“It appears that part of your solution has arrived,” Samuel said.
Quentin looked. The villagers were returning, apparently with the entire tribe. They were approaching slowly, following Sinanie, who was encouraging them not to be afraid. There were six women with them, more than Quentin had ever seen at one time in this tribe. Gradually the group came closer, and they finally formed a circle around Quentin and the others.
Matiinuo spoke directly to Bobby. “Nokhu mesendipo kholofudamo diabo Lamotelokhai.”
“They are ready to confer their knowledge to the Lamotelokhai,” Samuel said.
Bobby looked at the Papuans and shuffled his feet. “Well, um, right now the Lamotelokhai is—”
“I mbakha!” cried one of the women. She pointed beyond the group, to where Bobby had placed the ball of clay.
The Lamotelokhai was back, rising from the ground. It was a mound the size of an overturned bowl, but it continued to grow as the villagers gathered around to watch. Finally it stopped—a mound of clay a yard across, the size of the original Lamotelokhai.
“Excuse me,” Bobby said, and he pushed his way through the onlookers to kneel beside it.
Quentin watched over the shoulder of one of the shorter villagers.
Seconds after placing his hands on it, Bobby looked up. “It’s ready now.” His eyes searched the crowd and settled on one of the men. “Teatakan,” he said, and then he gestured toward the clay.
Teatakan stepped forward and transferred his knowledge to the Lamotelokhai. As he stepped back, the others spoke softly and rubbed his arms and shoulders, praising him.
Bobby called another name. “Jara.”
One of the women stepped forward.
The process continued until Bobby called Kebuge, the last Papuan on the list. The Lamotelokhai had given him no more names. Except Addison’s.
“It’s his turn,” Bobby said, looking at Quentin and then Lindsey.
Quentin moved away from the group and spotted Addison. He was still playing games with the tree kangaroos.
Lindsey stepped up beside Quentin.“I’ll try.” She called out gently, “Addison, please come over here.”
He stopped what he was doing but didn’t come closer. “I no touch, Mummy!”
“It won’t hurt you, honey, I promise.”
Addison dropped to all fours and took a few ape-like steps toward them. But then he stopped and twisted his face into a frightening sneer. “No, Mummy! It hurt me. It hurt me bad!”
Did Addison actually remember being hurt by it? Did he remember Quentin throwing it at his face, trying to kill him?
A slight commotion had risen from the villagers behind him, but Quentin was focused on Addison and his own despairing thoughts.
Addison’s sneer remained, and he crouched like he was about to charge them and attack. At that moment, Quentin realized his son was too broken to live any kind of normal life, even if they somehow managed to get to Puerto Rico and stop the spreading creatures. Addison was too unpredictable. And downright terrifying. The son he had known and loved was gone forever.
Quentin held both his hands out. “Addison, please don’t be upset.”
“Hey, Quentin. Lindsey.” It was Bobby. “Maybe this will help.”
Quentin pulled his eyes away from Addison and turned. Bobby emerged from the gathered villagers. And just behind him was Addison. It was Addison as Quentin wanted to remember him—human and unhurt. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, the same clothes the Lamotelokhai had been wearing when it was disguised as Addison eight months ago. Quentin knew this figure before him was actually the Lamotelokhai, but seeing it in that form was still like getting punched in the chest. He felt Lindsey grab his arm and squeeze.
“It’s almost complete now,” Bobby said as he and the Addison copy approached. “I don’t think it can talk out loud yet, but still, I thought this might help with Addison.” He shrugged and half-smiled.
Suddenly the real Addison was beside Quentin, standing upright. He was staring at the copy of his former self.
“Who that, Mummy?”
Lindsey said, “Do you remember him? That’s you. That’s what you looked like before.”
Addison took a step closer. The thing looked back at him without expression. They both had the same blue eyes, but nothing else in common. “Who you?” Addison said.
The Lamotelokhai remained silent.
“Um, there’s something else,” Bobby said. “There were supposed to be twenty-four data packets. But when the Papuans were downloading theirs, I counted them up. There were only nineteen—twenty if you include Addison’s. So I asked the Lamotelokhai about that. It said it was already aware of the situation, because it had put five data packets into Addison.”
