Warren Fahy - Fragment

His book was bringing in the kind of royalties and speaking fees he needed to fend off his bookies and his latest spouse. Against all odds, Thatcher Redmond had proven fit enough to survive, after all.

And then this Sedona business came along, and fucked everything.

The Airbus A321 finally taxied down the runway and throttled up, surging down the tarmac. A delirious cheer filled the plane and a wave of relief surged in his chest as it lifted off the runway.

He replayed the day’s events in his mind one more time. Seven hours ago he had sat in the back of a taxi heading for the uppercrust Camelback Mountain section of Phoenix. The exaggerated rock formations outside the window had reminded him of The Flintstones. Even though she was living in a mansion on a mesa in the wealthiest suburb of the city, owing to her well-to-do family and friends, the harpy had made him go there to hit him up for a child he had never wanted or even knew he had.

“Wait here, Thatcher,” Sedona had said to him, he recalled now.

“Here” happened to be an airy, sun-drenched family room decorated with expensive dolphin art in the mansion she was house-sitting for a friend. It had a high, open-beam ceiling and a sliding glass door looking out over the pool. The door stood open a crack to a dry Phoenix breeze.

Sedona warned that Junior had a tendency to jump in the pool outside if nobody stopped him.

The redheaded brat ran around screaming and crashing into things the entire time.

She had told him the little monster never remembered to use his sea-serpent life preserver, that he always ran straight for the pool and jumped right in.

But that sliding glass door was open a crack…

“I’m waiting for the cat to come in. Don’t worry, the baby can’t fit through that,” Sedona had told Thatcher. “He’s not strong enough yet to push the door open by himself and get out.”

Then she left to answer the front door, some sort of delivery…

Was it a setup? There were practically neon signs around it. He’d looked around for a hidden camera as the probabilities whirred like slots wheels in his mind.

He rubbed the edge of his rubber shoe now as he leaned back in the comfortable airline seat. After the miserable outbound trip, he had opted for a later flight in exchange for an upgrade to Business Class. His prize had been a six-hour wait, but almost an entire section all to himself.

As his cab waited for him fifteen minutes later, he had spoken to Sedona on the front doorstep, reassuring her that he would help her. He promised her that he would be in contact with her soon. He even kissed her on the cheek as the smoke-gray cat had run out the front door and curled around his leg, nearly tripping him as he walked to his taxi.

When the cab passed an ambulance a couple miles away, speeding in the opposite direction, his heart had pounded.

With the siren blaring and the lights flashing on top, it looked like a million-dollar slot machine paying off, Thatcher had thought.

“Hey, aren’t you Thatcher Redmond?” came a loud voice.

He turned, startled, to the man across the aisle. “Yes.”

“Well! I read your book, mate!” The sunburned Australian shook his hand vigorously. “You really figure human beings are going to wipe everything off the planet, eh?”

My dear rube , Thatcher mused, you just increased that very probability in my mind. “It’s a distinct possibility.” Thatcher smiled graciously.

“I don’t know.” The man shook his head. “I travel a lot, and I look out this window and I can hardly tell we’re even here, eh?”

“Can you see a deadly virus inside a human being?”

“Well, no, now that you mention it.”

“Free will is a virus. All that is necessary to create destruction is to set it loose and power it with reason. You can bet on it every time.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Not too good. Ah, well…”

“Don’t worry. The shit probably won’t hit the fan for a couple of centuries. We’re safe.” Thatcher winked obscenely at the man and grinned.

“Ah, that’s good for us, then! Too bad for our kids, though, I reckon. Oh, sorry to bother. I can see you have things on your mind.”

“Not at all,” Thatcher said, relieved to end the conversation.

“Here are your peanuts, sir.”

Thatcher flinched as the flight attendant at his elbow surprised him.

“Thank you!” he snapped, irritated that he had been identified by a witness on this plane and trying to calculate the damage.

Thatcher clicked off the overhead light and looked into the black window as he leaned his chair back. He tried to focus on the appearance he was scheduled to make tomorrow night on CNN to discuss the subject of Henders Island, again. But his thoughts drifted as he watched his reflection in the darkened pane. It won’t matter , he thought. Of course I visited her. No one can prove a thing.

He snatched a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing steward.

Finally allowing himself to relax, he toasted himself. And felt the same welling thrill in his stomach that he felt whenever he struck the jackpot.

The entire bubble windowat the end of Section One was now covered with green, yellow, and purple splotches of growth.

Emanating from the jungle, similar vegetation had already spread over one-fourth of the section’s side windows as well.

But outside the rest of the windows could still be seen flats of common plants and potted trees that Nell had requested be flown in and set down on the sloping field, each accompanied by an ROV to record their fate.

Quentin congratulated Andy as they looked into the trough at the live Henders rat. It was the first living adult rat they had been able to trap for observation.

“What do those eye movements remind you of?” Quentin brought the camera overhead as close as possible without spooking the animal.

Andy nodded. “Yeah, wow!”

“What?” Nell asked. The grinning face of the creature chilled her. Its cockeyed eyeballs seemed to be staring right at her no matter where she moved.

“Most animals on the island seem to have eyes like mantis shrimp,” Quentin told her.

“So?”

“So mantis shrimp have compound eyes, with three optical hemispheres.”

“Trinocular depth perception.”

“We have binocular depth perception,” Andy said.

“Yes, I know, Andy,” Nell said.

“These things can see the same object three times with each eye. So they perceive three dimensions better with one eye than we do with two.”

Quentin pointed up at the eye of the creature magnified on the monitor, making a side-to-side gesture with his index finger. “See how each eye is slowly scanning now?”

“One of them sideways and one of them up and down? Wow!” Andy laughed in awe.

“They’re ‘painting’ polarization and color data like a friggin’ Mars Rover, only a lot faster,” Quentin said. “Oh yeah, that rat can see us all right, right through the glare of this acrylic.”

“Their eyes also have saccadic motion,” Andy said, looking at Nell. “That’s what lets us read without the small eye movements blurring our vision.”

“And they see five times the number of colors we see-at least,” Quentin said.

“They do?” Nell looked at Andy grimly.

“Humans have three classes of color receptors: green, blue, and red. These things may have up to ten classes of color receptors!”

“There goes the Christmas tree.” Quentin pointed out the window as the gnawed remnant of a Norfolk pine, one of their test specimens, collapsed amid a swarm of fluttering bugs.