The Lost Island (18 page)

F
IRST THING THE
next morning, Gideon and Amy took the sat phone down to the beach, where they would have the best chance for reception. Amy turned on the unit. As it warmed up, the LED screen flashed with calls received and messages left. There were several—all from EES. Gideon felt a twinge of nervousness: they hadn’t called Glinn in days, and the man was not going to be happy.

Amy set the phone to speaker and put in the call. It was answered immediately—by Glinn. The voice wasn’t, as Gideon expected, excited or angry. It was cool, formal, measured.

“It’s been too many days since I heard from you,” Glinn said. “Would you care to explain yourselves?”

“We have to talk fast,” Amy said. “We’re down to four percent battery power, and no way to recharge.”

“Then talk.”

Gideon listened as Amy launched into an explanation of her discovery related to Homer’s
Odyssey
. But Glinn almost immediately interrupted her. “I’ve heard enough. This is irrelevant. Listen to me please—and listen well. We’re aborting the mission.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gideon asked.

“There’s new information that needs to be evaluated.”

“
What
new information?”

“We solved the riddle. No time to go into the details, except to say that the vellum was made from the skin of a Neanderthal-like hominid.”

“Wait. What are you saying?”

“This new information has thrown off our computer models. In addition, there is a consensus here that you can’t be left on your own any longer—we’ve got to regroup, reanalyze, and plan a revised mission. I’ll be sending a boat to pick you up and bring you back to New York. I commend your fine work and I look forward to debriefing you both—”

The battery indicator on the sat phone started to blink red.

Amy reached over and shut off the phone.

Gideon stared at her. “What are you doing?”

Amy turned her dark eyes on him. “Is that what you want to do? Abort the mission? After all we’ve risked,
all
we’ve done?”

“No, I don’t.”

“How about
no frigging way
! We’re twenty miles from our goal.” She gestured toward the distant islands. “It’s right
there
. We can
see
it.”

Gideon stared at her. “Okay. I hear you.”

“I hope you’re going to do more than just hear me. All we have to do is get to those islands, explore them, identify the source of this medicine—which I have little doubt is the very ‘lotus’ these natives gave you—and bring it back.”

“Going against Glinn may have consequences. He might try to stop us.”

“He doesn’t know where we are,” she said.

“He can make a pretty good guess.”

“The only thing I want to know right now is this: are you in or not?”

Gideon took a deep breath. He still had his doubts about her theory—but the appearance of the Lotus Eaters had gone a long way toward quelling them. He’d never seen such conviction or such fearlessness before, in man or woman. “I’m in.”

Amy smiled, leaned toward him. “You know, I could kiss you for saying that.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not right now. We’ve got work to do.”

He started to laugh. “If not now, when?”

“You’ll know it when it happens.” She packed the satellite phone back in the drysack and stood up, brushing off the sand. Then she paused, looking out to sea.

Gideon followed her gaze toward the nearer of the mountainous islands, lying on the horizon at the very edge of visibility, its vastness cloaked in purple haze, so distant and mysterious. A lone cloud clung to the highest peak. Was it possible—even remotely possible—that a cure for his terminal condition might be found in that mythical-looking land?

W
HEN THEY RETURNED
to camp, iPhone was there to meet them. He invited them to sit by the fire and partake of an unappetizing breakfast of gluey maize pudding with mashed green plantains. After they had eaten, Gideon motioned iPhone over. “
Isla
,” he said, pointing out toward the invisible ocean. “
Vamos isla
.” He pantomimed rowing a canoe and pointed again in the direction of the islands. “We want to go to island. Okay?”

iPhone seemed put out by the suggestion. He frowned, shook his head. Gideon persisted. “
Vamos isla. Importante. Vamos ahora
.”

More shakings of the head and negative murmurings. Finally iPhone got up and went into the chief’s shack. A moment later the chief came out, a somber expression on his face. He sat down with them.

“
No vamos isla
,” he said, wagging his finger like a schoolmaster. “No.”

Gideon took a deep breath. “
Porque?
”

“
Isla…peligroso
.”

