NOW YOU SEE HIM . . .
by Catherine Butzen
Five hours past . . .
The hot sun beamed brightly down upon the island scene, sending its brilliant rays dancing over the foam-flecked caps of blue-green waves that rose up and slipped down, finally cresting against a smooth white sandbar. In the depths, sleek, pale-grey dolphins rose up and pranced, while the silent shadows of hungry sharks coasted behind, small eyes glittering in anticipation of the kill. Flying fish sent rainbows dancing through the air, sunlight glittering off of their pearly wet scales and turning their quick movements into something etherial and untouchable. High above the scene, white and slate-colored birds of prey stalked the fish, while brightly hued tropical birds perched on odd logs of wood and chirruped in their own odd tongues. On the long white beach, littered with driftwood, there was nothing to interest them- not even the many still figures which lay amidst the washed-up driftwood and wreckage.
There was an avian shriek and a flutter of wings as one of the prone bodies stirred, forcing the bird which had been nesting upon it into a flurry of flight. The person- for human it was- groaned, muttered a few muted epithets, and rolled over, shielding her eyes from the sun and inadvertantly coating her soaked clothing with yet another layer of fine sand. Further down the beach, another one had already climbed to his feet, and was stiffly picking his way up the sandbar, dragging a long heavy object wrapped in dripping rags behind him.
�Tropical storm,� the female said hoarsely; she had evidently swallowed a great deal of saltwater, and her voice came out in something akin to a croak. At the sound of the voice, the other figure turned and staggered back down the beachhead, looking for whoever had spoken. The girl vaguely raised one hand, fingers clenched as though gripping a feather duster, and waved back and forth. �Ah, well done, monsieur,� she muttered.
�French?� said the man. �Parlez-vous Francais, mademoiselle?�
�No French. Amerikanski.� She grunted. �Und du?�
�Pardon?� The man had now reached where she was lying, one hand still raised in the air. She was just as drenched as he was, barefoot and dressed in sweatpants and a loose shirt. Apparently, the storm at sea had caught them both unprepared. They were not the only ones that had made it to the island, the man noted, but the only ones that had made it alive; bodies of the drowned and crushed victims littered the beach.
She opened one eye when he came a bit closer, and winced at the bright sunlight. Her short hair was crusted with sea salt. �Hi. Nice outfit.�
�I was caught a bit unawares, as were you, it seems,� he said, extending a hand. The girl ignored it and hauled herself to her feet, wavering slightly. �Are you all right?� he asked.
�Been better, been worse. At least I�m alive,� she replied, rubbing one cheekbone ruefully. A bruise was already forming there. �My name�s Kate Martin. Anybody else alive?�
�Not that I�ve seen.� He extended one gloved hand. �I�m Griffin, Hawley Griffin. Please forgive my . . . bandaged . . . appearance, but I was taking this cruise for my health. My skin is extraordinarily sensitive, so I cannot let it-�
�Albinism?� Kate interrupted.
�Yes, actually.� Griffin seemed surprised. Perhaps it was unusual that someone seemed unperturbed by his garb, which was admittedly extraordinary. Despite the shipwreck and frantic swim for his life, Griffin still wore a full suit of plain but well-tailored clothes, a plain brown trenchcoat, waterproof gloves, boots, and heavy bandaging around his face. The moment Kate�s eyes had opened, he had extracted from a buttoned pocket of the coat a pair of slightly chipped but otherwise undamaged sunglasses, and put them on with undue haste.
�An albino? Sorry to hear that,� Kate replied absentmindedly. �It�s funny, you know . . . I always wrote about albinos in my stories, but I have to get shipwrecked before I actually run into one. �Eye of the Golem,� that was a good one. Six-figure paperback sale, TV movie, all that. Bastard Blythe cheated me on the royalties, though.�
Griffin raised one eyebrow behind the bandaging. She was rambling, and her eyes didn�t seem to be quite focusing. Whatever had given her that bruise must have also jumbled her brains. �Wait here,� he said, and moved back up the beach to where he had left the cloth-wrapped bundle. Nimble gloved fingers unpicked the knots, revealing a watertight oblong box with several heavy locks.
�Curse it, the key�s lost,� he muttered to no one. Seizing a heavy piece of wood that had been washed up with the rest of the junk, he bashed the locks out of their settings and opened up the lid of the box. An audible sigh of relief issued from the covered mouth when he found the contents still unbroken.
Inside, nestled in cocoons of soft cloth, were forty or fifty small glass phials of colored fluids, numerous jars of mineral pieces and composites, a set of delicately balanced scales, measuring instruments (both metric and standard) for solids and liquids, and a beautiful array of surgeon�s knives. Griffin selected a large brown glass bottle with a peeling wrapper, took a quick whiff of the contents, nodded to himself in approval, and returned to where Kate was sitting on the sandbar and talking to herself.
