“So they might not want us to get off the island, Captain Sol,” Andy said. “Do you get it now, what we’re trying to say?” “Yes, Andy,” the captain said. “I think I get it!” “Can’t we launch the mini-sub?” Cynthea asked. “With two Sea-Wolf anti-sub attack submarines listening for exactly that? Christ, they can probably hear what we’re saying right through the hull of this ship.”
“We gotta do something, man,” Peach said.
Captain Sol nodded, stroking his beard. “Maybe we can let out the winch on the Zodiac and let the tide carry it in closer….But how the heck can you get down to us?”
Everyone in the B-29 cockpit turned to the right to look at the basket hanging from the branch of Hender’s tree.
“Hender,” Geoffrey pointed. “Exit?”
“Water hazar-doo-us. Hender no water.”
“Of course, they go at low tide!” Nell said.
“Exit OK Hender,” Geoffrey said. “Exit safety OK?”
“Dane-jer! Dane-jer!” Hender shouted, pointing down.
“Humans below help,” Nell said. “Safety. Raft. Safe!” She pointed down and nodded.
“Rescue, raft!” Geoffrey added. “Safety!”
“Raft.” Hender nodded at Nell with what she could have sworn was skepticism. He closed his eyelids for a moment, then looked at Nell with both eyes. “OK. Safety.”
Hender turned and spoke to the other hendropods.
“OK, Captain Sol,” Andy said. “We’re going to be coming down in a basket sort of elevator thing…”
“What?” Captain Sol said.
“Go on deck and look up at the cliff. We’ll wave some lights so you can see us.”
Geoffrey motioned to the other humans, and they each scooped up some bug-jars.
They waved them in the window of the cockpit.
Thatcher glanced over his shoulder at the others as he slipped out the door.
He checked his Timex Indiglo watch, pressing the crown to light up its face, and peered down the hillside. He heard the engine of the Humvee and saw headlights beaming from behind the B-29’s rotting wing farther down the slope. He sighed as a wave of relief washed over him. Then he ran toward the lights.
In the control room aboard the Trident the video started to fizzle and fade.
“We’re losing you, Zero,” Peach said.
They heard the cameraman’s voice as the transmission died: “Look up … for us!”
Moments later, they saw the Trident’s deck lights flick on and off twice. “They spotted us,” Geoffrey said.
“Come on, Andy,” Nell said. “Let’s pack their stuff in those specimen cases.”
Nell and Andy ran to the other end of the fuselage to start packing the hendropods’ possessions into the aluminum cases. The other hendros ran past them and climbed into the hole to the spiral stairs that led to Hender’s elevator. But Hender paused beside Nell, watching her place his things inside one of the cases.
“Go now, Hender. Exit,” Geoffrey said, behind him. “Nell will come with us.”
Hender twisted his head around and looked at Geoffrey. “Nell will come with us,” Hender repeated, nodding. He turned to Nell and both his eyes bent down and looked into hers. Suddenly, without warning, he embraced her, wrapping four arms around her.
Nell was alarmed as his four hands pressed against her back— but his touch was surprisingly gentle, and as her fingertips reluctantly touched the smooth fur on his belly colors expanded like petals blossoming. Pink and orange blooms of light opened all over his silvery body, along with shifting stripes and dots of green, and without warning she was laughing. Tears spilled over her eyelids as she realized that she had found her flower, after all.
“Thank you, Nell.” She felt his voice hum through her like an oboe.
She ran her fingers gently over the thick, glossy coat. “Hender go now,” she said. “OK?” “OK, Nell. Hender go now.”
As Thatcher ran down the slope, he dodged weird transparent fern-like growths that sprouted over the clover fields in the gloom. Down the slope about a hundred feet, the headlights went dark. Thatcher could hear the idling engine cut off as he finally reached the Hummer.
The alpha spiger launched its two-ton body off its rear legs and catapulting tail, lunging up the hillside in a thirty-foot leap, as it followed the tracks of the Humvee up the slope in the moonlight.
Behind the red beast two smaller spigers the size of polar bears, the two members of its pack, pounced up the hill.
Drool lubricated their vertical jaws and their eyes darted rapidly on stalks, canvassing the hillside around them in vibrant, vivid detail. An army of parasites, from scavenging disk-ants to centipede-like worms, coursed through the giants’ fur like sea monsters battling all attacking bugs to a standstill and protecting its wounds so they could heal.
The alpha spiger bore a deep scar on one side of its face where a wolf-sized rival had slashed its head before it had bit the youngster in two. The others in its pack had devoured the spiger’s other half.
The alpha spiger spotted the Humvee rolling to a stop on the slope above. It doubled its speed.
Nell and Andy packed the cases to the brim with the haversacks of each hendropod and started stuffing as many fossils as they could squeeze into the rest, even slipping some inside their pockets, reluctant to leave anything behind.
“Nell,” Andy said. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“Coming back to get me.”
“Oh! No problem, sweetie.” She laughed and gave him one of her signature hugs.
“I thought I was dead,” he said, tearfully. “I couldn’t believe they saved me. But the hendros really took me in, Nell, they really did. Considering what they’re going to do to the island…” He paused, eyes closed tight. Finally he sighed, and opened his eyes to meet hers. “Anyway,” he said, “thanks.”
“Thanks for finding them, Andy.” Nell let him go and squeezed his shoulder. “Your name will go down in scientific history as the one who saved the hendropods from extinction. Come on—we don’t have much time. We need to go.” They each carried two stuffed cases up the stairs, leaving the fifth case for a second trip.
The cataract of the Milky Way filtered through the screen of the tree’s dome-like canopy. A heavy branch reached out over the cliff from which a row of branches protruded like monkey bars.
They watched as the hendropods turned headstands on the wide branch and, with their four long legs, reached out and grabbed the side branches. The creatures swung across, rotating with one limb after another.
When the hendropods reached a pulley that hung from the bottom of the branch, they jumped down the thick cable into the big basket.
“Mmm. I don’t know…” Andy quavered, assessing their precarious escape route. “Hey! Where’s Thatcher?”
The others shot quick glances around.
“I’m not waiting for Thatcher,” Zero announced. He jumped out to catch the first rung of the “monkey bars” and then swung over the seven-hundred-foot plunge hand-over-hand on the side branches.
Geoffrey went after him. They both made it look fairly easy.
“Lookin’ good, guys,” Nell called as they slid down the cable into the basket.
