World Enough (And Time)

by Edmund Jorgensen

  Calling Jeremiah’s plan a “plan” was like calling Katherine’s suite a “suite”—both technically correct and somewhat aspirational. There were, to put it kindly, still some rough spots in his approach towards certain contingencies, and none rougher than this moment, when he crossed the Rubicon of Mrs. Abdurov’s threshold without knowing whether he would find her asleep—as he hoped—or awake, as he feared. The darkness that enveloped Jeremiah as the door hissed closed encouraged him on this point. The fact that she was speaking to him did not.

  “Vassily!” the unseen Mrs. Abdurov whispered urgently. “Ate toe tie?” Or Russian words to that effect.

  As Jeremiah’s eyes adjusted to the dim blue glow of the nightlight, he saw her there, sitting upright in bed with a white nightie fallen from one shoulder, the covers bunched about her waist. She was terrifying, pale and powder-blue, her eyes an average of every zombie wave Jeremiah had ever seen, and he was just on the point of flight when she turned her head slightly so at the new angle he could distinguish the beauty sponges on her eyelids.

  “Vassily?” she whispered again.

  The moment had come for Jeremiah to employ his Russian language skills.

  “Da,” he said, in the deepest register he could reach without injury. This represented half the Russian at his command, and promised to be more positive and comforting than “nyet.”

  Mrs. Abdurov fell back into bed like a plank, and within a few seconds was making sounds similar to one being sawed. The beauty sponges had not budged from her eyes during all the preceding movement, causing Jeremiah to wonder if perhaps she had affixed them with wood glue, or glue for wood.

  He pulsed the communicator once to signal that he was in safely, and lit his steps to the bathroom with its screen. Then, once the bathroom door was safely closed, he brushed the light switch and nearly yelped in victory and surprise.

  There, splayed out on the sink with his head tilted up and to the left, sat Carolus the Bold. It appeared he had been drinking from the faucet, which Mrs. Abdurov had left slowly trickling. Now his throat pulsed once and his head tilted to the right, and it seemed to Jeremiah that, as befit Carolus’s epithet, he was not frightened in the least by the sudden appearance of a new human being in the bathroom where he was being held captive, but rather curious. Jeremiah felt himself the subject of some interspecies interview, being asked to describe himself, his hobbies, and his qualifications for this kind of snatch and grab rescue work. Instead, he pulsed the communicator twice to signal contact with the target. Deeds, not words.

  The terrarium was still there on the ground where Jeremiah had glimpsed it that afternoon, wedged between the toilet and the sink, its yellow top propped beside. Along the bottom of the clear plastic rectangle ran a thin layer of sand, upon which two crickets lay belly up. Two others stroked the too-high plastic walls with their antennae, attempting an occasional and futile escape by jumping. Pocketing the communicator, Jeremiah picked up the terrarium and its yellow top. He took a step towards Carolus, watching for signs of flight. Carolus tilted his head back to the left. Jeremiah reached out his hand. The red throat pulsed. And suddenly Jeremiah was holding the creature, his hand belting the iguana’s belly. Carolus’s dry, papery skin felt as if it might rip away from that delicate rib cage beneath, and his dorsal spines were sharp but pliable between Jeremiah’s fingers.

  Carolus curled around Jeremiah’s hand, holding himself upright with his front legs draped over Jeremiah’s index finger and wrapping his tail up until it almost touched Jeremiah’s pinky. There was a kind of acceptance in the gesture—a recognition that they were both in this mad enterprise together—which touched Jeremiah.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, looking Carolus directly in the eyes. Carolus blinked weirdly with his lower eyelids, but the iguana’s gaze—just like his bold nerve—never wavered.

  Then suddenly those wise, placid eyes grew wide, and Carolus’s head—which had settled back straight as Jeremiah had picked him up—tilted and swiveled to the left, where the sounds of his captor clearing her throat and fumbling with the knob of the bathroom door were unmistakable. Jeremiah must have woken Mrs. Abdurov just enough that she had become aware of some pressing biological needs—needs to which she was now en route to attend.

