Well In Time Part 11

The man shook his head. "Ke." No.

At the time, they had only been at Rancho Cielo for two years and were still learning the language of the local indigenous. His linguistic cache almost expended, Javier asked, "Wawik-dnde?" Apparently bilingual, the man had pointed downhill and beckoned for them to follow. In due course, he led them up the game trail to the spring in the grotto.

"Sure works for us now," Calypso said. "He had to give up his native ways because the cartels wanted him to grow marijuana instead of corn. When he refused, they threatened to kill his family, so he had to leave his little farm." She sighed. "It's so unfair, Walter. You really ought to write an expose. The Rarmuri are being pushed off their lands, just like the Mayans in Chiapas. It's the story of modern Mexico."

"Not so very modern. Remember, it started with the Conquest, in 1519. It's not exactly hot news." Hill tossed another stick on the fire and chafed his hands together. "I thought Mexico was supposed to be hot and tropical."

"It's autumn, Walter, and you're two thousand feet up in the Sierra. But when we get to Batopilas, you'll see that it's tropical. Up on our plateau there are pine and fir, but down here in the canyon there are date palms and citrus trees."

They sat in silence, listening to the night wind moaning through the cliffs and spires of the canyon and the nearer, more companionable crackle of the fire. "It must be all over by now at the ranch," Calypso ventured at last. Her voice was small and tight with worry. "When we get to Batopilas I'll call. Or maybe there will be news waiting for us. Or maybe even," her voice brightened, "Javier."

Hill sat wrapped in his mylar blanket and stared glumly into the fire. He didn't want to think about what had happened at Rancho Cielo, and he definitely did not want to voice to Calypso the nagging concern that weighed on him as if he were carrying a set of barbells.

"Maybe so," he replied. "Maybe so."

The growling of their stomachs woke them long before dawn. The fire had burned down so that not even embers remained, but the cold wind that had gained in ferocity during the night had died with it. Despite the emergency blankets, they were both stiff, sore, and deeply chilled.

"Do you have any food left in your pack, Walter?" Calypso had pushed herself upright and was stacking tiny sticks in the blackened fire pit. "I'm all out."

Hill sat up, dreading the next stage of ascension that would require him to rise to his feet.

"I'm out, too."

Calypso lit the pyramid of sticks and sheltered them from the wind with her body until they flared into flame. She filled an aluminum bowl with water and set it on rocks near the flames.

"I still have some tea. When we've had that, I'll see if I can find the ingredients for an energy drink the Rarmuri make. It fuels them to run day and night, sometimes for two hundred miles or more."

"I feel like that, sometimes, when I've had my second espresso."

"Yes, but do you do it?"

"What?"

"Run."

He reached to a boulder, and with a grunt, pulled himself to his feet.

"I'll be grateful if I can still walk."

After tea, Calypso scouted the vegetation around the grotto.

"There's a wild lime tree here and we're in luck. It still has some fruit." She came back to the fire with a handful of small, leathery green limes. "Now for some chia seeds."

She followed the trickle of water that emanated from the grotto and crept darkly down through the rocks toward the river.

"Chia's a member of the mint family," she called back to him. "It grows wild along water courses here in the canyon. The seeds are very nutritious."

Hill's eyes followed as she picked her way through the rocks, bending to harvest seeds into her bowl from dry, wind-beaten seed head spires, and he marveled at her resilience. Despite the h.e.l.l of the last two days, she looked fresh and beautiful, with her cheeks rouged by wind and her hair in a long braid over her shoulder. Her blue jeans were faded and abraded and she wore them, he reflected, as if she were on the street in Paris, with indefinable chic.

From his vantage point on the edge of the grotto plateau, the backdrop of canyon fell away behind her in shadowy shelves of indigo. She was so at home there, so comfortable in the wildness and chaos of it all, that Hill felt the old tug. He would never be free of it. For him, Calypso was the summation of womankind and rather than make him morose, this realization brightened his mind, like the sun that was just beginning to spill over the high cliffs to the east.

Here he was, in this impossibly feral place with the woman of his dreams, who was, in fact, a waking reality. In the sacred ceremony of life, he had just ingested the wafer, or the sliver of peyote, or the sacred mushroom. With the day's dawning, his being flared like gates of light opening, allowing the holy moment to enter.

Even one instant of this pure and vivid life was worth all the rest, with its bills and sweltering airports, bad food, boring and officious people, and all the other acc.u.mulated ills of Western civilization. He would not trade this instant for all the rest of it put together. This, he knew in a flash of insight, was the purity of love and he rejoiced in it.

Calypso came to the fire, her face glowing from the climb back to the plateau, and set down the bowl with it's small clutch of mottled gray and tan seeds. Then she went to the cliff face and bent toward the riffles of water-worn rock as if searching for something.

