Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  I have a bad feeling about what's supposed to happen next.

  “You hurt my family,” he shouts at me, spittle flecking my face. He hauls me even closer to the edge. “I want to torture you for a very long time—for as many years as it has been since you killed her—but there is no time for that. Instead, your death will simply be very painful.”

  As the helicopter crosses over the lower terminus of the salt farms, he tries to shove me out of the helicopter. I don't go like he expects.

  He didn't bind my legs, and I've got one foot hooked around the hoist assembly for the cable winch. He turns to pull my leg free, and in doing so, steps between my spread legs. I whip my legs together, catching him across the thighs. As I twist to my left, he falls against the seat behind him, his lower back slamming against the edge of the seat. He roars in anger, trying to extricate himself from my scissored legs, and as he lunges, hands reaching for my face, I pull my legs up and in.

  The helicopter wiggles, the pilot compensating for the sudden shift of weight in the back, and all that combined momentum is enough to slide me over the edge. Gravity helps, and as Alberto gets his hands on my face, we both tumble out of the helicopter.

  We bounce off the helicopter strut—rather, it's my shoulder that does most of the hard work—and we kick free of each other as soon as we can. The helicopter was fairly low as it came over the salt fields—the cliffs on Rapa Nui were higher—and it's not the fall that worries me, it's the landing.

  It's impossible to gauge the depth of any of the basins, and so I try to position my body in a way to minimize the trauma of impact. In case that makes a difference.

  I hit water—very briny water—and it's like being squeezed in a vise. Salt is dangerous; it dehydrates tissue and, over time, it can be fatal. Salt water—like the ocean—is a slower death. You don't dehydrate right away, but your tissue soaks up the water, absorbing the salt which becomes a poisonous residue that breaks you down cell by cell. It's a slow, painful death. The concentration of salt in this water is much, much higher, which means death is going to come quicker, but it's going to be extraordinarily painful.

  Alberto is right about that part.

  My skin reacts instantly, shriveling and cracking. I'm becoming both a prune and a desiccated seed pod. The only good news is that the water is denser than regular water, which means I sink less. I still hit the bottom of the basin, but the impact is a distant source of pain compared to the burning pressure of my body collapsing in on itself.

  I float, letting my buoyancy aid me as I curl into a ball, slipping my hands under my butt. The next part is a little harder when I don't have something to brace myself against, but I manage to get my hands past my feet. I kick off from the bottom of the basin and shoot to the surface, breaching noisily. The sun beats down on the salt farms, making the air turgid and warm. I feel like I've jumped out of an acid bath into an incinerator. I bob toward the edge of the basin, trying not to breathe. Trying not to scream. Bobbing seems to take an eternity, a cork bouncing up and down on a lake of fire. Will I burn up before I reach the shore?

  The only good news is that the plastic ties slip off my wrists with ease by the time I reach the edge of the basin, with only a little bit of my skin as well. There is no blood. There's just bubbling lines of white foam.

  How did Phoebe survive swimming back from the Cetacean Liberty? As soon as I ask myself the question, I realize the answer. It lies in the enigma of her shrugs. Why wouldn't she have survived?

  I've never been in this much pain—never has so much of my body hurt—but I'm still conscious. I'm still me. There are ways to kill us, but for the most part, we are immortal. Mother takes care of us. That's our secret, and our flaw. We think we need Mother, and so when we are confronted with pain—real, life-threatening pain—we run back to Mother. And when we can't get back to Mother, well, then we die. Like any other creature on this planet.

  And that's our flaw. That's what Escobar has figured out. That's what Phoebe knows. We think we need Mother. We think that she can fix anything. She's our God, our deity that takes care of us, feeds us, and protects us. She is our faith, and as long as she is there, we think we can do anything. But what happens when she is gone? When there is no one to rescue us? Is that when we give up, when we default to the primal fear that lives inside all living creatures? We are alone, and the world does not care about us. We are insignificant, motes of dust in an infinite sky.

