Hieroglyph

by Ed Finn

  They didn’t know she was pregnant. And they wouldn’t know for a good while, at least. They had time.

  “WE DON’T HAVE ANY time. Arizona cuts off at twelve weeks.”

  “Seriously?” In Mexico, the procedure was allowed until twenty. They’d have a full five months, two months longer than the probationary period in Mariposa. Ulicez chewed halfheartedly at the remainder of his elotes. The lime here tasted all wrong. Too acidic. Not sweet. And the cheese was too salty. He had no room to complain, though. Elena couldn’t even keep hers down.

  “Do you have any idea how far along you are?”

  “For the millionth time, no.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. But it doesn’t matter, now, does it? We’re stuck. If I go to a doctor, they’ll know, and we’ll get kicked out. If I don’t go to a doctor, we’ll be accused of lying when they figure it out, and then we’ll get kicked out.” She smoothed her hair back. “Fuck. I’ll have to keep buying tampons just to grief the data.”

  “We don’t know if it goes that far—”

  “Of course it goes that far, Ulicez. Of course it does. You think they’d let a whole data-mining infrastructure that’s worked well enough for decades just sit there, going to waste? Why do you think they issued us special discount cards at Target? Because Target is the best at this game. Target probably already knows I’m knocked up.”

  Her voice caught. By the time Ulicez stood up to rub her shoulders, she had swiped the tears away with the heel of her hand.

  “I hate these fucking hormones,” she said.

  “I know.” He kept squeezing. “You should try to eat something. Even if it’s just ice cream.”

  She sniffed. “That might be nice.”

  “I’ll go get some.” He paused at the freezer. “Should I even bother with a bowl?”

  “Shut up.”

  Ulicez kept scooping. He wished they had condensed milk to go on top. If they had, he could simmer the can in a pot of water and caramelize its contents. Elena would probably like that. His own mother had mentioned enjoying it when she was carrying him. Jesus, what were they going to tell his mother?

  “If they would just stock some damn misoprostol in this godforsaken country, I could take care of this whole thing by myself.”

  There was no condensed milk. Ulicez picked up the bowl of ice cream and set it down in front of his wife. Even the dishware was bland here. He’d seen more interesting designs at his last trip to Denny’s. “Misoprostol?”

  “Cytotec. It’s for ulcers. And abortions. Well. Misoprostol and some other thing. That’s what RU-486 is.”

  “And they don’t sell it here?”

  “Nope. Not without a prescription.” She laughed. “But they do in Mexico! My sister even asked me if I wanted to take some with me. You know. Just in case. Shit.”

  “Eat your ice cream.”

  She dug in. “Thank you.”

  Ulicez took a pull of his beer. He watched the smaller kitchen screen embedded in the refrigerator. Madrigal wasn’t going to get anywhere in this game if he kept flailing around the pitch like that with his elbows sticking out and his knees going nowhere. The man ran like a child. It was only because he was big that they’d let him into the league; he was a bruiser and he had a chilling effect on a passing game. He was a solid wall of muscle and bone that just plunked itself down on the pitch, looming down over the triangle formations of smaller, nimbler players.

  A wall.

  Of course.

  “To save us some time,” he said, “let me ask you one question.”

  Her spoon clinked in the bowl. “Sure.”

  “Would you be comfortable buying it online? This miso thing.”

  “It would have to go through customs.” She snorted. “Whatever that means, out here.”

  “Right then.” He nodded to himself, then to her. “There’s a way around this. Or a way through it, anyway. But it’ll involve me getting some things from work.”

  FIRST, THEY WERE GOING to need a spider bot.

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. First, they were going to need a way into the labyrinth. And a couple of shovels. And then they were going to need a spider bot. And then, after that . . .

  After that they would need the Badger himself.

  “Are you sure he’ll even remember the code?” Elena asked him, in the shower.

