Exceptions To Reality Part 16

Harbison was drawn to him immediately.

The boy didn't snuff out the joint, but he did look over as the lawyer approached. His att.i.tude was an intriguing mix of bottled arrogance and heartrending vulnerability. The latter was a quality Harbison was accustomed to encountering in the boys he used, but the former was not. He immediately got down to business. He had to, if he was going to finish and still make lunch.

"How much?" he asked offhandedly. Those eyes. His own eyes strayed elsewhere. The boy didn't object to the blatant inspection. It was expected, and clearly he was used to it.

"The usual?" The kid's voice was high, sweet, girlish. Natural, somehow not yet broken, not a put-on. Better and better. Harbison nodded, struggling to contain his eagerness. "Twenty."

Fair, the lawyer thought. Good. He wouldn't have to waste time bargaining. "Needs to be quick. I've got a lunch appointment." He indicated his wrist without exposing his watch. This was not a prudent location to flash a Piaget. "You got a place?"

The boy nodded. Flicking the stub of the joint onto the street, where the gathering cold slush instantly extinguished it, he turned his head toward the nearby alley. That made Harbison hesitate.

A grin creased the child-like face. Full of magic, it bordered on the angelic. The boy looked even younger than he doubtless was, Harbison mused. What an enchanting discovery.

"Got a little box in back," the kid told him. "Propane heater. Mattress, chair. Doorway locks. Nice and private. I'm okay with spending the night there. You don't have to, but then you don't want to. It'll do fine for what you want."

Harbison was not convinced, but there was no way he was going to pa.s.s this up. He had to make a decision fast. Lunch beckoned. And the boy was slim, couldn't weigh more than 110, 120. An utterly adorable adolescent. Remarkably his skin was as pale and unmarked as a baby's, devoid of scars and needle marks. Not something one encountered every day on a less-traveled city street. Especially on this street.

"Okay, but no funny stuff." He put a hand in an empty pocket. "I've got a taser."

The grin lingered, humorless. "You ain't payin' enough for funny stuff."

Smart, too, Harbison decided as he followed the boy into the alley. Not that he was paying for smarts. "What's your name, kid?"

"Peter."

Harbison choked back something akin to an amused response.

"No, really," the boy told him. "Ironic, huh? Or poignant. Depends on your point of view, I guess."

Something about the reply struck Harbison as out of the ordinary. Natural suspicion being a hallmark of his professional as well as his private life, he slowed his stride. "Just out of curiosity, kid, where'd you learn how to use that word?"

The boy stopped too and turned to face the curious lawyer. "What word?"

"Poignant." Turning slightly, Harbison indicated the street behind them. "The kids I meet up with here usually can't get a handle on anything with more than four letters." Turning slightly, Harbison indicated the street behind them. "The kids I meet up with here usually can't get a handle on anything with more than four letters."

Blue eyes narrowed slightly and hands rested challengingly on narrow hips. "You want to f.u.c.king talk or you want to get it on? I thought you were in a hurry." The pose reminded Harbison of something, but he could not decide what. Then he saw the green shirt peering out from behind the battered leather jacket. It had a fringed hem. His gaze dropped. The shoes. They hadn't registered at first. Now they did.

"Your toes must be freezing in those."

Looking away, the boy muttered something obscene under his breath before his gaze returned to meet the lawyer's. "What the f.u.c.k do you care about my friggin' toes, Jack? You into feet or something?"

"You're an actor, right?" Harbison wasn't sure why he continued with the questions. Maybe because he had always been one to act on hunches, even in court. "When you're not on the street picking up a few extra bucks for rent, you're in a play. Or trying out for one." He smiled rea.s.suringly, confidently. "I think I know which play."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," the boy muttered. His expression twisted. "Yeah, that's right. Only, you know what, Jack? I'm gonna tell you something. Because every once in a while, for some reason, I just feel like telling somebody. For the h.e.l.l of it. I'm not an actor, see, and it's not a play. Not that it means anything, but my last name is one you already know. From the 'play.'"

