Brian D'Amato

Brian D'Amato Page 33

by In the Courts of the Sun

  “I’ve actually done a little caving,” I said.

  “Oh. Great,” he said. “Well, we can get this all a little more specific.” He zoomed in and moved a bar in a window that read “Tunneling Acoustic Scanner.” The wipe slowed down and began slicing virtual sections down into the rock. “Let’s look for calcium.”

  He typed in BONE MODULE. The software started defining the view based on the difference between the average amount of calcium in limestone, which is almost pure CaCO3, about 40 percent Ca—and in hydroxylapatite, which is about 33 percent. Bones are about 70 percent hydroxylapatite, and dental enamel is almost 97 percent. As it eliminated the limestone, the image faded into clusters of specks, like a frog’s egg masses, strung out through the caves, and in wide drifts closer to the surface.

  “A lot of this is prolly animal,” Michael said. “But some of it’s got to be burials. Especially under the main mounds or anywhere in the caves past the twilight zones. And these three dinguses—well, take a look.” He highlighted three roughly rectangular globs under the west side of Mound A. “These are very bone-rich. And from the size profiles we can get down this low, it’s not animals. It looks like about forty individuals. In fact, in terms of the stats, this one looks like a Roman catacomb.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “So I think that the interior stairway prolly used to connect to these. They were part of the caves, and they were artificially enlarged, and then, sometime after the bones went in, they collapsed. Although of course we get decent dates without digging.”

  “Right.”

  “But what I’m getting at here is that I’m pretty sure these are the royal tombs. So we really hope you can get yourself into one of these three. I mean, this should be, you know. Where we’re going to look, for, you know—”

  “My corpse,” I said.

  “Uh, yes.”

  [24]

  A pod of rain went by outside, drumming like bored defleshed fingers on the blue tarp. I picked my way over to the storage side of the room and sat down on a Cabela’s inflatable between piles of gear. Over in the work area the gals were busying themselves with little camp-keeping projects, a bit ostentatiously, I thought. Boy Commando had put on a pair of antique Marantz water-filled earphones and was turning the knobs on a big Raytheon receiver with safecrackerish slowness, boring through layer after layer of the local electroscape, radar and radio and VHF and UHF and other more exotic bands, listening for increeping troops or snoops. I leaned back on a compressor case. The humidity was around 90 percent, but the cool stone made it seem okay, as though one were slowly and pleasantly turning into a frog. There was an irregularly placed T-shaped block in the wall over my head, about a foot below the corbeled arch, and I couldn’t keep from looking at it.

  No Way sidled over and dropped down next to me. He was wet. He didn’t speak.

  “So, what did you see out there?” I asked.

  “There are at least five ES people out on the west side,” he said. He got out a pack of filterless 555s. “On the east I’m not sure. But the mayor”—he used the word alcalde, which is really more like an unofficial mayor—“of the village sounds like he’s on the payroll. He told everybody not to go out to any fields over here.”

  “So they know what they’re doing, anyway,” I said.

  He made a “supongo” grunt and lit his cigarette with an old Zippo. I felt Ana glare at him from the other side of the room, like, sir, this is a smoke-free palace, but amazingly she didn’t call him out on it.

  “I really want to get on that thing with the hairy guy,” I said. I meant that I wanted to start seriously planning the hit on García-Torres—the officer who’d been in charge when my parents were killed—who had a big beard.

  No Way exhaled and glanced up at the ceiling, meaning he was sure that Executive Solutions was listening and in fact probably recording everything we did. Sonically, visually, and maybe biochemically. Smoke floated up and collected in the long channel of the corbeled arch, like mist over a canal.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I really need to make it happen.”

  “If you’re still that worked up about it, why don’t you just strap on an ECA and walk into his house?” No Way asked. By ECA, he meant “explosivo combustible-aire,” that is, a fuel-air explosive.

  “Because, you know, I want to know it worked. And anyway I’m a rich coward now. It’s time to start throwing some money at this problem.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Anyway, I want it to hurt,” I said. I’d decided a while ago that G-T had to know he was about to die. People who get blown up or shot in the back of the head or whatever barely even notice. So what’s the point?

  “Let’s do one thing at a time,” No Way said.

  “Seriously, how much do you think it’ll run?”

  “Five dollars.”

  “Right.”

  “And, no, I’m not going to do it.” He took a long drag, incinerating more than half of the shaft, and stubbed the rest of it out on the side of a hand-sized fire extinguisher.

  “I don’t want you to do it,” I said, “I want you to stay healthy and help on the next one.” And I just hope the world stays existent for more than another nine months, I thought. Just so I can exact my horrible revenge. After that, who cares?

  Someone lit a lamp on the other side of the long room. I noticed the rain had gone by and it was getting dark outside. No Way leaned back and closed his eyes, as I remembered was his habit. I stood up and tottered over to the monitor area. The screens said it was T-5:49 hours. From when I lift off. I ought to be running through the drill, I thought.