  “He’s the one who taught it to me, so he had fucking better,” Ulicez said. “Where did you say that postcard was?”

  On the postcard, he expressed a longing for his mother’s plum jam, the likes of which he had not found in the land of the free and the home of the brave. He then mentioned an event that took place in April 1986: Chernobyl. It was surprisingly easy to tie plum jam and nuclear disaster together—all he had to do was make a joke about his mother’s inability to properly latch a pressure cooker, and done was done.

  “When should we say we’d like to see him again?” Ulicez asked, carefully.

  “As soon as possible,” Elena said. “Tell him we wish we could spend the weekend with him. You know. Like we used to.”

  At the mailbox, she turned to him and whispered: “Plum jam? That’s the secret code word?”

  He nodded. “Sure is.”

  “Plum jam means abortion pills. You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because I remember, and because—”

  “No, no. Why plum jam?”

  He winced. “If this all works out the way we want, the meaning should become pretty clear.”

  The next day he asked to take a look at the autonomous pipeline inspectors, “just to be sure he was familiar with them.”

  His boss thought that was a great idea. His boss was a Ph.D. who insisted on being called by his first name, Terry. Terry was a short, skinny man whose blond hair was turning white and whose salmon-colored polo shirts tended to highlight the rosacea around his nose. But he seemed genuinely happy to be in Mariposa: he kept a golf bag in his office, and he insisted that there would be a team-building event out on the links some Friday or other.

  Each spider bot was kept in an opaque plastic terrarium about the size of a shoebox. The boxes rustled as he strode past. Pressure sensors in their claws must have sensed his movement. He willed himself to ignore the inherent creepiness of their blind skittering. He needed one of them. They needed one.

  Way at the end of the steel racks was a box of various bots in states of disrepair. The sticker said they were older models; the parts didn’t exist to fix them any longer. “They’re spares,” his boss said, when he carried the box out of the room with him. “We just use them for the parts that still work, when the printer gets buggy.”

  “Could I make one on my own, at home?” Ulicez asked. “I wouldn’t be using company time. I just want to get to know them better if I’m going to be fixing them, and it’s probably better if I just tinker alone on my own—”

  “—in a low-stakes environment. I hear you.” Terry beamed. “No problem. Just run them through the scanner and sign out for the manifest it spits out.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

  “And I, for one, appreciate you taking the initiative! We need more of that kind of thinking around here.”

  And then Terry winked at him.

  Ulicez had the strangest feeling that he had just scored some points. Maybe the game wasn’t so random after all.

  “WHEN DID YOU START working on this?”

  Ulicez shone his flashlight down the tunnel. It was still as he remembered it: a surprisingly cool, clean space seven feet high and five feet across. Cheap, unfinished Home Depot wainscoting secured the earthen walls. Orange and black extension cords extended all the way down the ceiling; back in the day they’d had it hooked to generators in basements on the other side of the border and lit the thing with utility lamps purchased one hopeful Saturday on clearance at the last auto shop in town. Now both those buildings that supplied electricity were gone, and Ulicez and Elena had to
make do with the flashlights.

  “I was a kid,” he answered. “The work had already started before I was born, I think. I mean, they built a lot of these tunnels back then. This is just one they never found.”

  “Did you ever move anybody?”

  Ulicez shook his head. “My dad didn’t like me to do any of the real work. He just needed help with the engineering. You know, telling guys where and how to dig, how to shore it up, stuff like that.”

  “It looks pretty solid.”

  “It is. But you can’t be too careful.” Ulicez put down his backpack and withdrew a shoebox from it. Carefully upending it on the ground, he waited until the spider bot had crawled out. Lights on each of its eight legs twinkled to life, and he watched as it skittered on ahead of them, forming tight spirals from the floor to the right wall to the ceiling, down the left wall and back again, over and over.

  “I hate those things,” Elena said. “They’re creepy.”

  “They save lives. They work in pipelines all over the world.”