Peligroso
. What the hell did that mean? Once again Gideon found himself rummaging around his brain for his high school Spanish. “
Peligroso? No comprende
.”

“
Peligroso! Malo! Difícil!
”

Difficult. He got that last word at least. Problem was, the chief’s Spanish didn’t seem much better than his own.

“
Vamos in canoa
.” Gideon made rowing motions.

“
No. Isla sagrada
.”

Sagrada
. Another damn word he didn’t know. He turned to Amy. “Help me out here. You know Latin. What the hell is
sagrada?
”

“It sounds a lot like
sacra
. Sacred. And
peligroso
sounds a lot like
periculosum
. Dangerous.”

“So the island is sacred and dangerous. But they must go there, or how else would they get the lotus?” Gideon turned back to the chief. “
Cuando
…” He pointed at the chief and pantomimed the rest of the question.
When do you go to the island?
After a few false starts, the chief finally seemed to understand. With broken Spanish and much gesturing, he conveyed the general impression that they went there for some sort of ceremony of thankfulness.

“
Gracias
,” said Gideon.

The chief left, and Gideon motioned to Amy. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

They walked through the brush and came out on the broad beach. There were the canoes, still pulled up on the sand.

“Maybe we should steal a canoe,” said Amy.

“We’d never survive. Just launching a canoe in that surf requires incredible skill—someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We’ll take a page from your old friend Odysseus.”

“Like what? Poke a stick in iPhone’s eye?”

“No. I’m talking about some good old-fashioned social engineering.”

“How?”

Gideon explained his idea. He would feign sickness, which would require them to administer the lotus to him. He would be healed, and then they would have to have the ceremony of thankfulness.

Amy stared at him. “Gideon, that’s a terrible idea. How do you know the lotus isn’t poisonous?”

“One can only hope.”

“Hope, right. And how do you know this is a thanksgiving ceremony? That old man’s mumbling and gestures could have been describing anything.”

“You saw him putting his hands together and bowing. Looked like thankfulness to me. And anyway…I want to try the lotus.”

She looked at him curiously. “Why?”

“Just to see.”

“See what?”

Gideon fell silent.

They spent the next half hour discussing other ways to persuade the natives to take them to the island. But they kept coming around to the one, intractable problem: they went to the island only for the ceremony. Finally Amy gave in. “But I’ll only agree if you promise me one thing:
I
take the lotus.”

More arguing, but Amy was adamant.

They returned to camp and sat down around the fire again. While Gideon messed with the medical kit, Amy ate a second breakfast—another bowl of thick maize pudding and mashed plantains. It almost made Gideon sick just watching her cram so much food in her mouth. She gestured for a coconut to wash it down. iPhone brought one to her, hacking off the top with an expert swipe of a machete and gouging a hole for her to drink from. She drank and passed it to Gideon, who drank and set it beside himself. Surreptitiously, when no one was watching, he took a small bottle of ipecac he had palmed from their medical kit and poured the contents into the coconut.

Amy called for coconut milk and he passed it back to her. With a knowing glance at him, she drank deep.

And immediately began vomiting.

Everyone leapt up in horror as she continued retching and heaving, bringing up her enormous breakfast. As she puked, she hammed it up, writhing on the ground and shrieking between bouts of the heaves.

The effect was electrifying. While Gideon rushed over and made a show of trying to help her, at least half the settlement fled into the jungle in a noisy panic, taking with them the children. The chief came over, followed, very reluctantly, by iPhone.

“I’m dying!” Amy shrieked. “Dying!”

“
Muerte!
” Gideon cried, dredging up another Spanish word from his schooldays. The dry heaves had passed—ipecac was very short acting—but she continued to scream, rolling her eyes, clawing the sand, and feigning convulsions. It was so hideous that even Gideon felt his gorge rise. Most of the rest of the village edged farther away, with more fleeing into the jungle.

But the chief and iPhone bravely stayed put, trying to help her. The chief started chanting and laying on hands while iPhone attempted to hold her down.

