Earth Thirst
Page 13
“What are you, the Lorax?” She means the question as a joke, but it comes off too brittle, too close to the truth, and I can tell she regrets the jab as soon as she says it.
I've been trying to remember when I was here last, and my memory has holes. Has it been that long? When did the Dutch discover the island? Seventeenth century? Eighteenth?
“This used to be covered with a forest of broadleaf trees.” I sweep my arm to indicate the nearby hills, covered with green grasses. “Toromiro and palm trees.” I lean heavily against the frame of the door. “It takes more than a hundred years for the palms to grow to their full height. Why didn't they replant? Why was this place abandoned?”
“By who?” she asks quietly. “Arcadia or the natives? We're hundreds of miles from anywhere. If the ecosystem of the island gave out, how could the residents survive?”
What happened? My legs are weak, and I'm oddly short of breath. The skin on my back starts to prickle, a thousand needles jabbing at my burned skin. The thirst is building and, deep in my blood, something bubbles. An alien presence trying to change me. “I need to lie down,” is what I say, but what I need is to sleep in the ground. I need to be covered in humus, the rich loam of the earth. My hands ache. The desire to dig is overwhelming.
As is the desire to hurt someone.
There were trees here the last time I was on Rapa Nui. Why can't I remember what happened? What has Mother taken from me?
* * *
When I open my eyes again, the sun has slipped from the sky. A tiny breeze is flowing through the open glass door, and it toys with the bottom edge of the curtain. I smell cooked food and spices—lots of spices—and the potpourri of scents drags me upright.
Mere is sitting at the table, on which are several trays from room service. “I ordered a couple of things,” she says, “figuring maybe some food would do you some good. It's mostly vegetarian with some fish. Is that okay? I didn't know if you needed raw meat or something…”
“It's fine,” I manage. I take off my optics and blink heavily for a moment or two as my eyes water. “I don't eat a lot of meat.”
“Really? But, don't you—?”
“I'm not a meat sucker, Mere. I don't need to cut up cubes of sirloin and stick them in my cheek for an hour.”
“Thank God for that. You'd have the nastiest breath.”
I sit down at the table with her, and my stomach makes a noisy rumble as I reach for a plate. I am hungry, and the hotel has a surprisingly good menu. There is baked shrimp with fennel and feta. Pan-seared cauliflower with wild rice and a rich tomato pesto colored like the heart of the sun. A plate of marinated eggplant, chilis, and—I have to taste the sauce to be sure—burrata over brown rice pasta. A slab of seared salmon with a black and shiny tapenade of anchovies and olive, complete with a sprig of freshly harvested rosemary lying idly across the top.
The food will help me not think about the fluttering pulse in her neck. She's pulled back her hair, showing a lot of the pale skin there.
“You were angry,” she says after I've loaded my plate and started to shovel the food into my mouth. “While you were … resting, I guess you could call it. I tried to talk to you once or twice, but you snarled at me.” She shows me her teeth like she's an angry dog. “I figured it was best to leave you alone. I was going to go out, but I didn't want to leave you here on the off-chance that…” She shrugs. “So I ordered food. It's always a good idea when you don't know what to do next, right? Get a meal in because you can't be sure when the next one is going to happen.”
“It's a good plan,” I say around a mouthful of broccoli.
She smiles, and her hand drifts up to the scar at the base of her throat. It's not very deep, but it will always be there, a curling reminder of how close she came to dying. Kirkov had been an old soldier; his brain didn't even need to tell his muscles what to do anymore. He operated on instinct, and part of him had sensed me coming. He had already started cutting when I put my hand through his chest.
“When you and the others came onboard the Liberty, you brought your best don't fuck with us vibe. It worked well, didn't it? They left you alone, but then, most of the kids on the boat had never been at sea before, much less taking part of in an environmental protest. I could make any number of them cry just by raising my voice. I've been around meth heads who've totally lost it, some bad-ass mercenaries who could probably kill me as easily as they picked their teeth with a toothpick, and a couple of political lobbyists who would sell a busload of their own children if it meant ramming a bill through Congress. It was going to take a little more to scare me off.”
She shakes her head slightly, gathering a bit of courage, and continues. “You know what frightened me the most about being held over the railing? It's wasn't being held out like that. That was terrifying, sure, but what really scared me was the look on your face.”
I pause, half a wide rice noodle hanging out of my mouth. “Like this?” I squint at her.
She smiles politely, but her fingers are still toying with the flesh of her throat. “No,” she says. “I saw it on the others too. That day, on the Cetacean Liberty, when the harpoon boats got into trouble…”
She's reticent to talk about it and I haven't pressed her so far, knowing she'd tell me when the time came.
“I tried to get onto the bridge after you came storming out, but the other one—Talus?—he ordered the crewmen to take me below deck. I nailed one of the pair in the groin, but the other one got his arms around me. They were more frightened of Talus than me—and I can't blame them—and they were only going to get rougher with me if I kept fighting them. So I let them take me, and just as we were going down the stairs, I heard the first of the gun shots. That was Phoebe, right? With some sort of sniper rifle?”