�-stupid jerk, whenever I�d sit down he�d be right there grinning at me, told her off too and I told her I�d just have to kill him, but that�s not legal you know so I had to just deal with it instead-�
�Drink this.� Griffin ordered, handing her the bottle. Kate took it without complaint and knocked back a good swallow of the stuff, choking and spluttering as the liquid burned her throat. �What the hell-� she coughed, holding her throat. �What is that stuff, acid?!�
�Bourbon,� Griffin replied shortly. Kate was still woozy, but she got the distinct impression that he didn�t like being questioned.. �Good for what ails you. Take another drink.�
�Hell no, I�m awake now,� she retorted, eyeing the bottle with distrust. �An� people wonder why I don�t booze. Where�d you get bourbon, anyway?�
�Found it. Seems my medicine chest washed up on the shore, along with all this flotsam and jetsam. How do you feel?�
Kate shook her head. �Awake, and severely disgruntled. Medicine chest? Are you a doctor?�
�Something like that. Well.�
�Well.�
�Here we are.�
�Yep. Here we are.�
�You�re the only one I�ve found. I don�t believe anyone else survived the wreck.�
�Lucky me. So.�
�So.�
�What�s the situation?�
�We�re on a tropical island.�
�I figured.�
�I suppose we�d better forage for shelter. How well can you see?�
�Not well at all. The sun�s too bright. Lucky you, bringing sunglasses along on our own personal Gilligan�s Island; I know we�re on a beach, and that�s about it. What else?�
�The beach slopes upward gently for about six hundred meters, I�d say. Beyond that, there�s the beginnings of jungle. Mineral stains on the outcropping rocks indicate that there should be a course of fresh water around someplace. Judging by the flora and fauna, I don�t believe we�ll have to worry about any large predators . . . �
�That trailing-off was ominous. What�s up?�
�Not much.�
�Ah. Not much as in no large predators whatsoever? Including the notoriously belligerent homo sapiens sapiens?�
�Well put.�
Kate stretched, shielding her eyes with one hand and peering into the distance. As her eyes began to adjust, the vague blur of greens began to resolve itself into a sharp picture. The scene was just as Griffin had described; between the beach and the jungle, there were a few yards of dimpled, sandy soil, but beyond that there was a massive rainforest in full blast. Brightly-colored insects and tropical birds flitted about the beach, the birds diving for prey and the insects diving to get away from the birds. Not many of them made it, but it wasn�t like Mother Nature couldn�t make more insects. This was the South Seas, Gaia�s paradise- and no place for two unarmed urban humans.
�Well.�
Both were silent for a moment.
�Hey doc . . . �
�Yes?�
�I liked it better when I couldn�t see. Pass the glasses.� Without waiting for a reply, she neatly filched the black wire-rimmed spectacles from the end of his nose and placed them over her own eyes. Griffin�s hands flew to his face, but Kate was too busy watching the flight of a tropical parrot to notice the suspicious expression grow on his face. It might have reached his eyes, but even if she had observed him, she never would have seen it . . . for the glasses had concealed eyes that were not there.
Five weeks past . . .
Time moved on, as it was wont to do. The scene every morning as the sun rose over the turquoise sea remained unchanged; birds swooped, insects buzzed, dolphins pranced and sharks prowled. The waves washed up against the beach and retreated again, leaving a dampened patch that quickly grew smaller and dried up in the heat of the tropical sun.
But some changes had been made, though not great enough to affect the workings of nature each sunup. Several trees, the foreward scouts of the slowly advancing jungle, had been crudely chopped down and uprooted, leaving a squarish patch of brown-grey soil. A large number of young saplings were fastened together with springy creepers, forming a haphazard one-room lean-to, with white sand and gravel heaped against the four corners to keep the makeshift corner posts firmly planted. Between the bound branches had been strung large pieces of blue plastic sheeting, of the kind that usually decorates construction sites; Kate had found it in the wreckage, and as she pointed out, it made a �damn better roofing than any banana leaf.�
It had been more than a month since two humans had been shipwrecked on the island, which they had christened Schroedinger�s Box after an old logical paradox. (Schroedy for short.) Given that they were the only two higher-brain-functional creatures within several hundred nautical miles, it was logical that they work together to ensure survival. Survival until what, Kate did not know and Griffin did not ask. The �working together� bit was difficult enough.
