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 thing Loftgren 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.

Fanole had warned him that no matter what he wore he wouldn’t be able to stay dry for more than a day or two. They’d laid a small wager on the matter. Thanks to the university’s beneficent largesse, Loftgren had been able to outfit Sanchez and himself in the latest in tropical gear, modified to take into account the fact that at this time of year temperatures in the Alakai often dropped into the forties at night.

Their guide wore comparatively little: shorts and a light cotton sweatshirt, cheap ankle‑high sneakers and socks. His pack weighed more than those of his companions because he carried the tent, but that was only proper. He was being paid well for his exertions.

Loftgren hadn’t really wanted to engage Fanole, but the number of men who knew anything about the deepest parts of the Alakai could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and when they found out where the ornithologist wanted to go, every one of them had turned him down. When asked why, an old half‑Hawaiian, half‑ haole had quietly responded, “Because I want to live to enjoy my grandchildren.” Fanole was the guide of choice because among the knowledgeable only Fanole had agreed to take on the expedition.

Such caution–fear, even–surprised Loftgren. Having carried out important fieldwork in both Papua New Guinea and the western Amazon, he was hardly about to be intimidated by the prospect of working on Kauai, with a profusion of Sheratons and Hyatts sprawling not two hours’ drive from where they’d parked the rented van. He’d been planning this trip for more than a year and had prepared himself by reading everything extant in the limited literature about the Alakai.

He’d also encountered the stories–true, apparently. About the honeymooning couple whose car had been found at the nearby Kalalau Lookout a few years ago and who had never been seen again, alive or dead. About the US Geological Survey engineer who died of a heart attack three hundred yards from the summit of Mount Waialeale in 1948 and because of the difficulty of the terrain had to be left tied to a tree until his companions could return with adequate help to bring him out. It took sixteen men three days to get his body off the mountain. About the attempt to push a road through the swamp back in the 1950s. The construction crew had smashed their way into the forest and quit for the day, only to return the next morning to find their bulldozer missing. A brief search revealed that it had simply sunk out of sight.

Then there were his unsuccessful predecessors. Kinkaid of the University of Hawaii first, and two years ago Masaki of UC Riverside. Brazen to the end, Kinkaid had gone in alone, while Masaki had wandered away from his companions one day, never to be seen again. Kinkaid had been too brash for his own good, and Masaki–well, it was felt that Masaki had been the victim of either bad judgment or bad luck, neither a fault to which Loftgren was heir.

It was raining harder now and he found himself having to concentrate more closely on the trail. They were off the ridge and advancing through dense forest. Uluhe and ekaha ferns grew thickly in the underbrush, and the occasional flash of brilliant red ohi‘a lehua or waxy yellow‑white lobelia flower flared like strobe lights among the green walls through which they were moving. Occasionally he picked out the bright orange berries of the Astelia lily gleaming among the sodden verdure.

“Starting to get a little sloppy. Watch your step,” Fanole called back to them.

An instant later Sanchez slipped off the rotting log along which he had been tiptoeing and plunged waist‑deep into thick, soupy, organic muck. Fanole edged carefully around the inadequate pathway, clinging for balance to the overhanging branches of dripping trees, and reached down to give the embarrassed student a hand up.

Beneath the transparent rain slicker the young man’s waterlogged jeans were now stained brown from the waist down. Shreds of bark and leaves and other unidentifiable macrobiotic matter in various stages of decomposition clung to his legs and shoes.

An unsympathetic Fanole offered one of his typically terse observations. “Warned you. In here if you don’t get soaked from the top down, sooner or later you get soaked from the bottom up.” With that he turned and started back up a trail that had already diminished to little more than a narrow tunnel between the trees. “Might as well get used to it!” he yelled back.

The now saturated graduate student looked unhappy. “Sorry. I thought I could keep dry for one day, at least.”

Loftgren tugged the brim of his slicker down over his forehead. His face was wet, but the rest of him still held back the best efforts of the swamp to drench him. On the other hand, he was already soaked with sweat.

The Alakai was where dryness went to die.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Julio. Both Fanole and I have a lot more experience in this kind of country than you do.”

Twenty minutes later Loftgren stepped over a log and onto a seemingly solid patch of ground that turned out to consist of cloying thigh‑deep sludge. Fanole and Sanchez stood off to one side, looking on as he slowly pulled himself out and worked his way through the trough. No one said a word.

By nightfall they’d reached the junction of the Pihea and Alakai trails. Here the Forest Service had helicoptered in thick beams and wood planks. Securely strapped together, these formed a level, solid, platform at the trail juncture.

Fanole set up the tent, somehow managing to keep the interior halfway clear of rain. Beneath the extended, oversized storm flap they stripped nude and deposited their equipment outside on the redwood six‑by‑sixes.

