The Best of Lucius Shepard (27 page)

3

Debora was waiting at the pier, carrying a picnic
basket and wearing a blue dress with a high neckline and a full skirt: a
schoolgirl dress. Mingolla homed in on her. The way she had her hair, falling
about her shoulders in thick, dark curls, made him think of smoke turned solid,
and her face seemed the map of a beautiful country with black lakes and dusky
plains, a country in which he could hide. They walked along the river past the
town and came to a spot where ceiba trees with slick green leaves and whitish
bark and roots like alligator tails grew close to the shore, and there they ate
and talked and listened to the water gulping against the clay bank, to the
birds, to the faint noises from the airbase that at this distance sounded part
of nature. Sunlight dazzled the water, and whenever wind riffled the surface,
it looked as if it were spreading the dazzles into a crawling crust of
diamonds. Mingolla imagined that they had taken a secret path, rounded a corner
on the world and reached some eternally peaceful land. The illusion of peace
was so profound that he began to see hope in it. Perhaps, he thought, something
was being offered here. Some new magic. Maybe there would be a sign. Signs were
everywhere if you knew how to read them. He glanced around. Thick white trunks
rising into greenery, dark leafy avenues leading off between them ... nothing
there, but what about those weeds growing at the edge of the bank? They cast
precise fleur-de-lis shadows on the clay, shadows that didn’t have much in
common with the ragged configurations of the weeds themselves. Possibly a sign,
though not a clear one. He lifted his gaze to the reeds growing in the
shallows. Yellow reeds with jointed stalks bent akimbo, some with clumps of
insect eggs like seed pearls hanging from loose fibers, and others dappled by
patches of algae. That’s how they looked one moment. Then Mingolla’s vision
rippled, as if the whole of reality had shivered, and the reeds were
transformed into rudimentary shapes: yellow sticks poking up from flat blue. On
the far side of the river, the jungle was a simple smear of Crayola green; a
speedboat passing with a red slash unzipppering the blue. It seemed that the
rippling had jostled every element of the landscape a fraction out of kilter,
revealing each one to be as characterless as a building block. Mingolla gave
his head a shake. Nothing changed. He rubbed his brow. No effect. Terrified, he
squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like the only meaninful piece in a nonsensical
puzzle, vulnerable by virtue of his uniqueness. His breath came rapidly, his
left hand fluttered.

“David?
Don’t you want to hear it?” Debora sounded peeved.

“Hear what?”
He kept his eyes closed.

“About my
dream. Weren’t you listening?”

He peeked at
her. Everything was back to normal. She was sitting with her knees tucked under
her, all her features in sharp focus. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was thinking.”

“You looked
frightened.”

“Frightened?”
He put on a bewildered face. “Naw, just had a thought is all.”

“It couldn’t
have been pleasant.”

He shrugged
off the comment and sat up smartly to prove his attentiveness. “So tell me
‘bout the dream.”

“All right,”
she said doubtfully. The breeze drifted fine strands of hair across her face,
and she brushed them back. “You were in a room the color of blood, with red
chairs and a red table. Even the paintings on the wall were done in shades of
red, and ... “ She broke off, peering at him. “Do you want to hear this? You
have that look again.”

“Sure,” he
said. But he was afraid. How could she have known about the red room? She must
have had a vision of it, and ... Then he realized that she might not have been
talking about the room itself. He’d told her about the assault, hadn’t he? And
if she had guerrilla contacts, she would know that the emergency lights were
switched on during an assault. That had to be it! She was trying to frighten
him into deserting again, psyching him the way preachers played upon the fears
of sinners with images of fiery rivers and torture. It infuriated him. Who the
hell was she to tell him what was right or wise? Whatever he did, it was going
to be
his
decision.

“There were
three doors in the room,” she went on. “You wanted to leave the room, but you
couldn’t tell which of the doors was safe to use. You tried the first door, and
it turned out to be a facade. The knob of the second door turned easily, but
the door itself was stuck. Rather than forcing it, you went to the third door.
The knob of this door was made of glass and cut your hand. After that you just
walked back and forth, unsure what to do.” She waited for a reaction, and when
he gave none, she said, “Do you understand?”

He kept
silent, biting back anger.

“I’ll
interpret it for you,” she said.

“Don’t
bother.”

“The red
room is war, and the false door is the way of your childish ... “

“Stop!” He
grabbed her wrist, squeezing it hard.

She glared
at him until he released her. “Your childish magic,” she finished.

“What is it
with you?” he asked. “You have some kinda quota to fill? Five deserters a
month, and you get a medal?”

She tucked
her skirt down to cover her knees, fiddled with a loose thread. From the way
she was acting, you might have thought he had asked an intimate question and
she was framing an answer that wouldn’t be indelicate. Finally she said, “Is
that who you believe I am to you?”

“Isn’t that
right? Why else would you be handling me this bullshit?”

“What’s the
matter with you, David?” She leaned forward, cupping his face in her hands.
“Why ... “

He pushed
her hands away. “What’s the matter with me? This”—his gesture included the sky,
the river, the trees—”that’s what’s the matter. You remind me of my parents.
They ask the same sorta ignorant questions.” Suddenly he wanted to injure her
with answers, to find an answer like acid to throw in her face and watch it eat
away her tranquility. “Know what I do for my parents?” he said. “When they ask
dumb-ass questions like ‘What’s the matter?’, I tell ‘em a story. A war story.
You wanna hear a war story? Something happened a few days back that’ll do for
an answer just fine.”

“You don’t
have to tell me anything,” she said, discouraged.

“No
problem,” he said. “Be my pleasure.”

