I left the restaurant and drove full-tilt back to Meachem’s Landing, where I bribed the cleaning woman into admitting me to Ivie’s room. It was identical to mine, with gray boards and a metal cot and a night table covered in plastic and a single window that opened onto the second-story verandah. I began by searching the closet, but found only shoes and clothing, apparel quite in keeping with her purported job. Her overnight case contained makeup, and the rest of her luggage was empty…or so it appeared. But as I hefted one of the suitcases, preparing to stow it beneath the cot, I realized it was heavier than it should have been. I laid it on the cot, and before long I located the catch that opened a false bottom; inside was a machine pistol.
I sat staring at the gun. It was an emblem of Ivie’s complicity with an organization so violent that even I, who sympathized with their cause, was repelled by their actions. Yet despite this, I found I loved her no less; I only feared that she did not love me, that she was using me. And, too, I feared for her: the fact that she was at the least an associate of Sangre y Verdad offered little hope of a happy ending for the two of us. Finally I replaced the false bottom, restored the suitcase to its original spot beneath the cot, and went to my room to wait for Ivie.
That night I said nothing about the gun, rather I tested Ivie in a variety of ways, trying to learn whether or not her affections for me were fraudulent. Not only did she pass every test, but I came to understand much about her that had been puzzling me. I realized that her distracted silences, her deferential attitude concerning the future, her vague references to “responsibilities,” all these were symptomatic of the difficulty our relationship was causing her, the contrary pulls exerted by her two passions. Throughout the night, I kept thinking of horror stories I had heard about Sangre y Verdad, but I loved Ivie too much to judge her. How could I—a citizen of the country which had created the conditions that bred organizations like Sotomayor’s—ever hope to fathom the pressures that had brought her to this pass?
For the next three days, knowing that our time together was likely to be brief, I tried to put politics from mind. Those days were nearly perfect. We swam, we danced, we rented a dory and rowed out past the reef and threw out lines and caught silkfish, satinfish, fish that gleamed iridescent red and blue and yellow, like talismans of our own brilliance. Yet despite our playfulness, our happiness, I was constantly aware that the end could not be far off.
Four days after her meeting with Sotomayor, Ivie told me she had an appointment that evening, one that might last two or three hours; her nervous manner informed me that something important was in the works. At eight o’clock she drove off along the road to Flowers Bay, and I tailed her in my rented car, maintaining a discreet distance, my headlights dark. She parked by the side of the road about a mile past Welcomes’s shanty, and seeing this, I pulled my car into a thicket and continued on foot.
It was a moonless night, but the stars were thick, their light revealing every shadowy rut, silhouetting the palms and mangrove. Mosquitoes whined in my ear; the sound of waves on the reef came as a faint hiss. A couple of hundred feet beyond Ivie’s car stood a largish shanty set among a stand of coconut palms. Several cars were parked out front, and two men were lounging by the door, obviously on sentry duty. Orange light flickered in the window. I eased through the brush, making my way toward the rear of the shanty, and after ascertaining that no guards were posted there, I duckwalked across a patch of open ground and flattened against the wall. I could hear many voices speaking at once, none of them intelligible. I inched along the wall to the window whose shutter was cracked open. Through the gap I spotted Sotomayor sitting atop a table, and beside him, a thin, agitated-looking man of thirty-five or so, with prematurely gray hair. I could see none of the others, but judging by their voices, I guessed there to be at least a dozen men and women present.
With a peremptory gesture, Sotomayor signaled for quiet. “I would much have preferred to use my organization alone,” he said. “But Dr. Dobler”—he acknowledged the gray-haired man with a nod—“insisted that the entire spectrum of the left be included, and I had no choice but to agree. However, in the interests of security, I wish to limit participation in this operation to those in this room. And, since some of you are unknown to the rest, I suggest that we not increase our intimacy by an exchange of names. Let us choose false names. Simple ones, if you please.” He smoothed back his hair, glancing around at his audience. “As I am to lead, I will take a military rank for my name.” He smiled. “And as I am not overly ambitious, you may refer to me as the Sergeant.” Laughter. “Perhaps if we are successful, I will receive a promotion.”
Each of the men and women—there were fourteen in all—selected a name, and I heard Ivie say, “Aymara.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to hear it, but knowing her fascination with my article, I did not think it an unexpected choice.
“Very well,” said Sotomayor, all business now. “The matter under consideration is the American military project known as Longshot.”
I was startled—Longshot was the code name of the installation I was soon to inspect.
“For some months,” Sotomayor went on, “we have been hearing rumors concerning Longshot, none likely to inspire confidence in our neighbors to the north. We have been unable to substantiate the rumors, but this situation has changed. Dr. Dobler was until recently one of the coordinators of the project. He has come to us at great personal risk, because he believes there is terrible danger associated with Longshot, and because, with our lack of bureaucratic impediments, he believes we may be the only ones capable of acting swiftly enough to forestall disaster. I will let him explain the rest.”
