Nightwing

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Paine downshifted and turned the Rover up the path Youngman had told him about. Except for a rubble of loose mica-bright slate, he couldn’t see any obstacles ahead and he was encouraged.

  “The Indian was right. Youngman, I mean,” he looked at Anne to see whether he’d offended her. Her mind was elsewhere. He said louder, “Youngman’s quite an interesting guy.”

  “I suppose he is.” She watched the path. The Rover was steadily climbing, shooting slate from all four wheels. The walls ahead were pale, ossified sandstone.

  “But he doesn’t have to be,” she added. “ ‘Interesting’ is really a very small word. A bored word. Vampire bats are ‘interesting,’ plague is ‘interesting,’ Indians are ‘interesting.’ All of them are, from a distance, as a thrill. Life is ‘interesting.’ ”

  “Death is, too,” Paine said firmly.

  Anne glanced at him; there were times when she glimpsed more than the gulf in communication between them.

  For an hour, the Rover picked its way into the canyon and then the path turned slowly, inexorably back down to the desert.

  Under the double spiral drawn on the canyon wall, growing as the only vegetation on a small hillock, was the datura. Almost as tall as a man, the plants bore pale violet, trumpet-shaped flowers. Youngman sank to his knees before them.

  Right where Abner always said they were, he thought. Because no Hopi could enter Maski Canyon without datura in his mouth. It was the “way,” as much as any road.

  All his life, he had turned his back on the “way” and everywhere he turned the “way” was in front of him. His manipulation of Paine and Anne, sending them on a useless road so that he could be alone, was minor in comparison to what Abner had done to him. Because here he was; after everywhere, he was here. But, he told himself, he still didn’t believe.

  A black-and-white shrike feather vibrated among the coarse leaves of the datura.

  Still, a person had obligations. Youngman tore up one of the plants and hacked off a yellow-white root. He cut off a button-sized segment from the root and stuffed the rest in his pocket. He put the button in his mouth, and gagged. The taste was alkaloid and bitter, and at first he thought he was going to throw up, but after he rolled it under his tongue the nausea ebbed. Youngman got to his feet, turned right, and ran along the base of the canyon to where sheets of pocked lava came down to the desert in overlapping folds which hid a road of graded earth and mica. Without breaking stride, he turned into the canyon.

  The datura, he noticed with relief, had no effect. He breathed the thin air comfortably and watched the sky narrow by steps into blue wedges between canyon walls.

  The road was torturous, a series of seeming cul de sacs, and cruelly steep. There was shadow but no shade. The walls radiated an enervating heat that seared the windpipe and lungs. Youngman breathed through his nose at the start of the climb, but after a half an hour the oxygen demands on his legs were too much and he opened his lips. In minutes, his tongue thickened into a wooden lump, while the datura button swelled. His eyes fell from the sky to the vari-colored walls, and from the walls to the ruts that marked the road.

  It was the Castillo priests who built it three centuries ago, their ox carts burdened by double loads of flammable stone that had bitten into the road. Their knotted whips that came down on the Hopis struggling to control the overloaded carts, because oxen were valuable and souls were cheap. For fifty years, until the priests were killed and whips burned, their bells melted, their mission razed, and their road abandoned.

  Sunspots danced over Youngman’s eyes. As he dropped to rest he saw waiting for him, sitting high on a sandstone outcrop that jutted over the road, the silhouette of a small man wearing nothing but a ragged cape.

  “Hello, Flea,” Abner said.

  “Hello,” Youngman pulled himself to his feet and walked under the outcrop. Looking up at Abner he was looking directly into the sun, but he could make out dimly the features of his old friend and the dried blood on Abner’s chest. Abner had been smoking mesa tobacco and listening to a transistor radio. He put out the cigarette and turned off the radio.

  “Surprised to see me,” he asked.

  “Not really.” Youngman spat the datura from his mouth. “Since I was stupid enough to eat that, I expected to see something.”

  “You can’t see anything here without datura,” Abner reprimanded him mildly. “You shouldn’t fight it.”

