I
"You will hurt your brain, senor."
Jenson ignored him, continuing to doodle equations on the dusty tabletop, intricate and complicated equations that never converged. Several times, stymied, he moved to a fresh area of untouched dust, wiping the smudge from his fingertip before he began. Juan, Jenson's day guard, his sombrero pushed back on his head and two bandoleers crossed on his chest, peered over Jenson's shoulder, squinting through the smoke of a cigarette stub plugged between his lips. Juan reached over Jenson's shoulder, pointing at the equations.
"Why you do that?"
"What?" said Jenson, thinking Juan had noticed some error in his calculations.
"Arithmetic."
"Kicks."
"Kicks? What is kicks?" Juan withdrew his hand.
"Fun."
"You have one funny idea of fun, senor."
Silently, Jenson agreed. His sabbatical year, teaching at the University of Mexico, was supposed to be fun. It had been misery. The teaching, at times, was fun. The students were eager. Yet the whole reason for the sabbatical—to shelve his research project for a year and let his mind try for a new perspective—had failed. His work dogged him like a predator, lurking behind every thought. He was so close to a solution could almost feel it physically, an object grasped in the dark. Frequently he awoke in the middle of the night with the answer on his lips. By the time he got a pencil and paper, it was gone. Halfway through the school year, unable to abstain any longer, he sent for his equipment.
"How you know when it is finished?" asked Juan.
"The series converges."
"What you have then?"
"Zero."
"Cero!" Juan laughed and stood up. "You do that for a cero? You are one loco fella, senor."
"Probably."
Juan returned to his guardpost in front of Jenson and near the door. An M-16 rifle leaned against a plastic packing case next to him. He picked it up and began wiping the action with a rag, muttering something about gringos locos. Jenson looked at his equation. Another dead end. He bounced his fist off the table, and stood up.
"Damn this thing!"
"Cuidado!" said Juan, suddenly alert. He gestured with the rifle for Jenson to sit down. "Do not make the quick motions, senor."
Jenson remembered where he was and sat down. If only he had some paper, or better yet, a blackboard, things would go more quickly. He was running out of dust.
"Senor, you must not move so quickly. I have the orders, you know."
"Can you get me some paper?"
"Paper?"
"So I can go on with my work."
"Paper is not in the orders."
"The hell with your—" began Jenson vigorously, but Juan leveled the rifle at him and he softened his tone. "I mean, can't you make an exception?"
"There are no exceptions. All are treated in the same way."
"How many other prisoners do you have?"
"Just you."
"If you only have one prisoner and you give him paper and pencil, you will be treating them all alike."
"Muy logico, senor, pero—excuse me—but I have the orders and the orders say nothing of paper and pencils and you, if you will remember it yourself, have volunteered to be our guest."
Jenson remembered "volunteering." He was returning to the University of California at Berkeley from the University of Mexico, planning to stop over in Tucson and visit his sister. He was making better time than he expected, letting the turbine Porsche out to a hundred and sixty on any straight stretches of road he encountered. Between Hermosillo and Nogales, he slowed for a goat herd. A tire blew, causing him to skid onto the dusty shoulder of the road. He got out and fixed it. Only when the spare was in place did he notice the bullet hole in the old tire. He looked up from the tire. A half-dozen men in sarapes with rifles surrounded him. One of them, a short man with a tall sombrero and drooping mustachios, stepped forward.
"Buenos dias, senor."
"Buenos dias."
The man said something too fast for Jenson's limited Spanish. When he got no answer, he switched to English.
"It is a nice car that you have, senor."
"Thanks."
"What does it cost?"
"About eight thousand, new."
"Eight thousand. That is not much."
"Dollars, not pesos."
"Ahhh," said the man, smiling and nodding to accent his understanding. An even row of white teeth showed in the middle of the mustachios, punctuated by a black gap where an incisor should have been. He snapped an order to his men. One of them opened the driver's side and got in.
"Hey!"
"Hey, yourself, senor."
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Taking your car." The man waited for a reaction. When he got none, he burst into laughter, long snorting laughter that turned into a coughing spasm. After some final sputtering, he controlled himself.
"The revolution is not good for the health."
"How am I supposed to get to Nogales?"
The man smiled, but avoided laughing.
"Walk, senor."
"Walk!"
"It is good for health." He turned to his men. "Vamonos, hombres!"
The man in the driver's seat started the engine.
"Wait a minute."
"Wait a minute?" The leader stepped up to Jenson, bringing his face within inches of Jenson's. He grinned, his missing tooth prominently absent. "Do you know to whom you have the pleasure of addressing?"
"Genghis Khan."
The comment set off another bout of coughing, doubling the man. He repeated it to his men, who laughed, except the driver, who was practicing at the wheel of the motionless car, jerking the wheel from side to side as if working his way to the head of the pack at Le Mans. Finally the leader returned to his scrutiny of Jenson's eyes.
"No."
"Who then?"
"Who who?"
"To whom do I have the pleasure of addressing," said Jenson, annoyed enough to mimic the man.
"Me."
"Oh? And just who are you?"
"El Bui ."
"The bandido should-have—"
"Bandido!" blurted El Buitre. His eyebrows went up, mock incredulity on his face. "Bandido! No, no, senor. Politico!"
"Si, si," agreed El Buitre's men, except the driver, who was paying no attention to the conversation.
Conspiratorially, El Buitre lowered his voice, moving even closer to Jenson.
"You know what that is?"
"What?"
"El Buitre," whispered El Buitre.
"No."
"The vul-toor." El Buitre paused, stroking his mustachios before he looked up at Jenson. "It is a fearsohm bird, the vul-toor, no?"
"Fearsome."
El Buitre threw back his head and laughed, a growling laugh with shining eyes, simultaneously loosing a quick left jab into Jenson's stomach. Jenson gasped and collapsed. Dust settled gently around him. He struggled for breath.
"Muchachos—" began El Buitre.
"No!" gasped Jenson.
El Buitre glared at him. "No. You tempt the fates, senor."
Jenson regained some of his breath.
"You can have the car . . ."
"Of course I can have the car."
“... but please let me keep the papers and equipment in the back seat."
"Back seat?" said El Buitre and peered through the back window. "What is it in the back seat?" "My work."
"What do El Buitre care for your work? He does not. Muchachos!" Jenson got to his feet. The brief case and working model in the back seat were his life work. He could duplicate it but it would take years.
"If you take my work, you'll have to take me, too."
El Buitre smiled.
They threw Jenson in a storeroom at El Buitre's camp, more a permanent village than a camp. At night, Jose, Juan's brother, guarded him. Only Juan knew English. The ransom, Jenson was told, would be set at fifty thousand dollars, though El Buitre was willing to bargain.
"And if you don't get it?" Jenson had asked.
"We shoot you."
II
On the third day of his captivity, Jenson's mind recovered enough to be bored. He coped with the boredom by doodling math in the dust. When he had almost exhausted the dust, the storeroom door flew open, rebounding from the corrugated iron wall with a metallic clang and narrowly missing Juan, who snapped to something like attention. El Buitre stomped in, his boots clomping on the wooden floor, and skidded a newspaper across the tabletop to Jenson, ob literating the morning's work. "Is that you?"
"Is who me?"
"That," said El Buitre, poking at a picture on the front page of the paper with a stubby index finger. "Este hombre ahi."
Jenson looked at the picture, centered on the page, nodding. It was his picture, or more accurately a ten-year-old college graduation picture.
"It's me."
"El fisico?"
"Yes."
"Is it true what they say?"
"You got me."
"Correcto. I have got you. But is it true what they say?"
"What do they say?"
El Buitre jabbed the paper. "Read him!"
Jenson started on the story under the picture, laboriously sounding out the Spanish words. Communicating with his students had been easy. They used a combination of English, Spanish, mathematics and physics. Reading a newspaper entirely in Spanish was something else again, even if he did know the subject of the article somewhat better than the reporter.
"I am waiting, senor."
Jenson continued reading. After several suppositions about how he fell into El Buitre's hands—all wrong—the story went on to list his various distinctions plus a few rumors about the Nobel Prize.
"I see you upped the ante."
"Perdone, senor?" El Buitre said.
"You're asking sixty thousand."
"One must leave room for the bargain."
Jenson finished the article. "It's correct, except for the part about you."
"It says you are working on the—how do you call it? Transmitter of the material."
