The Green Cathedral

by Kerry Mcdonald

  “Yeah, she just came in last night for a while—and we hit it off right away, so we decided to make a day of it,” Abel said, sounding perfectly natural and smiling.

  “Well, isn’t that nice.” Ron grinned. “How’re the pancakes?”

  “Oh, so, so good! Your wife is a magnificent cook!” gushed Rimi.

  “Well, I’ll just be sure to let her know.” Ron smiled again and moved along to talk to the folks at the table behind them.

  Abel gave Rimi an astonished, admiring look.

  “I can be such a perfect Earth human when I wish.” She grinned mischievously.

  Later on, as they strolled down the road toward the pier, they could each feel more looks coming their way. It made Abel feel troubled, but Rimi played it up so much and so well, both in English and Spanish, that pretty soon no one was paying attention anymore.

  Faviola’s done wonders with this woman, Abel thought. She acts just like any sassy Latin American lady who’s scored with the new guy in town.

  He bet anything that Faviola had been the same way years ago.

  Arriving at the pier, Abel told Rimi to take his backpack and head down to the boat while he spoke with Monti, who was already holding court under his pavilion.

  “Ah, my friend! It is good to see you again today. And I see that you’re ready to go back down the coast and finish your job,” he gushed.

  “That I am. Just here to pick up my little down payment like we talked about,” Abel replied.

  “Ah, you’ll find it in a bag behind my chair. Perhaps you’d like to inspect it once you get out to where you’re going.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” replied Abel. He found the small duffel bag, took a peek inside, saw bundles of money, and quickly zipped it back up. He would most definitely count it once he was on the island.

  “Who is the chiquita you’re taking with you?” Monti asked with a snarky grin.

  “Oh, Faviola’s daughter. She came into town last night, and we hit it off right away, so we decided to make a day of it. She’ll lie on the beach while I do the grunt work in the jungle.”

  “And I bet you take an extended break for lunch and a siesta.” Monti laughed. “Just make sure that all is ready for tomorrow. My investor has confirmed that he will be arriving sometime later today.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t want to miss my payday!” Abel replied.

  ***

  After the trawler was well on its way, Rimi asked, “Why is it that the man in the diner called you Caleb rather than Abel? I remember one time after Bibi fixed your wounds you said your name was Abel-er-Caleb Forrest, and then later you told me just to call you Abel. I don’t understand this mystery.”

  Abel sighed and tried his best to explain, in an abbreviated form, all that he’d recounted to Faviola the night before. It was difficult without getting into too many details, and several times he begged Rimi to try to understand until some later time when they could talk about it more. He told her that what was most important to know for now was that, because of things that had happened weeks ago in Cartagena, a very kind colonel in Panama had made it seem that he, Abel, had been killed there while trying to escape, and that now, for everyone else besides her and Faviola, his name was Caleb Forrest and not Abel, and they must remember that when talking to others.

  “There’s something else, too,” said Abel as the boat rounded the volcano and headed for the little bay formed by the sandbar. “That man, the one from Cartagena who wanted me dead, he’s coming to Playa de Palma sometime this evening. Fat Monti’s making a deal with him to bring lots of evil people to the Green Cathedral and use it to help them do bad things. Nothing will be the same. That’s why I came out here in the first place. Monti wanted me to find you—the evil presence on the island—and kill you, and your animals, as well, at least the ones that could kill a person. That bag over there”—he pointed to the duffel bag he’d gotten from Monti—“it’s full of money, part of what Monti’s paying me to get rid of you. I get the rest when he comes here tomorrow and finds you’re not here anymore.”

  Rimi looked confused. “But when you came here, you were kind to the animals. You had your gun, but you didn’t use it. You could have shot me a hundred different times, and you never did. And I am not leaving the island by tomorrow—we are coming back tonight, and staying for the rest of our lives, aren’t we?”

  The boat was nearing the shore now, and Abel cut the motor and tossed out the anchor. Then he sat down by Rimi. She looked into his eyes with her green ones that seemed even bigger now, pleading for him to reassure her somehow.

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said Abel as he looked straight into those eyes. “We’re going to find your parents’ cruiser, get you what you need to survive, and then we’re coming back here to live forever. The only reason I took that money from Monti this morning is that we might need it from time to time. I don’t give a hoot about the rest of it. You’re worth so much more than that to me. I guess what I’m saying is that now, things are more complicated. We’ll have to fight for this place like you’ve never had to before—”

  “But you are here now, a great soldier, and my friends and I are still here as well, and—”

  “There’s one other thing,” interrupted Abel. “If the man that’s coming to see Fat Monti, the one that wanted me dead, should see me somehow, recognize me, and figure out that I’m not dead like he thinks—”

  “He’ll have you killed immediately,” said Rimi soberly. After a moment of silence, she looked up at Abel and smiled. “So, we will make sure that that does not happen. We are a team, remember? We will work together. We will find the pills I need to survive, and then, together, we will stop these bad men.” She stood. “Come, my amazing companion. Tell me what I should do here to help you, and then we shall be off to do what we must do today.”