  “I’m fighting you, uncle.”

  Abner cocked his head and smiled.

  “It was a real powerful painting, wasn’t it, Flea? Swastikas backwards, spirals backwards, everything in reverse to start all over again. Letting Masaw out of the fire. You were in it, too, remember, Flea?”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re Coyote Clan.”

  “That’s not why.”

  “Then,” Abner granted, “because you’re the only one I can trust. You hate the pahans.”

  “I hate too many people, but I don’t kill them.”

  “The same thing, Flea, if you know how to put your mind to it. You will. You have to.”

  “No.”

  “Why,” Abner asked slyly, “do you think you’re here?”

  Youngman stared up without an answer. Sunlight clung like dust to Abner’s blanket. This wasn’t happening, Youngman reminded himself.

  “Sorry about the priests in the kiva,” Abner changed tone. “They wouldn’t let me have the Fire Clan tablet, Flea.”

  “You were dead before they were.”

  “It was their fault, they should have helped me out. It’s important when you end the world, and you have to have the tablet. Harold understood.”

  “Harold’s here?”

  “No.”

  “Any bats here?”

  As the silhouette on the rock shifted, sunlight ran like liquid down the blanket. A change in the wind brought the stench of ammonia. Abner ignored Youngman’s last question.

  “It makes my heart glad to see you again, Flea. You know why I’m ending the world.”

  “You told me before. The strip mining on the mesa. The Indian Bureau. Navajos.”

  “Masaw says they’re coming here.”

  “Masaw said that to you?”

  “You know, if the headpounders want to sell their part of the Black Mesa to rip up and carry off, that’s okay. You can’t expect much religion from a Navajo anyway. But you know, we’re the only real people in the world and Masaw is the only real god. This canyon is his home. The first thing you ever learned is how he came out of the fires here to watch over us. Isn’t that the first fact you learned in your life, Flea?”

  “It’s what I heard.” That was true.

  “Then you. agree, the day a company can buy Maski Canyon, it’s time to wipe everything out and start all over again.”

  “You mean, wipe everybody out.”

  “Not everybody. We’ll go underground again, the way we always do between worlds. And when everybody else is dead, we’ll have plenty of room when we come back up. Masaw promised.”

  Youngman thought about it.

  “Let me tell you. An hour back, when I saw where I was, I would have killed Walker Chee. If he had been there with me, I would have done it, because one thing I never thought I’d be doing is helping him take Maski Canyon. He’s going to get it. You’re right about all that, uncle. They’ll take it if it kills us, and it probably will. They’ll kill Masaw for sure. They’ll blow him up with blasting powder and bury him under oil rigs. I felt that. But now. Now, I just feel sad. You know, my life has just been one circle. Starting here, going out, so far out I never saw the curve, and then ending here. A circle. What’s funny is that I even thought I could get away again, and I can’t. So, I’m here with you, uncle. And what are you, uncle, but a dream, a ranting nightmare trying to scare away all the rest of the world.”

  “Masaw said you’d be like this at the start, Flea.”

  “Stop it! Masaw isn’t killing people. Bats are. The plague is. Hopi people are dy
ing. What kind of a god kills his own people?”

  “It’s not unusual.”

  Youngman thought he could make out a smile again on Abner’s face. The image vibrated.

  “The reason you’re here,” Abner went on, “is that Masaw wants you to help kill the pahan.”

  “You’re not here at all, uncle. I’m just imagining you.”

  “You don’t need to kill the pahan yourself,” Abner said, soothingly. “Only keep him out of the cave until the sun goes down. Then Masaw can come out.”

  “What if I want Masaw to tell me all this himself?”

  “You have the datura. Let your mind open and you will see.”

  Youngman backed away from the rock.

  “No. I see you, but you’re not there. I’m talking to myself, you’re not there.”

  “You’re a good boy, Flea.” Abner started to make a cigarette. “We know you’ll do what you should.”

  “You’re not there!” Youngman shouted. He picked up a rock and threw it at the outcrop with all his might.