  Still holding Carolus in one hand and the terrarium in the other, Jeremiah pushed aside the shower curtain, jumped inside the tub, and used his elbows to close the curtain again, finishing just as the bathroom door opened and Mrs. Abdurov entered. Initially Jeremiah felt pleased with himself for his quick thinking and action, but the pleasure might have lasted longer if the plastic of the shower curtain concealing Carolus and himself had not been transparent.

  The curtain did introduce, Jeremiah was happy to note, some degree of blur to everything behind it, but he could still see the scene developing in the bathroom more clearly than he might have wished, and he assumed that, if Mrs. Abdurov were to direct her attention to the general area of the bathtub, the corollary would also prove true.

  So far she still had her back to Jeremiah, examining herself in the mirror and fussing with her nightgown, making preparatory noises low in her throat. He would not have long until she worked herself up to what she had come to do—30 seconds, at most—at which point, seated just a few feet away and facing him, she could not possibly miss the distinctly man-sized, man-shaped, man-colored blur behind her shower curtain. Jeremiah could not predict exactly where Mrs. Abdurov’s reaction would range along various axes at that point—fight vs. flight, for example—but he was reasonably sure that, once the initial shock had worn off, her satisfaction score for the experience would fall somewhere between “Highly Dissatisfied” and “Legal Action.”

  Jeremiah clutched Carolus to his chest, relieved that the telepathic link they had forged seemed to be holding. The iguana sensed his rescuer’s desperate intent, grabbing Jeremiah’s shirt with all four of his spindly hands and holding on for dear reptilian life, which freed Jeremiah’s hand to go for the communicator in his pocket. He extracted it and began to pulse with his thumb in desperate bursts of three.

  Almost immediately after he made his distress signal he heard the electronic tinkle of the doorbell in response, but the sound was terribly quiet and distant behind the bathroom door, far quieter than the increasingly loud grunts that Mrs. Abdurov was making as she now rocked from foot to foot, loosening up.

  Jeremiah mashed the communicator harder and faster, and the doorbell matched his urgent rhythm, now a steady stream of ascending tones, the last hardly ending before the next began. Carolus at least seemed to hear them, and they stirred something elemental in him—some predator or prey instinct deeper than the interspecies mind meld between himself and Jeremiah, which shattered as Carolus gave over to his genetic urge to flee danger by ascending the nearest tree—or, in absence of a tree, the nearest object taller than it was wide—meaning, in this case, Jeremiah.

  The iguana cleared Jeremiah’s collar and began slapping his hands against Jeremiah’s face, searching for a good toehold in Jeremiah’s nostrils and the corners of his mouth. Jeremiah did not dare stop pulsing the communicator or risk putting down the terrarium on the noisy tub to free up a hand. He was reduced to huffing and puffing in a breathy attempt to dissuade Carolus from climbing any further, and scowling as he tried mentally to re-establish the unity of purpose they had so recently enjoyed. Neither of these efforts slowed Carolus’s ascent, however, and Jeremiah watched with horror through what he supposed was Carolus’s armpit as the blur that was Mrs. Abdurov turned and bent, steadying herself with one hand on the sink to begin her descent—and then stopped.

  Through the filter of the shower curtain Jeremiah saw the smaller blur that was Mrs. Abdurov’s head tilt to the side in a motion reminiscent of Carolus’s (who was just now clearing Jeremiah’s hairline). Had she heard something? Still Jeremiah pulsed the communicator again and again, each pulse now alternating between terror and hope, hope and terror—but yes, yes, Mrs. A
bdurov had heard the little ascending riff of the doorbell, which now sounded sweeter and more angelic than any symphony or folk song Jeremiah had ever heard, and she was holding there, mid-squat, deciding what to do about it.

