This is part 3 of 8 of The Singing Ape
3
Chet could hardly keep up with Bradidiah anymore.
The forest spoke secrets, threats, and promises in his ear, and when he looked his friend Bradidiah moved like a series of photographs: Bradidiah crouched and touching the mud; Bradidiah resting against a tree trunk, eyes closed, nostrils flared, inhaling some subtle scent unknowable to a man like Chet. And between these frozen moments Bradidiah slipped like a trick of the light down the path.
“Bradidiah,” he finally said, barely above the sound of his breath, “I am bewitched. I think I am in the Fruit Forest with you, hunting a beast. But you are not really here. Perhaps I am not really here.”
Bradidiah heard him and smiled and pulled up the bill of Chet’s sweat-soaked hat to better see his eyes. “We are coming closer to the Magic Kingdom. The men our people know, Bradidiah and Chet, are gone. We are what is left. And we belong to the ghosts and gods of blood. Do you hear them? Do you hear? Every bug and bird and animal has changed its song — they beat the drum of the hunt together. This prey we seek, she is not our prey, she is the prey of the land and sky and trees and waters, she is the prey of Florida. We are the agents of the land, its hands, its fists.”
“Yes, I feel it,” Chet said. Then he inhaled deeply. “What is that?”
“Fear. She knows we are coming.”
“Fear.” Chet inhaled again. “I think it is the first real thing I have smelled.”
“It has not yet turned deadly. This fear still swims in hope and cunning. But when we have her trapped it will turn. You will see. Now, we should not speak.”
Chet narrowed his eyes and nodded.
They moved through the trees, silently.
Sofi looked down the path her professor had taken. She walked as far as she could, still keeping sight of the camp, and she stretched her neck to look farther.
“Fifi! What are you doing?!” Pierre came halfway between her and the camp and stopped. “We need to stay here, together.”
Sofi pointed at his feet. “Why did you stop?”
Pierre looked down, then up again. “What?”
“Look at you, you stopped there like there’s a wall. Come closer. Come all the way to me.”
“Quit playing around. Come back to the camp.”
“You won’t do it, will you? You won’t go past that line.”
Pierre scrunched his face, annoyed. He took one more step. “There. Now, let’s go back.”
Sofi laughed. “Look at you, you’re really scared! Do you believe it makes a difference if you’re standing there or here where I am?”
“This is not the gameworld. This is not the gameworld! We can be hurt, killed, raped, we can suffer here, against our will, and we can’t make it stop, and the pain…”
“I’m going to look for the professor. They’ve been gone over an hour and we haven’t heard anything.”
“Maybe it will take them two hours. Maybe it will take them three. Professor Froget told us to stay here. ‘Defend the camp,’ she said. We have a camp to defend!”
“I look at you Pierre, and I see… nevermind. I’m going.”
“No. What do you see?” Pierre took another step past his line on the ground. “Tell me, Fifi. I deserve to know what you think of me.”
“I think you’re a fine, good person. But I see in you this fear, this normal, human fear, and it reminds me of my own weakness, and I’m disgusted by it. I don’t want to tremble like a baby monkey in an experiment. But you know, it’s me. It’s my problem. If I weren’t afraid myself, it wouldn’t bother me.”
“So I’m getting in the way of you fooling yourself.”
“Yes, Pierre. You are.”
“So stop fooling yourself.”
“No. A person without fiction is a beast.”
“I’m not a beast.”
“You’re not. You’re a person with a different fiction. You have a different story, a different thing to prove, a different way of fooling yourself. And I have mine. And you’re getting in the way of mine.”
“I don’t have anything to prove.”
Sofi smiled and walked past him, back towards the camp. “The professor and Pete, they didn’t take any water, just a gun. They should be back by now. I’m packing enough gear for a day’s hike, but I’ll try to be back by sundown.” She was met by Skip at the camp perimeter. “Skip. I’m going after the professor and your brother. Come or stay?”
