The Fifth Harmonic (23 page)

“No.” She rose and started toward the door. “I will not do that— I
cannot
do that.”

“Then I'm out of here.”

That got her. I didn't know if I truly meant it, but I had to make her believe I did. And I knew I had to talk tough to wring a deal from her.

She turned and stared at me. “You do not mean that.”

“Absolutely. I have to know I can chose between a quick death and the lingering agony of dehydration and starvation. If you won't promise to be there for me when and if I should need you, then I'll go find a hotel room somewhere and wait for the end.”

I wasn't bluffing, and she must have known that. She looked torn, uncertain. I decided to push her a little harder.

“You talk about my lack of belief and hope. What about you? If you really and truly believe I have a chance at a cure, why don't you simply say yes, you'll help me. What's to lose if it's a promise you'll never have to keep? That is, if you truly have belief . . . and hope.”

I hated putting her on the spot like this, but I had to have the assurance of her help if I ever needed it. It was my security blanket.

“Very well,” she said in a tight, flat voice. “You have my promise.”

Then she turned and walked out.

I sat alone, feeling none too proud of myself. But this wasn't a game I had ever played before. I didn't know the rules, so I was making up my own as I went along.

The hut was stifling. The heat kept me from sleep, but it had help from a nagging guilt about backing Maya into a position she loathed, plus my worries about ever being able to reach the water tines. And then came all the regrets of my life—Annie, Kelly, roads not taken— recycling through my head for the thousandth time. I managed to turn them off . . . regrets were useful only when you had time to rectify them, and I didn't.

Desperate for some air, I crept outside to lay on the cooling sand and gazed at the night sky.

The moon wasn't up yet but Venus was low on the horizon, and so bright it cast a wavering bridge of light across the water like a miniature moon. I lifted my gaze and gasped when I saw the stars. They didn't have stars like this back in the U.S.—at least not in the Northeast. Where did they all come from? I hadn't seen the Milky Way since I was a boy, had almost forgotten what it looked like, but here it was now in all its speckled glory, a pale path of distant stars trailing overhead from horizon to horizon like a smear of semen from an infinitely fertile ejaculate, its countless spermatozoa streaming away into the night . . .

Semen? Ejaculate? I'd come up with another sexual image. Too long sitting naked in front of a woman with jade eyes and glorious thighs. I felt a long-lost heat growing in my groin as I fantasized a reversal of our roles in the boat today: I was the guide and she was the tine diver. I saw her clothes come off, watched her long lithe body poised to dive into the water—

I jumped as something pinched my leg. I sat up and saw a crab— a dozen, two dozen, a hundred crabs. The sand was alive with dark scuttling forms. Land crabs? Sand crabs? Fiddler crabs? Venus and the stars didn't provide enough light to tell and I wasn't hanging around until the moon rose to find out.

I jumped up and danced back to the hut, trying my damnedest not to step on them. For a moment I watched from the doorway as they scuttled back and forth across the sand in some sort of dance of their own. At least I knew the origin of the sand's morning herringbone pattern.

I retreated to the safety of my hammock. The hut was still hot but it was better than risking getting nibbled to death by crabs.

We left early the next morning in the Jeep: Maya driving, I in the passenger seat, Ambrosio crouched in the rear among the gas cans and my duffel—I wasn't going anywhere without my Kevorkian kit. He had a lap full of giant palm leaves and he was stringing them together with some sort of vine.

“What're you up to, Ambrosio?” I said. My voice was even more hoarse and cracked than yesterday.

“This will help you reach the air tines,” he said with a grin.

And that was all he would say.

I sipped slowly at my mixture of milks, trying not to wince with each swallow, and trying to keep it from sloshing all over the interior of the Jeep as we bumped up steep trails into the mountains.

We drove in silence, mostly. I was most hoarse—and swallowing was the hardest—first thing in the morning. The tumor tissue probably became edematous overnight, and only after I'd been up for
awhile did it shrink some. I couldn't stand the rasp of my own voice, so I could imagine how it sounded to others.

And Maya seemed a little distant after last night's encounter.

Consequently neither of us was the best company this morning.

Eventually I noticed the terrain looking increasingly volcanic.

“Are we going back to the lake?” I asked.

Maya shook her head. “No. We visit a very old volcano today—or rather, what is left of it.”

The terrain flattened into a high plateau. The vegetation thinned as the soil became harder and blacker. Finally the trail disappeared and we pulled to a stop at the base of a steep incline.

“We must walk from here,” Maya said.

She handed me a coil of rope—the same we'd used in the sand pit—and shouldered her backpack.

“We're not going to do more spelunking are we?”

“No,” she said as she started to climb. “Come. You will see.”

We left Ambrosio behind, and he headed into the brush with his machete. As we climbed, I began to hear a strange sound, a mournful low-pitched hum, rising and falling. The farther we ascended, the louder it became until it seeped into my bones and buzzed in my head.

The ground suddenly flattened and we stepped out onto a high ridge overlooking an emerald sea of mountains and valleys. But directly in front of me lay a black hole. Not the astronomical kind— this was volcanic.

We were standing atop a volcanic cone. Its mouth stretched fifty yards across. The low moan I'd been hearing echoed from somewhere deep inside that mouth.

