The Antarcticans (16 page)

“Do you ever have any regrets about coming here?” Noila pressed on.

“No. Like I said, I love it. I feel so at home.”

Noila felt a nervous flutter in her stomach—nervous that she was feeling that way as well.

“My son, Joshua, is in one of those suits you described, but his is white. He’s on the
Dragon
now. He’s…mentally unstable. Dr. Cristofari is convinced she can help him.”

Florencia took a sip of her tea. “And has she?”

“It’s too early to tell. My husband, Gavin, who’s back there, hasn’t been having luck seeing him. I don’t even know exactly where Joshua is right now.”

“I wouldn’t sweat it. Focus on your work here. If you do a good job, they’ll take care of you in ways you can’t imagine. It’s strange, but I feel like I would endure the sickness all over again if it was the only way for me to get here.”

Noila abruptly switched topics. “Are the Antarcticans friendly?”

“The Antarcticans? Oh, yes, some of the nicest creatures you’ll know. Just don’t cross them.”

Noila raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t litter, don’t ever threaten them, and don’t lie,” she said in a serious tone. “You’ll get that in the culture class you’ll go through, but it’s a very severe situation if you do. We humans don’t understand that lying is a big deal because we tell little lies all the time. But to Antarcticans, murder can be more acceptable than lying.”

“What constitutes threatening?” Noila asked.

“I mean, don’t imply you’re going to attack them. They’re savage warriors. Remember, they’re descendants of the Srechritoris. A human wouldn’t last one minute against them in a confrontation. They also are who they say they are. They never lie. Well, I shouldn’t say never. But I’ve never seen it happen. I’m telling you, being honest all the time was hard to get used to, but I think it’s made me a better person.” She perked back up and looked over at the large woven basket next to the hearth. “Looks like your fire needs tending to.” She stood up and pulled one of the iron pokers from the fire-tool stand, poked at the logs, then pitched a fresh cut of wood onto the hot-coal remnants of the previous logs. The sap of the wood crackled, and the fire roared back to life.

“What does your husband do for a living?” Florencia asked.

“He’s a pastor.”

“Like a priest?”

“Yeah, but not for Catholics.” Noila laughed to herself. “He absolutely hates when people say that.” She put her hand up, indicating that Florencia was fine and that she hadn’t offended anyone. “He would never move here. There’s no one to convert and preach to,” she added.

She couldn’t help that she felt almost a sisterly bond with Florencia. She didn’t think anything she would say would be offensive to her.

“The Antarcticans have their own religion, if you can call it that,” Florencia said. “They portal. You’ll see them doing it on occasion, and they don’t like to be stared at, but they assume a posture, hold very still for some time, then sprint into a portal that opens. I don’t really understand where they go, but Vinettea said it’s similar to meditation. I asked her if I would able to do it, and she didn’t really even understand the question. I asked other Antarcticans about it, but they all just shook their heads. So I dropped it. I’m too busy with my research anyway to worry about spending time jetting off to some paradise for an hour or however long they spend there,” she said with a laugh.

“You seem so at ease with all this, as if someone told you everything is going to work out just fine. How?” Noila asked.

“Sister, when you’re left for dead, and someone brings you and your family back to life from a fate you’d accepted, and from everything that had happened in your life up to that point, you believed there was no way out…well from that point on, you just know anything is possible, even if you’ve never dreamed it before.”

“I love that. What a beautiful way to look at life.”

The sirens were still going off outside, and they felt the ground lightly tremble. Noila looked at Florencia for reassurance.

“It’s fine,” she said with a comforting smile. “We’re on an ice shelf—it moves around a bit. C’mon…this is a good time to show you around the village, while most people are inside.” She stood up and put her fur-lined parka back on.

The path outside Noila’s door was empty. She saw the packed snow where she had been tackled. They continued up the path in the opposite direction from which Noila had walked up to her cottage. They headed up the small hill for about a hundred feet.

