Fragment

7:33 P.M.

Thatcher burst in and slammed the door behind him.

Copepod snarled at him.

“Not good, Thatcher,” Hender said, startling him.

“I agree,” Nell said. “What did they say, Thatcher?”

“Please call off this dog!” Thatcher scowled.

Hender whistled and Copepod ran to his side. Hender stroked the dog with his two right hands, and Thatcher studied Hender for a moment. He didn’t answer Nell’s question.

“What did they say, Thatcher?” Geoffrey pressed.

“The seismic activity must be interfering with radio reception,” Thatcher answered. “Cane said he had to get closer to transmit a message.”

“My God, that guy was scared out of his wits!” Zero said.

“You should have gone with him to make sure the right message gets through to the President,” Nell said, running a hand back through her hair in frustration.

“I wrote it all out for him,” Thatcher snapped. “He said he would be right back!”

A hard earthquake jolted the fuselage.

“Aye-yai-yai-yeesh,” Hender trilled.

“This isn’t good,” Geoffrey said, reaching for handholds and glancing at Nell, who seemed struck by a dawning thought.

They looked around at the curiosities now swaying from Hender’s roof.

“The quakes have been getting worse,” Andy said. “All the hen-dros are upset about it.”

“Hendros?” asked Thatcher.

“I call them hendros,” Andy said. “Short for hendropods.”

Nell looked at her watch. “Cane better not take too long, Thatcher. Considering everything that will need to be done to get the hendros safely off the island, we don’t have much time.”

“We should have enough,” Geoffrey reassured her, and he jabbed a look at Thatcher.

Twenty minutes later, Andy asked, “Where’s our driver, Thatcher?” for the fifteenth time.

Hender was bouncing a blue plastic ball back and forth with Andy, who sat on the floor in front of him as they all waited for Cane to return.

“How should I know?” Thatcher repeated, glancing at his watch again.

“Maybe they’re putting a caravan together or something.” Geoffrey had been marveling at the creature playing ball with Andy, watching how its arms moved and joints flexed, and observing the psychology and culture in its intelligence, its humor, its playful interaction with Andy.

“This place will probably be crawling with the military any time now,” Zero said.

“Can you imagine how this kind of news might be going down back at the base?” Nell asked, her unwelcome thought recurring.

Zero snickered. “Yeah, it must have blown their fragile little eggshell minds.”

“We have to think about how to safely transport them. Andy, you should travel with Hender.”

“Make sure the Army knows that, Nell,” Andy said, batting the ball back to Hender. “People don’t listen to me.”

“They better come soon,” Geoffrey said.

Zero shrugged. “All we can do is wait.”

“We can’t wait too long,” Nell warned.

Despite Andy’s clumsy returns and outright misses, Hender used four hands, even his fifth and sixth when necessary, to save the ball every time in a mesmerizing volley. Copepod sprawled between them, panting with excitement.

When stretching out with all limbs extended, Hender had the appearance of a spider. When seated, however, Hender had a paunch between his pelvic-ring and his middle ring and tended to rest his upper forearms on top of his potbelly. Sitting across from Andy with his upper arms folded up like shoulders against his long neck, he seemed like a cross between Buddha and Vishnu, with widening pink and emerald rings of light effusing on his photophoric white fur.

Nell and Geoffrey caught each other watching the ballgame. They laughed, sharing their awe, and climbed down to sit on the floor near Andy.

“You know, something may have made it off Henders Island already,” Geoffrey speculated.

“Let me guess,” Andy said, volleying the blue ball. “Stoma-topods?” He missed the return, and Hender saved it.

“Right. Mantis shrimp! You had the same thought?”

“What do you think attacked the NASA rover? Thirty-five-foot mantises came out of that lake.”

“Wow,” Geoffrey said. “Angel should be here!”

“Angel?” Nell said.

“My office mate. Angel Echevarria. A stomatopod freak. He spotted the resemblance to mantis shrimp from the SeaLife footage. Hender has a vague resemblance to them, too, especially the way he folds his upper arms. And his eyes.”

“You think mantis shrimp may have evolved here?” Nell asked.

“Stomatopods probably evolved only 200 million years ago,” Andy pointed out. “This place has been isolated much longer.”

“Right, Andy,” Geoffrey said, “but the South Pacific Ocean is considered to be the center of the mantis shrimp’s adaptive radiation. Henders Island was right here, passing through the middle of it. The superior attributes of the mantis shrimp could be explained by this hyper-competitive ecosystem-and they’re continuing to spread around the world at an amazing rate. They may be the only species that escaped Henders Island.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Andy missed again and again Hender saved it.