  Abel rose as well. “Okay. You take that bag with the money in it back to Bibi and leave it there. I’ll be burying some bones that aren’t far from the shore here. The rest I don’t care about—they’re not going to put up anything here anyway. Then we’ll go.”

  They both boarded the little rubber boat and motored onto the beach. Rimi grabbed the duffel and dashed for the meadow path and the entrance to the Green Cathedral. Suddenly, Abel called out, “Oh, and ask Bibi to check out the money inside and see if he can figure out how to make more of it!”

  Rimi smiled a sly grin. “Mi madre has told me that you’re a—how she says—scalawag!”

  Abel shrugged and grinned back. She disappeared, and he shouldered a spade and headed into the meadow grass to dig up and bury the skeleton he had fallen over on his first-ever visit to the Isla del Diablo just a couple of weeks ago, a period that now seemed like a lifetime ago to him. Actually, it was a lifetime ago, he decided with a smile.

  ***

  Rimi came to the grand entrance to the Green Cathedral at the end of the meadow path. She leaped into the nest directly above it, the place from where she’d seen this man Abel the first time as he had gazed at the beauty around him, and she, wary as always of Earth humans, had called her friends to come and watch with her. She remembered how different he’d seemed. His only weapons had been the two machetes he’d used to cut a path through the grass from the beach to the rainforest, and yet he’d been unafraid, even when one of her pumas had shown up and stared down at him from the trees. He was definitely attractive, much more than anyone she had seen on the mainland during her occasional visits to her adoptive mother. How far they had each come in such a short time. From perfect strangers suspicious of each other to the closest of friends, and now lovers as well. It was a miracle, just what her mother had told her about when she and her father had met. Now, today, she might possibly see her mother and father again. Yes, they would not be alive, but regardless, she could share, in some fashion with them, that she had found her miracle, too.

  Grab
bing her gloves from where she’d left them, she took one more look at Abel, now fully caught up in digging at the edge of the tall grass near her, and zinged along her cables to Bibi’s small clearing. She walked through with the duffel of money and tossed it down.

  “Live from Studio One-A in Rockefeller Plaza, this is Today, with Bibi and Rimi,” greeted Bibi.

  “Bibi, hello. I have some instructions for you, and then I must go again. First, this bag is full of money. Abel would like you to identify all of its types and find a way to make more of it. When we return, you can tell us what you’ve come up with. The next thing is that I will soon be leaving with Abel again to try and find the Xilinium supplies that were on my mother and father’s space cruiser. We’re going to where Abel thinks their crash site is, which is not far from here. We hope that we’ll be successful.

  “Also, I need the bracelets we talked about last night. Are they ready yet?”

  “They are here, exactly as you ordered,” said Bibi. Even as he was speaking, two silvery-looking bracelets appeared from the shiny metal of the side of the sphere where Rimi and Abel usually entered. Each was inlaid with several sparkling crystals of different colors, and one clear crystal in the center.

  Rimi allowed each to fall into her open hand as they slowly extruded. Finally, she was holding both of them. She gazed at them with wonder and a smile.

  “Oh, Bibi, you’ve done it! They’re just like Father’s and Mother’s!”

  “So all is well with the Earth human, Abel?”

  “All is very, very well, but things are about to become very dangerous, Bibi. You must be ready to defend yourself if necessary in the next day or two. You must not melt away, however, because we may need your healing webs and cocoon.”

  “Is there a chance that something could be fatal to you or Abel?” said Bibi in his usual flat tone.

  “Yes, I’m afraid that this is a possibility,” said Rimi, much more soberly.

  “I shall prepare accordingly,” chimed Bibi.

  “Thank you, my friend. I must go with Abel now to find my mother and father. We shall return as soon as we can. In the meantime, expect visitors, and if it seems like they are going to be harmful, don’t hesitate. Exterminate them, as we did with the other hostile Earth people before.”

  Rimi walked through Bibi’s wall, the mysterious bracelets now in the pockets of her shorts, leaped to the nest in the trees, and sailed off back toward the meadow.

  25

  —

  It was a couple of hours later when Abel and Rimi sat in Faviola’s Jeep on a deserted beach just north of Jacó and gazed out at the rocky island they’d seen in Bibi’s external surveillance footage from the day of his crash over a century ago. Abel could see more now why the owner of the scuba rental facility at the nearby motel about a mile up the beach had warned them about diving there.

  “We’ve been asking the government to close down that area for years,” he’d said. “There was a seismic landslide that came off that island years ago, and it threw up all sorts of debris and boulders all over the beach and under the water, too. It’s totally unstable. We get injuries every year from people messing around down there on the rocks and slipping and falling when they shift, and divers who get cut on the underwater rocks or get attacked by jellyfish. And shark attacks happen a lot out there, too, mostly bull sharks that use the boulders as cover and lurk around looking for schools of fish to go after.”

  Abel had signed an equipment rental agreement that said, among other things, that he had been informed of the dangers of diving, and that if he died, he waived the right for anyone who was related to him in any way, family or legally, to sue the company for damages. Abel had mentioned that he was an experienced diver, but had not divulged he’d been in the SEALs for twelve years.

