The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria (22 page)

The poachers hand finally drops. He’s out. It suddenly occurs to me the girl must think he’s dead. Jesus Christ: how much worse can we make things for her?

Gavin’s already charging ahead to the forest to go truss up the poachers with zip-ties. He’ll be there in a minute. All I need to do is keep her entertained until he gets there and make sure she doesn’t—

—no! She slips the leash off the poacher’s wrist and takes off running.

Here’s an important safety tips for the kids at home. Do not go tearing as fast as you can through a moderately dense forest while also trying to fly a Fey Spy. You can’t run and watch a screen and steer a robot at the same time. After my fourth tumble, I decide to go with the Fey Spy. It can move through the forest much faster than I can, and it will provide me her location via the map of the forest it’s been creating this whole time.

It’s the right choice. In less than three minutes, I find her. The Fey Spy flies into a small clearing where I witness a scene plagiarized from a medieval tapestry. The girl—the leash still around her neck—is kneeling in front of a horse. Huge and beautiful, chestnut-colored, male. He has folded his legs under him. He can barely keep his dipping head aloft. On his flank a bullet wound yawns; a slow lava-flow of blood gurgles out of the hole. Below it spreads a scabrous beard.

And, spiraling out from the horse’s head, is a horn almost a meter long.

We have the Large Hadron Collider to thank for unicorns. Once the scientists at the LHC discovered they could make these adorable microscopic black holes, they couldn’t resist doing it all the time. “They only last for microseconds,” they said. “What harm could they do?” they asked.

How about destabilizing the membrane that keeps other universes from leaking into ours?

Think of our universe as some kid’s crayon drawing on a piece of paper. Take that drawing, and place it on top of some other kid’s. If nothing else happens, the drawing on top will hide the drawing beneath it. But now, take a spray-bottle and spritz the drawing on top. Don’t ruin it or cause the colors to run; just moisten it a little. As the paper gets wet, you’ll be able to see hints of the picture that’s underneath.

The numberless black holes created at the LHC “moistened” the paper on which our universe is drawn, allowing other universes to come peeking through.

Handwringers have announced the inevitable collapse of our universe but, so far at least, nothing so dramatic has happened. And in fact, a great deal of good has come of the LHC’s experiments. Scientists have gained invaluable insights into how parallel universes work.

For instance, we now know that, in at least one alternate timeline, unicorns exist. And a few specimens have found their way into our neck of the multiverse.

Even before I entered the clearing, I could hear the girl calling out “Help! Is anybody there? Help us!” Not “Help me.” “Help us.”

So I enter the clearing slowly. The girl sits with the unicorn’s head on her lap, petting its neck. Her face is a tragedy mask.

She asks me, with wounded voice, “Are you a hunter?”

I sit next to her. “My name’s Gabrielle Reál. I’m a reporter.”

“You’re American?”

I nod. “I’m here to help you.”

She feels safe enough to start crying in earnest. “Can you call my parents?”

“Help is on the way, sweetheart.”

She cries and nods. “Can you help him?”

She means the unicorn. How to reply? I will not compound her
future suffering with a lie—truth or death, remember?—but I don’t want to compound her present suffering by presenting her with the stark realities of life and death. I finally settle on, “I can’t. But I have a friend coming. He’s a forest ranger. If anyone can help the unicorn, he can.”

She nods, sniffles, redoubles her petting. The unicorns sighs, settles further into her lap. I have to dodge his horn. It’s even more amazing up close than any picture I’ve seen. It’s a spiral of silver-gray, pitted and striated, covered with the nicks and flaws that come from a lifetime’s use. It doesn’t feel as cold as I expect; it’s like reaching into a body and touching vital bone.

I should get us away from him, I know. This is a wounded wild animal; he can turn on us at any moment. But the truth is I don’t want to move. I don’t want this magnificent creature to die without knowing some comfort and love in his passing. It’s a girlish, sentimental thought, I know. That doesn’t make it any less authentic.

I scratch the unicorn’s head. He moves slightly toward my hand, grateful. The girl rests her head on my arm, and together we pet him and weep.

