lions get all the glory as Africa’s most dangerous mammal. But hippos outpace their kill count many times over.”
The path began widening, and sometime around sundown, they saw the lights of a small collection of buildings no farther than two hundred yards away through the bush. They even heard the sounds of music and laughter. But as they drew close, a rumble of grunting and twig-snapping shook the path ahead, and a massive black shape appeared mere footsteps ahead of them. Charlotte and Orion froze.
The beast stood there for a moment, its outline dotted by the small, distant lights of the buildings behind. The creature moved its head towards them, and for a second it did and said nothing. Then its jaws opened wide and a pair of white tusks gleamed out from the forest’s shadows. There were teeth there too; the hippo’s mouth was an alarming and strange array of oversized canines, incisors, and molars ending in sharp points.
For a moment, Orion hoped the animal’s gesture was something of a yawn—a sign of disinterest and passivity, maybe even submission. But Charlotte knew. The bull was trying to intimidate them. It was preparing for a charge.
“Shit,” Charlotte muttered under her breath.
“Get behind me slowly,” whispered Orion.
Then there was another sound, three boys—young teens, really—speaking in Chichewa, crashing through the bush on the other side of the hippo.
“Hippo go away,” they shouted.
“Back to the river, mvuwu.”
And the boys clapped their hands and hooted at the beast, who turned to face them. For a moment, the bull looked startled, and perhaps it considered retreating. But then it opened its jaws again, this time in the direction of the children. And when the boys saw this, they froze in their tracks, called out to one another, and began mounting the trees nearest to them in a frenzy to reach branches several yards off the ground. The oldest among them hollered at Orion and Charlotte in English to do the same.
“You first, Miss Boone,” Orion said, crouching to provide a foothold.
“I can manage without your chivalry,” she responded, grabbing a hold of a branch overhead.
But just as the foreigners scrambled into the tree nearest them, the hippo turned to another figure in the forest that evening. There was one child left on the jungle floor, perhaps a younger sibling of one of the valiant teens who had come to Orion and Charlotte’s rescue. He was no more than six years old, crouching behind a tree in the direction of the village lights. The hippo spotted the small form—the boy’s round, white eyes shining in the night—and began grunting at him.
The older boys in the trees began shouting, imploring the younger child to run or climb a tree, but even in the waning light, Charlotte could see the child’s face was paralyzed with fear, his eyes locked with the hippo’s. The bull stomped its feet and began moving in abrupt and aggressive starts. The teens continued raising their voices in increased anguish and urgency, but nothing seemed to distract the beast from this easy and unoffending quarry.
This was one of those moments, thought Charlotte, like watching a slow-motion car wreck. She had to intervene; there was no time for a calculus. You’re not the hero type, a voice reminded her from somewhere inside. Don’t get any crazy ideas. That isn’t you.
She slipped out of the tree, shoving the familiar leaden voice of her own cowardice down into her gut. Her heart pounding against her ribs, she dashed behind the bull.
“Charlie,” Orion hissed after her.
With no better way to turn the beast’s attention, she slapped the tough, rubbery hide of its behind with an open palm, and the blow fell with a surprisingly loud thwack. The hippo wheeled towards Charlotte with a swiftness and agility that seemed impossible for a creature of its girth, and the former movie star sprinted back towards the safety of the trees.
“Goddamn it, Charlie,” Orion muttered as he dropped onto the forest floor. The beast began its charge, and within a pair of seconds, it had closed the distance with Charlotte’s heels. As she approached Orion, he grabbed her by the waist and flung her upwards into the branches of the tree.
“Catch something,” he shouted.
Orion was left standing alone in the bull’s path with a heartbeat separating them. He ducked behind a thick trunk, and the creature thundered past him on its fat and powerful feet and collided with the side of the tree, sending splinters of bark careening into the night air.
Orion leapt upwards, groping for a thick branch, still wet with the rain. The hippo recovered just as he was finding a hold, but Orion had swung his legs out of reach. A wave of hot breath rolled over him as the beast snapped its jaws at his toes.
Once he got his bearings, Orion could feel sweat pouring down his back, mingled with the dampness of his clothes, and he looked over and saw Charlotte safely nestled out of reach on her own branch. Their eyes met, and Orion saw something dance in Charlotte’s face. Adrenaline? Was she enjoying this? She was almost smiling.
The small child disappeared, presumably back in the direction of the village, and the teens were still on their branches, pointing at the hippo and now jeering at him with their laughter.
The beast was still below Orion, however, heaving its terrible mass against the tree and snorting indignantly at Orion. It was an intimidating sight, and the canopy shook with the bull’s frightful—though fruitless—exertions.
Within a few minutes, a crowd emerged in the forest waving torches and beating on a white drum. They bellowed and whooped.
The hippo looked between the approaching people and his quarry in the trees. It recognized it was now quite outnumbered, but it lingered for a minute longer, snapping and grunting, reluctant to give up the fight on those who offended him. Finally it gave a haughty snort and turned to stomp off into the darkening night in the direction of the river.
“Hey, Azungu, you can come on down now,” said a woman standing beneath Orion and Charlotte. Her face was lit only by torchlight.