Harbison's guard went up immediately. Either the kid was toying with him, and before time, or else he was going to prove difficult. The latter possibility did not concern Harbison overmuch. He'd had to deal with rants before. They rarely interfered with what he came for. Like all the others, the boy would eventually settle down. Because in the end, no matter how p.i.s.sed off he got or for what reason, he would still want his money.

"It's all right," he said soothingly. "I don't care what you do once we've concluded our business. I just thought, seeing the shirt and the shoes and all..."

"Turns you on, does it?" The boy was watching him steadily.

"A little maybe, yeah."

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Sure I do. Hey, I think it's great. Stay in character when you're off stage. Ought to be good for business, anyway. I know a couple of guys who'd pay double just to have you do them in full costume."

"I bet you do." Raising one arm, the boy gestured to take in the alley, the street beyond, the vast, uncaring city. "You know why I'm stuck here, putting up with this s.h.i.t? Putting up with marauding, predatory a.s.sholes like you?"

"It doesn't matter." Time's a-wastin', Harbison realized. He could still do this and make lunch. a.s.suming the kid knew his business.

"It's all the fault of a certain f.u.c.king jealous little b.i.t.c.h. Since you're so confident of what role I'm 'acting' in, I'm sure I don't have to name her. Not the Brit twit, that's ancient history. But last New Year's I was in Times Square, and there was this little Puerto Rican chiquita and her friend, and they thought the hat and shirt and shoes were, like, oh so cute, you know? So, like, how about a threesome, to, like, celebrate the Neuva Ano, verdad verdad? Oh yeah, by the way, I'm bi. That bother you?"

"No," Harbison admitted honestly.

"So we, like, went back to her place, and I showed them how to fly, in a manner of speaking, and that mini-b.i.t.c.h I can never seem to shake no matter where I go or how hard I try showed up at just the wrong moment. Being kind of preoccupied at the time, I'd forgotten all about her. I thought she'd be out boogeying with the fireworks-that's one of her little SM things, you know? Man, was she p.i.s.sed! So, no more fairy dust. I'm grounded until she gets her tiny little panties out of the knot they're in." Peering around, he took in his cheerless surroundings. "That was months ago, and I'm starting to wonder if she's ever coming back, and, like, even an immortal's got to eat, you know? I'm f.u.c.ked if I'm gonna sling burgers for minimum. And with this not-growing-old thing, this f.u.c.king permanent youth, turns out I'm a boy-magnet to perverts like you."

Harbison bristled. "Calling clients names is bad for business."

"No s.h.i.t?" Bold and completely unafraid, the boy approached until he was standing right up next to the older, bigger man. "You a lawyer or something?"

Harbison nodded. "Right now I need your services, but if you ever need mine..."

The lithe young male body spun around and back, a startlingly agile pirouetting leap that might have sprung straight off the stage at Lincoln Center. "Oh, right! That's it, that's the solution! We'll sue her! Haul her blond little a.s.s right into civil court. Give new meaning to the term small claims small claims. With you and her together there, facing each other, there'd be two fairies facing the judge." His tone darkened, like the weather. "Wouldn't work, dude. And you ain't licensed to practice where I come from." His gaze rose skyward. "d.a.m.n but I miss the place. Forest, mermaids. No f.u.c.king snow. No pathetic, lonely b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like you to have to squeeze for enough wampum to get a decent meal. Even that miserable homicidal son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h nemesis of mine at least has his crew to help him out of a jam."

Despite having begun with promise this encounter was souring rapidly, an unhappy Harbison saw. As a lawyer, he knew when to pursue a case and when to settle and get out. It was time to get out. Plainly, the poor, beautiful kid was seriously disturbed, maybe strung out on crystal or Ecstasy or who knew what. He had suppressed his personal problems just well enough to fool Harbison. Until now. Regrettably the lawyer decided he would have to take a pa.s.s on his singular pleasure today. But there was still lunch to look forward to. The street, with its fluctuating complement of ready, accommodating, doe-eyed melancholic urchins, would still be here tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that.

