Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (22 page)

“Quién estás? Al socorro!
Help,
señores!”

No answer except the light goes out, leaving me blind.

I yell some more in a couple of languages. It stays dark. There’s a vague scrabbling, whistling sound somewhere in the burn-off. Liking everything less by the minute, I try a speech about our plane having crashed and we need help.

A very narrow pencil of light flicks over us and snaps off.

“Eh-ep,” says a blurry voice, and something metallic twitters.

They for sure aren’t locals. I’m getting unpleasant ideas.

“Yes, help!”

Something goes
crackle-crackle whish-whish
, and all sounds fade away.

“What the holy hell!” I stumble toward where they were.

“Look.” Ruth whispers behind me. “Over by the ruin.”

I look and catch a multiple flicker which winks out fast. “A camp?”

And I take two more blind strides. My leg goes down through the crust, and a spike spears me just where you stick the knife in to unjoint a drumstick. By the pain that goes through my bladder I recognize that my trick kneecap has caught it.

For instant basket-case you can’t beat kneecaps. First you discover your knee doesn’t bend anymore, so you try putting some weight on it, and a bayonet goes up your spine and unhinges your jaw. Little grains of gristle have got into the sensitive bearing surface. The knee tries to buckle and can’t, and mercifully you fall down.

Ruth helps me back to the serape.

“What a fool, what a god-forgotten imbecile—”

“Not at all, Don. It was perfectly natural.” We strike matches; her fingers push mine aside, exploring. “I think it’s in place, but it’s swelling fast. I’ll lay a wet handkerchief on it. We’ll have to wait for morning to check the cut. Were they poachers, do you think?”

“Probably,” I lie. What I think they were is smugglers.

She comes back with a soaked bandanna and drapes it on. “We must have frightened them. That light . . . it seemed so bright.”

“Some hunting party. People do crazy things around here.”

“Perhaps they’ll come back in the morning.”

“Could be.”

Ruth pulls up the wet serape, and we say good-night again. Neither of us is mentioning how we’re going to get back to the plane without help.

I lie staring south where Alpha Centauri is blinking in and out of the overcast and cursing myself for the sweet mess I’ve made. My first idea is giving way to an even less pleasing one.

Smuggling, around here, is a couple of guys in an outboard meeting a shrimp boat by the reef. They don’t light up the sky or have some kind of swamp buggy that goes whoosh. Plus a big camp . . . paramilitary-type equipment?

I’ve seen a report of Guévarista infiltrators operating on the British Honduran border, which is about a hundred kilometers—sixty miles—south of here. Right under those clouds. If that’s what looked us over, I’ll be more than happy if they don’t come back. . . .

I wake up in pelting rain, alone. My first move confirms that my leg is as expected—a giant misplaced erection bulging out of my shorts. I raise up painfully to see Ruth standing by the bromels, looking over the bay. Solid wet nimbus is pouring out of the south.

“No planes today.”

“Oh, good morning, Don. Should we look at that cut now?”

“It’s minimal.” In fact the skin is hardly broken, and no deep puncture. Totally out of proportion to the havoc inside.

“Well, they have water to drink,” Ruth says tranquilly. “Maybe those hunters will come back. I’ll go see if we have a fish—that is, can I help you in any way, Don?”

Very tactful. I emit an ungracious negative, and she goes off about her private concerns.

They certainly are private, too; when I recover from my own sanitary efforts, she’s still away. Finally I hear splashing.

“It’s a big fish!” More splashing. Then she climbs up the bank with a three-pound mangrove snapper—and something else.

It isn’t until after the messy work of filleting the fish that I begin to notice.

She’s making a smudge of chaff and twi
g
s to singe the fillets, small hands very quick, tension in that female upper lip. The rain has eased off for the moment; we’re sluicing wet but warm enough. Ruth brings me my fish on a mangrove skewer and sits back on her heels with an odd breathy sigh.

“Aren’t you joining me?”

“Oh, of course.” She gets a strip and picks at it, saying quickly, “We either have too much salt or too little, don’t we? I should fetch some brine.” Her eyes are roving from nothing to noplace.

“Good thought.” I hear another sigh and decide the girl scouts need an assist. “Your daughter mentioned you’ve come from Mérida. Have you seen much of Mexico?”

