The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 1

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Finally another shower comes over and yields us six ounces of water apiece. When the sunset envelops the world in golden smoke, we squat on the sandbar to eat wet raw mullet and Instant Breakfast crumbs. The women are now in shorts, neat but definitely not sexy.

  “I never realized how refreshing raw fish is,” Mrs. Parsons says pleasantly. Her daughter chuckles, also pleasantly. She’s on Mamma’s far side away from Estéban and me. I have Mrs. Parsons figured now; Mother Hen protecting only chick from male predators. That’s all right with me. I came here to fish.

  But something is irritating me. The damn women haven’t complained once, you understand. Not a peep, not a quaver, no personal manifestations whatever. They’re like something out of a manual.

  “You really seem at home in the wilderness, Mrs. Parsons. You do much camping?”

  “Oh, goodness no.” Diffident laugh. “Not since my girl scout days. Oh, look—are those man-of-war birds?”

  Answer a question with a question. I wait while the frigate birds sail nobly into the sunset.

  “Bethesda... Would I be wrong in guessing you work for Uncle Sam?”

  “Why, yes. You must be very familiar with Washington, Mr. Fenton. Does your work bring you there often?”

  Anywhere but on our sandbar the little ploy would have worked. My hunter’s gene twitches.

  “Which agency are you with?”

  She gives up gracefully. “Oh, just GSA records. I’m a librarian.”

  Of course. I know her now, all the Mrs. Parsonses in records divisions, accounting sections, research branches, personnel and administration offices. Tell Mrs. Parsons we need a recap on the external service contracts for fiscal ’73. So Yucatán is on the tours now? Pity.... I offer her the tired little joke. “You know where the bodies are buried.”

  She smiles deprecatingly and stands up. “It does get dark quickly, doesn’t?”

  Time to get back into the plane.

  A Hock of ibis are circling us, evidently accustomed to roosting in our fig tree. Estéban produces a machete and a Mayan string hammock. He proceeds to sling it between tree and plane, refusing help. His machete stroke is noticeably tentative.

  The Parsons are taking a pee behind the tail vane. I hear one of them slip and squeal faintly. When they come back over the hull, Mrs. Parsons asks, “Might we sleep in the hammock, Captain?”

  Estéban splits an unbelieving grin. I protest about rain and mosquitoes.

  “Oh, we have insect repellent and we do enjoy fresh air.”

  The air is rushing by about force five and colder by the minute.

  “We have our raincoats,” the girl adds cheerfully.

  Well, okay, ladies. We dangerous males retire inside the damp cabin. Through the wind I hear the women laugh softly now and then, apparently cozy in their chilly ibis roost. A private insanity, I decide. I know myself for the least threatening of men; my noncharisma has been in fact an asset jobwise, over the years. Are they having fantasies about Estéban? Or maybe they really are fresh-air nuts... Sleep comes for me in invisible diesels roaring by on the reef outside.

  We emerge dry-mouthed into a vast windy salmon sunrise. A diamond chip of sun breaks out of the sea and promptly submerges in cloud. I go to work with the rod and some mullet bait while two showers detour around us. Breakfast is a strip of wet barracuda apiece.

  The Parsons continue stoic and helpful. Under Estéban’s direction they set up a section of cowling for a gasoline flare in case we hear a plane, but nothing goes over except one unseen jet droning toward Panama. The wind howls, hot and dry and full of coral dust. So are we.

  “They look first in sea,” Estéban remarks. His aristocratic frontal slope is beaded with sweat; Mrs. Parsons watches him concernedly. I watch the cloud blanket tearing by above, getting higher and dryer and thicker. While that lasts nobody is going to find us, and the water business is now unfunny.

  Finally I borrow Estéban’s machete and hack a long light pole. “There’s a stream coming in back there, I saw it from the plane. Can’t be more than two, three miles.”

  “I’m afraid the raft’s torn.” Mrs. Parsons shows me the cracks in the orange plastic; irritatingly, it’s a Delaware label.

  “All right,” I hear myself announce. “The tide’s going down. If we cut the good end off that air tube, I can haul water back in it. I’ve waded flats before.”

  Even to me it sounds crazy.

