No Vacancy
The nighttime sound of cicadas blew through the screens of his Airstream
trailer along with the August heat. It was ten o'clock at night and still
over a hundred degrees. About the only thing to do during the day was to
sit in the doorway of the Airstream and watch the lizards scoot by. And
that's exactly what he did. It was his job. At night he'd listen to the
cicadas and to his short wave radio. He was studying a specific species of
lizard, Dipsosaurus Coniunctionis. It was found only in the low deserts of
Northern Africa and in the Mojave Desert in the Western United States.
It was about three years ago that he first heard the transmissions while
exploring the radio waves in the late night air. The patterns of tones had
the self-similar fluidity of language. He believed the transmissions to
originate from an area near the Great Sand Sea of Uadi El-Blata.
No one has ever seen a male Dipsosaurus Coniunctionis. Every single one
ever found, by lay person or scientist alike, has been female. Specialists
in desert reptiles believe every Dipsosaurus Coniunctionis is genetically
identical to every other. The females lay unfertilized eggs which hatch
into exact replicants of their parent.
He knew that all languages are codes of some degree of efficiency, and that
there wasn't enough arbitrariness in the transmissions to convince him they
were just static generated somewhere between The Great Sand Sea and the
Mojave Desert. He had written to every active or retired cryptologist he
could find. Some returned his letters, others ignored them. He suspected
most thought him a crackpot.
Lizards differ from snakes not only in that they have four legs with five
toes on each foot, but that they have ear openings.
Over a year ago he began tape recording the transmissions. He noticed that
if he played them during the day the lizards would gather near the Air
stream. Not just any lizard, but the Dipsosaurus Coniunctionis. They'd
climb up the hot chrome and cling to the window screens with their tiny
toes. When he shut off the tape recorder they would scatter.
He knew he had something here, but he didn't quite understand it yet.
It was very late. He shut off the shortwave radio, the glow of the
frequency dial dimmed to dark. Through the screen door he watched the sky
turn pink. His gaze was distracted by something moving in the sand. It was
a Dipsosaurus Coniunctionis shedding its skin. After several minutes of
shuddering, the lizard ran off. He walked over to the slight depression in
the sand and picked up the discarded skin. It was still soft.
He brought it inside and put it on a shelf alongside dozens of others. The
skins reminded him of the brittle paper of old maps and the way their
messages become randomized as the paper crumbles into flakes the color of
the Mojave sand.
Eve Andree Laramee
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