The Red Thread Read online

  •

  Before we entered Ypané, Parrilla stood up on his horse in the native fashion and harangued the troops, warning that if they repeated their disorderly conduct in the town they would be whipped not on their backs but lower down, and riding would become a torture.

  A speech imparting the plan for this expedition to the expeditionary force would, I thought, have been more in keeping with the situation. No one, it seemed, quite knew what that plan was.

  I was nonplussed. Parrilla—who could have been my comrade and, up to a point, my equal—took no interest in me. He was a man who did not know what he wanted, sometimes aloof, at other times expansive, and both to excess. I held apart from the troops and had not so much as exchanged a glance with a single soldier. I paid no attention to them, except for the four or five who appeared before me without my seeking them out: the one who served our food, the one who saw to my horses, a few others.

  •

  In Ypané, Parrilla grew obstinate in unjustified suspicions. It was patently obvious that Vicuña Porto could not have taken refuge in that town, so small, impoverished, and peaceful.

  The local priest and administrator claimed to have heard nothing but distant rumors of the bandit’s existence and to have neither seen him nor suffered from his misdeeds. Dissatisfied with their report, Parrilla ordered the entire population of whites and natives to gather in front of the church.

  It was the season for planting—what, I don’t know. Indians scratched the shallow surface of the soil with the bleached bone of a cow or horse; they had no better tools nor were they aware that such tools existed. Others, behind them, planted the seeds. Still others, following the almost imperceptible furrows, covered them over, also using the most primitive tools.

  But before these last could arrive, birds dived down to the earth in dispute with the men, to rob the seeds. Of every five seeds planted, three were left. And I foresaw that the three that remained would be eaten by insects and worms that came later, after farmers and birds of prey had both moved on.

  I asked one of the Indians we herded from the fields to the church about the yield of the harvests—his daily bread. He did not understand.

  I needed no answer from him.

  Ventura Prieto had given me the answer, years earlier, though he never spoke of it to me.

  3

  That afternoon, we entered the region of the Mbaya Indians.

  We could no longer ride in the vanguard. Parrilla sent a scout ahead of us. He went alone, as custom dictated, so there would be no conversation to distract him.

  I was thirsty. My mouth seemed filled with flour.

  Vegetation betrayed the presence of a marsh.

  I thought Parrilla would give order to disperse and drink. To the contrary, observing that certain of the relief horses were attempting to break from the herd and wet their mouths, he ordered them held back.

  To me, he deigned to explain. “These waters may be insalubrious.”

  An argument that might have persuaded one other than myself. But I harbored a suspicion that the captain was imposing greater sacrifices than were necessary in the aim of grinding down my resistance, and for that reason alone.

  Then came my provocation.

  I asked for his flask of aguardiente. I was not similarly equipped.

  I drank two swigs without returning it to him. Two more: four. Two more: four, five, six.

  My scalp began to sting. Waxing loquacious with the captain as he watched in annoyance, I told him this was caused by the sun.

  I asked whether his family had a heraldic emblem. He answered that it did. I told him that the tree and the tower appear in my family’s coat of arms. He made no comment. I then inquired as to whether there figured, in the Parrilla family coat of arms, the implement used for grilling meat, commonly known as a parrilla.

  Parrilla exploded with a lash of his whip to my mount’s croup. The horse was as taken by surprise as I was and gave two mighty bounds; the second threw me to the ground.

  Parrilla dismounted and reached me before I was able to stand up. My head was burning with rage and aguardiente.

  He took me by the shoulders, assisting me as I rose to my feet. I flailed in an effort to hit him in the face. In a tone both vehement and sincere, he said, “Can’t a man blaze up in anger and make a mistake, then repent and be pardoned?”

  •

  Behind us, some hundred varas away, the relief horses trotted. The soldiers followed.

  They could not know what had happened.

  Perhaps they thought it an accident or misstep, a sudden fit of nerves from the brute I was mounted on.

  One horseman can ride next to another at a trot, without either ever looking at the other’s face.

  4

  The sun, in the final quarter of the sky, halted in its transit.

  The grass would be our blanket that night.

  I helped trample down the ground. For the first time, I mingled with the soldiers.

