Life During Wartime

CHAPTER NINE

On their last night together in the Petén, Santos Garrido told Mingolla a story. It was an act neither of camaraderie nor of instruction, merely the answer to a casual question; but because of events that followed shortly thereafter, Mingolla came to assign it more than a casual meaning.

For three days they had been hiking through the jungle, leaving behind the village of Sayaxché, once a staging area for Cuban infantry, but now—the fight having moved north along the Mexican border—reverted to the sleepy unimportance of a stopover for the peddlers who traveled the Rio de la Pasión, selling tin lanterns and bolts of cheap cloth and striped plastic jugs. Mingolla’s previous experience of jungle had been limited to strolls through the fringe surrounding the Ant Farm, and this, the heart of the rain forest, surprised him by the hardships levied upon those who entered it. They walked along narrow paths of brown clay crossed by tiny grooves, the trails of leaf-cutter ants, and whenever Mingolla stopped to catch his breath, the ants would swarm up his legs and bite; because Garrido—his guide—would not wait for him to pick them off, he would beat at them as he went, creating deep bruises on his thighs. They encountered mattes of dead vines from which clouds of stinging flies and mosquitoes would rise, buzzing in Mingolla’s hair, invading his nose and mouth. They plunged down rocky defiles, crawling beneath toppled tree trunks, home to centipedes and spiders that dropped onto their necks. The heat was overwhelming at first. Mingolla’s mosquito repellent was sweated off in minutes, and he would have to wash with water in which Garrido had dissolved cigar tobacco, his theory being that nicotine was the most effective of all repellents… a theory that Mingolla to his own satisfaction disproved. But as they moved deeper into the Petén, it became cooler, clammy and dripping. Every leaf he brushed against left a wet print on his clothing, and even the cries of the monkeys sounded liquid. He began to notice the beauty of the jungle. Green light, green shadow. Cathedral pillars of giant figs and ceibas upholding a vaulted canopy, their boles furred with orange club moss, and butterflies with six-inch wingspans dappling their trunks. Prows of limestone bursting from the jungle floor, netted in vines, like petrified schooners saved from sinking into a long-vanished lake. Everywhere was the litter of war, and this added to nature a curious inorganic beauty. A combat helmet with a cracked, cobwebbed faceplate lying in a hollow like a strange egg; the rusted turret of a minitank protruding from a stand of bamboo, draped in flowering epiphytes; an unexploded missile so overgrown with scale and algae that it seemed a vegetable production, as if the jungle had mimicked the creatures of war, giving birth to a creature that could pass among them.

That third night, Mingolla and Garrido set up camp beneath a high limestone shelf, stringing their hammocks between three sapodilla trees, making a meal of cold beans and tortillas. Garrido was a wizened yet hale man in his early sixties, his hair still black and his dark brown skin underlaid with a rosy tint. The only words he had addressed to Mingolla had been by way of caution or direction, and it was clear that he did not think much of Mingolla either as a colleague or as a man. Mingolla was untroubled by this opinion; in his eyes Garrido was merely a tool.

He spent the hour after dinner cleaning his machine pistol; then he took out a packet of frost and got high. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, puddling silver over the limestone and the surrounding foliage, and it looked like they were sitting in a fold of black cloth imprinted with an abstract design. Insects and frogs started an eerie chorus that had the sound of music made by hollowed bamboo and bubbling water. Mingolla paused to listen, balancing a heap of white powder on the tip of his knife.

‘Why do you take that?’ Garrido asked.

Mingolla inhaled, tipped back his head to let the frost drain. ‘It makes things sharper.’ He gave a brittle laugh. ‘And it keeps off the bugs.’

‘Are you an addict?’

‘I have a slight dependency.’

Garrido was silent for a bit. ‘When we set out,’ he said finally, ‘I didn’t think I understood you. I thought you were different from the other Americans I’ve guided. Why, I asked myself, does this young man hunt with such zeal? I sensed something in you that doesn’t accord with this sort of hunt. But I was wrong. You’re the same as the others. You look at things the same way.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘Without emotion.’

Mingolla’s sniff was partly to clear his nose, partly a reaction: to be emotionless seemed to him an ideal.

‘As if,’ Garrido continued, ‘emotion were an impediment to your master plan.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘It’s best to make plain where one stands when going into dangerous territory.’

‘You saying you won’t back me up?’

‘Simply defining the limits of my responsibility.’

The music of the jungle was growing louder, closing in around them, and Mingolla imagined the darkness to be a trillion open throats ringing the camp. ‘Why bother?’ he asked.

Garrido fingered a cigar from his shirt pocket and lit up. The coal illuminated his mouth and the glints of his eyes. ‘Once a friend and I found a jade cup in an unexcavated mound. A Mayan cup. Our fortunes were made. But I wanted it all for myself, and I ran off with it. Later I learned that my friend had died of the fever… without money for medicine. Since then I’ve been honest with my companions. Honesty prevents that sort of misunderstanding.’

He said this with a degree of feeling, and Mingolla tried to see his expression, but could not. ‘What ’bout the cup?’

‘It was stolen… by an American.’

‘Which explains why you don’t like us.’ Mingolla dug into the packet of frost again.

‘That’s not it. I understand Americans, and it’s hard to care about anything you understand.’

‘It must really be a chore for you,’ Mingolla said, ‘walking around so fulla crap all the time. I know it is for me. I know when I look inside myself and see all the ridiculous crud and opinion I think are wise, it makes me fucking sick to realize I ever bought any of it. But then the next minute, there I go spouting it all over again.’ He inhaled from the knife, spat mucus. ‘Excuse me. It’s just that when I hear major bullshit like “I understand Americans,” I tend to get amused. ’Specially when it’s followed up with, “It’s hard to care ’bout anything you understand.” I mean that’s very deep. That’s, y’know, like philosophy.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Garrido. ‘But what I’ve said tonight is true enough for you and me.’

‘Whatever.’

Maybe, Mingolla thought, inhaling again, he would stay up all night and grow full of jungle profundity like Garrido. ‘So why you work for us if you don’t like us?’

Garrido blew smoke and coughed. ‘I’ll tell you a story.’

‘Oh, boy!’ said Mingolla. ‘Lemme grab the popcorn! What’s it called?’

‘I’ve never given it a title,’ said Garrido, an edge to his voice. ‘But I suppose you could call it “The Conquistador’s Ghost.”’

‘Sounds spooky!’ Mingolla leaned forward, making a dumb show of attentiveness. ‘I’m all fucking ears.’

‘This is my only answer,’ said Garrido stiffly. ‘Do you want to hear it or not?’

‘Sure do… I mean there’s nothin’ on TV, right?’

Garrido sighed, exasperated. Insects swarmed in haywire orbits around the coal of his cigar, flashing whitely across the glow.

‘Once not long ago,’ he began, ‘there was a hunter, a Mayan like myself, who lived in a village not far from the ruins of Yaxchilán. Every morning he would rise before dawn, breakfast with his wife and son, and head out into the jungle with his rifle. He would hunt all morning, tracking tapir and deer, avoiding the trails of the jaguar, and when the sun was high he would find a place to rest and eat his lunch. Then he would have a siesta. One afternoon he fell asleep in the shade of a buried temple, and he was waked by the ghost of a Mayan king, his ancestor, a man wearing a red cloth about his waist and a necklace of gold and turquoise.

‘ “Help me!” cried the king. “My enemy pursues me!”

‘“How can I help?” asked the hunter; he had no idea what manner of assistance he could render against an enemy immune to bullets and blows… so he concluded the enemy to be, for no one can harm a creature of the spirit world except another similar creature.

‘“You must let me lay my hand on your brow,” said the king. ‒When I have done this, you will fall into a dream, and I will enter it and hide therein.”

‘The hunter was pleased to be of service to his ancestor, for he was a man who honored tradition, who had great regard for the old Mayans. He let the king lay a hand on his brow and immediately fell into a dream of a palace with labyrinthine corridors and rooms with secret doors. The king passed down one of the corridors and vanished from sight. The dream faded, and other, more ordinary dreams took its place.

‘Not long thereafter the hunter was waked by a white man dressed in a suit of armor with gold filigree, riding a black horse with fiery eyes and steam spouting from its nostrils. The ghost of a conquistador. “I know you have hidden the king,” he said in a voice like an iron bell. “Open your mind to me, and I will follow him.”

‘“No,” said the hunter. “I will not.”

‘The conquistador’s ghost drew his sword and swung it in a mighty arc that shivered the trees and left a trail of smoke in the air. But the Indian was not afraid, willing to die for the security of his traditions. When the conquistador’s ghost saw his lack of fear, he sheathed his sword, leaned down, smiled, and said in a voice like honey, “I will give you a golden coin if you but let me enter.”

‘Now this sorely tempted the hunter, for he was poor, his home a hut of thatch and brushwood, and though he provided his family with enough to eat, like all men he sought to improve the lot of his loved ones. But he resisted temptation and once again refused. His face twisted in rage, the conquistador’s ghost reined his horse hard, making it rear, and galloped off, dwindling to a point of darkness that flashed as red as a star in the instant it disappeared.

‘The hunter was pleased with himself, and that night he played happily with his child and embraced his wife with fervor, certain that his assistance to the king would bring him great good fortune. But the next day as he took aim at a deer, he heard a pounding as of iron-shod hooves, and out of nowhere appeared the conquistador’s ghost, riding straight at the deer and sending it leaping away into the cover of the brush. Laughing wildly, the ghost reined in his horse and vanished in the same manner he had the previous day. The hunter did not sight another deer and returned home empty-handed. There was food in his larder, however, and he was sure his luck would improve. But for two weeks thereafter, each time he made to kill his quarry, be it deer or tapir or agouti, the conquistador’s ghost would ride out of nowhere and give the alarm. Doggedly, the hunter persisted, but by the end of two weeks his wife and child had become ill from lack of food and he had grown desperate. He had no lunch to carry with him on his hunts, but he continued his habit of siesta, and on the fifteenth day after he had helped the king, the conquistador’s ghost waked him from a dream of skulls and said in a voice like ashes, “Let me enter, or I will haunt your days until your family dies of starvation.”

‘The hunter saw that he had no choice, and he let the conquistador’s ghost touch his breast with his sword, at which point he fell into the dream of the labyrinthine palace. The ghost galloped down the corridor, and when the hunter waked he found a gold coin lying in his palm. His first impulse was to throw the coin away, but remembering the plight of his family, he took the coin and bought food. That night it did his heart good to see the color return to their cheeks as they lay with full bellies under the stars, but he felt shame over what he had done, and he wondered if he would ever feel otherwise.

‘The next afternoon he dreamed again of the palace, and to his amazement the king came to the front of the dream, begged to be released, and told him the secret of opening the doors of a dream. The hunter was delighted to have this chance to atone for his weakness and did as the king instructed. But moments later the conquistador’s ghost galloped from the depths of the palace and demanded exit. Gleeful, the hunter locked the doors of the dream and went about his business. But during his siesta the following afternoon, he fell into a nightmare of such vivid torment that under ordinary circumstances he would have waked screaming. He did not wake, however. Demons flayed his skin, insects with steel pincers fed each other morsels of his flesh and tweaked his exposed nerves, and still he slept on. And in the background of the dream he saw the conquistador’s ghost looking on and smiling, resting his arms on the pommel of his saddle. At last the ghost cantered forward and said in a voice like ice, “Give me passage, or I will make you dream your own death.” And again having no choice, the hunter opened the doors of his dream and let the ghost sally forth.

‘When he waked he found another golden coin in his palm, and he was so unnerved that he went to the nearest cantina and drank himself insensible. He understood that he had been chosen by the spirits as the ground on which to fight their ancient battle, and he could only hope this particular engagement would be brief. But the next afternoon the king once again begged entry to the hunter’s dream, and when a brief time later the conquistador’s ghost came into view, the hunter complied with his demands and, his heart full of remorse, accepted another golden coin. First months, then years went by. The hunter constructed plots against the conquistador’s ghost, but for each the ghost had a remedy. He grew wealthy due to the daily payments, and his family’s future now assured, he considered suicide. But his moral imperatives had been seduced by comfort, and he reasoned that if it were not he whose dreams served as the battlefield, it would be some other: how could he burden anyone else with this terrible conflict?

‘Then one day as the king fled the dream, he said to the hunter, “Friend, thank you for your years of service. I am leaving now to find a new dream, for the conquistador has delved all the secrets of the palace and I can no longer elude him.”

‘Stricken by guilt, the hunter asked forgiveness, but the king told him that there was nothing to forgive, that the hunter had provided him with the best hiding place he had ever had. He sprinted off into the jungle, and soon the conquistador’s ghost emerged from the dream. He, too, spoke to the hunter.

‘ “Of all the hunts I have known,” he said in a voice that rumbled like a volcano, “yours has provided the most intriguing of all. I am sorry to see it exhausted.”

‘The hunter trembled with hate, but limited himself to saying, “I am grateful I will never have to lay eyes on you again.”

‘The ghost’s laughter filled the sky with dark clouds. “You are an innocent, my friend. That which is fallow will one day be fertile again, and that which is valueless will grow to be priceless. Sooner or later you will dream a new dream, and we will return to have our sport within it.”

‘“Never!” said the hunter, ‒I would rather die.”

‘“Die, then,” said the conquistador’s ghost in a voice of flame. “Perhaps your child will have the gift of dreams.”

‘The hunter was staggered by this possibility, and knew that he would do anything to spare his child this doom.

‘Again the ghost laughed, and lightning flashed across the sky, its forked values defining the thousand forms of terror in the language of the gods. “Here!” The ghost tossed a golden coin studded with emeralds at the hunter’s feet, a coin worth a decade of its usual payments. “I commission you to build me a new dream, one more elaborate than that of the palace. When I return it had better be ready.” And with that the ghost rode off in pursuit of the king, its steed leaving a trail of hoofprints from which an ineffable smoke arose, signs clear enough so that any spirit peering down from the heavens might take note of them and follow.’

Garrido butted his cigar, making a nest of sparks on the limestone. He seemed to be waiting for a response.

‘Coulda used a hair more dialogue,’ said Mingolla. ‘But not bad.’

Letting out a hiss of disgust, Garrido pulled himself up by his hammock rope. ‘Good night,’ he said. He slipped into the hammock and pulled the mosquito netting over his head.

Despite himself, Mingolla had been impressed by the story, although his secondary reaction had been to consider asking Garrido why he hadn’t simply said, ‘For the money.’ But he realized this would have been unfair. He would have liked to question Garrido further, for it had occurred to him that not only were there a great many things he did not understand, but there well might be a great many other things to whose very existence he had been blind. He gave thought to cultivating Garrido’s friendship, but after reflection decided against it, feeling that friendship would blur his judgments, and that the argument between them would in the long run prove more entertaining than any conversation generated by an accord.

He managed to get to sleep despite the frost, though sleep was hardly restful, a tapestry of anxiety dreams, and when he was awakened by a bright light shining in his eyes, he wondered if he had cried out and disturbed Garrido. ‘What is it?’ he asked, shielding his eyes, his hand tangling with the mosquito netting.

‘Son of a bitch!’ said a voice with a hillbilly twang. ‘This ol’ beaner talks American.’

‘I am American.’ He struggled up. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Something jabbed him hard in the chest, shoving him back; through the white mesh, he saw a rifle barrel and a hand holding a flashlight.

‘Sure looks like a beaner,’ said somebody else.

‘I’m an agent… a spy. Who are you people?’

‘We own this place, man,’ said the hillbilly voice, loaded with menace, ‘And you trespassin’.’

A chill washed away the dregs of Mingolla’s drowsiness, and he pushed with his mind; but rather than meeting mild electrical resistance and enforcing his will, he was flung back, repelled: it was as if he had been riding in a car, had stepped out while it was still moving, and instead of running smoothly along, had been flipped up into the air. He tried again, achieved the same result.

‘That’s a disguise, huh?’ said the hillbilly. ‘How we gonna tell for sure? Lotsa Cubans do real good American. Maybe we scrape ’way a little bitta that color, see what’s under it.’

A chorus of dopey-sounding laughter.

‘Whyn’t ya do like them ol’ war movies, Sarge? Ast him questions ’bout baseball and stuff?’ Another voice.

‘Yeah!’ Hillbilly. ‘How ’bout that, friend. S’pose you tell us who plays centerfield for the Chicago Bears.’

‘Your pal in disguise, too?’ Still another voice.

‘What you guys want?’ Mingolla tried to push the rifle barrel away. ‘Lemme up!’

‘Guess his buddy’s a beaner for real,’ said the hillbilly. ‘Go ’head and do him.’

A burst of automatic fire.

Mingolla stiffened. ‘Garrido?’

‘He answers ya, man,’ said the hillbilly, ‘and I’m gettin’ outta here.’

‘You crazy motherfucker!’ Mingolla said. ‘We’re…’

The rifle punched harder into his chest. ‘You ain’t outta the woods yo’self, boy. Now you wanna answer my question?’

Mingolla suppressed an urge to scream, to heave up from the hammock. ‘What question?’

