Alan Foster - Exceptions to Reality

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 pass 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 anticipating 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 bloody.

“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.” Crap, 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 fucker. 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, sniggering 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 passing 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. 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 thingLoftgren 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.