"Matter transmitter."
"Si, es verdad?"
"Yes."
El Buitre was silent, considering the idea. He stroked his mustachios. After several seconds of contemplation, he began pacing back and forth in front of the table, holding his chin and watching his path. He stopped abruptly and glanced at Jenson.
"Will it transmit the animals?"
"In theory it will transmit anything—animal, vegetable or mineral."
"Bueno!"
El Buitre paced again, his boots thudding hollowly on the floor. Jenson and Juan watched him. El Buitre paused every now and then to eye Jenson and shake his head. It occurred to Jenson that El Buitre was having pangs of conscience. If he were forced to execute Jenson, the world-renowned physicist, it would look bad for the cause, whatever the cause was. El Buitre, probably. It might also deprive the world of Jenson's potential achievements. Jenson discarded the idea, recognizing as vanity trying to console him when nothing else was available. A more likely explanation for El Buitre's pensiveness was the ransom. With a well-known physicist in hand, rather than simply a passing tourist, the price was probably going up.
"Those things in the car, they are it, the transmitter of material?"
"A model."
"A model that works?"
"Yes."
"Show me."
Jenson gave up speculating about El Buitre's thoughts. Whatever the man was thinking, would have to appear in its own time.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"No electricity."
"You think we are primitivos, senor fisico?" El Buitre pointed toward a socket near the base of the wall, unnoticed by Jenson. Every evening, Jose brought a kerosene lantern with him when he relieved Juan. Jenson had assumed there was no electricity. "What does that look like? The trap for the mouse?"
El Buitre said something to Juan, who bolted from the storeroom. After several minutes, Jenson heard an engine cough and catch. It whined a moment before it settled to a low rumble.
"You hear that, senor?"
Jenson nodded.
"Mi generador."
After a few more minutes, Juan returned with Jenson's equipment and briefcase, struggling under the awkward load of the transmitter carrying case, a three-foot plywood box with leather handles on both ends and the top.
"Careful."
Juan put the box on the table and dropped the briefcase. Jenson opened the box, examining the contents to make sure everything was there. He extracted a concrete disk a foot in diameter with a nine-inch hole in the center. Embedded in the concrete was a tantalum bar, used to focus the transmitter into a one-inch circle in the vacant center of the ring. The concrete itself was Jenson's substitute for a ground, an essential for stability. In any larger model, the focusing ring would have to be partially buried in the earth or risk an unstable field in the ring and permanent dematerialization. The ring was flat on one edge. Jenson rested the ring on the end of the table.
"What is that thing in the box?"
"A computer, among other things."
"What does it compute?"
"It's a feedback system to stabilize the field inside the ring."
El Buitre peered through the ring at Jenson. "I see no field."
"It's invisible."
"Oh."
Jenson pulled the feedback system out of the box, essentially a commercially built digital computer with a minimum of analog circuits to make decisions, modified for Jenson's purposes. Attached to the rear of the stabilizing computer was an energy converter and modulator, allowing objects passed through the ring to be converted into a stream of subnuclear particles and reassembled at the focal point. Jenson's model had only a two-foot range. He attached an inch-thick cable to a connector on the ring, then handed a line cord to Juan.
"Plug this in."
Jenson had done much of the prototype development in his apartment in Berkeley and designed the transmitter to operate on house current, though he occasionally kicked out a circuit breaker when he tried to pass large objects through the ring.
Juan stuck the plug into the socket. Jenson flipped up a safety cover on a toggle switch and activated the transmitter. The generator outside died.
"Que pass?"
"Not enough power."
"Power? We have plenty of power," said El Buitre, waving his arms around as if the world were filled with power, then yelled something at Juan, who rushed from the room, leaving his rifle leaning against a crate. Jenson looked at the rifle.
"Do not even think of it. I have four hundred men outside."
The generator started, this time at a higher idle.
"Buena Continuhremns."
Jenson activated the transmitter again. The generator kept running. "Do you have something small I can use to demonstrate with?" El Buitre pulled a bullet from one of the ammunition belts across his chest.
"Something nonexplosive."
"You said he would work on anything."
"In theory."
El Buitre replaced the cartridge and pulled a ball-point pen from his pants pocket.
"This?"
"Fine."
Jenson took the pen and slowly pushed it into the center of the ring. The pen barrel disappeared, as if submerging in water.
"Where he go?"
Jenson nodded toward the opposite end of the table. El Buitre's eyes enlarged.
"He sticks out here!"
The pen barrel had materialized over the table two feet from the center of the ring.
"Why does he stand in the air?"
"Because I'm holding on to it," answered Jenson, indicating the retractor end of the pen between his fingers.
"If you let go—what then?"
"It depends. If more of it's on my side, it will fall back this way. Otherwise, it will all come out where the point is."
El Buitre held both hands in front of him as if measuring a distance. "Not fifty- ?" he asked.
"No."
"What if the power go off?"
"There's enough residual energy to let anything in the field get through."
Jenson pushed the pen and let go. It appeared in the air two feet away and dropped to the tabletop, clattering and rolling toward the edge. El Buitre plucked it up and examined it, scrutinizing it at close range. The generator died. Juan came back into the storeroom with a supplicating expression on his face, launching into an explanation of why the generator stopped.
"Calla!"
Juan was silent. El Buitre gazed off into a corner of the storeroom, scratching his chin. Finally he looked up.
"Bueno!"
"Bueno, what?"
"You want to leave here, do you not?"
"Yes."
"You may go."
"Thank you," said Jenson, standing up. He began unscrewing the connector from the ring. "I—"
"If—"
"If what?"
"If," said El Buitre, pointing at the transmitter, "you make me one of those."
"Impossible."
"Nothing is impossible."
"You can have that one." Jenson nodded toward his briefcase. "If I can have my papers."
"Do you think I want a toy?" El Buitre held his hands wide apart. "I want a beeg one."
"How big?"
"As beeg as this room."
"You're nuts."
"Perhaps, senor, but that is the price of your freedom."
"We'll all be here a long time if that's the price. I've been working on the problem of how to make a large transmitter for over a year. Day and night, for a year. It simply cannot be—" Suddenly Jenson saw it, the solution he had wanted for a year.
"Pencil."
"Que?"
"Pencil, damn it, pencil!"
"Lapiz y papel," snapped El Buitre. "Vamos!"
Juan riffled Jenson's briefcase, at last coming up with a mechanical pencil and blank paper. Jenson sat down at the table and pushed the transmitter to one side to make room to write. For a year he had searched for a solution, for the mathematical expression of his matter transmitter, an expression that could be extrapolated into a larger transmitter. For a year, it had eluded his every effort. He wrote rapidly, covering the sheet on both sides with mathematical expressions and phrases. Why so simple a solution had evaded him, he was unable to say. Instead of the series converging, it was infinite. As if completing a letter with a period, he bounced the pencil point off the paper and sat back. "It can be done."
"Bueno! We will do it."
"But—"
"No buts."
III
The project would be difficult even in a sophisticated scientific community. In a Mexican mountain village, where women still ground corn for tortillas on large flat stones, it would be impossible. Since there were no "buts," Jenson decided to convince El Buitre by showing him. He began work on the designs.
Days passed. The pile of designs on his table in the storeroom multiplied. They let him out for an hour a day, heavily escorted by guards. On one of his walks, he noticed that the village—a collection of corrugated iron buildings and tents—was well camouflaged. There was little chance of being seen from the air.
The more Jenson got into the project, the more he enjoyed it. He could have faked the designs. No one in El Buitre's camp knew a neutrino from a burrito. The real work had to be done sometime. The present seemed ideal. No one bothered him. He was well fed. He was content to work.
Since it was impossible to actually construct the transmitter, Jenson designed with abandon, choosing the most expensive materials and grandiose construction. El Buitre wanted a "beeg one." Jenson would design a "beeg one." To construct a transmitter with a twelve-foot projection surface, it was necessary to design a ring one hundred and forty-four feet in diameter. Sixty-four feet of it would be underground. The protruding arch would rise eighty feet in the air. With some satisfaction, Jenson wondered how El Buitre would camouflage it. He estimated the cost of the tantalum alone at half a million, dollars not pesos.
El Buitre, inspecting the designs a month later, said simply, "Bueno."
"Bueno! Do you realize how much this will cost?"
"Make the list of your needs."