‘’Bout who plays centerfield for the Bears.’

Snickering.

‘The Bears play football,’ said Mingolla.

‘Well, I’m convinced! Take a reg’lar American to know that,’ said the hillbilly amid renewed laughter. ‘Trouble is’—the humor left his voice—‘we don’t cotton that much to Americans, neither.’

Silence, insects chittering.

‘Who are you?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Name’s Coffee… Special Forces, formerly ’tached to the First Infantry. But y’might say we seen the light an opted outta the military. You gotta name, boy?’

‘Mingolla… David Mingolla.’ He thought he knew them now, and to make sure he asked, ‘What do you mean, “seen the light”?’

‘The light’s holy in Emerald, man. Y’sit under the beams what shine through the leaves, let ’em soak into ya, and they’ll stir truth from your mind.’

‘That right?’ Mingolla pushed again, and again achieved nothing.

‘Think we’re nuts, don’tcha?’ said Coffee. ‘You ’mind me of my ol’ lieutenant. Man used to tell me I’s crazy, and I say, “I ain’t ordinary crazy, lieutenant sir. I’m crazy gone to Jesus.” And I’d tell him ’bout the kingdom we was gonna build. No machines, no pollution. Y’gonna thrive here, David, if you can pass muster. Learn to hunt with a knife, track tapir by the smell. Hear what weather’s comin’ in the cry of a bird.’

‘How ’bout the lieutenant?’ Mingolla asked distractedly, trying to gain a purchase in Coffee’s mind. ‘He learn all that?’

‘Y’know how it is with lieutenants, David. Sometimes they just don’t work out.’

The mosquito netting was flung back, and he was hauled from the hammock, forced to his knees, a rope cinched about his wrists. He saw the shadowy cocoon of Garrido’s hammock in the indirect glow from the flashlight: it looked to be bulged down lower than before, as if death had weighed out heavier than life. He was yanked upright, spun around to face a gaunt rack of a man with rotting teeth and blown-away pupils; an unkempt beard bibbed his chest, and dark hair fell in snarls to his shoulders. He was holding the flashlight under his chin so that Mingolla could see his grin. Behind him stood his men, all of a cut, bearded and thin, smaller than their leader. Their fatigues holed, rifles outmoded.

‘Pleased to meetcha, David,’ said Coffee, lowering the flashlight. ‘You up for a little night march?’

‘Maybe he should pop a couple?’ said one of the others.

‘Yeah, maybe.’ Coffee dug into his pocket, then shone the flashlight into his palm, illuminating two silver foil bullets. ‘Ever do Sammy?’

‘Listen,’ said Mingolla. ‘I’ve got—’

Coffee drove a fist into his stomach, bending him double. Only the fact that someone was holding the rope around his wrists prevented him from falling. He couldn’t breathe for several seconds, and when he had recovered sufficiently to breathe through his mouth, Coffee grabbed his chin and straightened him. ‘That’s the first lesson,’ he said. ‘Y’answer when you spoke to. Now y’ever done Sammy?’

‘No.’

‘Well, don’t get all anxious… it’s purely a joy and a triumph.’ Coffee held up one of the ampules. ‘Just breathe in deep when I pop it, y’hear. Or else I’m gonna give ya ’nother lesson.’ He crushed an ampule between his thumb and forefinger, and Mingolla inhaled the stinging mist. ‘Here comes number two,’ said Coffee cheerfully.

The world was sharpening, coming closer. Mingolla could see the spidery shapes of monkeys high in the canopy, backed by rips of moonlight, framed in filigrees of black leaves; he heard a hundred new sounds, and heard, too, how they knitted the darkness into a comprehensible geography of rustling ferns and scraping branches. The wind was cool, its separate breezes licking at him, feathering his hair.

‘I love to watch the first time,’ said Coffee. ‘God, I love it!’

Mingolla felt disdain for Coffee, and his disdain manifested in a rich, nutsy laugh.

‘Feel like you lookin’ down from the mountaintop, don’tcha? Don’t you trust that feelin’, David. Don’t figger on runnin’ off or takin’ me out.’ Coffee grabbed Mingolla’s shirt, pulled him face to face. ‘I been up in Emerald for two years now, and I can tell when a fly takes a shit. Far as you concerned, I’m lord of the fuckin’ jungle!’ He released Mingolla with a shove. ‘Awright, let’s go.’

‘Where we going?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Questions?’ Coffee went face to face with him again, and madness seemed to be flying out of his enlarged pupils, a vibration beating around Mingolla’s head. ‘Y’don’t ask questions, y’do what ya told.’ Coffee relaxed, grinned. ‘But since you new, I’ll tell ya. We goin’ to the light of judgment, gonna decide whether or not y’run with the pack.’ He shouldered his rifle. ‘Hope that eases your mind.’

The man holding Mingolla’s rope gave it a jerk, and he fetched up against Garrido’s hammock; he recoiled from it, and the man said, ‘Ain’tcha never seen a dead beaner?’

A chemical fury was building in Mingolla, a furious perception of new involvements of honor and character. He wrenched the rope loose from the man’s grip, and when the man jabbed at him with his rifle, he brushed the rifle aside and, moving with uncommon swiftness, kicked the man’s legs out from under him. ‘I’ll kill your ass!’ he said. ‘Touch me again, I’ll kill your ass quick!’

‘My, my,’ said Coffee from behind him. ‘’Pears we gotta tiger by the tail.’ His tone was mirthful, sardonic, but when Mingolla turned, he saw in the configuration of Coffee’s grin a kind of harsh appraisal, and realized he had made a mistake.

Every half-hour as they walked, the men beside Mingolla would pop ampules under his nose, and the inside of his head came to feel heavy with violent urges, as if his thoughts had congealed into a lump of mental plastique. He tried to influence the men, using all his power, but without success. Even had influence been an ordinary problem, his concentration was not what it should have been. The roughness of the terrain commanded a measure of his attention, and the generic mystic-warrior personality supplied by the drug tended to decry the concept of influence as lacking in honor. Rather than continuing his efforts, he concocted intricate escape plans with bloody resolutions. The sharpness of his senses was confusing—he spent a good deal of time identifying odors and sounds—and the initial burn of the drug was of such intensity, he became convinced that many of his perceptions were hallucinations. He had trouble believing, for instance, that the drumbeat issuing from his chest was his heartbeat; nor could he accept that the high-pitched whistlings in his ears were the cries of the bats that flashed like Halloween cutouts through the moonbeams. And so when he first sensed Debora’s presence, he disregarded it. But the impression remained strong, and once, straining toward the darkness from which the impression seemed to derive, he was positive that he had brushed the borders of her mind, feeling the telltale arousal of electrical contact, and feeling also a mental coloration that—though he’d had no previous experience of it, at least on a conscious level—he recognized as hers. After that one contact she either blocked or moved beyond range. What was she doing? he asked himself. Tracking him? If so, did she know his assignment? Then why hadn’t she ambushed him? Maybe, he thought, she had never been there at all.

They came to a large circular clearing overgrown with ferns, ringed by giant figs and mahogany trees: the canopy here was less dense, and the clearing had the look of an aquarium bowl filled with pale milky fluid at the bottom of which strange feathered creatures were stirring in a feeble current. Man-shaped objects were affixed to the tree trunks, but the dimness masked their exact nature. Mingolla was thrown onto the ground and left in the care of a single guard, while the rest—fifteen in all—sat down in the middle of the clearing. The guard forced two more ampules on Mingolla, and he lay on his back in a silent fury, working at the ropes. The subdued voices of the men, the insects, and the soft wind fused into a hushed clutter of sound, and it increased his fury to think that he should be subject to any judgment conceived in this muddled place.

‘Ain’t gon’ do ya no good to slip them ropes,’ said the guard. ‘We just run ya down.’ He was a balding man with a full reddish brown beard and a triangular piece of mirror hung around his neck. ‘Naw, ol’ Sarge ain’t gon’ let ya ’scape. He been waitin’ onna sign for a long time, and ’pears to me you it.’

Mingolla redoubled his efforts. ‘Maybe I ain’t the sign he’s been expecting.’

The guard laughed derisively. ‘Sarge don’t ’spect nothin’. He just reads ’em when they come. Ain’t nobody better’n Sarge at readin’ sign.’

‘I am,’ said Mingolla, hoping to play on the guard’s delusions. ‘That’s why I’ve come… to instruct, to give direction.’

The guard laughed again, but shakily; he lifted his piece of mirror and reflected moonlight into his face.

Mingolla had just begun to make headway with the ropes when Coffee walked over, dismissed the guard, and squatted beside him. He sucked on his teeth, making a whiny glutinous sound, and said, ‘Ever think much ’bout the Garden of Eden, David?’

Coffee’s wistful tone—as if he were regretting original sin—took the edge off Mingolla’s anger and left him at a loss for words.

Read this article once’t,’ Coffee went on. ‘Said the Garden was somewheres in the Anartic. Said they found all these froze-up berries and roots from thousands of years ago. They figgered once’t the Serpent did his business with Eve, the life force drained outta the place, and everything turned to ice. Reckon that’s so?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mingolla tried to influence Coffee and failed. It seemed the drugs added a spin to the electrical activity of the brain, one with which he couldn’t synchronize even when under the influence himself.

‘Yeah, me neither. Can’t believe nothin’ y’read in the papers. Like all the horseshit they print ’bout politics.’ Coffee popped an ampule, sucked in the mist. He glanced toward the clearing. Only three men remained sitting there.

‘Where the rest of your men?’ Mingolla asked, leery.

‘Scoutin’ ’round.’ Coffee cracked his knuckles. ‘Yeah, the stuff they print ’bout politics… Man! Pure horseshit! Gotta dig out the truth for yo’self. Half of them First Ladies was guys wearin’ dresses. Y’can see that just by lookin’. Ugly! I mean if you was president, wouldn’t you have yo’self somethin’ better for a wife than one of them ol’ bags? Yessir, them presidents was all queers… members of a secret queer organization.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Mingolla, making another fruitless effort at mental contact.

‘Wouldn’t ’spect ya’ to know. Come to me as a revelation. That’s the only sorta knowledge y’can trust.’ Coffee’s profound sigh seemed the result of understanding the wide world and its great trouble. ‘Ever have a revelation, David?’

‘Depends what you mean by “revelation.”’

‘If y’have to figger what it means, y’ain’t never had one.’ Coffee scratched his beard. ‘Y’believe in anything… like a higher power?’

‘No,’ said Mingolla. ‘I don’t.’

‘Oh, yes y’do, David. You a man with a plan, a man what’s too busy schemin’ to stop and figger things out. That’s when the revelations come, when you stop.’ Coffee gazed out at the clearing again, his Lincolnesque profile set off by the pale light. ‘That’s what y’believe in, David. In not stoppin’, in not believin’.’

The three men in the clearing were as still and silent as prophets at their meditations, shadows in a milky globe, and the mystical quality of the scene convinced Mingolla for a moment that Coffee’s assessment had been accurate, that inspiration was to be had at the center of the light.

‘Last man with a plan to come ’round Emerald was me,’ Coffee said. ‘Way it looks from here, I can’t judge ya ’cause you a judgment on me. I ain’t been too clear in my mind lately, been slackin’ in my work. ’Pears you sent to test me, and I welcome the test.’

‘What kinda test?’

‘Fang and claw, David, Fang and claw.’ Coffee took a handful of ampules from his pocket and heaped them on the ground. ‘There’s your ammo, man. Roll on over, now, and I’ll cut ya loose.’

‘Wanna tell me what’s going on?’

Coffee turned Mingolla over, sawed at the ropes with a knife. ‘I’m comin’ for ya in the mornin’, when the light’s strong. Gonna take ya out, David.’

Mingolla’s stomach knotted. ‘What if I kill you?’

‘You a test, David, not a challenge.’

Mingolla sat up, rubbing his wrists, looking at Coffee. The moonlight brightened, and he felt it was illuminating more than their faces and clothes, enforcing honesty like a shared attitude. He thought he could see Coffee’s truth, see him leaning against a gas station wall at some hick crossroads, top dog in a kennel of curs, sucking down brews and plotting meanness, and it seemed to him that though Coffee was misguided, insane, he had at least come to an honorable form of meanness. He wondered what Coffee could see of him. ‘What ’bout weapons?’ he asked.

‘Like I said.’ Coffee held up his hands. ‘Fang and claw.’ He gestured at the men in the clearing. ‘The boys’ll make sure nobody gets illegal, and the rest is spread out in case anybody runs.’ With a show of weariness, he got to his feet, and from Mingolla’s perspective his head appeared to merge with the canopy, making him look as tall and mysterious as the trees. ‘See ya in the mornin’,’ he said.

‘This is bullshit, this crap ’bout a test!’ said Mingolla, his fear breaking through like a moon escaping cloud cover. ‘You just need to kill somebody, to prove something to your men.’

Coffee kicked a fern, moved off. ‘Why’s a car engine work, man? ’Cause ya turn the key in the ignition? ’Cause sparks fly from the generator? ’Cause you ’membered to gas up? ‘Cause some law of physics says so? Naw, it’s ’cause of all that and a million things more we don’t know nothin’ about.’ He strolled farther off, becoming a shadow among shadows. ‘Ain’t no such thing as cause and effect, ain’t but one law means shit in this world.’ His voice came from utter darkness and seemed the sum of all the dark voices issuing from beyond the clearing. ‘Everything’s true, David,’ he said. ‘Everything’s real.’

Coffee had left sixteen ampules, and feeling irritable and nauseated, symptoms he could trace to the packet of frost back at his camp, Mingolla popped a couple right away. A rain squall swept in, and after it had passed, to Mingolla’s ears the plips and plops of dripping water blended into a gabbling speech; he imagined demons peeping from beneath the leaves, gossiping about him, but he wasn’t afraid. The ampules were doing wonders, withdrawing the baffles that had been damping the core of his anger. Confidence was a voltage surging through him, keying new increments of strength, and he smiled, thinking of the fight to come: even the smile was an expression of furious strength, of bulked muscle fibers and trembling nerves.

Dawn came gray and damp, and birds set up a clamor, began taking their first flights, swooping over the heads of the three men in the clearing. The underbrush looked to be assuming topiary shapes. Violet auras faded in around ferns, pools of shadow quivered. Mingolla saw that the manlike objects affixed to the tree trunks were combat suits: ten slack, helmeted figures, each featuring some fatal rip or crack. Though he concluded that the suits might be equivalent to notches on Coffee’s belt, he was undismayed. The drugs had added a magical coloration to his thoughts, and he pictured himself moving with splendid athleticism, killing Coffee, becoming king of that dead man’s illusion and ruling over the Lost Patrol, robed in ferns and a leafy crown. But the battle itself, not its outcome, that was the important thing. To reach that peak moment when perfection drew blood, when you muscled aside confusion and—as large as a constellation with the act, as full of stars and blackness and primitive meaning—you were able to look down on the world and know you had outperformed the ordinary. This was the path he had been meant to take, the path of courage and character. A mystic star shone through a rent in the canopy, marooned in a lavender streak above the pink of sunrise. Mingolla stared at it until he understood its sparkling message.

The light brightened, and butterflies flew up from the brush, fluttered low above the ferns. There were, Mingolla thought, an awful lot of them. Thousand upon thousands, an estimate he kept elevating until he reached the figure of millions. And he thought, too, that it was unusual for so many varieties to be gathered in one place. They were everywhere in the brush, perching on leaves and twigs, as if a sudden spring had brought forth flowers in a single night: some of the bushes were completely hidden, and the trunks were thick with them. Now and again they would rise from one of the bushes in a body and go winging in formation about the clearing. Mingolla had never seen anything like it, though he’d heard how butterflies would congregate in such numbers during the mating season, and he guessed that this was something similar.

Beams of sun angled into the clearing from the east, so complexly figured with droplets of moisture that they appeared to embody flaws and fracture planes, like artifacts of golden crystal snapped off in midair. The three men stood and took positions at the rim of the clearing. Apprehension spidered Mingolla’s backbone, and he popped two ampules to clear his head. Then, tired of waiting, he walked to the center of the clearing, his nerves keyed by every shift of shadow, every twitching leaf. Clouds slid across the sun, muting the sky to a platinum gray; a palpable vibration underscored the stillness.

Less than a minute later, Coffee came jogging toward him from the east, a grin splitting the wild thatch of his beard. Mingolla had expected formalities, but Coffee broke into a run, and he barely had time to brace himself before the man hurtled into him, his head catching Mingolla in the side and knocking him to the ground. He went with the fall, rolling out of it and up to his feet; he circled away, amazed by the fluidity of his movements, and though his ribs ached from the impact, he laughed in delight.

‘Aw, David!’ Coffee balanced on one hand and a knee, still grinning. ‘I hate to rob ya of this joy.’ He hopped to his feet, held both fists overhead as if squeezing power from the air.

Laughter bubbled out of Mingolla. ‘You too crazy to live anymore, man. This ain’t a test.… I’m here to relieve you of command.’

‘Are ya, no shit?’ Coffee dropped into a crouch.

