TWENTY-FIVE
It's not hard to get her drunk. She's tired, jetlagged, emotionally wrung out, still recovering from being doped by Secutores, and hasn't had a decent meal in more than twelve hours. What surprises me is that it takes as many drinks as it does.
After we've cleared a dozen plates and half as many drinks (of which I had one and a half), I have our waiter get us a cab. Mere's already half asleep by the time I coax her out of the booth. Once in the cab, I tell the driver to drive around for twenty minutes or so, and it only takes Mere five to fall asleep, her head resting against my shoulder. Fifteen minutes later, confident that we're not being followed, I tell the driver to take us to the hotel I had spotted near the open air mall.
I leave her in the car until I have a room, and then I carry her in. The concierge gets the elevator for me. “Thank you.” I nod toward Mere's limp form. “Too much to drink.”
“It happens,” he replies with that nonjudgmental air that good hotel staff learn. I smile, trying to make it seem like I'm the long-suffering one in the relationship, as the elevator doors close.
We're on the eighth floor, in a corner room. I key in, arrange Mere on the bed, and cover her with the sheets. I prowl around the room for a few minutes, pausing to peek out at the parade of lights that are strung along the side of San Cristobel, and then I acknowledge that I'm too restless to sit and wait. I leave Mere a note and go back downstairs.
The mall is still open and I find a telecom shop where I buy a few international phone cards and a new pay-as-you-go phone. I get a small laptop too, using the debit card that I got from the bank in Adelaide. It creates a money trail, but I don't have any choice right now. I don't have enough pesos to pay for it, and changing the rest of my Australian money is going to require a bank.
If we're going to keep moving, changing money is going to be a problem. I'm going to have to trust that the bank channel is secure for the time being. If it isn't, it's better to find out now rather than later when I really need it.
Afterward, I find a quiet bench off the main thoroughfare of the mall and sit down to figure out how to make the phone cards work. Australia is on the other side of the International Date line, and with the time difference, it is tomorrow morning there. I follow the directions on the card and then punch in Ralph's cell phone number.
He answers on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Did I wake you?”
“What? No, no. No, I was just… is this—?”
“It is.”
“Are you…? Is…?”
It's hard to ask questions when you're worried about who might be listening in.
“We're fine. Enjoying our honeymoon,” I tell him. “How are the neighbors?”
“Restless. Some of the natives are getting curious too.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“I think the neighbors are leaving soon, though. If they haven't gone already.”
“Any forwarding address?”
“Just the one on file.”
“Well, sounds like that party is almost over. Should be nice and quiet after that.”
“So, ah, look, the neighbors.” I can almost hear him thinking through the code phrasing we've adopted, trying to fit it to what he wants to tell me. “The landlords—the ones who own the place the neighbors have been staying at—I think they pulled the lease.”
I parse what he's telling me. “Interesting. Any idea on who the landlords are? Is someone else moving in?”
“Nada,” he says dejectedly. “I got zilch.”
“I was thinking about buying my new bride some hyacinths,” I tell him. “But it's the wrong time of year. Could you look into it for me? Where I could find someone who could grow them out of season? Get them to hold them for me? Until we get back.”
He's quiet for a minute. “Yeah, sure,” he says eventually. “Holding on to some hyacinths. I can do that.” From the stress he places on certain syllables, I think he's got my request figured out. Hyacinth Holdings.
“Great, thanks. I'll call later.” I hang up.
I call Callis next. Rather, I try to, but he doesn't answer. I let the call ring for a long time, wondering why it doesn't go to voice mail. All I can imagine is an old rotary phone in a dusty room somewhere, in a house that no one lives in anymore.
I end the call and shove the phone in my pocket. I don't need to talk to Callis, and maybe this is his way of reminding me that I need to stay away from making contact. If I'm isolated, then not only am I safe from whatever is poisoning Arcadia, Arcadia is also safe from me.
Mere says this isn't personal, but I can't help but think of Talus's warning on the boat. She's not family. Remember your priorities.
