Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (13 page)

Other hymns followed. Andy finally recognized one and was caroling "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," when—observed by Susan, who was standing just behind them—Esperanza quietly took his hand. At the end of the service, she turned Corazon over to her friend, while she and Andy ducked into a thicket of fire ginger and made urgent love, flattening the stalks and crushing out the flowers' honeyed attar. She whispered to him that before they became lovers, she'd first wanted to make sure he believed in God.

"People like you," she explained, "sometimes be too damn smart for their own good."

"Actually, most of my life I've been too damn dumb for my own good," he said, and she smiled.

That night they waited until the baby was asleep, then made love twice more. The next day Esperanza had a long talk with Susan and told her almost everything about the experience, including the odd fact that Andy was circumcised. By noon the whole story, including the circumcision, had become public knowledge. Except for the bachelors Esperanza had rejected, everybody smiled at the new couple, and Andy, relaxing for the first time in a long time, smiled back until his face hurt.

In the days that followed he was so happy that Gomez enjoyed being near him, just for the glow he put out. After many false starts, Li'l Brudda had found a life, or rather had one presented to him on a plate, and he made the most of it. He worked and loved and played with the baby, made new friends in the village and with them caught fish and hunted pigs and swam in a nearby lagoon. He even found a use for his aborted education. Esperanza spread the news that he'd trained to be a doctor, and people started asking him for advice about their aches and pains. Most of his patients recovered simply because they were healthy and strong and had vigorous immune systems. But Andy got the credit, and his practice grew.

He and Gomez were becoming villagers, and little by little the life of the place absorbed them. The original Hilo had stood on the big island of Hawaii, but after a tsunami destroyed it some survivors came to Tuamotu, built a new town, and named it for their lost home.
This
Hilo was a jumble of small houses, some with wooden frames and clapboards, others with thatched roofs and no walls at all, for the sake of coolness. The fifty or so residents formed a Pacific medley of islanders with a few Africans, Orientals and Haoles thrown in for flavoring. Most appeared to have clothed themselves from a shipwreck in faded shirts and shorts, but small children ran naked and some older people wrapped themselves in lava-lavas like George's. Some women went about modestly in flowered print dresses, while others left their breasts bare—especially the ones with good breasts, as Gomez and Andy both noted. Everybody, old and young, male and female, decorated their hair with scarlet and yellow hibiscus flowers.

Though the villagers were mostly self-sufficient, they got things they couldn't make for themselves—toothbrushes, mirrors, aspirin, and so forth—from the prison staff. In return they provided the guards with fresh fruit, fresh fish they caught out by the reef, and fresh meat from feral porkers they trapped in the jungle. Some guards visited Hilo, including Stink—that was why he'd been able to give Gomez directions for finding it—while others met the locals in a jungle clearing near the perimeter fence called the Trading Post. The guards paid willing women for sex, giving them colored beads and cheap watches that decorated wrists and necks all over Hilo.

Living in a place where food was abundant and work far from excessive, Gomez developed a bit of a paunch, while Andy turned robust and chunky for the first time in his life. He began to love the island that had been his prison and told Gomez he never wanted to leave. Daily rainbows came and went, sometimes three or four at a time. Prevailing westerlies had carried most of the volcanic ash toward the east coast, forming the peninsula where the prison stood, but elsewhere near-vertical cliffs plunged into the cobalt sea. Their rough slopes bore forests of man-high ferns, like a cloak of green feathers that glistened with rain or dew and rippled in the gentle trade winds.

Esperanza showed Andy a path that twisted through the woods, climbed a spur of the mountain, and dipped into a narrow valley. It was a mysterious place where shade lingered even at noon, and a tiny silver waterfall left pearls on spiderwebs before cascading through a fissure into a cavern below. Strange sounds rose from the old fumarole, sometimes a booming like iron bells, sometimes cries as of animals or men. The Kahuna disapproved of all magic but his own, and declared the place taboo. But Andy loved it, and often walked the path with Esperanza, or with Gomez, or alone.