  I was agitated and bitter. I tried to convince myself of my own lucidity, but in truth I was in such a daze that the men going to and fro with me at our task seemed to float in midair.

  •

  Flatten grass, and a viper that neither escapes nor is trampled to death by a horse, will attack, to defend itself.

  Not wanting to bite the pastern or fetlock, it climbed up the animal’s leg. I could have reached it after it passed the knee, as it uncoiled to bite the breast.

  But I was unaware of it until the horse bucked and I risked another humiliating spill.

  The reins slipped from me and I clung to the mane.

  Bitten, the horse broke into a gallop while the viper, losing its hold, dangled by a single tooth from the chest. The long body whipped at the victim’s flanks. The danger—the reason for my terror—was that it could break free, spiral through the air, and twine about my leg.

  The quadruped stumbled, I rolled over its head, and the men came to my rescue.

  •

  There was a threat of rain. A straw shack was built for Parrilla and me, which forced us into even greater unwanted proximity.

  Before sleeping, I went out into the dark to attend to my bodily needs.

  The guard dogs tracked me a moment, nostrils alert to any nearby wild beasts. They sniffed and let me by. I had been recognized; my scent would be the only watchword necessary for my return.

  I was in a position that would have made self-defense rather awkward when I heard the dry grass crunch at my back.

  Footsteps.

  A dampness at my temples.

  Footsteps, heavy ones, those of a large animal. I was nailed to the spot, absolutely defenseless, as if in a trance. It would pass in a second, I told myself, leaving me another instant for delay after that, for if I flee like this, they’ll see me arrive in a way that. . . . And the dogs behind me and. . . .

  But now it was too late to flee.

  I turned, and in the time it took to move my head I knew that this was not the footstep of a beast; it lacked wariness.

  A man.

  A calm man.

  He said, as if delivering a witticism, “This whole wide country for the two of us and we’ve ended up choosing the same spot.”

  •

  When it was time to go back, he asked if we could stay a bit longer.

  He said, “Señor Doctor, there’s no moon, and we’d call attention to ourselves if we struck a light. My face can’t be seen, and therefore it behooves me to speak my name.”

  I was expecting the name. I knew it already.

  “Vicuña Porto.”

  I did not react. I sensed a dagger in his hands.

  It was him if he said as much, thereby risking his life. His voice summoned up my table, my office, my horse, my sword, my daily round of duties in another land. We were there in search of him, so it was not unreasonable for him to be there. But I did not understand how he could have approached without being seen, and still less how he had managed to identify me in the blac
kness of night.

  •

  He had revealed himself, and now undoubtedly waited to see what I would do. I was petrified with amazement at my singular destiny. I had fallen into his hands. All I could do was fear some treacherous blow.

  I did not speak, and he prodded me, “Perhaps the Señor Doctor doesn’t know me, doesn’t recognize Vicuña Porto?”

  I hastened to say I did, for the tone of the question was midway between jest and warning. And when I’d said that yes, I knew him, he commented, as if regretfully, “You know me, vaya! How unfortunate!”

  Was he allowing me a final word, before sacrificing me?

  I jumped back, not to take out a weapon but to escape. But I had a strange premonition that I was only delivering myself to my murderer, someone stationed behind me with a knife, ready to cut my throat. Porto’s cry would be the other man’s command. . . .

  And so, after jumping back, I jumped forward, a maneuver that Porto took for an attack. He stuck out a foot, I fell facedown, and he threw himself upon me, his knees pressing me flat as he dug a sharp point into my neck.

  “Piedad,” I begged.

  “Hand over your weapons,” he ordered.

  I told him my knife was in my boot. He seemed to grasp that I had not meant to attack him; the pressure on my legs diminished and I no longer felt the sharp metal on my neck.

  But he continued to straddle me while slapping me vigorously about the head. “You don’t know me, you don’t know me,” he said. “Su merced does not know me.”

  He was through with hitting me. He stood up.

  I lay sprawled on the grassy earth.

  I knew he was standing over me, observing my movements.

  After a time, we both calmed down.

  As if to breathe a little, as if to test me, he walked in a circle around me, never taking his eyes off of me.

