Warren Fahy - Fragment

“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.