  “Stay by plane,” Estéban says. He’s right, of course. He’s also clearly running a fever. I look at the overcast and taste grit and old barracuda. The hell with the manual.

  When I start cutting up the raft, Estéban tells me to take the serape. “You stay one night.” He’s right about that, too; I’ll have to wait out the tide.

  “I’ll come with you,” says Mrs. Parsons calmly.

  I simply stare at her. What new madness has got into Mother Hen? Does she imagine Estéban is too battered to be functional? While I’m being astounded, my eyes take in the fact that Mrs. Parsons is now quite rosy around the knees, with her hair loose and a sunburn starting on her nose. A trim, in fact a very neat, shading-forty.

  “Look, that stuff is horrible going. Mud up to your ears and water over your head.”

  “I’m really quite fit and I swim a great deal. I’ll try to keep up. Two would be much safer, Mr. Fenton, and we can bring more water.”

  She’s serious. Well, I’m about as fit as a marshmallow at this time of winter, and I can’t pretend I’m depressed by the idea of company. So be it.

  “Let me show Miss Parsons how to work this rod.”

  Miss Parsons is even rosier and more windblown, and she’s not clumsy with my tackle. A good girl, Miss Parsons, in her nothing way. We cut another staff and get some gear together. At the last minute Estéban shows how sick he feels: he offers me the machete. I thank him, but no; I’m used to my Wirkkala knife. We tie some air into the plastic tube for a float and set out along the sandiest-looking line.

  Estéban raises one dark palm. “Buen viaje.” Miss Parsons has hugged her mother and gone to cast from the mangrove. She waves. We wave.

  An hour later we’re barely out of waving distance. The going is purely godawful. The sand keeps dissolving into silt you can’t walk on or swim through, and the bottom is spiked with dead mangrove spears. We flounder from one pothole to the next, scaring up rays and turtles and hoping to god we don’t kick a moray eel. Where we’re not soaked in slime, we’re desiccated, and we smell like the Old Cretaceous.

  Mrs. Parsons keeps up doggedly. I only have to pull her out once. When I do so, I notice the sandbar is now out of sight.

  Finally we reach the gap in the mangrove line I thought was the creek. It turns out to open into another arm of the bay, with more mangroves ahead. And the tide is coming in.

  “I’ve had the world’s lousiest idea.”

  Mrs. Parsons only says mildly, “It’s so different from the view from the plane.”

  I revise my opinion of the girl scouts, and we plow on past the mangroves toward the smoky haze that has to be shore. The sun is setting in our faces, making it hard to see. Ibis and herons fly up around us, and once a big hermit spooks ahead, his fin cutting a rooster tail. We fall into more potholes. The flashlights get soaked. I am having fantasies of the mangrove as universal obstacle; it’s hard to recall I ever walked down a street, for instance, without stumbling over or under or through mangrove roots. And the sun is dropping down, down.

  Suddenly we hit a ledge and fall over it into a cold flow.

  “The stream! It’s fresh water!”

  We guzzle and garble and douse our heads; it’s the best drink I remember. “Oh my, oh my—!” Mrs. Parsons is laughing right out loud.

  “That dark place over to the right looks like real land.”

  We flounder across the flow and follow a hard shelf, which turns into solid bank and rises over our heads. Shortly there’s a break beside a clump of spiny bromels, and we scramble up and flop down at the top
, dripping and stinking. Out of sheer reflex my arm goes around my companion’s shoulder—but Mrs. Parsons isn’t there; she’s up on her knees peering at the burnt-over plain around us.

  “It’s so good to see land one can walk on!” The tone is too innocent. Noli me tangere.

  “Don’t try it.” I’m exasperated; the muddy little woman, what does she think? “That ground out there is a crush of ashes over muck, and it’s full of stubs. You can go in over your knees.”

  “It seems firm here.”

  “We’re in an alligator nursery. That was the slide we came up. Don’t worry, by now the old lady’s doubtless on her way to be made into handbags.”

  “What a shame.”

  “I better set a line down in the stream while I can still see.”

  I slide back down and rig a string of hooks that may get us breakfast. When I get back Mrs. Parsons is wringing muck out of the serape.