“Not really. Last year we went to Mazatlán and Cuernavaca. . . .” She puts the fish down, frowning.

“And you’re going to see Tikal. Going to Bonampak too?”

“No.” Suddenly she jumps up brushing rain off her face. “I’ll bring you some water, Don.”

She ducks down the slide, and after a fair while comes back with a full bromel stalk.

“Thanks.” She’s standing above me, staring restlessly round the horizon.

“Ruth, I hate to say it, but those guys are not coming back and it’s probably just as well. Whatever they were up to, we looked like trouble. The most they’ll do is tell someone we’re here. That’ll take a day or two to get around, we’ll be back at the plane by then.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Don.” She wanders over to the smudge fire.

“And quit fretting about your daughter. She’s a big girl.”

“Oh, I’m sure Althea’s all right. . . . They have plenty of water now.” Her fingers drum on her thigh. It’s raining again.

“Come on, Ruth. Sit down. Tell me about Althea. Is she still in college?”

She gives that sighing little laugh and sits. “Althea got her degree last year. She’s in computer programming.”

“Good for her. And what about you, what do you do in GSA records?”

“I’m in Foreign Procurement Archives.” She smiles mechanically, but her breathing is shallow. “It’s very interesting.”

“I know a Jack Wittig in Contracts, maybe you know him?”

It sounds pretty absurd, there in the ’gator slide.

“Oh, I’ve met Mr. Wittig. I’m sure he wouldn’t remember me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not very memorable.”

Her voice is factual. She’s perfectly right, of course. Who was that woman, Mrs. Jannings, Janny, who coped with my per diem for years? Competent, agreeable, impersonal. She had a sick father or something. But dammit, Ruth is a lot younger and better-looking. Comparatively speaking.

“Maybe Mrs. Parsons doesn’t want to be memorable.”

She makes a vague sound, and I suddenly realize Ruth isn’t listening to me at all. Her hands are clenched around her knees, she’s staring inland at the ruin.

“Ruth, I tell you our friends with the light are in the next county by now. Forget it, we don’t need them.”

Her eyes come back to me as if she’d forgotten I was there, and she nods slowly. It seems to be too much effort to speak. Suddenly she cocks her head and jumps up again.

“I’ll go look at the line, Don. I thought I heard something—” She’s gone like a rabbit.

While she’s away I try getting up onto my good leg and the staff. The pain is sickening; knees seem to have some kind of hot line to the stomach. I take a couple of hops to test whether the Demerol I have in my belt would get me walking. As I do so, Ruth comes up the bank with a fish flapping in her hands.

“Oh, no, Don!
No!
” She actually clasps the snapper to her breast.

“The water will take some of my weight. I’d like to give it a try.”

“You mustn’t!” Ruth says quite violently and instantly modulates down. “Look at the bay, Don. One can’t see a thing.”

I teeter there, tasting bile and looking at the mingled curtains of sun and rain driving across the water. She’s right, thank god. Even with two good legs we could get into trouble out there.

“I guess one more night won’t kill us.”

I let her collapse me back onto the gritty plastic, and she positively bustles around, finding me a chunk to lean on, stretching the serape on both staffs to keep rain off me, bringing another drink, grubbing for dry tinder.

“I’ll make us a real bonfire as soon as it lets up, Don. They’ll see our smoke, they’ll know we’re all right. We just have to wait.” Cheery smile. “Is there any way we can make you more comfortable?”

Holy Saint Sterculius: playing house in a mud puddle. For a fatuous moment I wonder if Mrs. Parsons has designs on me. And then she lets out another sigh and sinks back onto her heels with that listening look. Unconsciously her rump wiggles a little. My ear picks up the operative word:
wait.

Ruth Parsons is waiting. In fact, she acts as if she’s waiting so hard it’s killing her. For what? For someone to get us out of here, what else? . . . But why was she so horrified when I got up to try to leave? Why all this tension?

My paranoia stirs. I grab it by the collar and start idly checking back. Up to when whoever it was showed up last night, Mrs. Parsons was, I guess, normal. Calm and sensible, anyway. Now she’s humming like a high wire. And she seems to want to stay here and wait. Just as an intellectual pastime, why?

