“You sticking up for him, now?”
“No, of course not. Lorenzo may well rank as the world’s No. 1 villain to date.”
We hashed the topic over as we squatted in the sun, inspecting the tools and baubles. Dr. Duarte was holding an acorn-sized ruby up to the sunlight when she uttered a suggestion which caught me completely by surprise.
“Sal, I’ve been I thinking about what you said, about keeping all the good stuff. I think you are right.” The words came in such a distracted way, at first, I did not grasp their meaning. Perhaps I assumed I was the only one lusting for riches.
“If we could give it back to the rightful owners, that would be the best solution,” she continued. “But it is unworkable.”
“What about The Team?” Kaikane asked.
Duarte began pacing as she made her case, trying to talk her own self into it, as she sought to convince us. Dr. Duarte often delivers monologues. While most are tedious, occasionally, they are quite entertaining. I did my best to not be distracted by the way the sun glinted off the auburn streaks in her jet-black hair, or the way her passion added tinges of red on those high cheekbones, and the way her feminine body was a pleasing half-size too large for her Cro-Magnon clothes.
“Our primary job is to survive. Plain and simple. Once we deal with Martinelli’s mess, our next priorities will be to explore and to chronicle what we see. This is a scientific mission, first and foremost. If we put all of these trade goods in a hole, a hole which will probably never be discovered by The Team anyway, it will be a colossal waste of resources. We can use these goods to help wipe away Martinelli’s influence. We can also use them to advance our studies, grease the skids of our movements around this earth. Besides, what has The Team done for us? We were sent back in time with faulty equipment and a compromised crew. They owe us. What do you two think?”
Kaikane wore a bemused look. “I wanted to keep it from the get-go,” he said.
“As did I.”
She expelled a deep breath. “Good. We’ll divide everything into three piles. Burn, bury and keep. Cpl. Bolzano, you’re going to have to carry whatever you and Gray Beard want to take along the trail. He travels light, though he may let you put some things in the dog’s packs. Sort through the small stuff and take what you want. The rest of the keepers, we’ll transport in the holds of the kayaks.”
It took eight total round trips. We left a museum wing’s worth of heavy artifacts at the bottom of a hole on the hill. I am sure Duarte will send forward better coordinates, but it looked to me to be about two kilometers due north of where Firenze’s majestic Duomo will stand. Should Team personnel ever locate the lode, they will find everything from spear points to stone picks, but not one ruby or divinely-shaped piece of amber with a loop of baby mantis frozen inside.
TRANSMISSION:
Bolzano: “How go your efforts with the new Team Pledge?”
Duarte: “Pardon me?”
Bolzano: “The pledge you are to write. Is it finished?”
Duarte: “Not yet.”
Bolzano: “I leave on the morn, you know. Are you not going to insist I put my hand over my heart and promise to forsake God and all His Saints, or take to one knee and renew my commitment to protect humanity?”
Duarte: “Truthfully, I haven’t even started. I’ve been so busy, so occupied with Leonglauix.”
Bolzano: “Like a camel at an oasis, he drinks deeply of you before his journey.”
Duarte: “It will be difficult to say goodbye.”
Bolzano: “He calls you his daughter.”
Duarte: “Leonglauix honors me.”
Bolzano: “To the detriment of your relationship with the rest of the Turtles. Even Tomon and Gertie are jealous.”
Duarte: “Is this Tomon fellow up to snuff?”
Bolzano: “Up to what?”
Duarte: “Snuff. Is he qualified to lead?”
Bolzano: “Certainly, yes. Tomon is quite capable.”
Duarte: “Will he remember our story? Tell it correctly? His recitations displayed so little conviction.”
Bolzano: “He forgets nothing. Don’t worry, your disinformation campaign is in good hands.”
Duarte: “It is not disinformation! Martinelli was the one spreading disinformation.”
Bolzano: “Forgive me, I misspoke. Though Tomon may not yet have the old man’s panache, his delivery captures the natives’ interest nonetheless. Do you think it is fair to compare the two?”
Duarte: “Leonglauix is truly a master storyteller.”
