Fragment

7:10 P.M.

They followed Hender up a spiral stairway that seemed half-natural and half-carved inside the massive tree.

In niches beside the stairway, various man-made glass vessels glowed faintly green. Hender flicked these jars as he passed them, and each brightened as bioluminescent bugs swirled inside, illuminating the passageway and revealing more signs, trash, labels, and artifacts tacked to the walls and hanging from the ceiling.

Hender paused before a chest-high niche and tapped a bug-jar inside it. Inside the niche the humans saw a propped-up coconut. It wore a somewhat askew scarlet cap and bore a crudely carved human face blended with eerie elements of Hender’s anatomy. Lying next to it was a pocketknife with an ivory handle, which Hender picked up and handed to Nell.

“It looks like scrimshaw,” she said. “A name’s carved on it here, see?” She showed it to Geoffrey.

Hender took it from her and read it out loud: “Hen-ree FERRR-reeeers.”

“No way,” she whispered. “Henry Frears?”

“Yes, OK!” Hender warbled.

“What’s the matter, Nell?” Geoffrey asked.

“Henry Frears was the name of the man the Retribution lost while collecting water on the island,” she said.

“Huh?” Geoffrey said.

“Captain Henders recorded it in his log when he discovered the island in 1791.”

“Where’d Hender get a coconut?” Zero muttered.

“If this is Frears’s hat,” Nell said. “Then Hender may have actually seen him. That would make Hender over 220 years old!”

“I told you,” Andy said. “I think he’s a lot older than that.”

Hender whistled and gestured with three hands for them to follow.

They passed another niche displaying another carved coconut. This one wore a WWII American officer’s cap. A long gouge in the side of the coconut was smeared with red pigment.

“Maybe the captain of the B-29?” Zero suggested grimly.

They passed more rooms, peering into them with frustrated curiosity, as they hurried behind their tour guide up the winding passageway.

In another niche, an uncarved coconut gazed out at them. This one was faceless. It had dried red seaweed for hair and wore a Mets baseball cap.

“Hey, my cap!” Nell exclaimed. She reached for it and put it on her head with a half-smile at Hender. “I left it behind on StatLab.”

Hender’s head swiveled down toward her on his long neck, and he nodded. “Nell, yes!” he croaked, seeming to awkwardly mimic her smile.

She glanced back at Geoffrey with wide eyes. “He said my name!” she whispered.

Strung along the corkscrewing ceiling was a collection of glass fishnet floats and plastic buoys. More random garbage, battered and bleached, seemed pinned to every available square inch of wall space. As they came around a curve they saw, mounted above them and illuminated by a freshly-riled jar of bugs, what appeared to be the faded figurehead of a Spanish galleon, a mermaid carved in wood, half human and half fish.

“Looks like a cargo cult,” Thatcher mused as they came around another bend in the stairs and amidst the flotsam saw a life preserver stenciled with faded dark blue letters: R.M.S. LUSITANIA.

“Thank you, God!” Zero laughed as he videoed it with his handheld and head-mounted cameras.

Nell glanced at Geoffrey behind her, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Geoffrey nodded and impulsively squeezed her hand.

As they came through a level passage they saw artifacts that were clearly more recently acquired: pieces of ROVs, an Army helmet, even an Incredible Hulk action figure.

Hender opened a door. They emerged on a huge branch under the umbrella of the tree’s canopy.

Below, attached to the trunk of the tree, hung an enormous waterwheel-like structure.

From the wheel spooled a thick cable of braided green fiber. The cable ran through a pulley on a branch that reached over the cliff.

A basket the size of the Trident’s large Zodiac hung at the end of the cable against the orange glow of the setting sun, swinging slowly in the steady wind that blew seven hundred feet above the sea.

Hender pointed at the basket and then at some of the garbage stacked in piles on the wide branch.

“Hender’s got an elevator,” Andy told them.

“That must be how he got his collection! The elevator must go down to a beach where he got all this stuff.”

“Trash,” Thatcher said, glancing back at Cane. “Humanity’s calling card.”

“Um,” Zero looked around nervously, “should we be out here?”

“It’s OK, Zero,” Andy assured him. “The tree gives off some kind of bug repellent. We’re safe here.”

Nell laughed. “This is a plant,” she sighed. “The first actual plant on this island!”

Andy smiled. “Too bad it doesn’t have a flower, Nell.”

“I wonder if they evolved together.” Geoffrey watched Hender climb nimbly to a high branch and extend his arms in a double V. A soulful, lilting call resonated through a chamber in the creature’s cranial crest.

A distant chorus of four similar horn-calls answered from across the bowl of the island.

“We’ve heard that before,” Andy said. “Remember, Nell?”

Tears of shame brimmed in her eyes as she remembered the nightmarish voices the outboard mikes had picked up in StatLab echoing across the island. “Yes…”

“So there are four more of them,” Thatcher said.

“OK,” Geoffrey said, decisively. “We need a pow-wow. Now.”