The three of us began taking our evening meals together. Though they were younger and smaller than me, they became my mentors and teachers. I would not be alive in this perilous world if not for their guidance. As our friendship grew, I had a box seat view of my young friends’ blossoming love. Leonglauix was not in favor of the match due to Gertie’s narrow hips and her unlikely prospects of providing Tomon with an heir. By the time the old storyteller reconnected with his nephew, however, the die had been cast–or as Leonglauix put it in colloquial terms, “That rabbit bone has already been swallowed and shit out.”
And now I learn that my two best friends have died. The news has robbed me of my will to eat or even move. I feel physically ill. To start, denial got me through. I told myself Father had his facts crossed. My interrogations of the Sons deflated those hopes. They may be lying through their piano-key teeth about what precipitated the massacre, and what transpired in the aftermath, but their accounts of the rhinoceros attack match so perfectly they cannot be false. The couple was not without friends within the ranks of the Sons. One pair of hybrids became so distraught while telling the tale, I found myself consoling them.
Tomon and Gertie were far too young and intelligent, too filled with potential to die. They loved their little boy intensely and completely. I know they would have raised him to be a great man and clan leader. The Sons have been short on details concerning the child’s survival. Some say the baby was flattened, and others claim he is in the care of the “woman with big hair”–Duarte. The two crying hybrids were split on the matter.
Poor Tomon and Gertie. Oh how I shall miss the beautiful voices that formed the foundation of my choir. It will be impossible to replace them, disrespectful to even try. Here I am lamenting over lost songs, while Leonglauix must be in tremendous mourning. The old man had pinned the hopes and legacy of the entire Green Turtle Clan upon the shoulders of the nephew and his wife. Who will carry on the clan’s traditions and oral history? Tomon was so quick-minded and inquisitive, he memorized long chants with ease.
He and I discussed our most recent dreams last time we spoke. Tomon claimed he had taken flight before waking, and was still quite excited about it. Leonglauix teaches that dreams can be controlled, and after years of trying, Tomon was beginning to have some success. He told of soaring over the trees and joining up with V-shaped flocks of geese. Gertie watched her man describe the honks and sights like he was the most interesting person alive.
Those two shared a quality of love that may come round only once in a million relationships. It breaks my heart to think of the savagery of their deaths–Tomon giving up his life in a vain attempt to save his mate and child. The only consolation is they went together.
We did not even share a proper goodbye.
TRANSMISSION:
Bolzano: “Spalancare!”
Hunter: “You don’t need to say that every time you come in.”
Bolzano: “Just a habit.”
Hunter: “Do you waltz with beautiful women in all of your dreams?”
Bolzano: “No, sometimes we do the cha-cha, or see how low we can limbo.”
Hunter: “Who is she?”
Bolzano “I do not know.”
Hunter: “Come now, you must.”
Bolzano: “I have come to the conclusion she is an amalgamation of many of the beautiful women I have experienced in my life. Did I mention I was married briefly along the trail? To a Green Turtle beauty with black hair and blue eyes?”
Hunter: “Duarte told me. Martinelli shot her?”
Bolzano: “Point blank.”
Hunter: “What about her?”
Bolzano: “This dream girl, they share some similarities. May I ask you something?”
Hunter: “Depends on what you ask.”
Bolzano: “Do you and your guests always share their dreams?”
Hunter: “Couldn’t say. You’re the first person I’ve allowed to sleep inside. The manual made no mention of it when I researched whether it was possible to host you.”
Bolzano: “Father, your dreams....”
Hunter: “What of them?”
Bolzano: “Why, they...they are horrible.”
Hunter: “Indeed.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRANSMISSION:
Jones: “Good shootin’, Surfer Man.”
Kaikane: “Glad that’s over.”
Jones: “Ain’t over. Not by a long way.”
Kaikane: “Come on Jonesey, we whupped that pack’s ass. You saw those skinny bastards run.”
Jones: “Wolves’ll be back. In force.”
