Zig Zag

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  Valente blocked her way.

  "Let me go," Elisa said, trying to dodge him.

  "I know where you're going. You're going to strip on the beach and increase the temperature of my member even more. If you weren't such a prick tease, you'd put on your bikini in your room, like your friend, but since you're such a fucking prick tease you get naked right here on the beach so we can all watch you. Isn't that right?"

  Elisa dodged him again. She was now incredibly sorry she'd wondered if he was OK a minute ago. And it was about to get even worse.

  He stood in her way once more.

  "So you're going to report me for telling you what you technically and scientifically are?" Suddenly, she realized that this wasn't one of his jokes. Valente was livid, even more irate than her. "That would be like me accusing you of something unthinkable, something monstrous, like ... fantasizing about me when you jack off. Something impossible..."

  She froze. All of a sudden, she had no desire to go for a swim, to be with Nadja or anything else. She wasn't embarrassed or humiliated; she was scared.

  "It would be like accusing me of bestiality just because I like your tits," he continued in the same tone, as if it were all part of the same joke. "You're such a drama queen. If you don't want to hear the truth, then don't go asking for it..."

  He saw me. He must have seen me. But that's impossible. He's just saying it. She tried to see through the mocking gleam in his eye to the truth, but she couldn't. Two weeks had gone by since that night she'd been touching herself in her room, and she was sure that nobody had seen her. But then, how...?

  "Let's all just calm down," he said. "You think you've got the solution, don't you, sweetheart? That all your calculations have paid off. Well, then, let the rest of us dimwits do our work and stop flaunting yourself around like the tease you are..."

  He turned and stalked off, leaving her standing there. Nadja arrived a minute later, but she was gone by then. It was several days before she felt like going back to the beach, and from then on she always changed into her bikini in her room. She didn't bother telling her friend what had made her change her routine.

  Afterward, when she looked back on things with some perspective, she saw that she had been a little dramatic. She considered Valente's attacks from a competitive perspective and realized that it was clear he couldn't stand seeing her get results before he did. What was more, she took him too seriously; there was no need to shrink back in his presence. Valente might seem like some indescribable, bizarre, freakish being, but when it came right down to it, he was a total dick who happened to be really smart and got off on trying to hurt her whenever he saw the chance. But that was more because she let him than because he was so great.

  She was sure that what he'd said was just bluster. There was no way anyone could have seen her, not even through the peephole, and she'd already cleared up the mystery of the footsteps. Mrs. Ross had been down in the pantry that night; she'd told Elisa the next day. So that was all cleared up. Valente was taking shots in the dark just to see if he could rile her. He'll get over it. Maybe this will make him realize he'd be better off spending his time working and not sleeping with his colleagues. She thought no more about it.

  In fact, she felt remarkably relaxed. Since she'd finished her calculations, she slept like a log and had stopped seeing shadows and hearing noises.

  On Thursday, August 18, the energy for the Jerusalem time strand was placed on Blanes's desk on a clean sheet of paper. They set up the experiment for the next day. After Craig and Marini obtained the sample images and made them collide at the level of energy they'd calculated, the whole team began to endure a nail-biting wait.

  Elisa was on cleaning duty, which had suffered some neglect over the past few days, and she was glad to have something to do. She and Blanes were in the kitchen together. Seeing Blanes wash dishes was not something she ever thought she'd experience, especially back when she was in his classes at Alighieri. But this was the kind of thing that happened when you lived together on an island.

  Suddenly, there was silence. Several long faces stood in the kitchen doorway. Colin Craig was the one who told them.

  "Both images diffused."

  "Don't cry," Marini tried to joke. "But that does mean you'll have to go back to the drawing board and start calculating again."