Any one person with a strong personality is cross enough to bear, and a clash between a pair of them- with nobody else to intermediate or separate them when necessary- was the kind of thing that started wars. Kate was sarcastic, suspicious, and dry, with a virago personality and a sizeable chip on a cold shoulder that made it very difficult to get a straight answer out of her, while Griffin had obviously worked in laboratory conditions for most of his life; while pleasant at first acquaintance, he was short-tempered and quite bitter about the whole situation, finding it difficult to deal with such an open-ended environment that had literally thousands of variables. Between them, they managed to survive well enough (Kate had done a large range of reading as a child, and her memory occasionally regurgitated useful tidbits from Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island), but they argued constantly, and night often found one or the other sleeping in a tree instead of the hut, refusing to have anything to do with the other until a minor debate was solved.
The biggest argument, which had forced Kate to do her own fishing for over a week (and consequently go hungry, as she was not a wilderness enthusiast in any form) had been over the inherent nature of humankind. Griffin believed that humanity was a blank slate, a tabula rasa in any form, which left each person open to influence from good or evil according to their environment; Kate, who had evidently not been born with much in the way of maternal instinct, argued by example that humans were based in predatory instinct, and consequentially classified themselves as evil by their own dictation. If any of the sailors or other passengers from the boat had been alive, the new influences might have tempered the situation a bit; but two trivia hound intellectual-cud chewers were a bad combination.
But their most constant chafing point was over Griffin�s attire. They had stripped all the clothes from the corpses before burying them, and given the ratio of dead people to live ones, there was no shortage of fabric or material; Kate had often suggested that he change his clothes, mainly because the bandaging was starting to grow moldy. But Griffin refused, clinging to his one suit of tailored clothing like the lifeline that saves a drowning man.
�Oh, for god�s sake!� Kate exploded one evening, watching Griffin use a pair of pincers from the medicine chest to remove patches of rot from the trench coat. �We�re in the tropics, doc! It�s two hundred degrees in the bloody shade. Fine, you�ve got bad skin, that�s acceptable. But even albinos don�t need sixteen bloody layers of clothing! Ditch the coat, for chrissakes!�
Griffin didn�t twitch, but his voice was low and cold. �I will not. Be quiet.�
�It�s rotting, you�ve lost the belt, and the damn thing�s turned green. The damp gets into everything here, Griffin- even that friggin� coat. Chuck it on the fire and pick one from the pile- we�ve got loads.�
�No.� There was a hint of threat now, lurking under his voice. �I need this coat. If you knew anything, you�d drop the issue. Now.�
Kate snorted. �Fine. Forget the coat. Why don�t you take the bandages off? The sun�s gone down; you don�t need to worry about sunburn now, even if you are an albino.�
�The bandages stay.�
�Look, doc, that can�t be sanitary. There�s mold on them. M-O-L-D, as in the product of bacterial activity. You�re a medico, you ought to know how bad that stuff is. Why don�t you-�
�NO.� Griffin snapped. �Stop bothering me, Martin. Now. I don�t need any of your rambling while I�m working.�
�Ah, the hell with it.� And Kate reached forward, just as she had that day on the beach, and snatched at the bandages. The decaying fabric gave way easily, falling in shreds into her lap and crumbling away in the hand that grasped them. Kate looked up, expecting to see a white face-
-and let out a piercing scream as nothing at all stared back.
�Are you satisfied?� the voice of Griffin hissed. The empty collar of the suit folded and stretched, responding to the motions of a neck that was not there. �Are you happy now, you little American harpy?� There was a guttural sound, and a particle of spit evaporated in the fire. �This coat, these clothes- they are all part of a plan that will not be altered just to suit your tastes. This island is a setback to my research- nothing else. Are you going to leave well enough alone, or will I have to add another body to the sailors� grave?�
Kate made a choking sound in her throat. �Yuh- you- the book said-�
�That I was a fiction? It also tells you that I died, didn�t it?� There was no smile to be seen, but the tone of his voice told that it was there. �Yes, I would have to be well over a hundred by now, wouldn�t I? But-� gloved fingers snapped in midair as the voice turned sardonic �-here I am, nonetheless. Hale, hearty, and feeling not a day over thirty- though whether I look it, I can�t say.�
�H.G. Wells.� Kate stammered. �The Invisible Man. Hawley Griffin. I should have known-�
�I wondered how long it would take you to figure things out.� Griffin commented sarcastically, returning to his work. �When you quoted War of the Worlds, I thought you were simply biding your time. Yet somehow, you managed to be enough of an idiot not to see the blindingly obvious.� The surgeon�s pincers clicked as the invisible man extracted another clump of mold from a pocket of the coat. �It�s obvious that you take pride in possessing some sort of intelligence, Martin. But if you don�t learn to use it, then all your pride isn�t worth a thing. Do you think reciting equations and the national motto of Brazil makes you a genius?� Another snort. �As your contemporaries would say . . . do not attempt to grow a brain? Is that it? Yes, I believe it is. And sage advice it is.�
Kate didn�t say anything for a moment. Then she slowly rose to her feet, picked up her satchel (pilfered from one of the corpses) and retreated into the jungle.
