CHAPTER 22
Yap Island
(Shikarrak)
Dennis Silva was snoring
loudly in the gray half-light of dawn. Sometime during the night,
they’d decided the shiksak activity below had begun to taper off,
and he’d produced a bottle of his reserved prize “medicinal” rum to
celebrate. He’d shared—a little—and the bizarre phenomenon they
experienced later, after he was liberally medicated, had blended
into a twisted dream in which their boat was sailing through the
air above the roaring rapids of a boundless river. Even now, as
consciousness threatened, he remembered that the roar had been
pretty loud, and somehow their little boat had become Walker from time to time. He was pretty sure Spanky
had “blown tubes” at least once, judging by the sooty taste in his
mouth. The dream was a hoot, even if the ride was a little bumpy.
The circumstances were strange and maybe even ominous, but that
wasn’t the point. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d been singing,
and he imagined he’d been particularly witty when he ridiculed
Rajendra for his girlish squeaks of alarm.
In any event, for
once Silva wasn’t already fully awake before everyone else. The
others had endured a long, tense, “unmedicated” night that hadn’t
been entertaining in any way, and all except Rebecca Anne McDonald
were still asleep after their ordeal, snoring under this momentous,
utterly changed dawn.
“Mr. Silva,” Rebecca
whispered, again prodding him disapprovingly with her toe. “Do wake
up; something is eating our ropes.” She’d barely slept at all,
staring down, trying to see what was happening during the seemingly
endless, terrifying night. Long after the roar had passed, but
before the meager light revealed a dark, diminutive shape near the
falls, she’d heard gnawing sounds coming from the aft
tackle.
“Mr.
Silva!”
Dennis’s good eye
popped open, and seeing Rebecca in the gloom, he immediately groped
for his eyepatch. Oddly, despite his bizarre behavior in most
respects, he didn’t like it when his “little sister” saw the
gnarled, sunken socket where his left eye had been. His next
priority was Truelove’s long-barreled pistol tucked in his rope
belt.
“Umm?” he demanded
groggily.
“The aft tackle. The
falls.”
“What’s wrong with
’em?” he managed thickly.
Rebecca sighed
exasperatedly. “Something is there, chewing on them!”
Silva twisted to
look. “I’ll be . . . derned. You’re right!” He squinted. “Silly
bastard’s gonna drop us on the water—I mean the ground! Hey, there,
you little freak!” he growled menacingly, “get away from there, or
I’ll blow your goddamn head off!” With his left hand, he pitched
the empty rum bottle at the thing.
“Goddamn! Goddamn!”
shrieked the creature, dodging the bottle and scampering up into
the lower branches above.
“It spoke!” Rebecca
exclaimed, shocked.
“Yeah,” Silva
admitted, trying to draw a bead on the ill-defined shape above.
“Sounds kinda like a parrot, don’t he? You know
parrots?”
“Unfortunately, yes,”
Rebecca admitted. “The Founders carried some and they have quite
devastated the indigenous songbird populations of New Britain.
Horrid, obnoxious creatures!”
“Well, let’s see if
they can be ate,” Silva murmured.
“Don’t you dare!”
Rebecca objected. “It may be more than a strange parrot! What if
it’s like Lawrence?”
“Not like Lawrence,”
the Tagranesi proclaimed disgustedly, awakening to the voices and
quickly grasping the situation. There was little trace of sleep in
his voice. “They are annoying ’ests, and they can ’e ate. Tasty too.”
“Well, then!” Dennis
said, aiming at the dark shape more carefully. Over the last few
days, they’d supplemented their rations with various arboreal
denizens. It often sparked a race between them (usually Lelaa on a
rope) and their native “neighbors” to retrieve the fallen
creatures, and of course if any shiksaks were nearby, they didn’t
want to draw their attention by leaving food beneath the boat.
There was nothing they could do about their waste, and that was bad
enough. Shooting and eating their “neighbors” was a diversion from
the monotony of their situation if nothing else, and it kept them
from digging too deeply into their increasingly limited
supplies.
“No!” Rebecca
exclaimed, glancing darkly at Lawrence.
“No! No! Goddamn!”
came a shrill, indignant cry from above.
Silva shrugged.
