"Hey, Emma, what are you, you a channeler or something?"
The speaker was Stan Ard, who had been sitting unnoticed by Gideon at an adjoining table, a beer at his elbow and his notebook balanced on a heavy thigh.
"I don't care for the word channeling," Emma said, preening at the sight of Ard's slowly moving ballpoint pen, “but, yes, I admit I've had some success at receiving mind-construct energy from personality entities on the other side of the physical-reality void."
"Whoa,” said Ard, laughing and looking up from the notebook. “Personality which?"
"Personality entities that don't meet our definition of material actuality,” Emma explained helpfully. “I visualize them as-"
" Su te, senor," said the female bartender to Gideon.
"Gracias," he said and signed the chit.
She smiled. “Manzanilla tea is very good for what ails you,” she said in English.
"Let's hope so,” Gideon said. “Would you happen to know if there's been a general outbreak of turista among the guests?"
"No, senor, I don't think so. Only your party."
"No problems with the hotel water supply?"
"Senor," she said reproachfully, “this is the Mayaland. No doubt you ate somewhere else."
Chapter 14
"No,” Abe said slowly with a shake of his head, “everything I ate all week came from the hotel. You too, right? And Julie?"
"That's right,” Gideon said. “So if it was something in the food, it had to come out of the hotel kitchen."
Abe nodded. He was propped up in bed, fragile and sallow-cheeked, and looking disreputable, as old men in pajamas do when they haven't shaved. But he was hopping with restlessness, crossing and recrossing his thin legs, and poking irritably at the pillows stacked behind him.
When Gideon had brought the tea to Julie, she had taken three swallows, sighed, given him a sweet smile, and slipped into a peaceful doze with her hand on his. Gideon had sat without moving until she had fallen into a deeper sleep, then carefully extricated his hand and gone to see how Abe was doing, stopping first at the bar to pick up a bowl of soup and some bread for him. When he'd seen him at about 10:00 a.m., Abe had been in no condition for food.
"So what kind of soup?” Abe said with a listless gesture at the covered bowl.
"So what kind should it be?"
But Abe wasn't in the mood for this. “From an anthropologist I don't expect ethnic humor,” he snapped.
"All right, it's chicken soup."
Abe made a growling noise. “Also I don't expect rote adherence to outmoded stereotypes."
"Wow, you're sure in a good mood. I'm really glad I came and cheered you up. Look, let's call it caldo de pollo, if that makes you feel better. And it's damn good therapy. It's bland, nutritious, easy to swallow; it can be tolerated even with digestive problems; it replaces fluids lost through dehydration; it-"
Abe covered his ears and made a face. “All right, I'll eat the damn soup, all right?"
Gideon took the cover off the bowl and set the tray on Abe's lap. “You're very welcome,” he said. “No need to thank me."
Abe finally smiled tiredly and relaxed against the pillows. “Thank you very much, Gideon. I appreciate it. It was nice of you to think of it.” He brought a spoonful to his mouth and swallowed. “It's good,” he said. “I didn't realize I was hungry.” For a few seconds he ate in silence, visibly reviving.
"You're right,” he said, “I'm not in my usual good-natured frame of mind this morning."
"Really? I haven't noticed anything unusual."
Abe smiled again. “No, I've been kvetching, all right, and it's not just because I'm sick.” He moved the spoon back and forth in the bowl, scowling down at it. “It's because we're all sick. Gideon, someone is trying to make it look as if the curse is real.” He waved a listless arm. “Sit down, will you?"
Gideon brought one of the dark wooden chairs from the desk to the side of the bed, swung it around backward, and sat down, his forearms resting on the back. “Yes, Emma's just been explaining that to anyone who couldn't figure it out."
"Unless, of course, the whole hotel got sick, which would throw a different light on things."
"I already checked."
"And it's just us?"
"Just us."
"That's what I figured.” He tore a tiny piece from a soft slice of white bread and chewed it, slowly and thoroughly. “You got any ideas how it was done?"
"Well, it's obviously something we ate and nobody else did."
"I agree. Isn't it wonderful to be scientists and come up with such terrific deductions?"
"But I don't think it was Escherichia coli, or salmonella, or any of the other turista bugs. We're not sick enough."
"Speak for yourself."
"You know what I mean. Everybody seems to be on the mend already-including you-and as far as I know there hasn't been any vomiting or fever. Just some acute diarrhea and a little weakness and cramping; nothing serious."
"Easy for you to say,” Abe grumbled. “But you're right; I'll live. So what do you think, somebody just slipped a laxative in our food?"
"Looks like it."
"To me too.” He handed Gideon the tray to place on a bureau. He had eaten most of the soup and half a slice of bread, and his cheeks had taken on some color. “So the question is, what did we eat yesterday that no one else in the hotel ate? Not breakfast, because we order that individually from the regular menu, and dinner is the same. So that leaves-"
"Lunch, which is prepared at the hotel, boxed, and left in the bar-unattended-for us all to pick up in the morning. Anybody could easily have doctored it."
Abe was shaking his head. “No, Preston and Emma make their own lunches from bee pollen or sunflower sprouts or whatever, and they were sick too.” He glanced sharply up. “So they said."
"If they weren't, they were putting on a pretty good show, right down to the green complexions."
They both did some more thinking, their chins on their chests. They looked up at the same time. “The juice!"
Each morning at nine-thirty a busboy from the Mayaland bicycled to the site with an insulated three-gallon container of cold fruit juice, which was heavily used by the crew and remained all day on a table in the work shed. Unattended.
"So how hard would it have been to slip a few spoons of cathartic into it?” Abe asked rhetorically. “Cascara sagrada, say. You could get it in an over-the-counter laxative and break up the tablets into powder."
"We had unfiltered apple juice yesterday, didn't we?” Gideon asked. “Who'd notice if the cascara made it a little darker?"
Abe blew out his cheeks in a sigh. “Somebody around here certainly has a wonderful sense of humor."
"I can't help wondering if Emma's behind this,” Gideon said. “She's sure getting a lot of mileage out of it. Maybe she's giving her friend Huluc-Canab a little help from the other side of the physical-reality void."
"But you don't think she was the one that attacked you."
"No.” He paused, then added: “Not that I'd swear to it."
"What about the coatimundi?"
"No, that wasn't Emma. That was something different, a joke."
"Maybe it was different, maybe it wasn't. When a lot of funny things are going on together, they got a way of turning out to be related. Goldstein's Theorum of Interconnected Monkey Business."
Gideon smiled. “Could be."
"Of course. Anyway, you're right about one thing.” For the first time a tiny sparkle glimmered in Abe's eyes. “It wasn't Emma who provided the coati. It was someone else."
Gideon leaned over the back of the chair, his chin on his crossed forearms. “Okay, Abe, you know something I don't. Let's hear it."
"Well…” Abe leaned comfortably back against the pillows, his hands behind his neck. “Since I had some time on my hands this morning I did some thinking, and I got to wondering about this coatimundi. What I wondered was, where do you find such a thing?"