It took a day to write the materiel list. It was one of Jenson's better days. He would blithely write something on the paper, then burst into uncontrollable laughter, contorted at the idea of El Buitre trying to buy it. When he finished the list, he gave it to the bandit.
"How do you plan to get this stuff?" asked Jenson. "Sears Roebuck?"
El Buitre folded the list and tucked it into a pocket somewhere under his red sarape, then looked up, grinning as he spoke.
"Steal it."
Jenson followed El Buitre's exploits in newspapers supplied by Juan. A train was derailed near Guaymas and its reactor stolen to replace the inadequate gas engine generator. Twenty of El Buitre's men died of radiation sickness carrying the pieces back to camp. Jenson shook his head over the paper, regretting his inability to instruct El Buitre any other way.
Reports, both in the newspapers and from Juan, got worse. Without thinking, Jenson mentioned the inadequacy of the computer used with his model transmitter to stabilize a larger transmitter. The quantity of information alone would overload it before it ever got to analyzing the information. A few nights later, an analog computer system was borrowed from a factory in Chihuahua, carted over the Sierra Madre Occidental in pieces, and presented to Jenson.
"What was the cost?" asked Jenson.
"Cost?"
"In men," said Jenson. "At the factory."
"Only the graveyard shift."
When Jenson overcame his repugnance at the computer's price, he spent some of his time working out a program to match his designs. One would have to be worked out anyway. When El Buitre finally saw the impossibility of his plan, Jenson would have a copy of the program in his briefcase. Besides, working took his mind off the raids.
The government in Mexico City was panic stricken. For the first time since the days of Francisco Madero's entry into Mexico City, the electorate was muttering change. The conservative National Revolutionary Party was bloating its rhetoric to no avail. Speculation was giving way to fear. Why was El Buitre taking what he took? What did it mean? When four hundred banditos swept into Chihuahua and left with a computer, it was news, but news no one could interpret. There were printed rumors that El Buitre's gang was increasing. People were said to be joining just to find out what was going on.
Jenson read about small massacres. A concrete factory in Ciudad Obregon was sacked, leaving ten men dead and two cement mixers demolished. An electronics warehouse in Mazatlan was looted. Four men died. A bulldozer disappeared in Puerto Periasco. A gas station in Topolobampo was pumped dry.
"A gas station?" said Jenson, looking up from the paper.
"We move quickly, senor," said Juan. "We must have gasoline. You think we use the burros?"
Reports trickled in of plundering in Guadalajara, tourists fleeing before an army of ten thousand, though El Buitre had nowhere near that many men. Zacatecas and Tehuantepec, even Merida in the Yucatan, reported raids—all disclaimed by El Buitre, who complained of shoddy journalism. He said he never got farther south than the state of Nayarit.
Fall changed to winter. It snowed briefly in the mountains. A stove was installed in Jenson's storeroom. As the materials mounted, dark circles began to appear under El Buitre's eyes and his cough got worse. If the revolution demanded his health, he commented to Jenson one day after a particularly bad coughing spell, he must give it.
The bandit horde was now two thousand strong and unruly. Once El Buitre shot it out with one of his lieutenants, a man who wanted to abandon the matter transmitter altogether and concentrate on pillaging. El Buitre unhesitatingly shot the man, lamenting the necessity for it only after he checked for a pulse. El Buitre spent more and more of his time with Jenson, complaining about the problems of command. Several times Jenson tried to reason with him about the matter transmitter. El Buitre only eyed him suspiciously, evidently thinking Jenson had sold out to some faction among his men. Some of the men, especially those loyal to the dead lieutenant, thought El Buitre was mad. Why build matter transmitters, they reasoned, when there was looting to be done?
"They do not understand, Federico," said El Buitre, who had taken to calling Jenson by something like his first name. "They have no vision, no view of the future. Robbing and killing is O.K. for today, but what of tomorrow? Manana. We must think of manana.
"It's lonely at the top," remarked Jenson.
Sometime during the winter, Jenson began to believe El Buitre was a real revolutionary. It chilled him more than the weather. Bandits were predictable. They wanted booty. When they got it, they went home happy. You could deal with a bandit. Fanatics, on the other hand, committed to their own unalterable vision of manana, were not only unpredictable but resolute. No deals deterred them. They kept their eyes fixed on a distant star while their hands cut a bloody path through any careless chunks of humanity that got in their way.
Jenson had pangs of guilt. He felt responsible for those who died, from banditos to factory workers. He had tried to show El Buitre the folly of building the transmitter. It accomplished the opposite. Materiel mounted, El Buitre's band increased, an unprecedented crime wave swept western Mexico—all due to Jenson's own mistaken notion of the best way to instruct El Buitre. He should have refused from the beginning, refused and been shot. At night he dreamed of the dead men, each sent to his doom by Jenson's folly, marching into heaven through a gigantic concrete ring.
Yet, as the days wore on and more of the materiel arrived, Jenson doubted the impossibility of building the matter transmitter. It was a small doubt at first, easily brushed aside. After all, there was still the insurmountable problem of the tantalum.
One day El Buitre, large bags under each eye and twenty pounds lighter than when they first met, walked into the storeroom and spread out a map on Jenson's work table, pointing at it.
"Do you know this place, Federico?"
"Tucson."
"The tantalum will be there Tuesday. It is being shipped from San Diego to Hous-tone."
Jenson imagined El Buitre's horde in Tucson, burning, sacking, killing. He pictured his sister in the ruins, dismembered or worse.
"Oh, no! My sister lives in Tucson."
"I will say hello if we see her. This is my plan."
El Buitre outlined a plan, a quick pincer movement into the railroad yards at Tucson. Jenson was incredulous. Bovine Mexico was one thing, but lupine America was something else.
"You'll never get away with it."
"Por que?"
"Because the United States Government is not the Mexican Government."
"You are right. It is beeger." El Buitre grinned. "Like the dinosaur."
"Remember General Pershing," Jenson said.
"Who?"
"Never mind. This plan is insane."
"They will never know what it is that has hit them."
"They didn't," said Jenson, watching the men unload tantalum from the back of a truck. It arrived with a construction engineer named Harold Wright, a man about El Buitre's size who refused to say anything to Jenson for three days, insisting on his rights as an American citizen, whatever he supposed them to be.
With the arrival of the tantalum, Jenson was convinced. The transmitter was possible. His only decision was whether to make the attempt. The men who died to collect the material, and those who died at the hands of the collectors, were dead. Refusing to go ahead would only add another name to their numbers, his own. If he refused El Buitre would certainly shoot him. If he failed, El Buitre would no doubt shoot him. Even if he succeeded, El Buitre would probably shoot him. There was little choice.
Convincing Wright to cooperate proved more difficult than convincing himself. When Wright finally believed Jenson was Jenson, the missing physicist, he was even more recalcitrant. He would sit on his stool in the corner of the storeroom muttering, "turncoat," "Benedict Arnold," "Quisling." El Buitre, Jenson tried to explain one day when he heard the bandit approaching outside, would use something more than sweet reason. The door burst open.
"How is the frog today?" said El Buitre, walking toward Jenson at the table and indicating Wright with a nod of his head.
Jenson glanced at Wright, who was sitting resolutely in the corner, staring straight ahead with a thin-lipped determination to remain silent. Wright's face, wide-mouthed with hyperthyroidal eyes, did faintly resemble a frog's.
"Very quiet," answered Jenson.
"He no talk?"
"Not to me."
"He will talk to El Buitre," said El Buitre, turning to Wright. "You will not only talk to El Buitre, senor engin'er, you will work for him, or your life will not be worth that!" El Buitre spit on the floor.
"Messy," said Jenson.
"Que?"
"Nothing."
Wright was silent, avoiding everyone's eyes. El Buitre walked over and planted himself squarely in front of the engineer, legs apart.
"Talk!"
He slapped Wright twice. Wright looked up, his bulbous eyes gleaming with intensity.
"Creep."
"Creep? What is that, creep?"
"You're not getting word one out of me!" said Wright. "I demand to see the American ambassador!"
"We have no ambassador."
"The consul."
"We have no consul."
"An attaché?"
El Buitre grabbed Wright's shirtfront, lifting him partially off the stool and staring into his eyes.
"Listen to me, gringo pig—"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No! No choice. You will work for me or I will feed your insides to the coyotes!"
