Fragment

7:03 P.M.

The Hummer’s Mattracks rolled to a stop beside a towering baobab-like tree at the north rim of the island. About a dozen of these gargantuan trees clung to the edge of the island. From a distance they’d looked like toadstools, with vast umbrellas of dense green foliage.

“It lives here?” Cane was staring.

“Wait till you see his hobbit hole,” Andy said. “Oh, hey, if we’re going to transport them off the island before all the nukes go off we better take something to pack their things in!”

“Them? Pack their things?” the soldier said.

Andy nodded.

“We can use the specimen cases in the back here.” Nell glanced at Geoffrey; he nodded and reached for them.

Copey barked enthusiastically and jumped out first. Up here, near the island’s rim, the air was considerably fresher. The sound of the jungle below was a buzzing high-pitched white-noise.

The scientists each carried one of the aluminum specimen cases from the back of the Hummer.

Now that he was outside the vehicle, Cane carried his M-1 assault rifle, glancing warily at the branches overhead. They were far away from the teeming jungle at the island’s heart-but what lurked in the giant tree above them was anyone’s guess.

“Are you sure we’re all right, Andy, next to this thing?” Zero pointed his video camera up into the tangled canopy.

“Yeah, we’re fine if we stay close to the tree.”

A perimeter of salt seemed to have been excreted into the soil around the tree’s trunk. This seemed to hold back the Henders clover from attacking the creamy gray surface of its trunk, which was as wide as a house. Stepping stones led over the salt perimeter like a Japanese rock garden.

Though it had originally appeared to them like a spider with six legs radiating four meters, the creature now seemed compact. Two legs folded up in back like a spider’s. Its middle arms apparently acted as forelegs, and its upper arms tucked up against its long neck so that the first joints or “elbows” resembled pointy shoulders from which surprisingly human arms hung down. The hands on all six of its limbs had three fingers and two opposable thumbs. The scientists and the cameraman drank in the details of its anatomy and its elaborate and effortless motion with speechless wonder.

The long elastic tail from which the creature had dangled over the cave was now coiled inside a potbelly. A sheen of color played over its thick fur like the Aurora Borealis. Its head was onion-shaped, with an understated sagittal horn on top. It had a high-browed forehead over a wide and graceful mouth, and no sign of a nose. As it looked at them, its large oval eyes had a sly, feline look, moving independently in different directions. The eyes blinked with furry eyelids whenever their stalks retracted. Slanted triangular lobes projected to either side of the creature’s sagittal horn like brow-ridges over its eyes.

The shape of its wide mouth and lips had a duck-like friendliness, with smiling corners and an eager peak on its wide upper lip. Its expression had an elegant confidence that the humans found disconcerting. Reaching out one of its upper hands, the creature touched the barrel of Cane’s assault rifle with delicate curiosity.

Cane jerked the barrel back and aimed the weapon at its head.

“No!” Nell shouted.

Copepod barked frantically.

“Chill, dude!” Zero said, lowering his camera.

“You can trust him, Hender,” Andy told the creature.

“It has a name?” Thatcher sounded bemused.

“It’s cool, Cane.” Geoffrey spoke with more confidence than he felt. “This thing just saved our lives, remember?”

“It’s cool, Cane!” the creature sang, freaking the soldier out. Cane felt cornered. He darted a glance at Thatcher, who nodded at him discreetly, signaling patience. Cane backed down, and nodded back at Thatcher.

All watched in astonishment as the shimmering creature stepped delicately onto the stones, then turned toward them and gestured for them to follow. It opened a round door that was nearly imperceptible in the bulging trunk of the ancient tree.

Inside, engulfed by the flesh of the vast tree, they stepped into another surprise.

“It’s the fuselage of a World War II bomber,” Zero murmured.

Andy nodded. “Yep!”

Only the nose of the plane poked out of the massive trunk, hanging over the cliff at the far end. Through the twisted frame of the cockpit window, which seemed to have been covered by a stitched patchwork of clear plastic, they saw the sun setting over the sea.

“The house that Hender built,” Andy announced.

“‘Hender’?” Nell said.

“That’s what I call him. Or her. Or both.”

