The Antarcticans (28 page)

“If each of you drinks half of this, you’ll be restored.” Her wings beat hard, creating powerful gusts of wind. Then she took to the sky and disappeared into the air.

Joshua handed the canteen to his father first, who took a swig of the liquid. He tried hard not to expel it from his mouth. It was thick and rancid, like liquefied rotting meat. A dribble of the thick liquid ran from the corner of his mouth. Joshua made a face of disgust before reluctantly drinking the other half of the liquid.

“Ah, my head, it feels much better,” Gavin said after a few moments. “Who was that?”

Joshua shrugged. “I’ve never seen her or heard her voice before. She might have been put in here for some reason.”

Gavin heard Dr. Cristofari’s voice in his ear. “I’m pulling you both out of there. You screwed up, Gavin.”

The ground flattened and turned into hard white stone. Gavin was looking at Joshua, whose face had turned into a smooth form, like the face of a department-store mannequin. Then he was back in the black void he’d been suspended in before he entered this world. The release dropped him onto the bed in Joshua’s room in the medical unit.

He heard heels clicking hard against the floor then stop right next to his bed. He couldn’t see anything. Dr. Cristofari activated the cameras so he could see in the room. She was standing over him with her hands turned up. “What the hell were you doing in there? You can’t invoke your own manifestations in Joshua’s world. You’ll reverse the weeks of work we’ve done with him.”

“What are you talking about?” Gavin sat up in bed. He didn’t know it, but he was looking at Joshua; the cameras made him think he was looking into Dr. Cristofari’s eyes.

“That angel? That wasn’t from Joshua—that was you. It came from some remote part of your brain, probably when you were first solidifying your belief in your religion. That image is classic Christian imagery used for adolescents.” She was huffing and walking in circles in the room.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Help your son detach from that world, which is very, very real to him. Don’t create creatures that make that world more appealing or somehow manageable. There’s going to be an element of pain you’ll have to endure and also inflict upon him to get him out of there. Right now, although he’ll tell you he knows they’re hallucinations, the temporal lobe of his brain that deals in belief truly accepts that they’re real.”

“I wasn’t aware that image was even from me. I—”

“It was, and from now on, I need you to be aware of exactly everything you interject into his environment.”

“How could he think that place was real? I was in there—it’s like being in the middle of a movie set, except all the stunts hurt. Can’t you do something about that? About the pain?”

“If you want to compare your son’s mind to a movie set, that’s your choice. The point is you’re wasting everyone’s time if you don’t follow the protocol.”

“I apologize.” Gavin rested his head back in his bed. “Is there any permanent damage to me from what happened in there?”

Dr. Cristofari’s mouth was set in a stern line. “This isn’t about you. It’s about your son. Stop focusing on yourself, and things will go a lot smoother. We’ll try again tomorrow.” She let out a sigh and walked out of the room.

When she left, Gavin tried to stand up, but the suit stiffened around his joints, holding him in place. “Hey, I want to be able to walk around,” he called out. “I can’t lie here until tomorrow.” He struggled against the suit.

“It’s no use, Dad,” Joshua said. “Just lie back into it. It’s like the ultimate vacation. They take care of everything here for you, and you just have to live. Sorry you got hurt in there. I can’t control everything that’s happening.”

“Buddy, don’t apologize. You’re not responsible for anything that’s happening here.”

“No, I am. I’m the reason you and Mom came here in the first place and made a deal with Lucifer. I know it goes against everything you believe in. It’s my fault.”

“How do you know about Lucifer?”

“It’s part of the images I see. He’s woven into everything here. Not in a bad way, but in a way that makes you understand what’s happening on the ship and in Antarctica.”

“What do you know about Antarctica? Wait, wait. Let’s just focus on what’s happening here. Tell me more about Margie,” Gavin said. He stopped struggling and held still so he could hear his son.