Quentin looked at him. “Five? Why?”
“I guess because I made it erase Addison’s memory. That’s when it put the five packets in him. Because then there was plenty of room.”
“Who you?” Addison asked again. He stepped even closer. “Who you!”
Lindsey spoke softly. “I told you, Addison. That’s what you—”
Addison attacked the Lamotelokhai. He threw himself upon it so viciously that Quentin grabbed Lindsey’s arm and stumbled backward. The Lamotelokhai fell flat on its back under the weight of the attack, and Addison sank his teeth into its neck. He pulled back, ripping out a large chunk of the neck and tossing it aside. He then pummeled the thing’s face as he snarled and grunted, his arms a blur.
Lindsey lunged forward and tried pulling Addison off the Lamotelokhai, but Quentin pulled her back. “My God, Addison!” she cried. “Stop!”
Apparently he didn’t even hear her. He kept pounding. But seconds later his blows slowed down. And then they stopped. He sat there on the Lamotelokhai’s chest, panting and staring down at the thing’s mangled head.
There was no blood, no exposed bone. Just clay.
Addison’s chest was heaving from the effort of the attack as he looked up at the crowd surrounding him. His eyes moved from one person to the next. He found Quentin and Lindsey.
“Dad? Mom?”
Quentin’s throat went dry, and he struggled to swallow.
Lindsey said, “Addison, what have you done? Are you okay?”
Addison looked down at the mutilated figure beneath him. “What is this?” He then seemed to notice his hands—powerful, animal-like fingers encrusted with grime. He let out a pitiful sob. “What’s going on? What happened to me?”
Quentin was only a few steps away, but he couldn’t get to his son fast enough. He dropped to his knees and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Addison, who am I? Tell me who I am!”
Tears were starting to form in Addison’s eyes. “You’re my dad. What’s happening? My voice…. What’s happening?”
The maimed figure on the ground began stirring. Quentin and Lindsey pulled Addison off the Lamotelokhai, and they all settled onto the ground beside each other, watching it. Its face and neck were quickly shifting back to normal. It reached for the chunk of its neck Addison had bitten off and pressed it against its abdomen. The clay particles began moving through the t-shirt, and seconds later the chunk was gone.
“Mom, Dad, is that the Lamotelokhai? Is that why it looks like me?”
Quentin said, “You know what the Lamotelokhai is?”
Before Addison could answer, the fully-recovered Lamotelokhai spoke. “Quentin and Lindsey Darnell. A fascinating sequence of events has brought us together again. Your kind can be interesting and unpredictable. But at this moment, your kind is being destroyed. If you wish for that to occur, I will not interfere. If you wish to prevent it, then I must go to the site of this destruction immediately.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Before the Lamotelokhai could offer an explanation, Bobby had a hypothesis about what had happened to Addison. “It must have been when we were all together back in Newton, when we made the big announcement about the Lamotelokhai. The other Addison was there, the one who had been in the o
ther copy of the Twin Otter—the plane that had never even crashed. The Lamotelokhai must have touched him and read his memories. That’s what it gave to Addison just now.”
Quentin, Lindsey, and Addison stared at him, absorbing this.
“Bobby is correct,” the Lamotelokhai said. “The information I put into your son is the information I collected when I encountered the other Addison. If you wish for me to remove the information, I will do so.”
“No!” Lindsey said.
“We’re grateful for what you’ve done,” Quentin said. “We thought we had lost our son.”
Lindsey turned to Addison. “What’s the last thing you remember, honey?”
It seemed to take him a moment to realize she was talking to him. “Those people came to our house, the ones who looked just like us. They talked to all the news reporters about the Lamotelokhai. The Lamotelokhai changed its shape. It freaked everyone out.”
Bobby had replayed that day in his head countless times. It was a day that had changed the world.
“That was eight months ago,” Quentin said. “What do you remember after that?”