That night, she slept under a tree, after rubbing her clothes with wild garlic to keep the insects and wasps away. Despite her shock and fear at discovering that a legendary madman was in fact a real madman, with an extra helping of mad scientist to boot, a lot of Russian fairy tales in childhood had convinced her that �mornings are wiser than evenings�. She would rise at dawn, find food, and decide what was to be done about their situation.
When she returned to the camp, though, she found things in a state of utter confusion. The hut itself had been torn to pieces, the campfire extinguished and its ring of stones overturned, every bundle and parcel of salvaged items destroyed by a whirlwind of fury. A whirlwind named Griffin, who was to be found digging through the pit where they had buried the dead sailors, almost choking with frustration as he pawed at the dry sandy soil.
�Where are they?� the harsh voice was muttering. He had dispensed with coat, hat, and bandages, and the dirt smeared all over his face and hands made him somewhat visible to the eye. �Where is it? Damn you, you little American bleeder, did you take them? Where are they? The only way, the only method, and it�s gone-�
�Doc?� Kate called nervously. The digging figure stopped in his tracks, hearing her voice, then whirled about and came charging up the slope at her.
�YOU!� An invisible hand drew back for a vicious blow- but Griffin had forgotten how much time he�d spent grubbing and searching. Seeing the patches of mud hovering in mid-air curl into the shape of a fist, Kate took the universal female approach and kneed him in the fork. Hard. Griffin made a peculiar whimpering noise and folded up, and despite her fear, Kate found herself sniggering as a pair of apparently empty trousers assumed a very familiar knock-kneed stance and collapsed.
�Something gone wrong?� she asked. Griffin didn�t reply immediately, but that could be excused, given the circumstances.
�Papers . . . � he finally muttered, painfully staggering to his feet. �My papers have gone . . . �
Kate raised an eyebrow, royally confused. �You get newspapers out here? What, the Schroedy Times or something?�
�Not. As. Such.� Griffin hissed, settling himself on a log and wiping his hands on a scrap of cloth. �Not newspapers. Papers. They had formulae. Calculations. Material estimates. All of the work that I�ve spent years planning, and somehow . . . they�ve gone.� There were no eyes to be seen, but nevertheless, Kate felt the suspicious glance that he was aiming her way. �You�ve taken them, haven�t you.� Not a question.
�I plead the fifth amendment,� Kate said shortly. �Formulae and calculations for what?�
A low snarl. �A cure.�
�A cure . . . for your invisibility?� she hazarded.
There was no answer, but the suit of clothes on the log shifted slightly. �Thought as much. Fine, I took your goddamn papers.� She reached into the satchel and handed over the rustling sheaf of stained foolscap. �So that�s why you were so possessive about your clothes, eh? I found them stitched into the coat�s lining after you went to sleep last night. Had a look at them, but it�s all Greek to me.�
Griffin seized the papers and rapidly rifled through them, sighing in relief as he saw that none were missing or damaged. �You realize, of course, that I�m going to have to get rid of you,� he said in an oddly conversational tone.
�Really. How are you planning to do that?� Kate responded in the same tone. As high-handed and downright psychotic as this particular mad scientist was, he made good conversation. She was on firmer ground with congenial death threats, being the issuer of several herself in past years.
�I have my concoctions. It would be a matter of minutes to create a poison . . . or perhaps simply slit your throat while you sleep. My scalpels were quite undamaged, despite the shipwreck.�
�Ah, but that might be a bit difficult,� Kate tutted reproachfully. �I always sleep with a sharp object, and I don�t take very well to being awoken. Not to mention that blood is terribly difficult to wash out of clothing.�
�But you haven�t answered to the poison.�
�There�s a large jungle here. I�m sure I could find something to eat that you haven�t poisoned.�
The fingers tapped together in a manner that somehow reminded Kate of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. �Quite a difficulty, then. Hmmm. Strangulation?�
�I�d sing.�
�Beg pardon?�
�Soft parts, Instep, Neck, and Groin. I�ve spent so much time in barfights that I know how to hit where it hurts, doc. Try again.�
With most of the mud gone, Kate couldn�t be sure of that unseen face, but she thought she saw a ghost of a grin in the dusting of dirt still there. �Well, then, how am I supposed to dispose of you?�
�You�re a doctor. I�m sure you�ll figure something out.�
Five years past . . .