Skip watched Pierre following her around. His mouth gaped open, helpless, his arms out and imploring, ignored. Skip said, “one of us should stay and watch the camp, guard against wild animals, at least.”
Sofi was ready. “Pierre wants to stay. I want to go. You have your choice.”
“I will go help find my brother,” he said, avoiding sight of Pierre as though embarrassment were contagious and spread by glances.
Sofi pulled the sack off her back and grabbed Pierre’s. She split her supplies into two and topped off both sacks with bags of water. She gave Skip one of them and put on the other. She appraised the rifle in her hand. Then she turned to Pierre.
“Pierre, we will do everything we can to be back by nightfall. If by morning we’re not here and the professor’s not either, take the water taxi and return to the City of Towers.”
Pierre said nothing. He was finished talking. But there it was. Wait alone. Survive the night. Backtrack through the forest and find the shore where they’d hidden the taxi boat. Get it back into the water, alone, without breaking it or sinking it. Sail a taxi-boat across the treacherous Sea of Houses and find, among those many rotting rooftops, the path to the City of Towers. He counted in his mind how many impossible things Sofi had told him to do: 1, 2, 3, 4…
And as he counted, he saw Skip glance back at him, his eyes wide and sad in his dark, dusty face. It was an expression, Pierre thought, of knowing, permanent parting.
And they were gone.
Pete slashed the wall of vines with his machete, and the bright outline of a smiling beast became clear before him: he screamed at the sight of such a monster. Its eyes enormous, its head outsized, grinning with two giant buck-teeth forward, its snout topped with a shiny black olive-like nose. It wore a red vest and a blue neck tie. It did not move.
Vivienne touched his shoulder. “It’s okay, it’s just a statue.”
“What dark magician would create such a warning? It appears as a bear, yet it laughs at us!”
“We have such things in Canada. We call them cartoons. This is meant to be a happy image, for children who will never see or need to fear a live bear. Look, around its feet…” Vivienne pushed away a loose clod of grass and sand with her boot revealing gold. “The ground is made of painted bricks. A path.”
“A path to what?”
“If I am not mistaken, to the Magic Kingdom.”
“You believe now in the legends of the Fruit Forest? Next you will tell me you worship the smiling mouse!”
“It’s no legend. Or, it is, but it’s a legend with truth to it. My people also say that before the war there was in this land a Magic Kingdom — a place of amusements from a time before the ConneX, before livplay and gameworlds, where fantasies were built in concrete and steel.” She knocked on the statue. “And fiberglass, apparently.”
A glob of water rose out of the bear-creature’s hand and leapt five feet over its head and landed in its other, outstreatched hand.
“Did you see that?”
“Yes,” Vivienne said. She knocked on the statue again. It gurgled and then another glob of water did the same. “I think this is some strange fountain.” Another glob followed after a moment, then another.
“Do you think the water is safe?”
“I’ll risk it,” Vivienne said. She climbed the statue and lay her head in its right palm. She heard the gurgle and opened her mouth: a glob of water filled her mouth and splattered all over her face. Then she heard a low and strange bellowing noise. Looking up, she saw Pete’s face contorted into the unfamiliar expression of laughter. She realized how absurd she must have looked and laughed as well. Then another glob of water landed in her ear. At this, Pete doubled over, holding onto his thighs, barely able to contain his glee. She laughed so hard she fell off the statue.
“Now me,” he said, still laughing.
Pierre Remy watched the wall of green around him twitch with lizard jumps and dripping moisture. Yes, he had a story to live, a fiction. Yes, his story was different from Fifi’s. But his adventure was Fifi herself. Fifi, the pursuit of whom had brought him to this electronically barren wasteland where lush natural life bloomed and thrived so inhumanely. Was it the force of natural life itself pushing the global human digital network away?
Every gorilla in Africa he could study with a non-stop global connection to his brain giving him total situational awareness.
Every monkey in South America he could observe while chatting with his mother and re-climbing Mount Everest and playing football with his friends.