"On second thought, Mr.-Peter, I think we've wasted too much time talking and not enough doing. Now it's too late. I've got an appointment I have to keep." He turned to go.

He was not sure what they hit him with. It might have been a stick, it might have been a brick. Too early antic.i.p.ating the night, stars filled his vision. He hit the alley pavement hard, his head bouncing off the wet asphalt like a mud-filled sock. Blinking, trying to clear his vision, he saw them standing over him. There were four, maybe five. A couple of them pretty big, all of them armed with potentially lethal detritus scavenged from the alley's battered, oversized Dumpsters. Reaching around behind his throbbing head, his hand came back b.l.o.o.d.y.

"Don't hurt me," he mumbled weakly. "I've got money."

The boy was bending over him, unsympathetic, thoughtfully checking the bleeding face. To the others he snapped, "He'll be all right. Joey, Arturo-get his wallet. Just the cash." The lawyer felt grubby fingers fumbling at his pockets. "Don't forget his watch." c.r.a.p, Harbison thought. Insurance would cover part, but not all, of the expensive chronograph's replacement cost.

He saw the boy straighten, open the ostrich-skin wallet, and pull out the couple of hundred bucks Harbison always carried with him. Another boy admired the glint of the Piaget on his own dirty wrist. His face flush with contempt, Peter let the wallet fall on Harbison's face.

"Come to my home, you self-important, condescending f.u.c.ker. I'll turn you over to our local felon and his crew. They'd use you up. But you'd probably get off on that." He gestured to the other members of the gang before sparing the man on the ground a last, disdainful look. "I don't want to see you here again. Meanwhile, me and the local version of my homeboys are gonna go and get us something to drink and something hot to eat."

Turning sharply, he and the other kids, laughing and joking, headed for the street. Pushing himself up on one elbow, a dazed but still gratefully alive Harbison watched them go, sn.i.g.g.e.ring and cursing and shoving one another playfully in the manner of arrogant street kids everywhere. Superior and self-confident in the shadowy, misty murk, their leader seemed to float along just above the ground.

Slowly, painfully, Harbison picked himself up. His clothes were a mess, smeared with street grit and dirty snow, but the red oozing at the back of his head seemed to have slowed. He needed medical attention. Any legitimate doctor or hospital emergency room would demand the details of his encounter. As he staggered toward the street, his afternoon trashed, he was already hard at work putting together the lie he would have to tell.

He could hardly confess to having been mugged by a boy named Peter.

The Last Akialoa

A number of years ago a friend and I had the opportunity to spend a week on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which is known as the Garden Isle. The top of the island is a volcanic caldera. Over the millennia, the caldera has filled up with decaying organic matter, like a giant planter. Within can be found some of the most unique biota in the world-a swamp in the sky.

Determined to hike across at least part of this wondrous landscape, we drove up past Waimea Canyon one cloudy summer morning, parked our rented car in the last lot, and set out on our hike. It quickly became clear that when it came to describing the actual conditions and terrain, all the guidebooks woefully understated the actual conditions. Most Hawaiian hikes do not involve repeatedly sinking, sometimes up to one's waist, in a thick, gooey sludge of organic mulch. Nevertheless we made it to our destination, a lookout on the pali (a steep cliffside) high above the little town of Hana.

Meanwhile the cloud cover had thickened dramatically. Wind and rain had been intensifying for hours. I decided to hunker down for the night with our emergency tarp and let the weather blow through. My younger companion, however, declared tersely that "I'm not going to freeze to death up here!" and started back. As he was my responsibility, I felt I had no choice but to accompany him. By the time we reached our car, barely before darkness settled in, it was the only one left in the parking lot. Being well-prepared for the hike, it had never occurred to us to check the weather forecast.