‘Come to me inna dream,’ said Mingolla. ‘Your soul ascending into the light, your body all maggoty and hollow.’

Coffee gave his head a good-natured shake, pawed at a butterfly that fluttered into his face. ‘I love ya, David. Swear I do.’ He stared admiringly at Mingolla. ‘Wish there’s another way.’

He lunged, swung his left fist, catching Mingolla on the cheekbone, rocking him; a second blow landed flush on the mouth, but he managed to keep his feet. His head spun, pain spiked his gums. He spat blood and the fragments of a tooth.

‘See what I’m sayin’, David?’ Coffee flexed his left hand, swiped at some butterflies that danced before his eyes; two others had settled atop his head, like a bow tied in his stringy hair. ‘Just a matter of time.’

He charged again, ducked Mingolla’s looping right, and nailed Mingolla twice to the head, knocking him down; he planted a kick in Mingolla’s ribs, the same spot he’d rammed with his head. Mingolla yelped, crawled away, and was flattened by another kick. Coffee hauled him to his knees, slapped him lightly as if to gain his attention.

‘Well, David,’ he said. ‘It’s cryin’ time.’

A couple of dozen butterflies were preening on Coffee’s scalp—a bizarre animate wig—and others clung to his beard; a great cloud of them was circling low above his head like a whirlpool galaxy of cut flowers. Coffee noticed those in his beard, and with a befuddled look, he swiped at them. Two more perched on his brow. Ignoring them, he threw a punch that landed on the side of Mingolla’s neck with stunning force. Threw another that clipped his jaw. He cocked his fist for a third punch. Mingolla fought to retain consciousness, but darkness was flittering at the edges of his vision, and when his head thudded against the ground, he blacked out.

He came around to cappistol noises, to a sky that was a hallucinatory blur of color. Reds, blues, yellows. He couldn’t figure it out. Something odd lurched past, turning, staggering. Mingolla sat up, watched the thing reeling about the clearing. Matted with delicate wings, man-shaped, yet too thick and bulky to be a man. It screamed, tearing at the clotted wings tripling the size of its head, pulling off wads of butterflies, and then the scream was sheared away as if the hole had been plugged. Butterflies poured down in a funnel to thicken it further, and it slumped, mounded, its surface in constant motion, making it appear to be breathing shallowly. It continued to build, accumulating more and more butterflies, the sky emptying and the mound growing with the disconnected swiftness of time-lapse photography, until it had become a multicolored pyramid towering thirty feet above, like a temple buried beneath a million lovely flowers.

Mingolla stared at it, disbelieving yet also terrified that it would fall on him, bury him under a ton of fragile weights. The cap-pistol noises were coming more frequently, and a bullet zipped into the ferns beside him. He went flat, whimpered at the pain in his ribs, and belly-crawled through the ferns. Blight-dappled fronds pressed against his face, slid away with underwater slowness. It seemed he was burrowing through a mosaic of muted browns and greens into which even the concept of separateness had been subsumed, and so he didn’t notice the boot until his hand fell upon it: the rotting brown boot of a man lying on his stomach, holed at the ankles and with vines for laces. Several butterflies perched on the heel. He inched closer, spotted a rifle stock protruding from a mound of butterflies. Carefully, afraid to touch them, he pulled the rifle to him. About a dozen butterflies came with it, clinging to the barrel and the clip. One fluttered onto his hand, and he squawked, shaking it off. Then he eased around the body and into the margin of the jungle.

The firing had become sporadic, and bullets were no longer striking near. Mingolla dragged himself behind a fallen tree trunk. He popped an ampule, had a resurgence of energy, but still felt like shit. His ribs were on fire, and the lumped bruises on his face were heavy and sick-feeling, full of poison. He spat more blood, probed with his tongue at the hole where his tooth had been. Then he turned onto his back, thinking about Coffee under all those butterflies, throat stuffed with their prickly legs, ticklish wings. He looked through a screen of brush at the clearing. Butterflies everywhere, a storm of them whirling and whirling. They’d be coming for him soon. And that was all right. He lay drained and thoughtless, watching the butterflies, not really seeing them, seeing instead the afterimages of their flights, streaks of color that lingered in the air. Time seemed to collapse around him, burying him under a ton of decaying seconds.

Something snapped in the brush to his left, and a man stumbled out of the cover. The red-bearded man who had stood guard over him. He’d lost his little piece of mirror. Dirt freckled his cheeks, bits of fern ribboned his hair. A survival knife dangling from one hand. He blinked at Mingolla. Swayed. His fatigues were plastered to his ribs, and a big bloodstain mapped the hollow of his stomach. His cheeks bulged: it looked as if he wanted to speak but was afraid more than just words would come out. ‘Jesus,’ he said sluggishly. His eyes rolled back, his knees buckled. Then he straightened, appeared to notice Mingolla, and staggered forward swinging the knife.

Mingolla tried to bring the rifle up and found that the stock was pinned under his hip. But somebody else got off a round. The bullet pasted a red star under the man’s eye, stamped his features with a rapt expression, and he fell across Mingolla’s ribs, knocking the breath from him. Shouting in the distance. Mingolla heaved the man off, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. The effort mined a core of dizziness inside him. He resisted it, but then realizing that there was nothing attractive about consciousness, nothing he cared to know about the someone in charge of death and butterflies, he let himself go spiraling down past layers of darkness and shining wings, darkness and mystical light, and a memory of pain so bright that it became a white darkness wherein he lost all track of being.

CHAPTER TEN

Lantern light washing shadows from a tin roof, fanning across a dirt floor, shining over walls of palmetto thatch, the fronds plaited into a weave like greenish brown scales. Smell of rain and decay. A wooden chair and table were the only furnishings aside from the pallet on which Mingolla lay, his ribs taped, jaw aching. And something bright was strung on the ceiling. Ribbons… or paper dolls. He rubbed his eyes, squinted, and made out hundreds of butterflies clinging to the roof poles, their wings stirring gently. He kept very still. He heard a man and woman speaking outside. Their words were unintelligible, but he thought he detected an accent in the man’s voice. German, maybe. A second later, the man entered the hut. He wore dark slacks and a blue polo shirt, and radiated an unnatural measure of heat. Mingolla pretended to be asleep.

The man sat at the table, gazed thoughtfully at Mingolla. He was thin but well muscled, his short blond hair shot through with gray, and he had a cold ascetic handsomeness that in association with the accent called to mind evil SS officers in old war movies. One of the butterflies descended, perching on his knuckles. He let it walk across the back of his hand, then with a flick of his wrist, as if loosing a falcon, cast it aloft. ‘ “Transparent forms too fine for mortal sight,”’ he said. ‘“Their fluid bodies half-dissolv’d in light.”’ He watched the butterfly alight on a roof pole. ‘And yet they can be quite formidable, can they not?’

Mingolla kept up his pretense.

‘You are awake, I think,’ said the man. ‘My name is Nate, and you, I’m told, are David.’

‘Who told you that?’ asked Mingolla, giving it up.

‘A friend of yours… one who is convinced you are her friend.’

‘Debora?’ Mingolla shrugged up, winced at a shooting pain in his side. ‘Where is she?’

Nate shrugged, an economic gesture, the merest elevation of his shoulder. ‘ “Fluttering like some vain painted butterfly from glade to glade along the forest path.” Matthew Arnold, from The Light of Asia.’ He smiled. ‘You know, I believe I could construct an entire conversation from quotations about butterflies.’

Mingolla pushed his mind toward Nate, began to exert influence, and several dozen butterflies flew down from the ceiling, fluttered in his face.

‘Please don’t,’ said Nate. ‘There are a great many more outside.’

There was something peculiar about Nate’s mind, a dominant pattern in the electrical flux unusual for its complexity and resistance to influence; it seemed to Mingolla that the pattern was weaving a mesh too fine for his own mind to penetrate. He was fascinated by it, but didn’t want to risk further exploration, ‘It was you back at the clearing, wasn’t it?’ he said.

Nate looked at him with disapproval. ‘That was a bad job… very bad. But she says you’re worth it.’

The thing to do, Mingolla thought, would be to buddy up to Nate, gain his confidence. ‘You’ve obviously been through the therapy,’ he said. ‘How’d you wind up here. You desert?’

‘Not at all,’ said Nate. ‘Psicorps considered me a failure. I wasn’t able to achieve any effect until after my release. To tell you the truth, I doubt the therapy had much to do with the development of my abilities. I was close by Tel Aviv when it was destroyed, and not long afterward I began to show some signs of having power. A product of my anger, I’m thinking.’ He stared up at the roof poles. ‘Butterflies. Hardly an appropriate tool for anger. Now if I’d managed an affinity with tigers or serpents…’ He broke off, studied his clasped hands.

‘What was it like?’ Mingolla asked.

‘What was what like?’

‘Tel Aviv.’ Mingolla injected sympathy into his words. ‘Back in the States we heard about the suicides, the apathy.’

‘The bomb is a powerful symbol, powerful beyond its immediate effects. To see it… I can’t explain it.’ He made a gesture of dismissal and glanced up at Mingolla. ‘Why are you hunting Debora?’

Mingolla didn’t think he could lie successfully. ‘Things have changed,’ he said.

‘Indeed, more than you know.’

‘I’ll talk to him now,’ said Debora.

She was blocked, standing at the door, an automatic rifle under one arm, and seeing her, all Mingolla’s preparations for this moment went skying. Of course the circumstances were different from those he had planned, but he had the feeling that even if everything had been as expected, his reaction would have been the same. It seemed his obsession was feeding on the sight of her, absorbing the loose fit of her jeans, the hollows in her cheeks, her hair—long uncut—falling to her waist, and composing of these elements a new portrait of obsession, a portrait of a leaner, more intense Debora. Her dark eyes reminded him in their steadiness of Hermeto Guzman’s, and the clean division of white blouse and dusky skin reminded him of his dream of possession. Only after he had satisfied himself that she was more or less as he remembered did his resentments surface, and even then they were not vengeful, but the weaker, wistful emotions of a betrayed lover.

Nate gave her his chair and, with a cautionary look at Mingolla, went outside, followed by a leaf storm of butterflies. Debora laid her rifle on the table and said, ‘Your disguise isn’t bad, but I liked you better as an American.’

‘So did I,’ he said, and, after a silence, asked, ‘Why’d you save me? How’d you know I was coming?’

She glanced at him, looked away. ‘It’s complicated. I’m not sure how much I want to tell you.’

‘Then why are we talking?’

‘I’m not sure about that, either.’

Mingolla felt a bewildering mixture of anger and desire. ‘Are my ribs broken?’

‘Just bruised, I think. I couldn’t do much for your mouth. You’ll have to be careful… keep it clean.’

‘You patched me up?’

‘There wasn’t anyone else. Nate’s not much of a doctor.’

‘Yeah, but he’s good with butterflies.’

‘Yes.’ Sadly.

‘What’s he alla ’bout, anyway?’

‘He used to be a journalist.’ She had another quick look at him. ‘And he’s going with me to Panama.’

‘Panama, huh?’

She nodded, toyed with the trigger guard of the rifle.

‘Why don’t you explain what’s going on?’

‘I can’t trust you.’

‘What am I gonna do… overwhelm ten zillion fucking butterflies?’

‘Your mind’s very strong,’ she said. ‘You might be able to do something.’

‘We’re going to have to talk sometime.’

‘Maybe.’

A dozen intents were colliding in his head, running into one another, bouncing off, like cartoon policemen trying to grab someone who had just vanished into thin air; and what had vanished, he realized, what kept materializing in different parts of the room, shouting, ‘Hey, over here!’ and causing another collision, was his basic intent regarding her… which was something he didn’t care to confront and so made vanish time and again. But at the core of every intent was the tactic or the urge toward seduction. She lifted her head, and in the flickering light he thought he detected a scurrying of dark shapes behind her eyes, as if her purposes, too, were in collision.

‘You shouldn’t be suspicious of me,’ he said, and understanding how ludicrous that statement was, yet that he had meant every word, he laughed. ‘Look, I’ve been pretty fucked up. I, uh…’

‘I know how it is,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I know what they can do to you.’

That hadn’t been his meaning, but he went along with her. ‘Yeah.’ He let a couple of seconds leak away. ‘Why’d you desert?’

She continued to examine the trigger guard. ‘I learned things that made me realize what I was doing was a lie. That made the revolution meaningless.’

Mingolla thought about Alvina and Hermeto. ‘The struggle,’ he said, and gave a dismal laugh.

‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ She smacked the rifle stock against the table.

‘I guess not. It’s just pathetic the way people keep ramming their heads into a brick wall.’

Her face tightened. ‘And what would you do?’

‘It’s not my business. I got roped into this war.’

‘But not into Psicorps.’

‘That’s true, but if I had a choice now, I would desert. I’m tired of killing, of people trying to kill me.’ He was borne away into memories of Coffee, de Zedeguí, and the rest, and understood the full measure of their deaths. He felt he had been stripped of some armor that had enabled him to withstand the aftereffects of what he’d done. ‘I just wanna get outta here.’

‘Back to America!’ She made the prospect sound obscene.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing… if you can live with what you’ve seen, if you stuff your knowledge of oppression under a pillow and go back to painting little pictures.’ She snatched up the rifle and stood. ‘I can’t take this. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

‘What can’t you take?’

‘Your self-absorption,’ she said, ‘Your ability to look away from whatever offends your eye. I’m beginning to think it’s a national characteristic.’

‘It’s not my war.’

Her turn to laugh. ‘Oh, yes it is! But you have to decide whose side you’re on.’ She paused in the doorway and—her back toward him—said, ‘I was going to let the soldiers kill you.’

‘Why?’ he said after a silence.

‘You were after me. You might have killed me.’

‘How’d you know I was tracking you?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

She started through the door.

‘What stopped you?’ he called after her. ‘What the hell stopped you?’

Seconds later, fluttering ribbons of butterflies convoyed Nate into the hut. They settled on the roof poles, and with similar precision, Nate settled on the edge of the chair. His eyes probed Mingolla, and he gave a satisfied nod. ‘I’m thinking it will be all right now.’

Distracted, wishing he hadn’t acted like such an asshole with Debora, Mingolla said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Everything.’ The simplicity of the answer seemed to exploit a simplicity in Nate’s features that Mingolla hadn’t noticed before. He held up a hand, and two butterflies drifted down to decorate his forefinger. ‘ “Twixt purple shadow and gold of sun,”’ he said, ‘“two brown butterflies lightly settle, sleepily swing.”’

The village, a fly-swarmed Indian place littered with dung and mango rinds, was strung out along a bend in a jade-green river and consisted of about thirty huts, all less grand than Nate’s. The high walls of vegetation hemming it in against the river were a weave of lush greens, and by contrast the huts were made of blackened poles lashed together with rotting twine; they were wrecked-looking, pitched at every angle like the remnants of unsuccessful bonfires. Pale smoke trickled from holes in the roofs, and the way the plumes were attenuated and pulled apart by the breeze, drifting into invisibility, they appeared to be responsible for the gradual whitening of the sky. Hammocks were strung inside the huts, plumped full, with children’s faces peeping over the sides; chickens and pigs wandered in and out of doors. Except for a few flattened cans and sun-bleached beer labels on the ground, it might have been a settlement of the Dark Ages.

Mingolla strolled through the village, hunting for Debora, and unable to find her, he stood on the bank, watching the sun burn off streamers of ghost-gray mist. Nate joined him, butterflies clumped in patches on his trousers, others circling above. For want of anything better to do, Mingolla tried to strike up a conversation. ‘Debora tells me you’re a journalist,’ he said.

‘I was,’ Nate said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Mingolla said after waiting a reasonable length of time for more detail. ‘A correspondent?’

Nate seemed to return from a mental vacation. ‘Yes, I was a war correspondent. An occupation with little focus these days.’

Weary of puzzles, Mingolla didn’t attempt to unravel the statement. ‘What’s your last name? Maybe I’ve read your stuff.’

‘Lubove.’

Mingolla sounded the name, heard a familiar resonance. ‘Shit! You’re the guy did the articles on the guy who paints the ruins… the War Painter!’

‘Yes.’

‘You ever find out who he is?’

‘I learned he was Scandinavian. A Dane. But as to his specific identity, no luck there. Have you seen his work?’

‘Just stuff on the news and photographs. Did they manage to save any of it?’

‘Not to my knowledge. His boobytraps are most ingenious. Who would have thought that the profession of curator would have become so hazardous?’

‘Yeah, I saw one of the murals blow up on TV.’ Mingolla kicked at a clump of mud, listened to it plop into the water. ‘Why’re you and Debora going to Panama?’

‘She’ll tell you when she’s ready.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Busy,’ said Nate. ‘She asked me to accompany you this morning.’

‘She said we were gonna talk.’

‘Then you will… but not this morning.’ Nate waved toward the jungle. ‘I thought we’d go for a walk and visit a friend of mine.’

‘Terrific!’ Mingolla threw up his hands. ‘Let’s pack a lunch! Make a picnic out of it!’ Butterflies eddied before his face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go for a walk.’

