Walker peeled back a piece of charred cloth. ''First Cavalry,'' he read, and looked at
Ike. 'These are your people. What are they sending Rangers down for?'
'I have no idea.'
'You know this man?'
'I don't.'
The doctors covered the burned man with a sleeping bag and gave him water to drink. The man opened his one good eye. 'Crockett?' he rasped.
'Guess he knows you,' Walker said. The whole camp stood breathless.
'Why did they send you?' Ike asked.
The man tried to form the words. He struggled beneath the sleeping bag. Ike gave him more water.
'Closer,' said the soldier.
Ike leaned in. He bent to hear.
'Judas,' the man hissed.
The knife drove straight up through the sleeping bag.
The fabric or pain spoiled the assassin's thrust. The blade skipped along Ike's rib cage but did not enter. The soldier had enough strength for a second slash across Ike's back, then Ike caught his wrist.
Walker and Shoat and the doctors fell back from the attack. One of the mercenaries reacted with three quick shots into the burned man's thorax. The body bounced with each round.
'Cease fire!' Walker yelled. It was over that fast.
The only sound was the water flowing.
The expedition stared in disbelief. No one moved. They had seen the attack and heard the soldier's whispered word.
Ike knelt in their midst, dumbfounded. He still held the assassin's wrist in one hand, and the gash along his ribs flowed red. He looked around at them, bewildered. Suddenly, a terrible keening noise rose up from him.
Ali didn't expect that. 'Ike?' she said from the ring of onlookers. No one dared go
closer.
Ali stepped out from the circle and went to him. 'Stop it,' she said. They had depended on his strength for so long that his frailty endangered them. Before their eyes, he was coming undone.
He looked at her, then fled.
'What was that all about?' someone muttered.
For lack of shovels, they drifted the bodies out into the river. Many hours later, two more cylinders were lowered to them, each filled with cargo. They ate. Helios had sent them a feast for a hundred people: smoked rainbow trout, veal in cognac, cheese fondue, and a dozen different kinds of bread, sausages, pasta, and fruit. The crisp green lettuce in the salad brought tears of joy. It was, said a note, meant to celebrate C.C. Cooper's birthday. Ali suspected otherwise. Ike was meant to be dead, and this banquet was in effect a wake.
The attempt on Ike's life had no explanation or context or justice. What made it all the more irrational was that Ike was their most valued member. Even the mercenaries would have voted for him. With him as scout, they had felt like the Chosen People, destined to exit the wilderness on the heels of their tattooed Moses. But now he had been labeled a traitor, and was inexplicably marked for death.
The communications cable to the surface had been fried by the magma zone overhead, and so the expedition had only conjecture and superstition to fall back upon. In a way they all felt targeted, for in their experience Ike had been the best of men, and he was being punished for sins they had never known. It felt as though a great storm had opened upon them. The group's response was a little worry, then a lot of denial and bravado.
'It was a matter of time,' said Spurrier. 'Ike was going to come unwrapped sooner or later. You could see it coming. I'm surprised he held up this long.'
'What does that have to do with anything?' Ali snapped.
'I'm not saying he brought it down on himself. But the man's definitely in torment. He's got more ghosts than a graveyard.'
'What do you do to get the U.S. Army on your case?' Quigley, the psychiatrist, wondered. 'I mean that was a suicide mission. They don't throw good men away on nothing.'
'And that 'Judas' stuff? I thought once the court-martial was over, they were finished with you. Talk about bad luck. The guy's a born outcast.'
'It's like the whole world's against him.'
'Don't worry about him, Ali,' said Pia, for whom love had come in the form of
Spurrier. 'He'll be back.'
'I'm not so sure,' Ali said. She wanted to blame Shoat or Walker, but they seemed genuinely disoriented by the incident. If Helios had meant to kill Ike, why not use their own agents? Why involve the U.S. Army? And why would the Army involve itself with doing Helios' bidding? It made no sense.
While the rest slept, Ali walked from the light of their camp. Ike had not taken his kayak or his shotgun, so she searched on foot with her flashlight. His footprints loped along the bank's mud.
She was furious with the group's smugness. They had depended on Ike for everything. Without him, they might be dead or lost. He had been true to them, but now, when he needed them, they were not true to him.
We were his ruin. She saw that now. They had doomed Ike with their dependence. He would have been a thousand miles away if not for their weakness and ignorance and pride. That's what had kept him bound to them. Guardian angels were like that. Doomed by their pathos.
But blaming the group was a dodge, Ali had to admit. For it was her weakness, her
ignorance, her pride that had bound Ike – not to them, but to her. The group's well-being was merely a collateral benefit. The uncomfortable truth was that he had promised himself to her.
Ali sorted her thoughts as she picked her way along the river. In the beginning Ike's allegiance to her had been unwanted, a vexation. She had buried the fact of his devotion under a heap of her own fictions, satisfying herself that he pursued the depths for reasons of his own, for his fabled lost lover or for revenge. Maybe that had been so in the beginning, but it no longer was. She knew that. Ike was here for her.
She found him in a field of night, no light, no weapon. He was sitting faced toward the river in his lotus position, his back bare to any enemies. He had cast himself onto the mercy of this savage desert.
'Ike,' she said.
His shaggy head stayed poised and still. Her light cast his shadow onto the black water, where it was immediately forfeit. What a place, she thought. Darkness so hungry it devoured other darkness.
She came closer and took off her backpack. 'You missed your own funeral,' she joked. 'They sent a feast.'
Not a motion. Even his lungs did not move. He was going deep. Escaping.
'Ike,' she said. 'I know you can hear me.'
One of his hands rested in his lap; the fingertips of his other hand touched the ground with all the weight of an insect.
She felt like a trespasser. But this wasn't contemplation she was invading, it was the start of madness. He couldn't win, not by himself.
Ali approached from one side. From behind he looked at peace. Then she saw that his face was drawn. 'I don't know what's going on,' she said. He was resisting her within his statue stillness. His jaw was clenched.
'Enough,' she said, and opened her pack and pulled out the medical kit. 'I'm cleaning those cuts.'
Ali started brusquely with the Betadine sponge. But she slowed. The flesh itself slowed her. She ran her fingers along his back, and the bone and muscle and hadal ink and scar tissue and the calluses from his