Maya moved to the edge but I held back. As I watched her kneel on the rim and stick her head over the abyss, I fought an urge to rush forward and yank her back. But as her head cleared the edge, I saw her braids lift and flutter above her head.

And then it all came together: the moaning sound, the wind pouring up from the depths—this was El Silvato del Diablo . . . the Devil's Whistle.

Maya turned and smiled. She motioned me closer. I got down and approached the edge on my hands and knees. The wind blasted
my face and roared in my ears as I peeked over. I squinted against it and peered down smooth, sheer black walls dropping vertiginously to shadows of unguessed depth.

After a moment, Maya pulled me back. I didn't resist.

“The prevailing winds off the sea enter a wide cave mouth far below and funnel up through the chimney. During a storm it is quite frightening. The mountain's screams can be heard for miles.”

I was only half-listening. I knew she'd said the so-called air tines were at El Silvato del Diablo.

“Where are they?”

She seemed to know what was on my mind. “The air tines?” She pointed directly across the chasm. “They're over there . . . around a bend to the left of that ledge.”

I scanned the far wall, found the ledge, and made out a line of shadow where the volcanic wall seemed to fold around.

“Now how in the world do I get
there?
Crawl along the rim?”

“No. This is the only part of the rim that will support our weight. The rest is very thin and crumbly.”

“Do we go around the far side and climb over?”

“No. The walls are very steep and smooth and hundreds of feet high.”

“So what the hell am I supposed do—
fly
over?”

“Yes!” she said, smiling and nodding enthusiastically. “That is exactly what you must do! How do you know this?”

I thought she was putting me on until we returned to the Jeep and I learned what Ambrosio had been making with those palm leaves: wings. Even then, I wasn't completely convinced. I stared at the crude construction of leaves, branches, and vines and shook my head in disbelief.

“You don't really expect me to strap that on and jump over the edge, do you?”

“Si!” Ambrosio said. “I make these before. They fly plenty fine.” I turned to Maya, intending to say, You're joking, right? But then

I realized that Maya didn't joke. Now I was truly perturbed.

“I can't do this.”

“You must.”

“It won't work.”

“It has worked for others, it can work for you.”

“You?” I said.

She nodded.

Here it was again: Maya had done it, so why couldn't I?

I felt shaky. Maybe it was from lack of solid food, maybe it was fear, or perhaps a combination of the two. I stepped over to the Jeep and swigged some of the milk mix, swallowing as fast as my throat would allow. After a few moments I began to feel better . . . less shaky, but far from relaxed.

I looked up and noticed Maya and Ambrosio watching me expectantly. I sighed. I'd already been almost buried alive in sand, almost roasted alive in molten lava, almost drowned. I supposed I could risk almost plummeting to my death . . . as long as we didn't forget the
almost
part.

“What the hell,” I said as bravely as I could. “Let's give it a shot.”

Ambrosio's response was a big grin. From Maya . . . a lingering look and a slow nod. What was she thinking? What was going on behind those jade eyes? Was all this necessary, or was she merely testing my limits, seeing how far she could push me before I'd dig in my heels and go no further?

I had to admit the wings were pretty ingenious—more like a kite, actually. Slim, flexible tree branches formed the frame, thickly layered palm leaves the skin, all bound together by tough green vines. Thicker vines strapped the frame to my body and formed handholds on the wings. The narrow V-shaped end of the kite was tethered to my left ankle; my right leg remained free.

“When you begin to fly,” Ambrosio said as he tied the last knot, “hook your right foot over the left.”

“When I begin to fly . . .” I said, grinning. “Now there's a prime example of positive thinking.”

Where was the terror? For some reason, I wasn't nearly as afraid as I should have been. After the initial alarm, my self-preservation instincts seemed oddly muted this time. A side-effect of Captain Carcinoma's relentless assault, perhaps? Or were the rational parts of my brain overriding them? After all, if I went into a nose dive, what was the cost? I'd have advanced the inevitable by only a couple of days. A few dizzy seconds of tailspinning terror, and then instant, merciful oblivion, quicker than my Kevorkian kit.

I found an odd sort of peace in that.

Ambrosio started tying the rope around my waist.

“What's that for?”

“There are two dangers here,” Maya said.

“You mean besides dropping like a stone?”

“Yes. The other is flying too high. If you get too far above the rim, the crosswind will push you out of the updraft—”

“And I'll go sailing down into the jungle.”

She nodded. “Yes. We will try to prevent that with the rope.”

“I'd appreciate that.”

Ambrosio finished securing the rope, then checked all the fittings. Finally satisfied, he slapped my chest.

“You are ready to fly, señor.”

I nodded and stepped up to the edge. I couldn't believe how cocky and reckless I felt. Looking across the windy chasm, it seemed damn near impossible for this flimsy contraption to carry me to that far ledge. But I didn't care. Was this how you felt when you've got nothing to lose? Whatever it was, it pumped me full with an exhilarating, untethered feeling: I'll try anything . . . the sky's the limit.

Was this how Icarus felt?

And I wondered how Maya had felt when she'd stepped off the edge with her own set of wings. She'd had everything to lose—but she'd had her beliefs to buoy her. I, on the other hand, was buoyed by the imminence of death.

I inched the toes of my boots over the edge and felt the moaning
updraft whip my hair and tug at my face. I looked into the abyss, and damned if I didn't sense it looking into me.