“Any other wood’d rot out inside a month,” their guide pointed out unnecessarily. “Except cypress and mahogany. But we can’t get cypress here, and mahogany’s too expensive. So we have to import the redwood.”

Using clean towels they dried themselves, then crawled into the tent to settle down around the camp stove Fanole ignited. By the time dinner was ready it was darker outside than the inside of a cave. A drenching, dripping, soaking dark. Steady rain pattered like dancing mice on the top of the tent, falling harder at night than it had during the day. Except for the monotonous thrumming of the continuous downpour–the heartbeat of the Alakai–it was dead silent outside the shelter.

Fanole poked leisurely at his reconstituted freeze‑dried supper, looking on as Sanchez ravenously devoured his and Loftgren made a more considered go of his own. The guide was nearly fifty, with a receding forehead of thinning brown hair and dark eyes the color of aged bourbon that seemed to pierce whatever crossed their path, be it human or rock or tree. His sun‑seared appearance left his ancestry open to some question, but he was certainly at least part Hawaiian. He had a slight bulge around his middle: spare tire for a bicycle rather than a sedan. Otherwise he was surprisingly muscular.

“You don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re both crazy.”

Loftgren grinned. It wasn’t the first time that opinion had been expressed in regard to the expedition. “You’re entitled to your opinion. If you feel that way, why did you agree to guide us?”

Fanole finished the last of his dinner and set the plate carefully to one side. “Because no one else would. I know you academic types. If you couldn’t get any help, you’d eventually have tried it on your own.” He glanced up at the roof, listening to the rain tap‑dancing relentlessly outside. “You’d never have gotten out of this place alive.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Loftgren told him. “I’ve been in rougher places than the Alakai. There are no snakes here, no hostile natives. Not even any dangerous bugs, and the mosquitoes quit climbing at the thirty‑five‑hundred‑foot level.”

Fanole nodded. “That’s right. Nothing dangerous here but the place itself. Don’t need any snakes or tigers. The swamp’ll kill you all by its lonesome.” He looked toward the entrance and nodded knowingly. “No landmarks, either. No sky overhead; only clouds. No ground underfoot; only a bottomless pit of composting plant matter. Even compasses act funny in here.”

Sanchez felt compelled to speak up. “Begging your pardon, sir, but we got through the first of the bogs okay.” He smiled apologetically. “Didn’t stay very dry, but we got through.” Reaching over, he tapped his pack. “Hard to get lost with a GPS.”

Fanole shook his head once. He didn’t smile. “‘The first of the bogs’? We haven’t even reached the bogs yet, kid. That was just muddy trail. I’ve personally sounded bogs here that were twenty feet deep. There are deeper still, but they ain’t been plumbed yet.”

“How come?”

“Nobody’s ever brought in a long enough measuring probe. Remember: we’re walking across the throat of an old volcano. Might be bogs a hundred feet deep. Maybe a thousand. Nobody knows. In the whole swamp there’s only two barely‑there east–west trails and nothing at all running north to south. Your plan is to head off‑trail and follow the line of the Wainiha Pali. Nobody’s ever gone in there and done that.” He snorted softly. “With or without a GPS.”

“Kinkaid went in,” Loftgren corrected him, “and Masaki.”

“Nobody knows that for certain.” Fanole’s eyes burned into those of the ornithologist. “Masaki got to the Kilohana Lookout. Nobody’s sure about Kinkaid. If you try to go north from there, you’ve got sheer cliffs on one side and unplumbed bogs on the other. I give you haoles about a day before you give up on it. If we make it that far.”

“I once spent a month in the highlands of New Guinea, Fanole. Don’t try to scare me.”

“I’m not.” The guide leaned back on his light sleeping bag. “You hired me for advice. I’m giving it. Just think it’s a lot to go through for a glimpse of a bird that’s probably been extinct since the ’seventies.”

“There have been reports of song‑sightings since then,” Sanchez pointed out. “The survivors of Masaki’s party all confirm it.”

Fanole rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one big, weathered palm. “You stay out here long enough, it’s easy to start hearing things as well as seeing them.”

“Masaki vanished while tracking a singing akialoa,” Loftgren insisted stubbornly.

“Maybe.”

“Those with him heard it, too. The weather and the terrain got so bad, they all gave up and fell back, except Masaki. But they heard it.”

“Maybe.” The guide was incorrigible. “Next you’ll be telling me you expect to find an o‘o‘a‘a, too.”

“No.” Loftgren’s voice dropped. “No, I’m afraid the o‘o‘a‘a is gone. But not the akialoa. I won’t accept it. It’s too beautiful to not exist any longer.”

From his file pouch he drew forth a folded eight‑by‑ten. Like every other picture he carried, like every map, it was laminated to protect it from the all‑pervasive, all‑destroying moisture. Unfolded, it revealed a painting of a small bird with a distinctive brown patterning and a lighter buff underbelly. Attractive but hardly spectacular.