“Uh, how are we going to get these over there?” Andy pointed at the cases.
“Uh-oh,” Nell said. “Hend—”
As Nell started to call them, the hendropods sprang back up the cable and swiftly spread out along the “monkey bars,” forming a chain back to the main branch. As she handed them off they tossed the cases along the chain to Zero and Geoffrey, who caught them in the basket.
“Your turn, Andy,” said Nell.
“I can’t do this.”
“Come on, Andy!” shouted Zero. “Just don’t look down!”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of heights,” Nell said.
“Who isn’t afraid of heights?”
“It’s not that far, just go!” she said.
Andy jumped with a terrified yell and caught the first branch.
“Hand over hand!” shouted Zero.
Andy glanced down the sheer cliff face and began thrashing his legs wildly.
Hender stood by Nell on the main branch. The four other hendropods hung from the monkey bars, watching Andy.
“Go Andy!” Hender said.
Andy reached for the next monkey bar and grabbed it, but when he swung for the rung after that his hand missed and he fell.
She heard Andy’s scream. Hender jumped from beside Nell and plunged down the cliff as she looked down.
Hender grabbed Andy’s ankle with an outstretched hand as two hendropods leaped from the rungs in sequence.
Like the pieces from a Barrel of Monkeys game, one hendro stretched a hand out to grab Hender’s tail while hooking tails with the one behind it, who held the tail of a fourth, who clung to the ladder with all six hands.
As Andy plummeted down the face of the cliff, the hendropods’ tails stretched to the limit and then sprang back and jerked him upward like a bungee cable.
At the top of the recoil, Hender handed Andy off to the fourth hendropod at the top of the chain, who quickly passed him to a fifth hendro hanging from the pulley.
The fifth hendro dropped Andy, who had been screaming throughout, into the basket.
Zero and Geoffrey patted his back with amazed congratulations as Andy popped his head up, speechless.
Thatcher slid into the shotgun seat of the waiting Hummer, breathing hard from his run. “They have no way to contact the base,” he said, slamming the door.
“You sure they don’t have one of these?”
“What’s that?” Thatcher wheezed.
“A satphone.”
“No, no. They would have used it.”
“The scientists think the island is sinking,” Cane whispered. “They’re going to nuke it ahead of schedule, twelve hours from now, they say, if there’s anything left to nuke. They’re evacuating the lab and deep-freezing the last specimens for transport. We could just leave now, no problem, sir.”
“We’ve got a problem. Those scientists are trying to escape with four more of those wretched creatures, Sergeant. They’re planning to use that elevator they built. They’re getting the ship from that TV show to pick them up.”
Cane solemnly reached under the seat and pulled out his rifle and some ammo clips. “You know my orders, sir. My orders are clear.”
“You’re not…” The scientist’s eyes widened, “going to shoot them?”
Sergeant Cane released the safety on his weapon. “With extreme prejudice, sir.”
“I mean—you’re not going to shoot the humans?”
“The humans were warned of the consequences. They’re no better than terrorists smuggling WMDs.”
“But—” The gears were jamming in Thatcher’s mind. He noticed specimen cases in the back of the Humvee. “What are those, Sergeant?”
“When I was driving around down there I ran into a bunch of panicky eggheads, no offense, sir, who asked me to take some specimens back to the base. They fumigated the canopy and knocked out a bunch of rats.”
Thatcher saw the taped labels on the cases that said HENDERS RATS. “So those are live specimens…”
“Not for long,” the soldier replied darkly. “They’ll whack ’em back at base camp. Deep freeze.”
“How will we explain that? I mean, if the others don’t come with us, how will we explain how we got those specimens?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, sir. We’ll just say we caught the others trying to smuggle specimens off the island: in other words, we tell the truth. My orders are clear, regardless of what you may want to do. This mission is now official, and not hypothetical, sir.”
“Right…” Thatcher said softly. He looked at the cases of live specimens, thinking fast as he reeled forward different scenarios in his mind and, seeing three bars come up down one path, decided to gamble. “Give me a gun, Sergeant. I don’t intend to sit out here unarmed.”
Cane paused, studying the scientist for a moment. Then he reached down to his holster, unsnapped it, and handed Thatcher his Beretta.
Cane reached for the door. Thatcher’s fingers tightened on the weapon as soon as the soldier turned away, but his arm froze when Cane turned back to him. Then, in the window behind Cane, Thatcher saw a giant shape rising like the neon marquee of the Flamingo Hotel.
Thatcher forced himself to remain calm and lowered the gun to his lap. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? It could be dangerous,” he said.
“I’ll be fine,” replied Cane. “I’ll be right back.”
When the young soldier opened the door to step out, a black spike ripped the door from its hinges. A second spike pierced Cane from his neck to his pelvis, and lifted him out of the vehicle like a gruesome marionette, dead.
Thatcher reached over from the passenger seat and switched on the ignition. When the Hummer started, he shifted it into gear. It rolled forward as the spiger, joined by another, and then a third, ripped into the soldier’s body.
Thatcher scrambled into the driver’s seat of the rolling Hummer and gripped the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror he was certain he saw two of the spigers follow him.
He pointed the vehicle down the slope, grabbed the satphone from the seat and one of the specimen cases from the back, then he shifted the Hummer into neutral and jumped out, getting lucky as he hit a relatively bare patch of ground and sprawled flat.
Thatcher raised his head inches from a bloom of fetid purple clover to watch the empty Hummer pick up speed on the darkened slope, chased by the two smaller spigers. The big one, having finished with Cane, lunged down the field to join the hunt.
Thatcher stood up and ran. The creature’s bizarre tree house was fifty yards away, and he could barely hug the bulky specimen case under one arm. He had dropped Cane’s pistol somewhere, but he wasn’t about to stop and look for it.
The alpha spiger’s rear eyes and hindbrain spotted the zoologist running behind them up the field. It abandoned the chase of the Hummer, spun instantly on a spike, and launched after Thatcher. The other spigers followed.
Thatcher shifted the case from arm to arm, gasping for air as putrid gases wafted over the purple field.
The spigers ran at full speed, pushing off their powerful middle legs and digging in their cleated tails and hind legs to propel them forward. In mid-leap they curled their spiked tails back under them to take the blow of their landing and drove their spiked front arms into the ground to pull them forward as their middle legs pushed off and their tail and hind legs launched them again.