  No one cried right then. But maybe alone, in their rooms, they did. Elisa was sure they cried. She did. And the next day, everyone had red-rimmed eyes, puffy faces, and no desire to talk. Mother Nature seemed to be in mourning, too, and the last days of August were filled with thick clouds and a warm, driving, almost horizontal rain. It was monsoon season, Nadja said, something a majority of the planet experienced. "The summer months are when the southwest winds—the hulhangu—blow, and when driving rain is almost a daily occurrence, like in the Maldives." Elisa had never seen anything like it. It didn't look like drops, but like strings. Millions of strings being pulled by furious puppeteers and hammering down on rooftops, windows, walls. It didn't patter; it sounded more like a low, guttural, constant snore. Sometimes Elisa looked up and stared out the window, zombielike, at the fury the elements were unleashing. She thought it accurately reflected her state of mind.

  The first Monday in September, after an unpleasant argument with Blanes, who upbraided her for working so slowly, she felt an odd, cloying bitterness. She didn't cry. She didn't do anything at all. She just sat motionless in front of the computer in Clissot's lab, thinking she'd never get up again. Time passed. Maybe a few hours, she wasn't really sure. And then she smelled perfume and felt a hand on her bare shoulder, as soft as a leaf drifting down from a tree.

  "Come," Nadja said.

  If she'd done anything else to try and convince her, if she'd hurled abuse (like her mother) or tried reasoning with her (like her father), Elisa would never have obeyed. But her smooth movements and sweet voice cast a spell on her. She got up and followed her friend, like one of the Pied Piper's rats. Nadja was wearing sturdy pants and boots that looked too big.

  "I don't feel like going to the beach," Elisa said. "We're not going to the beach."

  She led her to her room and pointed to a pile of clothes and another pair of boots. Elisa laughed when she realized that the clothes actually fit her pretty well.

  "You have a soldier's physique," Nadja said. "Mrs. Ross says those boots and pants are for Carter's men."

  Thus disguised, she smeared on a strange-smelling lotion that Nadja called "mosquito repellent"; Elisa thought it was just plain repellent. Then they went outside and walked toward the heliport. It wasn't actually raining, but she had the impression that the monsoons were just lying in wait, camouflaged, biding their time. Elisa's lungs filled with humidity and the smell of vegetation. The north winds brought in a constant flow of quick-moving clouds that hid and uncovered the sun every other second, producing an almost strobe-light effect.

  They left the heliport's landing pad behind. In front of the soldiers' garrison, Carter stood talking to the Thai soldier, Lee, and the Colombian, Mendez, who was on guard duty at the gate that led into the jungle. Elisa liked Lee because he always smiled at her, but Mendez was the one she spoke to most. Right then he was smiling widely, his white teeth contrasting with his dark skin. She was no longer as afraid of the soldiers as she had been. She'd realized that beneath their metal and leather exteriors, they were just people. And now, she tried to concentrate more on what was underneath, not on, their uniforms.

  They passed the warehouse where the munitions, weapons, technical equipment, and water purifier were stored, and Nadja took a path parallel to the jungle wall.

  The famous rain forest, which to Elisa had seemed like no more than a smattering of trees and mud, was absolutely magical once she was inside it. She jumped up and down like a little girl on enormous, mossy tree roots; she marveled at the size and shape of flowers, and listened to the endless sounds of life. At one point, what seemed like a black-and-white model plane buzzed past her.

 
"Giant dragonfly," Nadja explained. "Or a damselfly. Those black spots on its wings are pterostigmas. In some parts of Southeast Asia they believe they're the souls of the dead."

  "I can see why," Elisa agreed.

  Suddenly, Nadja crouched down. When she stood back up she was holding a little red, black, and green bottle in her hand. It looked like a witch's potion, and had six jet-black handles. "This is a Cetoniidae. Or maybe it's a Chrysomelidae, I'm not sure. Beetles, for normal folks." Elisa was amazed. She'd never seen a beetle so brightly colored. "I have a French friend who's an expert in coleoptera who'd love to be here right now," Nadja added, placing it back on the ground. Elisa made a joke about the kind of company her friend kept.

  Nadja also showed her a family of stick insects and an unbelievable pink mantis. Nothing they saw was larger than an insect (except for one brightly colored lizard), but according to Nadja that was often the way in jungles. The creatures that inhabited that place hid from each other, blended in, or camouflaged themselves in order to save their own lives or to take others'. The jungle was a place of fearsome disguises.

