Chapter 51

It was twenty minutes after the attack of the Dinofelis when the conference call finally ended. Jada looked at her watch and thought that by using a little of the evening twilight, they still had almost four hours of decent light left. If they stayed out of the central channel, they could avoid the current and have the kayaks secured in the boathouse in less than three hours. Then there was a short two-kilometer hike across some gentle switchbacks to climb to their home sanctuary. Heck, they might even be back before sunset, but they definitely had to leave now.

Tom and Mandy though had another idea. As they all broke camp, Mandy reported on her away-mission with Tom. “There’s a huge lake coming up after the next bend in the river. You can’t see it from here, but the Mississippi really broadens out, maybe a kilometer or more across.”

As he was lifting the first of his two kayaks into the water, Tom added, “And in the middle of the lake, perhaps dead center in the whole world down here, there’s a small island. We estimate it’s six kilometers from here. With the current, we could be there in a half hour.” He turned and gave Jada a grinning smile.

Jada paused and then blinked. “You’re suggesting we head there now?”

Mandy answered for both of them. “Well, it’s an intriguing idea, isn’t it? The entities who built this place adored playing with the geometry. This island is probably directly under Hex Hall and might even be centered under it. Tom and I think there’s bound to be some useful treasure there. Maybe it’s loaded with treasure. We’re hoping for an elevator.”

“I think it would be safe,” Tom added, “It’s a small island, too small to support large predators.”

Jada blew a full load of air through her cheeks and repeated, “You want to go there now?! Are you two on drugs?” And then she gave them a playful smile to show she wasn’t too upset with the suggestion. “Think! What if your buried treasure is surrounded by a certain type of ivy we’ve all come to know so well? If we explore that place and find we have to abandon it, it’ll be after 5 PM by the time we return here. Even if we kill ourselves paddling, we’ll have no margin for getting home before dark, and I’m talking about the boathouse, not back at the sanctuary. Don’t you remember? We’re supposed to drop off our camera’s memory sticks.”

Mandy nodded sheepishly. “Ah, I admit I forgot about that. But first thing tomorrow?”

Jada grinned. “I don’t see why not. Uh...” Jada noticed for the first time the plants Mandy was carrying. Mandy had been displaying them to Jada from a distance just before the Dinofelis attacked. They looked so strange. “What are those?”

Mandy proudly showed off her find. “Take a good look! Don’t you recognize them?”

Jada stared for a moment. “No, not at all.” Madison also stopped and looked closely at the plants. One plant had an orange cauliflower-like top with spiral tentacles underneath with the thickness of carrots. Another plant was the size and structure of a head of lettuce, but with a dazzling array of leaves with multiple stripes of green. And a third plant looked like some sort of a vine with bunches of pale-brown spheres attached to it. The spheres were the size of giant grapes, roughly the size of strawberries.

Mandy was still smiling. “Think of your banquet the day you first got here.”

Madison shook her head. “We had nothing like that. I would remember.”

Both Mandy and Tom were very still for a moment. “That’s interesting,” said Tom. “We did. It’s not just the appearance. Mandy and I both recognized the smells, and we’ve also tasted the plants too. They’re so delicious, it was hard not to.”

Madison walked over and sniffed the orange plant. “It does smell interesting.”

“It’s like a spicy sweet carrot,” said Mandy showing off the plants. “And this one makes a fabulous salad, and this is brown fruit tastes like a cross between a fresh fig and a soft-shelled walnut. I love these things! You eat the entire bulb, shell and all.”

Madison was very curious. “These plants were growing in the forest? That seems a bit odd. I would have guessed the climate was too cold for such ripe development.”

Tom spoke up. “Not exactly in the forest. They’re growing high in the foothills, almost adjacent to where the rocks meet the sky. There are some terraced beds up there with warm soil, warmer than the air.”

Jada stared at the plant, considering what Mandy and Tom were saying. Yes, the bulbs were about the size of walnuts. “And you’ve eaten these things now?” she asked.

Many replied, “Uh, yeah. But Jada, I know the plant. I’ve eaten it before. Tom has too.” She looked at Jada closely. “Do you think we made a mistake?”

Jada sighed as she looked at her two teammates. “I don’t know. Probably not. I certainly hope not. Let’s just head back. If either of you starts feeling sick, or anything unusual, tell me immediately.”

Tom and Mandy acknowledged the order. Their party of four disembarked a few minutes later.

Time: Thursday, February 14, 2019 6:34 PM

With their familiar boathouse visible and only one kilometer away, Jada finally allowed herself to relax. What a day! They had came so close to losing Maddy. Jada felt extremely fortunate to have Tom on her team. There was the shot that saved Maddy’s life of course. But there was also his woodsman experience. He was calm throughout the entire episode with the Dinofelis, simply accepting the existence of the dangerous creature as natural part of the environment. In comparison, Jada felt very nervous after the attack.

Jada turned and watched Mandy and Tom paddle for a moment. They were all tired, and these two had towed spare kayaks over forty kilometers today. That was a major piece of work. Jada’s own arms were complaining from the exercise. She allowed herself to smile though. Kayaking was fabulously enjoyable!

Jada took another close look at Tom and Mandy and thought to herself, “They seem healthy. From what I know about food poisoning, you don’t exercise afterwards for three hours and not notice you’ve been poisoned. I guess they’re okay.”

Jada allowed her thoughts to run as she paddled. “What’s the bigger issue here? Have I watched too many horror movies back on Earth? Was I worried about alien parasites? If the entities wanted to infect us, have our bodies explode with baby spiders or something, they certainly could have infected us before now.”

Jada took a deep breath before her next stroke. “It’s such a critical question though, when to be cautious and when to be bold. Fortune favors the bold, but you can’t be bold if you’re dead. The question becomes, how do you strike the balance? What principles do I use to guide my decisions? When should I be bold?” She paddled another few strokes. “Come on Jada! You should be able to come up with a few answers to that.”

“Principle #1: The intelligence of the builder entities is vast, but somehow they seem to have only a limited ability to understand our emotions and how we make decisions. Gifts that may have been designed in a spirit of generosity can still be dangerous, even deadly.”

“Principle #2: For all its dangers, the Great Hexagon is a lifeboat, not a prison, not a zoo. The gift of the mind linkage is just too beautiful to think otherwise ... My gosh! The pain I had when I rode in the elevator for the first name. It felt as if my mind were being torn apart. And then I took a big gulp of that hot chocolate, and the pain disappeared. Maybe ... Yes! Maybe the original human mind could not survive the journey. I had only taken one very small sip before. With everything else that’s been happening, I had forgotten. I have to tell Mark about this, Fatima too.”

“And I remember how thirsty I became when I walked the corridor. Didn’t Emily comment how thirsty she was too? Could there have been something there to make us thirsty, something in the air maybe, something to make us drink? What does that imply? I guess that the entities have a vast and detailed knowledge of human physiology. But from the drugs that boosted our minds, we already know that. But perhaps the mind boost was secondary. My gosh. Perhaps the primary purpose of the drug was to allow our minds to survive the journey. Maybe it was as simple as that.”

“And it’s interesting how Tom and Mandy found some of their banquet food down here. It’s not just six different parties. Sometimes it seems to me as if there were three different pairs of parties, each pair with its own gifts. Red and Green Malls, complementary colors, opposite positions on the hexagonal spirals, they both have the same distance of the home complexes from Hex Hall. Only 6.7 kilometers, what an advantage! And we shared the same banquet. All our conversations with Aggie, the first day we found her. After that we just assumed. We never bothered to ask Black Mall about their banquet.”