“Hender didn’t build this B-29,” Zero said. He canvassed the scene in broad pans.

With four hands, “Hender” pantomimed a plane trying to pull out of a steep nose dive and failing. It made a noise that was an uncanny approximation of an explosion.

“Do you suppose he saw it crash?” Geoffrey asked the others.

“That had to have been at least sixty years ago.”

“I think Hender’s old,” Andy told them. “Really old.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Geoffrey agreed. “Is he a solitary animal? Does he live by himself?”

“Yeah,” Andy said.

“What’s that got to do with how old he might be?” asked Nell, intrigued, as she glanced at Geoffrey.

“I’ll explain later,” Geoffrey said.

“Good.”

“It’s a radical theory.”

“Good.”

“Way outside the box.”

She gave him an appreciative glance, then smiled.

None of the humans could take their eyes off the remarkable creature for more than a moment as it moved gracefully toward the nose of the plane in which it had made its home. The fur on its body emitted soft fireworks of color as it pointed at the control panel in the cockpit. Like a weird recording, it spoke:

“This concludes the Pacific Ocean Network broadcast, May 7, 1945. Once again, it’s VEEE-EEE-DAAAY! Victory in Europe!”

Geoffrey and Nell glanced at each other in speechless astonishment.

“He must have heard that on the plane’s radio,” Zero whispered.

“Yeah,” Andy told them. “And I’ve heard him do Bob Hope, too.”

“I thought you said it didn’t speak English,” Cane snapped.

“He doesn’t. I’ve taught him a few words. And he repeats things he heard on the radio back then, but he doesn’t understand them.”

It was pleasantly cool inside Hender’s lair, and the air had a faintly sweet and spicy smell, somewhat like Japanese incense, Nell thought. She could see that Hender had collected a variety of wine bottles, bell-jars, fishing floats, a peanut butter jar, a mayonnaise jar-precious glass vessels had somehow miraculously survived their journey from civilization to Henders Island in cargo containers, steamer trunks, crates, and wrecks across great gulfs of time and distance.

With his three free arms, Hender shook some jars which held insect-like creatures, and their agitated glow filled the shadowy room with a flickering light.

“He catches fresh drill-worms and wasps by putting a piece of meat in each jar,” Andy explained. “You should see his rat trap.”

The glass vessels glowed green as Hender shook them, casting orbs of light. Nell could see scraps of what looked like trash or beach litter tacked to the walls and ceiling.

Hender’s guests seated themselves on crates inside the B-29 fuselage, some of which were lined up like a bench against one wall with an old rubber raft draped over it. Stenciled on the raft in faded black letters was a name.

“Electra?” Nell said in excitement. “This couldn’t really be Amelia Earhart’s raft, could it? That was the name of her plane, wasn’t it?”

Geoffrey stroked the cracked rubber, shaking his head as if nothing could surprise him now. “It seems old enough.”

Hender brought out a gourd of some sort.

“Andy, how did you survive six whole fucking days here, man?” Zero asked.

“That first day, Hender came down from the tree next to the lake and grabbed me,” Andy answered. “I thought I was dead. But I woke up here. I wasn’t dead and he had fixed my glasses with something like masking tape. See?” One arm of his glasses was bandaged at the joint.

The creature served them something in cups of cut-off plastic soda bottles and they were stunned by the dexterity of its multiple hands.

“It’s tea-time,” Andy said.

“Tea-time!” the creature sang.

Thatcher curled a lip as the creature served him a cup.

It handed Nell a cup.

“Thank you,” she nodded. “What is this?” she asked Andy.

“It’s OK. It’s actually pretty good. I call it Henders tea. But it’s more like chili, though. And it has meat in it. Rat meat. It tastes like lobster!”

Nell hesitated, crinkling her nose. Then she sipped, and found the “tea” was more like a tangy salsa than chili and, after the initial surprise, it was good. “Tastes like cherry lobster cinnamon gazpacho… with a hint of curry!”

“Thank you.” Geoffrey accepted a cup as he observed the anatomy of the creature’s two-thumbed hands, longing for a sketchpad or a camera to document them.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the creature hummed.