  Marena had come over.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she said.

  I said great. Ana materialized and whispered into Marena’s ear, obviously telling her not to let me run off. I turned toward the door. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” I figured Marena answered.

  I pushed out through the flap. Marena followed. Keeping a six-foot leash on me, I thought. As though I didn’t have a locator on my ear anyway. As though I might sneak off. Well, you couldn’t blame them. I was already the biggest investment any of them had ever made. Millions and millions of dollars just to run an electric comb through my frontal cortices.

  Marena got in front of me and picked her way down the deer path toward the river. I was about to pull the flashlight out of the little ES-approved survival pack and then realized I could still see. The path ran through these thin, twisty ixnich’i’zotz trees, and it was easy to trip over their roots. Incidentally, ixnich’i’zotz means palo de colmillos de murciélago, that is, “bat fang wood,” and they’re called that because their little fruits have two fangy spines, and the ancient city—Ix for short—was named after them. The undergrowth was wet under my snake boots. ES had put an upside-down lancha in a crook of the riverbank where it would be hidden under foliage, and I sat down on it. It wasn’t totally dark yet, but the water was black. It was only about ten yards across at this point, though, so it didn’t look intimidating. The insect choir was out, but it still felt like there was something missing.

  Marena sat down next to me but not right up against. Uncharacteristically, I almost didn’t notice.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, but I probably sounded pretty distant and unsympathetic. She put her hand on my shoulder for about a half-second.

  “You’re hyperventilating,” she said.

  “Well, normally I infraventilate.”

  “Have you been in swimming yet?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I went in this morning, it’s great. Also Michael certified it crocodile-free. And piranha-free.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “Piranhas live on a whole nother continent.”

  “Excellent.” She was wearing a kind of a top and a bottom, and she wriggled out of them. Whoa. Quieto neron.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, trying not to gawk but not to look away, either, because that’s equally stupid. “I’m always uncomfortable.”

 
; “Just don’t get any ideas.” She balanced on one foot and pulled off a pair—well, “pair” is a little strong—of barely-there panties. Her body was sexy in an ethnic way, tiny, slightly chunky, and rounded off at the edges, and she wore it with that kind of Euro-aristocratic unconcern, like, oh, please, grow up, we’re all adults here. Although of course we’re not. She had very little pubic hair but it didn’t look shaved, just, like, sparse.

  “I’ve never had an idea in my life,” I said. It was too late to turn around without giving the game away, so I put my Kleenex hand into my front pocket in order to nonchalantly wrench my mighty verga into its full upright position, but she’d already spotted the move.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, lots of guys tend to get erections when they see me naked.” Her nipples were perky and inviting in the gray light, like miniature truffles from La Maison du Chocolat.

  “I’m sure, I mean, one would hope so, it’s biological … ly …”

  She waded out on tiptoes and slid splashlessly under the surface. I took the opportunity to readjust myself. The guy thing is so embarrassing, it’s like, after two hundred million years since we separated from arthropods there’s only one hydraulic muscle left in the human body, in fact only half of all human bodies, and guess which it is. Just this automatic grasshopper ready to jump. Women are mammals and men are insects. Her head and shoulders bobbed up.

  “Damn, this is refreshing stuff,” her head said.

  “The worst thing you have to worry about around here are the really big snapping turtles,” I said. “Although you should also check for leeches.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “I dare you to come in.”

  “Well—”

  “Oh, wait, we have to address the sexual-harassment issue. The fact is, you’re an outside contractor and technically I’m not the one hiring you.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, “don’t worry about it—”

  “Even so, you could get me fired, not that that seems like a big deal anymore, in fact if I could get it together to still worry about something like that I’d be happier than—”

  “Please, you needn’t give it another thought,” I said. Hmm, I wondered, is this leading anywhere really interesting? I’ve been thinking about her for weeks and now I’m sort of flustering up at the moment of—

  “Okay,” she said, “great, come on, the water’s, it’s dark.”

  “Lovely, dark, and deep?”

  “Yeah, like me, come on, don’t be a felch.”

  “Hmm. Is it all right if I come in fully clothed?” It felt odd talking with this disembodied head in the deepening dark.

  “No, you have to bare your body as you have your soul.”

  “What if Gulag shows up and kills me?”

  “You mean Grgur?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry. Is that like, uh, Trog or Grout or some kind of, you know, cave dude name?”

  “It’s Croatian for Gregory.”

  “Oh. Cute.”

  “He’s not going to show up,” she said.

  “Hmm.”

  “Okay,” she said, “stop stalling or I’ll think less of you.”

