Galapagos

On the island, Hisako’s daughter, Akiko, will be the only person able to converse with the Kanka-bono orphans. The Bahia de Darwin sinks in 1996, and a short time later, Mary begins to have ideas about a science experiment. Though the group is still “expecting to be rescued at any time” (146), she begins to contemplate an artificial insemination program using the Kanka-bono orphans, who are now in their late-teens. The memory of Mary’s experiment reminds Leon of his father, who desperately hoped to sell a script to a Hollywood studio to alleviate his financial problems but never did.

During the 10 years they’ve lived on the island, the group has split into several factions. Hisako and Selena live together, raising the fur-covered Akiko. The Kanka-bono orphans form a community on the other side of the island. Mary and Adolf, with no allegiances of their own, live together. Adolf finds a freshwater supply and, in his declining years, decides that he is its manager. When a baby is born via one of Mary’s experiments, it’s given the name Kamikaze. It’s the first of many. The narrative reveals that in generations to come, the islands residents will become “a family which included everyone” (151). During this time, the Kanka-bono language and culture will become dominant.

During one restless night, Adolph visits the crater filled with fresh water and sees the Kanka-bono women drinking. He notices that one of them has a strangely enlarged belly. Mary has impregnated the woman with his sperm, without his knowledge. When the baby is born, he complains that he “surely should have been consulted” (153). Mary dismisses his concerns, saying that he’s irrelevant to the child beyond being a sperm doner.

After Adolf learns of his child, his informal relationship with Mary is irretrievable. His blue eyes will be a genetic trait inherited by one in twelve of his future descendants. Mary makes herself a private hut and assures Akiko that she’s “no lonelier then than she had been when she lived with the Captain” (154). Akiko eventually becomes a mother; Kamikaze is the father of her seven “furry children” (155). Hisako and Selena drown themselves together. The Kanka-bono women treat Mary with fear as much as respect, unsure of her intentions or capabilities. When Adolf is 86, he develops Alzheimer’s disease, and Akiko cares for him. Mary, 80 and hobbling due to osteoporosis, goes to Adolph’s hut to make peace with him.

As Mary visits Adolf, she remembers how Selena and Hisako drowned themselves shortly after Akiko, craving independence, moved out of their hut. Mary has long planned to follow them if she ever feels that she has become a “burden on the community” (157). Adolf doesn’t recognize Mary and claims that she’s “the ugliest woman [he] ever saw” (158). He insists that she leave. At the same time, the now-teenage Kamikaze whoops with joy on the other side of the island because he caught his laughing aunt and plans to have sex with her. He has sex with any women (and some animals) on the island. Annoyed that Mary hasn’t left, Adolph snatches Mandarax from her hands and hurls it into the sea. When Mary dives into the water to try to save the device, a shark eats her. Adolf, struck by sudden memory loss, doesn’t like the finches that flock around him. He dives into the blood-strewn water, where he too is eaten by a shark, a creature that is “a flawless part in the clockwork of the universe” (159).

Leon reflects on the story he has just told. He describes how the people on the island gradually evolved into furry, aquatic mammals with flippers for hands and much smaller brains. He takes a moment to deal with “a few not very important details” (161) that he didn’t cover in the story. A million years in the future, he explains, the evolved humans have no conception of their own mortality. Other mammals or large creatures never joined them on the island. Leon himself didn’t reproduce. He arrived in Sweden after contracting syphilis as a Marine in Vietnam. Visiting a Swedish doctor, he explained the crimes that he and his unit committed during the Vietnam war. He felt numb to the reality of what he’d done. The doctor, noticing Leon’s surname, asked whether he was the son of “wonderful science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout” (162). Leon broke down in tears. He was shocked that, at least to one person, his father’s desperate writing efforts hadn’t been in vain. When Leon stopped crying, the doctor suggested that he desert the Marines and flee to Sweden, where he could claim political asylum. Although Leon worried that he didn’t speak Swedish, the doctor assured him that he would learn.