Joshua let out a deep breath. “She’s my savior. She takes care of me…like the one person in there who doesn’t want bad things to happen to me.”

“Son, that’s not a good word for her. She can be a lot of things, but there’s only one savior.”

“Yeah, well, she saves me…all the time.”

“Do you pray when you’re in there?”

“What? No. Are you kidding? There isn’t even time to think. I’m usually just running for my life.”

“Try…try praying. It’s what brought the angel that helped us.” Gavin tried to say more, but the words caught in his throat. The suit was restricting his speech. It squeezed him tighter and made his head feel as if he had stood up too fast, complete with small stars and blotches of black.

“Dad? You okay?”

Dr. Cristofari’s voice came into the room. “He’s fine, Joshua. Let him sleep. We’re going to try this again tomorrow, and he needs to be well rested. You should get some sleep too. I’m not going to turn on any simulations for you.”

“Ugh, okay.” Joshua deferred to her and quickly drifted off to sleep.

…

The next morning, Dr. Cristofari showed up in the room in jeans and a Tulane Medical School T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her makeup had been half washed off. Some color was left in the cracks of her eyes and mouth. She whacked both Gavin and Joshua on the legs. “Wake up, boys. We’re going to start in ten.” She nervously tugged on her ponytail.

Gavin didn’t respond; he was emerging from a rough night of worried dreams with Joshua and Noila battling an unseen enemy in a place he didn’t recognize. Joshua was jibing her about her appearance. It was clear they had spent some time together over the past few weeks.

The interface started, and Gavin entered the blackness. He was tempted to fall back asleep; the darkness wrapped around him, filling in his fears with serenity. A gold filament swirled into the void like a rogue New Year’s streamer. It fell past him and out of sight. He was lying in a shapeless plane as hundreds of gold streamers advanced toward him. He floated down through one; then more fluttered around him until his body was sticking to the curly gold-foil streamers. He touched down on a hard cold surface then broke through into freezing rushing water. As the water filled his lungs, his eyes searched through the blue murkiness for a lifeline to hang on to. His arms flailed, pressing up against the ice ceiling above, which was too thick to push through. He saw someone approach him through the water. It was Victor from the desert yesterday, walking along the bottom of the icy riverbed toward him and carrying a glowing bucket overflowing with molten rock. Stunned by his presence, Gavin stopped struggling and reminded himself that he wasn’t really here; he was able to override the pain bursting in his oxygen-deprived lungs while he put his hands up to ward off Victor. He heard Victor mumbling words, the bubbles escaping his lips. He tilted the bucket toward him with a wide smile on his face and ejected the contents onto Gavin. The molten rock evaporated the icy cap of the river and the water in it, and tore through his torso and legs. The transition from cold to hot sent him into a state of shock as the river dried up around him. The rocks from the riverbed poked through his new wounds, which had been cauterized. The smell of burned flesh and hair filled his nostrils.

“You can’t help him,” Victor said, goading him.

The pain of Gavin’s new wounds rendered him speechless, and the lack of oxygen had jumbled his mind into a jelly.

“It’s not proper that you’re here.” His rocky, serrated voice was uncomfortable to listen to.

Gavin didn’t understand what Victor meant by “proper.”

Gavin’s voice bubbled up in his throat and came out with vitriol. “You’re not real. You’re a hallucination. My son can get rid of you, and I’ll help him.” He stood up to face the man.

His eyes were black, his skin pale white; gills in his throat exhaled smoke every time he spoke. He was a foot taller than Gavin and moved closer to him. Gavin smelled soot and fire; Victor’s presence canceled out the light around him.

“Lucifer was right: you’re on your way to hell, and you don’t even know it, you righteous bastard.” Victor raised the bucket in his hand, which had been replenished with molten lava.

As Gavin tried to back up, he bumped into something, and then he heard his son’s voice.