Could she have intended to come here? No way. Where she planned to be was Chetumal, which is on the border. Come to think, Chetumal is an odd way round to Tikal. Let’s say the scenario was that she’s meeting somebody in Chetumal. Somebody who’s part of an organization. So now her contact in Chetumal knows she’s overdue. And when those types appeared last night, something suggests to her that they’re part of the same organization. And she hopes they’ll put one and one together and come back for her?

“May I have the knife, Don? I’ll clean the fish.”

Rather slowly I pass the knife, kicking my subconscious. Such a decent ordinary little woman, a good girl scout. My trouble is that I’ve bumped into too many professional agilities under the careful stereotypes.
I’m not very memorable. . . .

What’s in Foreign Procurement Archives? Wittig handles classified contracts. Lots of money stuff; foreign currency negotiations, commodity price schedules, some industrial technology. Or—just as a hypothesis—it could be as simple as a wad of bills back in that modest beige Ventura, to be exchanged for a packet from, say, Costa Rica. If she were a courier, they’d want to get at the plane. And then what about me and maybe Estéban? Even hypothetically, not good.

I watch her hacking at the fish, forehead knotted with effort, teeth in her lip. Mrs. Ruth Parsons of Bethesda, this thrumming, private woman. How crazy can I get?
They’ll see our smoke. . . .

“Here’s your knife, Don. I washed it. Does the leg hurt very badly?”

I blink away the fantasies and see a scared little woman in a mangrove swamp.

“Sit down, rest. You’ve been going all out.”

She sits obediently, like a kid in a dentist chair.

“You’re stewing about Althea. And she’s probably worried about you. We’ll get back tomorrow under our own steam, Ruth.”

“Honestly I’m not worried at all, Don.” The smile fades; she nibbles her lip, frowning out at the bay.

“You know, Ruth, you surprised me when you offered to come along. Not that I don’t appreciate it. But I rather thought you’d be concerned about leaving Althea alone with our good pilot. Or was it only me?”

This gets her attention at last.

“I believe Captain Estéban is a very fine type of man.”

The words surprise me a little. Isn’t the correct line more like “I trust Althea,” or even, indignantly, “Althea is a good girl”?

“He’s a man. Althea seemed to think he was interesting.”

She goes on staring at the bay. And then I notice her tongue flick out and lick that prehensile upper lip. There’s a flush that isn’t sunburn around her ears and throat too, and one hand is gently rubbing her thigh. What’s she seeing, out there in the flats?

Oho.

Captain Estéban’s mahogany arms clasping Miss Althea Parsons’s pearly body. Captain Estéban’s archaic nostrils snuffling in Miss Parsons’s tender neck. Captain Estéban’s copper buttocks pumping into Althea’s creamy upturned bottom. . . . The hammock, very bouncy. Mayas know all about it.

Well, well. So Mother Hen has her little quirks.

I feel fairly silly and more than a little irritated.
Now
I find out. . . . But even vicarious lust has much to recommend it, here in the mud and rain. I settle back, recalling that Miss Althea the computer programmer had waved good-bye very composedly. Was she sending her mother to flounder across the bay with me so she can get programmed in Maya? The memory of Honduran mahogany logs drifting in and out of the opalescent sand comes to me. Just as I am about to suggest that Mrs. Parsons might care to share my rain shelter, she remarks serenely, “The Mayas seem to be a very fine type of people. I believe you said so to Althea.”

The implications fall on me with the rain.
Type.
As in breeding, bloodline, sire. Am I supposed to have certified Estéban not only as a stud but as a genetic donor?

“Ruth, are you telling me you’re prepared to accept a half-Indian grandchild?”

“Why, Don, that’s up to Althea, you know.”

Looking at the mother, I guess it is. Oh, for mahogany gonads.

Ruth has gone back to listening to the wind, but I’m not about to let her off that easy. Not after all that
noli me tangere
jazz.

“What will Althea’s father think?”

Her face snaps around at me, genuinely startled.

“Althea’s father?” Complicated semismile. “He won’t mind.”

“He’ll accept it too, eh?” I see her shake her head as if a fly were bothering her, and add with a cripple’s malice: “Your husband must be a very fine type of a man.”

Ruth looks at me, pushing her wet hair back abruptly. I have the impression that mousy Mrs. Parsons is roaring out of control, but her voice is quiet.

“There isn’t any Mr. Parsons, Don. There never was. Althea’s father was a Danish medical student. . . . I believe he has gained considerable prominence.”