The Book of Chimera

      They drove to the police station first. When the commissioner found out that the outsider agreed to borrow his car, he gave Rica a walkie-talkie, but just one (“I can’t give you two of those, I tear this one from my heart”). Then he took LeBeau’s elbow and pulled him aside. Rica didn’t hear what they were talking about, but she had a guess: a grown-up man and a young girl (despite the local consensual relationship of an early age), and if anything happened, then he, then his, then with him… The Frenchman flapped his hands in a caricatural way and clearly swore off the very thought of somehow hurting the saint mademoiselle. The commissioner wheezed a bit, panted a bit, and looked at him from under his eyebrows. But he stopped short of giving Rica a service gun in addition to the walkie-talkie. He just asked her to get in touch every 30 minutes. And if anything, and if suddenly…       LeBeau’s car was suitable. Exactly suitable, for such roads and such weather. It was surely from Cape Town, and Remy confirmed with a disarming smile, “Where would I get a car from? It’s rented…”       It seemed to Rica somehow that this phrase didn’t belong to him being some quotation, but she didn’t even guess from where. It was more important to her to focus on the road. All the more so the fine weather was really breaking up: the wind was growing stronger, and on the horizon, from where the sea was rumbling far, far away, there was a dark storm front slowly coming.       Remy tried to get his new acquaintance to talk, but she answered curtly and he realized it was better of him to let her be, and he dozed off on his front seat. The only thing Rica caught from his chitchat was that the Frenchman wasn’t really a Frenchman, he was from New Orleans. It was just the language being native to him.       The veteran off-roader was leaving behind mile after mile of the dusty savannah. Rica had the time to reach Commissioner Naude once and report to him everything was alright. But suddenly, Remy opened his eyes, sat straight, and unstrapped the seatbelt. The surprised girl almost whirled the wheel and hit the brakes. She turned to him to ask what the hell it was, but he pressed his fingers to his lips and made a gesture offering her to listen closely. After a couple of minutes, Rica distinguished an unusual sound in the howling of the wind. It was the noise of an approaching car.       It could actually be cops, rangers, or some tourists coming back from safari. Moreover, it should be exactly them. But somehow Rica was reluctant to floor it and drive on. She sat with her hands on the wheel, obeying Remy’s silent gestures.       When a car finally came round the bend, from behind a small grove of dry acacia trees, Rica frowned with a puzzled expression on her face. Something was wrong in this picture, but what exactly?       The car (it was another off-roader, but a black one with tightly tinted windows, in such heat!) screeched to a halt and blocked them the way. The girl looked at her companion feeling confused, but he said between his teeth, “Stay”, and went outside.       From the other car, someone slammed the door, too. The one who left the vehicle was male, and Rica couldn’t say anything else about him. First, he was too far away, and second, the dust rising from the savannah obscured the vision already.        Remy went to the opposite car with a leisurely pace, hands in his pockets, and the tails of his brown coat flapped on the wind. The girl stretched her neck trying to see or at least to hear something, but only in vain. The wind howled down all the sounds. Rica automatically shuffled on her seat, and then suddenly, as if something clicked, and she heard a snatch of their conversation, and it was as if they were speaking right here, beside her, in the car.       “—and tell your master that he’ll definitely meet his match!” Remy’s voice was ringing with uninhibited rage and was so deep that Rica flattened herself against her seat unknowingly. “If not right now, then very soon, still. And you — out with you, whiffet! Don’t you dare slow me down!”       LeBeau thrust his left hand out; there was a shrill whistle, and the air was slashed by a small flat rectangle with a purple shining. It smashed the windscreen and stuck in it creating a web of cracks.       Rica shuddered and shut her eyes tightly for a second. This second was enough for the car door to slam, the engine to growl and the black car to turn around with a screech of rubber and to race off wherever it came from. Leaving tire marks on the worn ground.       This screech sounded in the same manner, as if behind the shoulder, and it hit Rica’s eardrums so much that she clapped her hands to her ears. And when she dropped her hands, all the sounds returned to normal, and LeBeau was already snuggling in the front passenger seat. Rica stared at his face inquiringly (his cheek muscles were flexing), and she couldn’t help but flinch when he looked back at her.       The whites of his eyes couldn’t be called that way anymore: they were pitch-black, and two scarlet sparks of his iris were flaming in this darkness.       “Sorry.” After realizing that she saw it, Remy exhaled and rubbed his face with his palms. As he looked at the girl once again, his eyes returned to their former color, the whites were perfectly normal, and his face changed from a rage grimace to a tired and a bit sad smile. “I didn’t want to scare you. Just— I didn’t think that everything would turn out like this. And now I have to introduce myself outright, I guess? Also, my name really is Remy Etienne LeBeau, my nickname is Gambit, and it just happened that I’m a mutant. Please, don’t be scared and don’t run away.”       “Uh-huh,” Rica chuckled nervously and, following her instincts, backed away from him as far as the seat belt allowed her. “And which mutant is it? As far as I know, there are two coalitions of you out there…”       “Actually, far more than that.” Remy lifted his hands at the level of his eyes, showing her empty palms, and grinned, “Well, I’m not one of those who shout All power to the mutants and Humans belong in reservations. I work for Professor Xavier.”       Just one sound of this name, and Rica suddenly pulled herself together, for no reason. Perhaps, the reason was that she recalled him herself in the morning? Xavier was well-known. His face could be seen on the TV, on the Internet, and in newspaper photos. It was a bald man in years with kind, understanding, and a bit sad eyes, forever wheelchair-bound. His face inspired trust, and—       “Who is this Master?”       This question broke out by itself, and Remy frowned.       “Magneto, who else? We knew he’d been plotting something, gathering followers, but we couldn’t find out in which area, for even the Professor—” And then the Frenchman stopped short, his features slightly blurred but then became sharp as he eyed the girl’s face keenly. “Wait a minute… How do you know about the Master?”       There was no sense trying to fool him.       “I heard it,” Rica sighed and took her field jackknife out of the pocket of her jacket. “You see, since morning, I’ve been kinda… mutant.”       Now she realized what was wrong with that car from the beginning. According to its speed and when she saw it, no way a normal human girl could hear the noise of the engine from a distance that could be elementary calculated using simple school formulas.       The folding blade clicked. Remy gathered slightly up as a lion before the leap. But Rica just pierced her finger and held her hand out forward. A cut would be more spectacular, of course… But she did practice this trick in the morning, unlike the other.       “Unbelievable,” whispered Gambit watching the little wound heal and the blood get absorbed. His eyes widened a little. “Regeneration. And, apparently, animal hearing. But you can’t be— You look nothing like him.”       “Like who?” the girl asked suspiciously as she put the knife away.       “Logan. You don’t know him!” Remy shrugged off. “And we have more important things to think about right now. I tell you what, Federica Clayton…” He swept his eyes over her face and her figure as if he had some doubts, and then he decided, “I tell you what, Rica. There is a weighty opinion (and it’s not only mine) that this weather anomaly is Magneto’s doing. Somehow, he gathered even more power, but even this is a non-issue right now. Your lineage will also be the matter for later. But considering our destination and this accidental meeting… Rica, we have to get to your parents as soon as possible.”       Without any words, the girl dropped the hammer and repeated the maneuver of that black car, except for a turnaround. Remy was saying something else grasping the handle above the window, but she didn’t hear his words anymore. Blood was thumping in her ears; scarce thorn bushes outside the window slurred making one however patchy line. She felt a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, and her brain was struck by one thought that came from God knows where: something bad was happening, if only they weren’t too late…       

***

      Rica Clayton was sitting on the bare ground on her heels and looking blankly at her dusty knees and a silent walkie-talkie in her limply dangled hands. She should be now calling Uncle Mbeki, derailing other people, asking for help… However what help was there to talk about now?       They were too late.       Rica wasn’t crying. She wasn’t screaming or wreathing in hysterics. She even managed to identify the remains; half of them were eaten, half of them — torn down and scattered around the camp that existed now in name only. She did that before she threw up today’s breakfast.       The wind was howling drearily and ruffling up people’s hair, both to living and to dead. LeBeau was walking around, looking for something, quietly cursing in French, and Rica was sitting and staring straight before her. There weren't any thoughts in her mind. None at all. Nothing could be wrapped around in this mind now. Even the understanding that those mutilated bodies that Gambit tried to lay with some dignity with his strange purple energy were her parents. Yes, they were.       Emp-ti-ness. Nothing. A pit you’re flying into like Alice, but there’s nothing around you, and even an empty jar of orange jam wouldn’t hit your head playing catching up. Only a small vein is pulsing on your temple, and there’s a ghost of a thought that you should call…       “Rica.”       A warm male palm came down upon her shoulder. Rica didn’t move. Gambit sighed heavily and hunkered down beside her.       “Rica… Now you’ll think of me as heartless. And at any other time, I’d get you into a tantrum myself so that you could cry your eyes out and I’d comfort you as I could. But you must pull together. Take heart and think. Girl, you are versed in animals better than me. You know those lions. You can read tracks. So, read them and tell me: everything that happened, was this natural? Could this be happening at all? Come now, Rica, help me!”       He grasped the girl’s shoulders and shook her up so her head jumped and her jaw snapped, and she finally raised her eyes and looked at him. On Remy’s face, there was a mix of understanding, compassion, pain, and dark inner anger that was rising like black threads to the whites of his eyes. He wasn’t lying and wasn’t pretending. He actually entered into her feelings. But now… it was necessary.       Rica forced her parched lips open. “I’ll… check it out.”       Remy took her arm and made her up with a jerk. “Attagirl. I’ll go look around further. Did your parents have some working cameras?”       