"It's still here!" she said and held up a round, fist-sized stone in triumph. "I've used this every time we've come here," she said over her shoulder, as she washed the rock in the pool.

Settling cross-legged by the fire, she set the aluminum bowl with the harvested chia seeds in her lap, then tore open two small pouches of honey from her pack and dribbled the amber runnels over the seeds. Finally, she threw in the limes, poured a small amount of water over everything, and then commenced macerating and grinding the lot into a paste using the stone as a pestle. When everything was a nasty, greenish-looking pulp to Hill's watching eye, she began to add water until there was a thick, sludgy drink, clear to the brim of the bowl, which she held up to him with a smile.

"Here. Drink this. It'll give you strength."

Hill took the bowl from her and stared into it.

"I've never felt more dubious," he said. "We're a long way from medical a.s.sistance."

Calypso sighed in exasperation.

"Here. Give it back to me." Hill complied and Calypso tilted the brew to her lips without hesitation and drank deeply. "If I die in the next few moments," she said acidly, "just bury me here. Don't trouble yourself trying to lug me down the mountain." She smiled at him brightly and when he reached for the bowl, held it just out of his reach. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

"I don't want any medical emergencies." She s.h.i.+fted the bowl further still, as he leaned, reaching for it. "And no gagging, grimacing, or agonizing allowed."

"I promise," Hill said and his stomach gave a vicious growl as if in agreement. "I'll be manly as Socrates with his hemlock."

She relented and handed him the bowl. He sipped the liquid reluctantly and then his face brightened with wonder. He took another tentative sip and raised his face to the warmth of the just-risen sun.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned! It tastes good! Delicious even." He buried his lips in the green liquid and drank deeply.

Calypso sat by the fire, snapping sticks and throwing them into the flames, a small smile playing around her lips. She could feel the tangy brew making its way inside her. Its living warmth, along with her fondness for Hill and his nattering ways, was the heat she needed to fuel another day of exertion.

In her mind's eye, she clambered downhill through the boulder field, all the way to the old mule trail that ran along the riverbank. The river would be rus.h.i.+ng over its stones, with a slight morning breeze riffling the surface and water ouzels bobbing on spray-misted rocks midstream. Alders, bare now in the autumn cold, would lift their dark limbs in silhouette against the clear and piercingly blue sky. It would be a scene of serenity and peace and it would belie all that the dreams had told her.

It was an image straight out of her dreams but it was real, and it was standing not five feet away, elevated on a flat outcrop of rock. Without a sound, a large animal had materialized and with a gasp, Calypso turned to face it. She heard Hill give a yip of alarm and brought her hand down, in a gesture demanding his silence and immobility.

This, she knew instantly, was the creature that had left its prints in the mud of the grotto. It was not a large dog or a panther, as she had suspected, but a wolf.

"Good morning," she crooned softly. "You're looking very beautiful this morning."

It was true-the wolf was a magnificent animal, tall, lean and sleek. Its charcoal and gray coat, deep, soft, and silvery, russet around the face, sifted gently in the morning breeze. Its yellow eyes stared into hers unwaveringly and Calypso stared back.

The standoff continued for several seconds, during which the wind brought the sound of the river's rus.h.i.+ng far below, the chirp of birds in nearby bushes, and the green scent of the grotto. Calypso's mind was frozen. She could think of nothing to do about their situation. The wolf seemed equally undecided.

The small sound of rolling pebbles broke their trance. The animal turned its head toward the noise, and Calypso's eyes darted in its direction, as a man emerged from the foliage near the mouth of the grotto.

"Down, Lobo!" he commanded and the wolf sank dutifully to the stone. Calypso had expected a Rarmuri but the man was Anglo or part-Hispanic and spoke English. He was tall, lean, and gray-haired like the wolf and his stance was tense, as if any quick movement on her part would set him into instant and deadly motion. She had met men like him before, men cut off from the mainstream of society, accustomed to making their own laws, imposing their own judgments. Altogether, she thought fleetingly, she would rather take her chances with the wolf.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, scanning Calypso and Hill behind her with pale blue, expressionless eyes.

"We're hiking in the canyon," Calypso answered. "We spent the night here. We're just preparing to leave."

The man continued to stare, and the wolf's yellow eyes were also unwavering. Calypso felt a crawl of dread move through her. Had they escaped the battle at the ranch only to fall into far worse hands? She squared her shoulders and stared back at him impa.s.sively.

The man moved closer. He was wearing faded jungle camouflage pants and a black windbreaker, and something in the way he moved caused his image to blur into the surrounding shadows, rocks and greenery, and then come into focus again, mirage-like. Ex-Recon, her intuition told her. Silently, on crepe-soled boots, he crept closer until he was standing above her, with the wolf at his feet.

"I won't hurt you," he said, never breaking his stare.

