by Kaz Morran
“So, what, China just pulled this story out of their ass?”
The Xinhua report had named Jidenna Layeni as the whistleblower on the alleged nukes-in-space conspiracy. Her and Taiyo had had a fling at ISAS before she moved on to work at the Beijing branch of the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs.
“I can’t prove it,” Taiyo told Nel, “but I’d place money that Ronin used the Xinhua report to get JAXA and ISAS to let him take the credit and patents for MONSTAR-X. Whether or not he’s the one that planted the rumor to begin with, I can’t be sure.”
“And since JAXA is only going to pick one of you …”
“Who would you trust to represent your country? The guy who disarmed landmines, escaped multiple fascist gulags, and walked across Asia to be reunited with his beloved motherland, or the guy who shares national secrets with China and sells out your space program to the American military?”
“But without any actual evidence—”
“I used to work for Mitsubishi on the maglev. Under development since the seventies. Forty-years to build one line. Nine trillion government-subsidized yen. It doesn’t matter that China’s had its own fully operational maglev train for twenty years, or that Hyperloop blows magnetic levitation technology out of the water. The maglev is their baby, and they’re crazy-paranoid about China pirating the tech. If somebody thinks I’m a liability, all it takes is one file I forgot to encrypt or one scribble on company letterhead I didn’t shred. Just discussing something they say is sensitive to national interests can get you, and everyone affiliated with you and your evil plot, thrown in jail. I’m implicating you right now!”
Walter’s screams forced Taiyo to take a moment to calm down.
“Then why aren’t you in jail? If it’s so easy to lock you up.” Taiyo couldn’t see Nel, but he imagined she’d crossed her arms. It was a legitimate question, one he didn’t fully have the answer to—especially given what had happened to a pair of his undergrads:
“They wanted to take a road trip down to Fukushima for a town hall. Big mistakes were made in that meltdown, and we needed to know what public concerns to address in our proposal. They booked a car online but decided to pay in cash at the rental place so they could split the cost. The detectives called that operating an unlicensed taxi service.”
“Just sounds like Uber to me.”
“Uber’s illegal in Japan.”
“I see.”
“They hadn’t even picked up the car yet, but it’s one of the crimes on the list, and since there were two of them, they’re a subversive criminal organization.”
“Seriously?”
“That was right before we finished the proposal. Their parents tell me their cases are still being processed. Years of legal purgatory. Whether they’re eventually locked up or let go almost doesn’t matter. Two brilliant young lives, ruined.”
After a pause, Nel asked if Taiyo ever watched soccer.
“No,” he said, puzzled by the question.
“Okay, but you know how sometimes a player goes down like he got shot—rolling around on the ground, grabbing his leg—even though the other guy barely touched him.”
“Uh-huh …” That was why he didn’t watch soccer.
“So, if that innocent guy ends up getting a red card, what’s he thinking as he gets tossed from the match?”
“He’s probably so furious he wishes he really had shot the weaselly bastard.”
“Exactly.”
Taiyo did not respond right away, but not because he didn’t get her point. When he did decide to speak, nothing more than a rasp came out at first—the sound of his gut warning him not to tell her what he’d done.
“What?”
“It’s a nice analogy,” he said.
“And?”
“And what?”
“You’re hiding something. Speak up.”
“I really shouldn’t.”
“I thought you had nothing to hide.”
He poked his gut to make it shut up, and then put his hand on her arm and nudged her closer so he didn’t have to compete with Walter. “If things have gone as planned …” He stopped, unsure if he’d heard someone approaching.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Ronin’s way over there sleeping.”
He whispered anyway. “Right about now in Beijing, there are two hard drives of MONSTAR-X data landing on the desk of a top Chinese National Space Agency engineer.”
Taiyo reached up, found Nel’s face, and turned on her headlamp. She turned away, but not before he caught a glimpse of her smile.
“Maybe you’re braver than I thought,” she said.
They laughed, but he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps at themselves, or at the absurdity of life in general.