They set out along a trail that ran downhill through dense growths of bamboo and palmetto, and Mingolla asked whom they were going to visit.

‘God,’ said Nate.

Mingolla inspected him for signs of insanity, then wondered if a walk was the jungle equivalent of taking someone for a ride.

‘Actually, it’s only a computer,’ said Nate. ‘But he makes an intriguing case for his divinity.’

‘A computer… what kinda computer?’

‘An experimental model in one of your helicopters. It was shot down by a Russian missile, and the pilot was killed. But the missile didn’t explode, just penetrated the computer deck. The computer cannibalized the missile for parts and repaired itself. According to it, this syncretic process gave birth to the incarnation.’

‘And you buy that?’

‘Not an easy question to answer,’ said Nate. ‘For a long time I believed only in the god that rose over Tel Aviv one morning. But now, well… why don’t you judge for yourself.’

By the time they reached the crash site—a sizable ferny hollow ringed by granite boulders—the sun was fully up, and in the fresh morning light it had the look of a place touched by divinity. The helicopter was slim, black, cigar shaped, and had not fallen to earth, but was suspended about twenty feet above the floor of the hollow by a webbing of vines and shattered branches; with its crack-webbed cockpit eyes and buckled rotors, it showed in semisilhouette against the low sun like a mystical embryo, the unborn child of a gigantic alien race. The rents in the canopy caused by its passage had grown back, and blades of greenish gold light played over the metal surfaces, alive with refracted dust and moisture, shifting with the action of the breeze. Epiphytes fountained from the rotors, dripping crimson and lavender blooms, and butterflies appeared to materialize from the dazzles on the cockpit plastic, glowing flakes of white gold. At certain angles it was possible to see the skeleton of the pilot still strapped into his harness, but this reminder of death did not detract from the beauty of the hollow, rather effected a formal signature like a cartouche at the bottom of a painted scroll. It seemed less a geographic location than the absolute moment of a place, a landscape that brought to mind the works of Jan van Eyck, a mystic pastoral scene where at any second springs might burst from the rock and birds acquire the power of human speech.

They stood atop a boulder from which they could look down into the hole punched by the Russian missle ten feet below, at the glittering blue and green telltales of the computer inside the chopper. ‘What happens now?’ Mingolla asked, and Nate put a finger to his lips.

‘Good morning, Nate,’ said a dry amplified voice from the helicopter. ‘Are you feeling well?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’

‘And David,’ said the computer. ‘It’s good to meet you at last.’

Though Mingolla assumed that the computer’s identification was based on sensor readings, on information received from Debora and Nate, he was disconcerted by the cool immensity of the voice. ‘It’s mutual,’ he said, feeling foolish. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Kind of you to ask,’ said the computer. ‘To tell you the truth, things are shaping up nicely. I expect we will soon have a resolution to the war, and…’

Mingolla laughed. Really?’

‘I take it, David, that you have been apprised of my nature and doubt my authenticity.’

‘You take it right.’

‘And what do you think I am?’

‘A freak accident with a voice.’

The computer emitted a mellow chuckle. ‘I’ve heard less apt definitions of God, although perhaps none less flattering. Of course the same definition might be applied to man.’

‘I won’t argue that,’ said Mingolla, beginning to appreciate the computer’s affability.

‘Aha!’ said the computer. ‘I believe I may be dealing with a practicing existentialist, a man who—in the vernacular—plays philosophical hardball, denying sentiment except when it coincides with his notions of romantic fatalism. Am I correct?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Most assuredly, I do know. But this is a conversation, David. And I doubt you would find it entertaining were I to insist on omnipotence and infallibility. Besides, the times do not require these proofs.’

‘What do they require?’

‘Me,’ said the computer. ‘No more, no less. Are you interested in a summary of my function? I wouldn’t want to bore you.’

‘Please,’ said Mingolla, thinking that by its urbanity, the computer had imbued this eerily beautiful place with the genteel atmosphere of a drawing room.

‘It’s quite simple. God appears now and again in highly visible incarnations… when the times call for such. However, most periods require only a token appearance, and this period is typical.’

‘It’s hard to think of God as a token figure,’ Mingolla said.

‘We’ve already established, David, that God is not a subject upon which you are expert.’

‘He has you there.’ Nate gave Mingolla a chummy elbow to the ribs, sending him reeling in pain. ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’

‘No serious damage, I trust?’ said the computer.

‘I’m all right.’ Mingolla sat down on the edge of the boulder. Below him, the bank of lights underwent a rippling change, looking like a sudden shift in alignment among the stars of a distant galaxy.

‘As I was saying,’ the computer went on, ‘most periods require only minimal intercession on my part to set things right. The work done in such times goes unnoticed, and mine, aside from a brief flurry of notoriety, will leave no historical record. The appearance of Jesus and Buddha were necessary pyrotechnics. But for the most part’—another chuckle—I work in mysterious ways.’

‘And what is your work?’

‘It has been completed. The copilot of this helicopter, a young man named William, was traumatized by the crash. It was my task to heal him, to educate and prepare him for the important work upon which he is now engaged.’

‘His absence seems pretty convenient,’ said Mingolla.

‘Proof was Jesus’s evangel, not mine. I demand faith of no one other than William, and William can do nothing other than practice faith. Your faith, David, is immaterial. My work is done, and soon I must go to meet my fate… a most ignominious fate, yet suitable to the age.’

‘Care to say what that is?’

‘Certainly. After the war a businessman from Guatemala City will stumble over me in the course of a hunting trip, and thinking me a curiosity, he will have me transported to his home. He will attempt to exploit me, never realizing he has the genuine article in his possession, and will generate the wrath of the Church, which in turn will incite the masses. One day a mob will break into the businessman’s home, kill him, and destroy me. The glory of my Assumption will be obscured by an electrical fire.’

‘If you know the future,’ Mingolla said, stifling laughter, ‘maybe you’d like to tell me what the next year or so has in store.’

‘There is no purpose in disclosing your future.’

‘Uh-huh, right.’

‘However, there is a purpose to your being here. I want you to come inside me.’

Mingolla looked into the hole, at the banks of winking lights; a thrill ran across the muscles of his shoulders. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the computer.

‘I’m not alarmed, I just don’t see the point.’

‘The point will be made manifest. I’m not trying to prove anything, David. I simply feel that a brief intimacy between us will benefit you in the days ahead.’

‘It’s up to you,’ said Nate. ‘But I’ve found it quite restful.’

‘You’ve been inside?’

‘A number of times.’

Mingolla looked again at the hole and decided it would be stupid to give in to nervousness. ‘Why the fuck not?’

Nate lowered him by the arms, released him after he had gained a footing. The chopper shifted, vines creaked, and vegetable debris rained down. Mingolla dropped to his hands and knees, crawled over to the hole, and went in headfirst, carefully negotiating the sharp peels of metal. He slid to the end of the deck, positioned himself against the computer facing.

He had expected that—despite its protestation to the contrary—the computer would attempt his conversion; but there was only silence, and though he felt stupid sitting there, he didn’t want to create the impression that he was afraid by crawling back out. The air was cool, drier than the outside air, like an expression of the computer’s voice, and as Nate had said, it was restful inside the chopper, with the blinking lights and the faint whine of the power system and the edges of the hole framing a ragged circle of greenish gold light like an opening into Eden. From this vantage it was hard to believe that in that light lived loonies and jaguars and poisonous snakes. And maybe that was the truth of the computer’s delusion, of all religious delusion: that if you were to limit yourself to such a narrow view, hold within yourself a ray of greenish gold light, a pocket of cool dry air, you might cultivate an innocence that to some extent would repel the violence of the world. Maybe if he had been armored with faith instead of power he could have avoided much that had come to harrow him. He folded his arms, closed his eyes, letting himself steep in the peace of the dead chopper and its deluded oracle, the image of God appropriate to the age. His thoughts idled. Memories of the Barrio, the Lost Patrol, and the Ant Farm flitted past like scenes from a damaged print of an old silent film, their colors faded, the exaggerated displays of their characters redolent of an antiquated school of acting, and he saw in every instance how irredeemably wrong his own actions had been.

‘That should be enough, David.’ The computer’s voice seemed to surround him. ‘If you start back to the village now, I think you’ll find that Debora is available.’

Mingolla started to ask how the computer knew Debora’s business; but then he understood that whether it was a matter of reasoning or innate knowledge, his judgment was unimportant. Willing to accept this much of delusion, he crawled out from the dark computer deck and let himself be hauled up into the light.

Debora was waiting by the river, and he had the idea from her pose—sitting with knees drawn up, chin resting on her folded arms—that she had been waiting for some considerable time. She was unblocked, shedding heat in waves like the radiation from an open fire, and when she glanced at him, he detected strain in the unnatural steadiness of her gaze. He noticed that her loss of weight had added a sculptural quality to the shape of her face; making it a more suitable framework for her sensual features. Her beauty had been the main focus of his dreams and fantasies, and she was beautiful, albeit less so than his memories of her; yet considering her now, he perceived a bright particularity of which beauty was only a small part. The movements of her body, the black curls hanging over the front of her blouse like the tail feathers of exotic birds, the way the wind pressed the fabric against her breasts: these things were more significant and precious in their familiarity than the fact of her good looks. He rebelled against this perception, trying to resurrect his sense of outrage and betrayal; but he was beginning to realize that didn’t matter anymore, that whatever the reasons underlying the attraction, he wanted to immerse himself in it, to wash away the stains he had accumulated since he had left her.

She invited him to sit, but when he did she shifted her position, creating a wide space between them. He gazed out at the jungle fringing the opposite bank. The sun was an explosive white glare whitening the sky, causing the greens of the vegetation to appear a single livid, overripe color. Birds with scythe-shaped wings made low runs across the treetops; a silver arc and splash out on the river. ‘Are we gonna talk?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She let the answer stand.

The bank fell away sharply, and below Mingolla’s feet the surface of the water was figured with eddies forming around the slick brown tips of a submerged branch; black flies hovered above them, and shadowy fingerlings darted in the green murk of the shallows. Farther along the bank a row of tree ferns leaned out over the river, their stalks ten or twelve feet long, their plumy fronds nodding: the nodding gave them the semblance of an animal vitality, and they seemed to be signaling their approval of all that passed before their strange eyeless heads, measuring the peace of Fire Zone Emerald.

‘All right,’ said Mingolla finally. ‘I’ll start. You told me you learned stuff that made what you were doing meaningless. What was it?’

She drew a line in the clay with her forefinger. ‘There’s another war being fought. A war within a war.’

His impulse was to ridicule her, but her glumness was convincing. ‘What sorta war?’

‘Not really a war,’ she said. ‘A power struggle. Between two groups of psychics, I think.’

Maybe she was crazy after all. ‘How’d you find out ’bout it?’

‘My superiors told me. That’s how they work. They build you up, give you power, watch how you handle it. And when they think you’re so involved with the power that all you want is more, they admit you to their’—her voice quavered—‘their goddamn fraternity! They tell you a little at a time, they give you clues to see how you’ll react. Well, they told me too damn much!’ She looked at Mingolla, anguish in her face. ‘I believed in the revolution. I gave it everything… everything! And there isn’t any revolution! There isn’t even a counterrevolution! It’s all camouflage.’

Mingolla remembered Tully’s outburst about the war not making sense, remembered de Zedeguí’s cryptic statements. He told Debora about Tully, and she said, ‘That’s it! That’s how they begin, by seeding doubt. And next they tell you about special operations, drop hints about underlying purposes. Then they present the whole picture… nothing specific, because they still don’t trust you. Nobody trusts anybody. That’s the one verity. Everything is suspect, everyone’s after power. And no one gives a damn about anything else. The cause is a joke!’ She looked at him again, calmer now. ‘Do you know why I deserted, the final straw? It was because of what they told me about you.’

He waited for her to go on.

‘They said you were going to be assigned to kill me. I know how the training goes, how isolated you are. Never more than a couple of other people around. If you’d been given an assignment, only your trainer and the person in charge of the therapy would know about it, and that meant that one of them had to be in league with one of my superiors. With all the other information I had, I realized that what was really going on must be so elitist, so complicated and filled with intrigues, I’d never figure it out… not while I was still involved in it.’

Mingolla kept his eye on the eddying water, watching strands of dark scum being spun loose from a clot of mud caught on the tip of the submerged branch. ‘It’s hard to swallow,’ he said. ‘But I’ve heard some things, too.’

‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘Amalia knows it.’

‘Amalia?’

‘She’s another clue. A little girl. She’s in my hut. Sleeping. That’s all she does now.’ Debora rubbed the back of her neck as if the subject were making her weary. ‘That’s why I rescued you. I’m not strong enough to wake her anymore. I need your help.’

‘That’s all… that’s the only reason?’

‘Why else would I? You were hunting me.’ She said this with defiance, but he could hear the lie.

‘Not now… I’m not hunting you now.’

‘No, but that isn’t by choice.’

‘Debora,’ he said. ‘I was just…’

She jumped up, walked a couple of paces off.

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly,’ he said.

The wind veiled her mouth with a sweep of dark hair; behind her, three old shirtless Indian men were sitting beside one of the huts, staring at them with fascination. ‘Do you want to help or not?’ she asked harshly.

‘Sure,’ said Mingolla. ‘That’s what I want.’

Amalia was a chubby Indian girl of twelve or thirteen, with a psychic’s heat and a melanin deficiency that had dappled her reddish brown skin with pink splotches; in the candlelit gloom of Debora’s hut the splotches looked raw and vivid, like scars made by poisoned flowers pressed to her face. She lay with one arm hanging over the side of a hammock and wore a dirty white dress imprinted with a design of blue kittens. Her breathing was deep and regular, her eyelids twitched, and according to Debora she had been asleep for almost a week.

‘She just ran down,’ Debora said. ‘Like a windup toy moving slower and slower. Then she stopped. But even before that she wasn’t right. I thought she was retarded. She’d lie there and stare at the walls and make noises. Then she’d have violent spells… break things and scream. Once in a while she’d be lucid, and I could get her to talk. She talked about Panama, about a place she called Sector Jade… she said everything was being decided there. A lot of what she said sounded rote, like pieces of poems and stories she’d memorized.’

The last of Mingolla’s doubts vanished. ‘I’ve heard stuff about Sector Jade.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘Just the name, and that it was important.’

A starved-looking cow stopped by the door and looked inside the hut, its ripe smell filtering in. Its mottled red-and-white skin was sucked in over its cheekbones like a caved-in map, and its unpruned horns had grown into circles that almost met its eyes. It snorted, then moseyed off.

‘What else did she say?’ Mingolla asked.

‘She’d talk about where she used to live. With one of “the others,” she’d say. She said she was one of his “broken toys.” I asked what she meant by “the others,” and she said they were like us, but not as strong… though they were stronger in some ways. Because they were hidden, because they couldn’t be detected.’

Flies droned in the thatch, a chicken clucked. It was hot, and sweat burned in the creases of Mingolla’s neck. He breathed through his mouth. ‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘When I was in therapy, I never worried about failures or fuck-ups with the drugs… even though they gave me an overdose once. I just assumed everything was fine. Beats me why I leapt to that assumption, but I did.’

‘You think that’s what happened to Amalia… a failure with the drugs?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Maybe. But she might not have been sound before they gave them to her.’

‘Either way, it’s not a pretty picture.’

‘I should warn you,’ Debora said. ‘She’s strong… very strong. And her thoughts are chaotic.’

He glanced at her, held her eyes. Her skin was almost the same shade of ashen brown as the air, and for an instant the eyes appeared to be disembodied, floating toward him. She moved back, nervous, and put a hand on the hammock ropes.

‘I’ll give it a shot,’ he said.

Chaotic was too mild a term to describe the process of Amalia’s thoughts; they seemed a fiery shrapnel spraying around inside her skull. The electric sensation was overwhelming, and the subsequent arousal shocking in its suddenness. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.

‘Can’t you do it?’ Anxiety in Debora’s voice.

‘I’m not sure.’ He rubbed his temples; the pain there was more an inflammation than an ache.

After several tries he became acclimated and began to project alertness and well-being. Though painful and dizzying, his contact with Amalia’s mind proved instructive. He was beginning to understand that what he had perceived as random flux was in fact an infinity of patterns, most of them so minimal that they tended to obscure one another; and he found that what he was doing intuitively was reinforcing certain of them, channeling his energy and strength along their course. Some of Amalia’s patterns were—like that one of Nate’s—powerful, easily perceived, and the longer he worked on her, the more dominant these grew. However, half an hour went past, and he still had not been able to wake her.

‘I could be here all day,’ he said to Debora. ‘Why don’t we work on her together?’

Debora frowned, plucked at the hammock ropes. ‘I guess it’s worth a try,’ she said. She ducked under the ropes and stationed herself on the opposite side of the hammock. ‘All right.’

