Sunseeker

'The village,' he agreed, rolling his eyes. He did not threaten her with the gun. 'Those Sunseeker people, they're all there, waiting to get picked up. You're supposed to go with them. We got to go, pronto. You know. Fast.'

'That's by the museum, isn't it?'

'Si,' he said, eyes squinted as he examined her. 'You okay?'

She wiped her cheeks. Maybe the dim light hid the messy cry.

'We got to go,' he repeated, shifting his feet, dancing up two steps and pressing the curtain aside with his rifle as he glanced out into the church. 'It'll be dark soon. They got some 'cars coming in to get all of you out of here before sunset. You got to get out before sunset, right?'

'The museum,' she said. 'Okay. Is it far?'

'Four or five kilometers. Not far. But we got to go now.'

She nodded like a marionette, moving to the strings pulled by someone else. She got her feet to move, one before the next, and soon enough as they came out of the church she found her legs worked pretty well, just moving along like a normal person's legs would, nothing to it. A group of little boys played soccer along the dirt track of the hamlet, shouting and laughing as the ball rolled toward the river but was captured just in time. They turned off into the ragged forest growth before they passed the house where she had talked to her father; she saw no sign of Marcos except the flash of the ceramic satellite dish wired to the roof.

The boy walked in front of her. He had a good stride, confident and even jaunty, and he glanced back at intervals to make sure she hadn't fallen behind or to warn her about an overhanging branch and, once, a snake that some earlier passerby had crushed with repeated blows. It had bright bands on what she could see of its body, a colorful, beautiful creature. Dead now. She sweated, but he had a canteen that he shared with her-not water but a sticky sweet orange drink. A rain shower passed over them, dense but brief, to leave a cooling haze in its wake. All the time they walked, he kept the big plateau to their left, although they did not ascend its slopes but rather cut around them along a maze of dirt trails.

'Who was that woman?' she asked after a while.

'My great-aunt? She's some kind of crazy inventor, a genius, but she got into trouble with corporate politics. She was in prison for a long time, so I never saw her but I heard all about her. She was a real, uh, cabrona. Now maybe she is more nice.'

Rose could think of nothing to say to this; in a way, she was surprised at herself for asking anything at all. Just keeping track of her feet striking the dirt path one after the other and all over again amazed her, the steady rhythm, the cushioning earth, the leaf litter.

The forest opened into a milpa, a field of well grown maize interspersed with manioc. A pair of teal ducks flew past. When they cut around the edge of the field they saw a stork feeding at an oxbow of muddy water, the remains of the summer's flooding. Lowlands extended beyond, some of it marshy, birds flocking in the waters.

Another kilometer or so through a mixture of milpas and forest brought them to San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan on the shore of El Rio Chiquito. Here the houses had a more modern look; half a dozen had solar ceramic roofs. There was a fenced-off basketball court and a school with a satellite dish and a plaza with a flagpole where the Sunseekers sat in a distraught huddle on the broad concrete expanse, staring anxiously westward while a few onlookers, both adults and children, watched them watching the horizon.

It was late afternoon. The sun sank quickly toward the trees. The Ra sat forlornly on the grassy field behind the school, within sight of the old museum. Its stubby wings looked abraded, pockmarked, where the solar array had been stripped off.

'Rose!' Akvir jumped to his feet and rushed to her, his hand a warm fit on her elbow. 'We thought we'd lost you!' He was flushed and sweating and a bruise purpled on his cheek, but he looked otherwise intact. He dragged her toward the others, who swarmed like bees around her, enveloping her with cries of excitement and expansive greetings. 'You're the hero, Rose! They said you begged for our lives to your dad and he asked them to let us go. And they did! All because of your father! They're all fans of your father! They've all seen his shows. Can you get over it?'

She stood among them, drowned by them. All she could do was stare past their chattering faces at the boy who had led her here. He had fallen back to stand with a pair of village women, his arms crossed across his bare chest and the rifle, let loose, slung low by his butt. One of the women handed him a shirt; she seemed to be scolding him.

'Look!' screamed Zenobia, still clutching her torn clothing. 'There they are! There they are!'

A pair of sleek, glossy hovercars banked around a curve in the river and leveled off by the boat dock, but after a moment during which, surely, the navigators had seen the leaping, waving, shouting Sunseekers, they nosed up the road to settle, humming, on the grassy field beside the disabled Ra. Akvir and the others jumped up and down, clapping and cheering, as the ramp of the closer 'car opened and three utility suited workers, each carrying a tool kit, walked down to the ground. They ignored the crying, laughing young people and went straight for the Ra. After about five breaths, the second 'car's ramp lowered and a woman dressed in a bright silver utility suit descended to the base where she raised both hands and beckoned for them to board.

The sun's rim touched the trees. Golden light lanced across the village, touching the half hidden bulk of the great stone head beyond the museum gates.

With a collective shout rather like the ragged cry of a wounded, trapped beast who sees escape at long last, the Sunseekers bolted for the 'car. Halfway there, Akvir paused, turned, and stared back at Rose, who had not moved.

'Aren't you coming?' he shouted. 'Hurry! Hurry! They're fixing the Ra, but meanwhile we're going on. You don't want the sun to set on you, do you?'

'I'm not coming.'

Everyone scrambled on board, one or two shoving in their haste to get away. Akvir glanced back at them, shifting from foot to foot, as Zenobia paused on the ramp to wave frantically at him. The sun sank below the trees.

He took two steps back, toward the hover, sliding away as they were all sliding away, following the sun. 'You don't want to stay here with the night-bound? With the great lost?'

'It's too late,' she said.

She had always belonged to the great lost. Maybe everyone does, each in her own way, only they don't want to admit it. Because no matter how diligently, across what distance, you seek the sun, it will never be yours. The sun shines down on each person indifferently. That is why it is the sun.

His fear of being caught by the approaching dark overcame him. He gave up on her and sprinted for the ramp; as soon as he vanished inside, it sealed up and the second hover lifted off with a huff and a wheeze and a high- pitched, earsplitting whine that set all the dogs to barking and whimpering until at last the 'car receded away over the trees, westward. The first hover remained, powering down. The technicians had lamps and instruments out to examine the scarred wings of the Ra.

Rose stared at the lines the grass made growing up in the cracks between the sections of concrete pads poured down in rectangles to make the huge plaza. The eruption of grass and weeds created a blemish across the sterility of that otherwise smooth expanse. In the village, music started up over by the museum where someone had set up a board platform in front of the fence. Guitars strummed and one took up a melody, followed by a robust tenor. A couple of older men began dancing, bootheels drumming patterns on the wood while their partners swayed in counterpoint beside them, holding the edges of their skirts.

The boy approached across the plaza, torso now decently covered by a khaki-colored long-sleeved cotton shirt that was, not surprisingly, unbuttoned halfway to the waist. He no longer carried the rifle.

'Hey, chica. No hard feelings, no? You want to dance?'

'I'm waiting for my brother,' she said stoutly. 'He's coming to get me. He said to wait right here, by the museum.'

'Bueno,' agreed the boy. 'You want a cola? There's a tienda at the museum. You can wait there and drink a cola. I'll buy it for you.'

Shadows drowned the village, stretched long and long across houses and grass and the concrete plaza. The transition came rapidly in the tropical zone, day to night with scarcely anything like twilight in between. She had not seen night for almost three months. Was it possible to forget what it looked like, or had she always known even as she tried to outrun it? Had she always known that it was the monster creeping up on her, ready to overtake her?