“That’s my cottage there.” Florencia pointed to a two-story home that was wider than Noila’s. Lights lined the tall A-frame roof. “There are only two bedrooms, so the twins have to share, but they don’t seem to mind. Anyway, I’m right at the border. You see that? The gate at the end of the path? It’s the end of the protective dome. If you cross outside of it, make sure you’re wearing heavy clothing.”

The wind was spinning snow through the air.

“I just go out that gate, and I’m out of the enclosure?”

Florencia nodded. “Yes, ma’am, but there really isn’t any reason to be out there. It’s uncharted territory.”

“Don’t the Antarcticans live out there?”

“No, they live beneath us. The tunnels you arrived through are just a tiny piece of the whole complex. They extend for hundreds of miles. It’s unclear how far they go out. I’ve been asking that question since I got here, but no one seems to know.”

Noila thought about the ant farm she had when she was a kid, and she imagined the likes of Vinettea crawling through the tunnels. Florencia seemed so comfortable with all this, like this place was just an additional part of the earth. Like a trip to a new country or the discovery of a new type of jellyfish. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t more in awe of it all. Maybe it would become commonplace to her someday too, she thought.

They retraced their steps back to the junction with the other paths. Florencia turned away from the direction of the village gates and pointed out which homes were inhabited by scientists and diplomats. There was an entire corps of people living here to manage the relations between Lucifer’s team and the quirks of the Antarcticans. Noila and Florencia reached a small opening between two houses and walked through; on the other side, there was a polished steel circle the size of a large above-ground swimming pool.

“If you really want to get anywhere with your research, you have to get them to let you go down there,” Florencia said, pointing to the steel circle.

Noila stepped forward, knelt, and ran her hand over the smooth grooved lines that followed the circumference all the way around. “What’s underneath?”

“The foundation of the whole Antarctican way of life. But it’s going to take longer than the time you’re staying to convince them that you’re worthy of it.”

“Have you been down there?”

Florencia nodded.

“So what is it?”

“If you’re allowed down there, you’re sworn to secrecy. Not even your husband can know. You might want to think about what you want to expose yourself to before you never can speak about it again. From my perspective, to further your research it’s worth it.” She suddenly switched topics, as if she had revealed too much. “Did Vinettea tell you where you need to go tomorrow for your induction?”

“No.”

“I’ll walk you by there on our way back so you won’t be searching all over the village. After your induction, that’s when the real fun starts.”

As they made their way back to Noila’s cottage, Florencia pointed out the meeting hall entrance. It was a glass enclosure over a staircase that descended into the snow below.

When they got to the split in the path where Florencia would head to her house, she leaned in closer, with one of her braids landing on Noila’s shoulder.

“Give yourself some time to see what’s really going on here before you make any decisions and get too attached. I love this place more than anyone, but there’s a lot of change coming, and not all of it is good.” She patted Noila on the back and trudged through the snow to her house.

Joshua peered over his toes and saw Margie standing at the end of the bed. She looked tired. Her orange sparkling eye shadow looked like it had been on for days; the sparkles had smudged against her cheek, mixing with her fading rouge. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin tinged green, and her hair, which had been arranged in deep-red spirals dancing away from her head and forming what resembled a Christmas tree, looked like the cat had gotten into the lights and torn it to pieces. Margie was a wreck, and she kept looking around frantically and pushing a ripped piece of her dress nervously back into place.

“Sugar, have you seen that doctor lady?”

“Margie, you look like hell.” Joshua swung his legs around and off the side of the bed.

“She’s after me, sweetie. I tried tellin’ her all the terrible things they’ve been doing to you, but she keeps pullin’ and tuggin’ and tryin’ to evict me.”

“Who? Dr. Cristofari?

“Oh, Joshy…” She walked over to him and ran her hands over his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “You’ve gotta stop them from doin’ all this to you. They’re going to make you worse.”