Kaikane: What makes you so sure?”
Jones: “Old man says so.”
Kaikane: “Ah, shit.”
From the log of Capt. Juniper Jones
Security Detail II
Storyteller has a knack for sniffing out ice caves. Guy could not have picked a better time to find this network of tunnels. Judging by all the shadows through milky ice, there’s a pack of at least 80 wolves walking directly above me. We plugged the entrance to this wing with chunks of ice and spear points. So far, it has held.
Clan managed to gather enough dung for a couple days’ worth of fires to melt ice for drinking water, but that fuel’s about finished. Gray Beard says we’ve got hard traveling ahead–one to two hands of days (5-10) without fire. I guess the mammoth and oxen finally run out of shit around the same zone. He calls it the “killer land without fire or water.” Something like that.
Wolves trailed us for four days before driving clan down into this cave. At first, once we showed ‘em what we were made of, they mostly kept their distance. But a few times each night, they’d wander in close enough to put a good scare into everybody. Gray Beard said it was a scouting party. He kept us moving at a forced march until the main pack rolled in late this afternoon. They’re not the healthiest or biggest wolves I’ve seen, but I’m sure their teeth are plenty sharp. Old man says they were probably working the frozen marshes far south of here, hunting snow rabbits and deer, when word reached of easy pickings on the shelf.
First attack caught everybody by surprise. About 10 wolves had settled into a low spot and laid flat waiting for us to get close enough to bite. Bongo and Conga were leading the way. The drummers were raised in the Green Turtle Clan. They know all the danger signs and are good at picking a safe line across the ice. They spotted the wolves lying low, no more than 20 feet away. Bongo and Conga didn’t even bat an eye, just started throwing spears and killing wolves. They knew they would have backup. That’s the thing about being a Turtle, your brothers and sisters are always there by your side.
Have to admit, it has taken me awhile to accept these two soldiers who kiss and hold hands. At West Point there were rumors about the “misguided” days when homosexuals were allowed to serve openly in the military. One guy even claimed the greatest U.S. military man of the 22nd century, Gen. D.K. Feinberg, got hitched to his male adjutant. It’s just hard to believe.
Once the UberMind was clipped and the religions grew back into power, all that liberal stuff must have gone by the wayside fast. Gays serving in the military, or anyplace else in government, was a “sin against society.” Grandma’s Revised New Testament said so. That’s what I was raised with and that’s how I was brought up through the ranks. We would have run those guys out of the Army so fast their heads would’ve spun.
Gray Beard accepts his drum-playing, hand-holding grandsons unconditionally. Asked him about it once and he had a hard time understanding the question. I tried framing the native words a bunch of different ways. Once he caught my drift, the storyteller seemed confused.
“Do you not have people like this in the land where you come from? There are always some men who prefer men and women who prefer women. Men who behave as women are helpful as gatherers and cooks. It is good to have someone strong to help with the female chores. My grandsons do not want to be women, but they do not want to mate with them either. As long as those two respect their elders and do thei
r duties, what does it matter who they love?”
For a guy born in the Paleolithic, Gray Beard has some forward-thinking ideas. Would like to hear his current plan of action, but once the entrance was sealed, he rolled up in his cape and went straight to sleep. Dude didn’t seem overly worried, which makes me think he’s got something up his sleeve.
TRANSMISSION:
Duarte: “This cave is starting to drive me buggy.”
Kaikane: “Don’t look at ‘em.”
Duarte: “Why not? They’re looking at me.”
Kaikane: “Let’s cover back up, you’re letting out all the heat.”
Duarte: “I feel like I’m going to suffocate in there.”
Kaikane: “Better than freezing to death. Come on, we’ll think happy thoughts.”
Duarte: “About what?”
Kaikane: “What else? Good eats.”