  Along with individual gear for him and Rimi, he’d rented a harpoon gun, two headlamps, a couple of foldable digging tools, and a crowbar. He’d also bought some underwater flares and a small, motorized, underwater sled they could put supplies into and also help them get where they were going with less effort. And Rimi, for some reason, bought some water shoes.

  Now, as they geared up, they formulated their plan. “We should stay near the surface for as long as we can,” explained Abel. “That will keep us from having underwater troubles with those boulders. The video looked like the cruiser clipped that mountainside on the island and then just plunged straight down, so I’m thinking we’ll probably find it submerged just off the shore of the island. That’s over a mile of swimming. You think you’re up to it?”

  Rimi, who had put on the wetsuit and weight belt she’d been given but had put on the water shoes rather than the fins Abel was donning, replied, “‘Up to it’ is a good description. But before we go, I have a surprise for you.”

  Abel gave her an incredulous look, remembering her surprise for him the night before. “Not to say I wouldn’t like it, but this isn’t the time or the place—”

  Rimi laughed. “Not that kind of surprise,” she said. “I have something for you. Here, hold out your hand.” She grabbed his right hand. Abel noticed a jeweled bracelet around her right wrist, one of the ones Bibi had made for her. She now stretched over his wrist the other one with the clear crystal on top. The ends of the bracelet, as if by magic, wrapped around Abel’s wrist and fused themselves perfectly.

  “This is a special bracelet that humans from my world use to show their lifelong commitment to one another. It is also precious and very practical. The crystals are specially attuned to my energy, and as long as I am alive, the clear crystal will shine, and its point will direct you to where I am. See?” She took a few steps back and forth, and the directional crystal, its tip darkened, turned with whatever way she walked.

  “If I am above you, the crystal will point straight ahead, and the blue one next to it will flash, and if I am below you, the red one on the other side of it will flash. And if I am no longer alive, the clear crystal will no longer shine,” she said.

  “Does yours do the same thing for me?” asked Abel.

  “Of course.” Rimi smiled, and she showed him.

  “What’s the range?”

  “I’m not sure here, but in my world, my mother’s and father’s worked even when they were thousands of your miles apart. So, you see, now neither of us will ever be lost again.”

  “That’s quite the way of putting it,” said Abel, and he wrapped Rimi in a warm embrace. “I guess we’d better get going on this. You better finish getting ready.” He grabbed the harpoon gun, strapped on his rebreather and face mask, and powered up the underwater sled.

  Rimi slipped her small bluish knife between her weight belt and her wetsuit. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Abel gave her a curious look. “Aren’t you missing a few things—like something to breathe with, for starters?”

  “I’ll be just fine.” She grinned. “Here, give me some of those flares.” Abel handed several to her, which she also stuck underneath her weight belt. “I’ll meet you there!” And with that, she leaped high into the air and out over the water, and before Abel could even get into the water himself, he saw her plunge into the ocean just a few hundred yards from the island.

  Abel shook his head and smiled his crooked smile. “Glad she’s on my side,” he said, and then eased himself into the water, flipped on the underwater sled, and let it drag him out to where Rimi already was, helped along by the powerful push from his flippers.

  Meanwhile, Rimi, headlamp turned on, allowed her weights to slowly pull her down while she observed what was below her. True to what they’d been told, there were many boulders, some very massive, littering the ocean bottom, which was probably only thirty or forty feet deep at this point. But then she noticed there was an area of relatively clean sand and mud between the beginning of the boulder field and the shore of the island. It was as if some giant had shoved a massive pile of rocks out int
o the sea to make a space for him to sit that would be free of stone. Finding this both curious and encouraging, Rimi allowed herself to settle onto the ocean floor just on the other side of the boulder field and then began to walk slowly through the mud and sand. Rimi stared around her and felt with her feet for some huge object that might be her family’s cruiser buried in the mud, smiling to herself at what Abel’s expression would be when he saw that she could breathe underwater just as easily as she could breathe above it. It was a gift that Earth humans considered miraculous, but for her, it was nothing special at all. Everybody where she came from was able to do the same. It was apparently an adaptation that her particular species of humans had developed that the Earth human species never had.

  Looking around, she saw a true underwater wonderland. The sun above looked a bit like the moon did at night, with most of its light dissipating just a few yards above her. It was like being just under the clouds, able to see the clear sky while being shrouded in the darkness just a little farther down. She saw small schools of fish swimming in the curious, singular behavior that reminded her of how flocks of birds acted in the sky. There was an occasional larger fish that wandered among them. One, which Rimi sensed was a predator, was directly above her. She sent out a telepathic warning in its direction, and it instantly skittered away.

  Checking her wrist crystal, she saw that Abel was still above and behind her, but the quickening blinking of the crystal indicated that he was coming rather fast. At the same time, she suddenly felt as if she were walking gently upward, even though she was still walking in mud and sand.

  I’m just ahead of you, and I think I’ve found something, she thought to him.

  What the hell? Is that you, Rimi? she heard back from him.

  She chuckled. Of course it is. Who else do you know that can get into your head so easily?

  Nice! On my other team, we all had to wear radio headsets.

  Bibi would say that you’ve made it to the majors, like in baseball.