Wright, his chin obscured by his distended shirtfront, seemed unimpressed. Jenson, on the other hand, was impressed, both by El Buitre's threat and Wright's defiance of it. Wright was doing what Jenson should have done from the beginning. Unfortunately, in Jenson's opinion, it was too late for defiance, noble as was the gesture. El Buitre was committed to the matter transmitter. He would stop at nothing to achieve his goal. Defiance must give way to cunning. Jenson chewed on his lip, calculating how best to use the situation. Though Jenson considered himself cunning enough in his own right, two heads were better than one. He would need Wright's help. El Buitre must be dissuaded from violence and Wright persuaded to work. Only working, would they have time to devise a plan.
El Buitre shook Wright, emphasizing his point.
"While you are still alive!"
The bandido dropped the engineer onto his stool, turning to Jenson. Defiance was incapable of achieving Jenson's long-term goal—freedom—yet it might be useful in the short run.
"Ahora, Federico, where are we?"
"Nowhere."
"Nowhere? How come nowhere?"
"I'm not working unless you leave Wright alone."
El Buitre's eyes narrowed. Without moving his head, his eyes flicked from Jenson to Wright and back to Jenson.
"Your insides, too, Federico, can feed the coyotes."
El Buitre drew a long Bowie knife from under his sarape. Its blade gleamed in the faint light of the storeroom. Jenson shivered.
"Engineers are a dime a dozen," persisted Jenson, noticing Wright scowl. "But physicists—"
"Twenty-five centavos a dozen," said El Buitre, thumbing the cutting edge of his knife.
"Physicists who can build matter transmitters are one of a kind—namely, me."
"You," said El Buitre, snorting. "What do I care? I had no transmitter of material before you come. I have none now. I will lose nothing. I think I cut you up for fun."
El Buitre started toward Jenson, grinning on the other side of the knife blade. Jenson was beginning to think defiance, whether for short- or long-run goals, was a mistake.
"Wait!" said Wright. "I'll work."
IV
They began work the next day. Jenson explained his plans and specifications to Wright, who in turn explained them to Juan, who told the men what to do. Jenson spent most of his time working on the heart of the transmitter, the energy converter and modulator. After the initial organization of the project, things went smoothly. At first, he was so busy getting the various aspects of construction under way that he had no time to plan an escape. Later, he forgot about escaping altogether, losing himself in his work for days. It was work that would have to be done anyway.
Wright worked on the projection ring. Using the bulldozer and a work gang, he excavated a hole seventy feet long and seventy feet deep, a trench with sloping sides, scooped from the hillside. They leveled an area two hundred yards around the ring. Wright set up a mold for the concrete ring, building it in sections on the ground and paying scrupulous attention to detail. When the ring was complete, a half million dollars' worth of molten tantalum poured into section after section, it was as large as the foundation of a building.
One evening, shortly after the completion of the ring but before it was erected, Jenson and Wright were talking in the storeroom. Wright lounged on his cot, installed after he agreed to work. Jenson was putting the last touches on the day's entry in his step-by-step procedural journal. Jose, Juan's non-English-speaking brother, was reading a Spanish comic book near the door.
"What do you suppose the old buzzard is going to do with us," asked Wright, "when the transmitter's finished?"
"Shoot us, probably," answered Jenson without looking up.
"Cynic."
"Realist."
"Then why do you keep working?"
"To postpone the inevitable, I suppose."
"Nothing else?"
Jenson looked up from his notebook, laying his pen carefully in the centerfold. "What else?"
"You want to build it."
"Don't be silly."
"Who's silly? Think about it."
Jenson thought about it, resisting the idea. His only reason for building the transmitter was the threat of El Buitre's knife. That motive alone was potent enough. On several occasions he dreamed of being pursued through knee-deep snow by howling coyotes, a vulture flapping overhead. True, sometime during the weeks of construction he became convinced they could succeed. True, the dreams stopped about the same time. But he worked because of the threat. Wright was wrong. Wright was definitely wrong. Whatever change Wright thought he noticed—if any—had nothing to do with his reason for working. It was compulsion—nothing more.
"You're working for yourself," said Wright.
"No."
"Yes. I can see it."
"I'm working for the same thing I've always worked for—our release."
"You just said, Buzz is going to shoot us."
"It was a joke."
"Some joke."
"Do you have a better explanation?"
"How long would it take you to get backers in the States?"
"I don't know," answered Jenson, uncomfortable at the implication of Wright's question. "I haven't thought about it."
"How long? Any kind of backers—government or private. A year? Two years? Five years? Your transmitter's brand new. A lot of people would have to be convinced before one speck of work was done."
"What are you getting at?"
"Here, you've got the materials. Here, you've got the manpower. And most of all, here, you've got a willing patron—"
"That's insane."
"I agree."
"You're implying that I would take advantage of all the people who died because of that . . . that . . . fanatic! I'm not responsible for that madman! Especially when he's got that Bowie knife at my throat!"
"I'm not suggesting you are."
"You're suggesting something. Whatever it is, you're wrong!"
"Am I? Here you are. You find yourself in the middle of this situation. A madman is forcing you at knife-point to do what you would have done anyway. He'll supply the material. He'll supply the manpower. You're not responsible, after all. Certainly, you're not responsible. All those people who died are already dead. Nothing will bring them back. And besides, everything you really want—want as much as El Buitre himself—is here." Wright grabbed at the air in front of him, clinching his fist. "Within your reach."
"I think we'd better end this discussion."
"Not yet," said Wright, leaning back on his cot. He propped his head up with his hands, looking at Jenson from between his elbows. "Let's talk about your patron."
"What about him?"
"We know—at least I know—why you want to build the transmitter."
"You're wrong there."
"Maybe, but why does he want it?"
"Why?"
"You heard me."
The question had never occurred to Jenson. The last ten years of his life were spent developing the transmitter. The last few months were spent building it. It seemed perfectly natural to him that everyone would want it.
"Why?" repeated Jenson. "I haven't the vaguest idea."
They erected the projection ring the next day, laying in the underground sections first. They built up from each stub of the underground "U," completing the "O" when the last keystone section was lowered into place. It. occurred to Jenson, watching the process, that the Pyramids were probably built in the same way, muscle over matter. Jenson was still building the transmitter itself, yet he felt satisfaction that its most impressive feature was finished. El Buitre kept the men working after dark, painting the awesome concrete arch with camouflage paint, blotchy patches of dark and light green to blend with the sprouting grass on the leveled area around it.
After dinner, Jenson left the storeroom door open so he could look at the arch. Jose, forced to work all day and guard all night, was slumped against the wall by the door, close to sleep. Wright was finishing his frijoles, noisily scooping spoonfuls from a metal pan.
"You must have some feeling of accomplishment, Harold," said Jenson, gazing out the open door at the painters.
Wright grunted and spooned beans.
"The size of it alone—"
"I've built bigger," said Wright through a mouthful of beans. "What, for example?"
Wright swallowed the beans and smiled. "A mausoleum, for one."
"For who?"
"Some other megalomaniac." Wright dropped his spoon into the pan with a metallic click. "Is this thing of yours going to work?"
"I think so."
"'I think so' isn't going to be good enough for old Buzz."
"I wish you'd quit calling him Buzz," said Jenson. "It annoys me."
"You like him!" said Wright, beaming, evidently delighted at his discovery. Wright himself annoyed Jenson as much as anything else about the project. Why the man insisted on analyzing Jenson's every statement for some hidden meaning was beyond Jenson.
"No."
"You do!"
"I respect—"
"You respect him?" Wright laughed, a deep, derisive laugh.
"His vision."
"Wait until he cuts your guts out and feeds them to the coyotes—then tell me how much you like his vision." Wright was silent a few moments. "You realize the sooner we get this thing built, the sooner we meet the coyotes."
"Will you shut up about coyotes!"
"It's true," Wright insisted.
"Nonsense."
"Nonsense! It's good sense!" Wright pointed out the open door. "That bandit doesn't give a taco in hell for either one of us!"
"What do you suggest?"
"Drag your feet."
Jenson was incensed. Drag his feet! When he was so close? Out of the question! Jenson controlled himself, resolving to avoid provocative conversations with Wright. He was beginning to think El Buitre was more reasonable than Wright.
"Impossible," said Jenson.
"Why?”
"He would notice."
"By 'he,' I take it you mean Buzz—Mr. Vulture."