  A large crow flew into the sky, screamed over Youngman’s head, and dived away, out of sight.

  The outcrop was bare.

  Long after the desert below was ocean dark, the promontories of Maski Canyon stood in the sun. Looking away from the desert into the canyon, Anne saw a labyrinth not so much of other ridges and canyons as of shapes. Of canyons that flying sand had scooped out of sandstone, leaving them as clean and round as shells, of rivers of volcanic ash, of lava chimneys that twisted up by the hundreds.

  Medical bulletins were coming more frequently now over the Rover’s AM radio.

  We have good news for folks in the plague area. Public Health authorities have informed us that the plague situation covering the southwest corner of the Navajo and Hopi reservations is now under control. A state and federal effort to bring in vaccine by helicopter is being mobilized at this very hour. Health facilities at Ship Rock and Window Rock are being expanded to treat the sick. If you are outside the plague area and you think you may be infected, do not, repeat, do not go to Tuba City. Stay where you are. The growing coordinated effort is being personally led by Navajo Tribal Chairman Walker Chee, who emphasizes that cooperation between the two Indian nations is essential. Rebroadcasts of this bulletin in Navajo and Hopi will follow. If you are in the plague area, it’s probable you can carry on life as normal with certain precautions. Do not approach any wildlife that appears sick. If any livestock appears sick, kill all your livestock and pets by rifle at a distance not less than thirty feet. Under any circumstances, continue to wash twice a day with green soap, use insect repellents, and fumigate your house. Do not go out after dark for any reason. Avoid caves. Keep your windows and doors bolted at night. Most important, do not try to leave the plague area. State troopers stationed along Route 89, on the approaches to Flagstaff and Winslow, along the Black Mesa and east along Oraibi Wash have orders to turn back evacuees. Anyone not obeying their orders will be shot . . .

  As the tide of shadow rose, Youngman and Paine finished the erection of the wire mesh tent from the back of the Rover. When he’d pounded the last stake into the ground, Youngman ran his fingers along the fine metal wires of the tent.

  “They can bite through this.”

  “Yes.” Paine set a heavy battery next to Youngman. Together, they attached two wires to the mesh wall. Youngman noticed that where the walls joined the back of the Rover was an insulating collar of thick rubber. When the attachments were complete, Paine set the battery at 115 volts and threw a switch, setting off a deep tocking. “Now they can’t.”

  Youngman’s quickest touch of the mesh sent an electrical jolt up to his elbow.

  “I know what I’m doing.” Paine turned the battery off.

  . . . a change in previous announcements. For precautionary reasons, the northern limit of the plague alert area now includes these pueblos on the southern rim of the Black Mesa: Hotevilla, Bacopi, New Oraibi, Oraibi, Toreva, Shongopovi, and Walpi. Also, the towns of Moenkopi and Tuba City are now considered in quarantine. Again, these are precautionary measures and not reasons for alarm . . .

  Youngman turned the radio off. As darkness swung over the ridge, Paine slid into the driver’s seat. The unidirectional microphone was already set up on the roof and the oscilloscope glowed green next to Paine. Youngman and Anne crowded into the rear of the truck. Paine checked his watch.

  The first stars began to appear, growing in intensity every second. Hotomkam in Orion’s Belt. Choochokam, the Pleiades.

  “I’ve got their flight pattern down pretty pat.”

  Paine turned the microphone grip back and forth in an arc of 15 degrees. He wiped the palm of his other hand and fine-tuned the amplifier, and tuned it a second time.

  Anne had grown used to the sounds of the desert at night. There were none on the ridge or from the canyon. Not an insect or a bird.

  The oscilloscope’s white line was straight. A string of ice.

  “If they moved to a new cave—” Anne began to say.

  The line shivered. A faint pattern emerged. Three harmonic lines slashing from one octave to another.

  “Under three minutes after sunset,” Paine looked at his watch. “We’re very close to the cave. To,” he checked the compass reading on the microphone shaft, “west-northwest, and bearing straight at us. They’re packed tight, very tight.”