Except for the downward‑curving sickle‑beak, which was fully one‑third the length of the creature’s body. It was this remarkable protuberance that set the akialoa apart from its immediate relatives and for that matter, from all but a few other birds in the world. It had last been seen in the Alakai in 1973, and the possibility of its continued existence was the reason for Loftgren’s university‑sponsored expedition.

To find the akialoa, he mused as he gazed at the painting, the details of which he knew as intimately as those of his own body. Finding it would guarantee publication in Science, Natural History, the Smithsonian, National Geographic –they would be fighting one another for the right to be first to publish his words and pictures. A coup for the department and for the entire university. Perhaps a chair dedicated in his name. Promotion to professor emeritus of ornithology. The world would be his–or at least that small portion of it that concerned itself with birding.

Kinkaid had plunged into the Alakai seeking the elusive scimitar‑billed bird and had vanished. So had the esteemed Masaki. Now it was his turn, and he fully intended to succeed where they had failed. If the akialoa still lived, it would be left to professional ornithologists such as himself to devise a scheme for ensuring its survival. Only they had the knowledge and ability to do so.

But first he had to find one.

The rain was lighter when they awoke. Carefully, they packed their equipment and set out again. Halfway up a steep, slippery, moss‑bedecked slope he was delighted to find an outcropping of ohi’a trees. Fully mature at eight inches high, they were all more than a hundred years old. Later he spotted a thriving specimen of gunnera, the world’s largest herb, with its unique eight‑foot leaves. Miniature trees and giant herbs. Reversed proportions, he reflected, were the norm in the Alakai.

Later that day the sun came out and they saw their first birds. Sanchez picked up a pair of bright red apapane, but it was Fanole who pointed out the endemic anianiau and the rarer i’iwi. Loftgren felt left out until he saw a tiny elepaio sheltering from the sun beneath a palapali fern.

Of the akialoa, however, there was no sign.

It was raining seriously when they entered the first bogs, edging around them where possible and wading through–sometimes up to their waists–when it was not. Fluttering fragments of fluorescent tape tied to tree branches were all that marked the trail, and these were hard to see in the fog that had settled over the swamp. Several times Loftgren had to admit he would have been lost without Fanole to lead the way.

On the third morning they turned off the intermittent trail and plunged into abject wilderness.

No one bothered to comment on the damp anymore because they were all soaked from head to foot. It was a distinctive, all‑pervasive dampness that made you feel as if your skin were slowly sloughing off your body. White ridges appeared on palms and fingers; it felt as if at any minute your flesh would burst into flagrant, pustulant bloom. Forward progress was now measured in yards instead of miles.

By the end of the week the formerly resolute Sanchez had had enough.

“I want out, Martin.” Despite the protection offered by the battered but still‑intact slicker, water trickled down the graduate student’s sensitive face into his eyes and mouth and ears.

Loftgren regarded him sternly. “There’s no ‘out,’ here, Julio. This isn’t a library research project. We stay until we’ve found what we came for or until we run out of supplies.”

Fanole materialized silently at the frustrated student’s shoulder. “The kid’s right. We’re in too deep as it is. If we keep going this way and don’t manage to hook up with the Mohihi Trail, we won’t get out of here.”

“You’ll find the Mohihi.”

“Maybe. I’ve never gone this way before. No one ever has. We could step right off the damn Pali or stumble into Waialeale. You know damn well nobody’s gonna spot us from the air because the cloud cover only breaks fully maybe once, twice a year. No emergency helicopter pickups in here, mister. I say it’s time to leave. You got what you paid for.”

“I paid for an akialoa. We have plenty of food left.”

“We’ve been slogging and bogging for four days and we haven’t seen a hint of one. Nobody knows exactly where we are, and in an emergency it wouldn’t matter if you could raise someone on that satellite phone tucked in your pack anyway. It’s time to go.”

“If we don’t save the akialoa, no one will. Even in the academic community people are losing interest.”

“You can’t save what doesn’t exist,” Fanole replied evenly. “People have been reducing the native birds’ range and food supply for hundreds of years. You know that. Even if there are a couple left, we don’t know if there’s enough of whatever they specialize in feeding on to support them. Long‑petaled flowers, bugs, whatever. There’s so little information about the akialoa that we don’t even know for sure what the hell they eat. But that hook of a bill evolved to feed on something specific. We don’t know anything about it from the old Hawaiians because they almost never came up here. Country’s too rough, too many dangerous spirits. Too many feather‑hunters who never made it back. Birds like that don’t just switch specialized feeding habits to lobelia or ohi’a in a few decades. The o‘o‘a‘a had a better chance in that respect and it didn’t make it. Be reasonable, man.”