Margie shrieked and doubled over before grabbing her stomach and vomiting on the floor. Rainbow-colored chunks sat in a pool of a pink liquid.

“Trix for breakfast?” Joshua asked.

She stood back up and wiped her mouth. Her jaw went slack before her eyes rolled back in her head, and then she pitched forward, planting her face on the floor. Joshua knelt to help her. He rolled her over; her face looked distorted, and colors seeped from behind her eyes and out of her nostrils.

“Margie? Are you okay?” He held her head very still. “Should I call the doctor for you?”

Joshua’s fingers sank into her head; the solid form gave way and filtered through his fingers like pudding. The rest of her body did the same, mixing with the fabric of her clothes, and ended its transformation as a pile of goopy, colorful slush. A bird cawed in the distance and swooped through the doors of the hospital room, landing on Joshua’s soldier. It nuzzled its beak into his ear, stroking it up and down, then sidestepped its way down his arm until it was perched on his wrist. Joshua noticed a splotch of sparkling orange eye shadow above the bird’s eye and a tuft of deep blood-red hair sprouting from the top of its head.

“Margie?”

“Caw, caw,” the bird replied.

A floor tile popped up, and a large millipede rose up from underneath it and crawled toward Joshua’s foot. It excreted saliva that slid between his toes and singed the skin away. Margie fluttered to the floor, pierced its exoskeleton with her beak, then pecked out the green guts of the animal until it spun into a ball and rolled away, leaving a trail of bright-green entrails behind. She flew around Joshua’s head four times then took off through the door. He heard the other voices he knew so well in the hallway. There were the Samson twins, and they were grunting and laughing. He called them Monkey One and Monkey Two because their long hair met with the hair on their back and chest and made them appear to be fully covered in coats of mammalian fur. They were generally sporting weapons of some sort to bludgeon him with, if he wasn’t fast enough. Right now they were knocking something against the walls of the hallway. There was a chorus of others out there, demons who regularly beat him until he pleaded for mercy or tried to end their voices entirely. They didn’t move closer this time; instead they stayed at a distance. One of them yelled, “Hey, fuckface, wanna suck my dick?” and then the sounds of a fight broke out: screaming that he couldn’t understand, loud punches, and breaking glass. Joshua climbed into his bed and rang his attendant call button. A set of hands from the ceiling descended and adjusted his blanket then printed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for him, placing it on a silver tray and setting it on the bedside table.

“Can you get rid of the people in the hallway?”

“Certainly, Mr. Pennings.” The hallway instantly fell silent.

“Do you know when I’m scheduled to leave? I need to help Margie. She’s in rough shape.”

“I am sorry, Joshua, but you still have further treatment, and we cannot let you go until the treatment cycle is complete. Do not worry about Margie. I will look after her,” the robotic attendant said.

“You can’t look after her—she exists in my brain. I need to be able to spend some time with her, make sure she’s okay. Those thugs will beat her ass too. It’s not just me they’re after.” His heart was beating faster, his face flushed with blood.

“Please calm down, Joshua. We will make sure you have time to spend with Margie. But you must know that our first priority is your health and safety.”

“What’s real? Are you real? Am I real? Why don’t you tell me why I never see you, just your arms?” He twisted in his bed to look behind it. “Where are you?” he cried out.

“Joshua, everything is okay. That is not a question I can answer for you. Do you see the images? Can you focus on those?” the attendant said.

Joshua squeezed his eyes in protest. The voices in the hall started up again, louder now; the demons were right at the threshold of the door. Joshua looked over and saw them. The Samson twins, with their big hairy muscular arms, were holding Margie in her human form, her arms twisted behind her back, her face screwed up in pain. She wore an emerald-green dress now, her nails painted the same color, and a bright emerald crown encrusted with diamonds. Royal-looking jewelry covered every ounce of her pale flesh that wasn’t covered by her dress. Her hair had changed too; it was even redder now. She looked like an Irish princess.