Thatcher huffed and puffed as he jumped over glistening clovores blooming on the starlit slope. He stuffed Cane’s sat-phone in the inner pocket of his vest and didn’t look back. He barely registered the distant concussion of the Hummer plunging over a cliff into the jungle below. As it exploded, distracting the spigers for a precious beat, he put his head down, and ran for his life.
On their monitors inside the Trigon’s control center, three Army Radio Telephone Operators noticed Blue One on the move in the theater of operations.
“Blue One just took a nosedive!” one RTO reported, turning to his CO in the communications room.
The Commanding Officer on duty opened a radio channel. “Blue One, what’s your status, damn it!”
“I don’t think they’ll be answering, sir,” the RTO said, staring at the screen. “They must have fallen about fifty feet off a cliff before they hit jungle.”
“When did they last check in?”
“About twenty-three minutes ago, sir. They were collecting specimens.”
The icon indicating the Hummer’s transponder vanished from the map on their screens.
“Fuck it!” the CO snarled. “Send a search-and-rescue chopper, but don’t drop anyone in. I’m not leaving one more soldier on this goddamned island, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir! But there were some VIPs on board Blue One, sir. Um…Dr. Cato, Dr. Redmond, and Dr. Binswanger… and Nell Duckworth. Plus that survivor they picked up.”
“Oh, Christ. I’ll call General Harris—Jesus Christ!—the shit’s going to spray on this one, guys. Fuck! My order still stands, Lieutenant. Do not drop anyone in there, under any circumstances.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel! That’s affirmative.”
Thatcher stumbled the last ten feet to the door as the spigers closed the gap behind him, coming within one leap of their quarry. He shoved the door open as the alpha spiger landed on the doorstep.
Thatcher heard the whistle of its arms slash the air behind his head as he slammed the door to Hender’s house, wheezing and gasping for breath. He tore the taped label from the specimen case, and then he pushed himself up the spiral stairs. Reeling and dizzy, Thatcher thought his blood pressure was going to pop his eyes like corks.
The alpha spiger’s warning signals triggered as it sensed the tree’s pheromones and the warning pheromones of other creatures that had approached it. But the spiger was disoriented; the electromagnetic flux generated by the island’s seismic activity interfered with the predator’s instincts as a static of confusing impulses fired in its brains.
The spiger drew its tail forward underneath it and dug it into the ground, cocking its giant rear legs as it lowered its head at the front of Hender’s house.
Then it slung its mass forward, clawing out with its spiked arms, and smashed the door to pieces with the top of its head.
As it thrust its body into the fuselage, the nostrils on the alpha’s forehead sampled the scents in the air and found a strand of Thatcher winding up the stairway.
Nell watched Hender carry Copepod with four hands as he swung to the creaking basket.
“Where’s Thatcher?” Andy called from the basket, his voice echoing off the cliff.
“I don’t know,” Nell said, looking around.
“I’d like to know what that explosion was.” Geoffrey stood beside Andy in the basket.
“Screw Thatcher, let’s go!” Andy urged.
“I’ll go get the last case and see where he is,” Nell said.
She turned—and there was Thatcher, flushed and panting for breath, and hugging an aluminum case. She looked him up and down. “Good timing, Thatcher. Come on!”
She grabbed the case out of his hands, and saw his look of surprise.
Without a second thought she handed the case to Hender, who swung across the monkey bars and tossed it to the others in the basket before returning to Nell.
“Our turn,” Nell told Thatcher.
Thatcher stood at the edge of the cliff looking at the rungs reaching out over the cliff. “Good God!” he said. “There is no way I can do this.”
“Hender!” Nell called.
The spiger extended its spiked front legs two yards in front of it and shimmied rapidly up the spiraling tunnel of stairs.
Since it did not have vertebrae, it stretched forward as the legs attached to its three bony rings grabbed hold and hauled it forward up the stairs like a muscular Slinky.
The other two spigers caterpillared their way furiously through the corkscrewing tunnel behind it.
Pairs of hendropods grabbed Thatcher. He had frozen stiff in panic, making their job far more difficult. They carried him across the hand-ladder bridge and finally dropped him unceremoniously into the basket.
The door from the trunk of the tree exploded into a thousand pieces.
Nell whirled as two six-foot-long spikes reached through the shattered door.
A huge alpha spiger squeezed through onto the branch thirty feet behind her. It folded its spiked legs under it like a mantis shrimp as it scuttled forward, scanning her with swiftly moving multicolored eyes. Waves of orange, yellow, and pink light pulsed over waving stripes around its jaws.
“Nell, hazar-do-us!” Hender shouted.
“Come on, Nell!” Andy yelled.
The spiger’s vertical jaws, three feet tall, opened wide and she could smell its sour breath as it raised its striped haunches up behind it.
“Nell! Jump!”
She turned and jumped, grabbing hold of the first rung. Hender was there to meet her, but she swung quite capably hand over hand as Hender backed away rapidly in front of her, using four hands and keeping one eye on the spiger at her back.
The spiger advanced to the edge of the branch where she had jumped, smelling her, the eyes on its head and haunches locking on their target—then it used all six legs and its tail to hurl itself through the air after her.
Hender grabbed Nell with his legs and two arms, pulling her forward just as the spiger’s spikes lashed down through the air inches behind her head.
The spiger plummeted past the basket, snapping its jaws a few feet in front of Thatcher’s face, and fell with a piercing wail seven hundred feet to the sea below.
Hender dropped Nell into the basket and jumped in behind her.
The thick cable of rope had apparently been woven from some kind of pale green fiber. The basket was made of the same fiber laced through large skeletal plates from some creature, perhaps the mega-mantis. It creaked now and stretched, dangerously overloaded.
“OK!” Hender said.
The other hendropods warbled a musical cacophony as the two remaining spigers peered over the edge of the branch, trying to gauge the distance to the basket that dangled like a feast before them.
“We gotta go!” Zero shouted at Hender.
But Hender stood motionless, looking upward. “OK, dudes!” he yelled. Hender reached an arm two meters up and pulled a rope that unlatched the pulley; the basket descended as the huge wheel turned.
The hendropods, normally solitary, clung to each other in the center of the basket, watching the spigers above.
The island that had been their home and world forever disappeared into darkness as they descended.
Geoffrey and Nell found themselves lying next to each other on their stomachs, looking over the edge of the basket at the sea as they sank alongside the ancient cliff. Geoffrey waved a glass jar of glowing bugs over the side.
