An Introvert's Guide for Island Domination novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Rule One
Dot reads Katja's laminated rules to the whole island and sixty-one people mime their questions in silence until noon; Lyle Hargrave arrives on a zip line with real coffee and a partnership offer, and leaves his steel line anchored in her pine.
The clicker said zero again, and Katja woke with a plan.
She had written it on the backs of laminated cards the night before, by headlamp, in block capitals.
Harvey had spent the same night lengthening the rope bridge with every rope on the island, including Dot's clothesline.
At dawn Dot stood on a stump by the spring, cleared her throat, and read the cards out loud like scripture.
"Rule One. No talking to the lady before noon."
Sixty-one people looked at Katja.
"Rule Two. One liter of water each, in line, and nobody cuts."
"Rule Three. Complaints go in writing in the box."
The box was a bear canister wedged into a split in a pine, with a slot cut in the lid.
"Rule Four. The lady is not the mayor. Do not ask the lady what she is."
"Rule Five," Dot said, and squinted. "No trespassing."
"That one's a sign," Katja said, which was her first sentence of the day, and she regretted it at once.
She had nailed the card to the pine at the bridge end, where it faced Landing.
NO TRESPASSING. THIS IS MY ISLAND.
"Her island," Dot told the crowd. "Notrespass. Got it."
By nine o'clock, people were calling it that.
The first beat of the morning went to the man with the sunburned scalp, who came up to her at the spring and opened his mouth.
Dot appeared at his elbow and tapped the card on her clipboard.
The man closed his mouth.
He held up his empty cup, tilted his head, and raised both eyebrows to ask whether he might have a refill.
Katja pointed at the line.
He bowed and went to the back, and she felt something she had not expected to feel, which was that this was working.
The second beat was Teddy, who tried to hand her a drink of water with a question attached.
Dot did not even tap the card. She held up the ladle, and Teddy handed her the water and fled.
By ten, the third beat had arrived.
Word had gone around. Katja sat on her rock above the spring and watched sixty-one people take turns walking past her with their mouths shut.
They nodded to her. A woman with a baby waved the baby's hand at her. Somebody's grandfather saluted.
Nobody said a word, and every face was full of a question.
"It's a very orderly island," Harvey said, coming up the slope with a coil of cord. "I'm not allowed to talk to you yet, so I'm saying this to the rock."
He sat down next to her anyway and looked at his watch.
"Fifty-one minutes."
She gave him a card.
DON'T.
"I'm not doing anything," he said. "I'm timing."
At eleven fifty-five, a man slid down a steel line from the flagpole on Landing, dropped off the trolley and landed on his feet.
He was tall and very tan, in an ironed polo, with a lanyard of six colored tags on his chest and a coffee thermos in one hand.
He stopped at the back of the water line, behind a woman with a pot, and looked at his watch too.
He waited four minutes without a word.
At noon exactly, sixty-one people started talking to Katja at once, and the first voice she could pick out was his.
"Warden Ostrow," the tall man said. "I'm sorry to disturb you. Lyle Hargrave, Landing."
"How do you know my name?" Katja said.
"The young man with the camera told everyone on the bridge." He held out the thermos. "Hot. It's real coffee, from the visitor center. I waited until noon, because the card said to."
He had not asked her anything yet.
Katja took the thermos and drank, and it was real coffee, and it was the best thing that had happened since the sky broke.
"Thank you," she said, and found that her mouth was already making a second sentence. "You waited."
"I respect a good rule."
He looked around the spring slowly.
"How many sleep on this island?"
"Sixty-one," Dot said from behind them.
"And you've been feeding them all on this one spring." His voice was kind. "That's remarkable. May I ask how many liters you've got to spare?"
Katja did not answer. She had a card for that.
NOT BEFORE LUNCH.
"Fair enough." Lyle laughed, with a lot of white teeth. "I'll be quick. I run Landing. A hundred and forty-two people, a full cafeteria, a first-aid room, and a reservoir that cracked on the first day. You have the water, and I have the organization. Let me manage things for you, and you can do whatever it is a person like you does."
"A person like me," Katja said.
"A survivalist," he said, with real warmth. "Someone who wants to be left alone."
She held up the kindest card she owned.
LATER.
"Later is fine," Lyle said. "Later is wonderful."
He shook Dot's hand, and Harvey's, and walked back across the bridge with his hands swinging.
He was a good man to have around, Katja thought, and went back to her coffee.
Harvey stood at the pine for a long time after he left.
"Dot," he said. "Come look at this."
The steel line still ran from the flagpole on Landing down to the big pine on the Shelf, tied off at the bottom with a clean, expert hitch.
Nobody had seen who tied it, and it had been there before Lyle ever stood in line.
"He didn't take his rope back," Dot said.
"No," Harvey said. "Anyone on Landing can be on this island in a minute now, and we can't stop them."
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