The Best of Lucius Shepard (8 page)

“Moody!”
he shouted. “DT!”

But
the voice that answered belonged to neither of them. It was hoarse, issuing
from every part of the surrounding blackness, and he recognized it as the voice
of his recurring dream.

“You
are killing my son,” it said. “I have led you here, to this
ayahuamaco,
so
he may judge you.”

Dantzler
knew to his bones the voice was that of the
Sukia
of the village of
Santander Jimenez. He wanted to offer a denial, to explain his innocence, but
all he could manage was, “No.” He said it tearfully, hopelessly, his forehead
resting on his rifle barrel. Then his mind gave a savage twist, and his
soldiery self regained control. He ejected an ampule from his dispenser and
popped it.

The
voice laughed—malefic, damning laughter whose vibrations shuddered Dantzler. He
opened up with the rifle, spraying fire in all directions. Filigrees of golden
holes appeared in the blackness, tendrils of mist coiled through them. He kept
on firing until the blackness shattered and fell in jagged sections toward him.
Slowly. Like shards of black glass dropping through water. He emptied the rifle
and flung himself flat, shielding his head with his arms, expecting to be
sliced into bits; but nothing touched him. At last he peeked between his arms;
then— amazed, because the forest was now a uniform lustrous yellow—he rose to
his knees. He scraped his hand on one of the crushed leaves beneath him, and
blood welled from the cut. The broken fibers of the leaf were as stiff as
wires. He stood, a giddy trickle of hysteria leaking up from the bottom of his
soul. It was no forest, but a building of solid gold worked to resemble a
forest—the sort of conceit that might have been fabricated for the child of an
emperor. Canopied by golden leaves, columned by slender golden trunks, carpeted
by golden grasses. The water beads were diamonds. All the gleam and glitter
soothed his apprehension; here was something out of a myth, a habitat for
princesses and wizards and dragons. Almost gleeful, he turned to the campsite
to see how the others were reacting.

Once,
when he was nine years old, he had sneaked into the attic to rummage through
the boxes and trunks, and he had run across an old morocco-bound copy of
Gulliver’s
Travels.
He had been taught to treasure old books, and so he had opened it
eagerly to look at the illustrations, only to find that the centers of the
pages had been eaten away, and there, right in the heart of the fiction, was a
nest of larvae. Pulpy, horrid things. It had been an awful sight, but one
unique in his experience, and he might have studied those crawling scraps of
life for a very long time if his father had not interrupted. Such a sight was
now before him, and he was numb with it.

They
were all dead. He should have guessed they would be; he had given no thought to
them while firing his rifle. They had been struggling out of their hammocks
when the bullets hit, and as a result they were hanging half-in, half-out,
their limbs dangling, blood pooled beneath them. The veils of golden mist made
them look dark and mysterious and malformed, like monsters killed as they
emerged from their cocoons. Dantzler could not stop staring, but he was
shrinking inside himself. It was not his fault. That thought keep swooping in
and out of a flock of less acceptable thoughts; he wanted it to stay put, to be
true, to alleviate the sick horror he was beginning to feel.

“What’s
your name?” asked a girl’s voice behind him.

She
was sitting on a stone about twenty feet away. Her hair was a tawny shade of
gold, her skin a half-tone lighter, and her dress was cunningly formed out of
the mist. Only her eyes were real. Brown heavy-lidded eyes—they were at
variance with the rest of her face, which had the fresh, unaffected beauty of
an American teenager.

“Don’t
be afraid,” she said, and patted the ground, inviting him to sit beside her.

He
recognized the eyes, but it was no matter. He badly needed the consolation she
could offer; he walked over and sat down. She let him lean his head against her
thigh.

“What’s
your name?” she repeated.

“Dantzler,”
he said. “John Dantzler.” And then he added, “I’m from Boston. My father’s....”
It would be too difficult to explain about anthropology. “He’s a teacher.”

“Are
there many soldiers in Boston?” She stroked his cheek with a golden finger.

The
caress made Dantzler happy. “Oh, no,” he said. “They hardly know there’s a war
going on.”

“This
is true?” she said, incredulous.

“Well,
they do know about it, but it’s just news on the TV to them. They’ve got more
pressing problems. Their jobs, families.”

“Will
you let them know about the war when you return home?” she asked. “Will you do
that for me?”

Dantzler
had given up hope of returning home, of surviving, and her assumption that he would
do both acted to awaken his gratitude. “Yes,” he said fervently. “I will.”

