The Other Tree (16 page)

“And we couldn’t get these online because…?”

“You had to pay to register, not to mention the download fee for each file,” said Chris indignantly. “Libraries are about sharing knowledge for the benefit of humankind. Creating a level playing field for all people, to give equal access to information and the opportunity for self-improvement, rather than supplying the elite and depriving the disadvantaged.”

Chris grabbed several more coffeetable-sized tomes before steering Luke towards a set of study tables. Massive leather-bound atlases with embossed covers portrayed a world transformed. Strangely familiar coastlines wound around alien continents; long-vanished seas filled unimaginably vast lands. Rivers veined through lush primeval forests, thriving in places now irreclaimable wasteland.

Paleogeographic images were like a flicker-book through the millennia, sea levels rising and falling, continents vanishing under the ocean, and ancient coastlines revealed and reclaimed. Ice caps grew and shrank, waters flooded the land and retreated back to the deeps, sea beds became beaches became canyons became mountains, all while life bubbled over its surface and died away.

The sun sank lower, and panes of scarlet light crossed the floor. Desk lamps flickered on through the building, and the library transformed into a hushed world of compulsive readers and late-night loners.

“I think this is it,” said Chris, her hand moving among several open texts. “This is the coastline of the Persian Gulf during the late Cretaceous.”

She ran her finger along an irregular crescent coast, pocked with inlets and coves.

“This is where it is today,” said Chris, her hand moving to a modern atlas.

“That’s awfully inland,” said Luke. “Is this scientific like psychoanalysis is scientific?”

“It’s scientific like archaeology is scientific.”

“Are we talking archaeology like carbon dating or archaeology like Indiana Jones?” said Luke dubiously.

“What’s wrong with Indiana Jones?” said Chris. “Anyway, look.”

Chris’s hand moved to another text, her finger tracing several lines across the ancient landscape, in a time when Europe and Persia were nearly indistinguishable.

“Rivers winding from the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Red Sea, all joining into a single waterway flowing into the Gulf,” said Chris. “Tell me that’s not Biblical.”

Luke looked from the atlas to their photo of the Sumerian map—a perfect circle geometrically marked with lines, smaller circles, and pictograms, like an astrological diagram. His hand hovered over a bent line.

“Is that supposed to be a river?” asked Luke.

“And I think that’s supposed to be the Caspian Sea.” Chris pointed to a large circle punctured by a line, like a stylised drawing of a toffee apple.

“It’s not proportional. Or even the right shape. Are you sure this is a map and not Sumerian cubism?”

“It’s like megafauna,” said Chris, her face lighting up. “Back when gigantic armadillos roamed the earth. Most megafauna became extinct thousands of years ago, but we know about them from two main sources—ancient cave paintings and fossils. Cave paintings tell you about the human experience of these animals. But reconstructing a fossil tells you how many bones it had. The Sumerian map tells us about the experience of the geography, the atlas tells us the co-ordinates.”

Luke looked from the Sumerian map to the atlas. If you kind of squinted and disregarded scale, that line could be another river, and that pictogram might be a mountain, or a mountain on fire. And that curve might be the coastline, and that circle another sea.

“So if you loosely superimpose the Sumerian map on the Cretaceous map, you can interpret the Sumerian diagram in geographical terms,” said Chris. “And if you superimpose the modern atlas on the Cretaceous map, we know how to get there.”

Luke looked doubtful. There seemed to be a lot of “ifs” involved.

“It’s all desert there,” said Luke.

Millennia ago, the area had been rich with fertile plains, fringed with lush forests, and cooled by temperate sea breezes. Time and human activity had turned it into a hot, inhospitable wasteland.

“Ezekiel, chapter thirty-one, verse eighteen,” said Chris.

“‘Yet shalt thou be brought down with the trees of Eden unto the nether parts of the earth,’” said Luke.

Underground.

“We just have to figure out which of the pictograms says ‘Eden,’” said Chris.