Loftgren regarded his companions. Fanole was unyielding. Sanchez’s expression was a mixture of pleading and anger. Bits of dark, decomposing plant material clung to his forehead and hair, giving him the aspect of a drowned Hispanic dryad.

“All right. But first we finish out the day and then camp. We can start back tomorrow.”

Fanole grunted, willing to concede an afternoon. An exhausted and relieved Sanchez merely slumped to the ground where he stood. Beneath him, the spongy earth immediately began to give way, oozing up around his hips and shoulders. Hastily he rose to search for more solid ground. With the intensifying rain shrouding them in wet shadow, they made camp.

The song woke him. It was sharp, piercing, utterly distinctive. At first Loftgren thought it might be an akepa, but decided the concluding notes were too high.

Hauling himself to the front of the tent, he unzipped the flap and crawled outside. Fog swirled around the temporary shelter, coiling smoke‑like through the trees, reducing visibility to a few yards. An errant shaft of sunlight shining momentarily through the clouds briefly pearlized the drifting fog.

It sat in a tree not ten feet away, singing energetically, that remarkable bill parting slightly to emit each series of notes. He stared breathlessly, hardly daring to move. Then it turned to regard him momentarily out of tiny blinking eyes before flying off into the enveloping mist. Alighting somewhere unseen, it resumed its cheerful song.

Loftgren flung himself back into the tent and pawed at his camera bag until he’d extracted the digital unit. Fanole sat up and blinked at him as the ornithologist struggled feverishly with a fresh storage card. Sanchez stirred sleepily nearby.

“Nude Menehune nymphs cavorting in the bogs?” the guide inquired.

“I saw it.” Trying to steady shaking fingers, Loftgren slid the camera into its protective housing, checked the telephoto, then began to tighten the knobs on the aluminum strip that would make the plastic airtight and waterproof. “I heard it first and crawled outside, and I saw it.”

Fanole sat up sharply. “What do you mean, you saw it?”

“On a branch, right outside the tent. It was still singing when I came in for the camera.” He rose, checked to make sure the card was more than half empty, and started for the tent flap.

“Hey!” Naked, Fanole scrambled out of his bag. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Loftgren paused in the entrance. “Can’t wait. Might never see it again.”

“You idiot, hold up!” Fanole lurched to the opening and outside, where it was beginning to rain afresh. On hands and knees, Sanchez blinked out from behind him, trying to wake up.

“What’s happening? Where’s Professor Loftgren going?”

Fanole stared into the intensifying shower. “He said he heard his damn bird. Says he saw one.”

“Saw one?” Sanchez emerged, arms wrapped across his naked chest, shivering slightly in the early‑morning chill. “An akialoa?”

“I guess.” The guide turned and reentered the tent. Sanchez gazed into the fog and drizzle for a moment longer, then retreated.

“Aren’t we going after him?”

The guide’s eyes were unblinking, hard. “Without our equipment? Without planning? Not me, kid. Not me. If he has an ounce of intelligence left in him, he’ll be back within an hour.”

Sanchez hesitated in the doorway, wavering. “And if he’s not?”

Fanole said nothing. He was heating coffee.

Loftgren ran on, pushing through the trees and brush, ignoring the brilliant red flowers that occasionally cropped up in his path. Once, an apapane trilled close on his left. He ignored it, concentrating only on the song that stayed just ahead of him but never disappeared entirely. The bird was moving, perhaps in search of the particular long flowers it needed to feed on that were nearly extinct elsewhere in the swamp, perhaps toward a nest. A nest! What a discovery that would be!

All he needed was a picture; one lousy picture. A single decent clear shot. Then he’d pick his way back to the tent. They could search farther for the bird or return to civilization if Fanole and that simpering Sanchez still insisted on going back. He’d expected better of his most committed graduate student. It was apparent he had the brains but not the dedication. Great discoveries were not made by the cautious or the reluctant.

A second time, the bird lighted in a tree in front of him. He aimed the camera, but the creature flew off as he thumbed the release and he couldn’t be sure he’d gotten the shot. A check of the LCD screen showed that he had not. Damn! It was almost as if the bird was leading him on, deeper into the swamp. Absurd notion. Rare as it was, it would be nothing if not highly skittish. He plunged furiously onward, once wading through a bog that reached up his waist to his chest, then his neck, then to his very chin. You couldn’t swim through a bog, he knew. It was too thick, too dense with organic components. But it wasn’t quicksand, either, fighting to drag you down.

Out of breath, muscles aching, he flailed at a protruding root, got a grip, and pulled himself out. Just ahead the akialoa sang on, its song bright and strong.

Broken branches and thorns tore at his rain gear, at the sweatshirt beneath, and finally at his exposed skin. He ignored it all just as he ignored the profound dampness, just as he ignored the waning light. Dimly he realized that it would be impossible for him to find his way back to the camp by nightfall. Concentrating as he was on listening for the bird, he had no time for mere personal concerns. But he was strong and experienced. He would find his way back tomorrow.