  I looked toward the campfire. It was far away. If I tried to flee, Vicuña Porto, murderous knife in hand, would catch me.

  As I watched, someone in the camp rose to his feet by the fire, a black, ecstatic figure silhouetted against the blaze.

  It disappeared.

  It reappeared, surrounded by dogs, as if it knew precisely where to find me.

  Vicuña Porto stepped toward me, warning me anew. “You don’t know me, eh? You don’t know me.”

  But he did not leave. He stayed at my side and ordered me to get up and go meet the man coming toward us.

  I admired his temerity. He would confront the soldier and kill him, I thought. What he might do with me after that I hardly imagined.

  We walked side by side.

  The dogs raced forward.

  The sentry let out the precautionary cry.

  “Señor Don Diegooooo!”

  Vicuña Porto answered on my behalf, “Here we are. . . .”

  •

  Vicuña Porto was a soldier in the legion sent in pursuit of Vicuña Porto.

  Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen

  THE FLESH-MAN FROM FAR WIDE

  David R. Bunch

  I HAD JUST nailed the mice down lightly by their tails to the struggle board, was considering how happy is happy, and was right on the point of rising from my hip-snuggie chair to go fetch forth the new-metal cat when my warner set up a din. I raced to my Viewer Wall where the weapon thumbs all were, set the peep scope to max-sweep and looked out, wide-ranging the blue plastic hills. And I saw this guy, this shape, this little bent-down thing coming not from the Valley of the White Witch, my main area of danger now, but coming from the Plains of Far Wide, from which I had not had a visitor for nigh on to five eras.

  Was he sad, oh, was he sad! He came on, this little toad-down man, tap-tap, mince-mince, step-walk-step, but with tense carefulness in his slowness, as if every inch-mince were some slipping up on a bird. It made me itch just to see him, and to think how walking should be, great striding, big reaching, tall up with steel things clanking long-down by your side and other weapons in leather with which to defy your world. And your wagons coming up with maces and hatchets on end. Though I go not that way myself, truth to say, for I am of Moderan, where people have “replacements.” I walk with a hitch worse than most, an inch-along kind of going, clop-clip-clap-clop, over the plastic yards, what little I walk, for I still have bugs in the hinges. I was an Early, you know, one of the first of Moderan. But I remember. Something in the pale green blood of my flesh-strips recalls how walking should be—a great going out with maces to pound up your enemies’ heads, and a crunchy bloody jelly underfoot from the bones and juices of things too little even to be glanced at under your iron-clad feet.

  But this guy! Hummph. He came like a lily. Yes, a white lily with bell-cone head bent down. I wondered why my warner even bothered with him. But yes, I knew why my warner bothered with him. My warner tells me of all movement toward my Stronghold, and sometimes the lilies—“Stand by for decontamination!” He was at my Outer Wall now, at the Screening Gate, so I directed my decontaminators and weapons probers to give him the rub-a-dub. To be truthful, two large metal hands had leaped out of the Wall to seize him and hold him directly in front of the Screening Gate, so my call to “Stand by for decontamination!” was merely a courtesy blab. When the Decontamination and the Weapons Report both gave him a clean bill I thumbed the gates back in all my eleven steel walls and let the lily man mince through.

  “Hello, and welcome, strange traveler from Far Wide.”

  He stood trembling in his soft-rag shoes, seeming hard put on how actually to stop his inch-mince walk. “Forgive me,” he said, “if I seem nervous.” And he looked at me out of the blue of his flesh-ball eyes while he tugged at a cup-shaped red beard. And I was appalled at the “replacements” he had disallowed, the parts of himself he had clung to. For one wild blinding moment I was almost willing to bet that he had his real heart, even. But then I thought ah, no, not at this late year and in Moderan. “This walking,” he continued, “keeps going. You see, it takes awhile to quiet. You know, getting here at last, I cannot, all of me, believe I am really here. My mind says yes! My poor legs keep thinking there’s still walking to do. But I’m here!”

  “You’re here,” I echoed, and I wondered, what next? what goes? I thought of the mice I had nailed and the new cat waiting and I was impatient to get on with my Joys. But then, a visitor is a visitor, and a host most likely is a victim. “Have you eaten? Have you had your introven?”