* * *

Luke had wanted proof. He had wanted something to hold on to, and possibly wave in other people’s faces. Now, after everything he had been through over the past few days, he was even less certain that it existed. Leap of faith after leap of faith, chasing tenuous connections that were remote at best, and most likely deluded. Chris forged ahead, facing death and destitution without a sidelong glance, but she was driven by grief and righteousness. She would look back one day and be amazed at the risks she had taken, yet grateful for the endless supply of stories with which to lord over the less adventurous.

But Luke, he would still be alone in every way, his faith eroded even further by a fruitless search.

Ha ha
, thought Luke, and sighed, sinking further into the car seat.

Chris had insisted on a second-hand rental vehicle, since their budget was running dangerously low. At least this car was in reasonably good condition—that is, all four tyres were the same size, and the interior didn’t smell of dead goat.

It was raining lightly, and the passing streetlamps pulsed through the windscreen, intermittently lighting up Chris’s face as she drove. Her expression was one of great concentration, as though mentally homing in on the location of Eden, sifting through lines and pictograms, and circles within circles. Luke felt a little like a freeloader, riding on the energy of Chris’s indefatigable determination, leaning back and saying, “Convince me.”

It reminded him of the attitude most people had when they came into his office.

“Prove it,” they would say. “Show me that what you believe is real.”

“It’s about faith,” he would try to explain. But how did you explain faith when it went against reason, against logic, against good judgement?

Luke glanced across at Chris, the lights of the city flashing past in the rain.

How did you explain a faith that dragged you across the world, chasing myths and monsters, driven by faded memories and smouldering resentment?

How did you explain a passion you weren’t sure you were capable of?

“Are you okay?” asked Chris, not taking her eyes from the slick road. “You have this expression like someone just bulldozed your house, set it on fire, and then put it in the background of a skanky R&B music video.”

“Just tired. How about you? Want me to drive for a bit? You look really tense.”

“That’s probably because of the car that’s been tailing us for twenty minutes,” said Chris.

Luke sat up abruptly and turned towards the rear windscreen. Two bright headlights shimmered through the rain, getting steadily closer. The lights stood high off the road, as though they belonged to a truck or a Jeep, but on the dark stretch of highway it was hard to make out any details.

“They’ve been gaining since we hit the highway,” said Chris. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t cut them off or make any offensive gestures.”

“SinaCorp?”

“I think they’d just crush us with an armoured helicopter. But you never know.”

There was a loud growl of sudden acceleration, and the rental car suddenly jolted forward with a deafening metallic bang.

“Did they just ram us?” said Luke.

He turned to see the unidentified vehicle’s high beams glaring through the rear windscreen, and he barely had time to brace himself before the car was rammed a second time. Chris lurched forward, slamming hard into the steering wheel. She quickly pushed herself upright and floored the accelerator, deciding that she probably should have gone for the working seatbelts.

As the car shuddered all the way up to seventy-five kilometres an hour, the vehicle behind them surged forward again. The sound of crunching metal screeched like fingernails down a blackboard, and a thick crack burst across the rear windscreen. Luke smacked into the dashboard and suddenly noticed a white envelope protruding from the glove box.

“Did you put something in the glove box?” asked Luke.

“Don’t touch it!” yelled Chris.

Luke jerked his hand back, his attention already redirected to the sudden, thundering
hoom
of acceleration from behind them. The menacing headlights were gone from the rear window, and the tailing vehicle was beside them. Luke looked out the driver’s side window and saw a looming off-road truck with monster wheels and reflective windows, dark and glossy in the wet. A large roof rack was mounted to the top, and a heavy covered cage tray was built into the back.

There was a deafening bang as the truck swerved into the side of the rental car, sending the smaller vehicle skidding across the road. Somehow, Chris kept them on the highway, her knuckles white as she gripped the wobbling steering wheel, her foot pressing the accelerator into the floor.

The truck drew alongside again, and Chris dodged the car away, dropping back and weaving across the lanes. The truck slowed and swerved towards them again, catching the bonnet of the car and sending them spinning towards the edge of the road. Chris strained to control their drift, and the car screeched back onto the bitumen. She waited until the truck slowed to pull beside them, then accelerated hard, pulling ahead and swerving around the road, trying to stay in front of the truck.

“Chris…” said Luke, eyes wide.