The matter is personal, though. It has been for a long time.
I need to remember who the steward was on Rapa Nui.
I start walking toward San Cristobal. There will be trails, walking paths through the trees. If not, I'll just find my own way through the woods. I've done it before. All that really matters is that I get under the trees for a while.
They don't judge me. They still accept me as family. They'll let me rest, and maybe they'll even help me put my mind back together.
Mere is still sleeping when I return to the room. Her hair is mussed around her head and her shirt is twisted around her body. The only part of her that moves is her chest and her throat. Watching both becomes hypnotic, and I can feel the thirst tickling at the back of my throat.
How many times have I been in a room like this, watching someone like this? There were others before Val, a long list of faces that are all out of focus. But it was different with the others. None of them knew about Arcadia. None of them knew how I was different. I was a man with an exotic past, loath to talk about family and where I had been before I met them. I lied to them all. I was good at dodging questions, at coming up with false emergencies and interruptions to derail persistent questions. After a while, most of them gave up trying. Some of the relationships failed for that reason. Some of them flourished because the exotic and unknown were perpetually exciting.
Mere knows too much already, and I fear that learning more is only going to make her want to stay.
I peel the plastic wrap and dozen stickers that constitute packaging on the laptop and switch it on. As it boots up, I figure out how to work the in-room coffee maker. The sound of the computer churning and the smell of brewing coffee work to bring Mere out of her stupor. She sits up slowly, trying to push her hair into a semblance of order. A lazy smile spreads across her face when I offer her a cup of hot coffee. She takes a large sip and then lies back in bed, the cup resting between her breasts. “Ah, you know how to greet a girl in the morning, don't you?”
“I bought you a laptop. It's got a Spanish operating system preinstalled, but there's an English version on the DVD that comes with it.”
“Now you're just trying to get into my pants,” she says.
“I don't think you're wearing any,” I say, recalling a crumpled heap lying on the bathroom floor.
She lifts her head and peeks under the sheet. “Well, then,” she says, taking another sip of coffee. “I guess we must have gotten along pretty well last night.”
I ignore her comment and put the cell phone and the extra calling cards on the table, next to the laptop. “New phone and calling cards,” I say.
“In case I want to call my girlfriends and talk about the awesome night I can't remember?”
“It couldn't have been that awesome if you can't remember it,” I point out.
“Spoken like an experienced amnesiac,” she says. She winces as soon as the words come out of her mouth. “Sorry.”
“It's okay,” I say. “I'll take acerbic as a sign that you're going to survive.”
“It's the caffeine kicking in.” She takes another large sip from the cup, her attention drifting toward the table with the phone and laptop. “By the way, when this headache goes away, I'm going to get out of bed and kick your ass.”
“Why? Because I took your shoes off before I put you into bed last night?”
“And my pants.”
I shake my head as I point to where her shoes are neatly arranged next to the dresser. “There are your shoes. Do you see your pants?”
“Well, they're not on me,” she says.
“They're on the bathroom floor, where you must have left them when you got up to pee in the middle of the night.”
Some expression flashes across her face, and I'm not sure if it is disappointment or outrage, but it is gone before I can really decide which it is. “Regardless of the location of my pants,” she snaps, “that's not why I'm going to put my foot up your ass.”
“I shouldn't have plied you with drinks while I was dodging your questions?”
She makes a gun with two of her fingers and slowly shoots me with it. “Bingo.”
“Call Ralph,” I say. “Maybe he'll play nicer.”
“At least he'll play,” she says. “You owe me some answers.”
I shrug. “I'm going to get some breakfast,” I say, heading for the door.
“Silas. Don't you run away from me.”
I stop and look back at her. “I'm not. I'll be back in a bit.”
“Why don't you stay and call room service,” she says, “instead of running away?”
“Why don't I go get some food while you solve your lack of pants problem?”
“Why don't you throw me them since you're standing right there?”
I glance over at the pair under discussion. “I could take them with me,” I suggest.