  "If we came at night with infrared goggles, we might see lorises. They're nocturnal lemurs. Have you ever seen pictures of them? They look like teddy bears with huge, scared eyes. And those noises...," Nadja said, and then froze like an ice sculpture in that green cathedral, "... are probably gibbons..."

  The lake was large, and the north side of it was marshy, full of mangroves. Nadja showed her the tiny marsh creatures: crabs, frogs, and snakes. In the late afternoon light, the water looked dark green. They walked along the shore until they got to the coral reefs, where they came across a pool so bright it looked as if it were lined with emeralds. After looking around cautiously, Nadja took off her clothes and invited Elisa to do the same.

  There are times when we have the feeling that everything we've ever done in life up to that moment has been false. Elisa had felt something like that when she viewed the Unbroken Glass and the Perennial Snows images, but now it was different. Splashing around in that warm, crystal clear water, as naked as nature had intended and in the company of her friend, also naked, she felt it again, maybe more intensely. The life that she lived surrounded by computers and equations seemed as fake to her as her velvety reflection on the water's surface. Her skin, her pores, her whole body submerged in that cool water—all seemed to be telling her she could do anything, that nothing stood in her way, that the world lay at her feet.

  She looked at Nadja and could tell she felt the same way.

  They didn't do anything out of the ordinary, though. For Elisa, just the thought was enough to make her happy. It occurred to her that the (subtle) difference between heaven and hell could be as simple as not acting on all the impulses that pop into your head.

  It was an unforgettable afternoon. Maybe not the kind you'd tell your grandkids about, she guessed, but definitely the kind that, when it happens, makes you realize that every fiber in your body had been crying out for it.

  Half an hour later, without even waiting to dry, they got dressed and headed back. They didn't talk much as they walked back; in fact, they were pretty much silent. Elisa intuited that their relationship had reached a new level, a deeper level, and that they no longer needed words to bond them together.

  And after that day, things got better for her. She went back to the lab, to her calculations. Days passed almost without her realizing it, and then on September 15 she experienced a déjà vu when she interrupted Blanes and his music to show him her results once more. The figure was almost identical to the one she'd come up with the first time, except for the last few decimal points.

  TWO days later, the energy for the Jerusalem time strand was handed in, too, but they had to wait for Craig and Marini to finish tinkering with the accelerator. Finally, on Friday, September 24, the whole team congregated in the control room (Marini called it "the Throne Room"). A vast hall almost a hundred feet wide and 120 feet long, it was New Nelson's pret-a-porter architectural gem. Unlike the barracks, it was made of brick and cement and reinforced with insulation to minimize the chance of a short circuit. That was where the four most powerful computers were, as well as SUSAN, the supraselective accelerator that was Colin Craig's baby. It was a steel doughnut 45 feet in diameter and 3 feet thick. The magnets that produced the magnetic field that accelerated the charged particles were attached to "her" circumference. SUSAN was Project Zig Zag's great technological triumph. Unlike most accelerators, she only needed one or two people to operate her and make all the endless adjustments necessary. The energy levels produced inside her weren't high, but they were extraordinarily precise. On either side of SUSAN were two small doors with skulls and crossbones that led to the station's generator rooms. One stairway, which you reached through the left door, led up above the doughnut so that whoever needed to could "touch our little girl's private parts," as Marini said with his typical macho southern humor.

  Sitting at the telemetric screens, Craig anxiously tapped in the coordinates of two groups of satellites so they would capture the images of North Africa and send them down to New Nelson in real time (time strings could be opened only in real time—or "fresh time," as the ever-imaginative Marini called it—since storing them in any way distorted the results). The geographic area selected was about twenty-five square miles, and was nearly the same for both experiments. From that, they could obtain the images of Jerusalem and Gondwanaland, the megacontinent that 150 million years ago was formed by South America, Africa, the Hindustan peninsula, Australia, and Antarctica. When they received the images, the computers identified and selected them, and Craig and Marini started up SUSAN to accelerate the electron beams and make them collide with the calculated energies.