“Impressive moves back there, Duckworth. I thought we might lose you.”
“Thanks. I always was a tomboy.”
“In case we don’t make it, I just wanted to say…” He looked at her urgently, dropping all sarcasm. “There’s nothing sexier than a brilliant woman—even if she has a funny last name.”
“You mean I’m not beautiful?” she said.
“Maybe that came out wrong…”
She laughed and kissed him quickly on the lips as they plunged down toward the swirling sea. “In case we don’t make it,” she told him.
The crew of the Trident spotted the faint light sinking down the cliff and Captain Sol unlatched the winch to let the Zodiac out.
Two crewmen paddled the Zodiac as the winch-line unspooled.
“It could work, Captain,” Cynthea said, standing next to him at the stern of the Trident.
“Yes, it could work, Cynthea.” Captain Sol sighed as the deck heaved and some big swells moved under the ship.
Second mate Samir El-Ashwah and crewman Winger paddled the Zodiac.
“So far so good,” Samir said. “Steady, mate.”
Winger saw the Trident rolling on a swell behind them. “Looks like the Navy’s kicking up some wake on the way out.”
“Bloody great,” Samir said.
Heavy seas rolled toward them, submerging the towline and buffeting the Zodiac.
Samir pointed above. “There! Ya see ’em?”
A small green smudge of light was slowly descending the cliff.
“Yeah!” Winger exclaimed, narrowing his eyes against the saltwater spray of the buffeting waves.
Samir switched on a flashlight and wedged it in the bottom of the boat, lighting up the inside of the Zodiac like a lampshade.
“There they are.” Nell pointed at the glowing raft bobbing hundreds of feet below. “See ’em?”
“Yeah!” Zero said.
As they dropped the final hundred feet, it looked as if they were perfectly aligned with the Zodiac. Too perfect: the basket halted directly over the Zodiac so that they couldn’t see it just below them.
The swells lifted the Zodiac and slammed it against the bottom of the basket. “Oh, fuck!” Winger yelped.
The wave subsided. Samir and Winger frantically paddled the Zodiac out from under the basket, which was now quivering ominously.
Vibrations rolled down the long cable, which throbbed like a bass string.
Pieces of rock sheared from the cliff and sliced into the sea: a terrific quake was rumbling through the island.
“This island’s exploding!” Andy shouted.
“Calm down, Andy,” Nell said, reaching out to squeeze his ankle. Copepod yapped frantically.
The basket tipped and swung as the falling rocks tumbled into the water all around them.
The hendropods cringed as seawater from the incoming waves splashed over the basket.
“Jump in the Zodiac when the basket swings that way,” Geoffrey instructed.
“Are you kidding?” Andy exclaimed.
The moment arrived and, when Andy didn’t move, Geoffrey pushed him out of the basket. He landed, screaming, in the Zodiac. Geoffrey turned to the hendropods, pointing. “Jump, OK?”
“Trident, what’s the status on the engines?” demanded the radio transmission from the Enterprise.
“Uh,” First Mate Warburton answered the hail from the bridge. “We think we’ve almost got the magnetometers synched up, Enterprise.”
He grimaced at Marcello, who was muttering prayers over his St. Christopher’s medal.
As the basket swung sickeningly to and fro, Geoffrey and Nell tossed the cases into the Zodiac.
Zero jumped into the raft, and Copepod followed at the urging of Andy. The little dog seemed happy to see the familiar raft. The hendropods, Nell, and Geoffrey were the last ones left in the wobbling basket.
“Here comes another set,” Samir said, looking over his shoulder. “Duck!”
Everyone in the raft ducked as another giant wave slammed them into the bottom of the swinging basket.
The basket moved to one side as the next wave lifted the Zodiac. One of the stays of the basket snapped.
Everything except for Nell and Geoffrey rolled out of the basket and into the boat.
“Allahu Akbar!” Samir exclaimed as all five hendropods tumbled into the raft around him. One of them clung to his legs with three hands.
Nell and Geoffrey clung to the basket as it splashed into the cold black water.
The basket’s heavy cable began plunging down around them in giant folds that crashed into the sea.
“We made it,” Nell gasped, treading the icy water beside Geoffrey as the basket submerged, disappearing within seconds from view.
“Not yet,” Geoffrey warned. “Let’s go! Swim, Nell!”
They swam hard for the Zodiac as great elbows of cable smashed into the water behind them.
Suddenly they found themselves on top of a furry mass floating in the water.
“Keep going!” Geoffrey yelled.
Nell saw the mouth of the giant spiger lolling open underneath her like a face in a nightmare. To her horror, her foot grazed its lower jaw, but it moved loosely as she shoved off in panic. The spiger’s spiked arms reacted slowly, rising from the water on either side of them, grasping at the two scientists as they swam for the raft.
“Hurry!” Andy yelled.
Nell swam forward in the chilling water with a renewed burst of adrenaline, passing Geoffrey. She crossed the last ten yards and grabbed the edge rail of the Zodiac, and she reached back to snag Geoffrey’s hand.
“Hit it!” Samir shouted at the Trident eighty yards away.
Captain Sol engaged the winch to reel in the floundering Zodiac at top speed.
“Look!” yelled Andy.
“Oh noooo!” Hender cried.
A giant branch of Hender’s tree plunged down the face of the cliff: two glowing creatures clung to its side.
With one hand towing Geoffrey, Nell was losing her grip on the Zodiac against the dragging force of the winch. Andy reached down to grab her wrist, but too late. The edge rail ripped from her hand and she and Geoffrey slipped behind in the churning water as the Zodiac pulled away.
“Keep swimming,” yelled Geoffrey.
Nell turned to see the massive branch crash into the sea behind them. The heaving shockwave lifted Nell and Geoffrey and threw them into the raft, pushing it closer to the Trident.
The hendropods shrieked and retreated as the wave crashed over the boat and swept Hender over the side.
Hender screamed a piercing peal of anguish and immediately sank up to his neck, reaching his arms out of the seawater in all directions.
The wave deposited one of the glowing spigers that had held onto the branch right behind him in the water.
The spiger seemed stunned from the fall, floating on its side.
“Hender!” Andy shouted.
“Andeeeeee!” Hender squealed.
“Cut the winch!” Samir yelled.
The other hendropods emitted a chatter of quick high screams at Hender and watched in terror, unable to help.
To everyone’s surprise, Andy dove in.