  Youngman heard nothing, but the oscilloscope line shook violently. He looked at Paine, whose face was triumphant.

  “Listen.” Paine snapped off the scope.

  There was a wind, Anne thought with surprise. No, rain, she corrected herself, but no rain was falling. A milling of wings, she realized, but sharper. Wings without feathers.

  Youngman thought they sounded like steps in the sky.

  “Look,” Anne said.

  From west to east the stars were vanishing, eclipsed by a whispering tide that swept over the ridge at a height of thirty feet. It moved over the Rover, blotting out starlight. They were faster than Youngman had expected, more than he had thought possible and he cringed reflexively, bowed by their shadow and the close and heavy strokes of wings. A minute passed and the bats were still coming overhead. Paine closed his eyes; for a moment the old panic was back burning like a red bulb but he mastered himself and the panic faded. Anne concentrated on the blind eye of the scope. Youngman watched the last of the bats funnelling down into the desert, a sinuous line dipping and curling into the night wind.

  “When will they return?” he asked long after the bats had disappeared and Anne was making a supper of powdered egg tortilla on a hot plate.

  “I don’t know.” Paine laid his air gun, three darts, and a pocket-sized radio receiver on a table. “It all depends how quickly they find food out there. A couple of hours at the least but they’re bound to find some abandoned livestock. I’ve set the beeper on the microphone so we’ll know when they get close.”

  “They may find something besides livestock. Everyone in the quarantine area is abandoned.”

  “True, but that isn’t what you asked. Anyway, we’ll be ready for them when they return.”

  “We will?”

  “This,” Paine held up one of the darts, “contains a miniature radio transmitter. It weighs about a gram and only throws a signal for two hundred yards, but I think that’ll be sufficient to find a cave as close as theirs. The trick will be to plant them on the backs of the bats so they can’t bite them off.” Paine slid the receiver’s button to ON, checked three frequencies of tones from the darts, and slid the button back to OFF, speaking softly to himself, “ ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I. There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly.’ ”

  Supper. Paine ate his spongy tortilla voraciously and with great good humor. Anne busied herself in a charade of domesticity. The bright light of the Coleman lamp dissolved the fine mesh of the tent, so that the three seemed to be having a picnic in the open air.

  “Now that we’re all in this toget
her,” Youngman pushed his food aside, “I think it’s time you told us just what we’re up against, Paine.”

  “You know. Infected bats.”

  “I know from what I’ve seen so far that I don’t think we’re going to come out of this.”

  “Youngman—”

  “Wait a second, Anne.” He considered telling her and Paine about his hallucination of Abner, but there was no point. He wasn’t going to eat any more datura. “If we’re going to die up here with Paine, I want to know why. I want his reasons. I want to understand. I want to understand everything.”

  “It’s very complicated,” Paine said.

  “You said the same thing the first time we met. You were lying then.”

  “All right,” Paine conceded. He shifted uncomfortably, searching for words.

  “It’s like a war,” Anne suggested. “That’s obvious enough.”

  “No,” Paine shook his head, “not in a biological sense. It’s simply a meeting. A meeting of life-forms.”

  “A competition,” Anne said.

  “No. An interdependence. Vampires and plague and man.” He looked at their faces. “You did want the truth, didn’t you?”

  “Go on,” Youngman said.

  “It could be argued that the two dominant life-forms on earth are bacilli and mammals.” Paine chose his words slowly. “The three most successful forms of these groups are the plague bacillus, man, and bats. Functioning together. The plague, to begin with. The plague bacillus has always been here. As a minor disease.”

  “It wasn’t as dangerous?”

  “To the caveman who caught it, yes, but how many other men could he infect? Or a farmer? Or a hunter? Do you see what I mean? There was plague, but there were no epidemics, not one in the history of the world until the coming of higher civilization. Until men got together in cities, until men traded, until men congested. Then starts the reign of the plague above all other diseases. Because of man, nothing else.”

  “The plague does okay,” Youngman said. “What do we get out of it?”