  While all this took place, Elisa watched her colleagues' faces. They were all tense and eager, though each with their own idiosyncrasies: Craig, contained as always; Marini, exultant; Clissot, reserved; Cheryl Ross, mysterious and practical; Silberg, worried; Blanes, expectant; Valente, as if he couldn't care less; Nadja, thrilled; Rosalyn, staring at Valente.

  "That's it," Colin Craig said, getting up from his seat by the mainframe. "Within four hours, we'll know if the images are visible."

  "If you're a believer, this would be the time to pray," Marini added.

  No one prayed. They did, however, attack the food. Everyone was starving, and lunch was relaxed yet quick.

  While they waited for the image analysis, Elisa recalled her magical afternoon with Nadja two weeks ago and laughed, thinking that her friend had been her own "accelerator." She'd given her enough energy to open up and to realize that she still had a lot to offer. At the time, she thought they'd have more afternoons like that for as long as they remained on the island.

  Later on, it became clear that their little excursion had been her last happy moment before the shadows began to engulf everything.

  "THERE are images."

  "From both samples?"

  "Yes." Blanes held up a hand to silence their comments. "The first one is from three or four isolated strings on solid ground, about four thousand seven hundred billion seconds ago, which is a hundred and fifty million years."

  "The Jurassic period," affirmed Jacqueline Clissot, as if in a trance.

  "That's right. And that's not even the best news. You tell them, Colin."

  Colin Craig, who even over the past few exhausting days had not stopped looking like a dandy in jeans and T-shirt, pushed back his glasses and gazed at Jacqueline Clissot as if he were about to ask her on a date.

  "Our analysis shows there are very large, living creatures."

  The computer used to digitalize the images captured from the strings was set to detect shapes and the movement of objects, with the aim of picking up on the presence of living organisms.

  For a second, no one spoke. Then something rather remarkable happened. Clissot, an amazing, fascinating woman— perfect, Nadja called her—whose outfits gave the strange impression that she wore more metal than cloth (unlike
Ross, she wore steel accessories: watch, bracelets, rings, pendants), took a deep breath and whispered a single word that sounded more like a moan.

  "Dinos..."

  Nadja and Clissot hugged and people applauded, but Blanes interrupted their displays of joy, raising his hands.

  "The other image corresponds to Jerusalem, a little over seventy-two thousand million seconds ago. Our computations situate that in early April, the year AD 33."

  "The Hebrew month of Nisan," Marini said, winking at Silberg. Now everyone stared at the German professor.

  "There are also living creatures in this one," Blanes added. "And they are well defined. According to the computer, there is about a ninety-nine point five percent chance they're human beings."

  This time there was no applause. The feeling that overwhelmed Elisa was almost wholly physical. She was trembling, and it felt like it was emanating from her bone marrow.

  "One or more people walking through Jerusalem, Reinhard," Craig said.

  "Or one or more trained chimpanzees, if we consider the remaining point five percent." Marini smiled, but Craig shook his head.

  Silberg, who had taken off his glasses, looked at them one by one, as if daring anyone to be as happy as he was.

  AFTER a quick, noisy celebration with real champagne served in real champagne flutes that Mrs. Ross found in the pantry, they all met up in the screening room.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats!" Marini shouted. "Come on, hurry up! 'Le vite son corte!' as Dante said. 'Le vite son corte!'"

  "To your posts, everyone," Mrs. Ross cried, clapping her hands.

  "And fasten your seat belts!"

  Almost reluctantly they began scooting their chairs, asking questions ("Do you mind if I sit here?"), calling the person they each wanted sitting next to them when the lights went down. As if it were a scary movie, Elisa thought. Cheryl Ross held everyone up by insisting they all finish off their champagne first and take the glasses out to the kitchen, which, of course, led to more jokes ("Anything you say, Mrs. Ross. I'm more afraid of you than of Carter," Marini said) and delays. Elisa sat by Nadja, in the second row. Blanes had already begun speaking.