And Rica went to check out. Making a wide detour against the broken remains that LeBeau had covered with a tilt of a tent just in time.       The more the girl read herself into the tracks, the more her face became awry with astonishment and misunderstanding. It was very hard to figure anything out on this stomping ground, but two moments were clear at once. First, the lions had come here. It took some time for her to realize this fact because of her grief, but the Claytons, as always, made their camp not near the pride, but at a proper distance to prevent the smell of the temporary human quarters from disturbing the animals. But the animals had come here. All at once. And second, humans had been here. Or not exactly humans. Someone else. Two-legged.       And when the lions had been leaving, one of the two-legged ones had been going beside them.       Without asking Gambit for permission, Rica followed the tracks. She wasn’t afraid, only the impending doom was pulsing in her stomach like a tight cold knot. And when she saw what she saw without having made a few dozen steps from the torn-up camp, only then she fell on her knees and buried her nails into the dry dirt, and tears flowed down her cheeks.       They were lying out there. All of them. The old experienced male — and the young one whose mane was still stubby; they hadn’t expelled him from the pride yet. The lionesses, huntresses, and getters, and their fangs were bared even in death. And lion cubs, and somehow it was exactly now that their little spotty skins were clearly standing out against the grass. Each of the beasts had a small black hole between their eyes, and if it wasn’t the wind, flies would be surely swarming above them.       Hasty steps sounded beside her, an astonished merde! — Gambit. And before Rica knew it, she was turned away from the horrible view, his arms wrapped around her, and her face was buried into the brown coat with a thin smell of expensive perfume. And she was held like that while her shoulders were shaking, and sobbing was bursting out of her chest…       When she was out of tears, Rica sat for a while like that feeling Remy carefully stroking her on her head. And then she sniffed and awkwardly mumbled the first thought that crossed her mind, “You must think goodness knows what of me now. I didn’t cry back there, and now…”       “No, don’t be ridiculous.” She heard a bitter grin in Remy’s voice above her ear. “Our mentality is a bitch. And its defense mechanisms could be in all shapes and sizes. I honestly expected that you would bite me and hit me. But you’re more powerful than I thought from the beginning. And now I’ll let you go… and you’ll tell me everything you found out. Okay?”       Rica sighed abruptly, like little children sigh after long cries, and tore her head from his chest. She reached to wipe her face, but Remy gently caught her hands, reached into his pocket, and took out some wet wipes and a plaid beige and brown handkerchief. Rica understood him, sniffed again, and began to scrub the dirt from behind her nails. In the meantime, she told him everything she managed to find out.       “So, he led them away and then he killed them,” Remy said through his teeth as Rica finished her short report and blew her nose loudly into the offered handkerchief. “Well then. I knew that one of Magneto’s minions could control beasts. But in that way, all the pride… There’s some trick, Rica. Here, take it.”       A flash drive slid into her hand, an SD card from one of eight cameras her parents had taken along.       “Everything I managed to save.” Remy shrugged; his eyes were a little guilty. “Their camp was smashed like a pro. Not by the beasts. By humans. By mutants. But one video camera survived, and I found it. We would be able to understand how everything had happened. But I do know one thing exactly, and I know it right now: your parents were murdered. And those lions were also victims for someone got into their heads and told them, go! They were forced, Rica.”       Gambit took the girl by her shoulders and looked closely into her eyes.       “Rica… We could call the rangers now. I’d drive you back into town where you’d be taken care of, and then I’d go look for my friend myself. Just say the word.”       A word… And there would be people with condolent glances, and she’d have to tell everything again, even to Uncle Mbeki, and then, probably, he’d file a request for custody, but it might not work because they wouldn’t approve and would seek for her relatives, and then… And what then?       An old irrational fear threw itself in her face, a fear from very early childhood: people in suits and with ties, people with lead-colored eyes and the same Good Friday faces, people who looked and saw not a living person but a column of numbers or a set of letters. Those people her parents had always protected her from. And those people would definitely come for her as soon as she was left alone, and then—       “No.” Rica shook her head and sniffed with her runny nose again. “The storm is already close. You’re short of time. I promised you to help. And there’s no one here to—” Her voice quivered, but the stubborn girl gulped down the cotton lump swollen in her throat and finished, “And your friend is still alive. And let him stay that way.”       She held out the hankie to Remy, but he shook his head with a smile and helped her up. “Let’s go. We’ll contact the commissioner along the way. And keep the hankie. You need it more than I do.”       He said the last phrase in English, and that was definitely the quotation that Rica remembered and loved just as the movie source and this understanding even put a weak smile on her face.       She had a purpose. Not a life purpose, but it was enough for the following couple of hours. And next…       And we’ll see what comes next.