The hendropods sent up a chorus of shrieking whistles in the distance as Captain Sol disengaged the winch.
“What just happened?” Cynthea asked.
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t good!” Captain Sol growled.
Andy’s glasses flew off when he hit the water, but he could see the sinking glow of Hender through the murk and he dove down to grab his arm and pull him up. Hender gave a whistling gasp as his head emerged from the ocean. Andy spun Hender’s body around and began kicking to push him toward the raft, paddling with his size-eleven shoes as hard as he could.
“Reach, Hender, reach!” Andy yelled, and spluttered seawater.
Hender wheezed and shuddered.
“You’re close, come on, Hender!” Andy heard Nell shout, and it inspired the marine biologist to kick harder.
Nell saw the floating spiger convulse on the surface of the water behind Andy. “Reach, Hender!” she implored.
The hendropods shrieked and cowered at the bow, retreating from the spiger and the sloshing water in the raft.
The humans reached out over the edge of the raft and Hender stretched out one of his long, trembling upper arms.
Andy pushed Hender forward with one hand pressed against the thick silken fur of his back as he stroked the water with his other.
Nell dove in and grasped Hender’s trembling hand, while Geoffrey grabbed her foot and held on—but her Adidas shoe slipped off, so he grabbed her bare foot, and then all the humans grabbed Geoffrey around the waist and pulled to keep him in the raft.
Hender was torn from Andy’s grasp as the humans grabbed hold of his various hands. As soon as they hoisted him out of the water his entire trembling body twisted and shook the water from his fur violently. Andy treaded water for a moment, trying to catch his breath, then a wave crashed against the side of his head and he choked, coughing water. He popped his head up, disoriented, and turned to see a fuzzy patch of glowing colors moving toward him with a spreading blackness at its center.
Spasms contorted the stunned spiger as it kicked its legs and raised its head out of the water. “ANDY!” screamed Nell, as she and the hendros comforted Hender. Flexing open all four jaws in a final convulsion, the spiger saw Andy now.
“Turn around, swim, fast!”
Confused, Andy swam toward the spiger.
The other hendros all moved from the bow and waded into the water sloshing inside the raft. In the center of the Zodiac, they clung to each other and one reached out a long arm toward Andy like the boom of a crane.
“Turn around, Andy!” Zero hollered. “Damn, it—turn around!”
Suddenly, Andy realized the blurry glow was not Hender.
Andy swiveled in the water.
The hendro’s hand dangled in front of his face.
He grabbed it.
“Hit it!” Captain Sol heard Samir shout from the aft deck, and he engaged the winch at top speed as he yelled over his shoulder at the bridge, “Weigh anchor, Carl! Half-speed now!”
Warburton exhaled and nodded at Marcello as he picked up the radio, fingering it for a moment before speaking in his most casual airline pilot voice: “Enterprise, we fixed the problem and are now under way. Over?”
“Good news, Trident,” boomed the response. “God speed.” Warburton gave Marcello a low-five. “Thank you, Enterprise. God speed to you as well. See you at Pearl!”
The hendropods and humans scrambled from the half-swamped Zodiac onto the aft deck as the Trident picked up speed.
Everyone aboard was dumbstruck as their new passengers came aboard.
Cynthea videoed the event with her camcorder, her hand steady as rock as she reeled in the historic moment and came face-to-face with a drenched but determined Zero, who was videoing her.
Geoffrey and Nell were the last ones remaining in the Zodiac. With the rest of the crew’s attention on the hendropods, she took a deep breath and said, “There’s almost nothing sexier than a man who knows the right thing to say at a very scary moment.”
Drenched and weary, he grinned happily, handing the last case up to a waiting Thatcher. As she helped him up to the deck he smiled at her, and then frowned: “Almost?”
The shivering hendropods approached the humans repeating “Thank you!” to everyone they met. Copepod barked as he greeted the crew, who were too dazed by the hendros to be amazed by the miracle of his resurrection.
“Madone,” Marcello breathed as he stared out the aft window of the bridge at the scene, and he crossed himself hastily.
“They need showers,” Nell told the captain. “Saltwater isn’t good for them.”
“Good, get them below!” the captain said. “Let’s get them out of sight, damn it, until we figure out what to do!”
Nell and Geoffrey quickly led the hendropods below.
“I’m going to get Copey something to eat, Captain.”
“Good God, Andy, that damn dog made it! Will wonders never cease—yes, carry on, lad, get the little beast something to eat!”
“You are the captain, I presume?” Thatcher asked. He was hugging one of the aluminum cases they had brought aboard to his chest.
“Yes, sir, and you are?”
“Thatcher Redmond. I’m a scientist. Where should we store these cases?”
Captain Sol saw four others laid out on the poop deck. He frowned. “What’s inside them?”
“Just artifacts and belongings of the hendropods.”
“Hendro—?”
“Our guests.” Thatcher smiled.
“Oh, I see, yes! Samir, can you help Mr. Redmond stow these cases? Use one of the empty cabins in the starboard pontoon.”
“Right, Captain. This way, Mr. Redmond. I’ll take a couple of those,” said Samir.
Cynthea clutched Zero’s hand. “Tell me you have hours and hours of footage, Zero,” she crooned.
Zero tapped the NASA headband camera on the temple, turning it off, and placed it on her head like a tiara. Then he dropped a Ziploc bag full of memory sticks from one of his pockets into her hands. “Cynthea, I am your lord, master, and God Almighty, for all eternity. Get used to it, doll-face!” With a knife-edged Gary Cooper grin, he hauled off and gave Cynthea a mashing kiss, complete with a dip.
When he let her up for air she seemed ten years younger. “Now, now,” she purred, shaking a coy finger at him.
“A deal’s a deal,” he growled in her ear and she giggled in delight.
Nell told Hender to follow her and he told the others. They sprang on two legs down the stairs inside the central hull of the Trident, their heads bobbing and stretching and twisting as their eyes pointed in all directions.
“Where are we going?” Geoffrey asked, bringing up the rear.
“To the gym.”
“There’s a gym?”
“They wanted us all to have ripped abs. You didn’t watch the show?”
“Thank God. OK, Hender. In here.” Nell motioned them into the ship’s gymnasium, a wide white room lined with gleaming new exercise equipment. An alcove at the far side contained six shower stalls and a separate locker area with benches.
Nell led them between the shower stalls and opened the last one on the right. She reached in and turned the water on.
“No water!” Hender said.