Addison shook his head. “No, it was today. Or maybe yesterday. But not eight months ago.” He looked at his hands again, and then at the rest of his naked body. “But I also remember things that happened here—living with the mbolop, helping them with their tree houses. What happened to me?”
Bobby realized this could go on forever. “We need to talk about all this on the plane. People are dying right now.”
“Again, Bobby is correct,” the Lamotelokhai said. “The process that began while my parts were separated is likely to continue. If you wish for me to attempt to stop it, I must go to the location where it began.”
“I can just take the Lamotelokhai with me,” Bobby said. “You guys can stay here with Addison if you want.” He looked at the Addison copy. “Are you ready?”
“We’re going with you,” Lindsey said. “And we’re bringing Addison and all the tree kangaroos. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“What the hell, Bobby?” Ashley was leaning out the aircraft’s hatch as the lift rose up through the canopy.
Bobby just smiled at her. He wasn’t alone in the lift. Crammed into the four-by-four box were seventeen tree kangaroos, as many as he had been able to fit without stacking them.
The lift came to a stop, and the mechanical arm retracted, pulling the platform inside. Bobby messed with the latch until he figured out how to open the panel. The tree kangaroos poured out and scattered throughout the cabin, startling everyone. One of the policemen shouted and leapt onto a seat. When he saw what the creatures actually were, he forced out a chuckle that still sounded nervous.
Suddenly, everyone started asking Bobby questions at once. He held up his hands to stop them. “I don’t know why, but we have to take them with us. And this is only the first load.” He stepped over the open panel into the box and then latched it shut. “I’ll get them loaded as fast as I can.” The lift arm extended, carrying him out the hatch again.
When the lift was halfway through the door, Ashley grabbed it, stopping its movement. “I’m going with you.”
“I told you there’s no time for—”
Suddenly she vaulted over the side of the box. Her knees hit the panel, and she tumbled inside.
Bobby grabbed her elbow to help her up. “Are you crazy? You could have fallen!”
“Everything okay?” Captain Kirk called out.
“We’re fine,” Ashley said. “Take us down please.” The box finished moving out and started dropping.
She glared at Bobby. “You knew I wanted to go down there. I want to see Samuel. And Sinanie. You should have asked me to get in with you.”
He stared back at her in disbelief. He was about to ask again if she was crazy, but he held off. She was trembling, either from anger or fear, and she had an intense look he had seen only a few times before. Suddenly a wave of regret washed over him. Why had he treated her that way? He realized she was right—he should have asked her to ride down with him. Her presence on this trip down wouldn’t delay the process if they both waited on the ground as the rest of the tree kangaroos were lifted.
The platform hit a limb and tipped to one side before sliding off. Ashley held on to one of the cables, never taking her eyes off Bobby’s. She was glaring at him like she wanted to push him over the side, and he grabbed a cable in case she actually did.
Bobby wanted to say he was sorry, but at this moment those words didn’t seem like enough. “Sometimes I don’t really know the right thing to say. But if you would let me kiss you right now, that’s how I could show you how I feel.”
Her brows furrowed. The platform hit another limb and momentarily tipped.
“Apology accepted,” she said. And then she leaned in and pressed her mouth against his so hard it hurt.
But it hurt for only a second, because then Bobby didn’t even care. Ashley actually put her arms around him, like how they kissed in movies. Her eyes were closed, so he closed his, and this made it even better. She kissed his lips, first his top lip and then his bottom lip, and he kissed hers. Then he felt the tip of her tongue. He touched her tongue with his, and suddenly the kiss went to a whole new level of amazing.
Bobby was vaguely aware that the rustling of leaves against the descending lift had stopped. They were in the open space beneath the canopy, but he wasn’t about to stop the kiss until Ashley was ready.
Abruptly, the lift hit the ground.
“Bobby and Ashley. What a surprise it is to see that you are two people, when only a moment before I would have sworn that I was witnessing one individual with four arms.”
Bobby released her. His heart was pounding. She stared at him for just a second before turning away.
“Samuel!” she cried. “I was hoping I’d get to see you.” She started opening the side panel but then stopped. “No freaking way!”