Calypso did not believe him. Everything instinctual was aroused. Red lights flashed and alarm bells clanged beneath her immobility. She felt her body tense, her breath coming in short gasps, and her leg muscles tighten. She knew she should run, but instead watched him warily, feeling already overpowered.

The move was too sudden for her to antic.i.p.ate. In an instant, he had leapt beside her and her arm was in his vice-like grip. Before she could react or even cry out, he whipped his hand from his jacket pocket and flung a fistful of white powder into her face. She heard Hill's yell and felt the collision of his body against hers as he tried to intervene. Then a wave of dizziness. .h.i.t her brain and she felt herself slip down, away from the man's grip. Her last impression was of the stones coming up to meet her and then everything went black.

A confusion of sounds, like voices on a tape being eaten by a boombox. Through one squinted eye, a sliver of piercing light. The voices warped and gurgled through the background, alternately liquid and viscous. She felt deeply ill. The hard surface under her seemed to be spinning and the centrifugal force of it blasted her out of consciousness again, sending her into a blackness slashed with yellow sabers of light.

Light and voices again. A splitting headache. Mouth unbearably dry. Heart hammering arrhythmically. She tried to concentrate, to understand. A mixture of English and Spanish. The word drug. A surge of oblivion, overwhelming her like a black wave.

Finally, the ground under her stopped spinning. Voices no longer eddied and chuckled around her like fast-flowing water. Still the headache, still the dry mouth, but her heart no longer felt as if it were bursting.

She heard her first coherent sentence: "She ought to be coming out of it soon." English. The voice deep and male. Not the voice of her attacker. She lay still, gathering her strength; gathering her wits.

A hand gripped her shoulder and rocked her, not ungently.

"You in there?" The same deep voice. Rocking again. "Come on. It's time to wake up." She thought she detected an element of concern. She tried to speak and heard an unintelligible mutter in what might be her own voice. The hand shook her again.

Calypso opened one eye and winced at blindingly bright light. She clamped her eye closed again and whispered, "Water."

There was a pause and then a hand slid under her neck and her head was bent upwards. A gla.s.s was pressed against her lips. Water coursed into her mouth and down her throat. She choked, gagged, began to cough. The coughing made her head ache unbearably.

The hand had not moved from her neck. When the coughing subsided, the voice said, "Take another sip. Not so fast this time. Just a sip."

She sipped. Cool water penetrated the parched recesses of her mouth and a trifle of the desperation subsided behind its fluid promise. She sipped again and then rolled her head back as a wave of dizziness. .h.i.t her.

"Dizzy." Her voice was scratchy and weak.

"It'll be wearing off soon." The hand went away. She lay inert, savoring the wetness of the water, asking nothing more of herself. Then she slept.

When she awoke, there were no voices. Through slitted eyes, she took in a room washed in evening light entering one small, high window set in a wall of roughly plastered stone. Her hand wandered out from her side and felt the abrasion of a wool blanket. She blinked, tried to focus.

Above her, a ceiling of pale plaster was washed with rose in the falling light, with triangles of deep indigo shadow hanging like kites in the corners. She raised her head and caught sight of a crude wooden table and chair and a fire burning low on a small hearth, before her head dropped back of its own weight. She closed her eyes. The nausea had pa.s.sed, and the headache. Her mind felt clear but she was completely without volition.

She heard a heavy wooden door sc.r.a.pe open and then closed. Footsteps. They stopped next to her bed.

"You're awake." The same male voice. Not unkind. Not frightening. She opened her eyes.

A man of medium height stood over her. He was broad-shouldered and powerful looking despite his age. Calypso put him somewhere in his late sixties. His skin was brown like the local indigenous, but he spoke uninflected English. Black hair salted with white framed a slightly pocked face made handsome by strong bones and deep-set, intelligent eyes.

"You were out a long time."

"How long?" she whispered.

"Twelve hours or more."

"Why?"

"The Devil's Breath."

Calypso shook her head.

"Scopolamine. You got too big a hit."

She rolled her head to see him more clearly and was surprised that he was wearing a black ca.s.sock.

"Priest?"

He gazed down at her and said with a small smile, "Of a sort."

Calypso frowned and tried to sit up. The man reached down and restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Better stay down awhile." He reached behind him, dragged the wooden chair beside her bed and sat. "What's your name?"

Calypso was suddenly wary. She and Javier and Rancho Cielo were known throughout the canyons. How could she be sure it was safe to reveal her ident.i.ty? She countered: "What's yours?"

"You can call me Father Keat." He said it with the same small, self-deprecating smile.

Calypso nodded. "You can call me Jane."

The man nodded with a chuckle. "All right, Jane." He c.o.c.ked his head and regarded her appraisingly. "So how do you feel?"

"Better now. I thought my heart was going to burst."

He nodded. "Tachycardia. And then bradycardia. Your heart rate was down to thirty-three beats per minute. You had me worried."

"What happened?"