Adrift and Invisible hit the New York Times Bestseller list for the month of January. A successful book tour was being planned. Significant literary prizes were being discussed. Life was good for Erwilian Foster-Courte, who in real life was known as somewhat disgruntled but now moderately wealthy writer Kate Martin.
Sighing, she shuffled through her appointment calendar. Given how unorthodox her book was- a Chicagoan humor novelist trapped on a tropical island with the Invisible Man? How bizarre can you get- she was frankly surprised that it had gone over as well as it had. She�d had difficulties reducing Griffin�s dialogue to a form that would fly with the American public, and most of their arguments (especially the one about the nature of humanity) had had to be cut right out, or the book would have been fifteen hundred pages of give-and-take grouchiness. Still, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
Horse. She remembered the taste of horse- when the day-old body of a stallion had washed up on the shore from who knows where, and they�d dismembered the corpse and had horse steaks with garlic and onion dressing. Somewhere, still buried in her closet, was the horse�s hide she�d tanned and used for a blanket. Griffin, as stubborn and sardonic as ever to the end, had refused to abandon his trench coat until the thing had fallen apart; and even then, he�d taken a long coat from their stock of salvage and worn that instead. The new garment had been cut for a six-foot-seven, chronically obese man, and it had hung on the wiry scientist like a very peculiar tent.
They�d spent three years on Schroedy, as near as Kate could figure. It wasn�t marked on any of the island charts, but it had supported a small ecosystem, as well as a few small herds of incredibly inbred ruminants; enough to keep them alive and coherent, though both had gotten rather sick of nilghai and deer after a while. The native vegetables had been farmed into a small garden, the hut had been rebuilt (with rooms this time), and the local fish and dolphin populations had been significantly decreased by a slightly manic invisible scientist, who turned out to be handy at setting snares. In the first weeks on the island, Kate had suffered from the loss of her temper-control medication, but she�d managed to dig up a few brightly-colored plants containing natural tranquilizers. Of course, they�d also made her hear some things that weren�t- in the strictest sense of the word- there, but she�d coped. They both had.
Sure, Griffin had been testy and cold, Kate had been prone to fits of shrieking anger, and the environment did its very best to kill them both. But between a scientist and a frequent reader, it had worked out somehow. And they�d been rescued, just as abruptly as they�d been dumped there.
A Navy seaplane had been on a scouting mission, recording the locations of previously unknown tropical islands and looking for possible sites of unrecorded mineral deposits. Passing over Schroedy, the pilot had noticed a massive amount of steam rising from a point on the beachhead, and set down to investigate what appeared to be a hot-spring geyser. What they found was Kate and Griffin, who had seen the plane overhead and dumped a kettleful of water on the campfire.
What can you say about spending three years on an island with the Invisible Man? Kate was a writer, and she handled it the way she always handled problems: made a book out of it. H.G. Wells was long dead, and his copyright on the intellectual property of the book had expired decades ago, and Kate settled down and got to work. She churned out cheap romance novels on the side to pay the rent while she wrote her magnum opus, and twenty months after the rescue, she finally finished the volume. The dramatic story of her own rescue, which the media had leapt on, added color to the story, and when Kate released Adrift and Invisible, she hit the jackpot.
Only one question remained. What had become of Griffin? He�d disappeared into the jungle as the plane was landing, and never returned. She�d told the Navy pilot this, and he and his crew had conducted a search, but Hawley Griffin was never found. Smiling, Kate closed the appoinment calendar and brushed one strand of hair out of her eyes. He really had been the Invisible Man, after all. If he didn�t want to be found, he wouldn�t be.
The ligh0t clicked off, and the door closed silently behind her. The appointment book lay where she�d dropped it, and in the kitchenette, a half-finished glass of iced tea failed to make any sudden moves. Kate had always been sloppy, the shadow recalled. It detached itself from the wall and stepped noiselessly into the kitchen, unseen eyes scanning the room. Left the faucet dripping, and the garbage is piling up, too. Not very conscientious.
A single leather glove raised itself from the table and stiffened, slipping over a hand that wasn�t there. The hand dipped into an invisible pocket, and a glass phial emerged, half-filled with a thin bluish liquid. Success. The cure might not have worked . . . but there were always other things to work on. The phial tipped, sending a stream of liquid into the glass of iced tea; the chemical swirled away and vanished, blending easily into the sweetened red mixture.
He�d liked her book; the girl might have talent of some sort. Perhaps with the proper inspiration, she could write a masterpiece.
And what better inspiration than an invisible woman?