“My father’s faith is stronger than you, Victor. You can’t torture him.” Joshua charged at him and drove his head into Victor’s stomach. Victor’s body disintegrated into black soot, covering Joshua. He stumbled, expecting to hit a solid object, then caught his balance and inhaled. He coughed and choked out the fine particles that were trapped in his lungs. Then he braced himself, leaned over with his hands on his knees, and made a hoarse choking noise.

Gavin came to his side and put his hand on his back. “Cough it out,” he said.

Joshua stopped choking and stood up to face his father. “Thanks, Dad. Listen, we have to go…like now.” He pointed behind him. Loud thuds were shaking the earth, a clue that something was approaching.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. Nothing good comes from noises like that.”

They followed the riverbed in the opposite direction, jumping from boulder to boulder, keeping a safe distance from the noise. The riverbed opened into a sandy delta that led into a green ocean. The sand had a thick covering of conch shells, lapped by light waves. Joshua ran to the shells and began picking them up and looking inside them. Gavin saw the light reflected from his eyes as he stared into them. He picked one up near him and looked in. He saw Noila, working over a table with test tubes and pipettes. She was talking, but he couldn’t hear her; the scene lasted only a few seconds then played again. He set the shell down and picked up another; it was Joshua as a toddler, running around the kitchen in their house. He was pointing at something outside the frame of the shell and babbling a word that Gavin couldn’t make out. He set it down and walked over to Joshua, who was still looking into the same shell, his eyes brimming with tears.

“What is it?” Gavin asked him.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Joshua wouldn’t look at him. He set the shell down and faced the water, looking out.

Gavin reached down and picked up the shell. Inside was an image of his mother, Cathy, clipping her coupons and ignoring Gavin’s father, who was knocking back a beer and complaining about something. “Why are you upset about seeing your grandparents?” Gavin asked.

“That’s what
you
see.” Joshua didn’t turn around. “Everyone sees their own images, things that are important to them. Every shell is a moment of your life, real or not.” He pointed out in the water. “Do you see that?”

Gavin squinted and looked toward where he was pointing. An island jutted up from the ocean, its peak lost in the clouds and fog. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s Salvation Island.”

“What’s there?”

“Home, you, Mom, peace, college.” Joshua paused for a moment. “Margie.” He sat down on the shells. “The demons—or whoever they are—can’t come there; they can’t cross the water.”

“Can we go there?” Gavin asked.

Joshua shook his head. “Not unless you can figure out how to swim a couple of miles. I tried, but Margie had to save me. I almost died out there.”

Gavin grabbed his son and held him close.

Chimeruth Village had stabilized. The shops had closed, and all the human residents had been allowed out of the shelters and back in their quarters. Noila had gained the trust of the Ptahs in her laboratory. They had brought her the results of the samples so she could continue the work of altering the Antarctican DNA. The small rack of sealed test vials was almost full on the wall. Noila pulled out the remaining two vials and opened them so the Ptahs could deposit the test results they had run in the supercooled waters. She had two more DNA lines the Ptahs had gathered from a family of Antarcticans who had been tested and found to be genetically distant from the rest of the population. It would be one of the last tests she needed to verify the results were valid across the whole species. When the Ptahs emerged with their smooth metallic heads open, displaying the clear solution inside, she pet the tops of their bodies then drained the samples so she could view them under the electron microscope. She sucked one of the cultures into her dropper and placed it on the viewing dish. Then she fed the water into the microscopic tube that lined up the water molecules in single file and drew them into the cells. When she was done with both samples, she put them in the rack, labeled them, and closed the cabinet.

Noila spent the rest of the day logging results and discarding hypotheses she had come up with on the boat ride to Antarctica. She still had a nagging feeling that something bad had happened with Gavin and Joshua; she tried calling them again, but she couldn’t connect. The evening turned into early morning; she tried to sleep, but the day had shown her too much, and her worry over her boys was intensifying. The doorbell rang; Addie was standing in the doorway when she opened it.