As it happened, Kauai was in the process of catching the trailing southern edge of a pa.s.sing tropical storm.

Back in our hotel, I spent two hours in the shower. Ten minutes to wash the gunk off myself, and the remaining time attempting to get it out of my sneakers. The latter task proved impossible, so ingrained had the organic matter become. Regretfully I had no choice but to throw away the unsalvageable shoes. Had I planted them, I have no doubt they would have sprouted a fantastic variety of flora.

Some small literary controversy attended the publication of "The Last Akialoa" in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. There are those who think it does not qualify as either a fantasy or science fiction. There are those who think it does not qualify as either a fantasy or science fiction.

A nice leisurely afternoon stroll in the Alakai would, I think, change that perception...

The first thing Loftgren noticed was the rain, coalescing out of the air as mist, then sifting gently to the already sodden earth. He smiled to himself. They could hardly have expected otherwise considering they were about to enter the wettest place on Earth. Loftgren noticed was the rain, coalescing out of the air as mist, then sifting gently to the already sodden earth. He smiled to himself. They could hardly have expected otherwise considering they were about to enter the wettest place on Earth.

He didn't mind bringing up the rear. Fanole, their guide, was out in front, probing the feeble excuse for a trail, occasionally calling back to his two companions warnings and advice in equal measure. Behind him and just ahead of Loftgren was young Sanchez, the graduate student who had worked so long and hard to be included in the expedition. At the moment he resembled a runaway candy bar, enshrouded as he was in the transparent plastic sheets that shielded both him and his gear from the all-pervading damp.

Back down the road they had just left and four thousand feet below them lay the Kauai coast, with its warm tropical sunshine and chattering tourists and full-service hotels. Ahead lay thirty square miles of the most improbable and impenetrable terrain in the United States, if not the world. Equally remarkable, much of it was still unexplored.

The Alakai Swamp occupied the bowl of a gigantic caldera that formed the top of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Trade winds slamming into the flanks of its highest peak, Mount Waialeale, were shoved upward into colder air where they were forced to drop their load of moisture day after day, month after month, year after year, with a benumbing, saturating regularity. Four hundred and eighty inches of rain a year. Six hundred and twenty-four inches in the record year of 1948. Cherrapunji in India occasionally had more during the monsoon, but Cherrapunji also enjoyed a dry season.

In the depths of the Alakai, the swamp in the sky, the dry season was measured in hours.

By late morning they were making their way down one of the knife-edged ridges that slice up the Alakai like razor blades planted in a pie. The Forest Service had hacked notches out of the solid rock, and while the going was slippery, by choosing his handholds with care Loftgren was able to keep all but the soles of his Gore-Tex-lined boots out of the stream that tumbled down the crack in the mountain. The temperature hovered in the sixties, and he was still dry and comfortable.

Fanole had warned him that no matter what he wore he wouldn't be able to stay dry for more than a day or two. They'd laid a small wager on the matter. Thanks to the university's beneficent largesse, Loftgren had been able to outfit Sanchez and himself in the latest in tropical gear, modified to take into account the fact that at this time of year temperatures in the Alakai often dropped into the forties at night.

Their guide wore comparatively little: shorts and a light cotton sweatshirt, cheap ankle-high sneakers and socks. His pack weighed more than those of his companions because he carried the tent, but that was only proper. He was being paid well for his exertions.

Loftgren hadn't really wanted to engage Fanole, but the number of men who knew anything about the deepest parts of the Alakai could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and when they found out where the ornithologist wanted to go, every one of them had turned him down. When asked why, an old half-Hawaiian, half-haole had quietly responded, "Because I want to live to enjoy my grandchildren." Fanole was the guide of choice because among the knowledgeable only Fanole had agreed to take on the expedition. had quietly responded, "Because I want to live to enjoy my grandchildren." Fanole was the guide of choice because among the knowledgeable only Fanole had agreed to take on the expedition.

