The Lost Island (24 page)

T
HEY RETURNED TO
the dwelling cave later that day. The Cyclops built up the fire in the cave and then disappeared out the door, carrying his spear, leaving Amiko and Gideon behind. It was the first time they’d had a chance to talk since seeing the Cyclopes’ necropolis. Even though they doubted the Cyclops could understand any English, they had both been reluctant to discuss their situation in front of him.

Amiko spoke first, the words pouring out. “My God, Gideon. Do you realize what that necropolis means? These Cyclopes—they aren’t just a bunch of cavemen. They have a culture. A history. A sense of the afterlife.
Religion
. That art—it indicates a symbolic understanding. In other words, they have something we might call civilization. And they’ve been here a very, very long time.”

“And that single eye,” said Gideon. “It’s an adaptation to darkness.”

“Exactly. This island is riddled with caves. This is their homeland. In a way, like
Homo floresiensis
, the ‘hobbits’ in Indonesia. This group of islands is where they evolved. And he may well be the last of his kind. I think he’s been alone for a long time—maybe hundreds of years.”

“Kept alive by the lotus.”

“We’ve got an obligation to protect him,” Amiko said. “Otherwise, he’ll end up in a zoo or a lab…or worse. Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll get some of those dried lotus and bring them back. That was the mission Glinn tasked us with. But we’ll keep secret the existence of the Cyclops and the location of the island. Nobody needs to know that. Mycologists might be able to cultivate the lotus, or perhaps chemists will be able to isolate and synthesize the active ingredients.”

“That may be difficult,” said Gideon. “The compounds in the lotus must be incredibly complex to have such a profound effect on the human body.”

“If that’s so, we’ve really got a problem on our hands.”

“And then there’s Glinn. He knows about the Cyclops. And he knows our general location.”

“He has no idea we found a
live
Cyclops. And he doesn’t know the location of the island. We’ll lie. We’ll make up a cover story, say we were on another island. Say we only saw bones—old bones.”

“Glinn’s a hard man to deceive,” said Gideon.

“Then we won’t deceive him. We just won’t
tell
him. We’ll keep silent. And if he insists on the details, we’ll be vague. We were sick, the details are fuzzy. I mean, how many times has Glinn kept us in the dark? Turnabout’s fair play, right?”

“So what now?” Gideon asked after a moment.

“We’re done here. We need to get back to civilization. With the lotus.”

“Easier said than done,” Gideon said. “We’re stuck on a volcanic peak walled in by sheer cliffs, in the middle of the sea, with no boat and no phone. Not to mention a mainland populated by people who are seriously pissed off at us.”

They fell silent, the fire burning low, casting flickering shadows about the walls of the cave. Beyond the entrance, the afternoon sun streamed through the vegetation, and the faint calls of birds and frogs could be heard drifting back. Gideon could feel the spell of the moment enveloping him as he thought back on what they’d seen and experienced: the lost-world magic of the island; the ancient Cyclops, apparently the last of his kind; the crystal mausoleum hidden in the cliffs; the ancient petroglyphs of the Greek ships. It was all so fantastical, so otherworldly. He looked at Amiko, her face, pale and beautiful, staring into the dying fire, the faint, earthy smell of the lotus lingering in the air like a musky perfume. Gideon extended a hand to her, and she turned her face toward him. He gently drew her toward him and their lips met. This time, he could feel the willingness, the eagerness of the contact. They kissed quietly, slowly. He pulled her closer, felt her breasts against him, and their kisses became faster, more urgent—

Suddenly a shadow fell over them and they sprang apart. The Cyclops stood in the entrance to the cave, a bloody howler monkey hanging from a stick. His single eye stared at them, black brow furrowed in displeasure. Slinging the dead monkey aside, he advanced at Gideon with a growl.

Gideon stood up, facing the creature and realizing what a colossal mistake they had made. He could feel the air congeal with tension.