Bolzano: “How much have you told him about us?”
Duarte: “You read the reports.”
Bolzano: “No need to become testy. I just wanted to make sure we have our accounts in line.”
Duarte: “We’ve told him as little as possible. He understands we come from a very far away place. He knows we have unusually strange and powerful tools and weapons, and we are high-functioning people in terms of intelligence and physical capabilities. He’s never worn a suit, never had ‘helmet time,’ and never watched a movie on one of our computers, but he knows all three devices exist. Leonglauix is no dummy. The man is keenly aware we have secrets, and that we worry mightily about exposing him to those secrets.”
Bolzano: “Are you not worried he will share your secrets with the world? After all, he is a storyteller. What if he details our exploits in the best tale of all time?”
Duarte: “I don’t think he will. I’m fairly well certain of it.”
Bolzano: “What could possibly give you such confidence?”
Duarte: “Because I’ve asked him not to. He understands, if he betrays our trust, we will no longer travel with him. He finds us quite entertaining.”
Bolzano: “So you just treat him like a member of the Team? You wear your suits and use your computer as usual? Speak English all the time?”
Duarte: “As little as possible. You’ve seen how we interact.”
Bolzano: “He refers to the direction north as ‘north.’”
Duarte: “I’m aware of that. Regretfully, he has perhaps a dozen English words. Maybe more. I lose sleep about it almost every night. It is so hard.”
Bolzano: “Especially at the beginning. You do not even realize it is happening. Forget not, I too traveled with Cro-Magnon this past year. They are a very curious and observant people. They can also be loud, obnoxious and flatulent.”
Duarte: “We do our best to communicate with him only in Green Turtle dialect or native sign language. I wait to pull out my computer when he sleeps or is off doing something. When he catches me working, I stop and put it away. Same for the suits and helmets. He accepts them as tools which we have and no one else does.”
Bolzano: “I am surprised you did not throw the suits and helmets in the river along with the guns.”
Duarte: “The guns didn’t work. Used properly, these suits and helmets will be invaluable. Even Amacapane’s equipment, though not functioning, is still worth keeping for spare parts.”
Bolzano: “Is the suit broken or locked?”
Duarte: “I don’t know. I tried it on. It does not fire up.”
Bolzano: “Just as well. You already have a suit, and we three men would never fit inside. We do not need natives wearing an activated suit.”
Duarte: “Right, indeed. You know, Paul and I talked it over with Jones. We think we can trust you to fly straight. Please tell me we are not crazy?”
Bolzano: “I can be trusted. As an example, look what I have done while you have been malingering with your Cro-Magnon padre.”
Duarte: “What is it?”
Bolzano: “I have spent my free time collating our notes.”
Duarte: “Our notes? Yours and mine?”
Bolzano: “Yes, of course. Again, I must commend your observations. Not only are your efforts prodigious, they are also quite astute. Many details you list about these people and this place either slipped by me or I neglected to mention them. And vice versa. We complement each other very we
ll. Perhaps we will be co-published.”
Duarte: “That would be nice. Co-published, single authorship, I wouldn’t care if I received zero credit–as long as somebody besides us reads it.”
Bolzano: “It is the billion Euro question, is it not? Will our work make it all the way back?”
Duarte: “In monetary terms, the investors will be unhappy no matter what happens. The four of us can never hope to fulfill their expectations. In the unlikely event our efforts do prevail, most investors, and even Team leaders, will view our scribblings as a poor return indeed.”
Bolzano: “What are you talking about? They will name college buildings after us!”
Duarte: “I’ve heard that before. Dr. Gomez said it aboard ship, the day before the waves. If only he and the rest of the men and women seated at that table had made it through. Then we would really have some scientific achievements.”
Bolzano: “I believe you sell yourself short, Dr. Duarte. Your colleagues would be proud of your findings, which are monumental indeed.”
Duarte: “Thank you, corporal. And as for you, they are certainly getting their money’s worth out of a lowly Firefighter II.”
Bolzano: “When do you plan to bury the first computer, the first message to the future?”
Duarte: “Soon.”