“But you shouldn’t have done that.” Her voice had changed; gone cold and cracked. “As soon as China does something—”
“It was the only way to keep the project alive.”
“You don’t get it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see why they haven’t laid formal charges on you yet? Think about it.”
“I have. Goddamn, I have. And I really don’t know why.”
“Taiyo,” She squeezed his hands together in hers. “They’re casting a wider net.”
“But …” Down there, trapped as much inside his own head as outside it in the cave, he didn’t want to believe it, but he knew the universe didn’t give a shit what he believed. He saw their faces in his mind: good, honest people who’d collaborated with him, who’d followed his dream. Hundreds of them. “A subversive criminal organization.” The words didn’t feel like his own. “They’re going to ruin all of our lives. Everyone’s. And for what? Because we dared to look up.”
Nel came around behind the hammock and put her hands on his shoulders. She squeezed his tense muscles and pressed in her thumbs into the stained cords along his spine. Her touch freed an inflated breath from his lungs. The sensation felt so foreign; so good. Like the darkness in the Asylum, the absence of human touch was no absence at all. It was a thick, heavy presence; sediment that built up inside, progressively enveloping his organs and tightening his chest. But now, as Nel worked her fingers around his neck and shoulders, the layers fell away, exposing goosebumps. And yet, as rapturous as it felt, the truth did not crumble:
He’d either die in the Asylum or escape and go to prison. No matter what, he’d never be free from what he’d done to his collaborators, and—like Ronin said—he’d never be an astronaut.
***
“Oh shit, Ronin. What the fuck is that?”
“I found it over by—”
“Put it down!”
“Is that … ?”
“A leg or something, I guess,” said Ronin, casting his headlamp on the object in his outstretched hand. The discovery shocked Nel and Taiyo, too, but Kristen was in hysterics.
“A leg? What the fuck do you mean, a leg?”
“You’re overreacting,” Ronin told Kristen, and Nel told her to control herself.
“How can it be a leg? Like, from an animal? From a kangaroo?”
“How the shit would I know?” Ronin said, “Do I look like a mangled limb inspector?”
“In all fairness—” Taiyo began, but Nel smacked him in the gut to shut him up.
“No, I don’t,” so Ronin. “So I’m not going to bescumber you with a bunch of guesswork.”
“Okay then,” Kristen said, only somewhat more poised. “So, it’s a kangaroo leg. Right?”
Ronin held the discovery up to eye level while Nel aimed a flashlight at it.
“Christ,” said Taiyo when Ronin dangled it his way.
“You guys think it’s a kangaroo leg, too, right?”
“Okay, how about putting it down now?” Taiyo said.
“It’s definitely dead,” said Ronin, still inspecting it under the beam of the headlamp. “Looks like a kebab spit, the way it’s all hacked up with meat hanging off the bone. I can tell you that much
.”
“A dead kangaroo,” said Kristen. “We already determined that it’s the leg of a kangaroo.”
Ronin dangled the limb out at Kristen and said, “Oh, so you’re the mangled kangaroo inspector.”
“It’s not a kangaroo,” said Nel calmly.
“It could be,” said Kristen in an even higher voice than before. “It probably is. Or it could be a tail.”
“It’s fresh,” said Nel.
Kristen gagged.
“Some animal must have gotten washed in,” Taiyo offered.
“The monitor lizard,” said Ronin.
“Yes, that’s it.” Kristen muttered to herself, “A dead lizard. Just a reptile.”
Nel offered her no comfort. “It’s far more likely we’re looking at the reptile’s leftovers.”
“Oh, God.” Another gag.
“Well it’s not Walter,” Ronin said. They could still hear the commander moaning. “Unless one of you snatched a limb to chew on.” He laughed.
“Christ, Ronin,” said Taiyo.
“Well, I know how hungry everyone’s getting. It’s not that shit-slurry crazy to think one of you might have—”
“Nobody’s eating Walter’s legs!” screamed Kristen.
“Not his legs.” Ronin shook the limb at her. “His arm. Try and keep up, please.”