The Cyclops halted a few feet from him, staring him down with his single, bloodshot eye. He was gigantic, towering over Gideon by a good three feet. Gideon could smell the creature: the sweat and dirt, the crushed jungle foliage. He could see that the Cyclops was flushed, the skin under his coarse hair mottled red, the muscles of his long arms jumping with nervous tautness. He sensed he was moments from being torn apart. But he stood his ground, feeling intuitively that to turn and run, or try to talk his way out of it, would only set off the explosion he still hoped to avoid. The Cyclops, although clearly enraged, his veins pulsing with anger and jealousy, seemed uncertain what to do next.

Gideon waited for a sign, a signal, some sort of indication how to defuse the situation. But he could think of nothing.

Amiko tried to speak—a few halting words of ancient Greek—but the Cyclops silenced her with a terrifying roar, brown teeth snapping.

Slowly, a hand rose up and closed around Gideon’s throat. Gideon grasped the wrist with both hands and tried to tug it away. But the Cyclops was unbelievably strong, the wrist like a steel bar.

“Don’t. Please.” He glanced over at his bag. The gun was in there. Amiko could use it. She followed his eyes and seemed to understand.

The grip tightened.

In a smooth and easy motion, Amiko reached out, grasped the bag, removed the gun, and pointed it at the Cyclops.

He ignored her, the fist tightening. Gideon could feel his air being cut off, the blood thrumming through constricted arteries.

Amiko spoke again in Greek, but the Cyclops didn’t appear to hear, so focused was he on Gideon. Still grasping Gideon by the neck, the creature lifted him off the ground.

Gideon could no longer breathe. He felt himself starting to black out and struggled to cry out to Amiko. She had to shoot.
Now
.

The ground suddenly shook. A faint rumble like thunder rolled through the forest. The Cyclops jerked, startled, dropping Gideon and staring about wildly.

Coughing, tugging at his neck, Gideon scrambled to his feet and backed away. Amiko was still pointing the gun, but the Cyclops was ignoring both of them, completely focused on the sound. Another rumble, the ground shaking. This was clearly something the Cyclops had never heard before, and he was becoming more agitated than they’d ever seen him. In a flash he loped to the entrance of the cave and peered out with his huge yellow eye, surveying the jungle.

“Thunder?” Amiko asked.

“No,” Gideon replied in a strangled voice.

Now another sound reached them: the
thwap-thwap
of chopper blades. In an instant the Cyclops vanished into the forest. Gideon exited the cave with Amiko and stared up in time to see a shape passing over them: a large single-engine helicopter, which Gideon recognized as a Sikorsky S-70, was passing over the trees. A column of smoke was rising into the pristine sky from the far end of the island-top. Even as they looked, there was the roar of another explosion, along with a wash of overpressure that lashed the jungle canopy. Another ball of fire rose into the sky, billowing into black smoke.

“What the hell?” Amiko cried.

“Napalm!” yelled Gideon, over the roar. “They’re clearing a landing zone!”

“They?
Who?
”

As the S-70 passed overhead, Gideon could see no identifying logos or marks—only a call number. But even as he watched, the chopper slowed and the cargo door slid open. Just before the chopper disappeared over the trees, Gideon could have sworn that the man standing in the door, wearing plain jungle camo, was Manuel Garza.

T
HE HELICOPTER HAD
vanished, but Gideon could still hear the thud of its rotors. It sounded like it was going into a hover near the middle of the island, no doubt to rope down personnel to finish clearing the LZ.

“
Glinn
,” said Amiko, in a low voice.

Gideon swore. “I guess he got a better fix on us than we realized.”

For a long time, neither said a word. The thump of the chopper blades rolled through the trees, the smoke billowed upward. Soon that was joined by the sound of chain saws.

Gideon looked at Amiko. He could see the disbelief, the shock and anger, in her eyes.

“We need to stop this,” she said.

“Yes. We need to confront Glinn, find out what’s going on.”