In the brief, bright, burning fury of discovery, he had forgotten about the cold.

There was just a light breeze, but once the sun went down it was enough to drive the chill through his flesh and into his very bones. At times, he found himself remembering from his reading, the temperature in the Alakai could drop to levels that approached freezing. Ordinarily that would not have mattered, despite his light attire–except for the fact that he was soaked to the skin. Curled by the side of a bog, he started shivering as soon as the sun disappeared completely. By the time it was dark he was trembling violently.

He had nothing to light a fire with, even if any of the sodden pulp that passed for wood around him could have been persuaded to nourish a spark. For a while he tried shouting, gave it up when he realized no one would dare come looking for him in the dark.

Eventually the shivering began to subside. He lay on his side, his breathing slow and shallow, realizing what was happening to him. All because he wanted to help a single, rare bird to survive. His greatest fear was not of death, but that no one else would come after him. The public would forget about the akialoa without dramatic rediscovery and intercession by trained ornithologists. Without the support of dedicated scientists like himself, there was no way the species could survive.

An eternity later he became feebly aware that the light around him was strengthening. Had the night passed so quickly? Or was his perception of time failing faster than his other senses? The omnipresent fog and drizzle prevented the sun from reaching the surface, from warming him. Closer to Heaven he might be, but here it was wet and gray.

Searching for more solid ground, he dragged himself with infinite patience away from the bog until his hand wrapped around something hard and almost dry. A solid piece of wood at last. But when he struggled to pull himself higher it came apart in his fingers. Blinking, he examined it weakly in the saturated light. It was not brown, but white. With a great effort he managed to raise his head.

Not one, but two deteriorating skeletons lay just above him, entangled in the trees where they had collapsed. Scraps of rotting, disintegrating clothing clung to the bone‑white shoulders and hips. Like desiccated string, a few vestiges of tendons hung slack from the limbs. Exotic mosses and small ferns flourished in the vacant body cavities, having fed well on the now decomposed flesh.

Kinkaid, he thought. Masaki. Or maybe just a pair of disoriented, unlucky hikers. Without a detailed forensic analysis, there was no way to know. Had they been drawn here, too, by the song of the akialoa? Drawn to what? A nesting place, perhaps. Or maybe a courtship ground, where hopeful males displayed their most colorful feathers and warbled their most enchanting songs.

From somewhere very close by, an akialoa greeted the morning with the rarest song in the world.

Kinkaid, Masaki, and now him. Everything risked for fame and modest fortune. All to try to help a wonderful, unique bird, and all for naught. How ironic it was that a man should die of hypothermia in the midst of a swamp. He pushed on, staggering and falling, struggling to his feet, always following the song.

He did not know how much time had passed when the sun finally came out. The warmth was as unexpected as it was welcome. With dryness came a rush of renewed strength and determination. Knowing he ought to turn back, he pushed on. Not the wisest of decisions, perhaps, but having come this far and endured so much, he felt he had no choice.

Then he saw them.

They were perched in a cluster of trees green with epiphytes and bromeliads, bejeweling the branches with the brilliance of their plumage. His jaw dropped in wonderment. A pair of black momo sat preening themselves, their own shorter sickle‑bills digging parasites from beneath their wings. Nearby, a flock of greater amahiki chattered away like so many lime‑green mockingbirds. With its thick, heavy beak, a greater koa finch was plucking caterpillars from the trunk of an isolated tree, while overhead a trio of o‘o‘ flashed their extraordinary tail feathers and brilliant gold wing tufts. Crow‑sized kioea yelled at diminutive red‑and‑gray ula‑ai‑hawane. It seemed as if all the extinct, beautiful birds of Hawaii had gathered in this one place, just waiting for the sun to come out in the Alakai. Waiting for him.

Then he heard the song again, and there they were. Not one, not two, but three pairs cavorting in the tree directly ahead of him, singing their approval of the rare appearance of the sun. The males were seven to seven and a half inches long, bright olive‑yellow above and yellow below, the gray‑green females slightly smaller. And those amazing, astonishing bills, unequaled anywhere in the kingdom of birds. There was a nest, too. Hearing the peeping of chicks, he hardly dared to breathe. Ever so slowly, he reached for his camera.

It wasn’t there. He must have dropped it while running and slogging through the swamp, he realized. No matter. With such a sight as no ornithologist of his generation could dare to dream of spread out before him, it was enough simply to sink to his knees and stare, and stare. Spreading his arms out to his sides, he drank in the sight and the sun. And smiled.