I nod, still eating, but listening intently to her story.
“I thought I had seen her, up in the prow,” Mere continues. “I didn't find out until later that she was clearing a path for you. You went out to one of the harpoon boats, didn't you? You and Nigel, both. You each took a boat.”
“Nigel went rogue,” I correct her. “He went off on his own and attacked the first boat. By the time Phoebe and I had gotten involved, it was already well underway.”
“Nigel? Rogue? Is that what you think happened?” She shook her head. “An hour before, I had run into him coming out of the cabin you all shared. He had that look on his face. He stopped when he saw me, and when I squeezed past him, I saw Talus standing in the room, watching me too. I'm pretty good at reading people, Silas. They had made a decision. I was terrified when I realized what it was, and I didn't know what to do. Who could I tell? You? I had no idea if you weren't part of it. Captain Morse would have shit himself with fear if I had gone to him, and then he would have jumped overboard and been happily eaten by a shark. I went down to the mess and sat with as many people as I could find. It wasn't a good solution, but all I could hope was that all those innocent kids would be enough of a deterrent to keep Nigel away from me. But I knew they wouldn't. If he had wanted to kill me, it wouldn't have mattered how many there were. He would have killed them all to get to me.”
She's not family. Remember your priorities.
I can't argue with anything she's said and so I don't try, keeping my attention on the food. There's a few slices of thin bread made from cassava flour on the tray, and I mop up the remaining bites on my plate. The tension in my muscles is easing and my skin is softening. I'm hydrating, but not quickly enough. I pour myself a glass of water from the pitcher and drain it quickly. The water is good too, untainted by too many cycles of filtering and chemical softening.
“But Nigel wasn't coming after you,” I say, prompting her to continue her story. Nigel was going over the railing to assault the first harpoon boat. And Talus knew. His orders on the bridge made an ugly sense in light of Mere's story. He knew I wouldn't have agreed with his decision to fight back, and so he had had to create a situation where I would be inclined to do what he wanted. Wher
e I would volunteer. With me gone, there would only be Phoebe to protect the crew of the Cetacean Liberty.
“When the shooting started, I was locked in my cabin,” she continues, her frustration at being kept away from the action clear in her voice. “I made a racket for a while, more angry than anything else, and then I started to hear other people shouting and… screaming. And then it got real quite. I hid, or tried to, actually. There's not a lot of places to hide in those cabins. After a few hours, I started to wonder what was going to happen if no one ever came looking for me. How was I going to get out of this cabin? Was there anyone piloting the boat?
“I was starting to get hungry and having my second or third panic attack about being trapped, when I heard someone tapping at my door. It was the old guy, Gus—the engineer who'd been in Vietnam. He had been hiding down in the engine room. Once things quieted down, he started to sneak around the boat to see who was still alive. He found me and a couple of others. Gus had the clever idea of hiding in your cabin—the room where you four all stayed. At first, I thought it was a terrible idea, but he explained that none of you were on the boat anymore.”
“What happened?”
She shakes her head. “I don't know. I asked everyone we rescued, but no one knew anything. They had all been below deck when things had gone sideways. By the time Gus let me out, the Japanese were running things.”
“The Japanese? From the whaling fleet?”
“Captain Morse—or whoever was in charge on the bridge—sailed the Cetacean Liberty right up to the processing ship and handed it over. The Japanese put a crew on board and turned the boat around for Adelaide.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “I don't know. We stayed out of sight. They didn't come looking for us. But they had to know we were there. And they didn't care.”
“What happened?”
“There was some British guy with them. Hard-looking guy. At the time I thought he was military of some sort, but now, I realize he was probably Secutores. Short gray hair, well-groomed stubble like he'd just come from a fashion shoot. I only caught sight of him a couple of times before Gus insisted I stay in the cabin. Anyway, as soon as we hit the Bight, there was another boat. The enforcer and his crew took off; Gus said it sounded like they were using a go-fast boat. ‘Two engines, maybe a thousand horses,' is what he said. Ten minutes later, the bomb went off and the fire started.
“That's when we found out who was still on the boat; we could hear them screaming and shouting. Me and Tawni—she was the one who had the orca tattoo on the back of her neck—well, anyway, she and I tried to get all the rooms open, get people out and on deck where the life boats were. Gus and some of the other guys tried to fight the fire, but it spread too fast. It all happened so quickly. We didn't have any time. We barely got the life boats in the water in time. And then there was nothing we could do except wait for someone to spot the smoke.”
“How many made it into the lifeboats?”
“I don't know. There were three boats. There were six—seven?—in the one I ended up in. At least that many in the others. I… don't really know. And once we got picked up and taken to the hospital, it was chaotic. There were lawyers from Prime Earth there. The police showed up. Hospital security was trying to get everyone out of the way. It was a mess. I don't even remember a lot of it. The next morning, the guys in dark suits show up, and I know they're friends of the guy from the boat.”
“Secutores.”