They went back into the cave, threw some supplies into a drysack. Without exchanging a word, they set out toward the rising smoke and the outraged buzz of chain saws, following the web of trails toward the far end of the island. As they moved on, the sounds grew louder: the crashing of a great tree being felled, the whines of multiple chain saws going at once, the shouts of men, the crackle of radios—and now the rumbling of a massive diesel generator.

They burst into the clearing. One chopper was coming in while a second had already put down. A third was hovering nearby. It staggered Gideon how much had been done in so little time. A crew was busily cutting up and hauling off a litter of great trees that lay on the ground, while others went around with fire extinguishers putting out the last of the napalm fires that had devoured the thick brush and understory. Still others were erecting metal poles for tents and establishing an electrified perimeter fence.

At one side, a massive metal cage was being erected.

At the sight of this, Gideon stopped. It was impossible. They hadn’t told Glinn—hadn’t even known themselves—that there was a live Cyclops on the island.

“The son of a bitch,” breathed Gideon. “How did he know?”

Amiko said nothing.

Nearby stood a large wall tent, already erected and staked out, with a small gazebo adjacent to it. After a moment’s hesitation, Gideon walked toward it, Amiko following. He pulled aside the flap and there, as he expected, was Glinn, sitting in an all-terrain wheelchair, wearing light safari clothing, a young blond man in camo standing at his side, holding an M16. Nearby stood Manuel Garza, his face like stone.

“Ah, Gideon and Amiko,” Glinn said. “I was expecting you. Come in.”

“What’s that cage for?” Amiko asked quietly.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“Answer my question.”

“You know some of it already. It all started with the vellum.
Respondeo ad quaestionem, ipsa pergamena
. ‘I, the very page, answer the question.’ It turns out that the ‘very page’—the parchment itself—was the solution. It was made from the skin of an animal—but not any sort of animal normally used for parchment. We did a DNA analysis of the sample. As I’ve told you, we identified the creature that the parchment was taken from. Neanderthal. But there was a twist. This Neanderthal-like hominid was different. More robust. Bigger. Fiercely aggressive. And in one area, this creature’s genetics are completely different from Neanderthals—and modern humans. And that is in the area of sight. The creature of the vellum had a very different way of seeing, a single, large optic nerve, a single area of the brain for optic processing—and what’s more,
a single eye
. When you radioed that you’d seen the skull of a Cyclops, we knew exactly what this creature was. And when we ran this information through our proprietary QBA programs, we got a most interesting result: that, given the remote location of this island group and lack of contact with the outside world,
there was no good reason to think the Cyclops had gone extinct
.”

“And the cage,” said Amiko. “That’s for…capturing one?”

“While the lotus is our prime goal, the scientific opportunity to study a living Neanderthal-like creature must not be missed.”

Gideon stared at him, then glanced at Amiko. She was looking at him with intensity, communicating some meaning.

Gideon managed an easy laugh. “That’s ridiculous. We’ve been on the island now for days. We haven’t seen the slightest indication of any Cyclopes. You might as well send that cage back to where it came from.”

Glinn seemed to pierce him with his one gray eye. “You’re an excellent liar, Gideon, but you can’t fool me.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I shall keep the cage ready and waiting, because you have just confirmed what I suspected: that there are Cyclopes on this island.”

Amiko finally spoke. “Wrong. There’s
one
Cyclops. A very old one. The last of its kind.”

Glinn arched his eyebrow. “Indeed?”

“So you see,” said Amiko slowly, “there’s no way you can put the last one in that cage. It would be a crime against nature.”

“I’m sorry, Amiko, but we’re going to be working to recover the lotus. Our activities will be disruptive to the Cyclops’s habitat. The creature will need protection.”

Amiko’s voice rose a notch. “You need to call this whole thing off. Right now. You’re wrecking the island. It’s a unique habitat. This isn’t the way to recover the lotus!”

“I am sorry,” said Glinn, “but it’s the
only
way to recover the lotus.”