  In the meantime Jeremiah was facing decisions of his own. Having finished scaling Jeremiah’s face with a kind of spastic aplomb, Carolus the Bold had reached the crown of his head, and, grabbing clawfuls of hair to steady himself, turned around to face the shower curtain. The good news was that, as a result, Carolus’s tail no longer dangled and tickled Jeremiah’s nose, provoking a disastrous sneeze. The bad news was that, from his new vantage point, Carolus had taken a liking to the rod and rings of the shower curtain, and was reaching out one claw with its strange elongated second finger to bat like a bored feline at the shower tackle. If the iguana reached it, it was inconceivable that the visual and auditory disturbances would not attract Mrs. Abdurov’s attention to the shower curtain and what was behind it. On the other hand, as Jeremiah leaned backwards in an attempt to deny the iguana access to the shower rod, Carolus the Bold—true once again to his name—was leaning further and further forward with a complete disregard for the steadiness of his perch and for the consequences to his own well being if he lost it. Brief telepathic link aside, Jeremiah was relatively sure that Carolus had not internalized what the consequences to Jeremiah would have been, either, if the iguana overreached and came crashing down in the tub, little iguana limbs flailing at the curtain and quite possibly bringing it down with him for what was sure to prove a dramatic reveal.

  “Edgar hog die Aphrodite Hanoi proletariat,” muttered Mrs. Abdurov, or Russian words to that effect, and with a relief like a breaking fever Jeremiah saw her straighten up, fix something on her shoulder in the mirror, and leave the bathroom just as Carolus reached the curtain rod.

  In two seconds flat Jeremiah had snatched Carolus from his head and tossed him gently into the terrarium. The top of the terrarium closed and clicked home, and Jeremiah pushed aside the shower curtain and placed his own ear at the door of the bathroom, right hand cupped to amplify whatever sound might come through. What came through was exactly one half of Katherine and Mrs. Abdurov’s conversation—namely, the half performed by the shouting Mrs. Abdurov.

  “I didn’t order hot cocoa. I didn’t order anything. Of course I’m sure. Who else you think is here in room to order? Of course I don’t want—if I want hot cocoa, I order. Yes, I know is without charge, everything on board is without charge, but I don’t want. What you mean, trouble? Why you get in trouble because I don’t want hot cocoa? Oh all right, bring it in.”

  Jeremiah closed his eyes, pouring all available mental and sensory energy into his right ear. As soon as he heard—or thought he’d heard—Katherine and Mrs. Abdurov walk to the far side of the room, he threw the bathroom door open and, terrarium clutched to his chest like a football, sprinted for the open hall, not even looking back to see if he’d been spotted.

  * * *

  When Katherine arrived back at the suite, Jeremiah had already been sitting on the sofa for a good five minutes, feeling quite pleased with himself.

  “That was amazing,” he said. “Absolutely textbook. You were perfect—I can’t believe that was your first snatch and grab.”

  “Mrs. Abdurov was not too happy with me,” said Katherine. “I practically had to beg her not to make a complaint—I’m still not 100% sure she won’t.”

  “You worry too much. Have a seat, take a snort of terrible vodka with me, and admire the fruits of our labor.”

  Jeremiah presented, game-show-hostess style, the terrarium on the floor in front of him, from which Carolus stared out at him. The iguana’s look seemed both to accuse Jeremiah of betrayal, and to accept stoically that perhaps it was an iguana’s lot in life to forever discover that the liberator in one episode was the jailer of the next.

  “I worry exactly the right amount,” said Katherine. “I’m tired and have to get up early. Good night. Oh,” she added, pausing in the doorway of her bedroom, “by the way, you’re welcome.”

  “Thank you!” shouted Jeremiah through the closed door. “Really, thank you! I couldn’t have done it without you! I already said thank you,” he asked Carolus, who tilted his head in response. “Right?”

  14

  Morning of the Iguana

  Tuesday (5 days until arrival)

  Jeremiah had meant to be outside Mr. Wendstrom’s door early—as in “before the hallway lights came up to full brightness at 5:00 a.m.” early—but the adrenaline of last night’s snatch and grab had first kept him awake and then deserted him so abruptly that he had passed out without setting an alarm. So here he was almost four hours later than planned, creeping through the corridors with the terrarium wrapped in a ratty towel he had liberated from Katherine’s bathroom. But despite his late rising he hadn’t met anyone on the way here, and all was well that ended well.