  Phoebe sees the world differently. She needs nothing. She needs nobody. She is. Zen purity.

  I clench my fist, noticing that the foaming spot has stopped bubbling. I don't need Mother's permission to die. Nor do I need her permission to keep on living. Those choices remain with me.

  My philosophical breakthrough is interrupted by Alberto, who leaps over the wall from an upslope basin. He looks like a preternatural nonagenarian with sharp teeth and nails. Way too spry for his appearance. All I can do is brace myself.

  He slams into me, a snarling bag of bones, and my feet slip on the crystallized bank of the salt basin. One of his hands rakes my face, tearing my skin, and the other claws at my clothing, trying to get my neck exposed. I get my hand under his chin and force his head back, exposing his neck too.

  It's primal combat, animals vying for dominance. Equally matched, the fight will be decided by which of us has the stronger will. Who can take more pain, more physical punishment? Who will be more relentless? Alberto is clean and strong. He fights with that confidence—that knowledge that he is the better physical specimen. Even though I'm invigorated by the blood from the Arcadian I killed in the plaza, I'm still weak, traumatized by the salt and sun.

  Be quick about it, then.

  I've got his head back, and instead of trying to bite him, I grab his throat with my left hand instead. His skin is fragile, like mine, and tearing it is like ripping a snake's discarded skin. He doesn't bleed; he foams—both from his mouth and from the ragged gash in his throat. And while he's still recovering from the attack, I punch him in the side of the head, putting as much strength as I can in the blow. Bones in my hand shift unnaturally.

  He staggers out of our embrace, clutching at his head which is no longer as perfectly shaped as it was. Foam is bubbling around his hand.

  My knuckles are covered with foam.

  Alberto comes at me again, and I sweep his strike aside, popping him in the face with my left hand, breaking his nose. He retreats a couple of steps, bumping up against the wall separating the basins, and I stay where I am. Keeping my distance.

  Alberto leans against the wall, breathing heavily and noisily. His wounds continue to foam, white bubbles dripping down his face. He exhales heavily, and foam spatters from his lips.

  I continue to wait for him, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to run. To get to ground and dig as deep as I can. I stand my ground and wait. Which of us is going to break first?

  “Is this hurt worse than when I took your head off?” I ask, goading him.

  He shows me his teeth, his hands closing into fists, and I think he's going to charge me again, but then he spins on his heel and darts for the wall behind him. I'm taken aback that he's going to try to run, and before I can respond, he goes over the wall into the basin on the next level.

  I dance along the ridges of the basin to the wall and look over. The upper basin isn't nearly as full—mid-thigh—and Alberto is splashing through to the far side. Leaping to the top of the wall, which isn't much wider than the width of my foot, I race around the perimeter of the basin. In a purely mathematical world, I'd be taking the longer—and slower—route, but conditions being what they are, I make up ground staying out of the salt water.

  Alberto gets to the next wall, and opts to stay out of the water too. He hoists himself up onto the wall and starts running along the rim of the next basin. I change my course, running parallel to him on my own track toward the top of the salt farm cascade.

  I can see where this is going, and I'm not interested in a
foot race to the top of the hill, and as I'm running after Alberto, I start looking for something I can throw. At a nexus of four basins, I find a jumble of stones. Selecting a suitably heavy rock, I gauge Alberto's speed and route, and then throw my rock.

  The missile hits him in the hip, knocking him off-balance, and he falls into a basin. When he surfaces, I'm ready with another rock—a third in my other hand. He stands in the basin, the water up to his waist, and stares at me, his forehead steaming and squirming with foam.

  “Did your grandfather ever tell you what happened to Jacinta?” I ask. “How she died?”

  Deliberately, he wipes the white foam off his face. His entire body is quivering from the salt water bath he's taking, but when he looks at me, all I see in his expression is how much he wants to kill me.

  “I dumped her body in the ocean,” I tell him. “That's why she never came back.”