“OK water. Not salt. See?” She reached in and tasted it. “OK?”
Hender reached out gingerly and touched it. “OK!”
“You can go in—”
Before she could finish, Hender walked into the stall, and then he rippled with a rainbow shiver as he felt the water turn warm. “Oooo.”
“OK?”
“Ooohkaaay,” Hender sighed ecstatically.
Nell laughed.
The other hendros each opened their own stalls without assistance, turned on the water with only minor fumbling, and stepped in.
“Wow, they catch on fast!” Geoffrey said. He noticed his hands were shaking. Even as a scientist, especially as a scientist, he still felt a religious awe in the hendros’ presence. Just seeing their alien heads pop over the shower stalls at each other, tittering and chirping, was a revelation of the humbling power of life that could create fantasies in reality and invest such disparate matter with a divine spark. He realized Nell was watching him. He shrugged, speechless.
“I know,” she murmured.
Andy came in with a stack of towels.
“Just in time!” Nell said. “They’re actually taking showers!”
“WOOO-WAH!” one of the hendros squealed, and the shower door nearest Geoffrey burst open as the creature leaped out, dancing and dripping. Geoffrey reached in and adjusted the knob to bring the temperature down.
“There, that’s better. OK now!” He nodded as the hendro’s color slowly turned from fiery red back to soothing greens and blues. The hendro reached into the stall and twisted the knob with one hand back and forth, feeling the water with five symmetrical fingers. Then it warbled a descending scale of strange consonants. Hender answered with a rising scale from his shower stall. The blue hendro then stepped back inside and closed the door with a soft click.
“I hope they leave some hot water,” Geoffrey said. “I could use a shower, too.”
“All I want to do is to get out of these wet clothes,” Nell said. “And then sleep for a week. Andy, can you take care of them from here? You can give them each a room in the starboard pontoon.”
“Sure, Nell. Where are you going?”
“Shopping,” she replied. “Come on, Geoffrey.”
He raised his eyebrows but said nothing as he followed her down the corridor to a large room forward of the gym.
It was the largest walk-in closet Geoffrey had ever seen. Rows of clothes arranged by sex and by size hung from long racks stretching the length of the room.
“These should fit.” She tossed him some jeans and a T-shirt. “Underwear and socks there.” She pointed at a tall stack of shelves near the door.
“Incredible.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, pulling some khaki slacks off a hanger. She took another T-shirt like Geoffrey’s and some panties and socks from a drawer. “That should do it. Now let’s take that shower.”
Geoffrey snagged some briefs from the shelf and backed away from the door as she turned off the light and closed it behind her.
“There are a few advantages to being on a floating television studio,” she told him.
“Is there enough water for so many showers?” Geoffrey said, hurrying behind her.
“Sure. There’s a desalinization plant on board. Three thousand gallons a day.”
“Amazing. I plan to use two thousand of them right now.”
When they returned to the gym, the hendros were out of the showers, each holding a pair of towels in random hands as they uncertainly watched Andy pantomime drying his back. A few tried to copy his motions before dropping the towels and giving a quivering twist up and down their bodies that sent a spray of water in every direction. “OK, that’ll work!” Andy said. “Oh, hey, guys.”
“Hey Andy.”
Zero came in the door with a fresh camera and memory stick. “Did I miss much?”
“They just took showers,” Nell reported.
“Oh wow.”
“OK, Hender,” Andy said. “Let’s take a tour! I’ll take them to their rooms, Nell.”
“Where are we putting them up?”
“In the starboard pontoon.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll come with you,” Zero told Andy. “You coming, Nell?”
“We got to get out of these clothes. We’ll catch up.”
Andy looked at Geoffrey for a moment and back at Nell. “Sure.” He smiled and shook Geoffrey’s hand. “I never thanked you, Binswanger. So… thanks.” Andy looked at Nell and grinned, nodding his head as he left. “Follow me, Hender!”
The hendros followed Hender and Andy, and Zero tailed them all down the passageway, camera to eye.
Nell closed the door to the gym.
“Now, I figure the best way to do this is we can take our clothes off in the shower stalls, then I can leave first to get dressed and you can come out after.”
“Yeah, that works,” nodded Geoffrey, glad to have a game plan.
They put their fresh clothes on the benches in front of the lockers and then pulled their shoes and socks off.
Nell looked at her single old beat up Adidas, the other having fallen into the sea. “My favorite tennies,” she mourned.
“Sorry. Keeping your foot from becoming a spiger snack seemed more important. Any shoes on board?”
“Oh, yeah. We’ll pick some out after we’re done.”
They walked toward the showers feeling giddy as teenagers for some reason. Both silently reminded themselves that they were mature and trustworthy adults. Level-headed and mature scientists. He took the shower in the far right corner and she took the one next to it.
They turned on the showers and started draping their seawater-soaked clothes over the dividers.
“Is there any shampoo over there?” she asked.
“Uh, yes.”
His arm came over the stall with a bottle of red Suave shampoo.
“Thanks.”
She touched his hand as she grabbed it and quickly started humming as she started washing her hair.
“You’re getting out first, right?”
“Right.” She lathered up and then rinsed off, trying to forget that they were both naked. “Need the shampoo?”
“No, I got it.”
She stepped out of the stall and grabbed her towel. “OK, I’m going to the locker.”
“OK, I’m not looking.”
She wrapped the towel around her waist and walked with her back to him. As she quickly turned the corner into the locker area and started drying herself off, she was thinking about Geoffrey and sex and sex with Geoffrey and keeping her eyes resolutely on the photographs taped to the lockers. As she straightened to dry her hair, she noticed the laughing snapshots of the obnoxious Jesse, and beautiful Dawn, and ever-polite Glyn, and bragging Dante and the others, and tears spilled without warning from her eyes. She sank down on the bench and brought a hand to her face as she quietly sobbed.
“Nell.” The warbling clarinet-like voice startled her. She looked up to see Hender in the middle of the gym, rubbing his chin with one hand and cocking his head.
She tugged on her towel but was sitting on it and had to stand up to pull it around herself. Hender was creeping forward the whole time, his eyes scanning her up and down and sideways.
“Hello, Hender!”
“Nell,” Hender warbled softly, moving gently closer.
She backed away and Hender stopped, turning his head to look at the photos on the locker doors. He reached his hands out to touch Glyn, Dawn, Jesse, and the others who had died when they landed on the island twenty-four days ago. He touched Dante’s picture with recognition. He turned his head to her and his eyes withdrew under his furry lids. “Nell thank you.”