  “And they do tunnels, too?”

  Ulicez smiled. “Yes. They do tunnels, too.”

  They followed the spider along the tunnel, pausing when it paused, waiting as it fired light from its joints at various sections of wall. Occasionally its green glow would shift into yellow, but it never turned red. That was good; Ulicez hadn’t supervised the entire tunnel build, but he had confidence in the guys who did the job. The cartel had paid them good money, after all. And there were certain consequences for not doing the job right.

  “I wish I could have spent more time with him,” Elena said. “Your father, I mean.”

  “Me too.” Ulicez watched the spider appear to work something out before scrabbling on ahead. “He liked you. He liked us, together.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Mom said so, anyway. After.”

  Elena took his hand. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

  Ulicez pulled up short. He let his flashlight dangle from his hand. It was easier to say the words in the shadows. “Stop. It’s like you said. Point six percent. You couldn’t see that coming. Nobody could. I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “But—”

  “Stop. Really. It’s done. We’re taking care of it. Together.” He pointed down the tunnel with his flashlight. “El Tejón is down there, waiting. It’s all going to be fine.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t it?”

  “There’s going to be a lot of blood. It’ll hurt.”

  “But I’ll be there. And we can go to a doctor. We can say it’s a miscarriage.”

  Elena looked like she wanted to say something more, but instead she just launched herself at him and wrapped both her arms around him like she expected him to blow away somehow. He set his chin on her head after a minute.

  “Are you having second thoughts?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “We have to get the drugs, Elena. Having some choice is better than having no choice at all. That’s why we’re here. Or there. In Mariposa, I mean. That’s why we came.”

  She sniffed. “I know.” She hugged him even harder, which he hadn’t known was possible. The woman was a lot stronger than she looked. “It’s just that you’re being so nice. And so brave. And I’d like a little more of that in the world, you know?”

  She pulled away and wiped her eyes. She smiled. “Fucking hormones. Sorry.”

  He reached out and held her hand. “Let’s just get the stuff. If you decide this isn’t what you want, then—”

  “No, it is what I want, I just—”

  “Let’s just keep it a decision, okay? You can’t say it’s a real decision if there aren’t any other options.”

  She appeared to gather herself. “Okay.”

  They were still holding hands when El Tejón appeared at the end of the tunnel. He was in some sort of gentleman adventurer costume, down to the pith helmet and elegant riding boots.

  “Why are you dressed as the Most Interesting Man in the World?” Ulicez asked.

  “It was the only way they’d let me inspect the rapid transit system,” the old man said. He waved a fake badge at them. “Had to get underground somehow.”

  Ulicez whistled. “Wow.”

  Tejón brought Elena in for a hug and a kiss. Then he brought out a couple of boxes. “The directions are on the tape,” he said. “And this one is some Valium. For the pain.”

  She beamed. “You think of everything!”

  “Make sure to drink lots of water first. Maybe take this with a little food.”

  “I will.”

  “And you’ll have to go to the hospital. Are you ready for that?”

  Elena’s lips pursed. “Yes,” she said after a long moment. “I think so.”

  Tejón sighed heavily. “The sooner you use these, the better. The longer you wait, the less they work. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” Tejón looked at Ulicez. “You take care of this one. She’s going to need you.”

  “I know.” Something occurred to him. “Have you spoken to my mother?”

  Tejón shook his head. “There’s no reason for her to know, I don’t think.”

  “Agreed.”

  Tejón tried to smile. “I wish things could be different for you two. But they will be different, soon enough. Very different. You’ll be Americans!”

  “We’re already Americans,” Elena said. “This whole continent is America.”

  Tejón’s laugh echoed down the tunnel. He gave them each hugs and kisses. Then he shooed them on their way. When Ulicez turned around, the old man was gone. He really was a badger.

  “Should it be glowing red like that?” Elena tugged on his sleeve. “The spider? Isn’t red bad?”