"Yes."
"That bird wouldn't know a slowdown if he saw one."
"I wouldn't be so sure."
"It's already taken me twice as long to build that damn ring as it should have."
Jenson was startled. His temper flared. His cheeks burned. What did Wright think he was doing with this . . . this ...
. . . sabotage!"
"Sure," said Wright. "Why not?"
"Are you insane?"
"Nope. I'm the sanest man around here."
"So say you," said Jenson, yet his feelings were mixed. There was some elusive truth to what Wright said. On the other hand, anyone who would claim to be the sanest person around, must be nuts. The man was incapable of seeing the value of the completed transmitter.
"Unless," said Wright.
"Unless what?"
"That thing really works."
"It'll work."
"'So say you,'" quoted Wright.
"Trust me."
"Trust you!" Wright let out a sharp, monosyllabic whoop. Jenson was unable to interpret its meaning. Did Wright distrust his ability as a physicist? Or something else?
"Assume it will work. Then what?"
"We go out through it."
Jenson's antagonism melted. He smiled. He looked past Wright at the arch. Two men were finishing the last area of paint near the ground. It was perfect. He laughed, a long laugh that seemed to drain all the hostility from him. It awoke Jose.
"Què pasa?"
"Nada Nada," answered Jenson, waving his hand for their guard to go back to sleep. Jose slumped against the wall, closing his eyes. Jenson looked back at Wright. "What better way to leave?"
"On foot," suggested Wright. "Or by car, if they hadn't sold yours. Even a balloon would be better, if we had a balloon. But we don't have much choice."
"None at all. Only the transmitter."
They worked out a simple plan. Jenson was to prepare the transmitter for a test run, focusing it a few hundred yards away. The coordinant program in the computer would be set up to switch to Tucson after a half hour of operation, giving them a chance to determine if the transmitter was safe to use on living creatures.
"Two living creatures," said Wright, making a "V" with his fingers. "When we're sure it's safe, we tell Buzz another test jump has to be made, and—poof! We're gone. It's simple."
Jenson shook his head in admiration. The most obvious solution to their situation had evaded him. It was the same problem he had with the original mathematics of the enlarged transmitter, the forest and the trees.
"Harold," said Jenson, reflecting on the plan. "You're brilliant."
"De nada," said Wright, finishing his beans.
A control shed had been built to house the equipment. The power supply gave Jenson the most trouble. Though he was a physicist, he had little experience with fusion reactors. It took him several days just to figure out a method of reassembling it without overexposing the workmen to radiation. Doubts nagged him. When he started working on the Tucson program, the doubts got worse. Something was bothering him. It was difficult to pinpoint. Occasionally he found himself staring off across the hills, wondering what was troubling him. His brain told him the transmitter was finished. His intuition told him it needed work.
Jenson rechecked all the equipment, matching everything against his calculations. Everything was perfect. His malaise continued. The more he thought about it, the less he trusted his creation. He rechecked the calculations themselves. They were accurate to six decimal places. He could find nothing wrong, yet the feeling that something was out of control persisted.
His cheerfulness gave way to depression. He continued to work, rechecking what had already been rechecked. Grumpy, curt, he snapped at everyone except El Buitre, though he felt like snapping at him, too. Finally, one night when El Buitre stopped by the storeroom for a progress report, Jenson drew a line across the bottom of the last filled page in his notebook.
"Finished," said Jenson, flipping the pen onto the table.
"Bueno," said El Buitre, his tone more of long-expected satisfaction than enthusiasm. "We will make him work tomorrow."
"Who?"
"Su aro magico."
"It's not magic."
"It better be," interjected Wright.
"Si. He had better be," agreed El Buitre, picking up Jenson's note- book and weighing it in his hand.
"I think I keep this notebook."
"Hey!”
"Hey, who?"
"Those are my notes!"
"Si."
"How am I supposed to operate the transmitter without notes?"
El Buitre tapped his temple with his free hand. "Use the head. This is the insurance." He snapped the notebook closed, tucking it under his sarape. "If the book stays, the fisico stays."
"But—"
"No buts!" El Buitre grinned, his missing tooth accenting the grin's ferocity, and left. They could hear him say "Watch them closely" in Spanish to someone outside. Jose entered and immediately fell asleep against the wall.
"Old Buzz is a real cagey bird, isn't he?" said Wright.
"Shut up!"
Jenson was bewildered. His notebook, his most important possession in the village—or anywhere, for that matter—was supposed to go with him through the transmitter. Agitated, he looked around the room. If only he had made a copy! His eyes fell on Wright.
"We can't go now."
"Why?"
"Why! Isn't it obvious?"
"No."
Jenson pointed toward the door. "He's got my notebook!"
"So?"
"So we can't go! It's my lifework!"
"Take your pick, your life or your work."
"Very glib, but it's not your lifework!"
"You're right. Just my life." Wright was sitting on the edge of his cot with his hands clasped between his knees. He leaned forward, scrutinizing Jenson's face. "Are we going?"
"I said no."
"That's what you said, all right. Are we going? It'll probably be our only chance."
"That doesn't matter."
"What matters?"
"I don't know," said Jenson, avoiding Wright's gaze.
"Does your life matter?"
"I don't know. Yes, it matters. Stop it!"
"Your work?"
"Stop it! Why are you doing this?"
"My life matters, too," said Wright. "At least to me. And it's in your hands: I have to be able to trust you."
Jenson looked at Wright. The man was unsure whether to trust him. The idea was incredible. Jenson wanted to escape as much as Wright. He also wanted to give his work to the world. He had set his goal years before. It was only now near success. Jenson remembered the years of work, fixing his attention on this distant goal. He remembered the years of sacrifice. Give it up? Leave without the notebook? The years would mean nothing. He would mean nothing. "You can trust me."
"We'll see," said Wright. "Tomorrow."
V
"Snake."
"Where?" said Jenson.
Jenson and Wright were standing on the mesa twenty feet from the arch. It towered above them, immense and triumphal. Jenson hugged himself, trying to keep out the morning cold. El Buitre was forming his men into a wide semicircle around the arch, some in red sarapes and others in campesino blouses and wool vests. Even two thousand men looked minuscule compared to the arch. Jenson had ticked off the last item on his check list and activated the transmitter five minutes earlier. The reactor, capable of powering a small city, barely noticed the load. They had left the control shed and walked to the arch. Jenson squinted at the center of the arch. He could make out a faint, shimmering line, describing a twelve-foot circle in the air at the center of the arch, but no snake.
"I don't see it."
Wright swept his arm through the air, tracing the line of the arch. "All that camouflage paint makes it look like a snake."
Jenson grunted. It still looked triumphal to him. El Buitre yelled several times, quieting his men. He walked over to Jenson.
"Where he come out?"
"Who?"
"What we put in."
"Oh, over there." Jenson pointed across the open area to a hill three hundred yards away, a hill touched with white by the first spring wild flowers. El Buitre glanced around and waved a squad of men toward the hill. They trotted across the mesa, momentarily disappearing over its edge only to reappear climbing through the flowers. Halfway up the hill, they stopped.
"There?"
"About."
El Buitre waved again and turned to Jenson. "We begin." Jenson looked around for something to feed through the transmitter. Anything would do. His eyes stopped at El Buitre.
"Your hat."
"Mi sombrero?" said El Buitre, glancing up at its brim.
"Let me borrow it."
"Oh, no!"
"For science."
After some thought, El Buitre loosened the chin cord and pulled off the sombrero, grumbling about how El Buitre cared nothing for science. He handed it to Jenson. Before he let go, he squinted at Jenson. "Your machine, he had better work, hombre."
"It'll work," said Jenson, imagining his own rigid body, riddled with bullet holes, being fed through the transmitter like a log through a pulverizer.
El Buitre snorted, letting go of the sombrero. Jenson walked to the bull's-eye of the arch. The sound of low conversations and shuffling feet died when he stopped. They were watching him, waiting. He grasped the sombrero by its edge, testing it against the wind with a slight flick of his wrist. He hesitated, suddenly convinced the transmitter needed more work.
"What's wrong!" yelled Wright.
"I—nothing!" yelled Jenson, adding softly to himself, "probably."