  “I’m glad you warned me, Mr. Fenton. It is treacherous.”

  “Yeah.” I’m over my irritation; god knows I don’t want to tangere Mrs. Parsons, even if I weren’t beat down to mush. “In its quiet way, Yucatán is a tough place to get around in. You can see why the Mayas built roads. Speaking of which—look!”

  The last of the sunset is silhouetting a small square shape a couple of kilometers inland; a Maya ruina with a fig tree growing out of it.

  “Lot of those around. People think they were guard towers.”

  “What a deserted-feeling land.”

  “Let’s hope it’s deserted by mosquitoes.”

  We slump down in the ’gator nursery and share the last malt bar, watching the stars slide in and out of the blowing clouds. The bugs aren’t too bad; maybe the burn did them in. And it isn’t hot anymore, either—in fact, it’s not even warm, wet as we are. Mrs. Parsons continues tranquilly interested in Yucatán and unmistakably uninterested in togetherness.

  Just as I’m beginning to get aggressive notions about how we’re going to spend the night if she expects me to give her the serape, she stands up, scuffs at a couple of hummocks, and says, “I expect this is as good a place as any, isn’t it, Mr. Fenton?”

  With which she spreads out the raft bag for a pillow and lies down on her side in the dirt with exactly half the serape over her and the other corner folded neatly open. Her small back is toward me.

  The demonstration is so convincing that I’m halfway under my share of serape before the preposterousness of it stops me.

  “By the way. My name is Don.”

  “Oh, of course.” Her voice is graciousness itself. “I’m Ruth.”

  I get in not quite touching her, and we lie there like two fish on a plate, exposed to the stars and smelling the smoke in the wind and feeling things underneath us. It is absolutely the most intimately awkward moment I’ve had in years.

  The woman doesn’t mean one thing to me, but the obtrusive recessiveness of her, the defiance of her little rump eight inches from my fly—for two pesos I’d have those shorts down and introduce myself. If I were twenty years younger. If I wasn’t so bushed.... But the twenty years and the exhaustion are there, and it comes to me wryly that Mrs. Ruth Parsons has judged things to a nicety. If I were twenty years younger, she wouldn’t be here. Like the butterfish that float around a sated barracuda, only to vanish away the instant his intent changes, Mrs. Parsons knows her little shorts are safe. Those firmly filled little shorts, so close...

  A warm nerve stirs in my groin—and just as it does I become aware of a silent emptiness beside me. Mrs. Parsons is imperceptibly inching away. Did my breathing change? Whatever, I’m perfectly sure that if my hand reached, she’d be elsewhere—probably announcing her intention to take a dip. The twenty years bring a chuckle to my throat, and I relax.

  “Good night, Ruth.”

  “Good night, Don.”

  And believe it or not, we sleep, while the armadas of the wind roar overhead.

  Light wakes me—a cold white glare.

  My first thought is ’gator hunters. Best to manifest ourselves as turistas as fast as possible. I scramble up, noting that Ruth has dived under the bromel dump.

  “Quién estás? Al socorro! Help, señores!”

  No answer except the light goes out, leaving me blind.

  I yell some more in a couple of languages. It stays dark. There’s a vague scrabbling, whistling sound somewhere in the burn-off. Liking everything less by the minute, I try a speech about our plane having crashed and we need help.

  A very narrow pencil of light flicks over us and snaps off.

  “Eh-ep,” says a blurry voice, and something metallic twitters. They for sure aren’t locals. I’m getting unpleasant ideas.

  “Yes, help!”

  Something goes crackle-crackle whish-whish, and all sounds fade away.

  “What the holy hell!” I stumble toward where they were.

  “Look.” Ruth whispers behind me. “Over by the ruin.”

  I look and catch a multiple flicker which winks out fast.

  “A camp?”

  And I take two more blind strides. My leg goes down through the crust, and a spike spears me just where you stick the knife in to unjoint a drumstick.

  By the pain that goes through my bladder I recognize that my trick kneecap has caught it.

