Fragment

4:49 P.M.

Still buzzing from the adrenaline high of the tailhook landing on the nearly five-acre flight deck of the Enterprise, Geoffrey clung to a handle inside the cockpit of the thundering helicopter as it made a dizzying ascent over the island’s sheer putty-brown palisade. Both Geoffrey and Thatcher wore blue hazmat suits, their helmets in their laps.

Scanning the cliff’s overhanging face, Geoffrey noted the metamorphic banding and buckled red layers of rock, deeply corrugated by eons of erosion. They appeared even more weathered than the ancient shores of the Seychelles that had been isolated 65 million years ago at the edge of the age of dinosaurs. As the helicopter cleared the rim, a green bowl opened under them. At its bottom, a broken ring of jungle spread outward like a dark wave from a bald central mesa of weathered rock.

“Looks like a creosote plant,” Geoffrey observed.

Thatcher nodded.

“How so, Doctor?” asked one of the helicopter crewmen.

“Some individual creosote plants are probably the oldest multi-cellular living things on Earth,” Geoffrey answered. “From the air you can see large rings of vegetation across the floor of the Mojave Desert in California. Fossilized root systems show that the rings are from a single plant growing outward for ten thousand years.”

“No kidding!” the young pilot exclaimed, impressed.

Whether it was the geology, the deeply sculpted weathering of the topography, or the strange growth pattern of the vegetation- or all of these cues taken together-Geoffrey’s instincts and training told him that this remote island was considerably older than he had first assumed.

Below, they glimpsed the four sections of StatLab at the outer edge of the jungle. The NASA lab’s first two sections appeared to be dissolving under a wave of multicolored growth, and the other two sections were strangled and encrusted with vegetation. The jungle seemed to be literally consuming the lab and a plume of swarming bugs poured out of the end of the last section.

“That’s the old lab,” the crewman told them. “We had to abandon it last week.”

“Last week?” Geoffrey asked. The ruin looked like it must have been there for decades.

Farther up the slope they saw the Army’s base of operations on the island, a mobile theater command center. NASA had clearly had its chance and failed.

“That’s the Trigon,” said the pilot. “That’s where we’re going.”

The new facility was made up of three olive drab sections joined together in a triangle.

“That baby’s blast-resistant, has virus-proof windows and magnetic-pulse-protected power and communications systems,” bragged the pilot. “It’s a mobile theater base designed to survive germ warfare as well as high velocity direct fire, direct hits by mortar bombs, and a near-miss from a twenty-five-hundred-pound bomb. You’ll be safe as a baby in a cradle there, guys!”

The new base had been established on a level tier carved into the green slope about four hundred yards away from NASA’s crumbling lab. Twelve Humvees and three bulldozers sat in neat rows near the Trigon on the freshly graded terrace.

The Trigon was encircled by a moat lined with butyl rubber and filled with seawater hauled in by helicopter, the pilot informed them. Every thirty seconds powerful fountains sprayed a white wall into the air around the base.

Twenty-two 300,000-liter demountable water storage tanks rested on shelves graded higher up the slope, sprouting PVC pipes that fed moats and sprinklers around the base. Geoffrey recognized the tanks from his visit to Haiti after Hurricane Ella-the giant tanks could be transported to disaster areas anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours-by land, sea, or air-to provide safe water supplies.

As they approached the base, Geoffrey wondered why there were so many tanks. Why did they need so much water? He watched a helicopter filling one from a distended hose, like a robotic Pegasus relieving itself.

“Time to get those helmets on. We’re about to drop you two off. After you hear the click just twist them clockwise till you hear another click.”

The Sea Dragon descended over a landing zone, and the rear hatch opened, admitting a gale of hot wind and the urgent pulse of the helicopter rotors.

Geoffrey and Thatcher braced themselves for the ramp to touch down, but instead it hovered about five feet off the scorched and salted ground.

“We’re not allowed to land!” the pilot shouted. “Jump! Then run down the path to the building. You’ll be all right.”

“Er-OK.” Geoffrey poised himself for the jump.

But Thatcher balked. “You must be joking, young man.”

“Jump NOW, sir!”

As the ramp dipped, they both jumped and Thatcher took a tumble. “Fuck!”

Geoffrey hit the ground on his two feet, his knees flexing with the impact.

The helicopter rose and the downwash of its rotors pounded their backs.

Geoffrey helped Thatcher scramble to his feet and they both ran down a wet path of glistening rock salt bordered by fountains that sprayed a tunnel of cold water over them.

“I’ve had friendlier welcomes,” Thatcher groused, panting.

The fountains subsided for a moment and for the first time Geoffrey looked out across the island they now stood on. “What are they? Triffids?” He remembered the old science fiction movie in which experimental plants invaded the earth. The desperate humans discovered that saltwater killed the vegetation only moments before it had strangled the entire planet.

“What, pray tell, are ‘triffids,’ Doctor?” Thatcher wheezed as they ran.

“Never mind,” Geoffrey answered, and a thrill swelled inside him-what on Earth had they found here?