From the log of Dr. Maria Duarte
Chief Botanist
Although my father refused government food assistance, he would accept the packets of vegetable and fruit seeds precinct officials handed out. Our home was inland, located in the northeastern quadrant of the sprawling megalopolis of San Francisco. My parents liquidated every family asset in Portugal to purchase the small parcel of land and tiny polymer house sight unseen. The realtors called it San Fran, but we actually ended up closer to Sacramento than the islands and drowned bridge tops of Old Town. Although the area was bone dry in summers, it usually got enough fog and rain in winter and spring to water a garden. Even during the wet times, however, Papa Duarte’s plants would not grow.
I took soil samples to school and my teacher helped me determine the brown clay was the problem. Our neighborhood was built upon land that had been used to farm rice for nearly 200 years, and after that, a series of other, more drought-tolerant crops until it was left to the Manzanita and weeds. To put it bluntly, the land was spent. When I informed Papa of my findings, he laughed and told me to go outside and play. What would a seven-year-old girl know?
I decided to show him. Having already completed the required coursework for the semester, my school days were generally spent reading and helping my teacher with her busywork. When I presented my proposal to do an independent study on backyard farming based upon composting and minimal, timed watering, she agreed with much enthusiasm.
I set up a three-stage composting bin at the corner of the family property where all household scraps and excess water were deposited. Although it earned me many strange looks, I canvased the neighborhood nearly every day looking for fallen leaves, dropped flowers and weeds to pull–anything with nutrients to add to our compost pile. If we went to the beach, I collected seaweed. By the time the rainy season rolled around, we had some decent soil to work with. Papa harvested fresh tomatoes, lettuce and beans that year. He also began listening to what I had to say.
Each season, as our system became more refined, the crops improved. In a nutshell, this is why I became a botanist. Plants were my friends and test subjects. The learning curve seemed to have no end. I received much-needed positive reinforcement for my successes, but the real joy was fiddling with the plants, finding ways to make them grow bigger, more fruitful and, eventually, so they produced specific tastes and textures Papa preferred.
I’ll never forget the day we got our first two worms. It was during my second year running the farm–if you can call an eighth of an acre a farm. An upper level teacher at school heard about my project and loaned me an antique treatise on urban farming from the early 2000s. The document was so old it was on real paper. I wasn’t permitted to take the 88-page pamphlet out of his classroom, so I committed it to memory during my free time over the next few days. There were many helpful tips, though some of the information was no longer pertinent. For instance, several chapters dealt with composting ruined fruits and vegetables, including how to collect the spoilage from grocery markets, wholesalers and schools. Waste and oversupply of that magnitude were unheard of in the 2200s.
The authors of the urban farming treatise could not say enough good things about their worms. They claimed livestock or poultry must always be a cog in a completely sustainable farm, but that becomes difficult in cities where there is little room or tolerance for housing pigs, goats and chickens. Through trial and error, the authors found worms to be their livestock of choice. They raved about worm tea and worm casings to fertilize plants, and worm burgers and worm ice cream to tantalize the belly. These guys were nuts about their worms.
Somewhere through the centuries, their techniques had been lost. It is easy to blame the machines. The UberMind ran agriculture efficiently for more than a century. By the time of the overthrow, farming had become a lost art for most of mankind. We had also lost our taste for quality and freshness. For the lion’s share of the world’s burgeoning population, food was something that came in powders or pellets. Just add water if you can afford it.
The fact the Duarte family garden was providing steady produce for the table, and using minimal water to do so, was not lost on the neighbors. So many people sought out Papa to ask his advice, his standing in the community began to rise. Perhaps that is why he listened when I said if we really wanted to step things up, we needed to buy some red worms. Several days later, he surprised me at the breakfast table by saying he had found a place with worms for sale. He asked if I would like to accompany him to pick a pair out. The garden store called Howard’s was on an island in the Berkeley Hills. The journey required passage on a train and two ferries each way. Howard’s worms were not cheap, but the towering man said if we did things right, we would never need to buy another pair again.