“What?” said Chris, weaving hard to the right.

“I’m not sure if this is important…”

Luke watched as small, furry, white bug legs poked around the edge of his headrest, crawling slowly upwards.

“You’d better make an executive decision because I’m kind of occupied,” said Chris, swerving sharply to the left.

The car jolted violently, and Chris slammed into the steering wheel again, which emitted a wheezing honk.

Inside the dimly lit vehicle, countless small furry legs were creeping out from under car seats and from behind cushions. As the white legs on Luke’s headrest crested the top of his seat, the full creature emerged into view. Luke stared in horror.

It was a spider.

With a clown face.

The furry arachnid was the size of a nickel, with a white head coloured in distinctive patches of red and yellow. Yellow ovals surrounded all eight black eyes, and garish pink circles patched the sides of its head. The mandibles were a smear of crimson, shaped like an oversized sloppy frown. It opened and closed its mouthparts, and crouched as it prepared to jump.

“Spiders!” blurted Luke. “The car’s full of spiders.”

Chris glanced quickly around at the swarm of clown-faced spiders crawling towards them.

“My bag,” said Chris, the car zig-zagging over the slippery road. “There’s a bottle of eucalyptus oil.”

Luke pulled Chris’s pack from the back seat, shuddering as he shook several spiders onto the floor. He rummaged through the bag, finding assorted jars, bags, and several small shrubs before pulling out a strong-smelling flask.

“Rub it on your skin,” said Chris, glancing at a sign showing a turnoff ahead. “Then put some on me. Spiders don’t like it.”

“‘Don’t like,’ as in they’ll avoid it like the plague, or ‘don’t like,’ as in they’ll be grimacing as they bite us?”

“I think they’re already grimacing.”

Feeling a little light-headed, Luke rubbed the sharp-smelling oil over his skin, filling the car with a strong, sweet, menthol odour. He saw the spiders hesitate, waving their forelegs in the air.

“Are they surrendering or cursing us?” said Luke, as he rubbed eucalyptus oil onto Chris’s arms and neck.

“They’re spiders,” said Chris. “They’re probably thinking ‘Where the hell am I, and what’s for dinner?’”

Chris saw the turnoff in the headlights and swerved desperately towards it. The pursuing truck veered to follow, crashing its bullbar into the boot of the rental car. There was a loud clatter as their bumper fell onto the bitumen, probably soon to be salvaged by a resourceful local to build a shed. The rental car rattled and skidded over the road as Chris fought to slide it into another sharp turn. They screeched into a narrow street, and suburban lights began to flank the road, living rooms shining through the drizzle. The dark truck fell back, and after a few more turns, it was gone.

The remainder of the drive to the motel was a tense standoff between Luke, with the bottle of eucalyptus oil, and the spiders, which were now gathered across the ceiling and doors of the car, forelegs still waving. Luke had never felt so many eyes fixed on him before, not even during Sunday mass.

After what seemed like a torturously long time, the car pulled up in the motel parking lot, and Chris carefully turned off the ignition.

“Open the door slowly, get out, and leave the door open,” Chris instructed.

Luke swallowed and reached carefully for the door release. A nearby spider crouched on the side panel, watching the progress of Luke’s big, juicy hand with intense interest. Moving in slow motion, he eased himself out of the vehicle and into the cool night air. He watched nervously as Chris slid carefully out through the driver’s side, joining him a safe distance away.

“They’ll be gone by morning,” said Chris.

“They won’t look for us, will they?”

“Spiders normally don’t,” said Chris, taking a cautious step backwards as a spider hopped out of the car and scuttled away into the bushes. “But I’ve never seen spiders like that before.”

“We seem to be getting a lot of that.”

As Chris trudged tiredly towards the motel room, Luke glanced back towards the car. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached inside and delicately plucked the mysterious envelope from the crack in the glove box. It was unmarked and unsealed, containing a single sheet of folded paper. A simple note was scrawled in black marker.

Stay Away
.

Luke cast a wary glance around the empty parking lot, the shadowy acacias waving slightly in the breeze. He wiped the misty rain from his face, then turned to follow Chris towards the main building.