  Ulicez aimed his flashlight down the tunnel. A cloud of dust was wafting their way. “Yes,” he said. “Red is bad. Very bad.” He pointed the flashlight at the ceiling. A fine crack had worked its way along under the cable. He thought he heard trucks. He watched root hairs trembling in the light. Then he was digging in his backpack.

  “What’s happening?”

  “There’s been a cave-in up ahead,” he said. “We have to dig. Come on.”

  “But we’re not on the other side yet! Are we?”

  Ulicez checked the map. Shit. “No. We’re not. We’re . . . we’re in the solar farm. We’re on the American side, still.” He withdrew one shovel, then another. He held it out to Elena.

  She refused to take it. “Ulicez. Think. They’re going to find two Mexicans digging their way out of a tunnel. They’ll see it. The solar people. They’ll see us trying to get back into America.”

  Ulicez looked back at the cloud of dirt. Fuck. As if on cue, the spider bounded back to him. It was covered in grit. One of its leg joints had a pebble stuck in it. Its antennae were broken. Whatever had happened up ahead, it was still happening.

  “Elena,” he said. “We have to dig our way out. Now. Before we’re buried alive.”

  “And saying we make it out, what do we tell the people up there?” She pointed at the ceiling.

  Ulicez started digging. “I’ll think of something.”

  “I have a feeling I won’t like it.”

  “Oh, I’m almost certain that you won’t.”

  “GET NAKED. NOW.”

  “What?”

  “I have an idea.”

  Elena gave him a look that said this had better be good. But she kicked off her shoes and started stripping anyway. White and green light strobed across her increasing expanse of skin. Ulicez unbuckled his pants and shucked them down.

  Then he tackled his wife.

  “What the fuck? You asshole, my bra isn’t even—”

  “STOP! SHOW US YOUR HANDS!”

  Ulicez grinned. He knelt down on the ground and held up his hands. Beneath him, Elena shot him a look that was pure death. Grudgingly, she got up on her knees and held her hands up. Behind them, keys jingled and flashlights bobbed. Ulicez had one moment to take a look around at the massive bl
ack lotuses open to the night around them, and how the stars were reflected in their gleaming surfaces, before his hands were forced down and back and enclosed in bread-tie cuffs. A very distant point was surprised and pleased at how well he was taking it. This was everything he’d ever feared, everything he’d worked his whole life to avoid: getting caught on the wrong side of the border, getting arrested. Flashlights and weapons and the desert cruel and quiet all around them.

  “What the . . .” The voice was panting, winded. Whoever they were, they’d run.

  “Ma’am, are you doing okay?” another voice asked. A woman. Stern.

  “What?” Elena almost brought her hands down, then appeared to think better of it. “I mean, yes. No. I’m okay.”

  “Was this man attacking you?”

  Of course. He almost laughed. Then something wiser in him reminded him that he was in front of people holding Tasers, and he reined himself in. The border botflies had motion-activated computer vision programmed to recognize all sorts of motion: running, walking, jumping. It made sense that fucking would be on the list. It was pretty distinctive, after all. And to the cameras, what Ulicez had done probably looked a lot like an attempted rape.

  “What? No! This man is my husband.”

  “Marital rape is a serious problem, ma’am, you don’t need to be afraid of telling—”

  “He wasn’t trying to rape me, you fucking idiots!” Elena brought her hands down and turned around. “He was trying to fuck me. We live over there.” She pointed vaguely north, at the bright lights of Mariposa. “We . . .” She was panting, now. The adrenaline was clearly washing out of her, leaving her at a loss for words. “We were just . . .”

  “We just wanted to get away from the cameras,” Ulicez said. His voice sounded remarkably steady in his ears. “From the observation. We’re on probation, in Mariposa, and there’s this points system, and it’s basically to see if you love your wife enough, and . . .” He licked his lips. “It kinda . . . puts a damper on things? You know?”