His words proved prophetic. Those two worms, and their many descendants, turned our garden into the envy of the entire precinct. On year four, I introduced a centrifuge made from salvaged air car parts to spin usable water and nutrients from the family’s bodily wastes. It was not quite legal to redirect this resource away from communal collection, so this aspect of the project was never mentioned in my studies or papers–not until now. Sorry, Mama and Papa, I hope I didn’t just get you busted.
At 14 years old, I conducted a study on the effects of prayer on the vitality of plants. A select number of test trays of seedlings were prayed over and others were not. I enlisted classmates of various religious persuasions to participate in the “prayer for plants” experiment. At the time, there were many doubts swirling in my head. The prayer project may have been a last-ditch hope of finding tangible evidence God existed–something I could document and understand. Maria Duarte’s long and ugly divorce from her parents’ beloved church had begun.
When the priest was called in, I explained how my findings cast doubts upon the viability of his archaic belief structure. Father Pinoy claimed God was too busy tending his human flock to worry about radishes, turnips and wax beans. The whip-thin man’s attempts to broker a peace between my parents and me only served to widen the divide. My fault entirely. I said things I truly should have kept to myself, including asking the priest if he would like to take a tray of dying beans to church and see if he could save them with holy water. Filtering opinions has never been a strong point of mine, especially when my temper’s up.
It makes me wonder if Rhino will someday use words to cut me to the bone as I did to my parents.
TRANSMISSION:
Kaikane: “You know what I miss?”
Duarte: “Being warm?”
Kaikane: “Fishing. Haven’t caught a fish in months.”
Duarte: “I could go for a nice salmon.”
Kaikane: “Slow baked with hazelnut coating and Sal’s berry sauce.”
Duarte: “Stuffed with steamed leeks, sea salt and watercress.”
Kaikane: “Served with frog legs and lobster tail on the side.”
Duarte: “Lobster...mmmmmm.”
Kaikane: “I’d cut my left nut off for a cook bag of lobster bouillabaisse.”
Duarte: “Like we made in Ibiza.”
Kaikane: “That was our best
.”
Duarte: “It was the spicy purple seaweed which gave it zip.”
Jones: “You two gotta knock that shit off. Making my stomach growl.”
From the log of Paul Kaikane
Recreation Specialist
Having never been on an ice cap before, I had no idea what to expect. After a dozen days, I’m finally starting to get a feel for it. This ice is nothing like the river ice we walked, or the frozen lakes we crossed. It’s old ice that’s been built layer by layer by a million snowstorms. Melted and frozen a hundred thousand times over, there are hills and valleys, caves and dangerous sinks of crystal ice.
As long as we hang with the mammoth and oxen we’re cool. They know where it’s safe to walk. Surprises me how close some of the mammoth get when they pass us by. It’s like everything and everybody is too cold, or too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to mess around. We’re not running between their legs or anything, but 30 or 40 feet is not an uncommon separation. The other day, we trailed an old whiteface bull ox for more than 10 miles. A rare storm from the south was dropping at least a foot of snow an hour. Bull knew we were behind him; he turned and checked us out a couple times. After that, he didn’t seem to mind plowing our trail. When it came time for us to stop for the day, a few of us gave that ox hoots of thanks as he disappeared into the blizzard and fading light.
Gray Beard’s lost three people to bad ice in the past year. It’s made him kinda paranoid. He’s always warning us to not wander off. Whether the Green Turtles are on the move or stopping to do our ass-freezing business, we keep to a tight pack.
It was cold. It was dark. It was hard. But, all in all, things were going pretty smooth until the stinking wolves showed up. Lean fuckers declared “game on” with a sneak attack that wasn’t as sneaky as they hoped. The two drummers, Bongo and Conga, spotted them in time to shout an alarm and lead the charge. We fought as a pack and showed no fear–just like Gray Beard taught us. Jones killed two with his atlatl, but lost four bolts in the process. Bummer. We looked for at least an hour, but couldn’t find the three-foot-long yew shafts in the snow.
Galway Page 26