Nell and Geoffrey looked at each other, trembling with amazement.

Cane accepted a cup with undisguised dread. It was clear that the soldier would be happier when his mission was over and Henders island was in ashes.

“Thank you!” the creature said, making Cane jump.

“Thanks, dude,” Zero nodded, setting down his camera and taking his cup.

The creature held its head cocked at Zero for a beat. “Thanks, dude,” it echoed.

Geoffrey sipped the “tea” and scrunched his face at the strange taste.

“He makes it from eggs that grow on this bonsai plant he feeds rat-meat to,” Andy explained.

“Not bad,” Zero decided cheerfully, chugging the contents. “Oh hey! I almost forgot!” He unzipped a pocket in his cargo pants. “This is for you!” He presented a still-sealed plastic bottle of Diet Coke to Hender.

“Oh hey,” the creature trilled, its arms unfolding in an “X” of delight.

Thatcher sneered as Zero twisted off the top and handed Hender the Coke.

“It’s a little warm, but here ya go,” Zero told the creature.

They watched as the creature tasted the soft drink. Its coat scintillated as it guzzled the sweet liquid down. Both of its eyes pointed at Zero and Cane’s hand tightened on his gun. Then it belched loudly, smiling wide and smacking its lips.

Zero chuckled. “He likes it!”

“Yes,” Thatcher said drily. “I can see the ad campaign already. He’ll make Coca-Cola a fortune.”

Zero gave Hender a thumbs-up. “Cool, dude!”

Hender gave Zero twelve thumbs-up. “Cool, dude!”

“It’s extremely good at mimicry,” Thatcher observed.

Hender swiveled his head to look at Thatcher. “It’s extremely good at mimicry,” it said in a perfect imitation.

“Hender’s good at everything,” Andy declared.

Thatcher cast his eyes around nervously at the oddball collection of recovered objects decorating the walls. The trash seemed crudely grouped by the various alphabets used in the labels- Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, Cyrillic, and Latin. “Not much sign of a culture. Aside from our own garbage,” he remarked.

“I think we’re his hobby.” Andy finished his tea. “I think he’s been collecting our junk for a long, long time.”

Thatcher pursed his lips dismissively “Magpies collect human refuse. And mynah birds mimic our speech.”

Nell leveled her eyes at Thatcher. “Dr. Redmond, there is obviously profound intelligence in this being.”

“Oh, I certainly believe we must consider intelligence as a factor in determining what kind of organism we are dealing with here, Dr. Duckworth,” Thatcher retorted. “This creature may prove to be as deadly as we are, though I sincerely hope not.”

“Whatever Hender is, it’s certainly deadly to your theory, Thatcher,” Geoffrey remarked. “Your perfect ecosystem seems to have produced intelligent life, after all. And it managed not to wipe out an environment that’s lasted longer than any other on Earth. Hender here is living proof that you’re wrong, old boy! Looks like you might not get that Genius Grant, after all.”

Thatcher’s face turned deep red. “There is absolutely no shred of proof that this organism has intelligence equivalent to human beings! It-”

“Wait, wait!” Zero interrupted. “Look!”

Hender had been scratching the burnt tip of a thorn on the back of what appeared to be a candy bar wrapper.

Hender handed it to Sergeant Cane.

The wrapper trembled in the soldier’s hand as he read what appeared to be a scrawled word: “Signal.”

When Hender heard Cane read the word out loud, his head bobbed up and down, and his coat flushed with kaleidoscopic patterns of color. Hender grabbed the wrapper from Cane’s unresisting hands. With one of his eyes looking at the wrapper and one focused on Cane, the creature said: “Sig-nuhl?”

Startled, Cane recoiled.

Hender grabbed the charred thorn and with it, wrote on the inside of a clamshell.

He thrust the shell at Nell.

She looked at it in astonishment, then read the word out loud: “‘Coke.’”

She showed the shell to Geoffrey.

The creature gestured to his mouth and then to her mouth, then to Cane’s mouth, and then to the shell, excitedly.

Nell nodded. “Coke,” she said again.

Hender’s fur burst with colors as he took the shell from Nell and sounded out the syllable. “COKE!”