The Ant Farm
was a large sugar-loaf hill overlooking dense jungle on the eastern border of
Fire Zone Emerald; jutting out from its summit were rocket and gun emplacements
that at a distance resembled a crown of thorns jammed down over a green scalp.
For several hundred yards around, the land had been cleared of all vegetation.
The big guns had been lowered to maximum declension and in a mad moment had
obliterated huge swaths of jungle, snapping off regiments of massive tree
trunks a couple of feet above the ground, leaving a moat of blackened stumps
and scorched red dirt seamed with fissures. Tangles of razor wire had replaced
the trees and bushes, forming surreal blue-steel hedges, and buried beneath the
wire were a variety of mines and detection devices. These did little good,
however, because the Cubans possessed technology that would neutralize most of
them. On clear nights there was little likelihood of trouble; but on misty
nights trouble could be expected. Under cover of the mist Cuban and guerrilla
troops would come through the wire and attempt to infiltrate the tunnels that
honeycombed the interior of the hill. Occasionally one of the mines would be
triggered, and you would see a ghostly fireball bloom in the swirling
whiteness, tiny black figures being flung outward from its center. Lately some
of these casualties had been found to be wearing red berets and scorpion-shaped
brass pins, and from this it was known that the Cubans had sent in the Alacran
Division, which had been instrumental in routing the American Forces in
Miskitia.

There were
nine levels of tunnels inside the hill, most lined with little round rooms that
served as living quarters (the only exception being the bottom level, which was
given over to the computer center and offices); all the rooms and tunnels were
coated with a bubbled white plastic that looked like hardened seafoam and was
proof against anti-personnel explosives. In Mingolla’s room, where he and
Baylor and Gilbey bunked, a scarlet paper lantern had been hung on the overhead
light fixture, making it seem that they were inhabiting a blood cell: Baylor
had insisted on the lantern, saying that the overhead was too bright and hurt
his eyes. Three cots were arranged against the walls, as far apart as space
allowed. The floor around Baylor’s cot was littered with cigarette butts and
used Kleenex; under his pillow he kept a tin box containing a stash of pills
and marijuana. Whenever he lit a joint he would always offer Mingolla a hit, and
Mingolla always refused, feeling that the experience of the firebase would not
be enhanced by drugs. Taped to the wall above Gilbey’s cot was a collage of
beaver shots, and each day after duty, whether or not Mingolla and Baylor were
in the room, he would lie beneath them and masturbate. His lack of shame caused
Mingolla to be embarrassed by his own secretiveness in the act, and he was also
embarrassed by the pimply-youth quality of the objects taped above his cot: a
Yankee pennant; a photograph of his old girlfriend, and another of his
senior-year high school basketball team; several sketches he had made of the
surrounding jungle. Gilbey teased him constantly about this display, calling
him “the boy-next-door,” which struck Mingolla as odd, because back home he had
been considered something of an eccentric.

It was
toward this room that Mingolla was heading when the assault began. Large cargo
elevators capable of carrying up to sixty men ran up and down just inside the
east and west slopes of the hill; but to provide quick access between adjoining
levels, and also as a safeguard in case of power failures, an auxiliary tunnel
corkscrewed down through the center of the hill like a huge coil of white
intestine. It was slightly more than twice as wide as the electric carts that
traveled it, carrying officers and VIPs on tours. Mingolla was in the habit of
using the tunnel for his exercise. Each night he would put on sweat clothes and
jog up and down the entire nine levels, doing this out of a conviction that exhaustion
prevented bad dreams. That night, as he passed Level Four on his final leg up,
he heard a rumbling: an explosion, and not far off. Alarms sounded, the big
guns atop the hill began to thunder. From directly above came shouts and the
stutter of automatic fire. The tunnel lights flickered, went dark, and the
emergency lights winked on.

Mingolla
flattened against the wall. The dim red lighting caused the bubbled surfaces of
the tunnel to appear as smooth as a chamber in a gigantic nautilus, and this resemblance
intensified his sense of helplessness, making him feel like a child trapped in
an evil undersea palace. He couldn’t think clearly, picturing the chaos around
him. Muzzle flashes, armies of ant-men seething through the tunnels, screams
spraying blood, and the big guns bucking, every shellburst kindling miles of
sky. He would have preferred to keep going up, to get out into the open where
he might have a chance to hide in the jungle. But down was his only hope.
Pushing away from the wall, he ran full-tilt, arms waving, skidding around
corners, almost falling, past Level Four, Level Five. Then, halfway between
Levels Five and Six, he nearly tripped over a dead man: an American lying
curled up around a belly wound, a slick of blood spreading beneath him and a
machete by his hand. As Mingolla stooped for the machete, he thought nothing
about the man, only about how weird it was for an American to be defending
himself against Cubans with such a weapon. There was no use, he decided, in
going any farther. Whoever had killed the man would be somewhere below, and the
safest course would be to hide out in one of the rooms on Level Five. Holding
the machete before him, he moved cautiously back up the tunnel.

Levels Five
through Seven were officer country, and though the tunnels were the same as the
ones above—gently curving tubes eight feet high and ten feet wide—the rooms
were larger and contained only two cots. The rooms Mingolla peered into were
empty, and this, despite the sounds of battle, gave him a secure feeling. But
as he passed beyond the tunnel curve, he heard shouts in Spanish from his rear.
He peeked back around the curve. A skinny black soldier wearing a red beret and
gray fatigues was inching toward the first doorway; then, rifle at the ready, he
ducked inside. Two other Cubans—slim bearded men, their skins sallow-looking in
the bloody light—were standing by the arched entrance-way to the auxiliary
tunnel; when they saw the black soldier emerge from the room, they walked off
in the opposite direction, probably to check the rooms at the far end of the
level.