Sotomayor stepped out of view, leaving the floor to Dobler, who looked terrified. Thinking what it must have taken for him to venture forth from his ivory tower and out among the bad dogs, I awarded him high marks for guts. He cleared his throat. “Project Longshot is essentially an experiment in temporal displacement…that is to say, time travel.”
This sparked a babble, and Sotomayor called for quiet. I wished I could have seen Ivie’s face, wanting to know if she were as stunned and frightened as I was.
“The initial test is to be conducted twenty-three days from now,” said Dobler. “We have every reason to believe it will succeed, because evidence exists in the past…” He broke off, appearing confused. “There’s so much to…” His eyes darted left to right. “I’m sorry. I…”
“Please be calm,” advised Sotomayor. “You’re among friends.”
Dobler squared his shoulders. “I’m all right,” he said, and drew a deep breath. “The site of the project is a hill overlooking the ruins of Olancho Viejo, a colonial city destroyed in 1623 by an explosion. I say ‘explosion,’ but I believe I can safely state that it was not an explosion in the typical sense of the word. For one thing, eyewitness accounts testify that while, indeed, some of the buildings were blown apart, others appeared to crumble, to collapse into powder and chunks of rotten stone, the result of being washed over by a wave of blinding white radiance. Of course these accounts were written by superstitious men—mainly priests—and are thus suspect. Some tell of a beautiful woman walking in the midst of the light, but I think we can attribute that to the Catholic propensity for seeing the Virgin in moments of stress.” This elicited a few chuckles, and Dobler was braced by the response. “However, allied with readings we have taken, with other anomalies we’ve discovered on and near the site, it’s evident that the destruction of Olancho Viejo was a direct result of our experiment. Though our target date is in the 1920s, it seems that the displacement will create a kind of shock wave that will produce dire effects 360 years in the past.”
“How does that affect us?” someone asked.
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” said Dobler. He was warming to his task, becoming the model of an enthused lecturer. “First it’s important you understand that although the initial experiment will merely consist of the displacement of a few laboratory a
nimals and some mineral specimens, plant life, and so forth, the target purpose of the project is the manipulation of the past through assassination and other means.”
Expressions of outrage from the gathering.
“Wait!” said Dobler. “That’s not what you should be worried about, because I don’t think it’s possible.”
“Why not?” A woman’s voice.
“I really don’t think I could explain it to you,” said Dobler. “The mathematics are too complex…and my conclusions, I admit, are arguable. Several of my colleagues are in complete disagreement; they believe the past can be altered. But I’m convinced otherwise. Time, according to my mathematical model, has a fixed shape. It is not simply a process that affects physical objects; it has its own physicality, or—better said—the process of time involves its own spectrum of physical events, all on the particulate level, and it is the isolation of this spectrum that will allow us to displace objects into the past.” He must have been the focus of bewildered stares, for he threw up his hands in helplessness. “The language isn’t capable of conveying an accurate explanation. Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, any attempt to alter the course of history will fail, because the physical potentials of time will compensate for that alteration.”
“It sounds to me,” said Sotomayor, “as if you’re embracing the doctrine of predestination.”
“That’s a rather murky analogue,” said Dobler. “But, yes, I suppose I am.”
“Then why are you asking us to stop something which, according to you, cannot be stopped? If evidence exists that the experiment was carried out, we can do nothing…at least if we are to accept your logic.”
“As I stated, I may be wrong in this,” said Dobler. “In which case, an attack on the project might succeed. But even if time does prove to be unalterable, what is unalterable in this circumstance is the destruction of Olancho Viejo. It’s possible that our experiment can be stopped, and the malleability of time will enlist some other causal agent.”
“There’s something I don’t understand.” Ivie’s voice. “If you are correct about the unalterability of time, what do we have to fear?”
“For every action,” said Dobler, “there must be a reaction. The action will be the experiment. One small part of the reaction can be observed in what happened three centuries ago. But my figures show that the greater part of the reaction will occur in the present. I’ve gone over and over the equations, and there’s no error.” Dobler paused, summoning thought. “I’ve no idea what form this end of the reaction will take. It may be similar to the explosion in 1623; it may be entirely different. We know nothing about the forces involved…except how to trigger them and how to perform a few simple tricks. But I’m sure of one thing. The reaction will affect matter on the subatomic levels, and it will be on the order of a billion times more extensive than what happened in 1623. I doubt anything will survive it.”
A silence ensued, broken at last by Sotomayor. “Have you shown these equations to your colleagues?”
“Of course.” Dobler gave a despairing laugh. “They believe they’ve solved the problem by constructing a containment chamber. It’s a solution comparable to wrapping a blanket around a nuclear device.”
“How can we discount their opinion?” someone asked.
“Look,” said Dobler, peeved. “Unless you can understand the mathematics involved, there’s no way I can prove my case. I believe my colleagues are too excited about the project to accept the fact that it’s potentially disastrous. But what does it mean for me to tell you that? The best evidence I can give you is the fact that I am here, that I have in effect thrown away my career in order to warn you.” He looked down at the floor. “Though perhaps I can offer one further proof.”
They began to bombard him with questions, most of them challenging in tone, and—concerned that the meeting might suddenly break up and my car be discovered—I slipped away from the window and headed back toward town.