“Guys,” said Taiyo. “Everyone. Please.”
“It’s an arm, not a leg,” insisted Ronin.
Nel said, “Where’s the rest of it?”
Taiyo reiterated that something must’ve died up on the surface and gotten washed down through the chimney with the waterfall.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” said Ronin, his tone sarcastic. “And it hit the ground so hard the limbs flew off and shattered into bite-sized pieces upon impact.”
“Ronin, would you put it down already?” said Nel, still calm but rubbing her temples.
“What, just drop it? I can’t just throw it away. It’s evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” said Taiyo.
“We don’t know, do we, hafu? That’s why we have to investigate it. I thought that out of anyone, you—the double agent—would know about evidence and investigation.”
“Me? Me? You’re calling me a double agent? Why don’t you tell everyone how you got here? I’m sure we’d all love to know what kind of scam you pulled to get selected.”
Ronin’s eyes flared beneath the glow of his headlamp. He stepped up to Taiyo, who held his ground and barely hid his own fury. Then, to Taiyo’s surprise, Ronin looked down and away like a scolded pet. “That hurts,” he said. “You seriously don’t think I belong here?”
Taiyo didn’t answer. Yes, that was precisely what he thought. What he knew. How dare Ronin play the victim! Taiyo gritted his teeth and pointed at the garbled limb. “So investigate it, then,” he said, waving the back of his hand at Ronin. “Do something with it already.”
Each far off shriek from Walter washed over Taiyo like a wave of judgment. Either the others thought Taiyo had been bold to challenge Ronin, or they thought he was an asshole. In the dark, he couldn’t tell.
Ronin set the limb on the ground and squatted in front of it. He poked at it with a rock, rolled it over, and brought his face down close to check it out under the headlamp and with the flashlight he’d taken from Nel.
Once Walter faded out a bit, Ronin gave his verdict: “Yeppers. I thought so. A genuine—wait for it—human forearm.”
From a ways back, Kristen called, “It’s a monitor lizard. We already decided that.”
“You don’t decide a fact,” Nel said quietly.
Taiyo pulled his undershirt up over his mouth and nose and took to a knee beside Ronin for a closer look. It indeed resembled a human arm, elbow to wrist. The hand was missing. The flesh—what wasn’t shredded or scraped away—was hairless on one side, and covered in little hairs on the other.
With bare hands, Ronin peeled back a flap of wrinkled black flesh to reveal two crushed and splintered, but distinct, bones. Both ran the length of the limb and stuck out from the skin at the hacked-off wrist.
“The radius bone,” Ronin said and scratched it with his fingernail. “And the ulna bone.”
Behind the curtains of nervous, speculative chatter, and the ambient groans of their writhing commander, Taiyo sifted through his memories. He was sure that while moving Anton’s body only the hand had fallen off. Not a forearm absent of a hand.
“Light, please,” Taiyo said, feeling like a surgeon calling for a scalpel. Ronin passed the flashlight. Taiyo rolled up his sleeves and laid his left forearm down beside the detached limb, and then his right, to compare anatomies. It had been Anton’s left hand that had slipped from Taiyo’s grip. The remains in front of him were of a right arm. “It’s from Anton,” he looked up and told the others.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Kristen said.
“That’s why we have to uncover the body and check,” said Ronin.
A moment passed, with the sound of people shifting from foot to foot to fill the silence between Walter’s cries, before Kristen said, “We can’t desecrate a grave.”
Nel sighed. “They exhume bodies all the time for forensics,” she said. “Whole cemeteries get relocated.”
Kristen blurred in the glow of Ronin’s headlamp as she shook her head. “Maybe on crime shows, but not in real life.”
“Of course they do.”
“Well, I can’t speak for your culture, but in Christian culture, we can’t do it. Walter would back me up on this.”
Unlike Taiyo, Nel didn’t keep her thoughts inside. “The men that dug up my family were Christians.”
Kristen laughed. It was a short, high-pitched, incredulous laugh. “Did they tell you they were Christians?” she said to Nel. Taiyo couldn’t tell if the tremble in her voice was because she felt ganged up on, or offended.