She nods. “And that's when I knew we were going to disappear. Those of us who were coherent enough to talk about what had happened. I had to get out of there or get a message out to someone, but before I could do anything, the nurses came in and put me out. When I woke up… well, I didn't really wake up again. Not until you came.” She flushes slightly, and turns her attention to her food, which she has barely touched. “Your turn,” she says. “What happened to you?”
I give her the short version—glossing over the parts where people died. She pretends not to notice the judicious editing.
NINETEEN
She wanders out onto the balcony again when we're done eating, and I stack dishes and clean up—giving her some space—before I join her. The sky is wide above us, and a bat flies by, a dark rag fluttering across a panoply of glittering stars.
“What's next?” she asks.
“Out there, past the airport, is Rano Kau,” I say, pointing off into the darkness. “The island was formed by three volcanoes, which extruded over a relative short span of time—geologically speaking. Rano Kau was one of the last ones to form, and the rim of the crater makes for a good wind break. It makes for a good micro-climate: warmed by geothermals, a couple of rain basins that are large enough to call lakes, and a rich soil.”
“Sort of like Ka-Zar's Savage Land.”
“Whose?”
“Ka-Zar. He's a—never mind. Yes, I read comics as a kid. I was that girl.”
“And look at you now. All grown up.”
“Mostly.” She looks at me over her shoulder, and I can see her face quite well in the ambient light. There is an impish curl on her lips. She leans back slightly, bumping her shoulder against me.
I don't know how I'm supposed to react. She's been sending me a variety of signals, and I've been wrestling with my own… what? To call it a long-standing fascination is to dissemble. To downplay what I've been feeling.
“There's a break in the rim of the crater,” I say, ignoring the signals I may or may not be getting. “You can look out over the ocean there; it became a place where the natives performed religious ceremonies. Over time, they built a village.”
“So there was a cult here,” she says.
“Not a Cargo Cult. This was earlier, and it wasn't reliant upon manna dropping from Heaven as part of the ritual celebrations. It was called tangata manu. A bird cult.”
“Didn't the Cargo Cults worship birds too—as in the giant planes that dropped supplies?”
“This was a different sort of bird cult.”
“Did they worship chickens or something?”
“Terns, actually.”
“Isn't that the local equivalent?” I can tell she's playing with me, and I find it both intriguing and distracting.
“The tangata manu rite was a manhood ritual,” I say, keeping on topic. “Every year, hardy warriors from the tribes would gather at Orongo and they would race to see who could get to a tiny atoll that lies offshore. They would dive and swim to this rock and try to be the first one to collect an egg from one of the terns that nested there. They're not chickens, but they might as well be, as ubiquitous as they are. Though, by some quirk, they only nest on Motu Nui—the atoll—and not on the main island.”
“A quirk, eh?”
“Well, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the island shamans banded together and wiped them out on the island. After a generation or two, the terns probably got the hint and stayed away.”
“Smart birds.”
“The guy who finds an egg first gets to stay on the rock as long as he likes—meditating, praying, whatever it is they think they're supposed to do—and then he comes back to the Orongo and gives the egg to his patron, who becomes the tangata manu for the next season.”
“The bird man,” she nods. “Does he get to wear a funny hat?”
“Of course. It's not a cult if it doesn't involve a funny hat.”
“Okay,” she laughs. “So what does this have to do with why we're here?”
“The tangata manu got to help tend the trees that grew in the crater. For that year, they were apprenticed to the steward of the garden. What they learned about tending the trees and the soil was knowledge they got to take back to their tribe. Remember how I said that the dirt here is different? Cultivating it was an ancient secret that was critical to any tribes' success in the growing season. The tangata manu's tribe would be assured of having a good harvest the year after their champion won.”
“They grew the trees everywhere else,” Mere says.
“The steward left,” Mere finishes for me. “Is that why the island died?”
“I don't remember,” I say.
* * *
I should go alone, but Mere pretends not to hear me when I suggest the idea. It's not far to the crater—a couple of kilometers—but we have to go around the airport. It'd be easy enough to rent a bicycle from the hotel, but doing so at this time of night is just going to draw attention to us. We keep it simple instead, and as soon as we walk a block from the hotel, I pick her up and start jogging.
She feels good, nestled against my chest, her head tucked against my shoulder.
An airplane howls overhead as I follow the road around the end of Mataveri's main runway, and instead of sticking with the road as it doubles back on itself toward the main terminal, I head overland. It takes me about an hour to jog up the hill, and I'm out of breath when we reach the top and I put her down. I don't want to look, afraid I'm going to see as desolate a landscape as the sere terrain surrounding the city, but to my surprise, the valley of the crater is carpeted with a lush forest.
“Are there any trees?” she asks, unable to see as clearly as I can.
“Yes,” I say, my voice breaking. “There are a lot of them.”
“Silas.” She fumbles for my arm, and I try to suppress the shiver that runs through my flesh as her fingers get hold of me. “When was the last time you were here? There haven't been trees on Easter Island for more than a hundred years.”
“I know.”
“When we were on the plane you said something about remembering World War II, and you said you were older than that. When I asked you how old, you dodged my question.” Her hand tightens on my arm. “I know we laughed about the vampire thing, and what you said about being a Dardanoi…”