Every orangutan in Asia he could trail by satellite feed while he and Fifi — whether she were beside him or on the other side of the world — satisfied one another on a luvplay platform. Something romantic: a snowed-in lodge, or a glamorous Toronto penthouse filled with toys; it all cost the same.
But instead he agreed to come with Professor Froget to war-torn Florida where everyone’s brain was a twitching amputated limb dreaming of the global body. He came because this is where Fifi wanted to go. And now she was gone. This was not bad luck. He knew he was to blame.
He’d secretly hoped the blackout would be “good for them,” that Fifi would take a break from her fantasy ultraviolence, that they would have time in quantities unimaginable to be together, that Pierre and Fifi in a tent surrounded by tropical sounds and smells would be like a new luvplay platform built just for them, the most fully immersive of all, with no other real or game world simultaneously nipping at your attention, or your lover’s attention.
Pierre coated himself in another layer of insect repellent. “You have my full attention,” he said aloud, to the indifferent world.
But now he knew that Fifi’s thrillseeking went deeper than he believed. Perpworld was not a habit, it was a lifeline, a limited expression of the thrills she needed. She was thriving here: armed, disconnected, able to feel pain, and die.
He knew, though he did not relish it, that he was also likely to feel pain and die, here in this place.
He sat in front of his tent and waited, listening. He heard it so immediately, he convinced himself it must be a background noise, some strange effect of the wind. But no, it didn’t coincide with the wind, not always. And it sounded like footsteps.
He stood and began to shake and weep and sweat, because he could not call for help with just a thought, like he could almost anywhere else in the world. He could not call for help even with great effort.
“This is scared,” he said to no one. “This is alone,” he said, too.
And then Pierre heard a voice, a soft woman’s voice, singing that song, that song the professor sings — oh God! Pierre sat up and let the tears run down his face. The professor is alive, and singing that awful song, but how beautifully! Her voice had never moved so perfectly over the notes — both sweet and coarse, both loss and hope. For the first time, the song’s simple words of love tore at his heart, he felt them, he felt them for all his life.
He opened his mouth and tried to croak out her name, but it was only an inarticulate sob. He watched for her coming down the path, but saw no one. Still the voice grew louder.
Then he heard the footsteps again, nearer, in time with the song. Clouds moved over him, shading the entire campsite, and the green leaves moved. The air blew cooler and tasted electric. Yes, she was approaching through the trees. He wondered why the professor was not on the path, and then the leaves parted, and he saw a large mass of pink flesh, a great hairless ape, its skin everywhere abraded and scarred, its lines lumpen, its form uneven, its breasts resting slack against its muscular frame, its mouth open in song, beautiful song.
He thought he should scream, but he was too enchanted by this creature’s strangeness. It looked almost human, but its body was also similar to a gorilla’s, with heavy cranial musculature and long hulking arms. Its bare skin revealed a jagged pattern of welts and scars. In defiance of its form it sang with a human woman’s voice, and it was singing to him, clearly, walking towards him, using its song to communicate, to entrance, to entice. Heavy drops of rain began to fall around him, began to strike his shoulders and his head.
And now this creature was reaching out for him, and he raised his hand to meet it, and it took his hand, and pulled him close, and pressed him against its body, squeezed him, squeezed hard, and he realized he could not breathe, and he struggled and he kicked, but it was no use, this creature was as strong as a gorilla, and he remembered all the times he’d died in games and hoped this would be like that, that he’d just open his eyes to another place, but he didn’t think so, he was pretty sure this was his last thought, and he wondered what was important enough for his last thought, and thought of tacos, and felt disappointment in himself for thinking of tacos, and then remembered his mother taking him to the taco truck when he was small, when they went to the park to play, and the spices would burn in his nose and the air would blow cool and would smell of dirt and sweat and green growing things, just like this, and when he passed out and stopped struggling the great pink ape broke his neck between her hands and laid him out neatly on the ground and went back into the bushes to retrieve the tools.