“Well, whatever the little bugger is, he talks as good as you,
Larry.” He looked at Rebecca. “He’s gotta leave off chewin’ on our
rope, though.”
The others in the
suspended boat began to stir.
“What’s happening?”
Sandra asked. “Is it over?”
Despite her
bedraggled state, Silva couldn’t suppress a thrill at the sight of
her pretty, morning face. He physically shook himself. Damn! He told himself. Don’T
even Think like That! It was hard not to after all this
time. He’d even occasionally caught himself looking speculatively
at Sister Audry. She was a damn fine-looking gal, after all.
Such a waste . . . He shook himself
again.
“ERRRrrrrrr!”
“What?”
“Oh, nothin’. What do
you mean, ‘is it over’?” He shook his still groggy head, deciding
to answer Sandra’s first question before pondering the second. “The
squirt wants a new pet. The bloom’s wore off poor Larry, I
guess.”
“That’s not true!”
Rebecca scolded. “And Lawrence is not a
pet!”
“What is a pet?”
Lelaa asked.
“A dog,” Lawrence
said, a little wistfully.
“Pets ain’t all
dogs,” Silva retorted, “but dogs can be pets. A pet’s just about
any critter that likes it when you pet ’em on the
head.”
“My God, Mr. Silva,
you are a philosopher!” Sandra
exclaimed, still muzzy herself.
“Yep. All I need’s a
Navy-issue Greek suit.”
“Hand me a piece of
biscuit, if you please,” Rebecca demanded. Half asleep, Rajendra
grumpily fished in a canvas bag and produced a mildewed cracker.
Snatching it away, Rebecca held it up to the creature, near the
falls. “Here you are, little fellow!” she entreated. “Won’t you
come down and eat? Show yourself! That’s a good little creature!” Tentatively, perhaps coaxed
by her pleasant voice or the smell of food, the little vandal eased
back out of the shadows.
“Why, it looks like
an archaeopteryx!” gushed Abel Cook. The young
midshipman/naturalist-in-training had improved considerably over
the last few days. He was still weak, and like them all, literally
covered with mosquito bites, but the lightly feathered creature
sniffing its way skeptically down the falls had stirred his
interest. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat, with a long neck and a
toothy head just like any other lizard bird they’d seen, but its
abbreviated wings and long, feather-vaned tail looked more suited
to gliding than flying. Silva chuckled as the light improved
because the thing was colored predominantly greenish blue and
yellow. The creature retreated at the sound, hissing at Silva with
an open mouth full of small, razorlike teeth.
“Sure looks like one o’ your relations, Larry,” Silva
prodded.
Lawrence hissed at
him too. Rebecca gave them both withering stares.
“Come on, little
fellow!” Rebecca cajoled again. “Wouldn’t you like something to
eat?”
“Eat?”
“Yes!” Rebecca teased
it with the cracker. “Eat!”
“Eat!” the creature
mimicked doubtfully.
“Yes,
eat!”
Quick as a shot, the
little thing raced down the falls, snatched the cracker, then
disappeared again in the canopy above. Rebecca checked her fingers
to make sure they were all there while Silva laughed. A moment
later, they heard another querulous cry from above.
“Eat?”
It was immediately
echoed by others. “Eat? Eat? Eat!”
“Uh-oh, now look what
you’ve done!” Silva said, turning serious. In a blurry streak, what
looked like the first creature bolted down the falls and bounded
around the boat shrieking, “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
It bounced off
Dennis’s leg and dug in its claws—which hurt—but it wasn’t even as
heavy as it looked. Lawrence took a swipe at it with his sword, but
it was just too fast.
“Well ... give it
something to eat!” Rebecca commanded. The entire canopy above was
beginning to thrum with the chant “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
“You feed that thing,
it’ll never leave!” objected Silva. “Them other bastards’ll be down
in a instant and eat us too!”
“Feed it!” Rebecca
ordered, and Rajendra obeyed, tossing another biscuit at the
creature.
“No!” Sandra almost
shouted. Dennis was right, she thought, but it was too late.
