Call Me Ishmael

Chapter 24

Author's note: Cut toward your buddy, not towards yourself. You can buy the completed book at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. To paraphrase Finne, "And who wants to do that, anyway? "

The jungle was hot, humid, and full of exotic life.  I was uncertain how we would find anything out of the ordinary in all the greenery, or how we would recognize it if we did.  If it had to be the size of a house for us to notice, anything smaller was bound to miss our attention.  Long before, I learned tricks to finding things, depending on what I had lost, and where it happened.  There was the very effective 'retracing your steps.'  I simply returned to the last spot the item's location was definitely known, and moved forward in space and time, until the point in time and space at which the item was lost.  I merely reached down, and picked it up.  This method was productive when looking for car keys in the living room, but was of less use when searching for out-of-place things in the midst of a jungle located in another dimension. 

"How are we going to recognize anything out of the ordinary?" Niles complained.  "I've never been in such an extraordinary place in my life.  That tree, there.  That's just a smashing, out-of-the-ordinary piece of tree, if one asks me.  It's very high, don't you think?"  He pointed up into the foliage. 

I squinted.  In the dim light of the understory, it was very difficult to see in any direction for any distance, especially straight up.

"Well, I'd guess it's two hundred feet," I said. 

Finnie's gaze followed my indicating index finger.  "That is a tiger balm tree."  She sighted up her perfect arm, angling just so.  "It's roughly 84 meters in height; say three hundred and fifty years old.  It's a fairly old specimen, boar beetles will have it dead within six years, and there's a nest of ant monkeys about half way up."

Even Splice was impressed.  "How do we know you're not just making that up?"

"You don't, except about the ant monkeys.  That stuff falling in your hair is their dung."

Splice shrieked and jumped away from the tree.  At that moment, there was a wet smack and a loud pop from somewhere off to our left.

Finnie dropped into her ninja crouch, the curtain parting in all the right places to allow her to lower her perfect body close to the earth and hug the ground.  I envied it.

"Get down, and follow me!"  Her voice was an order, and we all obeyed. 

We ran in a half-crouch for a quarter-mile, pushing through the tangle of wild ginger, poinsettias the size of wheelbarrows, and bright pink bananas only the size of my pinkie finger.  We tumbled down a moist, soggy hillside and fetched up against a large, dripping boulder at the edge of a slow moving stream about three feet wide.  There was no path anywhere to be seen, and I knew we would never be able to find our way back to the house, even if we wanted to go back there.

Finnie stopped.

"I say, Finnie, what sorts of creatures are those ant monkeys back at that rather large tree?  If they can fling their dung with that much, well, one hates to use such a vulgar term, but with such, shall we just say, gusto, they could be rather quite dangerous."

I looked at Niles.  I thought, is this guy for real?  Can anyone really get through life so clueless and inept?  The answer was clearly yes, as he stood blinking before me.

"Niles, that was not ant monkey dung, or any other sort of dung.  It hit the side of the tree, so it came in horizontally."  I thrust my arm out, illustrating the point.

"Quite, quite.  I had not considered that, what with not wanting dung on the old bean.  Not dung, you say?  I wonder what it was, then.  It certainly made a wallop, what?"