  Mr. Wendstrom answered the door wearing a long velvet garment that looked like the love-child of a cheap motel bathrobe and a smoking jacket, with slippers to match. He had the look of a man recently and unhappily awakened. When he saw the shape and size of the bundle Jeremiah was carrying, however, his face brightened. He waved Jeremiah inside and activated the door behind them, first looking left and right down the hall to make sure that Jeremiah had not been followed.

  “You have him? I knew you were a winner, Jeremiah. The pressure I put on you would have made most men crumble—but it turned you into a diamond.”

  Jeremiah did not immediately absorb this compliment, as he was too busy absorbing the room’s decor. That is, the room had a “decor” in the same way that the basement of a grizzled old detective might have a decor, if it were wallpapered in records lifted from his former department and articles snipped from the local paper, all of them related to the one case he could never quite crack, the one that kept him up nights and ruined his marriage and drove him to drink and eventually obsessed him to the point where he was kicked off the force for not being able to let it go. That kind of decor.

  The entire back wall of Mr. Wendstrom’s room was taken up with portraits—hand drawn on sheets of A4 paper—of animals in the postures and dress of high fantasy. There were wolf lords and cat ladies, armadillo knights and salamander wizards and toad witches. One prominent section even displayed a few creatures that, from this distance, resembled dragons interpreted by a man with middling artistic powers and more than a passing fondness for iguanas. The portraits were connected by yarn of different colors, presumably signifying various relationships, which gave the impression of a giant spider redecorating his web in an attempt to brighten the place up a bit.

  Next to the bed was a giant free-standing corkboard full of index cards. The cards had been arranged in three columns, each titled in block letters: LIKELY, UNLIKELY, DISPROVEN. Above those headings, on a still larger sheet of paper that was tacked halfway off the corkboard and leaning forward as if trying to read the others, was the super-heading: ANDWEN LONGTAIL’S REAL FATHER: THEORIES.

  Having internalized all this, Jeremiah made a “think nothing of it” face in response to Mr. Wendstrom’s ongoing remarks of praise, and, holding the terrarium in one hand, whisked the towel away showily with the other.

  “I believe this belongs to you,” said Jeremiah, handing the terrarium to Mr. Wendstrom.

  Jeremiah had expected a few seconds of stunned silence—in fact, he enjoyed them—but after a few seconds more he felt that the timing of the scene, with Mr. Wendstrom still standing and staring, had gone a bit off—and after a few more seconds he couldn’t find a way around the conclusion that Mr. Wendstrom was refusing to take delivery of his iguana.

  “Is this a joke?” said Mr. Wendstrom.

  “How do you mean?”

  “That’s not Carolus the Bold.”

  “Of course it is,” said Jeremiah.

  “There are crickets in that cage. All iguanas are vegetarians—they can’t even process the insect or animal protein some of the
ir so-called ‘caretakers’ give them—but for Carolus vegetarianism is more than that. It’s a part of his moral code.”

  “We haven’t actually seen him eat one,” said Jeremiah.

  As if to dispel any trace of doubt that the telepathic link between Jeremiah and himself was well and truly severed, the iguana turned his head sideways, trapped one of the living crickets against the wall of the terrarium, and devoured it mercilessly and with gusto.

  “Also,” continued Mr. Wendstrom, “Carolus is significantly larger than this iguana.”

  “Well if he’s had to go off his vegetarian diet because his kidnapper didn’t know the first thing about the proper care and feeding of iguanas, doesn’t it stand to reason that he’s dropped a few?”

  “Jeremiah, there are two reasons that Carolus is bigger than this iguana. First: he is a southern blood-throated iguana, which—besides being much rarer and more intelligent than your typical northern blood-throated iguana, run larger. This is a northern blood-throated iguana. And second, Carolus—unlike this iguana—is male.”

  Jeremiah had been just about desperate enough to argue the northern vs. southern issue, but this second point had the ring of checkmate. He didn’t know much about the social issues and gender norms of the natural world in general or iguanas in particular, but he imagined gender reassignment operations were rare among blood-throated iguanas, in both the northern and southern regions of their habitat.

  “You’re telling me I broke into Mrs. Abdurov’s room in the middle of the night and stole the wrong iguana?” said Jeremiah. He said it very, very quietly.