"Well, throw the damn thing!" Jenson threw it. The sombrero glided, spun, started to pitch, and vanished. A shout went up from the squad on the hill. They scrambled a few feet down the hillside and stooped. When they stood up, one of them waved a sombrero back and forth over his head, setting off cries of "Ole" and applause from the men around the arch. Jenson's doubts gave way to affection.
"You work."
It was the most incredible thing Jenson had ever seen in his life. He looked back at El Buitre and Wright.
"Hey!"
They ignored him, watching the man with the sombrero detach himself from the squad and run toward them, knee-deep in flowers. "Hey, you guys! It works!"
The man with the sombrero sank below the edge of the mesa, then reappeared in stages, his head, waist, and finally his boots, running toward El Buitre. He stopped panting in front of El Buitre, who snapped the sombrero out of his hand and scrutinized it minutely. Jenson looked back at the arch, following its curve with his eyes.
"I can't leave you now."
"Bueno," said El Buitre behind him. "Federico!"
Reluctantly Jenson turned his attention to El Buitre, walking over to him.
"It works."
"Si.”
Jenson was still dazed. "I can't believe it. It works."
"Si. We must try something beeger."
"Yes, bigger. It works."
"We got the message," interjected Wright.
"Un animal," said El Buitre.
When the idea registered, it pulled Jenson from his daze. An animal. It was too early for animals. There were tests, alteration, perfections to be done. What if they were successful? Wright would force him to go to Tucson. Tucson was out of the question. This was no time for a vacation. He must work, modify, perfect.
"It's too early for animals." Wright scowled. Jenson avoided his eyes.
"Why?" said both Wright and El Buitre.
"Tests. We have to make tests. It has to be per—safe."
"Quien no se aventura," said El Buitre, "no ha ventura."
"This isn't the time for adventure."
El Buitre narrowed his eyes, pushing his face in front of Jenson's. "You want to keep El Buitre happy, do you not?"
"Yes, but—"
"No buts. We do the animal."
Jenson gave up. If they failed, only a goat or dog or cat would be lost. If they succeeded—he could think of something.
"What kind of animal."
El Buitre grinned, his face still inches from Jenson's. "Una rana."
It took Jenson several seconds to remember that rana meant frog. Two men grabbed Wright.
"Hey!"
They dragged Wright, struggling between them, toward the projection surface.
"Pare!" shouted Jenson, confused. The men stopped, looking back. Wright continued to struggle. Jenson needed time to think.
"Why you stop them?"
"Why . . . ah . . . I," said Jenson, then saw a possible out. "An inanimate object like a hat is one thing, but a man—"
"Una rana," corrected El Buitre, grinning.
"A man is something else."
"What?"
"Alive."
El Buitre grunted.
"The transmitter has to be perfectly stable. Let it warm up a few more minutes."
It was difficult to tell whether El Buitre believed him. Since the transmitter was entirely solid state, it was as "warm" as it would get. Jenson could do nothing to prevent Wright's being fed into the transmitter. His only hope was to convince El Buitre to postpone the test for ten minutes, allowing the coordinate program in the computer to shift to Tucson. Wright would have a chance—if slim—of escape. When Wright failed to materialize on the hillside, Jenson could say it proved his point. The transmitter needed more work to project life. El Buitre would never know the difference. Wright, one way or the other, would be in Tucson.
"How long?"
"Fifteen, twenty minutes," answered Jenson, leaving room to bargain.
The bandit's eyes narrowed, his expression taking on a vicious look. Jenson shivered.
"Pepe!" shouted El Buitre.
Jose, their night guard and Juan's brother, broke from the men around the arch and ran up to El Buitre.
"Si, mi generalisimo."
"Talk to Federico about the little . . . viaje."
Jose looked puzzled.
"Jose doesn't speak—" began Jenson, but El Buitre's expression cut him off. Jose's face, round and somewhat more intelligent-looking than his brother's, lit up. He looked at Jenson.
"How's the weather in Tucson, Fred."
Somewhere in the back of Jenson's mind, a coyote howled. El Buitre flapped the back of his hand toward Wright's guards, a scooting motion, telling them to proceed. "Vamos, muchachos!"
They pushed Wright to within a few feet of the projection surface. He looked back at Jenson, his face plaintive. Before Jenson could say anything reassuring, they shoved Wright under the arch, jumping back at the last second. Wright disappeared.
"Hop," said El Buitre.
A cheer went up from the hillside, followed by another "Ole" from El Buitre's men. A figure was tumbling through the wild flowers below the squad.
"Turncoat."
"Harold."
"Benedict Arnold."
"Harold!"
"Quisling."
"Is it my fault if he," said Jenson, lingering on the word and hooking his thumb at Jose, who was sitting on a packing case, his legs dangling toward the floor of the storeroom, polishing a rifle in his lap, "speaks English?"
Wright, relaxing on his cot with one legup and his hands behind his head, grunted, staring at the ceiling. A mariache band was playing outside. Shouts and occasional thuds against the corrugated walls of the storeroom kept them awake. El Buitre had ordered a fiesta—fiesta del aro magico—to celebrate the success of the matter transmitter. The fiesta was two hours old.
"How was I supposed to know?" continued Jenson, reacting to Wright's accusatory silence. "He was a sleeper, a linguist in bandit's clothing, a charlatan! You can't hold me responsible! It was him!"
"He," corrected Jose. "I was just doing my job."
"Who asked you?"
"No one."
"Where did you learn English, anyway?"
"I learned some of it from you."
"Me!" said Jenson, momentarily forgetting Wright in the face of this new accusation.
"At Berkeley."
"You were one of my students?"
"Yep."
"I don't remember you."
"There were five hundred freshmen in the class."
Wright snorted. Jenson glared at him.
"That still doesn't mean I taught him English."
"I didn't say anything," said Wright. "You want another surprise."
"No."
"Ask him what he majored in."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just a hunch. Ask him."
"All right," said Jenson, turning to Jose. "What did you major in?"
"Physics."
Jenson felt a cold chill. With the transmitter complete, anyone could operate it. A physics major was more than qualified. They would still need Jenson to make repairs.
"B.A.?" asked Jenson, hopefully.
"Masters."
Jenson, suddenly expendable, cleared his throat. Wright interrupted before he could continue.
"I wasn't talking about Jose, anyway. I was talking about you, you and that lame excuse about it being too early for animals."
"It was."
"You didn't think so when you set the program for Tucson."
"That was different."
"How?"
"It just was," answered Jenson, annoyed. Wright was starting his amateur psychoanalysis again. It served no purpose. Jenson concerned himself with reality and the outside world. So fleeting a phenomenon as human motives—especially his own—had little place in it. He had his work. He did it. What else was there?
"I'll tell you what the difference is."
"Please don't."
"It worked."
Jenson controlled himself. Wright was treading on thin ice.
"It worked and you couldn't leave it."
"You're wrong there. If it hadn't been for this . . . spy, you, at least, would be in Tucson."
"Chance."
"What?"
"You made up your mind when there was no other alternative."
"He's right," said Jose.
"Who asked you?" shouted Jenson. "Who the hell asked you anything at all? What are you doing here anyway? A man with your background, working for that ... that . . ."
"Lunatic," supplied Wright.
"He's not a lunatic," said Jose, quietly. "He's a visionary."
Wright whooped and sat up on the cot.
"He is!" insisted Jose.
"I'm surrounded by lunatics," said Wright. "Buzz, Jenson and now, you!"
"I frankly don't give a damn what you think," said Jose. "Mexico needs him."
"And I need a hole in the head."
"You may get one," said Josè, polishing his rifle.
Jenson balked. The conversation was going sour. Wright, undeterred, swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the cot.
"How can you justify carving his vision out of human flesh, most of it Mexican flesh?"
"Necessity."
"I hear the echo . . ."
"I don't," said Jenson, looking around. All Jenson heard was the mariache band.
“. . . of history. Every butcher for two thousand years has justified murder, rape and every atrocity under the sun by running up the flag of 'necessity.' Richard the Lionhearted once cut the intestines out of every Moslem he could find in Jerusalem and strung them end to end in the streets. It was 'necessary' to get at the gold they were supposed to have swallowed, and The Cause needed gold."
"Did he get it?"
"No."
"Some guys have hard luck," said Jose.
"What about your own life?" said Wright. "Since you don't seem to care about anyone else's."
"Me?"
"What if you get killed?"
"I don't matter."
"Fanatics!" said Wright, disgust encrusting the word. "They're all alike."