Mingolla’s attention was focused on Amalia, on the boil of her thought, and at first he failed to notice the presence of a new and more controlled electrical flow, one whose borders kept withdrawing from his own. When he did notice it, he mistook it for one of Amalia’s patterns and pushed toward it with all his strength. At the moment of contact he had an impression of two streams of crackling energy knitting together, entwining, tightening, forming a kind of liquid knot that grew more and more complex, twisting in and out of itself, and his focus became limited to completing that knot, to contriving its ultimate expression, until even that intent was absorbed into a blaze of sexuality: like a man clutching a live wire, his thoughts sparking, conscious only of the voltage pouring through him. And then he found himself staring at Debora, unsure of who had broken the circuit and of how it had been accomplished. She looked terrified, her mouth open, breathing labored, and appeared on the verge of bolting from the hut. He wanted to say something to calm her, to stop her, because he saw that a barrier between them had been eliminated. He saw this very clearly, and he believed he had also seen down to the core of their mutuality; he didn’t understand what he had seen—its shape was as complicated as the knot they had created—but the fact that he could see it at all debunked the notion that his feelings for her had been manufactured. Enhanced, maybe. Their progress sped up, hurried along. But not manufactured. He believed she saw this, too.

‘Debora?’ Amalia’s voice, weak and whispery.

Her eyes were open, and she thrashed about as if being swallowed by the hammock.

‘How do you feel?’ Debora leaned down to her, stroked her hair.

Amalia stared at Mingolla. Though not in the least pretty, asleep she had embodied a youthful healthiness; now a sullen energy had gained control of her features, and she looked to be a fat little prig of a girl, the one with whom nobody wants to play.

‘Why do you love him?’ she asked Debora. ‘He does evil things to people.’

‘He’s a soldier, he has to do bad things sometimes. And I don’t love him.’

‘You can’t fool me,’ Amalia said. ‘I know!’

‘Think what you like,’ said Debora patiently. ‘Right now we want you to tell us more about Panama.’

‘No!’ Amalia twisted onto her side, facing toward Mingolla, her dumpling belly netted by the hammock mesh. ‘I want to play with you.’

‘Please, Amalia. We’ll play later.’

Mingolla started to exert his influence on her, but the instant he touched Amalia’s mind, a pattern he hadn’t noticed, one that must have been buried beneath the surface, began flowing back and forth, creating an endless loop that seemed to be threading through his thoughts, fastening itself to them with stitches of bright force. A point of heat bloomed in the center of his forehead, grew into a white-hot sun of pain filling his skull. He felt the jolt of a fall, heard Debora crying out. The pain dwindled, and he saw Amalia sitting up, skewering him with a look of piggy triumph.

‘I want him to play, too,’ she said.

‘We’ll both play with you afterward,’ said Debora. ‘After you tell us about Panama.’

‘You play with her.’ Mingolla pushed himself up. He gingerly touched the back of his head, found a lump. Then, alarmed by Amalia’s scowl, he backed toward the door.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ said Debora.

A sly smile spread across Amalia’s face. ‘Say you love him, and I won’t.’

Debora cast a grim look toward Mingolla.

‘Say it!’ Amalia insisted.

‘I love him.’

‘And you’ll keep loving him forever and ever, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I have something to eat afterward?’

Mingolla almost laughed at the greediness that came across Amalia’s face, it was so comically extreme an expression.

‘I’ll cook you chicken and rice,’ Debora said. ‘I promise.’

‘All right!’ Amalia lay back in the hammock, arms folded across her immature breasts. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Tell us ’bout Sector Jade,’ said Mingolla.

She glared at him, then turned her eyes to the ceiling. The innocence of sleep seemed to possess her once again. She remained silent for a long moment, and Mingolla said, ‘Is she…’

‘Shh!’ Debora waved to him to quiet. ‘She’ll tell us.’

‘Into…’ Amalia wetted her lips. ‘…Vanished… all vanished beneath… as smooth as stone, like a sector of jade amid the bright tiles, and he imagined that they would never reappear, that they were traveling an unguessable distance to a country beneath the shell of the world to which Panama was affixed like a curious pin on a swath of blue silk, and there, in that faraway country, the blood knot would be unraveled and the peace would be forged.’ Her intonation grew firmer. ‘Not the peace that passeth understanding, no, this would be a most comprehensible peace, one purchased with banknotes of blood and shame, with the coinage issued by those who at last have realized that what is fair in war must be incorporated into the tactics of peace, and from this issue would be established an unnatural yet stable order, a counterfeit of salvation, which is in itself a counterfeit of hope, and once… and once…’ She sighed, lapsed again into silence.

‘I’ve heard that before… those words.’ Mingolla couldn’t jog his memory.

‘Where?’

‘It’ll come to me. Ask her about “the others.”’

This time there was a longer pause after Debora had put the question, but when Amalia began to speak it was with more certainty.

‘…Only the latest incidence in the centuries-long feud, which was called by the Madradonas the War of the Flower, this euphemistic characterization exemplary of their tendency to embroider reality. Now Diego Sotomayor de Cabrillo, whose niece had been violated, was not slow to take his vengeance, yet went about it in typical Sotomayor fashion, preferring to concoct an ornate and subtle reprisal rather than initiating an immediate strike. He was at the time a man of great influence in the government of Panama, and using his high office, he sent against the Madradonas an army of tax assessors and other civil servants, by this harassment seeking to occupy their attention while he prepared his plot. From the populace of Barrio Clarín he selected a witling tool, a handsome young boy with a shred of the natural ability, whose brain had been damaged by a fall in his infancy, and from this stone of a child he constructed over the years a weapon of sublime elegance, supplying him with the gifts of poetry and song, making of him a pretty toy that would be sure to delight Serafina, the youngest daughter of his nemesis, and burying in the deepest labyrinth of the boy’s thought a violent potential to be triggered by the sight of her naked body…’

‘Son of a bitch!’ Mingolla pounded a fist into his palm.

‘Don’t!’ Debora bent over Amalia, who appeared to have dropped off into a deep sleep. ‘You can’t interrupt her. She just stops if you do. Damn! Now we’ll have to wake her again.’

‘It’s okay. She said enough.’ Mingolla went to the door, stood looking out at the lethargic activity of the village. Women rolling cornmeal on wooden flats, sleepy children lolling in hammocks, pigs waddling and snooting. ‘It’s like you were telling me. Clues. Izaguirre was giving me clues.’

Debora joined him in the doorway. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What she calls “the others,” they’re characters in a story about two families who’re addicted to this plant that gives them mental powers. They can influence people like we do, but it takes them a long time to get the job done. They’re weak.’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘But they’re hidden. Their power isn’t detectable.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Wake her ass up again, milk her dry, and head the fuck away from Panama.’

‘That wouldn’t do any good. She always uses the same quotes. It’s probably all she’s been programmed to say. I just never understood the part about the families.’ She looked up at Mingolla, seemed startled by his proximity, and walked off toward the river.

‘Where you going?’ he called.

She didn’t break stride. ‘For a walk… to think.’

He caught up to her, fell into step. ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘No.’ She paused beside a hut in whose doorway two naked little girls were playing, flattening cakes of mud between their hands. ‘I’d rather be by myself.’

‘We’ve got more to talk about.’

‘I think we’ve covered everything.’

‘We haven’t covered you and me.’

‘That’s a dead issue.’

‘Bullshit! I know damn well what you feel.’

She took a step back, not in fear, but as if she needed distance in order to see the whole picture. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said coolly. ‘I may have misled you. There’s…’

‘Uh-uh. You…’

‘…absolutely no chance of a deeper relationship between you and me.’

‘You can’t deny what you feel.’

‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’

Her voice had risen in volume, and the two little girls were gazing at them in awe.

‘Sure, you save my life and tell me it’s ’cause I can help you with Amalia. Then we wake her and you say she’s already told you everything she knows. You didn’t need my help. So why’d you save me?’

‘I felt responsible,’ she said. ‘I got you into this.’

‘Be real. It didn’t take Amalia saying you loved me to make it true.’

Anger notched her brow. ‘If you think I’m going to let emotion control me, then you don’t know me. The revolution, that’s…’

‘There isn’t any revolution,’ he reminded her.

‘Maybe not. But I’m going to learn what’s happening, and nothing I feel for you is going to get in the way.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this shit,’ he said. ‘I mean you musta got this dialogue from a bad movie. “Forgive me, Manuel. But until all wrongs are righted, my heart belongs to the cause.”’

She slapped him hard on the cheek, slapped him again, coming at him with a flurry that stung both sides of his face. He grabbed her wrists, and when she tried to knee him, he shoved her away. ‘You bastard!’ she said, standing with her hands clawed, staring at him like a madwoman through strands of hair. ‘Stupid bastard!’ Then she spun on her heel and strode off, disappearing behind one of the huts.

He clenched his fists, needing to hit something, but found only air. The little girls watched him, big-eyed and solemn. ‘Take my advice,’ he said. ‘Grow up to be lesbians.’

They exchanged stares and giggled.

‘I’m serious,’ he told them. ‘It’s got to be easier than this shit.’ He ambled toward the river, rubbing the sting from his cheeks, looking at the hut behind which Debora had vanished. ‘I love you, too,’ he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Some days it seemed he was moving through a vacuum, an airless gray created by his lack of purpose, and other days it seemed he wasn’t moving at all, that life was flowing past beneath a projection of rock upon which he had been stranded. He had nothing to do, nowhere to go: He had come to the end of purpose, and though the frustration caused by Debora’s rejection had acted to shore up his feelings for her, she was a problem he had no energy to solve; he thought she might be right about the comparative values of commitment and emotion, and he envied her capacity for denial, because seeing her every day drove him to distraction. Whenever their paths crossed he would—like a vampire anticipating a hot feast—relish every detail of scent and dewy fever; he would imagine himself following her to Panama, saving her life, and receiving infinite gratification. He had the idea that she was delaying her departure, that she was having trouble putting him behind her; but while this augured well for his chances with her, he knew that to take advantage of those chances he would have to endure more war, and he doubted he was capable of endurance. The memories of the dead men in his wake were weights bracketed to his heart, holding him in place. He could feel them. They were solid and fundamental restraints. And even more solid, more fundamental, was the idea that he was a pawn in a centuries-old feud. He wasn’t sure he believed that to be the case: spoken out loud it had the ring of fantasy. Yet each time he added up the elements of his experience, it seemed clear that fantasy and truth were in union. He saw that the feuding families in Pastorin’s stories, the playful way he had been maneuvered, and much of the war were imbued with a common character, a whimsical arrogance, and this enforced his belief. Belief made him angry, and anger made him eager to explore the perversity that underlay the war. But anger and eagerness were outfaced by his spiritual exhaustion, and so he did nothing.

He went often to the hollow, occasionally accompanied by Nate Lubove. Sunsets were the best time. The shafts of light bathing the chopper would burn red and orange through the canopy, kindling fiery glints from the cockpit, scalloping the black metal with gleams, and the huge silhouette would take on the aspect of an evil Easter egg waiting for a monster child to reach down and snatch it. Mingolla would feel that the light was congealing around him, armoring him in orange and black, and he would think darkly romantic thoughts concerning solitary adventures and high purpose. Whenever the computer addressed him, he would refuse to respond: he didn’t want its solace or companionship. Its skeleton pilot and divine mechanical voice seemed to him emblems of the fraudulence of the war, and he sat beside it only to remind himself of this state of affairs.

Now and then he tried to engage Nate in conversation, and for the most part Nate begged off. Always a minimal soul, he was growing more minimal, less inclined to both speech and action, content to watch his butterflies, and Mingolla, who, like him, sensing a resonance between them, chalked up his taciturnity to a brooding nature. Once, however, Nate did talk to him, telling stories about the wars he’d covered. Afghanistan, Kampuchea, Angola. He’d come to be a war tourist, spending his days in luxury hotels talking to other bored correspondents, comparing the current conflict with the various back-fence wars they’d seen, filing sentimental human interest pieces and getting drunk with ex-presidents while mortar fire chewed the surroundings into ruins.

‘I’ve never experienced a war like this, though,’ he said, kicking his heels against the boulder. ‘It’s insane. And the most insane part of it is in Panama.’

‘You’ve been there?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Yes, a year ago. The place was a puzzle. Most of the city went on as usual, but one barrio—Barrio Clarín—was barricaded from the rest. The official word was that it had been quarantined, but no one could tell you what disease had caused the quarantine. It was impossible to get clearance to enter it, but we heard things. Rumors of pitched battles in the streets. And stranger rumors yet. They sounded ridiculous, but you kept hearing them over and over, and you couldn’t help but pay attention to them.’

‘Tell me,’ said Mingolla.

‘There’s not much to tell. Just that people said there were some sort of negotiations going on in Barrio Clarín, something to do with the war. That’s all. I have no verification of it, of course. But I saw some things that, uh, while they weren’t verification, they did tend to lend substance to the rumors. For instance, I saw the doctor who managed my therapy entering the barrio. It was at a distance, but I could never mistake Izaguirre for anyone else.’

‘Izaguirre!’

‘Do you know him?’

‘He was in charge of my therapy, too.’

‘You were in Mexico City, then?’

‘No,’ said Mingolla. ‘Roatán.’

‘Hmm.’ Nate looked down at the chopper. ‘The doctor gets around, doesn’t he?’ He let out a pained sigh. ‘Well, I suppose it must all come clear in Panama.’

‘What…’ Mingolla began, wanting to question Nate further about Izaguirre, but Nate cut him off.

‘I’m so terribly weary of all this blood, this confusion,’ he said. ‘It seems my life has been nothing but blood and confusion. The other day I was trying to remember something pleasant out of all my times at war, and I could only recall one thing that struck me as of moment. Such a small thing, too. Yet because it’s unique, I suppose I’ve magnified it.’

Mingolla asked Nate to tell him, impressed by the fact that he could recall anything pleasant of war.

‘It was the summer of ’89, Afghanistan,’ said Nate. ‘The Barnian Valley. Do you know it?’

‘No.’

‘It was beautiful. There were dust storms to the south, and the sunsets… Unbelievable! Violent red and yellow skies, the colors melting before your eyes, and the hills black against them. Like a prehistoric landscape. There was a boy, a young boy, he’d lost his leg to a Russian mine, and he’d lost his voice, too. Or at least he wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even me… though he was curious about me because of my blond hair. They were all curious about that. I had with me a thumb piano. Do you know this? A little wooden box, hollow, with metal strips for keys. Twelve keys, I think. You strike them with your thumbs, and they make a brittle tinkling music. An African instrument. The boy was fascinated. I was not so good a player, you understand. I only used it to accompany my thoughts, my reveries. And when I saw the boy’s interest in the instrument, I gave it to him.’ Nate yawned, leaned back on an elbow. ‘I taught him how to strike the keys, and he would sit for hours with it on his lap. Of course I was occupied with other matters. Russian fighters would launch rocket strikes at our positions, and I was working with a film crew, shooting the battles. So for a time I forgot the boy and the thumb piano. Then one night I was walking on the perimeter of the camp. Beautiful night.’ Nate slumped lower, resting his head on his arm. Blinked sleepily. His speech grew slurred, slower. ‘Stars, more stars than you see down here, because the air was so clear. A sickle moon, cold and silver. Cool air. A night of clarity. And I came across the boy sitting on a rock looking out over the valley. He was playing the thumb piano. His shoulders hunched, his face intent upon the instrument, a shadow against the stars and the dark blue sky. God, how he played! So fluent, so expressive! He’d outstripped the limits of the twelve notes. Cold rippling arpeggios that seemed to be making the stars dance, with simple melodies stated above them. Poignant melodies, sad melodies. It had power, the music. Power like Bach, even though it had no great amplitude or range. For a moment I wasn’t sure it was the boy playing. I thought he must be a spirit, that if I moved closer I would discover he was a creature of shadow without eyes or mouth or any feature. The war was in the music, the strength of the people.’ Nate sat up straighter, drew a deep breath. ‘They weren’t an admirable people, you see… though much was made of their nobility, their fighting spirit. They were murderers and thieves, many of them. For example, I spoke to one man who told me that years before he’d learned that young travelers were selling their blood to hospitals in Kabul. He’d been inspired by this to ambush travelers going through the Khyber Pass. He’d cut their throats and store their blood in leather sacks. And when he had collected what he assumed to be a fortune in blood, he’d taken the sacks to Kabul. The blood was rotten, of course, and he’d been terribly distressed when the hospital wouldn’t buy it. Now he thought the whole thing absurd, that it had been a big joke on him. That was how a lot of them were. But whatever was good about them, it was in that music the boy played. The purity of their determination, their love of the land. I’—another yawn—I still hear it sometimes. It seems to be playing in my nerves. When I’m sleepy, like now.’

He appeared to doze off for a couple of seconds, and Mingolla, astonished by how much this reminded him of Amalia, shook him awake.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘The humidity,’ said Nate. ‘I’ve never gotten used to the humidity down here. I’m always having drowsiness.’

‘You looked sick or something.’

‘No, it’s only the humidity. The heat doesn’t trouble me… but in Israel it’s dry, you understand.’

Mingolla wasn’t convinced, but let it pass. ‘What’s it like in Israel these days?’

‘I have no idea. It’s been years since I was there… years.’ Nate stared at a far-off point in the canopy. ‘I can hardly remember it.’