  For instant basket-case you can’t beat kneecaps. First you discover your knee doesn’t bend anymore, so you try putting some weight on it, and a bayonet goes up your spine and unhinges your jaw. Little grains of gristle have got into the sensitive bearing surface. The knee tries to buckle and can’t, and mercifully you fall down.

  Ruth helps me back to the serape.

  “What a fool, what a god-forgotten imbecile—”

  “Not at all, Don. It was perfectly natural.” We strike matches; her fingers push mine aside, exploring. “I think it’s in place, but it’s swelling fast. I’ll lay a wet handkerchief on it. We’ll have to wait for morning to check the cut. Were they poachers, do you think?”

  “Probably,” I lie. What I think they were is smugglers.

  She comes back with a soaked bandanna and drapes it on. “We must have frightened them. That light... it seemed so bright.”

  “Some hunting party. People do crazy things around here.”

  “Perhaps they’ll come back in the morning.”

  “Could be.”

  Ruth pulls up the wet serape, and we say good-night again. Neither of us is mentioning how we’re going to get back to the plane without help.

  I lie staring south where Alpha Centauri is blinking in and out of the overcast and cursing myself for the sweet mess I’ve made. My first idea is giving way to an even less pleasing one.

  Smuggling, around here, is a couple of guys in an outboard meeting a shrimp boat by the reef. They don’t light up the sky or have some kind of swamp buggy that goes whoosh. Plus a big camp... paramilitary-type equipment?

  I’ve seen a report of Guévarista infiltrators operating on the British Honduran border, which is about a hundred kilometers—sixty miles—south of here. Right under those clouds. If that’s what looked us over, I’ll be more than happy if they don’t come back...

  I wake up in pelting rain, alone. My first move confirms that my leg is as expected—a giant misplaced erection bulging out of my shorts. I raise up painfully to see Ruth standing by the bromels, looking over the bay. Solid wet nimbus is pouring out of the south.

  “No planes today.”

  “Oh, good morning, Don. Should we look at that cut now?”

  “It’s minimal.” In fact the skin is hardly broken, and no deep puncture. Totally out of proportion to the havoc inside.

  “Well, they have water to drink,” Ruth says tranquilly. “Maybe those hunters will come back. I’ll go see if we have a fish—that is, can I help you in any way, Don?”

  Very tactful. I emit an ungracious negative, and she goes off about her private concerns.

  They certainly are private, too; when I recover from my own sanitary efforts,
she’s still away. Finally I hear splashing.

  “It’s a big fish!” More splashing. Then she climbs up the bank with a three-pound mangrove snapper—and something else.

  It isn’t until after the messy work of filleting the fish that I begin to notice.

  She’s making a smudge of chaff and twigs to singe the fillets, small hands very quick, tension in that female upper lip. The rain has eased off for the moment; we’re sluicing wet but warm enough. Ruth brings me my fish on a mangrove skewer and sits back on her heels with an odd breathy sigh.

  “Aren’t you joining me?”

  “Oh, of course.” She gets a strip and picks at it, saying quickly, “We either have too much salt or too little, don’t we? I should fetch some brine.” Her eyes are roving from nothing to noplace.

  “Good thought.” I hear another sigh and decide the girl scouts need an assist. “Your daughter mentioned you’ve come from Mérida. Have you seen much of Mexico?”

  “Not really. Last year we went to Mazatlán and Cuernavaca....” She puts the fish down, frowning.

  “And you’re going to see Tikal. Going to Bonampak too?”

  “No.” Suddenly she jumps up brushing rain off her face. “I’ll bring you some water, Don.”

  She ducks down the slide, and after a fair while comes back with a full bromel stalk.

  “Thanks.” She’s standing above me, staring restlessly round the horizon.

  “Ruth, I hate to say it, but those guys are not coming back and it’s probably just as well. Whatever they were up to, we looked like trouble. The most they’ll do is tell someone we’re here. That’ll take a day or two to get around, we’ll be back at the plane by then.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Don.” She wanders over to the smudge fire.

  “And quit fretting about your daughter. She’s a big girl.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Althea’s all right.... They have plenty of water now.” Her fingers drum on her thigh. It’s raining again.

  “Come on, Ruth. Sit down. Tell me about Althea. Is she still in college?”