The door next to Jose burst open, splashing the last of the day's sunlight on the wooden floor. El Buitre, his sombrero dangling down his shirt front, swayed in the doorway, a thin-necked wine bottle in his left hand. He grinned, shoving the sombrero over his shoulder with his free hand.
"Senores," said El Buitre and staggered forward. Cool air followed him into the storeroom. "It is so nice that you have come to my fiesta. Muy buenas noches." He bowed deeply at the waist, passing the wine bottle under his. stomach. The sombrero slip from his back and dangled toward the floor.
"How's it going, Buzz," said Wright.
"Buzz? What is that buzz?" said El Buitre. "The buzz saw, buzzzzzzzzzz."
Jenson shivered. Drunk, El Buitre was more unpredictable than usual. Wright was pushing him too far, especially since Jenson was now expendable.
El Buitre, the wine bottle still in his hand, flapped his arms, sloshing wine out of the bottle. "I am no buzz saw." He walked around in a circle, flapping his arms. "I am the vool-ture, the fear-some vool-ture!" He stopped in front of Wright. "What is this buzz?"
"Buzzard," said Jose. "It's a kind of vulture."
El Buitre glanced around at Jose, snarling. "Who ask you?"
"Sorry."
The bandit gave Jose a lingering stare before he turned back to Wright. "Now, what is this buzz?"
Wright nodded toward Jose. "Like he said, it's for buzzard. It's an affectionate name for a vulture."
"Affectionate? The gringos like the vultures so much?"
"Some do," said Wright, glancing at Jenson.
Jose burst out laughing.
"Calle la boca, hombre!" yelled El Buitre, lowering his arms.
Jose was silent. Jenson was terrified.
"Do you like the vool-tures, engin'er?"
"I can take them or leave them."
El Buitre belched and swayed, looking around the storeroom. He stroked his mustachios, thinking. He looked at Jenson, his expression pensive, then returned to Wright.
"What one is the most fear-some to the gringo ear?" asked El Buitre, pulling on his earlobe. "Vool-ture or buzz?"
"Buzz, I think. Vulture sounds too Latin."
"You joke?"
"No," answered Wright. Jenson cringed.
"You just say that buzz was affectionate."
"It's fearsome, too."
El Buitre looked directly at Jenson. "You agree, Federico?" Jenson, unable to speak, much less disagree, nodded up and down. The bandit raised his wine bottle to his lips. Wine gurgled from the bottle. He lifted it higher and higher, his chin extended and his Adam's apple working. Wine trickled from the corners of his mouth, running down his brown neck. When the bottle was empty, he threw it over his shoulder. It shattered on a packing case near Jose. He glowered, the expression Jenson had dreaded, and began working at the flap on his holster, cursing its obstinacy. Finally, after starting over several times, he got the holster open and extracted his .45. He fired into the recesses of the storeroom, shrieking "El Buzz!" and squeezing off round after round. In the small storeroom, the explosions were deafening. Lead ripped through sheet metal and ricocheted around packing crates, occasionally thudding into them. Someone outside screamed. El Buitre kept firing. Jenson got down on his hands and knees, crawling under the table. He could see El Buitre's boots walking in a circle, hear his screeches, and feel his teeth vibrate with every round. Suddenly the firing stopped. El Buitre peered under the table.
"Federico?"
"No!" said Jenson, remembering he was expendable.
"What you do there?"
"No!"
"No, what?"
Jenson looked up at the bandit, still covering his ears with his hands. "No, please?"
"No, no. I mean why you say `no'?"
"Don't shoot."
"I am out of bullets."
"Don't reload."
"Federico—"
"Don't—"
"Federico."
"What?"
"Tomorrow set the transmitter for Ciudad de Mexico."
"Mexico City?" said Jenson, removing his hands from his ears. There would be a tomorrow.
"Si," said El Buitre quietly. "El Buzz is going to visit la capital!" The bandit glanced at his .45. Jenson looked at it, too, noting that the muzzle seemed four times the size of the rest of the gun. The action was still closed. "I still have the bullet."
"No," said Jenson.
El Buitre stood up, fired through the ceiling, and left, slamming the door behind him.
Jenson crawled out from under the table. The air smelled of cordite. He was thankful it smelled at all. Wright and Jose were still on the cot and the crate. Wright, looking at Jose, nodded toward the door.
"Some visionary."
Josè was silent.
VI
When Jenson recovered from what he still considered his brush with death, he and Wright were separated to prevent any escape plan. Jenson got the storeroom. Wright got a tent with three guards. Jenson was content to be alone. The day had exhausted him. The pinnacle of success followed by a glance into the abyss—it was too much for one day. Anyway, the Freud of the Sierra Madre was annoying—even dangerous—to have around. He antagonized the wrong people, El Buitre among them.
"When you're through with those Mexico City calculations," said Jose, stoic on his packing case, "I'm supposed to look them over."
"Doesn't anyone trust me?"
"El Buitre just doesn't want any Tucson detours."
Jenson moved from the table to his cot, propping his head up with a pillow. It was his first opportunity to reflect on the transmitter's success.
"Jose," said Jenson, looking at the ceiling. "Do you realize what this is going to mean?"
"What?"
"What we're doing here. It's a revolution."
"That's the general idea."
"In the next fifty years—no, twenty years," continued Jenson, noticing a star through the hole in the ceiling, "the world can be a garden. It's possible to take one continent—say Australia—and set it aside for industry. The rest of the world can be a playground. Anyone who works in Australia can live anywhere he wants, step through an arch like ours in the morning and step back home at night."
"What about the Australians?"
"All right, we'll use the Sahara Desert, or even better, the Moon." Jenson imagined the Moon, covered with industry and arches. "It will be the greatest single uniting force in the history of man."
"Could be."
"Could be," said Jenson, warming to his subject. "It will be. A rational, worldwide civilization is within our reach."
"Men aren't always rational."
"You sound like Wright."
"Dynamite, if you remember, was supposed to make war impossible. Nuclear energy can power a city or flatten it."
"So?"
"So the question's never what's invented, but how it's used. And as far as worldwide civilization, there's that old stumbling block, sovereignty. Nations will never relinquish their precious sovereignty." Jose paused, thinking over what he had just said, then added, "voluntarily."
"Politics."
"That's right."
Jenson never particularly cared for politics. Democrats or Republicans, revolutionaries or reactionaries—they were all the same to him.. International politics was even more childish, armed squabbles over ephemeral values. Physics was more reliable. Political caprice could never replace the reality of physics. He trusted physics. It would always be there.
"Politics is none of my business." "Indifference is a political position."
"So they say," said Jenson, deciding to change the subject. "Incidentally, why does El Buitre want to go to Mexico City?"
"You aren't that naïve," said Jose, laughing. He nodded toward the rifle lying across his lap. "I thought—" began Jenson, but his imagination brought him up short. He imagined two thousand men materializing in Mexico City, sweeping everything before them. He imagined the horde swelling, becoming a national army, an international army. If El Buitre could take Mexico City, he could take Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Peking, or Lubumbashi! Everything and everyone were potentially within his reach. It was staggering! Nothing was safe! Governments, centuries-old institutions, civilization itself could fall before El Buitre's horde, riding out of nowhere and seizing everything!
"You thought what?"
"I thought the killing was over."
That night Jenson dreamed of raids, dreams tinged in the red of fire and blood. Moscow, Rome, Atlanta—all burned again in his dreams. Congress, Parliament and the Kremlin exploded under cannon shot, fired into the matter transmitter in Mexico. The faces of screaming women and children swam through his mind, flailing their arms. Miles of refugees, hopelessly trying to escape the inescapable, tramped through his brain. Barbarism raged from ear to ear. In the night sky of his mind, constellations rearranged themselves, spelling out "MEXICO NEEDS HIM!" "MEXICO" was crossed out and "THE WORLD" added. Jenson himself, a figure naked in driving rain, fled four horsemen, their horses snorting fire. Hooves, clapping thunder, trampled him under foot, yet miraculously he survived to find himself roasting on a spit with an apple in his mouth, turning faster and faster, El Buitre's laughing face flashing past with each revolution of the spit. He awoke in a cold sweat.
The storeroom was silent. Jose, visible in the dim light only as a rifle across a lap, watched him.
"What time is it?"
"Four."
"I was dreaming."