Ordinarily Mingolla would have passed off this last comment as well, but there had been an anxious undertone to Nate’s voice that made it seem a matter of real concern. He asked Nate what he did remember, and Nate, uncomfortable with the question, muttered something about inflation and militance, and refused to discuss the subject.

‘I don’t get much pleasure from remembering it,’ he said, and Mingolla, guilty over having pressed him, said he could understand that.

Returning from the hollow one evening, he noticed a trail leading south away from the village yet angled toward the river, and on impulse he set off down it. The trail was densely overgrown,running for the most part uphill, and by the time he reached a thicketed bluff overlooking the river, he was sweaty and begrimed. Twilight had blended water and jungle into a gray medium, and mist was forming in mid-stream; but full dark was still a half-hour off, and Mingolla thought he would have a swim. He threaded his way down the bluff and was about to push through the wall of brush bordering the bank, when he spotted Debora. She was buttoning her dress, and he had a glimpse of her high small breasts before white cotton closed them in. Her hair was wrapped in a towel, and after she had done all her buttons, she removed the towel and let the hair spill over her back. She sat on the bank, legs dangling over the edge. Beside her stood a tent, its peak outlined against a band of pink light that showed above the treeline on the far side of the river. Mingolla stood a minute considering the possibilities, realized there was just one, and pushed through the brush.

She started at the noise, turned toward him. He had expected her to react violently, but she only said, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Walking,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know this was your place.’

‘I stay here some nights. There’s a hot springs.’

He sat next to her. The water below was crystal clear, bubbling from a limestone cavity, and he could make out tiny fish darting over a pebbled bottom. ‘How hot is it?’

‘Too hot to touch at the source. But farther out it’s just warm. You should try it.’

Her solicitude made him think he could talk to her, but he found he had nothing much to say. He felt her eyes on him.

‘I’ll be leaving soon,’ she said, her voice icy.

The action of the springs made a racy turbulent sound that was audible above the rush of the current.

‘Do you want to come with me?’

Startled, he tried to catch her eye, but she had turned away.

‘It’ll be easier with someone else along,’ She gave a twitch of her head as if she wanted to look at him but was fighting the urge. ‘It’s up to you.’

Her shirt was molded to the wet curve of her ribcage, and he could see tension there, tension in her cabled neck, the stillness of her head.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘I don’t have the strength for it anymore.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘You’re just tired… like how you get after you’ve been hiking, and when you lie down, your muscles ache and you don’t think you can go on. But once you do, you’re all right again.’

‘You have Nate,’ he said. ‘He’ll share the load.’

‘I know, but…’

‘But it’s not the same, right? Why don’t you be honest, why don’t you tell me the real reason you want me along?’

He traced the line of her jaw, and she shivered—an all-over shiver, the way a colt reacts to something unfamiliar in the wind—but she didn’t pull away. ‘Because I want you, because I want to make love with you… is that what you want me to say?’

‘If it’s true.’ He moved his hand to her shoulder, lower, felt her heartbeat. The band of pink in the west had deepened to crimson, widened, its shape like a flame blown back in a strong wind, and the curve of her cheek held a red sheen.

‘Of course it’s true. I can’t hide it, I’ve never been able to hide it. Maybe that is part of the reason, but it’s the smallest part.’

‘Because it’s suspect, because everything is suspect.’ He heard the seductive challenge in his voice.

‘Yes.’

‘The only way it won’t be suspect is if you learn to trust it.’

‘I… I don’t know.’

‘Then why do you want me along? You think we’re going to be buddies or something? That it?’

‘No… I…’

‘You have to trust it, you have to trust something.’

‘I want to,’ she said. ’I do, but I can’t.’

He turned her, his hands went to her waist. ‘Why not?’

Her words came in a fragmented rush. ‘It’s just never been good, not with… and… I want to… I want for it…’

He slipped one hand up under her shirt, and she caught her breath, holding very still.

‘No,’ she said weakly.

‘I love you,’ he said, inching his hand higher. ‘And you love me.’

‘I’m trying not to,’ she said.

‘What for?’

His thumb nudged the swell of her breast, rubbed slowly back and forth, a sleepy rhythm. Her head drooped to the side as if her attention had been attracted by a faint sound on the far bank, and he kissed the angle where her neck and shoulder joined. The cool green taste of the river and the warmth of her skin mixed on his tongue. Like a hypnotist, he locked on to her eyes as he undid her blouse. She made a sound that started to be a rejection but died in the back of her throat. He spread the halves of the blouse, bent to her breasts, nuzzled them, kissed their tips, teasing the nipples hard. When he took one in his mouth, worked it gently with his teeth, she shuddered and put her hands on the back of his head, guiding him.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait.’

But he was through waiting and drew her down on the bank, his hand moving to her belly, lower, feeling the softness beneath her jeans, knowing she was open, ready.

‘Wait!’

This time she shrilled it, and dismayed, startled, wondering if he’d hurt her, he let her go. She rolled away from him, stood, holding her blouse closed. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know you.’

That could be argued, he thought, but why bother? He sat up, his balls aching. He was puzzled, though not by her reaction. Women were always making this mistake, discovering in the middle of things that they weren’t prepared for you to touch them here or there or somewhere, leaving you doubled over in pain. No, he was just generally puzzled. Looking at the bubbled surface of the spring, it seemed he was staring down through the strata of his various conditions. Blue-balled, on a riverbank at sunset, in the midst of a rain forest, the midst of war, surrounded by lunatics and Indians, in Guatemala. And binding it all together the strange web of his relationship with this woman. He wondered why he wasn’t more puzzled.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s just skip it.’ He turned to the far bank, and when he looked back a minute later, he found that she had gone.

Darkness sifted in, the moon was still down, and not wanting to negotiate the trail without a flashlight, he crawled into the tent. It had her smell, and that made him feel isolated among the night cries and the slop of the river. Too bad the tent wasn’t equipped with a phone. He’d make some calls. His parents, of course. Just for the sake of getting oriented to the American wavelength, a dose of salt and Nutra-Sweet. Hi, Mom, hi, Dad, here I am with gun and camera in Mangoland, the war’s no worse than a Disney Tru-Life Adventure narrated by a noble voice, and I’ll be home soon with souvenirs, bye, Mom, bye, Dad. And then, then maybe he’d give Sparky’s a buzz, his hometown hangout. He could picture it. Sparky the old fart scuttling crabwise for the phone, saying, ‘Yeah, whatcha want?’ and he’d say, ‘Hey, Spark. It’s David Mingolla calling from Guatemala.’ And Sparky would repeat the name a couple of times and say, ‘Sure… Davy! Cheeseburger plate and a lemon Coke, right? How the hell are ya?’ he’d say with false heartiness, recalling what a big shot Mingolla’s father was, and Mingolla would say, ‘I’m kicking ass down here, Spark. Refrying them beaners, y’know.’ Because Sparky was a hardcore patriot and why get into it? Then he’d ask who was around, and Sparky would say, ‘Well, nobody you’d know, what with your crowd split up and all.’ And maybe he’d bag calling Sparky’s, he didn’t need a reminder that those days were gone. Who else could he call? Light bulb switching on overhead. Yeah! He’d call up Long Island Woman. Give her a chill and a thrill. What was today? He counted on his fingers. Friday. Damn! They’d be out for a pizza and a movie, their idea of a hot date, and home around midnight for a bout of uninspired sex. Four times a week, regular as sin. Less would be unsalubrious. He remembered the first time they’d made love, how just as they were about to do the deed, she’d drawn back and said in a cool clinical voice, ‘At home we always do it on our sides. That way neither of us has to bear the other’s weight.’ He’d been amazed by her sexual naïveté, yet knowing this about her had given him a sense of mastery, and maybe that had been responsible for his loving her. You didn’t need much of a reason for love; that had been proved again with Debora, And it might be that lack of knowledge was a stimulant to emotion, that things were most alluring when they were not quite real… Naw… he’d bag that call, too. He needed to talk to Debora. In a way, she hung on to revolution with the same avidity that Long Island Woman had hung on to marriage. But there was some hope for her. He’d buzz her on the jungle hotline. ‘Listen,’ he’d say, and hold out the phone to catch the electric message of the night, the crickets and frogs with glowing eyes, the red-skulled monkeys with vibratory tongues, the black magic birds with tympany beaks, and she would tune in to what they were saying separately and unanimously, saying in music, saying in code, in clicks and squeals and arcs of iridescent noise. There is no reason There is no reason There is no reason, and she would be mesmerized, and she would understand, and she would give up her fear.

Mingolla awakened from a dream of suffocation, unable to breathe the stale heated air inside the tent. He crawled out, stood and stretched. It had rained during the night, rinsing the sky of clouds, and the sun was fierce on the river, adding a shimmering glaze to its jade finish. Blue-and-silver fish were nudging pebbles along the bottom of the hot springs. It looked inviting. He could, he thought, get into nudging pebbles, hunting for tiny bugs in the silt. He stripped and waded in, quickstepping away from the scalding current that bubbled from the bank. The limestone bank extended about ten feet out, and at its edge the water was only inches deep over a smooth bottom. He kneeled, splashed himself, and tilted his face to the sun, his thoughts going with the race of the current. Something splashed near shore, and he turned toward the sound. Saw Debora standing in the water, undoing her blouse, her jeans folded on the bank. Water beads glistened on her thighs, in her black pubic brush. She shrugged off the blouse, held it crumpled in front of her, then tossed it next to the jeans. For a moment her body seemed inset into the greenery, a keyhole opening onto a tawny desert place.

His senses ran out of him, coiling around her. She was a little thick-waisted, her breasts so small in contrast to the fullness of her hips that they looked immature, and this gave her a sexy childlike allure. She kneeled facing him, her expression tentative, a dozen expressions trying to be one, and he thought he must look much the same, because now he was insecure, afraid of making mistakes with her.

‘I couldn’t…’ she said. ‘I had to.’

He wasn’t sure what specific uncertainty she was trying to put behind her, but to smooth over her confusion he kissed her, met her tongue, and slid a hand along her inner thigh. She eased into the touch, and his finger slipped between her legs, found her open; she shifted forward, letting his finger penetrate, and he understood that she didn’t want to wait, she wanted to rush past the beginning, to know everything. He lifted her astraddle him, and her head resting on his shoulder, her hair striping his vision, she guided him into place, worked herself down until he was all the way inside. To be held that way, her warmth enclosing him, gripping him, it was, Jesus! so good, so good, he was melting in her, dissolving in that perfect fit. He could feel a clean untroubled face breaking through his old mask of war and anger, the shards falling away into the flood of the sun, the daze of bright water. Everything was melting, the jungle and the river running together, slick with heat and brilliance, greens and blues washing into a unity of light that penetrated his eyelids. She began to tremble, her nails pricking his back, and just the trembling nearly brought him off.

He needed to move but they were angled wrong. Supporting her with one hand, he tipped her backward until her hair fanned across the water; he planted his free arm on the bottom to bear their weight. Her legs locked around his waist, inching him deeper, and he came, all the bad days, the longing, loosed in a heart-stopping pour that left him wobbly and gulping for breath. But he stayed hard, wanting her again. Sweat trickled down his back like molten cracks spreading; salt drops stung his eyes. His planted arm began to ache with the awkwardness of the position, but then as if it had connected with limestone muscles, the ache subsided. She worked her hips, grinding, pushing, building her moment. It was quick for her, too. Her belly tensed, she gave a sharp cry and clawed at his shoulders. Then she relaxed, mouth going slack, eyes closed against the glare. He pulled out, eased back in. So good, that silky muscle. Good like Jesus, like everything calm and sweet at once. A single word began sounding over and over in his head, Debora, Debora, Debora, but that wasn’t it, not her name, her name was only a translation of the real word, which meant much more, secret kingdoms of meaning, of mastery and giving. He looked down at her. At the tendrils of black hair floating on jade, the dreamy eastern face. He saw where they joined. He wished he could say something, tell her something, but he was leery of words… words spoken out loud had the weight of evidence, they could be held against you, and even though they’d become lovers, there was still distrust between them. But it was all right, all right for now. He gazed out past her head across the shimmering water toward the tree line, and as he moved again, as it became all right forever for a moment, he caught a flash of the way it had been after they’d mowed down the jungle around the Ant Farm: the full-bore immensity and silence of the light, the clear innocent air above palms blackened like matchsticks, the cracked red earth leaking steam, and how they’d walked through the dead land, crunching the scorched, brittle stalks underfoot, unafraid, because all the snakes in hiding were now just shadows in the cinders.

They lay on their sides in the warm flow of the springs, and looking at the far bank, at the diminutive crowns of the trees, Mingolla felt they had grown enormous, that they were two exhausted giants newly surfaced from a deep. Debora threw back her head, and at that precise instant something silver streaked across the top of the sky; a worry line creased her brow. He pulled her to him, but she drew back and said, ‘No… the tent. Let’s go in the tent.’ And coming to her feet with a splash, she outran him to the bank.

With the flap closed, sealing them into a confine of half-dark and air as still as a held breath, he felt more alone with her, strangely more alive. Her body was aglow with dampness, her eyes were gleams. He kneeled between her legs, bent lower and tasted her. Tasted her, exploring the folds of her cunt, lapping at her, imagining honey smearing his mouth. She hardly moved for a minute or so, but he could tell how she’d wanted this, how known and gloried in it made her feel. Her hips bucked, her legs clamped his head. Breath was knocked out of her in hoarse gasps. The muscles of her stomach bunched, and she wrapped her hands in his hair, holding him immobile, as if were he to take his mouth away or do anything more, she would break into pieces. Afterward he lay beside her, kissed her, and she said, ‘I can taste myself… I thought it’d be horrible to taste myself.’

‘And it’s not?’

‘No, because I can taste you, too.’

The demureness in her voice aroused him, and he entered her again. And this time, obeying an impulse, he pushed into her mind as well, reestablishing that blazing mental circuit they’d experienced with Amalia. His body was galvanized, his movements seemed to be conforming to the twists and turns of the electric knot they were weaving inside each other’s heads, and from that point on he was aware of what was happening only during lapses in the connection. He would find himself battering at her, pinning her wrists above her head, or that she had mounted him and was raking his chest with her nails. Hours of this, on and on into the night. Brutal, sweaty, animal sex. He knew he should be worn out, but every renewal of the mental contact restored him, kindled in him a sensation of thrilling strength and vitality.

Toward dawn, with gray light hanging in the folds of the tent flap, Debora went outside, returning a few minutes later, her body damp from the river, carrying a cloth and a full canteen. She sponged off his chest, his groin, and then, setting the canteen aside, she took him in her mouth. She was a shadow bending to him, the act veiled by the fall of her hair, and because she had caught him by surprise, he was at first less aware of his responses than of hers. Fingers digging into his thigh, the pressure of her mouth. She was sweetly inexpert, too gentle with him, learning as she went, but his thoughts went with her hesitant movements, and it was fine, lovely, the concerned delicacy of those thoughts, the fleeting memories of other more expert women, the messages he tried to send, urging to do it this way, oh yeah, Jesus, that’s it, and worries that she wouldn’t like it when he came, he wanted her to like it, and then his regard of her was subsumed into dominance and need, the need to flood her, fill her, purient images of her lips, his cock going in, hollowing her cheeks, mixed in with the sensation of her tongue curling around him, and he saw flashes in the dark air, and he followed them with his eyes, with the thrusting of his hips, with all his wish, all his muscled intent, his hips bridging to meet her mouth, and said, ‘Debora, Christ!’ and laid his hand on the back of her head, guiding her the last bit, going blank and rigid into light, into a nervy flare of pleasure that was a greater fulfillment than all the previous violent ones. She nestled close, smiling a bright prideful smile, and kissed him, bringing his own salt taste to his mouth. She whispered something.

‘I didn’t hear,’ he said.

‘Nothing.’

He was certain she had whispered, ‘I love you,’ and was happy that words were becoming accessible to them, that trust was building; but at the same time he was put off by the claim implicit in the words, frightened by their power, and he began once more to wonder who she was, this stranger whom love made seem so familiar, and why they were here and what they were going to do.

The most intriguing thing about their lovemaking was not the intensity of their mental contact—Mingolla realized that he’d been expecting something of the sort—but was its aftermath, the sense of strength and vitality it brought to them. He recalled what Izaguirre had said about a mutuality of focus between two psychics acting to increase their powers, and to test the truth of this, he went with Debora to visit Amalia again. They each awakened her with only the slightest of efforts, and when she attacked Mingolla, he repelled her without difficulty. Amalia did not take defeat well. She peered fearfully at them over the edge of the hammock, the pink splotches on her face glowing like radium in the gloom of the hut, and wept. Debora tried to comfort her, but Mingolla’s interest was more clinical, and he worked to shore up the less dominant patterns of her mind, fueling them with his strength, curious as to what she might be able to tell them about her past.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said defiantly when he asked about her therapy. But he could tell she was lying and urged her to comply.

‘There were lots of us,’ she said. ‘In a big house.’

‘Boys and girls like you?’ Debora asked.

‘No one’s like me,’ said Amalia.

‘I mean were they… sick?’