Nel said, “They replaced the engraved name stones of my relatives with unmarked wooden crucifixes.”
Kristen swallowed audibly. “I see,” she said.
Ronin stepped in, insisting they focus on what mattered. They’d leave the arm where it was and cover it in stones. “Forget about Anton,” he said. “Let it go.”
But Taiyo could not. He’d have to investigate further.
35
Ethan smacked his palms on the windshield of the ute and yelled at the occupants. Swarming the vehicle with him in the dark storm was the whole T3 crew from the hab at Kambi Valley. They were in rough shape, but Ethan had done well in leading them down out of the mountains and rainforest to the Mulligan Highway.
Shouts both ways competed with the wind and rain. Nobody had a flashlight. A gust forced Ethan down in front of the bonnet. He got up and fell again, and on the third try pulled Dr. Sylvia Wilson into a huddle to steady her against the sweeping wind and rain.
The highway had turned into a river. Rapids rummaged over scattered tree limbs and mudflows. The torrent had piled debris against the vehicle: palm fronds, branches, shrubs, and even a road sign.
Ethan and Dr. Sylvia crawled around to the front passenger side tire. He reached up and banged on the side window. Whoever screamed back probably needed help. He locked arms with Sylvia, and they hoisted themselves upright and staggered like tattered sails against the forces of nature. Darkness and rainwater foiled attempts to peer inside, so Ethan bunched his jacket around his head to form a hood and encased his phone and face tight against the glass. The glow of the screen did nothing to light the inside of the cab, but it did make the occupants scream louder.
The Kambi crew shouted back and beat on the windows in hopes of reassuring the two men in the cab that the frenzied mob had descend from the midnight jungle upon the stranded vehicle was only there to help.
Preston Machesney yelled for one of the engineers on the other side to try the driver’s door. “Locked,” the young man called back. A thick branch struck the side of the ute, whacking Ethan’s leg at the same time as the door. Ethan cursed out in pain, which made
the people in the ute scream louder, now clearly out of fear and not as cries for help.
“Not yet, mate,” he cried to Machesney, who was about to smash through the side window with the butt of the road sign.
Ethan moved hand-over-hand along the body of the vehicle, passing other T3 people clinging to the tailgate, and over to the driver’s side.
Dr. Sylvia and the engineers climbed into the bed of the ute and knocked on the rear window, but that also seemed to exasperate the situation. The driver started the engine.
Ethan banged on the driver’s window with his fists. “Open up!” he pleaded.
The ute jerked forward and stalled.
Just before the engine restarted and the driver floored it, Ethan leaped into the back. Clenching the low wall of the bed with one arm, he reached around to smack the driver’s window with the other.
Headlights came on. Skidding, almost rolling, the ute bounded along the muddy edge of the highway before careening off a fallen tree and back onto asphalt under a shower of branches. The T3 crew screamed and hung on, legs dangling and knees banging. Amidst the chaos, Ethan snagged a branch. Again and again, he hammered the rear window until the glass exploded. The ute fishtailed. Ethan rolled. His back hit the tailgate, knocking it open. The ute jerked and bounced, flinging people out the open gate. Ethan clung by a leg to the tailgate chain, his head dipping into the flooded road with each bounce while the passenger chucked juice boxes at him from out the broken rear window.
He held on while the driver did a donut then hauled himself up onto the open gate just in time to take a juice box in the side of the head. But before it hit him, he caught a glimpse of the face behind the arm that had thrown it.
“Henry!” he yelled. “Henry, ya facken old wanker! Wumba! Henry!”
Wumba hit the brakes, hurtling the stowaways into a heap at the rear window. Everyone jumped out and bunched into a knot of cursing and spit-angry collar grabbing until Ethan got through to Wumba and Henry that the Kambi crew had not in fact left the astronaut candidates underground to die.
“No going back for them. They’re done and dead by now,” Ethan yelled into the rain as it pelted his face.