“So are you saying this creature evolved from a mantis shrimp?” Thatcher had been silent for a long time, repeatedly checking his watch.

“No, of course not,” Geoffrey replied. “No more than we evolved from a spider monkey, but we may have a common ancestor.”

“He doesn’t look like a crustacean,” Thatcher argued.

“But he might, if crustaceans kept evolving in the same direction lizards and mammals eventually went,” Geoffrey replied. “If left alone, would they have followed a path similar to mammals? Would their exoskeletons shrink and then submerge under a waterproof keratinized epidermis to ward off dehydration, like reptiles, birds, and us?”

“Cuttlefish once had a nautilus-like shell that became internalized over millions of years,” Andy remarked.

“Maybe the same genes that led to cuttlefish color-displays led to this evolutionary branch, as well.”

“I like the way you think, Dr. Binswanger,” Nell said. He smiled.

Hender tapped Andy’s knee impatiently and Andy fumbled for the ball, offering it to Hender.

“That’s absurd.” Thatcher shook his head. “Lobsters are more primitive than stomatopods and are thought to be their ancestors. That would mean that all arthropods evolved on Henders Island!”

“Ha!” Andy said. “Stomatopods and mantises are in the same class of arthropods, Malacostraca, sure, but they’re in totally different subclasses. Only Schram thought they could be descended from the same primitive eumalocostracan ancestor, but most car-cinologists rejected that as a needlessly complicated family tree, Dr. Genius Award! And nobody, but nobody, would say stomatopods descended from lobsters. Jeesh.”

“All right, so my classification of crustaceans may be a bit rusty.” Thatcher’s face flushed nearly as red as his mustache. “The point is, all arthropods could not have evolved here!”

“Not only do I think it’s unnecessary for all arthropods to have evolved on Henders Island for mantis shrimp to have originated here,” Geoffrey replied evenly, “but I also think it’s possible that all arthropods did evolve here, Dr. Redmond. Back when this fragment was a part of the Pannotia supercontinent.”

“Henders Island must have been much larger through most of its history,” Nell confirmed. “God, there could have been an entire civilization of Hender’s kind back then. Who knows how far back they go?”

“Wow, man,” Zero chuckled, sucking it all into his lens. He saw a red indicator light blinking in his handheld camera. “Fuck,” he said, and he quickly switched its memory stick.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Hender sang.

“Don’t teach him that, Zero,” Nell scolded.

“Sorry.” Zero aimed the freshly loaded camera.

“I still don’t see what you’re driving at,” Thatcher said, glancing at his watch again.

“The mantis shrimp is by far the most advanced crustacean on Earth. It may have evolved separately on this fragment of Pannotia before escaping from it 200 million years ago. You have to think outside the box, Thatcher.” Geoffrey smiled at Nell.

“The curse of man.” Thatcher pursed his lips under his thick mustache. “That ‘box’ we’re so good at thinking outside of is the natural order, Dr. Binswanger.”

“That box is conventional thinking, Dr. Redmond,” Geoffrey shot back.

“What is rational is madness to nature. The innocent attempts of the questioning mind invariably lead to re-orchestrating a symphony that has been tuned and syncopated over millions of years.”

“The history of Hender proves you wrong,” Geoffrey retorted.

Thatcher’s jaw tightened. “There are only a few of these creatures now, presumably. How can you predict what will happen when there are a million?”

“How can you?”

“Hold on a minute, I’m troubled by something here,” Nell interposed. “Are you saying that my favorite food-lobster-may have evolved here on Henders Island?”

Geoffrey nodded. “Well, yes, from a first wave of migration, when it was Henders Supercontinent.”

She smiled. “So how could the fact that they live alone increase their life span? You mentioned that before. Incidentally, I love the way your mind works, Dr. Binswanger.” Her mahogany-red hair was tangled and her shirt was still damp after being doused with seawater. Geoffrey’s pulse quickened unexpectedly as she leaned forward, her hands planted one after the other in front of her crossed legs, openly admiring something about him that people rarely noticed as she looked in his eyes.

Thatcher checked his watch, nibbling nervously on a few last peanuts that had slipped out of an airline packet into pocket number four.

Andy caught the ball and turned to Geoffrey. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Hender has a fossil collection.”

“What?” Nell, Geoffrey, and Thatcher realized that fossils from Henders Island would be like fossils from Mars.