  He leaps out of the basin, trailing salt water, and I throw my rock. His body contorts and he falls into the basin next to me with a splash. My skin burns and twitches where the salt water hits it, but I don't move.

  He bobs up slowly, floating on his back. His head is even more deformed, and the foam spurting out of his skull starts to cover the surface of the basin with a web of sticky bubbles. He stares at me, still alive. Still wanting to kill me.

  “I'm sorry, for what that may be worth,” I say as I transfer my last rock to my right hand. My fingers are stiffening up, and it takes me a little while to get a good grip on the rock.

  Alberto isn't going anywhere.

  “If there is life after this one,” I say, “at least you'll be with her.”

  He blinks.

  My aim is good, and his head snaps back from the impact of my rock. He slips underwater—bobs up once, his face squirming as if it was covered with albino worms—and then he goes under again. This time he doesn't come up.

  FORTY-TWO

  The sun beats down on the open deck of the warship. Most of the men are huddled beneath makeshift shelters strung along the starboard rail. The less able are below deck, squatting in ankle-deep water. An eerie emptiness flowed in the wake of the storm which had blown us west from Troy, and our ship was trapped in the endless calm. We have not felt a breath of wind for many days.

  “Do you ever regret not staying and fighting?” Aeneas and I are sitting in the rear of the boat, keeping an eye on the unmoving tiller.

  “In which battle?” I ask.

  He makes a noise in his chest that might have been the start of a chuckle. He fumbles for his water skin, takes a tiny sip, and then offers it to me. I am not thirsty, but I take it nonetheless and pretend to drink. We have to conserve what little water we have.

  Our boat is leaking, and too many of the men have fallen prey to sun sickness. Our vessel is a warship, not a transport, and it was never meant to be the home for the number of men it currently carries. Though, in a few more weeks, our company might number so few that we won't have enough strong men to work the oars.

  “The Achaeans were inside the gate,” I say as I hand the skin back. “Priam's spirit broke when Hector died. What would our deaths have accomplished? Killing a few hundred more Achaeans?”

  “What else is there for fighting men such as ourselves?” Aeneas asks.

  This is not the first time he has asked this question, and I have tried to discern the answer that he seeks, but I fear my responses have never been suitable enough.

  I hesitate before answering this time, glancing over at Aeneas. His skin is much darker after weeks at sea—as is mine—and our bodies are thin and wiry. We have stopped wearing our armor. It fits poorly now, and carrying the extra weight on board the boat is a foolish proposition. Very few of the men have shown any aptitude for swimming.

  “I don't know,” I say, unable to muster the enthusiasm to craft different rhetoric.

  “Nor do I,” he admits. “We have always turned to the gods for our answers, haven't we? When do we plant the crops this year? Let's ask the gods. Is tomorrow an auspicious day to smite our enemies? Why, yes, the gods think so. Shall I marry this buxom wench? The gods appreciate the offering her dowry will afford.”

  “The gods always appreciate a bountiful marriage,” I point out.

  “But we have no temple out here,” he says, waving a hand at the sky.

  I remain silent, already anticipating where this conversation is going.

  “Before the men grow too weak to row, we should ask for a sign,” he says.

  “And how would we find this sign?” I ask. “We have no goats or pigs to offer as a sacrifice.”

  “We have no hope either,” he says, looking at me.

  “If I do this, we stray from the path we have known. We will no longer be the men we were.”

  He laughs, a sick wheeze hiccuping out of his chest. “We are strangers already.”

  “Who are we then?” I press him, seeking some sign that he was not gripped by the madness that came from too much sun.

  “That is the question I want you to ask of the gods, my friend. Who are we destined to be?”

  He offers me his knife and, on unsteady legs, I clamber down into the damp hold. The men, instinctively sensing I am on an errand none wish to witness, make way for me. Many of them flee for the upper deck even though they are too weak to withstand the sun's heat for long. In the darkest corner of the hold, I find the few men who have tried to crawl as far away from the others in preparation of dying. Only one of them is conscious enough to be aware of my approach.

