afterimages of their flights, streaks of color that lingered in the air. Time seemed to collapse around him, burying him under a ton of decaying seconds.
Something snapped in the brush to his left, and a man stumbled out of the cover. The red-bearded man who had stood guard over him. He’d lost his little piece of mirror. Dirt freckled his cheeks, bits of fern ribboned his hair. A survival knife dangling from one hand. He blinked at Mingolla. Swayed. His fatigues were plastered to his ribs, and a big bloodstain mapped the hollow of his stomach. His cheeks bulged: it looked as if he wanted to speak but was afraid more than just words would come out. ‘Jesus,’ he said sluggishly. His eyes rolled back, his knees buckled. Then he straightened, appeared to notice Mingolla, and staggered forward swinging the knife.
Mingolla tried to bring the rifle up and found that the stock was pinned under his hip. But somebody else got off a round. The bullet pasted a red star under the man’s eye, stamped his features with a rapt expression, and he fell across Mingolla’s ribs, knocking the breath from him. Shouting in the distance. Mingolla heaved the man off, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. The effort mined a core of dizziness inside him. He resisted it, but then realizing that there was nothing attractive about consciousness, nothing he cared to know about the someone in charge of death and butterflies, he let himself go spiraling down past layers of darkness and shining wings, darkness and mystical light, and a memory of pain so bright that it became a white darkness wherein he lost all track of being.
CHAPTER TEN
Lantern light washing shadows from a tin roof, fanning across a dirt floor, shining over walls of palmetto thatch, the fronds plaited into a weave like greenish brown scales. Smell of rain and decay. A wooden chair and table were the only furnishings aside from the pallet on which Mingolla lay, his ribs taped, jaw aching. And something bright was strung on the ceiling. Ribbons… or paper dolls. He rubbed his eyes, squinted, and made out hundreds of butterflies clinging to the roof poles, their wings stirring gently. He kept very still. He heard a man and woman speaking outside. Their words were unintelligible, but he thought he detected an accent in the man’s voice. German, maybe. A second later, the man entered the hut. He wore dark slacks and a blue polo shirt, and radiated an unnatural measure of heat. Mingolla pretended to be asleep.
The man sat at the table, gazed thoughtfully at Mingolla. He was thin but well muscled, his short blond hair shot through with gray, and he had a cold ascetic handsomeness that in association with the accent called to mind evil SS officers in old war movies. One of the butterflies descended, perching on his knuckles. He let it walk across the back of his hand, then with a flick of his wrist, as if loosing a falcon, cast it aloft. ‘ “Transparent forms too fine for mortal sight,”’ he said. ‘“Their fluid bodies half-dissolv’d in light.”’ He watched the butterfly alight on a roof pole. ‘And yet they can be quite formidable, can they not?’
Mingolla kept up his pretense.
‘You are awake, I think,’ said the man. ‘My name is Nate, and you, I’m told, are David.’
‘Who told you that?’ asked Mingolla, giving it up.
‘A friend of yours… one who is convinced you are
‘Debora?’ Mingolla shrugged up, winced at a shooting pain in his side. ‘Where is she?’
Nate shrugged, an economic gesture, the merest elevation of his shoulder. ‘ “Fluttering like some vain painted butterfly from glade to glade along the forest path.” Matthew Arnold, from
Mingolla pushed his mind toward Nate, began to exert influence, and several dozen butterflies flew down from the ceiling, fluttered in his face.
‘Please don’t,’ said Nate. ‘There are a great many more outside.’
There was something peculiar about Nate’s mind, a dominant pattern in the electrical flux unusual for its complexity and resistance to influence; it seemed to Mingolla that the pattern was weaving a mesh too fine for his own mind to penetrate. He was fascinated by it, but didn’t want to risk further exploration, ‘It was you back at the clearing, wasn’t it?’ he said.
Nate looked at him with disapproval. ‘That was a bad job… very bad. But she says you’re worth it.’
The thing to do, Mingolla thought, would be to buddy up to Nate, gain his confidence. ‘You’ve obviously been through the therapy,’ he said. ‘How’d you wind up here. You desert?’
‘Not at all,’ said Nate. ‘Psicorps considered me a failure. I wasn’t able to achieve any effect until after my release. To tell you the truth, I doubt the therapy had much to do with the development of my abilities. I was close by Tel Aviv when it was destroyed, and not long afterward I began to show some signs of having power. A product of my anger, I’m thinking.’ He stared up at the roof poles. ‘Butterflies. Hardly an appropriate tool for anger. Now if I’d managed an affinity with tigers or serpents…’ He broke off, studied his clasped hands.
‘What was it like?’ Mingolla asked.
‘What was what like?’
‘Tel Aviv.’ Mingolla injected sympathy into his words. ‘Back in the States we heard about the suicides, the apathy.’
‘The bomb is a powerful symbol, powerful beyond its immediate effects. To see it… I can’t explain it.’ He made a gesture of dismissal and glanced up at Mingolla. ‘Why are you hunting Debora?’
Mingolla didn’t think he could lie successfully. ‘Things have changed,’ he said.
‘Indeed, more than you know.’
‘I’ll talk to him now,’ said Debora.
She was blocked, standing at the door, an automatic rifle under one arm, and seeing her, all Mingolla’s preparations for this moment went skying. Of course the circumstances were different from those he had planned, but he had the feeling that even if everything had been as expected, his reaction would have been the same. It seemed his obsession was feeding on the sight of her, absorbing the loose fit of her jeans, the hollows in her cheeks, her hair—long uncut—falling to her waist, and composing of these elements a new portrait of obsession, a portrait of a leaner, more intense Debora. Her dark eyes reminded him in their steadiness of Hermeto Guzman’s, and the clean division of white blouse and dusky skin reminded him of his dream of possession. Only after he had satisfied himself that she was more or less as he remembered did his resentments surface, and even then they were not vengeful, but the weaker, wistful emotions of a betrayed lover.
Nate gave her his chair and, with a cautionary look at Mingolla, went outside, followed by a leaf storm of butterflies. Debora laid her rifle on the table and said, ‘Your disguise isn’t bad, but I liked you better as an American.’
‘So did I,’ he said, and, after a silence, asked, ‘Why’d you save me? How’d you know I was coming?’
She glanced at him, looked away. ‘It’s complicated. I’m not sure how much I want to tell you.’
‘Then why are we talking?’
‘I’m not sure about that, either.’
Mingolla felt a bewildering mixture of anger and desire. ‘Are my ribs broken?’
‘Just bruised, I think. I couldn’t do much for your mouth. You’ll have to be careful… keep it clean.’
‘You patched me up?’
‘There wasn’t anyone else. Nate’s not much of a doctor.’
‘Yeah, but he’s good with butterflies.’
‘Yes.’ Sadly.
‘What’s he alla ’bout, anyway?’
‘He used to be a journalist.’ She had another quick look at him. ‘And he’s going with me to Panama.’
‘Panama, huh?’
She nodded, toyed with the trigger guard of the rifle.
‘Why don’t you explain what’s going on?’
‘I can’t trust you.’
‘What am I gonna do… overwhelm ten zillion fucking butterflies?’
‘Your mind’s very strong,’ she said. ‘You might be able to do something.’
‘We’re going to have to talk sometime.’
