She got up, walked to the door, and stood looking back at him over her shoulder; when he met her eyes, she paced away. ‘I can’t understand how I wound up in charge here,’ she said. ‘I can see the events that led to it, the colonel dying and all. But it doesn’t make sense.’ She laughed. ‘Of course I’m not in charge. Nobody is… or if they are, they don’t have much of a plan. You know I lose over a hundred men a day even when it’s slow. A hundred men!’ She walked back to the door, fiddled with the knob. ‘I shouldn’t be talking this way to an I-Op. You might report me.’
‘I’m not going to report you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, coming toward him. ‘I didn’t mean that. I’m just having trouble being around you.’
‘Maybe I should go.’
‘Maybe you should.’ She dropped into a chair. ‘Why does this keep happening?’
‘What keeps happening?’
She turned away, embarrassed. ‘I keep being attracted to… to men, to strangers. It’s… it’s not even a real attraction. I mean I can feel it beginning, y’know. Feel my body reacting. And I try to control it. My mind’s not involved, y’see. Not at first, anyway. But I can’t stop it, I can’t slow it down at all. And then my mind is involved… though even then I know it’s not real, it’s just… I don’t know what it is. But it’s not real.’ She seemed to be asking for reassurance.
‘I might be able to help,’ he said.
‘How could you possibly? You don’t know what’s wrong, and even if you did…’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, and began to make her drowsy.
‘Who’re you working for?’ she said, then yawned.
Among the patterns of her mind was one that showed evidence of tampering, its structure more resilient and less easy to influence than the rest, and as she nodded in her chair, he worked at modifying the pattern, reducing its dominance. The work was painstaking. He realized he could easily go too far and destroy the pattern. Destroy her mind, turn her into a clever reconstruction of human wreckage like Don Julio and Amalia and Nate. A feeling of serenity stole over him as he worked, and accompanying this serenity was a new comprehension of the mind’s nature. He sensed that the patterns of thought were obeying some master template, that over the span of a life they weaved an intricate preordained shape that was linked to those of a myriad other minds; and he wondered if his old belief in magic and supernatural coincidences had not been a murky perception of the processes of thought, and if the mystical character he had assigned reality had actually had some validity. There was so much to think about, to try to understand. The woman’s arm in the mural, the Christian girl he’d treated in some possible future; the idea that he had somehow dealt with Izaguirre. Even the serenity he felt was something that needed to be understood; it seemed a symptom of a deeper and more complete understanding that lay yet beyond him. And these things taken together implied a universe whose complexity defied categorization, whose true character could not be fitted inside the definitions of magic or science. He doubted he would ever understand it all, but he thought he might someday understand more than he had once believed plausible.
When he awakened the major, she sat up, looking confused. ‘You must have been dead tired,’ he said.
She laughed dispiritedly. I’m always tired.’ She pressed her palms against her temples.
‘How do you feel?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Clearer, maybe.’ She probed him with a stare. ‘You did do something to me.’
‘No, I swear… Sleep must have been what you needed.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘A minute ago I was desperate to…’
‘Probably stress,’ he suggested. ‘That’s all. Stress can do funny things.’
‘God, that’s what this place does to you,’ she said. ‘It even makes you suspicious of feeling good.’
‘Do you still want me to leave?’
She appeared to be checking inside herself, sounding for an answer. No,’ she said, brightening. Why don’t you have another drink and tell me about New York. About yourself. You’ve hardly told me anything. Of course that’s always how it is with I-Ops… they’re secretive even about trivialities.’ She reached for the gin bottle, paused. ‘But you’re no I-Op, are you?’
‘What gives you that idea?’
‘Every I-Op I’ve ever met has been cold and given to drinking bourbon and gazing moodily toward the Red Menace as if he was yearning to have a Commie in his sights. You’re not like that.’
‘I guess I’m a new breed.’
She studied him for a long time before pouring. ‘I just bet you are,’ she said.
The patrol that escorted them across the valley consisted of ten men, bulky and alien-looking in their combat gear, their faceplates aglow with green letters and numerals from the computer displays inside the helmets, their minds awhirl with Sammy. There was no moon at first, but as they moved through the thickets, hugging the side of a hill, flares burst above them, explosions sent blooms of orange flame boiling up toward the clouds, and iridescent rains of tracers poured down from circling gunships: a constant incidence of roaring light that silhouetted twigs and leaves, and shimmered in blazes on the faceplates of the soldiers. When the moon sailed clear of the clouds, its radiance was almost unnoticeable. Mingolla and the rest had been outfitted with throat mikes and miniature speakers affixed to their ears so they could communicate with the soldiers, and he listened to their tinny voices with amazement, wondering at their delight in this environment, which seemed to him infernal.
‘Son of a bitch!’ said one, a kid named Bobby Boy. ‘See that muthafucka go, man! Musta hit a fuel cell.’
And the sergeant of the patrol, a wiry light-skinned black named Eddie, said, ‘That ain’t shit, man! Wait’ll you see one of them little tanks get it. Man, one of them goes, it’s the fuckin’ Fourth of July. All them missiles touchin’ off… red and green streaks of fire. That’s somethin’, that’s really somethin’.’
‘I seen that,’ said Bobby Boy querulously. ‘You tryin’ to say I ain’t seen that? I been here ’bout as long as you, man.’
Eddie grunted. ‘You be so fuckin’ high, you liable to see anything.’
‘Hey,’ said another voice. ‘You fuckers watch yo’ mouth! We got us a lady present.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Sebo,’ came back Bobby Boy. ‘That ol’ girl’s I-Op. They probably bugged her yummy ’fore they sent her out here. They… Wow! Awright! See that bitch blow, man? See that gold color in the heart? That’s fuckin’ weird! Wonder what the Fritos got burns gold.’
‘Probably all the grease they eat,’ said somebody new.
Mingolla, made uneasy by all this, walked closer to Debora. In the flashes of the explosions, her eyes burned red, her shadow hands looked to be seven-fingered. ‘You okay,’ he said, just to say something, forgetting the throat mike.