Thousands of animals—elephants especially, but also walruses, rhinoceroses, and narwhals—are massacred every year for their horns and tusks. The demand for ivory continues with little abatement in China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other
countries of that region. In spite of the bans and the international efforts to curb the ivory trade, poachers have no trouble finding deep-pocket buyers and government officials on the take.

In fact, the only thing that has seemed to be effective at slowing down the butchering of these animals has been the introduction of an even more desirable source of ivory into our universe. Unicorns.

Unicorn horn is said to possess all sorts of salubrious woo. It can detect and cure disease, anything from nosebleeds to lupus. It’s a universal poison antidote. It can impart superhuman strength, speed, and/or intelligence; regenerate lost limbs; restore sight to the blind; recover sexual potency; reverse aging; raise the dead. Slice it, dice it, powder it, or keep it whole and use it as your magic wand—unicorn horn is good for what ails you.

Of course it has no such properties. But what science has learned already about unicorns is almost as wondrous.
Equus ferus hippoceros
seems to fit so well into our timeline’s system of classification, there is reason to believe that might actually have existed in our own universe at some point in our past, and that we may someday find indigenous unicorn fossils. Based on the specimens we have found so far, male unicorns seem to be up to 15% larger than the modern horse, females up to 10% percent. Their large skulls somewhat resemble those of large, extinct species from our Eocene era: save, of course, for the horns that spring from their head.

A unicorn horn, much like a narwhal’s, is actually a pair of repurposed canines that grow helically from the animal’s palate and
intertwine as they emerge from the forehead. Scientists believe that when the unicorn’s ancestors switched from being omnivores to herbivores, evolution found other uses for its meat-tearing teeth. Defense against predators and mating displays are obvious assumptions, though neither has been observed as yet. They have been observed, however, using their horns as “fruit procurement appliances” (Gavin’s words), as well as digging tools with which they unearth tubers and roots. And since the horn is actually two twisted teeth, it is sensitive to touch. Scientists are just beginning to hypothesize the various ways in which unicorns use their horns as sensory organs.

In short, the unicorn is an endlessly fascinating animal, one that not only has enriched our knowledge of our own natural world, but the natural world of at least one other timeline. It’s scientifically priceless.

As I sit petting this dying unicorn, I wonder
Why isn’t that enough? Why do we have to invent magical bullshit? They just got here, and we’re hunting them to extinction based on lies.

But then I grimly smile. Unicorns are not of our timeline. The few stragglers who have appeared here came by an LHC-induced accident. No matter what we do here, we can’t erase them from existence in all universes. Even our folly, thank the gods, has limits.

Gavin cautiously enters the clearing. The rifle is holstered. He’s walking in smiling, open-armed, crouching, cautious. He reminds me
of Caliban.

“There they are,” he says merrily. “Glad I finally found you. Now we can get you home safe and sound. So let’s get a move on, right?”

Neither I nor the girl move. The girl’s eyes are locked on Gavin, assessing. “Is that your friend?” she asks me.

“The forest ranger,” I reply. “The bad men who kidnapped you are going to prison for a long time thanks to him.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off of him. “You said he could save the unicorn.”

Gavin shoots me a look.

“I didn’t say he could definitely save him,” I say. “I said if anyone could, he could. He’s going to try.”

“He can’t just try. It has to work.”

“There, now,” says Gavin, coming over to us. He’s picked up what’s transpired between the girl and I and begins playing his part perfectly. Or at least I think he does. He kneels down next to the unicorn and pats the beast’s neck and says, “Alright then, let’s have a butcher’s.”

“Gavin!” I yell. I mean, what the hell? He’s talking about butchering the poor beast right in front of the girl?

But the girl giggles. “That just means he’s having a look,” she says, and giggles again.

“Americans,” says Gavin, and the little girl smiles at him and trusts him a little more. Yeah, it’s another “silly American” joke between Brits, but if it helps us all get through this, I can take it. Mock away.

Gavin turns back to the unicorn and examines it studiously.
“Right,” he says finally. “I’m going to have to perform a complicated bit of field surgery on this poor fellow. Gabby, my crew’s half a click south of here. You should head toward them with the little lady here.”