Amiko said, “You’ll kill him if you put him in that cage.”

“Him?” Glinn’s one eyebrow raised slightly.

“Yes, him.”

“So you’ve made contact?”

“Yes.”

He lapsed into silence. Finally he sighed and extended one claw-like hand in a gesture of conciliation. “May I speak?”

Amiko said nothing.

“There are two issues here,” Glinn began, his voice mild, reasonable. “The first is that we’ve discovered a medicine that will change the lives of every human being on this planet. It’s that significant. Of much less importance, but still extraordinary, is our discovery of a living hominid—”

“
Our
discovery?” Gideon said acidly. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“
Your
discovery of a living hominid, a relative of our species, a variant of
Homo neanderthalensis
. That this creature lives in the same place as the miracle drug and apparently feeds on it is unfortunate. By landing here, by identifying the plant and obtaining samples, we can bring the drug to humanity. By studying the creature, we can learn much about our origins. Two birds with one stone. That is why we’re here. And truly, the Cyclops needs to be protected, if only from itself.”

“You’re not going to put him in that cage,” Amiko said.

“We need to create the right habitat for him.”

“Habitat,” Amiko repeated. “You mean, zoo?”

“He can’t be turned loose just anywhere to fend for himself. Certainly you can see that. We will find a suitably appropriate habitat for him to live out the rest of his days.”

“Amiko’s right,” said Gideon. “He’ll die in a cage.”

Glinn continued on, his voice infuriatingly calm. “Mr. Garza and I ran countless scenarios on this. We chose the route with the highest probability of success. That route requires us to go in fast and hard, get the lotus, and get out. To establish a Cyclops preserve, we’d have to enter into negotiations with the Nicaraguan and Honduran governments—for whom this island is disputed territory. That would mean going through our State Department and diplomatic channels—a sure route to failure. We’re here, we’ve taken possession, and by the time anyone finds out, we’ll be gone. The Cyclops is in the way. We will do all we can to save it. But the lotus comes first. We’ll be doing God’s work in bringing this miracle to the human race.”

“God’s work?” said Amiko. “You really are crazy.”

“Not at all. This medicine is not for the benefit of one corporation, one nation, or one socioeconomic class. The goal of our client is to use this discovery to benefit the world.”

“Your goal is right, but not like this! That Cyclops saved my life! And Gideon’s!” Amiko’s voice was on the verge of breaking.

“It’s the only way.”

“It’s
not
the only way.
You can’t do this
.” She swallowed. “Wait until you see him, you’ll understand. He’s a person, he’s almost a human being. But even more than that, he’s the last of his kind. You can’t take him away from his home. Please, Eli, let him live out his last days here, in peace, in the place he knows and loves, where all his memories are.”

“I am indeed sorry, but that can’t happen.”

“
For the love of God, don’t put him in that cage!
”

“The cage is only temporary—”

In one smooth, practiced motion, Amiko pulled the .45 from the drysack and pointed it at Glinn. The aide raised his M16, but Glinn made a sharp gesture for him to put up the rifle.

“I’ll kill you before you put him in that cage,” Amiko said. “I swear to God.”

Glinn contemplated the .45 with a steady gray eye. “I already know you won’t use that on me.”

“You son of a bitch, I will!”

“Then do it.”

Amiko raised the barrel and fired it into the air, the massive pistol giving off a deafening boom, then lowered the muzzle again. Glinn continued looking at her. A group of soldiers burst into the tent, but Glinn again held up his hand. “Let me handle this.” He glared at Amiko. “I’m still waiting to see if you’re a killer. You want to stop this? You can do it by pulling the trigger.”