Seizing the morsel, the creature stuffed it in its mouth, showering
crumbs in all directions. Lawrence was trying to get close enough
to take another swipe with his sword when another, similar creature
swooped down into the boat and defiantly demanded, “Eat!” To their
amazement, the first one launched itself at the second, spewing
crumbs and shrieking, “Eat! Goddamn!” It struck the stationary
“intruder” like a bullet and, as quickly as that, in a shower of
feathers and blood, the intruder was dead. Frizzed out now, its
meager plumage standing on end, the first creature scampered back
up the falls almost to the limbs above and spread its long arms,
feathery, membranous wings taut. With formidable claws bared at the
ends of long fingers, and its neck stretched out, teeth exposed, it
gobbled thunderously like a tom turkey.
All protests of “Eat!” ceased in the branches above, and
triumphantly, the little creature strutted warningly back down the
falls. Finally, hopping the distance to its dead cousin, it
clutched the corpse and tore away a feathery gobbet. “Eat!” it
chirped contentedly. “Goddamn!”
“Goddamn!” echoed
Dennis Silva approvingly. “Little guy’s got the basics
down!”
“Look,” breathed
Sister Audry, pointing at the brightening world around
them.
Sandra gasped. For
nearly the last week, while they swayed between the tree trunks,
living a miserable, virtually seagoing existence with all the
attendant hardships and inconveniences (particularly on the
ladies), Yap Island had worked with shiksaks. It had been almost
like watching maggots in meat, except these maggots were nearly as
voracious toward one another as they were intent on their primary
goal. Mating pairs coupled everywhere, briefly and violently, and
the act ended, as often as not, with the death of at least one of
the participants. Abel speculated the fighting was the natural
outcome of cramming so many highly territorial carnivores together
in one place for any reason, but it seemed utterly senseless and
unnatural to everyone else. Males died, females died, shiksaks of
both sexes died fighting over the carcasses of the slain. When a
clutch of eggs was laid, almost as casually as defecating, they
were often eaten or crushed by their own mothers. Despite Abel’s
speculation, he was at a loss to explain this aspect of their
behavior, this utter disregard for their offspring.
Apparently, once laid
and forgotten, the eggs were safe unless a creature just happened
upon them, so maybe they exuded no attractive scent or maybe, as
they’d speculated before, shiksaks just didn’t have a welldefined
sense of smell out of the water. There was no telling. Abel and
Brassey had calculated that despite this apparently
self-destructive behavior, there would still be a net increase in
the ultimate number of shiksaks. Even given the inevitable infant
mortality, this annual smorgasbord/ orgy might be the only way the
creatures had to keep their numbers at a sustainable level. At sea,
they had no (known) natural enemies except mountain fish and one
another. Sandra was surprised that even Sister Audry allowed that,
sickening as it was, God may have allowed shiksaks to sort this
hideous arrangement out for themselves, since she was incapable of
believing he’d designed it thus. Secretly, Sandra reflected that
Courtney Bradford would have felt somewhat vindicated after Audry
had so violently attacked his faith in a partnership between
creation and natural selection. She was glad he wasn’t here to crow
about it.
That morning,
however, when the day began to break upon the virtually denuded,
devastated ... battlefield ... that Yap now resembled, all that
remained of the great infestation was the destruction left in its
wake—and the wake of something else that had happened in the night
they still didn’t understand. Bloated, festering carcasses lay
scattered among fallen trees and sandy, almost rippled soil. The
whole place looked like reels Sandra had seen of Poland after the
Nazis bombed whole areas into desolation, except that instead of
dead livestock, dead shiksaks were littered about. She was
fascinated to see green kudzu shoots already bursting forth from
some of the dead, and wondered if those that had eaten of them had
been infected as well. In all her view, there remained only a
single, badly wounded shiksak, and it was determinedly dragging
itself toward the sea.
“They’re gone,” she
murmured in wonder.
“Gone,” Rajendra
agreed. Until last night, he’d still maintained that Silva’s scheme
of “riding things out” had been a mistake. Now he seemed as
relieved as anyone else.
“Gone and washed
away, by the look of things.” Silva said. “I would’ve expected even
more bodies ... and look, there’s puddles all over the place, with
junk all tangled up like after a flood.” Silva looked at Sandra.
“Say, what did happen last night? I
musta been ... preoccupied.”
“You were drunk,”
Sandra said scornfully. “Not really your fault, I suppose. I
should’ve stopped you, but I had no idea ...”