The teens were clambering down from their tree, already engaged in telling their arriving friends about the daring escapade. They were lighthearted and pleased with themselves, quick to shrug off the certain mortal danger that had hung over them a mere few minutes prior.
The rain was slowing. Orion and Charlotte climbed down and met a woman with long braided hair and a smooth, round face named Imani, the headmistress of a rural orphanage. She led them back to their compound, a series of three white buildings and a small straw hut. Several vegetable garden plots, littered with improvised garden stakes and run over with cheerful vines of melon, crowded the paths between them. A set of swings stood at the far end, looking old but well maintained. And at the center, at the place where the students gathered for stories and music, was a vast fire pit, surrounded by logs that had been carefully carved with the names of the students there. The school was modest, its buildings ugly, but the love of the children for their home here was evident on almost every inch of the property.
The students who had come into the forest with torches all crowded in on Orion and Charlotte, eager to get a closer look at them. As they reached the compound, a throng of younger children awaited there, including a small boy very much like the one they had seen in the forest, and he looked up at Charlotte with two fingers in his mouth. The three teens ran animatedly through the crowd telling everyone in a mixture of English and Chichewa about the hippo attack. But the star of their story, as it became clear quickly, was the “mzungu girl who slapped the hippo’s butt.”
“You’re welcome to stay here for the night and try to fly out again in the morning,” Imani told them after Orion explained their predicament. “But the children are very excited by your presence, and they would greatly appreciate if you would sit with us for a time so we could hear more about you and where you come from.”
Charlotte was led away by a group of teen girl
s to change out of her wet clothes. Orion was the tallest male in the orphanage, and none of the shirts or pants available seemed to quite fit, but he told them he appreciated their efforts and didn’t mind being a little wet. Orion was given a quick tour of the gardens and classrooms at the compound, and then students converged to lay towels down on the ring of logs, start a fire and take seats around the pit.
The movie star emerged from the girls’ dormitory wearing an orange and blue cotton khanga that ran below her knees but kept her shoulders bare. Orion watched the way the firelight flickered on her exposed skin, the way the colors seemed to inflame her emerald eyes and red hair. He found the effect mesmerizing. Charlotte’s gaze met his, and her lips opened in an unfettered grin. She ran her fingers down the length of the dress, quite thrilled by her unexpected change of wardrobe. Its vividness and shape were so unlike anything she had ever worn.
The guests were shown to the remaining two open seats at the fire and handed small bowls of ugali and chapati, a maize porridge with a bit of bread. The children appeared to be squirming in their excitement to pepper the foreigners with questions. But all eyes were on headmistress Imani, who instructed the children to go around the circle and introduce themselves.
When they reached the small, shy boy from the forest who was nearly trampled by the hippo, he rose uncertainly and took a step towards Charlotte.
“Zikomo,” he said, looking at the dirt at his feet.
“English please, Kami,” corrected Imani. “For our guests.”
“Thank you,” he stammered out.
Charlotte leaned closer to the small child.
“You helped rescue me first, you know,” she said. Then she drew up to his ear and whispered. “And you helped me find my courage too.”
Kami’s eyes went wide. And then he reached to hug her with his small arms, and Charlotte obliged happily. When she released him and leaned back, she saw Orion was watching her with a broad smile—but then his gaze looked like he was lost somewhere else. So she gave Orion a gentle shove, and he shook his reverie away.
“Very courageous of you, Charlotte Boone. Indeed,” he said, nodding with playful agreement. “A true hero out there tonight. You’re full of surprises.”
This was followed by a chorus of children giggling anew about the girl who slapped the hippo’s butt. Then the three teens stood up and reenacted the hippo attack as an impromptu play for the group. Great attention was paid to the boys’ heroic intervention, to Charlotte’s quick thinking, and to Orion’s dodging of the bull’s charge. Then Orion and Charlotte talked about where they were from and answered questions on everything from Charlotte’s hair color to the kinds of plants that Orion liked to grow.
Imani invited the orphanage’s choir, a small group of five girls and one boy, to perform a short song. But then someone brought in a drum, and all the students were standing and dancing to the music. The girls taught Charlotte how to move her hips and shake her shoulders with the beat, and she picked up the rhythm admirably. Orion was more hopeless, as dancing was never a strong suit, but the kids enjoyed his eagerness to try. Charlotte laughed at him till her sides hurt—pleased to find a skill he did not excel at.
Then Imani bid a group of boys to bring fresh sheets and pillows to a hut with a straw roof and clay walls at the edge of the compound. It belonged to the orphanage groundskeeper, but he was away visiting family and all other beds at the orphanage were taken.
The kids bid Orion and Charlotte goodnight, and Imani led the guests to a small room in the hut filled with the sweet fragrance of fresh rain on upturned soil. A handful of tools caked with rust and dirt filled the entryway. One proper full-sized bed stood at the center, and, at Charlotte’s behest, a mat with a pillow and fresh sheets were also laid out on the floor. Charlotte’s clothes were hung up to dry in a corner of the room near a cracked window, and Imani lit a couple of candles for them to see by before departing.