Bolzano: “To my mind, the sooner the better. We should get one in the ground before some unforeseen disaster makes it impossible.”
Duarte: “Agreed, but not here. Not in Tuscany.”
CHAPTER NINE
From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano
Firefighter II
(English translation)
The old snake killer snores atop a bed of ferns, one hand draped across the dozing bitch’s back. I sit shivering against the base of a nearby conifer. The first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony whispers from Jones’ ear peas as I stare into the inky dark, wondering if a wolf or cat is licking its chops, ready to pounce.
I save this breathtaking 2099 recording of the Meerlust Orchestra for times of emergency. Times when my bruised mental palette needs a therapeutic massage. Has any composer said as much with four notes? “Must trust my guide. Must trust my guide. Must trust my guide. And–his–faithful–dog!”
Leonglauix assures me that even when the bitch has her eyes closed, her ears and nose are on alert. Our alarm. She has proven it many times over the past week, and though it is no small comfort to know she is sorting through non-threatening night sounds of crickets, frogs, owls and bats, and the tame smells of porcupines, rabbits and deer, ready to leap up and bark a warning should any predator have the audacity to wander close, still, I fret. Sleep proves elusive for the third straight night. I am afraid to close my eyes. Nearly being eaten by wolves will do that to you.
Living with the clan for so long, I had forgotten how diabolical the boreal forest can be. If only I could erase from my mind the warmth of the wolves’ breath on my neck, and the size of their teeth.
Despite his reputation for marching long into the night, the storyteller generally calls a halt to our efforts no later than an hour before full dark. The man likes to cleave a few snakes in half before he beds down.
He and the bitch led the way out of Camp Firenze not too terribly long after sunrise. Maintaining a measured, but certainly not killing, pace through drizzly weather, we followed Lorenzo’s well-worn trail through the marshlands to cover the relatively flat 35 kilometers to Pistoia. The journey took about eight hours.
Lorenzo and his Saints made at least three pilgrimages (which I knew of) to the sergeant’s old hometown and their trail was easily followed. Even for a novice tracker such as I.
Days earlier, when I had mentioned Lorenzo’s forays to the Americans, it struck a chord with Dr. Duarte. The woman sees conspiracies behind every rock. She insisted the storyteller and I swing wide to Pistoia before heading north across the snow-capped mountains of the Appennino.
Conspiracy aficionado or not, her worries were confirmed by way of a five-meter-tall wooden cross thrust deep into the bare foothill where the Martinelli family’s agricultural apartment building will one day stand. At the base of the cross, milling about in the persistent rain, a greasy-haired little clan fed pine limbs into a smoky fire.
Leonglauix wasn’t surprised in the least by the clan’s presence. He said he had been watching the smoke for several kilometers. My eyes had been riveted to the ever-changing ground in front of me. The tug of a pack does not agree with my shoulders. Nor do my feet appreciate an endless march. I was determined to keep up, however, and I did.
His sudden stop caught me by surprise. Nearly bumping into his back, I looked up to see the towering cross and its attendant clan about 50 meters away. We observed their antics for perhaps 10 minutes before one of the clan’s members stuck his head out of the smoke long enough to note our presence. In an instant, five smudged faces pointed our way. There was not one hint of menace. With open arms and friendly waves, they invited us into camp.
“People are poor. No dogs,” Leonglauix said.
“Stupid as well,” I replied. “Their fire is for chasing away bugs, not cooking.”
The quip brought a rare smile to his lips. He motioned me forward. “Let us help them, before they cough to death.”
Though the clan had slain an antelope, it could not produce a flame hot enough to cook the meat. Gray Beard inventoried their soggy kindling, then borrowed one of the men’s flint knives and began slicing long slivers from Lorenzo’s cross.
This set off a bit of a clamor among the clan’s people. My spears were ready should one dare harass my escort. I soon gathered the commotion was a litany of “I told you so’s” directed at the one senior member of the clan who did not want to defile the cross. Soon, Gray Beard stepped aside as a trio of men took his place skinning dry shavings into a pile.