Andy grinned. “Yep. And they sure look like pre-Cambrian biota to me. He’s got the most primitive Anomalocaris I’ve ever seen.”

“They found some fossils when they excavated the hillside for the Army’s base, but nothing identifiable,” Nell said.

“Since our driver-ahem!-seems to be taking his time getting back here, Thatcher, let’s take a look!”

“They must be arranging a rescue party,” Thatcher said.

“I hope you’re right,” Zero said, glaring at him.

“Where are the fossils?” Geoffrey asked. “We need to make sure they come with us!”

“Hender,” Andy said. “Fossils?”

Hender nodded, turning and reaching under a counter made from the planks of wooden shipping flats lashed together. With all arms he pulled out a stack of four flat hexagonal baskets apparently woven of some tough fiber.

He swiveled like a crane, and with all four arms he carefully lowered the heavy stack onto the floor. Then he opened the flap of the basket on top.

Geoffrey and Nell kneeled on the floor, breathless.

Thatcher could not resist, rising to peer over their shoulders.

“These are soft-bodied fossils,” Geoffrey whispered.

“My God, the detail is exquisite,” Nell murmured as she observed a reddish feather-like worm with snail-stalk eyes profiled as if in a snapshot.

“They look older than Burgess specimens,” Geoffrey said. “Even nearer to the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion-”

“Look! There’s a primitive version of Wiwaxia, and…could that be Hallucigenia?”

Nell pointed at a red cameo of a half-spherical animal with small spikes on its curving back. A tiny spiked worm was embedded in the silvery olive-colored shale.

“They could just be juveniles,” Thatcher said.

Nell lifted the slab to reveal another leaf of stone showing fantastical animals trapped in mid-somersault, mid-glide, and mid-pirouette by a sudden mudslide 600 million years ago.

“Larger,” she said. “But still more primitive.”

“The others may have been juveniles,” Geoffrey told her. “But these adults are still more primitive than any Cambrian fossils I’ve seen. Look at the radial symmetry in these arthropods!”

“Look at this quilted seaweed-my God, these could be the missing links between Ediacaran and Cambrian life!” she breathed.

“This could be the page that’s missing-the moment before the Cambrian explosion before life branched into our world and this one!”

Zero captured it all on video. “I’m sold, kids. Don’t worry about me!”

“Fossils,” Hender said proudly.

“Yes, Hender,” Nell said, extending her hand.

Hender took it carefully in his four gentle hands, his eyes widening, their six “pupils” focusing on her. “It’s OK, Nell,” Hender hummed.

“Yes,” Nell nodded, and laughed. “It’s very OK, Hender!”

“We better pack these away to take them with us,” Andy said. “He’s got more in smaller baskets, too, all around here.”

“Hot damn,” Zero said and looked heavenward with one eye. “With this footage I can retire to Fiji.” He laughed. “Not that I will.”

“No? What’ll you do, Zero?” Nell took the handheld camera from him, turning it around and pointing it at the photographer.

“Well,” Zero smiled, unaccustomed to this side of the lens, his face lighting up. “I’ll probably sail around the world and make some documentaries. Maybe even write a book!”

“Great!”

“I guess we can all write a book after this.” Geoffrey laughed as Nell turned the camera on him.

“And probably all get Tetteridge awards,” Andy said. “Right, Thatcher?”

Nell zoomed in on Thatcher as the older man smirked.

Geoffrey grinned. “I wonder who’ll play me in the movie?”

“Tom Cruise, no doubt,” Thatcher muttered.

“Yeah, that’s funny. ’Cuz I’m black and Tom Cruise isn’t black, and that whole thing. Yeah.”

“Imagine the book Hender will write.” Nell turned the camera toward Hender.

“Now there’s a guaranteed Nobel,” Andy said.

Hender suddenly gestured to Andy and moved to the window of the cockpit.

“He wants some privacy,” Andy translated.

They watched the alien being look out over the sea, where he had so rarely seen the vehicles of human beings passing in the distance.

Nell handed the camera back to Zero.

Geoffrey noticed a World War II signal handbook on the floor beside his foot. It was opened to a page with Morse code. He picked it up, and Nell noticed it.

“Andy,” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know Morse code?”

“Nope. I was rejected by the Boy Scouts.”

“We don’t have a way to signal the base from here anyway,” Zero reminded them.

Nell took the book from Geoffrey. “Hender must have figured out the word for distress signal or emergency and matched it to the Morse code for S.O.S.!”