Hender softly padded out of the room on six feet, his head down.
She sniffled and stared after him. Then she rubbed the tears from her eyes, dropped the towel, and reached for her panties.
“Here I come!” Geoffrey warned, rounding the corner.
“Oh, I’m not dressed yet!” Nell yelped.
“Oh!” Geoffrey lifted his hands in surprise and his towel fell from around his waist.
With a speed that astonished even him, Geoffrey hurtled back around the corner. They doubled over, helpless with laughter.
“OK, get dressed, woman! How long do you take, anyway!” he howled.
“I’m doing it!” she snorted, throwing her towel in his direction. “Put a towel on!”
Nell and Geoffrey, who had managed to get dressed without further incident and choose shoes from the garish collection of sneakers provided by SeaLife’s generous sponsors, entered the bridge with Samir and Andy.
Thatcher watched them climbing the stairs to the bridge and he followed, slipping in after them.
Warburton, Captain Sol, and Marcello were already there and in a troubled mood.
“The hendros are all tucked into their own private quarters,” Andy reported. “They definitely prefer to be alone. When Samir and I showed them how to use the toilet, I think they fell in love.”
“They definitely like peanut butter,” Samir said.
“And shrimp,” Andy said.
“We’ve got to check in on them.” Nell looked at Geoffrey, who nodded.
“Copey isn’t leaving Hender’s side. Somehow he found Hender’s room.”
“Is that where that dog went?” asked Marcello. “He wolfed down the steak Cook gave him and then took off like a shot.”
“Where’s Cynthea?” Captain Sol asked.
“She’s with Zero, I think.”
Warburton and the captain shared a look.
“We were just trying to make a plan,” Captain Sol told them.
“Any ideas?” Geoffrey asked. He wore an orange SeaLife T-shirt.
“That wasn’t exactly the answer we were looking for,” Warburton said.
“Sorry. By the way, my name is Geoffrey Binswanger.”
“Welcome aboard, young man.” Captain Sol shook his hand, firmly, glancing from Nell to the handsome scientist curiously. “Hello, Mr. Redmond, you don’t have to skulk around back there. Come and join the conversation.”
Nell and Geoffrey turned to see Thatcher in the doorway, his face flushing red. He waved weakly at the others.
“As I was saying to Carl,” the captain continued, “I don’t like keeping secrets from the Navy.”
“We’re being hailed, Captain,” Warburton reported. “This is Trident, over?”
“Trident, we can see that you’re at safe distance now. We have been instructed by the President to let you know that you can proceed to port without further restrictions. Copy?”
“Very well, Enterprise. Thanks for the escort.”
“No problem, Trident. Just part of the Navy’s job. Please proceed to Pearl Harbor for final inspection and debriefing. Good working with you. Enterprise over and out.”
Everyone sighed loudly in relief as Warburton clicked off the radio.
Thatcher cleared his throat. “Now what?”
“We have to phone the President,” Captain Sol decided. “He has to know about our guests.”
“When the Navy gets a little farther away,” Nell pleaded.
“They’ll be in this vicinity for a while,” the Captain reminded her grimly. “They’re nuking an island ten hours from now.”
“How can we call the President?” Thatcher asked.
Warburton pointed to a phone charging in its cradle on the wall. “Satellite phone. Just dial zero and the country code.”
“What’s the country code for the United States?” Thatcher asked.
“One.”
“Hmm. That figures.”
“Can we trust the President?”
“We have to, I think, Andy,” Geoffrey told him.
“It’s a risk,” Nell warned.
“Either the President or the Army deliberately left us behind on that island!”
Nell’s face went pale. “We don’t know that, Andy.”
“It’s less of a risk than not calling him,” Captain Sol argued. “We’ll get a little breathing room between us and the Pacific Fleet first, and then call in the morning. In ten hours, a nuclear bomb is going off and I intend to be far away.”
“Will we be safe?” Nell asked.
“The Navy said nine miles is the minimum safe distance, and we should reach that in another twenty minutes, so we’ll be OK, but I’d rather get as much distance between my ship and that island as possible. I suggest everyone grab a little shuteye in the meantime. Tomorrow will be a full day.”
“Captain,” Thatcher said, “how would one go about getting something to eat on this boat?”
“Ship,” Captain Sol corrected. “Nell, could you show Mr. Redmond the galley?”
“It’s ‘Doctor,’” Thatcher said.
“Eh?”
“Dr. Redmond.”
“Oh…”
“I’m starving,” Nell interjected. “How about you, Geoffrey?”
“Yeah, I’m hungrier than a spiger.”
She laughed. “This way, you two.”
In the mess, they sat at a table, Nell and Geoffrey eating tuna fish sandwiches and Thatcher nibbling at a veggie burger with pickles.
“So, Thatcher, do you still think we made the wrong decision?” Nell asked.
“The question is moot,” Thatcher grunted, wiping his mustache with a napkin.
“But do you?” she persisted.
“As Geoffrey says, everyone’s wrong sometimes. Eh, Bins-wanger? The Redmond Principle is obviously in error. Intelligent life is not destined to destroy its own ecosystem. You win some, you lose some. It’s playing the game that counts.”
“That’s mighty big of you, Thatcher,” said Geoffrey.
“Why, thank you, Geoffrey.” The zoologist inclined his head.
“Yes, I thought you might still be harboring some resentment.” Nell reached for a pickle.
“Never! It is clear that we have just saved a species of life whose intelligence is at least as advanced as our own.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet. There’s no telling what will happen when we let the President know what we saved. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they could make up any cover story they wanted. But if we don’t tell them, and they catch us smuggling, we stand even less of a chance.”
“Who are ‘they’?” Thatcher asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” Geoffrey admitted. “The President. The Navy. The Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Priory of Sion.
Does it matter? If this ship were lost at sea, how would anyone be the wiser?”
Thatcher smiled. “A calculated risk.” He took the last bite of his burger. “Well, kids, I’m an old man in need of a soft bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Did they give you a nice cabin?” Nell asked.
“Yes, thank you, my dear.” Thatcher rose from his chair.
“Good night,” Geoffrey said.
“Good night,” Thatcher bowed his head and smiled. Then he left them.
“Well that sandwich hit the spot,” Geoffrey remarked, after a moment.
“Nothing but the best,” Nell said. “Dolphin-safe.”