I had a bit of a shock when I stepped on the opposite side of the cross to look up and find Sgt. Martinelli’s aspirations carved out in bold, block lettering.
“Lorenzo is God.”
I imagine, in his warped mind, assuming the mantle of God was the next logical step. He was nutty. The lunacy and outright destructiveness of his misplaced religious campaign made what came next so much easier to swallow. What person who grew up in the Church could ever willingly condone the torching of a cross? Lorenzo’s fixation with wealth and power, his absolute bastardization of Christianity, made the towering blaze quite palpable indeed.
Moving embers from the failed fire to the pile of shavings at the base of the cross, the storyteller soon had a steady blaze roaring. He was dutifully following Dr. Duarte’s orders, which had been quite specific indeed. All crosses and other signs of my fellow Italian’s passing were to be destroyed completely.
I stood there in the firelight, dripping rain, wondering, “What is it about missionaries which makes them so damned cocksure?” Throughout history they convert natives with cries of, “March with me on the side of the one true Lord. My Lord is best!” Two generations later, the missionary descendants own the best land while host cultures are lost and languages are extinct. For what? So we all can talk and think the same way? “Follow my Lord, or else!”
I would like to think it a gross over-simplification. For every missionary like Lorenzo, perhaps there is a Saint Francis who lives up to his vows and never once gives in to the human emotions of lust, greed and domination. Having recently served at the shoulder of a zealot, I understand the pulse of power and lure of prestige. Crowds cheer your name, and you can tell in their eyes, they love you, are willing to die for you. You are their God!
History teaches us time and again, however, that the only thing the public enjoys more than building a great person up is tearing that person down. If Lorenzo had spent more time reading his entire Bible as opposed to cherry-picking passages that suited his empire-building desires, he may have stumbled upon verses such as the lament in the First Book of Samuel, “How the mighty have fallen.”
The antelope was near
ly fully cooked when the cross emitted a loud “crack” and toppled over in a shower of sparks. No one was hurt, save the antelope, which bore the brunt of the fall. The clan thought it was all in good fun. Once the cross was repositioned on the fire, the beast was dusted free of ash and debris, and placed once again alongside the blaze.
The fact that Leonglauix did not speak the clan’s dialect did not keep him from delivering his post-meal bedtime story. More or less following the script Dr. Duarte and I had crafted, he told the new version of Lorenzo’s tale through pantomime, facial expressions and common words.
“Lord-enzo,” the man who would be God, was characterized as a chronic masturbator and thief. He said “Mertoon-elly” grew up as a mean child who stole from everyone, even his own family and clan. The misbehavior eventually earned him expulsion from the clan. He grew meaner still as he wandered the earth alone, incessantly masturbating, always taking what was not his. One day, he snuck up on a volcano and stole its fire.
With the ability to hide in plain sight, and to burst into flames, he soon recruited the help of the Tattoo clan. Who but a bad person enlists the untrustworthy Tattoos? The story went on to discredit Sgt. Martinelli in no uncertain terms. It ended with the volcano tracking him down and exploding inside his belly.
The propaganda campaign is the brainchild of our military man, Cpl. Jones. “We’re the winners, so we write the history,” he said.
I wonder how Jones and the Green Turtles are faring these days. Back-tracking Lorenzo’s route from Nice as they are, I imagine they will encounter far more converts than we will. Tomon has probably told the tale many times by now.
If they are still alive.
How morbid, how pessimistic, you say? Why would they not be safe and sound? In this world, safe and sound are illusions to be shattered in an instant. The reality was brought to roost just three days ago.
Picking our way down a steep, rock-strewn hillside, gradually approaching a sea of sunlight, we emerged from the trees into a wide valley bottom which must have been the site of a mighty fire within the past several years. Left in the fire’s wake was a meadow of shoulder-high grass. Free of tree and scrub, teeming with wildlife, the clearing featured an abundance of megafauna we had not yet witnessed in the boot of Italy, including auroch, red deer and rhino standing tall above the lesser mammals. Backlit butterflies and dragonflies bobbed amongst spring poplar dander floating in the breeze as martins and swallows darted overhead.
Tuscany Page 24