The lift was surrounded by tree kangaroos.
“I told you there were more,” Bobby said, still catching his breath. “We have to take all of them.” He looked around. Quentin and Lindsey weren’t in the immediate area. At least he wouldn’t have to explain what had just happened to them.
Samuel was smiling. “My keen observations suggest that much has happened between the two of you since last I saw you together.”
Ashley glanced at Bobby. “We’ve been through a lot recently. Bobby saved my life. Of course he almost got me killed, too.” She nudged him with her elbow. “More than once.”
“Ashley!” It was Quentin. He rushed over and hugged her over the side of the lift. When they separated, he held her out by the shoulders. “You look okay. I’d say Bobby got the worst of it.” He nodded toward Bobby, probably at the scars on his neck from being bitten by the Helmich-bat.
“Debatable,” she said. When Quentin frowned, she added, “We’ll tell you about it sometime.”
Bobby opened the panel, and he and Ashley stepped out. He then got to work herding tree kangaroos into the lift. Ashley, Quentin, and Samuel helped, and soon they had packed nineteen into the box. Bobby yelled to the aircraft, and the box started rising.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” Bobby said, nodding toward the hanging village.
Ashley turned and saw the rest of the tree kangaroos, a couple hundred of them. And behind the mbolop, spread out to prevent stragglers, was the entire Papuan tribe. Lindsey, Addison, and the Lamotelokhai were at one end of the line of villagers.
Ashley watched as the herd approaching. “Bobby, whenever I’m with you, things get weird. And then they just keep getting weirder.”
Bobby latched the panel shut on the sixteenth load of tree kangaroos. There were only a few left on the ground, including Mbaiso and the three that were remaining strangely close to Addison, Quentin, and Lindsey. He shouted to Captain Kirk, and the lift began rising.
“Once again, I have made the difficult decision to remain with my indigene friends,” Samuel said as
the platform rose toward the canopy. “Perhaps one day, if you and the Lamotelokhai endeavor to make the world safe again, I will have the occasion to venture outside this forest. I can only hope that you are not too late.”
Samuel then nodded to Sinanie. The Papuan swung a heavy woven bag from his shoulder and handed it to Quentin. Bobby had no idea what was in it.
Samuel went on. “I pray that you will not need the talismans. But I trust that you will disseminate them wisely if you do, for you will be sowing the seeds of humanity’s future.”
Quentin set the bag down, opened it, and pulled out a small skin pouch. He held it out to Samuel. “This one’s for you. We will leave behind one of the mbolop. We can also leave some for Sinanie and the all of the others.” He nodded toward the gathered villagers.
Samuel looked at it for a moment and shook his head. “My indigene hosts wish you to take them all. As do I.”
Quentin held the pouch out to Sinanie, who shook his head and didn’t take it. He tried several other villagers, who also refused.
Samuel stepped up to Bobby and Ashley. “Perhaps I will see the two of you again. If that day comes, I imagine you will be together, will you not?”
Bobby looked at Ashley, but she held Samuel’s gaze.
“I hope so,” she said. “I’ve recently decided we make a pretty good team.”
Samuel nodded without smiling. “Godspeed to you both, then. Please safeguard the Lamotelokhai from those who lack your proclivities for wisdom and compassion.”
“We will,” Bobby said. “I promise.”
After several more long minutes of goodbyes, the lift came back down. Bobby, Ashley, Quentin, Lindsey, Addison, the Lamotelokhai, and the last of the tree kangaroos, including Mbaiso, crammed their way onto the platform, and then it began rising for the last time.
As the aircraft sped toward Sentani, Bobby once again watched the forest canopy race by beneath him. Captain Kirk had lengthened the plane to make room for the extra people and the tree kangaroos. Surprisingly, the cabin didn’t smell like a zoo. But Mr. Wahid and the two policemen seemed pretty freaked by it all. There wasn’t a seat or spot on the floor not occupied by an mbolop. And the creatures were acting nervously, never staying in one place. It seemed like each of them wanted to sniff and explore every square inch of the plane.
Diffusion Box Set Page 79