One day when the two friends were together, they topped the spur and paused to catch their breath on a rocky shelf. The sheer cliff rose on one side, the fern forest fell away on the other, and they were about to move on when Sneak stepped as soundlessly as ever into the path ahead of them.

He wore a holstered pistol and raised his hand to signal Halt. The ex-cons were standing paralyzed when a small woman wearing a Security Forces uniform emerged beside the guard, and Andy whispered, "Faith."

She told Sneak, "I have things to talk about with this man. Give us some space, and take the other guy with you."

As ordered, Gomez fell back a couple of meters, wondering if he should attack while the guard's pistol was still in his holster. Then he decided to wait and see what happened between Andy and Faith. You share a futon with a man for a year, you learn a lot about him, and Gomez knew that a woman named Faith had been Andy's lover, back in the days when he was getting ready to shoot Mahmud Alonzo Sol. He sensed a tale of betrayal and waited with ears twitching, hoping to learn more.

She led Andy down the path, and he stumbled twice, as if unable to control his feet. He couldn't speak either, and found himself listening to Faith—
Oh hell,
he thought,
why think of her by that so-called secret name?
Even back at Yale he'd known her real name was Constance Griffin.

"I know this must be a shock," she said, inadequately.

When he still couldn't find words, she explained, "I wanted to make sure those idiots at the prison really had arranged your escape." She seated herself on a boulder of eroded lava and gestured for him to sit beside her. But he preferred to stand.

"I'm not a complete monster, you know," she said.

He couldn't stop staring. Her face both did and didn't belong to the woman he'd known. Her hair was dark now instead of blonde with dark roots, as it had been. She still had a spark in her eyes, but the fire was different, he didn't know how. Three years had passed since they'd parted in the loft in Washington, yet she looked older by a decade. Still the lecturer, like Miss Birch his fourth-grade teacher imparting knowledge, she explained herself in tones that reminded him of the days when she was recruiting him for the AFA.

"I was working undercover when I set you up," she said, quite calmly, as if such betrayals happened every day. "The world government was having problems, still is. Security wanted to provoke an act that would justify a general crackdown, and they were looking for somebody to put on the kind of spectacular but harmless show they needed. Provocation is a very common ploy in my line of work, but it has to be done exactly right. The fake assassination was the first big action I was completely in charge of, and I owe my meteoric rise in the Service to doing it right."

She paused to take a small white regulation handkerchief out of her sleeve and wipe her eyes with it. "What I didn't count on was the way I started to feel about you. You were such a child, Andy, so helpless, such a—"

"You can skip that," he said, suddenly finding his voice.

"Sorry. It's not easy, you know, talking like this, as if I'd been the one in the wrong. There's no natural right to be a fool, and really, with your education, you had no excuse."

He looked away from her. Ferns, bird-of-paradise flowers, heliconia, fire ginger, all were growing nearby. For some reason, it suddenly felt important to call everything by its right name.

"I was shocked when I heard those bastards at Hoover Square had worked you over. I mean, I knew the whole story from the inside. They didn't need to get a single thing out of you, but sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I suppose it was pretty rough."

Again he said nothing. She frowned at the weighted silence, as if he'd accused her of something.

"Well, I'm truly sorry. But I
never
intended it to happen. After that I tried to look out for you, I really did. I got your sentence commuted, also those of the other boys. I saved your life, not that you'll ever thank me for it. When I had a chance to come to Tuamotu on official business, I jumped at it. There's a dirty job underway—ironically, it's called Operation Clean Sweep—but at least it gave me a chance to make sure you'd been released and see you one last time. I found you by that chip in your neck."

She dabbed her eyes again, and her voice changed from a somewhat strident major to a minor key. "You were kind of…oh, I don't know. My fling at passionate faith and youthful enthusiasm, all those things I'd never had, never really wanted to have in my own life. I'd never met anybody like you, ready to die for your beliefs, and now I never will again."

Andy had to ask her one question, even though he already knew the answer. "What about our child?"

