don’t get it.”
Roberto didn’t know how to respond.
“How did they get to you?” Jason asked.
“They didn’t get to me. I’m trying to help you.”
“I want to work. Leave me alone. And stop acting like an idiot.”
“Look, why don’t you go outside, get some fresh air? We’ll go for a walk and talk about it.”
Jason put down his marker and walked out the door with Roberto, nodding at the refrigerator-sized Frank Stefano.
“I wish Chellis would feed you to a meat grinder, whip up some Roberto tartar with ground olives and mushrooms, a good dose of garlic, fresh horseradish, and a little pimento on top.”
“Let’s enjoy the walk,” Roberto said. “It’s beautiful here, but we can find an even better place for you to work.”
“There is one certainty that arises out of all of this.”
“What’s that?”
“Human consciousness for all of its glory is a miracle that has not yet sufficiently advanced to free us from sick mutants such as yourself.”
“Tell me,” Roberto said. “Do the Nannites have a sense of history?”
“Good question. Keep moving in that direction and we may have some hope for you after all.” Jason looked at him. “I don’t think it’s the Nannites you want to fool, Roberto. I think it’s Anna.”
“Don’t be silly. She’ll come to visit at the new compound.”
As they walked along the trail in single file, with Jason ahead and Frank bringing up the rear, Roberto felt watched, even though foliage was so dense it would be difficult for someone to follow them undetected.
The trees around them were smallish, maybe sixty feet tall, mostly Douglas fir, a few silver firs, and the occasional big-leaf maple. The conifers had branches all the way to the soil that tangled and competed with the ground-loving species. A son of Italian farmers, Roberto had learned a few names of the things that sprang from the earth in this place of green and mist. Unlike the south of Italy, things grew so tight that the machete line became a wall in places, as if someone were contemplating hedgerows.
“Wait.” Roberto stopped to listen.
“What?” Frank said.
“I don’t know, I thought maybe I heard something.”
“It won’t be Nannites,” Jason said.
Roberto thought it was sarcasm, but he never knew for certain with Jason.
The path had gotten muddy, their boots slushing noisily. He listened in the new silence. A black-capped chickadee was doing its dee-dee-dee and a kingfisher flitted on uneven wing beats with its rattle call, before it landed on a snag, sitting proud and blue like midget woodland royalty.
There was a slight whirling autumn breeze in the islands, and in the distance honkers called in V formation, always seeming to reach for somewhere that never came.
“Okay.” Roberto shrugged. They began walking again.
As they approached a familiar bend, Roberto was sure he heard radio static for just an instant. This time he drew his unloaded gun and wished it were full of bullets.
Ten feet in front of him a painted face rose from out of the wall of green, then another. Roberto whirled, looking. As he did so the forest became a mosaic of plants and faces. They were surrounded by at least a dozen men wearing combat fatigues and carrying what looked like futuristic military rifles. Roberto’s chest constricted; he could be dead in seconds. Suddenly his head was plunged in darkness, his arms were pinned to his sides, the gun yanked from his hand, and all he could see were his feet. Then a zipping sound up his neck and he could see nothing. Before he could think, he was helpless and struggling. They laid him on the ground and began tying him. Frank was swearing and thrashing in the bushes.
“If you couldn’t fool these Neanderthals, you sure couldn’t fool Nannites,” Jason muttered. The way he spoke, it sounded as though he was watching rather than fighting. Roberto wondered if somehow Jason was in on whatever was happening, but that seemed impossible.
In seconds the attackers were gone and Roberto lay with his arms tied and some sort of tape holding his wrists and ankles. He couldn’t move. His head was zipped in a nylon bag, almost suffocating and foam-filled. He heard the dee-dee-dee of the chickadee again. He no longer heard Frank; the assailants may well have killed him.
He thought of the dark; then he felt the dark, the staleness of his own breath, the soft foam clinging when he stuck out his tongue. With his first rib-expanding gasp he felt velvet closing around his mouth. He tried another breath and then again, faster. He could suck but he couldn’t fill. Soon he sounded like a marathoner gone mad; eeee, haw, eeee, haw, the breaths came and their frequency mounted with his fear. Soon his body was shaking, nearly convulsing. Eeee, haw, eeee, haw. Breathing sounds and the want of air took over his mind. He was crying and choking and still the breaths came harder and harder, faster and faster.
His mind was a lizard trapped in a tiny cave. Then arose something worse, the fear of not being able to end it, to kill himself.
Roberto screamed and remembered the souvenir turtles in Mexico. The workers laid them on their backs in the sun. The necks came out. Then the legs. Stretching and reaching, the turtles slowly became frantic. Finally their limbs started to dangle, and then at last they simply waved, as if saying good-bye on their way to a slow death.
Sam wanted to make calls from the airport. He still liked pay phones more than cell phones because he claimed that talking on a cell phone was about as private as screaming from your back porch. Anna thought the phone companies had fixed that problem, but didn’t bother arguing with Sam. While waiting, she had some thinking time, and to divert herself from nagging worry about Jason began imagining how intriguing it would be to undertake a little investigation.
As she thought about the phone call she might make, she exited the jet on the tarmac and walked away from the plane so as not to be heard by the pilots.
“Hey, you,” she said to Peter in her usual way.
“Anna, great to hear your voice. I hope everything is going grand with Sam.”
“Just grand. That’s not what I called about.”
“Oh?”
“I have a screenplay that might be good for you.”
“Really!”
“Uh-huh, it’s great.” Then she went on for five minutes.
“Man, this sounds exciting.”
“Ah, Peter, there is one thing you could do for me.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What do you mean uh-oh?”
“It’s about Sam, isn’t it?”
“I do need a favor that has to do with Sam, and clearly I brought it up right in the midst of discussing a mutually advantageous proposal-which I might add you deserve anyway-and I want to do it with you no matter how this conversation turns out. You have my word on that.”
“I’m not going to do anything that Sam wouldn’t like.”
“You know I wouldn’t ask that.”
“All right, what is it?”
“You’re his friend.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“See? How easy was that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now just one more little question. How sure are you?”