Such caution-fear, even-surprised Loftgren. Having carried out important fieldwork in both Papua New Guinea and the western Amazon, he was hardly about to be intimidated by the prospect of working on Kauai, with a profusion of Sheratons and Hyatts sprawling not two hours' drive from where they'd parked the rented van. He'd been planning this trip for more than a year and had prepared himself by reading everything extant in the limited literature about the Alakai.

He'd also encountered the stories-true, apparently. About the honeymooning couple whose car had been found at the nearby Kalalau Lookout a few years ago and who had never been seen again, alive or dead. About the US Geological Survey engineer who died of a heart attack three hundred yards from the summit of Mount Waialeale in 1948 and because of the difficulty of the terrain had to be left tied to a tree until his companions could return with adequate help to bring him out. It took sixteen men three days to get his body off the mountain. About the attempt to push a road through the swamp back in the 1950s. The construction crew had smashed their way into the forest and quit for the day, only to return the next morning to find their bulldozer missing. A brief search revealed that it had simply sunk out of sight.

Then there were his unsuccessful predecessors. Kinkaid of the University of Hawaii first, and two years ago Masaki of UC Riverside. Brazen to the end, Kinkaid had gone in alone, while Masaki had wandered away from his companions one day, never to be seen again. Kinkaid had been too brash for his own good, and Masaki-well, it was felt that Masaki had been the victim of either bad judgment or bad luck, neither a fault to which Loftgren was heir.

It was raining harder now and he found himself having to concentrate more closely on the trail. They were off the ridge and advancing through dense forest. Uluhe and ekaha ferns grew thickly in the underbrush, and the occasional flash of brilliant red ohi'a lehua or waxy yellow-white lobelia flower flared like strobe lights among the green walls through which they were moving. Occasionally he picked out the bright orange berries of the Astelia lily gleaming among the sodden verdure.

"Starting to get a little sloppy. Watch your step," Fanole called back to them.

An instant later Sanchez slipped off the rotting log along which he had been tiptoeing and plunged waist-deep into thick, soupy, organic muck. Fanole edged carefully around the inadequate pathway, clinging for balance to the overhanging branches of dripping trees, and reached down to give the embarra.s.sed student a hand up.

Beneath the transparent rain slicker the young man's waterlogged jeans were now stained brown from the waist down. Shreds of bark and leaves and other unidentifiable macrobiotic matter in various stages of decomposition clung to his legs and shoes.

An unsympathetic Fanole offered one of his typically terse observations. "Warned you. In here if you don't get soaked from the top down, sooner or later you get soaked from the bottom up." With that he turned and started back up a trail that had already diminished to little more than a narrow tunnel between the trees. "Might as well get used to it!" he yelled back.

The now saturated graduate student looked unhappy. "Sorry. I thought I could keep dry for one day, at least."

Loftgren tugged the brim of his slicker down over his forehead. His face was wet, but the rest of him still held back the best efforts of the swamp to drench him. On the other hand, he was already soaked with sweat.

The Alakai was where dryness went to die.

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Julio. Both Fanole and I have a lot more experience in this kind of country than you do."

Twenty minutes later Loftgren stepped over a log and onto a seemingly solid patch of ground that turned out to consist of cloying thigh-deep sludge. Fanole and Sanchez stood off to one side, looking on as he slowly pulled himself out and worked his way through the trough. No one said a word.

By nightfall they'd reached the junction of the Pihea and Alakai trails. Here the Forest Service had helicoptered in thick beams and wood planks. Securely strapped together, these formed a level, solid, platform at the trail juncture.

Fanole set up the tent, somehow managing to keep the interior halfway clear of rain. Beneath the extended, oversized storm flap they stripped nude and deposited their equipment outside on the redwood six-by-sixes.

"Any other wood'd rot out inside a month," their guide pointed out unnecessarily. "Except cypress and mahogany. But we can't get cypress here, and mahogany's too expensive. So we have to import the redwood."