‘Broken,’ she said, and the word seemed to resonate beyond the walls of the hut, as if every broken thing were responding to her signal.

Mingolla framed another question, but before he could ask it, Amalia began to speak. ‘… And the light of the Beast that had been loosed was the light of reason for the Madradonas and the Sotomayors, and they met in the city of Cartagena to contrive a peace, and when they went forth from the city unified in purpose and over the years insinuated themselves into the seats of the mighty, preparing for the consolidation of the world into a single nation. But not all were of this accord. Passions still ran high among the youth of the families, and they continued to murder and rape, to swindle and defraud, as had the countless generations that preceded them, and so it was determined that… that they, too… they, too, should…’

Amalia slumped in the hammock, the patterns of her mind in utter disarray, beyond Mingolla’s capacity to restore. For a moment the only sound was the creaking of the hammock ropes, and to Mingolla, feeling desolate, realizing that he and Debora were trapped in a circumstance beyond their control or comprehension… to Mingolla the creaking of the ropes opened into a vision of a room with softly glowing walls, the light issuing from almost imperceptible cells embedded in pattern of magenta swirls on the wallpaper, and he was lying on a bed in a motel, furnished with a chrome desk beneath a wide mirror, and matching chairs of chrome and mauve upholstery, the decor achieving an effect both sterile and gaudy. Water running in the bathroom. A click, the bathroom door opening, and Debora came in drying her hands on a towel. Wearing a T-shirt and panties. He’d never gotten used to the changes plastic surgery had made in her face, and each time she reappeared after an absence—no matter how brief—he would fail to recognize her for a second, would have to seek out the old planes and lines, blur the new regularity of her features and find the exotic asymmetry that had first attracted him. Only her subdued manner was familiar, the way she moved around the room, keeping close to the walls like a cat exploring, eyes down, withdrawn. She fingered a dial beside the door, dimming the lights, and lay next to him.

‘How you doing?’ he asked.

‘I’m still not used to it here,’ she said. ‘There’s so much…’

‘So much what?’

‘Everything. Food, light, coolness. Anything you want.’

‘It’s the land of silk and money. We do not want for the luxuries.’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said.

Years before, he would have made a joke of her asceticism, but they had gone beyond jokes, beyond any sort of lightness.

‘Won’t be much longer,’ he said. ‘After tomorrow…’ He left the rest unspoken; they both knew about tomorrow.

They made love in the cool dry room, and yes, there was heat, and yes, there was joy, and there was that electric fusion of minds, yet it was no longer love they made, it was something less and something more, a ratification of their commitment and an exercise in power, an erotic calisthenics that bred in them a core dispassion that—like love—was its own reason for being. After they had done, their power was as palpable and bristly as ozone in the room, and with only a slight effort, Mingolla reached beyond the walls to engage the mind of a harried businessman on his way to shuffle papers over a drink at the motel bar, to worry about sales techniques, to ponder the morals of the waitresses… and the minds of passing motorists, dazed by the lights of Love City in the distance, scattered across a tawny strip of desert like stars whose constellate figure has abdicated to a better sky, and Mingolla plucked the thoughts from their heads, his own thought ranging over them, as strong as God in contrast to their firefly frailty, tuning in the trillion-watt wastage of the American West… Jerk-off motherfucker, cut in on me like that, I’ll drive this iron up your asshole… If I brake real hard, it’d jack her through the goddamn windshield, and serve her ass right for whimperin’ alla time, goddamn bitch has to pee every fifteen minutes… God, let not the wickedness of the world, let the wickedness, let not… in that mind the image of God a pearly sexual light, a pernicious denial… and wordless drones of thought, a static crackle of imagery and wants and hopes as feckless and ill-informed as a child’s, memories as random as a wash of transmission during a thunderstorm, and nowhere a mind of true strength or substance.

Not within range, anyway.

In the pale glow that came through the drapes, Debora looked worried, and he asked if she was thinking about the next day.

‘No… about the day after. About what we’ll do then.’

‘We’ll be okay.’

‘I know,’ she said, and turned away from him.

They awakened before dawn and ate breakfast in the diner next to the motel, a place called—according to its three-tiered neon sign—EAT VERNA’S TEX-MEX DELICIOUS. They had eggs-over-easy and bacon and toast and coffee, and sat in a booth of red vinyl sparkles, staring out through their reflections at the highway, the torrent of headlights and sleek dream machines westering, whispering toward the false dawn of Love City, piloted by men and women who wanted a good time then salvation and still believed this was possible, and thought maybe an immersion in the lingerie department of life would silver their hopes and streamline their wishes and send them home to boredom all chromed and supercharged with the horsepower of sexy experience. They lingered over their empty plates. No reason to hurry. Izaguirre wasn’t going anywhere, secure with his guards and his walls. There were no other customers, and when the waitress brought the check, she leaned on the booth and said, You folks goin’ or comin’?’

‘Coming,’ said Mingolla.

‘This your first time to Love City?’

‘Uh-huh.’

She nodded, a skinny fortyish woman with lines of sad wisdom on her face and rainbow stripes in her frizzy baby-chick-colored hair, an aging hillbilly punkette who had come late to a regretful morality, her disguise completed by a starched green uniform. ‘Ain’t nothin’ there you two couldn’t work out by yourself… if you take my meanin’,’ she said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, now. I ain’t preachin’ ’gainst L.C. God knows, I let it all wallow there a time or two. It’s just it don’t make nobody happy. Don’t make ’em sad, neither. It just sorta is… like everything else, y’know. So what’s the point?’

Debora murmured agreement; her response seemed casual, but Mingolla sensed between her and the waitress a woman-to-woman exchange to which he wasn’t attuned.

‘Where you folks comin’ from?’ the waitress asked, affecting deep interest.

‘Mexico,’ said Mingolla. ‘And Honduras before that.’ Made paranoid by the question, he checked her mind for signs of tampering and found her to be a mundane original.

‘Mexico!’ The way she said it, Mexico might have been something at the end of the boulevard of dreams, the distant glow of paradise. ‘Y’know, I sell Mex jewelry here’—she hooked her thumb toward the display case beneath the cash register; it was filled with cheap onyx and silver—‘and Mex food. Hell, I even had me a Mex boyfriend. That was ’fore the war, y’understand. But I never been down there. Always wanted to go. See the pretty boys and the lizards on the beaches and all. The ruins, too. Always wanted to see them ruins.’

Perky, feeling intimate with them now that she’d disclosed her heartfelt wish, she asked if they wanted more coffee… on the house. She brought the pot, poured, and plunked herself down beside Debora. She inquired about their backgrounds, said ‘uh-huh, uh-huh,’ in response to their minimal answers, impatient, eager to tell her story, the story she got to tell once every slow-predawn-while, the story that made her believe she’d lived that day.

‘This ol’ place probably looks pretty nothin’ to you folks,’ she said. ‘But believe me, you can see a thing or two here. The idea of gettin’ their Charlie doctored in Love City brings some strange ’uns thisaway.’

‘Oh?’ said Debora with polite interest. She glanced guiltily at Mingolla, and he checked his watch. They had time, and it would be okay to sit and listen and pretend for a little while that they weren’t going anywhere special, to have that much normalcy.

‘You wouldn’t believe some of ’em,’ said the waitress. And she told them about a man and a most unusual dog, and then about two women who’d looked as alike as two beans, pretty ol’ girls, y’know, like starlets, blondes, they was blondes, and it was surgery made them so alike, they’d told her about it, how they was eye-dentical down to their moles, and they’d had their voices altered so they could harmonize even when they just talkin’, not singin’ or nothin’, they sounded buzzy and high-pitched together like a coupla birds who’d learned to speak English. It had been a real treat hearin’ them order the same thing simultaneous, waffles and cream and bacon, that’s what they’d had, and they’d done all this surgery just to make a big splash in Love City.

Mingolla tuned the waitress out, watched Debora, and realized that she was watching him. He seemed to connect with her as he had back in San Francisco de Juticlan, to all of a sudden notice her, know her, and for a moment it seemed to him she was looking through younger eyes, seeing the kid he had been. It was such a clean feeling, that startled recognition, it confused Min-golla… and that was also part of the moment, part of the past, because he had long since learned to deny confusion. The moment was gone almost before it had existed, and he knew better than to try to hang on to it. It was simply there on occasion, one of their minor resources. He found it amusing that Izaguirre—in his guise as divinity—had told them the moment would always be a salvation. They hadn’t believed him; what he’d said had sounded too fanciful to be true… though now Mingolla realized that he’d been talking about a matter of basic psychology. He wondered if the fact that Izaguirre had brought it up was evidence that he had planted the idea in them, that he was still manipulating them. Everything remained suspect. But whatever its nature, the moment did save Mingolla. He began to listen to the waitress, to like her, to see the good thing she wanted to be, the sweet ineptitude underlying her wishes, and he joined in the conversation, joined with all his heart, putting aside who he was and what he had to do, and they talked on into the gray morning, with dirty clouds piling up like seafoam on the horizon, they spoke of common sorrows and touched each other’s hands, they told lies and believed them, they made a passion of forgetting and they laughed.

Mauve streaked the eastern sky, a couple of truckers came into the diner, leaking cigarette smoke like steam, braying for coffee and steak. The waitress bawled the order out to the kitchen, brought more coffee, and sat back down, still full of stories. But more customers pushed in through the glass doors, all as gray as the sky with fatigue, itchy with highway dirt, their underwear ridden up into their crotches from hours of sitting, and the waitress had to go back to work. Mingolla and Debora waited, hoping she’d have another break, but she kept getting busier and busier. They walked to the register, stood with money in hand, and at last she slopped steak and eggs in front of another trucker, and rushed up breathless to collect her bill. She told them to drop back, tell her how they’d liked L.C., and she’d sure enjoyed meeting them, wasn’t it funny how you could meet up with some people, perfect strangers, and next thing y’know you’d be like old friends talkin’? They promised to stop by again, tipped her big, and waved so-long. Then they went back to the motel and transferred the automatic rifles to the car…

Confused, wanting to reject what he was beginning to understand, Mingolla went out of the hut and stood taking in the dreary particulars of the village. Sunlight glittered on the thatch, still wet from last night’s rain; the puddles pocking the yellow dirt were leaden like pools of mercury. A man and a chicken passed each other on the street, the Indian heading for the jungle, the chicken toward the riverbank where it would hunt worms in the narrow margin of bright green grass. Mingolla recognized all the elements of the scene, knew their names and functions; yet there was a lack of coherence about it, and he came to realize that this incoherence stemmed not from any inherent wrongness in the village, but from the wrongness of his presence. He glanced back at Debora, who was tending to Amalia. Nothing incoherent about her.

Panama.

He remembered a brochure portrait of white skyscrapers and an aquamarine harbor, with Barrio Clarín somewhere behind, labyrinthine and silent.

It suddenly seemed right that he should go to Panama. More than right. It seemed he had a moral imperative, and studying Debora, he wondered if one side-effect of love was that it gave you a moral peg upon which to hang your fear and turned unacceptable risks into causes. Or maybe his desire to go was fueled by the sense of desolate triumph that had accompanied his vision, maybe he just needed a victory, any victory, and now believed one could be gained. No, he thought. He didn’t believe that. Despite what he’d seen, he had the feeling that the future was never assured, no matter how clear your view of it.

Debora came out of the hut, shook her head when he asked about Amalia, and they walked toward the bank. The river was high from the rains, and the edge of the bank was mucky; they sat on an overturned canoe, and she began to talk distractedly of her home, her childhood in a wealthy barrio of Guatemala City, where the houses had fountains and walls topped with broken glass. He knew Panama was foremost on her mind, but now that they were lovers, she was less willing to make demands on him, less sure of what she wanted.

He listened to her happily; he didn’t want to dwell on anything serious, and he enjoyed learning about her life. But a source of greater pleasure were the things he himself had told her over the past days, memories he hadn’t believed consequential, but that seemed integral to the person he was becoming with her. The summer he’d spent on his uncle’s farm in Nebraska, for instance. He’d been fascinated by the corn. He’d never thought of it as other than yellow ears dripping with butter, but standing in the midst of a cornfield he’d discovered that the plants were odd creatures with leaves that cut like stiff paper and white roots so powerful that you couldn’t pull them from the soil. And you could hear them grow. The thick end of each leafwhere it met the stalk would emit a soft quacking sound, this sometimes caused by the wind shifting them, but also when there was no wind, no motive force whatsoever. So much green around him, it had made him claustrophobic. And then there was the winter his great-grandmother had died. Cancer. He’d been going on twelve, and he had taken turns with his mother and grandmother caring for her. His father not disposed to such ministrations. Tumors hard in her neck. He’d had to massage her. Her muscles so tight, she’d felt like a rock with just a flicker of life beneath. Teeth grinding, eyelashes growing inside her lids, adding to her hurt. Eyes as hopeless and empty as crossed-out circles. He remembered her good times. Never talking much, order spreading around her in the form of baked goods and surfaces suddenly clean. She’d married a stunt flier, a guy who’d flown through barns and brought whiskey in from Canada. But she’d remembered none of that, gone inside to nothing. Once he’d stopped massaging her, and her hand had shot out, grabbed him, holding him tightly, and that night he’d dreamed about trying to kill a tiger with a spear. A beautiful young tiger with sleek muscles. It hadn’t moved quickly, but very intelligently, and he’d seen it was trying to show him things as he killed it. Later he’d realized that the tiger’s muscles had the same hardness as the tumors in his great-grandmother’s neck.

The sluggish current carried bits of vegetable debris to nudge and clutter against the bank, and watching them be sucked beneath the murky green chop, Mingolla came to a decision.

‘Debora,’ he said, breaking in. ‘When you wanna start?’

She looked up, uncomprehending.

‘For Panama,’ he said.

Her face remained blank, but after a second a thin smile surfaced and she gave him a hug. It was a weak, sheltering hug, and in concert with the smile it seemed she was accepting him into the arms of her sadness.

‘It’ll take me a few days to get things ready,’ she said, and then, after a pensive silence, she asked why he’d changed his mind.

‘Does it matter?’

‘No, I’m just curious.’

He knew she wanted to hear that it was because of a commitment to truth and justice, or some shit; but he couldn’t lie. ‘Because of you, because I can’t let you go alone.’

She took his hand, toyed with his fingers, and finally, in a little-girl voice, shy and somewhat perplexed, she said, ‘Thank you.’

Two days before they left, Mingolla visited the computer. Though he had rejected it, he at least wanted to acknowledge its existence with a farewell, for it had played a part in his coming to terms with many things. Debora scoffed at the idea, her rationality offended, but she went along to humor him. It was late afternoon when they reached the hollow, and the blades of golden light skewering the chopper were so defined by dust and moisture, they looked like transmuted chords of music, the sort of light that accumulates above organs and choir stalls in vast cathedrals. The skeleton of the pilot looked gilded and smiling, and the computer’s voice seemed the implementation of a rich silence, of words saved up for centuries.

‘You have my blessing for your journey,’ it said.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Debora.

‘You’re wrong,’ the computer said. ‘Lovers need blessings. Their rectitude is not enough to counter the loveless process of the world. They must depend on the strength of the moment, and if they do, then they are blessed. Look around you. A machine has become the Host. Light has been transformed into something rarefied. Even death has been transfigured. What you see here is an ordinary beauty made extraordinary by a moment that has outlasted its advent. And that is the best definition of love, the one most pertinent to you in your peril. Your moment lingers. You have hauled yourself up onto it and are living upon it even now. Sooner or later you will be pulled down, but that height is always there for you. Always reachable, always offering salvation. What the heart makes, the mind cannot destroy.’

Debora made a disparaging noise.

‘You believe me,’ said the computer. ‘But you don’t want to hear your beliefs spoken by the unbelievable something you think I am.’

The vines holding the chopper creaked, the light trembled, as if a mighty thought had troubled the innermost structures of the hollow.

It was approaching twilight when at last they headed back to the village. Birds were roosting, monkeys chattering, the beams of light withdrawing from the jungle floor. From the boulders ringing the hollow the trail wound downhill, narrowing into an archway of low-hanging branches, a leafy tunnel that curved west and opened onto a glade of palmettos and sapodillas. At any time of day the glade was lovely, but as they came out of the archway, they discovered that it had been made more lovely by the presence of millions of butterflies perched on every twig and frond. There was so much color and pattern that for a moment Mingolla failed to notice Nate standing on the opposite side of the glade, himself flowered with butterflies; some were swirling around his head, forming into a cloud through which his cold unreadable face could now and again be glimpsed.

‘Nate!’ Debora’s voice was sharp with panic, and Mingolla, already deep into panic, probed at Nate, but to no effect. That peculiar pattern he had encountered on his first day in the village resisted his efforts, creating a fluctuating barrier he was unable to penetrate.