“You
must hurry,” she said. “If you stay in the
ayahuamaco
too long, you will
never leave. You must find the way out. It is a way not of directions or
trails, but of events.”

“Where
is this place?” he asked, suddenly aware of much he had taken it for granted.

She
shifted her leg away, and if he had not caught himself on the stone, he would
have fallen. When he looked up, she had vanished. He was surprised that her
disappearance did not alarm him; in reflex he slipped out a couple of ampules,
but after a moment’s reflection he decided not to use them. It was impossible
to slip them back into the dispenser, so he tucked them into the interior
webbing of his helmet for later. He doubted he would need them, though. He felt
strong, competent, and unafraid.

*
* * *

Dantzler stepped carefully
between the hammocks, not wanting to brush against them; it might have been his
imagination, but they seemed to be bulged down lower than before, as if death
had weighed out heavier than life. That heaviness was in the air, pressuring
him. Mist rose like golden steam from the corpses, but the sight no longer
affected him—perhaps because the mist gave the illusion of being their souls.
He picked up a rifle with a full magazine and headed off into the forest.

The
tips of the golden leaves were sharp, and he had to ease past them to avoid
being cut; but he was at the top of his form, moving gracefully, and the
obstacles barely slowed his pace. He was not even anxious about the girl’s
warning to hurry; he was certain the way out would soon present itself. After a
minute or so he heard voices, and after another few seconds he came to a
clearing divided by a stream, one so perfectly reflecting that its banks
appeared to enclose a wedge of golden mist. Moody was squatting to the left of
the stream, staring at the blade of his survival knife and singing under his
breath—a wordless melody that had the erratic rhythm of a trapped fly. Beside
him lay Jerry LeDoux, his throat slashed from ear to ear. DT was sitting on the
other side of the stream; he had been shot just above the knee, and though he
had ripped up his shirt for bandages and tied off the leg with a tourniquet, he
was not in good shape. He was sweating, and a gray chalky pallor infused his
skin. The entire scene had the weird vitality of something that had
materialized in a magic mirror, a bubble of reality enclosed within a gilt
frame.

DT
heard Dantzler’s footfalls and glanced up. “Waste him!” he shouted, pointing to
Moody.

Moody
did not turn from contemplation of the knife. “No,” he said, as if speaking to
someone whose image was held in the blade.

“Waste
him, man!” screamed DT. “He killed LeDoux!”

“Please,”
said Moody to the knife. “I don’t want to.”

There
was blood clotted on his face, more blood on the banana leaves sticking out of
his helmet.

“Did
you kill Jerry?” asked Dantzler; while he addressed the question to Moody, he
did not relate to him as an individual, only as part of a design whose message
he had to unravel.

“Jesus
Christ! Waste him!” DT smashed his fist against the ground in frustration.

“Okay,”
said Moody. With an apologetic look, he sprang to his feet and charged
Dantzler, swinging the knife.

Emotionless,
Dantzler stitched a line of fire across Moody’s chest; he went sideways into
the bushes and down.

“What
the hell was you waitin’ for!” DT tried to rise, but winced and fell back.
“Damn! Don’t know if I can walk.”

“Pop
a few,” Dantzler suggested mildly.

“Yeah.
Good thinkin’, man.” DT fumbled for his dispenser.

Dantzler
peered into the bushes to see where Moody had fallen. He felt nothing, and this
pleased him. He was weary of feeling.

DT
popped an ampule with a flourish, as if making a toast, and inhaled. “Ain’t you
gon’ to do some, man?”

“I
don’t need them,” said Dantzler. “I’m fine.”

The
stream interested him; it did not reflect the mist, as he had supposed, but was
itself a seam of the mist.

“How
many you think they was?” asked DT.

“How
many what?”

“Beaners,
man! I wasted three or four after they hit us, but I couldn’t tell how many
they was.”

Dantzler
considered this in light of his own interpretation of events and Moody’s
conversation with the knife. It made sense. A Santa Ana kind of sense.

“Beats
me,” he said. “But I guess there’s less than there used to be.”

DT
snorted. “You got
that
right!” He heaved to his feet and limped to the
edge of the stream. “Gimme a hand across.”

Dantzler
reached out to him, but instead of taking his hand, he grabbed his wrist and
pulled him off-balance. DT teetered on his good leg, then toppled and vanished
beneath the mist. Dantzler had expected him to fall, but he surfaced instantly,
mist clinging to his skin. Of course, thought Dantzler; his body would have to
die before his spirit would fall.

“What
you doin’, man?” DT was more disbelieving than enraged.