“A surge of seawater,
like a tidal wave, came in shortly after midnight,” Abel said
seriously. “Several surges, in fact. All were relatively gentle in
a sense—no monstrous, crashing waves—but for a while, seawater
surged right beneath the boat at the base of the trees. It gave us
some concern,” he added as an understatement. They’d been very
concerned that their trees might be undermined and fall, as a
matter of fact.
“So it wasn’t all a
dream,” Silva muttered. “Did Rajendra really squeak?”
“I wouldn’t have
heard it over your yodeling!” Sandra said in an accusatory tone.
She rubbed her brow. “Chorus after chorus of ‘In the Jailhouse
Now,’ for God’s sake!”
Dennis looked at her
blankly. “I cain’t yodel,” he said.
“No,” Sandra agreed,
“you can’t. Never do it again. That’s
an order.”
Silva arched his
eyebrows and looked at Lawrence. “Ever seen anything like this
before? A tide high enough to cover an island like
Yap?”
“Yes, ’ut only when
the ground shakes. Large tides cross Tagran then. Tagranesi feel
earth shake, go to high grounds.” He looked worried. “Tide cross
here, it cross Tagran too. Ground not shake, late at night,
Tagranesi ’ight not go to high grounds ...”
“The surge came from
the southwest. Perhaps it didn’t reach as far as Tagran,” Brassey
said, trying to reassure Lawrence.
“Let’s get down and
out of here,” Rajendra urged angrily. His carpenter
agreed.
“Not so fast,” Sandra
replied. “Captain Lelaa?”
“The surge, or
whatever it was, has completely subsided now. We should be able to
cross the breakers with the tide around midday,” Lelaa replied,
glancing at the moon beginning to rise. “We have sufficient time to
observe a while longer, to make sure the infestation is indeed
over. All I see is that one injured creature, but it is possible
more will arrive. We should not wait too long, though, if we want
to leave today.”
With the full sun,
there were no more shiksaks, and the stench of rotting corpses and
vegetation became overpowering. Sandra was convinced they needed to
leave regardless. Thank God they still had sufficient rum-dosed
fresh water. She doubted that any uncontaminated water would be
found on the island for some time. Carefully, they lowered the boat
to the damp, mushy ground. Abel could help a little this time, and
all others were sent down by rope before they made the attempt,
both for safety and to decrease the weight.
Silva was annoyed to
see how far Rebecca’s new pet had chewed through one of the ropes.
Another few minutes might have done for them. “Stupid shit,” he
muttered accusingly at the creature, which seemed perfectly content
to remain with them.
“Stupidshit!” the
parrot lizard agreed enthusiastically. Uncharacteristically, Silva
was at a loss to come up with a clever name for the thing, and that
left him a little morose. He’d always thought he had a talent for
names. His perpetual fallback, calling it “Spanky,” fell on deaf
ears as usual. (Nobody knew why he always suggested naming anything
ridiculous or inconvenient after Walker’s engineering officer, but he apparently had
a reason.)
“Stupidshit Eat?” The
thing demanded hopefully after the boat touched the
ground.
“Hey!” said Dennis,
inspired. “Let’s call him ‘Stupidshit’!”
“Absolutely not!”
Rebecca decreed, coaxing the creature out of the boat and onto the
ground.
“Stu’idshit sounds
good to ’e,” Lawrence agreed.
“No.”
“Hmm,” said Silva,
coiling and stowing the falls after Lelaa brought them down.
Rajendra and his men were positioning the rollers. All were alert,
but in spite of everything, a festive mood prevailed. “Let’s see.
Eat—Pete! We can call him Pete!”
“I think General
Alden might take some offense at that,” Sandra observed
dryly.
“Well ... let’s call
him ‘Petey’ then! That’s a fine, upstandin’ American pet
name!”
Sandra giggled.
“What, make him a member of ‘Our Gang’?” Of course, the reference
was lost on everyone else.
“Petey!” shrieked the
gluttonous tree-leaper. “Petey Eat?”
“I guess that’s
settled,” Silva quipped in the face of Rebecca’s glare. “C’mon,
let’s get a move on. I’ve seen enough o’ this dump. Time to get
back in the Navy.”