The creature rose on his bottom legs, pressing his back against the roof and making a variety of high-pitched noises. Then, with all four extending hands, he pointed at various items of litter tacked to the walls and ceiling of the fuselage.

Nell laughed in delight at the first item Hender pointed at on his wall.

“Tampax!” she and Geoffrey exclaimed simultaneously.

The creature extended all four arms in an asterisk of excitement over them. “Tampax!” Hender echoed, indicating a foil condom packet.

Nell, Geoffrey, Andy, and Zero yelled, “Trojan!”

“Wonderful.” Thatcher rolled his eyes. “I see our garbage has already exposed our most intimate biological details to this creature.”

Hender pointed to other items.

The scientists called them out: “Kodak! Yoo-Hoo! Vegemite! Bactine! Fresca! Fanta! Nestle Quik! Wrigley’s! Milk Duds! Milky Way! Purina Cat Chow! Orange Crush! Thera-Flu! Mylanta! Zagnut!”

The creature lifted a hand and squeezed his eyes shut. “Stope,” he said.

Hender must have heard, Geoffrey realized, examples of how every letter in the Latin alphabet was pronounced.

Hender opened his eyes. They flicked in different directions as he scanned the downed plane’s dusky interior. With two hands he jostled the hanging jars. They immediately lit up to generate some light, then, with a third hand, he pointed at a scrap and gestured silence with his fourth. In a humming voice that warbled like an oboe, he said: “Fro-zun Myoolet.”

The six humans were shocked into silence for a few heartbeats.

The creature was undeniably applying the rules of pronunciation on his own now: he could not be merely copying what he heard them say.

“Frozen Mullet,” Geoffrey corrected.

The creature’s eyes fluttered and his mouth pinched downward at the corners. “Mullet?” He held one hand up and closed his eyes. “Stope.”

Geoffrey corrected him again: “Stop.”

The creature’s eyes opened and swiveled toward Geoffrey as he placed four hands on his four hips. “Stop?” he honked. He sounded irritated.

All but Thatcher and Cane nodded vigorously.

“I really don’t see the point of this,” Thatcher objected. “When we obviously have to-”

“SHUT UP!” Nell, Geoffrey, Zero, and Andy shouted.

“He’s learning to read,” Geoffrey said. “So shut up, Thatcher!”

“Shut up, Thatcher,” Hender fluted, and his wide mouth seemed to smile at the red-faced zoologist.

Thatcher looked at Hender with dread and then at Cane. The soldier sat rigid, with eyes fixed in an inward stare.

“It doesn’t know what it’s saying!” Thatcher scoffed.

The creature pointed to a series of sun-bleached aluminum cans lined on a shelf: “Coo-ers, Bud-wee-izer, Fahn-tah, Hawaye-ee-an Punch!”

“Yes! Coors, Budweiser, Fanta, Hawaiian Punch!” Nell encouraged.

Cane’s eyes squeezed tight and he grasped the gold crucifix on the chain around his neck as he gripped the stock of his assault rifle.

The creature waved four arms at the ceiling, then leaned forward. “Dane-jer. Cah-ooti-own. Hazar-doo-us mater-ee-als. In case of ee-mergens-ee open escap-ee hatch. Abandun sheep!”

Geoffrey nodded, thrilled. “Yes! Danger. Caution. Hazardous. Emergency. Escape! Abandon ship!”

Hender nodded at each of Geoffrey’s corrections. “Yes, danger caution hazardous! Escape! Hender signal ah-thers. Hender signal.”

Geoffrey’s mouth fell open.

“He means it!” Zero said.

Nell leaned forward with sudden urgency. “How many others? How many?” With her fingers she counted slowly. “One-two-three-four-”

Hender nodded. “Four others.”

Thatcher sank back against the wall of the plane, a grim conclusion visible in his expression. He glanced again at Cane, who was now whispering over his crucifix.

The creature hurried toward them suddenly and they shrank away before they realized he was motioning for them to follow. He stepped through the biggest of several round holes that were cut into the side of the wrinkled B-29 fuselage.

“Time for a tour,” Andy said.

“Tooouuur!” the creature grunted, nodding his head on his bobbing neck.