“Let’s check in on the hendros.”
“You read my mind, Dr. Binswanger.”
Nell led Geoffrey down the corridors below deck to the starboard pontoon, where they spotted Cynthea and Zero outside one of the cabins.
“Where’s Hender?” Nell asked.
“In there,” Cynthea pointed, sourly.
“Andy just kicked us out,” Zero told them.
“Why?” Geoffrey said.
“He says Hender’s sleepy.”
Nell laughed and tapped on the hatch. “Hi, Andy, it’s Nell! Can Geoffrey and I say good night to Hender?”
“Sure, come on in!”
Cynthea frowned.
The door opened a crack. “Just no more filming, OK? Don’t let Cynthea in.”
Nell smiled at him through the crack. “OK. Sorry, Cynthea.”
Andy admitted Nell and Geoffrey into the room.
Hender was hopping on the bed as Copepod jumped up onto the mattress and back down again, barking excitedly. Then Hender stepped down from the bed and reached his upper arms out toward them, nodding happily.
“Hello, Hender,” Nell said, taking one of his hands as Geoffrey took another. “OK?”
“OK, Nell! Hello, Geoffrey!”
Geoffrey laughed. “Hello, Hender!”
“Have they eaten anything, Andy?” Nell asked.
“Yeah, the cook boiled three bags of frozen shrimp. They loved them. So did Copepod. They let him eat from the same tray with them.”
Nell laughed. “Do they really seem all right? Do they need anything?”
“Yeah, they’re OK, Nell.”
“That’s great,” Geoffrey said, watching Copepod chase himself through Hender’s legs. “OK, Hender? Yes?”
“Yes, Geoffrey. OK. Thank you thank you thank you!”
Copepod ran to Nell.
“Copey, sweetheart, you OK, too?” She smiled as she kneeled and took his licks, scratching his shoulder blades. The little dog moaned in ecstasy.
“Copey good,” Hender piped.
“Copey won’t leave Hender’s side,” Andy confirmed. “Talk about a dog whisperer. He could have his own TV series.”
“Maybe he will!” Nell smiled. “What about the others? How are they?”
“They’re asleep already. They showered, ate, used the toilets, and conked out as soon as they got to their rooms.”
“Wow!” Geoffrey grinned. “OK, good night, Hender. Goodbye. OK?”
Nell reached out and gave Hender a full hug and whispered next to his head. “Safety, Hender. Safety now!” Even as she said it she wondered if she could keep that promise.
“Safety, Nell,” Hender echoed softly, his fur effulging warm colors where she touched his back.
Geoffrey watched, gasping at Hender’s display, as she pulled back.
“Good-bye, Geoffrey and Nell,” Hender nodded. “OK, sleep, right?”
“Yes, sleep! Right!” Nell saluted.
“Good night,” Geoffrey waved.
“Good night, good night, good night!” purred Hender, saluting and waving with four hands.
“He catches on awfully quick,” Nell whispered after they had shut the hatch of Hender’s cabin.
“My God.” Geoffrey shook his head. He yawned, and he realized suddenly that thirty-one hours had passed since he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. “Uh, where exactly would one go to grab some shuteye on this ship, Nell?”
“Follow me.”
Nell led him through a corridor to the port pontoon and turned left down the passageway.
“Here,” she said. “My room. Don’t worry. I’m tired, too.”
“You’re full of surprises.” Geoffrey smiled wryly. “Aren’t there other empty cabins available?”
“Maybe…” she answered. “I really don’t know.”
She switched off the light as she climbed onto her double bed and pulled the pillows out from under the bedspread, tossing one to him.
“It’s horizontal … I’ll take it!” Geoffrey climbed on, too, and rolled over on his side away from her.
The air was chilly in the cabin and Nell turned and spooned against him.
“It’s all right,” she told him. “Go to sleep. It’s just a cuddle instinct, as practiced by the North American wolf.”
“Oh really?”
“It’s common to all mammals.”
He chuckled.
“Go to sleep,” she whispered. “It’s for warmth!”
“Hmmm,” Geoffrey wondered, feeling very good with this woman pressed against his back, her breath soft against his neck. Suddenly he felt the need to sleep tug him down hard and he yawned again. “Did you ever notice how many scientists’ names match their chosen field of study?” he asked drowsily. “I’m thinking of doing a statistical study and writing a trifling monograph on the subject…”
She giggled, yawning too.
“Bob Brain, the famous South African anthropologist who discovered all those big-brained hominids.”
“Steve Salmon, the ichthyologist.”
“Mitchell Byrd, the famous ornithologist.”
“I had a dentist named Bud Bitwell.”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“Did he change it to that?”
“I don’t think so, but knowing him, he actually might have. That would have to be a statistical factor.”
“Then, of course, there’s Alexander Graham Bell.”
“Silly, but it qualifies.”
“That one always got me as a kid. Hey, and our own geologist, Dr. Livingstone.”
“I had a geology professor named Mike Mountain.”
“I had a botany professor named Mike Green.”
“Yeah, that qualifies.”
“Then there’s Charles Darwin.”
“Uh…?”
“A Darwinian biologist?”
“Yeah, almost too obvious. And Isaac Newton, the Newtonian physicist.”
“Let’s not even mention Freud.”
“Not even mentioning Freud is like mentioning Freud.”
She snuggled closer and sighed sleepily. “Exactly.”
“You are so outside the box.”
“Well, names do appear to be a common factor, Dr. Binswanger. You may be onto something,” she said against his neck, too tired to move her head. “Let’s see now. By your theory, I should be…”
“By my theory, if you were subject to being influenced by your name, Duckworth, which I believe derives from ‘duckworthy,’ or someone who tends ducks, today you might well be studying duck-billed dinosaurs.”
“I did go through a duck-billed dinosaur phase.” She chuckled.
“Aha! I rest my case.”
“You’re a genius. So what does Binswanger mean?”
“Well,” he said.
“I know: sometimes a Binswanger is just a Binswanger.”
“Ho, ho.”
Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she felt safe, and she knew he was safe, and that the hendros were safe. She needed to feel safe again, she thought with a pang. In less than nine hours, life on Henders Island would be no more.
“You have to explain to me sometime why you think hen-dropods might be immortal…” she muttered.
“I will, I will,” he said. “Sweet dreams, darling.” The word came, astonishingly, naturally.
“Hmm, yes, thank you, you, too.” She smiled, and they both fell instantly asleep.