  I said okay. I yanked off my boots with concealed difficulty and dug my way out of my Menelaus—I mean, many layers—of fabric. I left the ear thing in. I waded out, imagining I was going to step on a not yet totally defleshed skull. Like a lot of river water in the tropics it was weirdly cold. The bottom was silt with the occasional pebble. Before I knew she was close, Marena got one hand on the top of my head and pushed it down under the water. I only swallowed a little of it and managed to get myself together before coming up.

  “Your head feels so weird,” she said, “you’re like a new Chia Pig.”

  “Yeah.” I felt soft human parts brushing against me underwater.

  “So, listen,” she said, “I want you to fuck me but I’m too stressed out right now to go through a whole foreplay thing or like any drippy cuddling around or anything. Okay?”

  “Uh—right. Okay, great.” Oh my God, I thought. OMG OMG OMG—

  “You sure? You up for it?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. Ridiculously, I was all high-school-dance achy-breaky dizzy. Wait, what about the STD Talk? I thought vaguely. Although of course, she’d seen my medical reports. And I wasn’t about to look a gift tuna in the mouth. I’m sure she’s fine. Right? Right. She has a kid, for God’s sake, that makes her fine. Likely to be fine. Also, I was a little nervous that somebody might be listening, but I guess she figured we were out of range of any nosy parabolics Ana might have set up.

  “Not to twist your arm.”

  “No,” I said, “I mean, yeah, that’s, great, this is quite romantic—”

  “All this jungle and shit is romantic enough.” She sort of rock-climbed up my front. She didn’t weigh a lot anyway, and so in the water she felt like a ten-year-old. Why is this happening now? I wondered. Motive? Cheer me up? Release the sexual tension common among coworkers in stressful fields? Get me all relaxed and cozy before the big download? Because I’m about to die, sort of? Never mind, don’t look a gift hearse—

  “Don’t worry, it’s not just a pity fuck,” she said, reading my mind again.

  “Huh? Oh, no, pity’s okay, I mean, I’ll take it—”

  “It’s not, you’re cute, I’m totally wet for you, I’ve just been a little preoccupied lately. Mommy stuff.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Okay, come on.” She dove under, popped up, shook her head like a Labrador retriever, and climbed out onto the bank. I followed. You could still just see outlines in the dark. She stood on the thin band of exposed silt between the reeds and the water, like a G-scale beach, whipped her hair around, whirled it into a helix, and wrung it out. I had it enough together to stand close to her, but I hesitated and before I could do anything to feel more in control of the situation she grabbed my—well, you know, my … hmm. What to call it? Tumescent manhood? Nine-Inch Nail? The Cat in the Hat? Anyway, she grabbed it and twisted it, like her hair.

  “Okay, check this out,” she said. “I’m beta-testing these things.”

  She knelt down, grabbled around in one of the pockets of her deflated shorts, and un-Ziplocked something that turned out to be one of these new kind of condoms that only go over the glans.

  “Gird up your loins,” she said.

  I managed, barely, to don the device. It had some kind of nonpermanent Krazy Glue or whatever inside and it felt a little weird, but I guess still better than the old Hefty bags.

  “Okay, come on,” she said. “Just vadge, though, okay? I know it’s retro but I don’t have the engery for anal right now.”

  “No, that’s great,” I said. “Hang on, I’m just, uh, I’m screwing my courage to the sticking place—”

  “Come on. You’ve got until the count of two. Uno, … uno y medio … nnh. Excellent.” She grabbed me around the neck, pulled herself up to face level, wrapped her legs around me, and steered my whatever we decided on above into her—her yoni? Batcave? Su Tusa? Concha? El Gallo? Anyway, we were finally there.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “Yeah, how about that? You feel how tight I am?”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I said. It was like I was trying to wriggle into a size-one halter dress.

  “That’s last year’s vaginoplasty.”

  “I thought you said you had a C-section.”

  “I did, it’s just, you know, the modern girl gets her unit taken in every once in a while, whatever. It’s like having your teeth whitened.”

  “Great, that’s, uh, very thoughtful of—”

  “See, that’s the scar of Max.” She guided one or the other of my hands to her shall-we-say bikini line. I couldn’t feel anything but fat-free skin but then I distinguished a long curved ridge, as delicate as an enamel pinstripe on my ’73 Plymouth, whence the boy had emerged in 2004.

  “They did a good job on that, huh?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess these days having a kid is as easy as, uh, getting a manicure.”

  “Rather. Unnnnhh! ”

  I didn’t think I could stand up much longer, so I knelt down and eased her arched back down into the silt.


  “Dude,” she said. Dudette, I thought of saying, but instead I managed to kiss her. She kissed back, briefly. Her face had the bittersweet taste of diethyltoluamide from the Ultrathon, and mixed with sweat it made a kind of girl-flavor Shasta.

  “You’re kidding, nobody fucks missionary anymore,” she said.

 

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