Using clean towels they dried themselves, then crawled into the tent to settle down around the camp stove Fanole ignited. By the time dinner was ready it was darker outside than the inside of a cave. A drenching, dripping, soaking dark. Steady rain pattered like dancing mice on the top of the tent, falling harder at night than it had during the day. Except for the monotonous thrumming of the continuous downpour-the heartbeat of the Alakai-it was dead silent outside the shelter.

Fanole poked leisurely at his reconst.i.tuted freeze-dried supper, looking on as Sanchez ravenously devoured his and Loftgren made a more considered go of his own. The guide was nearly fifty, with a receding forehead of thinning brown hair and dark eyes the color of aged bourbon that seemed to pierce whatever crossed their path, be it human or rock or tree. His sun-seared appearance left his ancestry open to some question, but he was certainly at least part Hawaiian. He had a slight bulge around his middle: spare tire for a bicycle rather than a sedan. Otherwise he was surprisingly muscular.

"You don't mind my saying so, I think you're both crazy."

Loftgren grinned. It wasn't the first time that opinion had been expressed in regard to the expedition. "You're ent.i.tled to your opinion. If you feel that way, why did you agree to guide us?"

Fanole finished the last of his dinner and set the plate carefully to one side. "Because no one else would. I know you academic types. If you couldn't get any help, you'd eventually have tried it on your own." He glanced up at the roof, listening to the rain tap-dancing relentlessly outside. "You'd never have gotten out of this place alive."

"Don't bet on it," Loftgren told him. "I've been in rougher places than the Alakai. There are no snakes here, no hostile natives. Not even any dangerous bugs, and the mosquitoes quit climbing at the thirty-five-hundred-foot level."

Fanole nodded. "That's right. Nothing dangerous here but the place itself. Don't need any snakes or tigers. The swamp'll kill you all by its lonesome." He looked toward the entrance and nodded knowingly. "No landmarks, either. No sky overhead; only clouds. No ground underfoot; only a bottomless pit of composting plant matter. Even compa.s.ses act funny in here."

Sanchez felt compelled to speak up. "Begging your pardon, sir, but we got through the first of the bogs okay." He smiled apologetically. "Didn't stay very dry, but we got through." Reaching over, he tapped his pack. "Hard to get lost with a GPS."

Fanole shook his head once. He didn't smile. "'The first of the bogs'? We haven't even reached the bogs yet, kid. That was just muddy trail. I've personally sounded bogs here that were twenty feet deep. There are deeper still, but they ain't been plumbed yet."

"How come?"

"n.o.body's ever brought in a long enough measuring probe. Remember: we're walking across the throat of an old volcano. Might be bogs a hundred feet deep. Maybe a thousand. n.o.body knows. In the whole swamp there's only two barely-there eastwest trails and nothing at all running north to south. Your plan is to head off-trail and follow the line of the Wainiha Pali. n.o.body's ever gone in there and done that." He snorted softly. "With or without a GPS."

"Kinkaid went in," Loftgren corrected him, "and Masaki."

"n.o.body knows that for certain." Fanole's eyes burned into those of the ornithologist. "Masaki got to the Kilohana Lookout. n.o.body's sure about Kinkaid. If you try to go north from there, you've got sheer cliffs on one side and unplumbed bogs on the other. I give you haoles haoles about a day before you give up on it. If we make it that far." about a day before you give up on it. If we make it that far."

"I once spent a month in the highlands of New Guinea, Fanole. Don't try to scare me."

"I'm not." The guide leaned back on his light sleeping bag. "You hired me for advice. I'm giving it. Just think it's a lot to go through for a glimpse of a bird that's probably been extinct since the 'seventies."

"There have been reports of song-sightings since then," Sanchez pointed out. "The survivors of Masaki's party all confirm it."

Fanole rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one big, weathered palm. "You stay out here long enough, it's easy to start hearing things as well as seeing them."