Gideon pulled the carved wooden box out of his drysack, opened the lid, and took out the lotus. “Give her this!”

This suggestion was greeted with a cry of instant approbation. The chief leapt up and fetched some boiling water from the fire, while iPhone whipped out his machete and began mashing and chopping the pod into tiny pieces, then crushing them with the flat of the blade. A foul scent rose from the crushed plant and Gideon had a bad moment, thinking it might be poisonous. But they didn’t look like poisoners and were clearly concerned with her illness. When iPhone had reduced it almost to a powder, it went into the pot of boiling water.

Amy screamed one last time, and then—with a final rolling of the eyes—flopped out, unconscious.

The chief and iPhone worked frantically, boiling the lotus in the water, then straining it through a piece of pounded bark. A bad-smelling rose-colored liquid resulted, which they cooled with some fresh water. Talking rapidly, they gestured to Gideon to prop Amy up so she could drink. Gideon managed to get her up, her head lolling back, spittle drooling from her lips. He couldn’t believe what a good actress she was.

The chief, carrying a coconut cup with the foul beverage, knelt in front of her and gave her a couple of hard slaps. Her eyes flew open. He put the cup to her mouth. Making a face, she drank down the concoction.

She fell back, once again unconscious. Gideon eased her down.

A minute passed while she lay motionless. The tension and anxiety from the chief and iPhone were palpable. They stood over her, wringing their hands, their faces distorted with worry.

And then, suddenly, Amy opened her eyes and looked around a little groggily.

A great cry went up from the chief and iPhone. The others who had retreated to the edge of the jungle now shuffled forward to see what was happening.

Amy raised herself onto her elbows and glanced up at the onlookers, blinking.

More hubbub and excitement. People were still hanging back, but the relief was tremendous.

Slowly, gingerly, Amy rose to her feet. The retching and convulsions had passed. She thanked first the chief, then iPhone. People began to crowd around. Amy looked awfully tired, swaying slightly on her feet, but nobody seemed to notice as they came back out of the bush, eyes wide in wonderment at the miracle, making a great noise of thankfulness, gesturing to the sky as if praising the gods.

And then the chief seized Gideon’s hand and raised it in triumph. He gave another incomprehensible speech that seemed to be full of praise for Gideon and his wisdom. At least, that’s what Gideon hoped it meant—since that had been his intention all along.

Clapping his hands, the chief began calling out instructions. The village children began chasing around a goat, finally capturing it and tying it up. iPhone came over with his machete and, to the sound of much horrible bleating, cut its throat.

The chief was beaming. He clapped again. “
Fiesta!
” he said.

“
Fiesta
,” murmured Amy, as if from a long way away. “
Fiesta
.”

As they prepared the feast, Gideon took Amy down to the beach to clean off the dirt and flecks of vomit. That evening, at the feast around the fire, they consumed barbecued goat. The chief made what seemed like an important announcement, greeted with applause. After much questioning, Gideon was able to decode it. It was exactly what he’d hoped: The next morning, they would be making the journey to the island of Tawaia, apparently to give thanks to the gods of healing and to the spirit of the lotus.

After the feast, late that night, Gideon and Amy finally were able to retreat to the darkness of their hut. Gideon lay down on his mat, his hands behind his head. For a while they lay in silence, Gideon listening to the distant sound of the surf and the murmuring of voices around the fire.

“Amy, your performance was amazing.”

A quiet snore. Amy, it seemed, was still under the influence of the lotus flower. It had seemed to take her every effort to remain awake during the feast.

“Amy?”

“Mmm?”

“You were horrifyingly effective. It scared the shit out of everyone—including me.”

A long pause before the bleary response came. “Long ago, at a very foolish time in my life, I studied Method acting.”

“Ah! A clue to the real Amy finally emerges. You put it to good use.”

“Your idea.” And Amy began to breathe softly again.

Gideon looked over. Every other time he’d seen Amy asleep, there had been a frown on her face. It was as if she was forever struggling with something—what, he could not imagine. Now, however, there was a smile on her sleeping face: a smile that practically radiated serenity and bliss.