“Wait a minute, are you saying Hender signaled us?” Geoffrey exclaimed.

“Impossible,” Thatcher said.

“Hender set off that EPIRB,” Nell breathed. Her eyes glowed with excitement.

“Jesus,” Zero whispered.

“Oh wow!” Andy said.

“What’s an EPIRB?” Geoffrey asked.

“The emergency beacon that first brought SeaLife here,” Nell told him. “The earthquakes might have been worrying him-he may have thought the island was in danger. He could have seen the word ‘emergency’ on the EPIRB in the sailboat that washed ashore and figured out how to turn the beacon on!”

“Yeah, baby!” Zero said.

“‘Help,’ cried the spider to the fly,” Thatcher said.

A shape appeared in one of the dark holes in the fuselage above Nell. She gasped. Another of Hender’s kind peered in warily at the astonished humans. Glowing patterns of blue and green fluctuated on its white-furred body and limbs in the shadow before it emerged into the green-lit chamber.

Thatcher sucked in a breath and took an involuntary step backwards.

Behind the first, another appeared, and then another and another, each with a unique pattern and palette of colors. In their hands and on their backs they carried bundles, pouches, and packs containing an odd assortment of objects-customized tools, toys or weapons made of native materials, and man-made materials collected from the beach and put to original uses.

The four newcomers hopped gracefully down on their springing legs and approached the humans, creeping on four or even all six limbs, their heads downcast, as if approaching deities.

Hender went to greet them. He gave Andy the same hand signals they had exchanged earlier, and then the others of his kind followed him to the cockpit at the far end of the fuselage.

The beings huddled for a whispered, musical conference.

It was dark now in the nose of the plane. Only a starlit sky silhouetted the alien creatures against the B-29’s cockpit jutting over the ocean. From a distance the new arrivals seemed faintly sinister as they darted glowing eyes back at the humans.

Hender shook some glass jars full of jungle bugs to light up the cockpit. Following Hender’s example, all gave friendly waves at the humans, then went back to their discussion.

Nell’s heart pounded. To be in the presence of Earthlings who may have preceded human beings by millions of years made her feel oddly alien herself. It was an extraordinary sensation. “An intelligent species,” she whispered.

“It sounds like each one is speaking a different language,” Geoffrey whispered.

She nodded. “Maybe that’s why Hender’s so good at languages.”

“They’re a little smarter than you thought, eh, Thatcher?” Andy taunted.

Thatcher showed no expression. “Oh, yes.”

“Why would they have different languages?”

“Maybe they’re very, very old,” Nell suggested.

“You’ll have to explain that to me,” Geoffrey said.

“Well, maybe each of them is the last of a separate cultural or ethnic group. Their colorings are fairly distinctive.”

“Maybe,” Geoffrey mused. “But they would have to be incredibly old, Nell, to have that much genetic and cultural variation.”

“Like I said, they are incredibly old,” Andy insisted.

Geoffrey considered his own principle of life span as he watched the alien beings silhouetted against the moonlit window of the seventy-year-old aircraft. Suddenly Fire-Breathing Chats seemed remarkably tame compared to this. “It’s possible they don’t really have life spans,” he blurted even as the thought struck him.

“Huh?” Nell asked. “You’ll have to explain that to me.”

“I will.” He nodded.

“The hendros have tunnels that are probably fossilized root structures connecting these giant trees all around the island’s rim,” Andy put in.

“How many trees are there?” Geoffrey asked.

“Six or seven, I think, and they all live alone in separate trees. That multi-colored guy is a painter. The black and blue-striped one seems to invent traps and weapons and other things. The orange one’s a musician. I think the green-and-blue one is a doctor.”

Nell noticed the combinations of colors effervescing on their fur as Andy pointed each of them out. “How do you know what they do, Andy?”

“I went to a dinner party with them at the doctor’s tree. After dinner they traded some stuff. Hender traded some things he collected on the beach.”

“How cool is that?” Zero said.

“I think the hendros have made up their minds,” Thatcher observed sourly.

The discussion seemed to have been settled and the creatures were now coming back to the humans. Hender approached ahead of the others and spread two arms out. “Henders eat humans now,” he said.

Thatcher stiffened.

Hender held up one finger. “Joke,” Hender said.

“I taught him that word.” Andy laughed. “Don’t panic, Thatcher!”

“Joke, Thatcher.” Hender nodded in agreement.

“He’s got a future on The Tonight Show,” Geoffrey said. The other hendros watched the humans laughing and looked at each other in amazement.