Pictures of the request letters fell, one after another, on the screen. "Here's what we received back," Mike's voice said over them. New pages appeared, each pertinent section highlighted. "President Barnett's press secretary claims that the Carter administration documents relevant to that period are 'missing.' He promises to look into the matter. The Justice Department claims that it was 'not involved' and that any documents it might have regarding Cyclone's participation or non-participation in the operation are 'classified due to problems with his estate.' The Pentagon sent us reports which are, as you can see, mostly blacked-out and useless. The CIA has 'declined comment.'"
Cut back to Mike, looking seriously into the camera. "We would like to assure Ms. Davis that we will, indeed, 'do our job.' Our investigation will continue, and we will report back to you, our viewers, exactly what we find."
"Yes!"
The crowd of jokers and sympathizers gathered in Father Squid's new living room exulted as 60 Minutes went to a commercial, hugging Hannah and clapping Gregg on the back. He grinned in the midst of the spontaneous celebration. "You've done it!" Father Squid roared at him. "Tell them, Gregg!" he shouted. Others joined in, urging him to speak: Jube, Dutton, Oddity, a dozen more.
Gregg rose, holding up his left hand, and the group slowly quieted. Someone snapped off the television set.
"I'll make this short and sweet," he said. "Yes, this is exactly what we were after," Gregg told them, and just for the pleasure it gave him, he used the Gift with the words, imbuing them with power and enjoying the feel of their reaction. Already primed, already wanting to rejoice with them, it was easy to stroke their emotions. "We haven't won. Not yet. But we've made a beginning. The Sharks are already running for cover. If we keep the spotlight on them, they can't escape. I'm just a tool in your hands, someone with the right contacts. You did this, all of you. So applaud yourselves."
They did so, vigorously, as Gregg sat again, wrapped in their silver joy.
You see, he told the voice inside himself. If we can do this, we can do more - anything I want to do. God, it feels so GOOD!
From across the room, Hannah caught his eye. She was watching him. For a moment, their gazes locked, and her smile went wide. She nodded. For a moment, he felt confused, as if her acknowledgment overrode all the pleasure of the moment. Then he grinned again and nodded back.
Doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, the voice chided inside him. Isn't that right, Greggie?
To that, he had no answer.
Paths of Silence and of Night
by Leanne C. Harper
"The magic secrets of your forefathers were revealed to them by voices which came by the path of silence and the night."
- Popol Vuh
Sacred Book of the Quiche Maya
The movement caught her. The hawk, head turning in a search for food, fixed on the two men coming down the trail. Not villagers, not on the trail down from the mountains. The men of Chotol were in the milpas below the village. Neither the army nor the guerrillas would have been so foolish as to send only two men. Evangelical missionaries would have been coming up from the valleys. When they stopped, the hawk lost them amid the tangled mass of foliage. Suzanne Menotti shoved her thick black hair behind her ears as if it would aid her sight. She shared her vision with the black jaguar who stood at her side. They had been playing with the village children, making a game of learning Spanish. It was one of the reasons she was allowed to stay here. Now she let them play by themselves, chasing the dogs.
Listening, she heard nothing more than the quiet sounds of village life: maize being ground for tortillas and the tortillas themselves being patted into existence between the fingers of the women, the children laughing in their play, and beyond that the shrill bird calls that came from the jungle. The breeze that made life in the tropical heat bearable up here on the mountainside swept through the upper branches of the tall pine, oak, and cedar trees surrounding Chotol and down into her unbound hair.
Switching from one point of view to the next among her sentries in the forest, she watched the strangers approach the tiny Quiche Mayan village of Chotol. The eyes she used could tell her little about them at this distance. The eyes of her watchers were not adapted to see what she needed to know. The lead man avoided each trap set into the trail as if he had seen a map of their defenses.
When a coatimundi looked up from his meal and saw them twenty minutes from the village, Suzanne told the children to warn their mothers and grandparents in the eighteen thatched-roof houses surrounding the open center of the village. They did not hesitate, running silently with prematurely serious faces to follow a drill they had known all their lives. While they scattered into the tiny whitewashed houses, she went back to her surveillance of the intruders. As best she could tell, neither man was armed, but that was no guarantee. She called Luis, the eldest Ek child, back and sent him to warn the men farming the corn in the milpas. An unnatural quiet fell over the entire village as the adults and the children gathered food and weapons in preparation for evacuation. In a war zone, everyone learns their roles early.
The Eks were the village leaders. When Rosa Ek came out of her house fully armed with machete and ancient rifle, carrying both her youngest child and a bag of supplies, Suzanne explained the danger to her in the Quiche dialect she had struggled to learn. After a quick consultation, Rosa left Suzanne there to decide the intruders' fate and shepherded her charges to their jungle hiding places. It was a measure of the trust the people of Chotol had in her, and it never failed to make her proud. The danger was ten minutes away. Suzanne retreated into her own house to await its arrival.
When they left the jungle for the clearing around the village, the man who followed staggered as if, without the necessity of struggling through the fecund growth, he did not possess the strength to walk. The leader moved as slowly and deliberately here as he had through the jungle. Coming into the center of the village, he stopped for a moment before turning to face her home. His companion hauled himself to the edge of the well and began pulling up the bucket.
Now she could see them with her own eyes. The leader was Maya, in his late forties and already beating the statistics, a Cakchiquel she guessed from his embroidered shirt, although she was still terrible at determining tribal affiliations. Rosa despaired of her sometimes. Rosa could have told her precisely the village from which he came. To her surprise, his thirtysomething companion was white, as norteamericano as herself by the look of his sunburn. And a journalist, according to his filthy, many-pocketed vest and dangling cameras. By travelling alone with an Indian, he proclaimed himself a liberal journalist. Still, appearances here were at least as deceiving as they had been in New York. She saw no weapons other than the Maya's machete. They were travelling light, with only the white man's camera pack and the Maya's one red woven cotton bag. There was something wrong with her view of the Maya through the eyes of the margay perched high in a fir tree. The nervous little cat was difficult to control without taking over his mind entirely. Suzanne hated to do that.