Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,106
trying to put as much of the Atacama behind us. There's no reason to stay overlong in the desert. Pedro, his belly full of lunch, settles down in the front passenger seat and falls asleep.
I tell Mere about chimerae and the Bizzaria, the plant chimera that mixes the citron and the sour orange. By this time, I'm nearly certain the citrus trees I had seen on Rapa Nui were Bizzaria.
This strikes a chord in Mere, and she digs out her laptop and searches through her research files. Getting a hit in her data, she shows me a picture. It's a publicity still of Escobar Montoya. “Forty years ago,” Mere says, “taken during a junket at a farming initiative sponsored by Montoya Industries, the construction firm of his that made their mark in the '30s.” She points at the banner in the background. It's got the name of the farm and a logo. Laid over a stylized sunburst is a green sprig with a single fruit that has been rendered as a circle within a circle. “What's that look like?” she says, indicating the fruit.
“They're not concentric,” I note.
“If you were to consider that image as a symbolic representation, how would you classify it?”
“A circle within another circle?”
“Or a whole that contains the whole of another thing. In other words, something made from distinct objects.”
“A chimera,” I nod. “Where was this taken?”
“Somewhere up north,” she says, turning the laptop around and starting to type. “I'll need to find some Wi-Fi to check further. I don't seem to have that information saved locally.”
“Well,” I note, looking out at the sun-blasted landscape. “We're heading in the right direction, at least.”
THIRTY-SIX
About a half-hour before nightfall, the western sky awash with red and orange clouds, we roll into a tiny town with a single restaurant advertising Wi-Fi access. While Phoebe and Pedro take care of gassing up the car, Mere and I head into the restaurant for a quick meal and some Internet access.
An artichoke ravioli catches my eye on the menu, and since Mere is more interested in the Wi-Fi password than food, I order her the house empanadas. The dark-eyed waitress nods knowingly as she takes out menus. She's seen too many North American couples more fascinated with checking in with their social networks than with paying attention to the local cuisine, and Mere is living up to that stereotype.
“Do you know the history of the Bizzaria?” Mere asks as she starts pulling up a variety of search results. “First found in a garden outside of Florence in the seventeenth century. People thought it was an accidental mutation.”
Florence.
Mere notices my expression. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
Her eyebrows pull together and her fingers fly across the keyboard. I watch her scan her computer screen, waiting to see some reaction in her eyes. It doesn't take long. She stops looking, fingers sliding across the track pad, and then she looks over the top of the laptop at me. And then back at the picture on her screen.
“Was it an accident?” she asks.
“Was what?”
“The Bizzaria?”
I shrug. “I wasn't there. I couldn't say.”
“You've been to Florence, though, haven't you?”
“I don't know, Mere. What makes you think I've been to Florence?”
She laughs, covering her mouth as soon as she starts, subsiding into a fit of giggles. “It's almost like an Interpol wanted poster, isn't it?” she says when she has regained her composure.
“The statue of David?” I ask.
She nods, trying very hard not to start giggling again.
“I had never thought of it that way,” I confess.
She scrolls down on the picture. “Is it… a completely accurate likeness?” she asks with a smile.
“It was cold that morning,” I tell her. “It was cold every morning that I posed, in fact.”
“Clearly,” she says, the giggles starting again. With some regret, she turns her attention to her other search results.
A minute later, all of the humor drains out of her face. She spins the laptop around so that I can see what she's found. The first image is the stylized sun from the farm logo, though subtly different. “Inti,” Mere says, “Incan deity. God of the sun.”
I nod and go to the next tab as directed. It's a picture of a man dressed in religious garb. He's holding a stick with a sun figure mounted to the top of it. “Who's this?” I ask. The picture is drawn in a style that is several hundred years old.
“Manco Cápac,” Mere says. “The founder of the Incan empire.”