  “What is your name?” I ask.

  “Tymmaeus, my lord,” the sick man responds. His shoulder is festering with a foul blackness. I remember him. He had taken an arrow in the shoulder as we were boarding the boat. We had tried to get the tip out, but hadn't been successful. His wound hadn't closed, turning red and then black as rot set in. Tymmaeus tries to sit up, but he hasn't enough strength to do much more than breathe shallowly. His body is hot with fever, and his skin is slick with sweat. He was a young man when he came aboard the boat, but he looks much older now.

  I show him Aeneas's knife, and he squints at the blade.

  “It is a warrior's death,” I tell him.

  Licking his lips, he nods and tries to arrange his body to make my task easier.

  “Close your eyes, brave Tymmaeus,” I instruct him. “You do not need to see this death coming.”

  “I already—”

  I don't let him finish, sliding the knife into his heart so that he dies as quickly as possible. I withdraw the knife and slit his belly.

  His guts burn my hands, and I root through his viscera until I cannot withstand the pain any longer.

  Aeneas has ordered the men to the oars, and when I emerge, red-handed, from the darkness of the under deck, he shouts to me. “Which direction?” He is standing beside the tiller, leaning toward me, eager to hear my augury. Eager to know that the gods have not abandoned him.

  I raise my hands, puffy and swollen. Red with Tymmaeus's blood. The sun beats down, its rays inflaming my hands. I don't know how I can feel anything through the pain, but I do. It is the gentlest of caresses, the light touch of a zephyr's kiss.

  “That way,” I say, letting the wind stroke the back of my burning hands.

  * * *

  At the top of the cascade of salt farms is a row of white-walled huts, nestled against the base of another hill that rises much more steeply. There are people wandering back and forth along the upper edge of the farms. They've been watching since I started my rambling run along the brick-lined edges of the basins. When I reach the last few rows, the watchers scatter. It is one thing to spot a monster; it is another thing entirely to meet it face-to-face. The only thing moving along the rim when I arrive is a tiny wind, blowing dust along the walls of the huts. A zephyr.

  I've been thinking while I clambered up the hill, letting my brain get lost in my history as a distraction from the waves of pain coursing through my body. My skin is still raw and the weight of my clothing is
a fierce torment, but my strength has not been sapped by the sun as I had expected. I have been burned by the sun numerous times during the twentieth century—a growing concern brought about by the vicissitudes of the modern world—but this time, I can live with the pain. I do not entirely know the source of my willpower; perhaps it is a reaction to seeing Phoebe survive sunlight or a facet of my conversations with Escobar or even strength drawn from my memory of the last augury I did for Aeneas.

  I have lost my fear of the sun.

  And with it, so too has my fear of abandonment vanished. I have turned my back on Arcadia, even as Arcadia has exiled me. I have nowhere to go. No home that I can return to. But my exile is not a yoke about my shoulders. The salt and the sun have stripped away all that dead weight.

  The huts are tiny little domiciles, transitory living quarters for the farmers as they tend to their basins. I find little in the few that I break into. Most have tiny refrigerators that aren't very well stocked. What fruit I find I eat without reservation, replenishing my depleted cells. I can feel my body relax, no longer crippled by the desiccating salt of the basins. I'm a long way from being whole, but I'm strong enough to keep fighting.

  Tucked between two of the huts, I find a worn bicycle. It is covered in dust and might have been green once upon a time. Wire baskets have been welded between the handlebars and on either side of the back wheel. The nut holding the seat in place is stiff, but I manage to get it started so that I can raise the seat. It has a metal bell, and I flick the ringer with my thumb as I ride toward the dirt road that runs past the edge of the farms and heads further uphill.

  Ding! Ding!

  Moray, the farming site where the Incans experimented with seeds, is only a few kilometers away. That's where the helicopter was going. Hyacinth Worldwide is building something there, and I suspect it is Escobar's great secret. The place where he is building the chimerae.

  Ding! Ding!