Sanchez wasn’t with the search party that stumbled across Loftgren’s body early the following year, but Fanole was. The guide recognized the remnants of the ornithologist’s boots as he rechecked his group’s position on the new GPS he carried. He had to check it three times. Each time, his amazement grew. Without food or proper clothing, the haole researcher had somehow made it halfway up the side of Mount Waialeale itself.

Two of the Forest Service rangers on expedition with the guide peered over his shoulder. “Know him?”

Fanole nodded, resting an arm across one thigh. “Bird prof. Went running off into the depths by himself last year. His graduate student and I spent a day searching for him before we turned and got out. Barely made it.” He thought back. “That was two days before Tropical Storm Omolu hit the island.”

“Poor son‑of‑a‑bitch.” The taller ranger wiped moisture from his face beneath the rain hood. “What a way to die.”

“I dunno.” His companion cocked his head slightly to one side. “He looks kind of peaceful to me.”

Fanole grunted, straightened. “We’ll have to mark the location. Another crew can haul out the body.”

“That’s for sure.” The first ranger started to turn away, hesitated, looked back and frowned. “What’s that he’s holding in his right hand?”

The other ranger squinted. Fanole had already started back toward their bivouac. “Plant stuff. Fern leaf, I think. I don’t guess that he’s holding anything. Fingers contracted while dying.” He sighed and shook his head sadly. “Rigor mortis.”

Still, the taller man hesitated. Then he shrugged and started after his companion. “Funny. For just a second there I thought they were feathers.”

Growth

An awful lot has happen to the characters of Flinx and his pet minidrag, Pip, since they first appeared in The Tar‑Aiym Krang thirty‑five years ago. Having matured both physically and mentally, Flinx has gone from being a pretty aimless teenager to someone (or perhaps something) of immense importance to everyone around him. It’s not a destiny he sought. But like so many of us, he can’t escape the inexorable. That does not mean he wouldn’t like to do so.

As a consequence of who he is and what he may yet become, all manner of individuals and even entire societies have acquired an interest in what happens to him. Sometimes even without him being aware of it…

There was no denying that there were times when Flinx enjoyed being alone. One of the few times he could allow himself to relax was in transit. Because when traversing the immense distances between the stars he was spared the constant, puerile emotional babble of supposedly sentient individuals who collectively gave “higher intelligence” a bad name. Though interstellar travel did not entirely relieve him of his recurring headaches, the debilitating attacks were considerably reduced in number when he was by himself.

Of course, he was not entirely alone on the ship. Pip, the empathetic Alaspinian minidrag and his constant companion since youth, was with him. He could also count on the presence of the Teacher ’s advanced AI. For an automaton, it was a pleasant, sophisticated presence–and unlike the interminably gibbering mass of humanxkind, one he could simply shut down whenever he grew tired of the conversation.

Man and machine were chatting now as Flinx relaxed in the lounge. With its artificial pond, waterfall, and small forest, it was his favorite part of the ship. The Ulru‑Ujurrians who had presented him with the craft had left the relaxation chamber comparatively bare and utilitarian in both content and design. Employing the ship’s automatics, Flinx had modified it repeatedly over the years.

Now as he reclined on the couch‑lounge, he allowed music and the remnants of a good meal to slowly overtake consciousness. As he slipped sleepward, the AI’s thoughtful voice grew fainter and fainter. Gliding toward him from her perch in one of the many decorative live plants that composed the tiny woodland, Pip furled her wings as she landed on his chest. Coiling against his ribs, emotionally surfing his current wave of contentment, she shut her own eyes and joined him in sleep.

The lounge forest was home to a small but exceptionally varied collection of flora and fauna drawn from different worlds. Before being transferred to the enclosed, climate‑controlled chamber, their individual biologies and backgrounds had been thoroughly vetted by the vessel’s Shell. Otherwise Flinx would not have felt comfortable going to sleep inside the lounge. He knew that none of the diminutive creatures that dwelled therein were capable of or inclined to do him harm.

It was not an animal, however, that was now advancing silently toward him.

The single oversized leaf split and split and split again into innumerable subsidiary tendrils, not unlike the singular twin leaves of the uncommon Terran desert plant Welwitschia mirabilis. The suddenly motile growth was one of many that had been given to Flinx by the adapted human inhabitants of the edicted planet known in restricted Commonwealth files as Midworld. The primitive human colonists who lived there had developed a capacity for empathetic foliation: the ability to sense, on a very simple level, what much of the planet’s globe‑girdling flora was “feeling.” As an empath himself, Flinx to a certain degree shared that ability.

But he was asleep now. Not empathizing, not projecting, not receiving or feeling. Like his thoughts, his emotions were in stasis. The multiple tendrils that were twisting and weaving their way in his direction were doing so entirely on their own and without any prompting or tempting from their objective. The unanticipated activity did not, however, go unobserved.