There was something radiant in Charlotte’s face and an electric prickling in her toes. Getting caught in the rain, the exhilaration of having cheated death by hippo, the flush of pride of having possibly saved someone’s life with a daring act, the warmth of the bonfire, her billowing, colorful dress, the laughter of children, the beating of the drum—she felt a hedonic rush from all those visceral wonders and pleasures. The exhilaration coursed through her fingers like she had one too many glasses of wine. So she walked over to Orion standing at the center of their room. His sandy hair was unkempt, his shirt still wet against his chest, a lazy smile on his face. And she kissed him.
That’s all she intended to do. Their lips met for a moment. She slid her hands against his waist, and then she pulled herself away, feeling the need to explain herself.
“I’m distracted today,” she said with a smile. “I’m not so troubled by everything the world has become, and what’s happened to my life, and it feels good for a change.” Her honesty in this comment surprised even herself.
Orion stroked her face and leaned in to kiss her again, longer and deeper. This time he pressed her tightly against him. He moved his hands up her back, on her open skin, and she shivered and warmed under his touch. Her nipples pressed against him through her cotton dress, and then he was sliding the khanga off her shoulders as she began tugging his shirt upwards at the waist.
Then they were out of their clothes and huddled under the sheets of the solitary bed. He pulled her body against his at the small of her back, and she felt his body first tense and then relax. She was conscious of the state of her hair, of whatever smells were clinging to her from that long day, but there was an eagerness to him, a suppressed longing that was coursing through him. And it made her hesitations feel small.
He made her laugh for a moment before he started touching her again, and somehow, he seemed to know her body like he had a map of it. In the past, she would put men’s hands where she wanted them—it was the only way she could get her former lovers on track. But there was no need here. Now he preempted her every want, all the bits of her skin that called out for attention he seemed to find and draw out in due order.
She never had an experience like that before. All her sexual experiences with men prior to this seemed dull and vulgar. But Orion seemed to know her body intimately, knew all its hidden rhymes and puzzles—even the ones she did not yet know herself—and slowly, with no hint of haste or boredom, he exposed them all, each one in its turn. She had never received that much attention before—a lover so patient and competent despite the need and urgency she felt radiating from him.
There was more laughter than she had experienced before too, startling little shyness and self-consciousness about their nakedness, as if she were too stoned to care. She gave herself over to him in a way she had never let go before. Such abandonment wasn’t like her all—so utter, so vulnerable.
If she had been loud through the experience, as she was at first below him and then on top of him, she could not recall and did not care. There was no fear of how she looked, about her reputation, about the world. No anxious calculations or scheming narrations were running through her head. And when they were done, when their wants were all brought to life and driven to satisfaction into the wet, forest air between them, a dizzying buzz tingled through her body. It lingered there until she drifted off to sleep in his arms.
It was perfect sex.
Well, very, very close to that anyway, Charlotte imagined. In any case, she had never experienced anything close to it before.
It reminded her of their car ride out to Lilongwe the day prior when they had that conversation that was so supremely comfortable and easy, and she nearly lost herself entirely in the casual pleasure of it. Like they were old friends. Like they were old lovers.
The thought woke her at five in the morning.
Were they old lovers?
She went to wake Orion but found he was lying there with his eyes already open.
“I need you tell me who you are right now.”
He turned to her with a far-off stare in his eyes before nodding.
“Okay, I will,” he said. “But you need to promise you will listen till the end.”
Crisis
Catalina and almost all of the team that worked on Diana were fired before the Post even broke the story. She hurried to Devon’s office shortly after the phone call and explained everything.
“That’s repulsive,” Devon snarled, as she sobbed. “That’s the most repulsive thing I’ve ever heard of.”
She sank to her knees, one shaking hand on a chair to keep her balance.
“I didn’t mean for any of this,” she got out between gasps. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”
Devon shook his head, looked over Cat’s head and mouthed at his secretary. Call security.
“You’re obviously done at this company. You’ll never work here or in Silicon Valley again. This is a crime, a police matter. This is FBI level stuff.”
“You know me, Devon. I would never hurt people. I could never—”
“I don’t know you at all, Cat. You don’t even really have any friends at this company. Now I can see why. You’re a monster, and you deserve whatever comes next.”
“No,” she tried to protest. But tears were running down her face, and her body was trembling. “It was just an accident,” she choked out.
But the next thing she knew she was being carried out the door by security personnel, and she never saw the inside of a Sharesquare office building again.
The CEO, with Devon by his side, launched an investigation into the codebase to try to understand what had gone wrong and find a culprit to blame. Somewhere along the way, however, large segments of the codebase’s change history mysteriously came up missing.
Then the Post article was published under the headline, “Study finds Nutrino Mixer sterilizing certain voters.”
Mike was among 2.8 billion Sharebox users that watched key moments in the crisis unfold largely on a headset. First he saw his high school friends and family post videos burning their Nutrino Mixers, and that groundswell of vitriol grew until two more headlines zipped through the virtual walls and windows of Homepad:
The Echo Chamber Page 11