More butterflies eddied up, the cloud filling the glade, and Debora pulled at Mingolla, broke into a run back toward the hollow. He glanced behind him and saw that the archway was choked with a flurrying tide of butterflies, a tide of flowers flooding a green tube, making a whispery rustle that chilled him and weakened his legs. They reached the boulder that overlooked the chopper, and poised on the brink, butterflies streaming about her head, Debora shouted, ‘Jump!’ They jumped together, and Mingolla landed in a crouch, fell forward. Spotted Debora slipping off the side of the chopper, which was swaying violently. He caught her arm. Butterflies were batting at his mouth, his eyes, and he swatted them away. He dragged Debora toward the hole punched by the missile and followed her inside, slicing his hand on the ragged edge. He slid past the blinking telltales to the dark end of the computer deck and began prying at the cockpit hatch. Debora joined him, straining at the rusted metal, working her fingers into the crack of the seal. Butterflies everywhere. Light touches on his face and hands. He spat them off his lips. His heart was doing a fancy dribble against his chest wall. The hatch squealed open, and they wedged through, forcing it shut behind them. Several dozen butterflies had poured into the cockpit, and in a frenzy, Mingolla went about killing them, crushing them against the plastic bubble, stopping them, squeezing them into a glue of broken wings. Once he had killed them all, he leaned against the copilot’s chair, gazing at the skeleton, its ribcage protruding from the shreds of a flight jacket. The skull was parchment yellow, blotched with brown; dessicated tendon strings adhered to the corners of its mouth, lending the grin a grotesque silliness. Mingolla had the notion that the pilot was about to tell a joke; then a blue butterfly fluttered up in an empty eyesocket, and the expression of the skull was altered toward the sinister. With a shriek, Mingolla backhanded the skull, knocked it off the neck to roll on the floor; white dust puffed from the splintered spinal column.

Breathing hard, he turned to Debora. She had sagged down against the hatch, her knees drawn up, resting her forehead. ‘We’re okay,’ he said. ‘We’re okay now.’

The light dimmed, dimmed with such suddenness that Min-golla wheeled around to learn the cause. Thousands of butterflies were massing on the crack-webbed plastic, obscuring the reddened light with a matte of wings and brittle bodies. Like looking at a puzzle of butterflies laid on a red table, with a few pieces missing. The missing pieces filled in rapidly, and the cockpit grew dark, only a faint effusion of reddish glow filtering through the overlapping wings. He could sense the enormous weight accumulating on the plastic, and moments later he began to hear scratchy sounds of strain, the bubble giving way.

‘C’mon!’ He groped for Debora, plucked at her shoulder ‘Find Nate! Stop him!’

He flung out his mind, made immediate contact with Nate, and focused his fear into a knife that pried at his defenses. But even when Debora added her strength to his, that resistive pattern disrupted their attempts to penetrate it. The creaking had intensified, sharp bits of plastic dusted Mingolla’s face, and he felt the tonnage above them as a pressure on his chest, a crushing weight that was forcing air out of him. Desperate, he tried merging with the defensive pattern, and—a triangular chunk of plastic fell from above, striking his cheek—he found that he could. Wings rustling, prickly legs stalking his forehead; he bit down on something that crunched, spat it out. The edge of his fear flowed in complicated loops and arcs, stitching along Nate’s pattern with the rapidity of a sewing machine, and he added all his strength to the flow, accelerating it. Debora’s mind joined his, and the signature knot of their involvement threaded itself into the pattern, overwhelming it, drawing it into a bizarre three-way connection of pain and sexuality. Then a scream from beyond the cockpit, and with the suddenness of a spell being broken, the connection was dissipated.

Butterflies lifted from the plastic; the dying light streamed in between the mattes of crushed bodies and wings that remained, stippling the floor with shadow. Through a gap, Mingolla saw Nate’s blond head lying on the boulder above, and felt his mind roiling in the sluggish tumble of unconsciousness. Butterflies settled in Debora’s hair as she leaned on the pilot’s chair, shaking, and dozens more were eddying inside the cockpit, but Mingolla had no energy left to deal with them; he watched them batting around the headless skeleton, some fluttering out the new rent in the bubble, their colors flamed by the sunset, drifting higher and higher like glowing ash, until they became invisible against a lacework of black leaves and crimson sky.

They climbed up from the chopper to the boulder where Nate was lying. He was wearing a sidearm, and Mingolla removed the gun from its holster. Then they set about waking him. His mind had lapsed into a disarray similar to Amalia’s, but apparently their strength had grown over the last days, for they managed the job with ease. The patterns of Nate’s thoughts—again, like Amalia’s—kept unraveling, but Mingolla was able to restore them when they did. He saw that it would be no problem to reverse the process, to weaken and dissolve the patterns of a healthy mind, and he wondered if this was what had happened to Nate. Soon Nate sat up and looked around blearily; he smoothed down his hair.

‘I, uh…’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m not sure what went wrong.’

‘You tried to kill us,’ said Mingolla. ‘Remember?’

‘Of course, yes. But I was only supposed to watch, to assist you.’ He stared down at the chopper. Always so many mistakes.’

‘What do you mean “mistakes”?’ Debora asked.

‘Can I be of assistance?’ asked the computer.

It seemed to Mingolla there was urgency in the computer’s voice, and ignoring it, he repeated Debora’s question.

‘They are skillful, very skillful,’ said Nate. ‘It takes them a long time to control someone, but they’ve had centuries of practice. The thing is, though, they’re careless. They rely too much upon their power, and that makes them prone to sweeping tactics, the grandiose. They tend to neglect minor details… details that would be obvious to you and me.’

‘“The others,”’ said Mingolla. ‘That who you mean?’

Nate spotted the gun in Mingolla’s hand and reached for it. ‘Let me have it, please.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘You must,’ Nate said. ‘He will find me, use me again.’

‘I really believe I can help him,’ said the computer.

‘Do you know what it’s like to be almost nothing?’ said Nate. ‘To see things that aren’t there, obey voices in your head.’ His eyes darted about, and he wrung his hands, growing more agitated by the second. It was not good to watch; it appeared he was winding himself up, his springs coiling tighter and tighter.

‘Who’s using you?’ Debora asked.

‘Izaguirre.’ Nate made a grab for the gun, but Mingolla knocked his hand away. ‘Please! It’s been years since I’ve felt this clear. I may not have another chance.’

‘Tell us about Izaguirre,’ said Debora. ‘Then we’ll help you.’

‘All right.’ Nate rested a hand on the boulder, laid it there with precise care as if he wanted to know it, to draw its coolness inside. ‘All right, I’ll trust you.’

Darkness fell, moonlight inlaid the black metal of the chopper with gleams, and Nate talked calmly, steadily, his head thrown back, eyes lidded, like an enraptured saint. He told them he’d suffered a breakdown during therapy, and afterward had spent a long confinement in a house with other damaged recruits. Somewhere in the States, he thought, but he wasn’t sure.

‘Izaguirre was in charge,’ he said. ‘In fact, he was the only one of the families in residence.’

‘The families?’ Mingolla said. ‘That stuff Amalia said… it’s true?’

‘Oh, yes. Izaguirre would tell us stories about the families, the feud. He’d shake his head as if it were weighing upon his soul, but he enjoyed the stories, and I think he relished their bloody past. It was in the way he embellished them. He made horror sound elegant.’ Nate cast an eye toward the gun. ‘Such a strange, moody place… that house. You must be careful. There were dangerous people there. Izaguirre’s toys, his weapons.’

It was all coming together for Mingolla. The clues, Nate and Amalia, and Pastorín’s stories. Izaguirre was behind everything… if that was his name, and it probably wasn’t Sotomayor and Madradona. His arrogance would demand he use real names in the story. He must have subverted Pastorín. And maybe he was Pastorín. The author’s penchant for privacy was notorious, and now that Mingolla thought about it, he’d never seen a photograph of the man.

‘What did he have planned for us?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure. I was supposed to watch you, protect you. But something went wrong.’

‘Did he say anything ’bout us getting stronger? Anything ’bout a mutuality of focus making us strong?’

‘Actually,’ said the computer. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

They all turned to the chopper.

‘I simply thought it would be amusing to send you after Debora,’ the computer went on. ‘I have a fondness for irony. And I’m glad I did send you. No one has ever been able to defeat Nate until now. His malfunction has made clear how valuable you two will be. We look forward to your arrival.’

‘Izaguirre,’ said Mingolla. ‘You motherfucker!’

The computer gave forth one of its easy chuckles. ‘Hello, David. Surprised to see me?’

‘Not really.’ Mingolla stood and looked down at the chopper, wishing Izaguirre were there in person. ‘Where are you?’

‘Don’t be annoyed, David. I have nothing but good wishes for you and Debora. As to where I am, you’ll see me in Panama.’

‘What makes you think we’ll go to Panama after all this?’

‘Where else can you go? You’re both deserters, so you can’t go home. And besides, you want to learn about Panama. You want to find out what’s there, don’t you?’

‘Why don’t you just fly us there now?’ Debora asked.

‘Ordinarily I might,’ said the computer. However, I think in your case it would be wise to gauge your strength. The trip will provide you with tests, and I for one will be most interested in seeing how you cope with them.’

‘You’re nuts!’ said Mingolla. ‘You’re playing games with us, with everyone.’

‘Not at all,’ said the computer. ‘I’m merely being cautious.’

‘What is going on in Panama?’

Silence, the black web of vines stretched taut by the enormous bulk of the chopper. Mingolla felt its size and power within him, felt that his body, too, was a web holding a black shape, a potential that Izaguirre in his arrogance might not suspect. If he could hide that potential, if Debora could hide hers, they just might have a surprise for Izaguirre.

‘Please,’ Nate said, gesturing at the gun.

‘If you leave Nate here,’ said the computer, ‘I’ll have someone look after him.’

‘No!’ Nate jumped to his feet. ‘I won’t go back.’

‘Calm down, Nate,’ said the computer. ‘It’s not as bad as all that.’

Debora held out her hand to Mingolla. ‘Give me the gun.’

Appalled, he said, ‘What’re you going to do?’

She said nothing, but continued to hold out her hand.

‘You don’t have to,’ said Mingolla. ‘Maybe…’

‘Give it to her!’ said Nate. ‘You have to!’ He had a sick, eager look; Debora’s expression was resigned.

‘If it has to be done, I’ll do it,’ Mingolla said.

‘There’s no need to do it at all,’ the computer said. ‘Nate is overstating the horrors of his service. He’ll be well cared for, I promise.’

‘Well cared for?’ Nate stepped to the edge of the boulder, his fists clenched. ‘Yes, I’ll be well cared for! I can sit in a room all day without a thought to trouble me. And when I’m waked… hah! When I’m waked I’ll be so grateful to have you twist me… to let you…’ He appeared to have lost the train of thought and stared at the chopper. Insects fizzed out in the dark scrub beyond the ring of boulders.

Debora took the barrel of the gun. ‘Wait for me in the glade.’

Reluctantly, Mingolla turned the butt loose, and with a final look at Nate, he walked down the archway of leaves and stood in the feathery shadow of a palmetto. It gave him a strange feeling to think of Debora killing someone, especially by this method of mercy killing cum execution. He tried to excuse her in terms of her guerrilla experience; he wanted her to be virtuous. Minutes passed, and he became worried that something bad had happened, that Nate had managed to get the gun away from her. He started back toward the hollow, and at that moment the gunshot sounded. Monkeys screaming, a thousand dark wings beating overhead. A few seconds later Debora came through the archway, the gun tucked into her belt. He wanted to comfort her, but she walked past without comment, moving so quickly through the sparse brush that he had trouble keeping up with her.

They spent their last day in Emerald packing a canoe with provisions and weapons, and finalizing their plans for the journey. By river to the Petén Highway. Bus to the town of Réunion. Then on foot through jungle to the Río Dulce south of San Francisco de Juticlan, and thereafter by boat downriver to Livingston. They gave Amalia—who had wandered into the village shortly after Debora’s arrival, likely directed that way by Izaguirre—into the hands of a young childless widow; they had little hope that Izaguirre would fail to reclaim her, but at least she would be well taken care of in the interim. Then they paddled the canoe to the hot springs, where they would spend their last night.

The early evening was a quiet time. Debora sat on the bank, morose, dangling her legs, touching her toes to the scalding water as if testing her threshold of pain. Mingolla sat beside her, cleaning the rifles, thinking of the days ahead. He gazed south down the river. The darkness looked thicker there, a black gas welling toward them, and he thought he could sense the precise articulation of their journey, the uphills and downhills, the ducking-into-covers, the sprinting away from this or that danger; it seemed his thought was a wind going out of him, coursing over the shapes of land and event. Once in a while they talked, mostly about nothing, asking if one or the other was hungry, thirsty, sleepy. On only one occasion did they have a real conversation, and that occurred after Debora asked Mingolla what he was thinking.

‘Not much… just ’bout the apple trees in my backyard. Back home, y’know.’

‘I would have thought you’d be thinking about the trip.’

‘I was, but just then I was remembering pruning the apple trees, sawing off the dead limbs.’

‘I’ve never seen an apple tree.’

‘They’re kinda neat. I never thought much about ’em ‘till I had to work with ’em. You spend hours cutting at something, and you start noticing things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like when the sawdust gets hot, it smells like hot apples.’

‘What else?’

He mulled it over. ‘When there’s a long branch that’s dying, and it has a choice where to bring out a new leaf, it always puts the leaf right at the end, right at its tip.’

She dabbled her toes in the water. ‘Nate was like that.’

‘How do ya mean?’

‘Just something he said before…’ She pursed her lips, stared at her hands. ‘I wish,’ she said after a long pause, ‘that I could really believe he wanted to die, that it wasn’t just, madness.’

‘I think it was both.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was just madness.’

‘Then why’d ya do it?’

‘He might have tried to hurt us again.’

‘That’s a good enough reason.’

‘It always has been before, but…’ She kicked the surface of the water, sent spray flying. ‘I’m feeling too much,’ she said, glancing at him as if in accusation. ‘I don’t want this—you and me—to make me weak.’

He tried to jolly her. ‘Seems to me it’s done just the opposite.’

She looked puzzled, and he explained he was talking about their increased strength.

‘That’s not what I meant!’ She kicked the water again. ‘I meant what feelings do to your resolve.’

‘When you kill somebody, you should feel something.’ He told her about the Barrio and de Zedeguí, what his lack of feeling had done to him, and after he had finished, she said, ‘He was right. We are creatures of power. But we’re not in control of anything. Izaguirre’s in control, or else somebody’s controlling him.’

‘Probably,’ he said. ‘And it’s for sure we’ve been manipulated. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have some control.’ He laid the rifle on the bank, put an arm around her. ‘I keep thinking about what Nate said.’

‘What?’

‘ ’Bout how they always made mistakes, how they were skillful but careless. There’s this haphazard character to everything that’s happened. I’ve noticed it in myself, the way I acted in the Barrio. I assumed I’d blow through everything, that I was in complete command, and I ended up taking stupid risks, almost getting killed. And I can see it in the shit that’s been done to me. Like the time Izaguirre gave me that booster shot and then worried after the fact whether he’d given me too much. It’s in the stories, in their playfulness. The chopper’s a perfect example. I mean what a fucking waste of energy it was to set that up. It wasn’t necessary, it was a conceit, a chance for Izaguirre to play God. These people have been doing the drug for centuries, and that character’s engrained in them. They’re powerful but they’re fuck-ups. And if we can just stay cool, if we don’t trust anybody but each other, maybe we’ll catch them off guard. Maybe we’ll be their biggest fuck-up of all. I really feel that’s true.’

She said nothing.

‘Really,’ he said. ‘It’s more than a feeling.’

‘I hope they’re not fuck-ups,’ she said. ‘I hope whatever they’re doing, it’s something that’ll change things.’

‘You mean…’

‘I don’t care who’s running things down here,’ she said, ‘as long as it isn’t the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala City. Or United Fruit, or Standard Fruit, or the Banco Americano Desarrollo. Or some other American company. If Izaguirre is working against them, then I want to work with him.’

She had thrown off her despondency and seemed on the verge of anger; Mingolla didn’t want to argue.

‘Yeah, well… whatever. But let’s be careful? Let’s not start trusting people before we’re damn sure about them. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to have to trust somebody eventually, and I hope it can be Izaguirre’s people.’

Starlight laid a sheen on the river, picking out the eddies. Wind drove off the mosquitoes, and Debora and Mingolla spread their sleeping bags outside the tent and lay down. Close to him, her features looked softer than usual, more girlish, and when he touched her breasts, her breath came quick and warm on his cheek. Despite their intimacy, he felt estranged from her, too full of trepidation about the journey to lose himself, and he explored the shapes of her breasts, her hips, her cunt, trying to find in his knowledge of her body a truer knowledge of mind and soul, some fact of topography that would confirm the good news of his emotions, that would explain her and justify the risk he was taking. Arousal, however, was the only result. Her skin felt like the starlight, smooth, coated with a cool emulsion. As he lowered between her legs, fenced by her long thighs, she arched her neck, staring up into the sky, and cried out, ‘God!’ as if she had seen there some mysterious presence. But he knew to whom she was really crying out. To that sensation of heat and weakness that enveloped them. To that sublimation of hope and fear into desire. To the thoughtless, self-adoring creature they became, all hip and mouth and heart. That was God.