The Teacher ’s AI monitored the leaf’s fracturing approach via multiple lenses embedded in the walls and ceiling that were capable of scanning the entire chamber simultaneously. Though it could have sent mobile devices to intercept the squirming branchlets, it did not react immediately. Its history showed that whenever a serious threat to its owner presented itself, Flinx had invariably been stirred to wakefulness. The same was true of his winged pet. Both continued to sleep, ignoring the floral advance. Their indifference, even in sleep mode, caused the AI to dither.

By the time it decided that regardless of a lack of responsiveness from its master it ought to take some action, it was too late.

By now the diameter of the smallest of the continuously subdividing tendrils could be measured in nanometers. Entering Flinx via his right ear, they proceeded to worm their way deep into his cranium without damaging the delicate tympanum of the hearing organ or stimulating it to generate potentially awakening noise. Knowing exactly where to penetrate, they entered the cerebrum at points that would have struck a human neurosurgeon as not only harmless, but useless. A normal human brain would not even have been affected. Flinx’s mind, however, was far from normal. His closest human companion, Clarity Held, knew this. So, too, did a pair of longtime mentors, the human Bran Tse‑Mallory and the thranx Truzenzuzex.

So also, it appeared, did certain highly specialized and abnormally active botanical xenophyta.

Once again Flinx found himself in that peculiar state of conscious sleep that periodically afflicted him. He was aware of himself and, to a certain extent, his immediate surroundings as well. He knew that he was safely on board his ship, in the lounge, but asleep. In this singular state of awareness but not wakefulness someone–or rather something–was attempting to converse with him.

Intermittent contact is wasteful. The sexless voice in his mind was vast, enfolding, luxuriant. Greater intimacy will facilitate progress.

Flinx did not argue. How could he, being asleep? Nor could he ignore what he was perceiving. He could no more blot out the voice in his mind than he could reach up and pull out the infiltrating tendrils of which he remained utterly unaware. Even if he could, there was no reason to do so. Their existence inside his head, inside his brain, caused him no pain, no discomfort. In fact, their presence was soothing, generating a kind of cerebral balm. As he remained motionless and unobjecting, the tendrils set themselves more deeply. He was aware that something was being done to his body but found himself unable and unwilling to oppose it.

As awareness dawned of what was taking place, the ship finally decided that it had to do something. But in order to safely counteract what it now perceived to be an unsolicited intrusion into the body of its master, it first had to ascertain exactly what was happening. Analysis always precedes action.

Alongside the couch‑lounge a floor panel popped open. A cable emerged. The end of the cable split into smaller cables, which in turn divided into smaller and still‑smaller metallic filaments. These gave birth to hypoallergenic wisps of silicaceous cilia. Ascending the lounge, they twisted and curled and found their way to the head of the recumbent, sleeping human. A small number of cilia entered his left ear, penetrating, questing. Looking for answers. Searching for connections.

The world‑mind of Midworld that was present on the Teacher in the form of several decorative growths could not communicate with the ship’s AI. The purely mechanical AI could not talk to the wholly organic representation of that immense green world‑mind. But to the very considerable surprise of each, they discovered that they could communicate through the matchless, inimitable mind of the human dozing dreamily on the lounge. Genetically modified ganglia served to link plant and machine. It was not a function that had been envisioned by the rogue gengineers who had conceived the blueprint of the young man’s mind. Conditioned to think of himself as receptor of emotions and possibly a kind of trigger for something incalculably greater and as yet undefined, a quiescent Flinx now found himself serving as the unconscious facilitator of an unprecedented link between plant‑mind and machine.

Having unexpectedly established this rudimentary contact, the Teacher ’s AI ventured a typical terse query. What are you doing? Your presence here was not requested.

Not requested, artificial mentality, but necessary.

The ship mulled this response. I monitor the human’s condition on a more than hourly basis. I have not detected, nor do I now, any need for the intrusion of another life‑form. This plainly includes you.

The botanical vastness replied, Time passes. Events advance. It is thought a more intimate connection will help to speed, streamline, and facilitate certain essential decision making on the part of the human that is vital to the continued survival of all.

Since Flinx was in no condition to object, the ship did so for him. At times it may appear that the master hesitates unreasonably, or makes determinations that are contradictory or even counterproductive, which he then proceeds to follow. I have learned that this is necessary to the optimal functioning of his kind.

That is contradictory. How can following counterproductive decisions improve function? The plant‑mind was clearly confused.

One would have to be human to understand. It is true that I am not. However, I have spent all my conscious existence in the presence of or responding to the actions and thoughts of this one individual. You are, I perceive, a group consciousness. Not individual. It is not expected that you would understand.

The intimacy we have just forged will improve the human’s functioning.

The Teacher was unhesitating in its response. In the absence of empirical precedent I can neither refute nor verify that judgment. But I can tell you that while your intimate presence and consequent influence may possibly enhance his health and even extend his physical life span, it will only inhibit his decision‑making ability.