A wicked smile curls her lips. She leans over and sets the coffee cup on the nightstand. With a sweep of her arm, she throws the sheets back and hops off the bed. She wobbles slightly as she stands up, but she manages to not lose her balance. Wearing nothing but her sleep-wrinkled shirt and a pair of pale green bikini briefs, she walks over. Standing very close, she leans toward me so that her face is almost touching mine. “Go ahead,” she says. She grabs the top button on her shirt. “You want this too?”
“I'm going to get breakfast,” I growl. “More coffee?”
“Please,” she whispers, locking eyes with me. Daring me to look down to see what her hands are doing with her shirt.
“And a tart,” I say. “A very fresh fruit tart.”
Her laughter follows me out of the room and all the way down the hall to the elevator. Only when I'm securely behind the closed doors of the elevator, do I look down at the marks my nails have made in my palm.
There is still alcohol in her blood. That, I tell myself, is the only reason I held back. Otherwise, I would have done something foolish.
I want her to stay too.
She's wearing pants when I return, and appears to have been upright for most of the time that I've been gone. On the wall beside the dresser and TV unit, she's attached a white sheet and has been covering it with circles, lines, and scribbled writing.
“I asked the staff for tape and a marker,” she says, stepping back from her work as I put my bags on the table. “In case you didn't get my psychic messages.”
“I did,” I reply glibly. “But I also knew you couldn't wait for me to come back with them and would badger the concierge instead.” I open a small box filled with round, sugar-coated objects and hold it out to her. “Berliner? Or as the Germans call them: pfannkuchen.”
“A what?”
“Jelly donut.”
“Why didn't you say so in the first place?”
“When in Rome…”
“Is that an Arcadian saying?” She takes one and bites into it, discovering the jelly center. “Like, the First Rule of Arcadia is: pretend you're in Rome.”
“It's the other way around,” I say. “The First Rule of Rome is to pretend you're in Arcadia.” I pause thoughtfully as I pluck a berliner from the box. “Though that may have been Nero.”
She wrinkles her nose as she finishes the first berliner and reaches for another. “Before my time,” she says.
Chewing my donut slowly, I look over what she's done on the sheet. “This seems a bit more recent,” I say. “Corporate connections.”
She nods. “Ralph gave me a bunch of it, and while I'm waiting for him to call me back, I started making notes.”
Near the center are three circles: Secutores Security, Hyacinth Holdings, and Arcadia. From the first two, she's drawn a number of lines to smaller bubbles, and each line has tiny notes running above and below. Hyacinth is connected to Hyacinth Worldwide as well as Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals—easy connections to make—and she's drawn a line between Secutores and Kyodo Kujira, but the line has a lot of conjecture scribbled along it.
There are clusters of notes orbiting each of the three central circles, but no lines connecting them.
“There's a Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals?” I ask.
She picks up her laptop, selects one of the browser tabs she's got open, and hands me the small computer. It's a page from Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals' website—a lot of market speak extolling the natural medicinal virtues of star fruit. At the bottom of the page is a back button that takes me to a summary page that gushes about the majestic mystery of the natural world and how much humanity could benefit from a more holistic approach to naturopathic medicine.
“Pretty over-the-top marketing copy,” she notes. “Notice anything about that list of trees and plants?”
I pay attention to the two columns at the bottom of the page. “Some of them are Polynesian. Some are African. These four are Chinese. That one is extinct—”
“I bet they're all growing in the crater at Rano Kau,” she says, interrupting my recital. Her voice grows more animated; it is clear from my expression that she knows something I don't, and she's delighted to be the smart one in the room. “Those trees we saw were big and healthy. A farm like that doesn't spring up overnight. How many years would it take to grow a farm that size?”
“A couple decades,” is my guess. “More, probably,” I amend, thinking of the stately toromiro.
“Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals was incorporated three years ago. It's hard to tell without going back, but I'd be willing to bet that building out there in the crater isn't more than two years old. The Hanga Roa Royal Resort goes back thirty years, but four years ago, it went through major renovations—including that five-story building we were staying in. The resort increased its number of rooms from sixteen to a hundred and eighty. For an island that's a marginal tourist attraction and pretty much out of any cruise line routes, what would create such a boom in housing needs?”
“A workforce. One that needs temporary housing.”
“Exactly.”
She wanders over to the chart and taps Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals. “Figure Hyacinth Worldwide is managing the land, since they're already on the island. Maybe the hotel is originally built to facilitate the team that plants all the trees. They spend three decades growing that farm, and when the trees start to mature, they build the lab.”
“That's some long-term thinking.”
“Who thinks like that?”
“The Japanese.”
“Big Ag,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. Then, more seriously: “And Arcadians.”
“We left the island,” I tell her.
“Are you sure?” she asks. She still has that glint in her eye—that journalist delight at having uncovered some unexpected secret.
“No, I'm not sure,” I say as my stomach starts to tighten.
“Okay, let's look at the list of what you'd get from a farm on Easter Island.” She takes the laptop from me and switches over to a document that she was working on. “Sirolimus,” she starts. “Sourced from a bacterium found only on the island. If we buy the marketing hype, star fruit is useful to combat infections and it also acts—and I quote—‘as an inhibitor of certain isoforms.' What does that mean?”
I suspect she already knows, but I play along. “It increases the efficacy of other drugs.”
She makes the popping noise with her lips as she points a finger at me. “There's agbayun,” she continues, working down the list. “Also known as miracle berry—a source of miraculin. Handy when you're making native medicines. And African serendipity berry too, which has thaumatin in it, much like miraculin. They're also working with Amyruca, a natural source of DMT; Oldenlandia affinis, widely used in Africa to assist in childbirth; Polygala tenuifolia, a memory aid found in a number of Chinese herbal remedies; a couple others which I haven't figured out what they're useful for yet; and the jujube, which I thought was something that Lewis Carroll made up, but is apparently useful for a whole host of things.”
“Ziziphus,” I say. “Ziziphus zizyphus.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know of it. We used to eat the fruit. We'd dry it and eat it.” I shake my head at her raised eyebrow. “Never mind. Yes, I can see why it's on the list.”
“A small pharmaceutical company could make its nut—if you will—off any one of these if they could figure out how to harvest and/or synthesize them in large enough quantities. Yet, if we believe the marketing copy isn't just for show, Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals is doing all of them. Doesn't that seem a tad…?”
“Ambitious?” I try. “Delusional?”
“Either. Both,” she says. “Remember when I talked about the corporate pyramid? Every company is working on a piece of something else, and none of them know anything other than the part they're responsible for. Someone much higher up the chain knows the real score. They're the architects of the capital ‘P' plan. This is like a compressed version of that sort of vision. It's all in one place. In one company. We've got psychedelics, antipsychotics, immunosuppressants, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifibrinolytics, God knows how many other anti- agents there are. If you put them all together what have you got?”
“I got lost somewhere around the third anti-.”
“Complete systemic disassociation.”
“What does that mean?”
“You won't feel a thing, and your body won't reject anything you put in it. Or attach to it.”
It clicks for me. “Nigel.”
“They weren't just torturing Nigel,” she says. “They were cutting him up for parts.”
“Parts they could use for something—or someone—else.” I struggle to wrap my head around the idea of parts. Not just organ transplants, but entire pieces of a body. Or even building an entirely new body out of disparate sections. How would this work? “Lemon trees,” I breathe.
“What about lemon trees?” Mere asks.
“Do you know how a lemon tree is cultivated?” She shakes her head. “You grow lemons and oranges on the same trunk. It's done all the time. They're from the same family. You can graft a branch on, and the trunk will accept it. With this pharmacopeia, you could do the same with any genetically similar species.”
“Like Homo erectus?”
I nod, knowing it's more than that. It'd be even easier with a species that is more refined, genetically-speaking. Something singularly sourced.
Hyacinth wants to grow their own Arcadians.