"Well, of course there never was one. Getting pregnant would've been strictly against the regs. Anyway, I had my tubes cut long ago. You've never held a real job in your life, so you don't know the kind of things people have to do when they're fighting their way up in the world. Especially women—it's always harder for us. There's nothing like a pregnancy to take you out of the loop long enough for your enemies to knife you."

Finally he understood the fire in her eyes—it was the glowing coal of ambition. She got up and they started back.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Is she sensible?"

"Yes."

"That's good. You really need somebody to take care of you. You're looking great, by the way. You must be eating right. Well, here's my escort. Good-bye, Andy. Stay on your tropical island. You need a place away from the real world, while I—"

"While you go on serving Mahmud Alonzo Sol."

"Not really. He dropped dead twelve years ago. The fat old fool was partying with hookers and coke and brandy, and it finished him. There was talk about replacing him, but the technology's gotten so good there's really no reason to have a President any longer."

"Then who in hell's been running things?" he demanded, feeling new outrage because he'd not only shot an image, he'd shot an image of a dead man.

"You're not authorized to know. Good-bye, Andy. We won't see each other again. I don't think I could take it."

She and Sneak reentered the fern forest. A few minutes later a silvery gyro lifted, briefly backed up in midair, then spun, banked, and vanished. Andy watched it go, and Gomez, though palpitating with eagerness to learn what had happened, had the good sense not to ask. That was why, in his own good time, Andy told him everything.

 
BACK AT HOME, Esperanza took one look at him and demanded to know if someone had died. He answered that in the secret valley, the ghost of a dead lover had appeared to him and confessed that she had once betrayed him.

The lie—maybe because it wasn't
all
a lie—worked remarkably well. It was exactly the sort of romantic fable Esperanza loved and she swallowed it whole, including the ghost. Ghosts were common in Hilo—she often saw her deceased Mama, and every night put a small plate of fruit outside, in case the old lady felt hungry and wanted a snack. Of course she told Susan about Andy's encounter, and Susan told everybody else, so that his ghost became a part of village lore.

Next day he was called to assist the local midwife, and went willingly, hoping that work would help him forget. The birth was a breech presentation that went on for hours, and left three adults and a sore, squalling, purplish baby boy all smeared with blood and smelling like the bottom of a swamp. He was going home when Hilo's best fisherman—a thick-muscled man named Joe Aiaiea—passed him, a beautiful big tuna slung over his shoulder. Joe said he was headed for the Trading Post, because his girlfriend wanted a nice mirror and he hoped the tuna might get it for her. Andy only grunted, returned home, had Esperanza pour a bucket of water over him by way of a shower, fell on their bed, and passed out.

By the time he woke from his siesta, Joe had returned and so had the fish. That night he and his girlfriend baked it in a pit with sea salt and peppers and limes and other good things, invited the village, and served the food on chipped dishes and fresh-cut banana leaves. At the feast Andy learned that no bargaining had taken place, because no guards had appeared at the Trading Post. Puzzled, Joe had crept to the edge of the jungle, risking the lasers to find out why.

"Dey breakin' up da camp," he said through a mouthful. "Alla guards runnin' round like crazy. No trade for a while, damn shit."

That news was enough to send Andy, Gomez, Esperanza, and Susan next morning on a long walk up the mountain, to heights where the trees thinned out and winds blew cold off the snowcap. He and Esperanza shared the work of carrying the baby, until they reached a vantage point where part of the mountain had crumbled, leaving a sheer cliff. On the verge they rested, gazing out over the whole eastern end of the island, forest canopy and coves and inlets, beaches of black and white sand, the foaming reef, the encircling sea.

And the prison—an alien intruder on its promontory, the only place on Tuamotu where all lines were straight and all angles precisely ninety degrees. Cons were shuffling like columns of ants through the grid of red streets toward the Sea Gate. Offshore lay a missile cruiser gently rocking on the waves, while an old rust-bucket of a merchant ship towered over the quay. Even at this distance, flaking white letters that said
Pelican
were visible on the bow. The big portside cargo doors stood wide and the prisoners inched down the dock into the dark, cavernous opening.