Amiko stared at him, her chest heaving, the gun shaking in her hand. Suddenly she rushed at him, swinging the gun like a club. The aide launched himself forward to tackle her, grabbing for the gun, but she was too quick, spinning around and striking him in the head with her foot. The two soldiers threw themselves into the struggle, one punching her hard in the face. Seeing this, Gideon joined in without thought, tackling one soldier and sending him sprawling into the side of the tent, while kneeing the other solider in the diaphragm. The tent came down around them with a tearing of canvas and clattering of poles. Others joined the fray and in a moment it was over. Gideon found himself jammed facedown on the ground, knees pressed into his back. He could hear Amiko amid the wreckage of the tent, screaming like a wild woman.

“Clear this mess away,” came Glinn’s cool voice.

The tangle of torn tent fabric and bent poles was whisked off, leaving Glinn sitting, unscathed, in his wheelchair. Amiko was pinned by two men, her nose bloody, screaming at Glinn.

“Let Gideon up,” Glinn said.

They released him and Gideon stood up, spitting blood from a cut lip.

“You bastard,” Amiko screamed at the top of her lungs. “You won’t just kill him, you’ll be responsible for the extinction of his species!”

“You
are
a bastard,” said Gideon, staring at Glinn, and then at Garza. Garza hadn’t participated in the melee. His face was a hard, neutral mask.

“You won’t get away with this,” Amiko continued yelling. “The world will know! You cage that Cyclops, you’ll pay!”

Glinn shook his head. “You are thinking with your emotions.”

“Go to hell!”

“Please take her away until she’s rational.”

She was hauled away, cursing and spitting. Glinn turned his gray eye on Gideon. “You seem…confused.”

“I’m not confused about the way you’re treating her. It’s outrageous.”

“I want you to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. Give me credit for caring what you think.”

Gideon stared at him. He could still hear Amiko outside, yelling, screaming, and threatening. He didn’t quite know what to make of her outburst, pulling the gun. The intensity of her rage, its extreme suddenness, shocked him. Glinn, on the other hand, almost appeared to have expected it.

“As I was saying, this is the best—and the only—way to succeed. If we let the local governments become involved—even if they don’t destroy the island in their squabble over it—they will seek to monetize the discovery. They will cut an exclusive deal with a multinational pharmaceutical company to bring the drug to market. The end result is that the drug will be expensive and available only to the privileged. And they’ll put the Cyclops in a real zoo and monetize that as well. The way to stop this is to do what we are doing now. A preemptive strike. Our client, who is completely trustworthy and a man of goodwill, will found a nonprofit organization that will breed the plant and distribute it free to any qualified research group, government, and pharmaceutical company that wants it. In this way, the drug will come to market at the lowest possible cost.”

He paused again and eyed Gideon with peculiar intensity. “I’d think you,
of all people
, would want to see this drug developed.”

Gideon said nothing. Glinn had touched him where he was most vulnerable. But caging the Cyclops remained an ugly,
ugly
decision.

Glinn went on in his reasonable voice. “The logic is inescapable. We will do all we can to help the Cyclops, but it cannot remain on this island. According to our computer simulations, we have twenty-four hours before our presence here is discovered and investigated. If we don’t have the lotus by then, we will fail.”

Gideon winced slightly as Amiko, outside, let forth another shrill outburst. “As always,” he said, “you make everything sound so inevitable. But I want no part of it.”

“And you shall have none. Neither you nor Amiko. Tomorrow morning, Manuel will fly you both to Managua, and from there you will return to the States. Your work is done. And exceedingly well done, if I might say so, despite the contretemps at the end.” He gestured toward the sound of Amiko’s screaming. Glancing in her direction, Gideon could see that the two men holding her were having a hard time; she was amazingly strong for someone so small.

Suddenly a thunderous roar came from the wall of jungle. Gideon turned his head in time to see an extraordinary sight. The Cyclops came bursting from the foliage, his yellow eye fiery with rage, his mouth open, exposing long, yellow canines, his gigantic, muscled frame radiating ferocity, his silver hair streaming behind him. He carried a club in one massive hand and a spear in the other. He rushed straight at the men holding Amiko, who were so stunned they seemed momentarily paralyzed. He swung the club, which literally exploded the skull of one of the men, and grabbed Amiko.