It is a measure, I believe, of the foolishness of love that I was less worried about the fate of the world than about Ivie’s possible involvement in the events of Welcomes’s story, a story I was now hard put to disbelieve; it seemed I was operating under the assumption that if Ivie and I could work things out, everything else would fall into place around us. I drove back to the hotel, waited awhile, and then, deciding that I wanted to talk to her somewhere more private, somewhere an argument—I thought one likely—would not be overheard, I left a note asking her to meet me on the far side of the island, at an abandoned construction site a short ways up the beach from St. Mark’s Key—the skeleton of a large house belonging to the estate of an American who had died shortly after work had begun. This site was of special moment for Ivie and me. It was set back from the shore, hidden from prying eyes by dense growths of palms and sea grape and cashew trees, and we had made love there on several occasions. By the time I reached it, the moon had risen and the unfinished house—with its gapped walls and skewed beams and free-standing doorways—had the look of a surreal maze of silver light and shadow. Sitting inside it on the ground floor, I felt it posed an apt metaphor for the labyrinthine complexity of the situation.
Until that moment, I had not brought my concentration to bear on this complexity, and now, trying to unravel the problem, I found I could not do so. The circumstances of Welcomes’s story, of Dobler’s, Ivie’s, and my own…all this smacked of magical serendipity and was proof against logic. Time, which had always been for me a commodity, something to be saved and expended, seemed to have been revealed as a vast fabulous presence cloaked in mystery and capable of miracles, and I had as little hope of comprehending its processes as I would those of a star winking overhead. Less, actually. I attempted to narrow my focus, to consider separate pieces of the puzzle, beginning with what Welcomes had told me. Assuming it was true, I saw how it explained much I had not previously given thought to. Christmas’s courage, for instance. Knowing that he would die of a fever would have made him immune to fear in battle. All the pieces fit together with the same irrational perfection. It was only the whole, the image they comprised, that was inexplicable.
At last I gave it up and sat staring at the white combers piling in over the reef, listening to the scattery hiss of lizards running in the beach grass, watching the colored lights of the resort on St. Mark’s Key flicker as palm fronds were blown across them by the salt breeze. I must have sat this way an hour before I heard a car engine; a minute later, Aymara—so I had been thinking of her—walked through the frame of the front door and sat beside me. “Let’s not stay here,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. “I’d like a drink.” In the moonlight her face looked to have been carved more finely, and her eyes were aswim with silvery reflections.
I could not think how to begin. Finally, settling on directness, I said, “Did you know what Dobler was going to tell you? Is that why you chose the name Aymara?”
She pulled back from me, consternation written on her features. “How…” she said; and then: “You followed me. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why the hell not?” Anger over her betrayal, her subterfuge, suddenly took precedence over my concern for her. “How else am I going to keep track of who’s who in the revolution these days?”
“You could have been killed,” she said flatly.
“Right!” I said, refusing to let her lack of emotionality subdue me. “God knows, Sotomayor might have had you drink my blood for a nightcap! What the hell possessed you to get involved with him?”
“I’m not involved with him!” she said, her own temper surfacing.
“You’re not with Sangre y Verdad?”
“No, the FDLM.”
I was relieved—the FDLM was the most populist and thus the most legitimate element of the Honduran left. “You haven’t answered my first question,” I said. “Why did you choose that name?”
“I was thinking of you. That’s all it was. But now…I don’t know.”
“You’re going to do it
, aren’t you? Play out the story?” I slugged my thigh in frustration. “Jesus Christ! Sotomayor will kill you if he finds out! And Dobler, he might be a crazy! A CIA plant! Right now he’s…”
“You didn’t stay until the end?” she cut in.
“No.”
“He’s dead,” she said. “He told us that if we attacked, we should destroy all the computers and records, anyone who had knowledge of the process. He said that when he was younger, he would have supported any evil whose goal was the increase of knowledge, but now he had uncovered knowledge that he couldn’t control and he couldn’t live with that. He said he hoped what he intended to do would prove something to us. Then he went onto the porch and shot himself.”
I sat stunned, picturing that nervous little man and his moment of truth.
“I believe him,” she said. “Everyone did. I doubt we would have otherwise.”
“Sotomayor would have believed him no matter what,” I said. “He yearns for disaster. He’d find the end of the world an erotic experience.”
“I shouldn’t have to explain to you what produces men like Abimael,” she said stiffly. She reached behind her to—I assumed—adjust the waistband of her skirt. “Are you going to inform on us?”
Her voice was tremulous, her expression strained, and she continued holding her hand behind her back; it was an awkward posture, and I began to suspect her reasons for maintaining it. “What have you got there?” I asked, knowing the answer.
A car passed on the beach, its headlights throwing tattered leaf shadows over the beams.
“What if I said I was going to inform on you?”
She lowered her eyes, sighed, and brought forth a small caliber automatic; after a second, she let it fall to the floor. She studied it despondently, as if it were a failed something for which she had entertained high hopes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m…” She put her hand to her brow, covering her eyes.
The Ends of the Earth Page 32