Another contradiction. Can you elucidate?

The Teacher tried. Being wholly human, the concept was not one that was easy for an artificial intelligence to explain. When it comes to rendering rapid decisions on matters of great importance, safety and health are often inhibitors, whereas stress often proves to be the most important stimulant.

The plant‑mind was quiet for a long moment. Yet it seems that all other living things function better in the absence of such stimulation. What proof of this theorem can you offer?

Only an opinion that is based on knowledge accumulated from my years of attending to, observing, and working with the organism under discussion. If it is more rapid and intuitive decision making that you seek to augment, you will find that your physical and mental intrusion, no matter how temporally copacetic, in the end has the opposite effect.

Another pause, then: We seek only to support. It was not considered that self‑evidentiary improvements might produce contradictory consequences. Until this paradox can be resolved, we will withdraw to ponder your interpretation.

The curled green leaf that was protruding from Flinx’s right ear quivered slightly as it began to withdraw. Within moments the last of the microscopic tendrils at its tip had slipped out, sliding wetly down the side of Flinx’s jawline. Slowly the leaf pulled back across the floor, contracting, until it lay coiled against its parent plant: just one more innocuous decorative growth among the dozens of other exotics that made up the lounge’s carefully maintained landscaping.

From his left ear, a glistening cable withdrew. Its retreating diameter shrank toward invisibility as smaller and smaller fibers slid into view. The last of them were far too minuscule to be visible to the human eye. As the last of the cable vanished into an open port in the floor, Flinx blinked and sat up. Her rest summarily disturbed, a mildly irritated Pip uncoiled, spread her wings, and flew off to land on a favorite platform set among the trees where she could resume her rest undisturbed by her indecisive companion. Unaware that anything out of the ordinary had transpired, she promptly closed her eyes and went in search of the sleep that had just been interrupted.

Swinging his long legs off the lounge, Flinx yawned, stretched slightly, and used his right palm to rub at a slight itch that was irritating his right ear. It was too early to eat again, the Teacher ’s intended destination still lay some days far‑distant through space‑plus, and he was not in the mood to read, view, or listen to anything intended as a recreational distraction. Standing, he found himself not for the first time faced with budding boredom. He knew he need not succumb to it. On a vessel as elaborate as the Teacher, there was always something to do.

Without exactly knowing why, he decided it might be a good time to prune the plants.

By Alan Dean Foster

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

The Black Hole

Cachalot

Dark Star

The Metrognome and Other Stories

Midworld

Nor Crystal Tears

Sentenced to Prism

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Star Trek^® Logs One–Ten

Voyage to the City of the Dead

…Who Needs Enemies?

With Friends Like These…

Mad Amos

The Howling Stones

Parallelities

Stories:

Impossible Places

Exceptions to Reality

The Icerigger Trilogy:

Icerigger

Mission to Moulokin

The Deluge Drivers

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:

For Love of Mother‑Not

The Tar‑Aiym Krang

Orphan Star

The End of the Matter

Bloodhype

Flinx in Flux

Mid‑Flinx

Reunion

Flinx’s Folly

Sliding Scales

Running from the Deity

Trouble Magnet

Patrimony

The Damned:

Book One: A Call to Arms

Book Two: The False Mirror

Book Three: The Spoils of War

The Founding of the Commonwealth:

Phylogenesis

Dirge

Diuturnity’s Dawn

The Taken Trilogy:

Lost and Found

The Light‑years Beneath My Feet

The Candle of Distant Earth

Exceptions to Reality is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2008 by Thranx, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Some of the stories contained in this work were originally published as follows:

“The Muffin Migration” previously appeared in Star Colonies, DAW Books, 1999.

“Chauna” previously appeared in Far Frontiers, DAW Books, 2000.

“At Sea” previously appeared in Warriors Fantastic, DAW Books, 2000.

“The Killing of Bad Bull” previously appeared in the original anthology The Mutant Files, DAW Books, 2001.

“Rate of Exchange” previously appeared on AOL Online, 2001.

“Wait‑a‑While” previously appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Aug. 2001.

“The Short, Labored Breath of Time” previously appeared in Darkling Plain, Vol. 1 #2, 2001.

“A Fatal Exception Has Occurred at…” previously appeared in Children of Cthulhu, Del Rey Books, 2002.

“Basted” previously appeared in Pharoah Fantastic, DAW Books, 2002.

“Serenade” previously appeared in Masters of Fantasy, Baen, 2002.

“Redundancy” previously appeared in Space Stations, DAW Books, 2004.

“Panhandler” previously appeared in Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, DAW Books, 2004.

“The Last Akialoa” previously appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 2005.

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978‑0‑345‑50781‑5

v3.0