  “I’ve eaten.” He eyed at me strange-wide. “I didn’t have introven.”

  I began to feel more uneasy by the minute. He just stood there vibrating slightly on thin legs, with those blue-flesh-ball eyes peeking my way, and he seemed to be waiting for me to react. “I’m here!” he said again. And I said, “Yes,” not knowing what else to say. “Would you wish to tell me about your trip,” I asked, “the trials and tribulations?”

  Then he started his recital. It was mostly a dreary long tune of hard going, of almost baseless hopes concerning what he hoped to find, of how he had kept coming, of how he had almost quit in the Spoce Mountains, of how something up ahead had kept him trying, something like a gleam of light through a break in an iron wall. “Get over the wall,” he said, “and you have won it, all that light. Over the wall!” He looked at me as though this was surely my time to react.

  “Why did you almost quit in the Spoce Mountains?”

  “Why did I almost quit in the Spoce Mountains!? Have you ever tried the Spoce Mountains?” I had to admit that I had not. “If you have never tried the Spoce Mountains—” He fell in to a fit of shaking that was more vivid than using many words. “Where are all the others?” he asked when the shaking had stopped a little.

  “All the others? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, yes. There must be great groups here. There must be long lists waiting.” His white cone-shaped face lit up. “Oh, they’re in the Smile Room. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  My big steel fingers itched to crush him then like juicing a little worm. There was
something about him, so soft, so trustful and pleading and so all against my ideas of the iron mace and the big arm-swing walk. “There’s no Smile Room here,” I blurted. “And no long lists waiting.”

  Unwilling to be crushed he smiled that pure little smile. “Oh, it must be such a wonderful machine. And so big! After all the other machines, the One, the ONE—finally!”

  Great leaping lead balls bouncing on bare-flesh toes! What had we here? A nut? Or was he just lost from home? “Mister,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re driving at. This is my home. It’s where I wall out danger. It’s where I wall in fun. My kind of fun. It’s a Stronghold.”

  At the sound of that last word his blue eyes dipped over and down in his white-wash face; his head fell forward like trying to follow the eyes to where they were falling. And out of a great but invisible cloud that seemed to wrap him round his stricken mouth gaped wide. “A Stronghold! All this way I’ve come and it is a Stronghold! You have not the Happiness Machine at a Stronghold. It could not be.

  “Oh, it is what kept me going—the hope of it. I was told. In the misty dangerous weird Spoce Mountains when the big wet-wing Gloon Glays jumped me and struck me down with their beaks I arose and kept coming. And on one very sullen rain-washed hapless morning I awoke in a white circle of the long-tusk wart-skin woebegawngawns, and oh it would have been so much easier, so very much less exacting, to have feigned sleep while they tore me and opened my soul case with death. But no! I stood up, I remembered prophecy. I drew my cloak around me. I walked. I walked on. I left them staring with empty teeth. I thought of my destination. And now— It was a dream! I am fooled! Take me to your Happiness Machine!”

  He was becoming hysterical. He blabbed as how he wanted to go and sit in some machine gauged to beauty and truth and love and be happy. He was breaking down. I saw I must rally him for one more try, to get him beyond my Walls. “Mister,” I said, “you have, no doubt, known the big clouds and the sun failing and the rain-washed gray dawn of the hopeless time. You have—I believe it—stood up in disaster amid adversity’s singing knives and all you had going for you was what you had brought along. There were no armies massing for you on other fields, no uncles raising funds in far countries across seas; perhaps there were no children, even, coming for Daddy in the Spoce Mountains, and with death not even one widow to claim the body and weep it toward the sun. And yet you defied all this, somehow got out of disaster’s tightening ring and moved on down. I admire you. I truly am sorry I do not have what you want. And though you are a kind of fool, by my way of thinking, to go running around in flesh looking for a pure something that perhaps does not exist, I wish you luck as I thumb the gates back and make way for your progress. You may find, up ahead somewhere, across a lot of mountains, and barren land, these Happiness Machines for which you cry.” He trembled when I spoke of mountains, but he moved out through the gates.