"I figured."
"Horrible things."
Jose was silent.
"Get me a light."
Jenson blinked against the flaring match. Jose, tilting back the lantern chimney, lit the mantle. Hissing, the lantern caught, flooding the center of the room with a shivering circle of light. Jenson got out of bed and dressed. Sleep, with the four horsemen waiting, was impossible. He started on the Mexico City program.
The more Jenson worked, the more he felt driven to work. When he paused for a moment to mull over some calculation, his dreams impinged, as vivid in his mind as an event in life. Jenson had always trusted his unconscious mind. It solved problems for him. When he was stymied in his research work, he would pack his mind full of data and turn his attention to something else. Usually the answer would come to him, full-blown and correct. The same thing was happening now. He could feel something within himself, forcing its way to the surface. He continued working.
By mid-morning, after Juan relieved Jose, he was almost finished, yet the memory of his dreams and their unsettling feeling continued. He was working on the altitude parameter of the coordinate program. He glanced over the calculations, automatically rechecking the figures. There was an error, the first he had noticed that morning. Mexico City, according to the detailed maps supplied by Jose, was 7,348 feet above sea level. It was 1,182.5168 miles from the projection surface to the point where El Buitre wanted to materialize. At that distance, an error of .00015 percent in his calculations meant an error of 30 feet in Mexico City.
"Thirty feet," said Jenson. He stared into one corner of the storeroom, reflecting on the error. For the first time that morning, he felt relaxed. No dreams impinged.
"Perdone, Senor Jenson?"
"Nothing, Juan. Just a thought."
Jenson finished the program at noon.
At four o'clock, Jose came to check the figures. Jenson hovered behind him, peering over his shoulder and explaining anything difficult.
"What's this?" asked Jose, pointing at a series of equations and their equivalents in real numbers. Jenson tensed.
"What?"
"This. What's seven and four?"
"Eleven."
"You're sure about that."
"Yes, why?"
"You've got twelve here."
"Oh," said Jenson, relaxing. Mathematics was Jenson's forte, not arithmetic. He quickly corrected the arithmetic. Jose finished his checking and tapped his pencil point on the table.
"No detours, at least."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm not sure," said Jose. "Somehow it just doesn't feel right."
"That's you, not the program," said Jenson. "Remember, it's been a few years since you did this kind of work."
"I suppose so."
Jose gathered the papers and stuffed them into Jenson's briefcase, snapping it shut.
"That's that," said Jose, standing up.
"Where are you going?"
"Out. You'll he alone tonight, but don't get any ideas. You'd never make it."
Jose left, locking the storeroom door behind him. Jenson looked at the closed door, imagining escape followed by his body in a shallow grave, a hand protruding through the loose soil like a lily. He lay down on his cot, planning to think things through. Instead, he fell into a deep sleep, uninterrupted by dreams.
Somewhere in the distance a bird screeched. Jenson listened. Another screeched. He opened his eyes. Something scraped and banged on the corrugated iron of the door. A nail, being drawn from wood, squeaked. The bird image faded. Jenson sat up. After a loud twang, the storeroom door came open.
"Come on."
It was Wright.
"But—"
"No buts."
Wright's clothes were ripped and an ugly-looking gash trickled blood down his forehead. Whatever means Wright used to escape, the ferocity of the encounter had left evidence.
"How—"
"No hows either," said Wright, leveling an M-16 at Jenson. "They're all down by the transmitter. We've got about ten minutes before the two women I jumped recover."
"Women?" said Jenson. "Women did that?"
"Everyone else is getting ready for the raid."
"But the computer isn't—" began Jenson, then broke off, remembering Jose. "Where are we going?"
"Just follow me."
They left the storeroom. Jenson, crouching, followed Wright around the corner of the building. It took
Jenson several minutes to realize they were making a wide circle around the camp. He pulled Wright's tattered sleeve.
"We're going the wrong way," whispered Jenson, pointing back the way they had come.
"Get down," said Wright, dropping into the tall grass on the hillside. Jenson looked around. He could make out the tips of several red sombreros, bobbing up and down near the crest of the hill. He got down next to Wright.
"Where are we?"
"In the gully below the transmitter."
"Are you nuts?" whispered Jenson. "One sight of us and we're both dead. We're expendable nowadays, you know."
"I know."
"So let's get out of here."
Jenson started to squirm around in the glass, preparing to retrace their path. Wright grabbed his elbow.
"This is the only way. If we try to make it on foot, they'll just send men after us. We have to get as far from here as possible and as fast as possible. In the confusion at the other end—"
"The other end. You're not going through the transmitter."
"As a matter of fact, we're going through the transmitter."
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yes."
"We can't."
"Listen, Jenson, I've had about enough of you. You may not want to leave your creation up there, but [ sure as hell do. And you—whether you like it or not—are coming with me. You're a national resource."
"You've got me all wrong—"
"I've got you dead right. Now keep quiet."
Wright brought the muzzle of the rifle to bear close to Jenson's face. "You wouldn't shoot a national resource."
"Only if it's a choice between it and me. Now, shut up."
Though Jenson was pleased to see the sanest man around close to irrationality, he was silently pleased. Wright, for some reason entirely beyond Jenson, was determined to beat El Buitre to the transmitter. Resistance, at this point, would be futile.
"Why don't you go after they do?"
"It may shut off."
"It won't," whispered Jenson. "I know that equipment backwards and forwards."
"Do you know it since Jose's been working on it?"
"No."
Wright started to crawl around the base of the hill. Jenson followed. They arrived at a point Jenson estimated was beside the arch, and started toward the crest.
From over the hill, Jenson heard El Buitre's voice.
"Muchachos!"
There was a mechanical sputter.
An engine caught and shrieked, the high shriek of a two-stroke engine. Jenson, crawling with a frog-leg movement, worked his way to the crest of the hill next to Wright, peering over. He could see the edge of the arch. It looked more like a camouflaged monument from their angle. A wooden ramp had been set up in front of the arch. Jenson looked at El Buitre's men.
"Somehow," whispered Jenson. "I pictured horses."
"Not Buzz. He's mechanized."
Row after row of El Buitre's men, three abreast, each dressed in bright red sarapes and sombreros with rifles slung across their backs, were kick-starting red Hondas. Suddenly, other engines caught. An earsplitting roar blasted across the mesa. Exhaust billowed in a gray cloud over the men astride their machines. The line of men on motorcycles stretched over the other edge of the mesa and out of sight, a Chinese dragon of men and machines. El Buitre, the dragon's head, twisted the accelerator of his Honda, the only white motorcycle in the pack. It was inaudible in the din of engines. He waved his arm in a sweeping "Follow me" motion.
"Now!" yelled Wright, jumping up and sprinting toward the arch with his rifle in both hands.
"No!" shouted Jenson. His cry was drowned in the noise of engines. Jenson scrambled onto the mesa after Wright. Legs and arms pumping, he pursued. Wright was fast, but short. The rifle, throwing him slightly off balance, slowed Wright. Jenson gained on him.
In the corner of his eye, Jenson could see El Buitre. The bandit saw them and grinned. The white Honda hopped, a momentary wheelstand before it settled to the dirt. El Buitre, hunched over the handlebars, elbows up, was heading straight for them, his mustachios pressed against his cheeks. Momentarily, superimposed on El Buitre and the first rank of riders, Jenson saw four horsemen. He dove for Wright's heels, felt contact and grabbed the ankles. They fell, skidding to a stop ten feet from the ramp.
An instant after the fall, El Buitre's front wheel hit the ramp, its spokes invisible with motion. His white Honda hopped and he melted into the bull's eye. Red sarapes flapping, the first rank of riders hit the ramp. Jenson and Wright were enveloped in dust and noise. Only the noise and dust and his grip on Wright's ankles were reality, produced by rank after rank of riders taking the ramp. The world was dust and noise. Jenson could hardly breathe. He lay prostrate, his cheek to the ground and arms extended, struggling to stay conscious and hang on to Wright.
Finally, when Jenson was near blacking out, the noise diminished, then faded rapidly. He heard a last thud on the ramp, the roar of engines when the rear wheels are freed from traction, and silence, complete and total. After a few moments, his ears began to ring. He opened his eyes. The dust thinned, broke in patches, then blew away entirely. Jenson inhaled deeply, tasting the dirt in his mouth. Wright, prone in front of him, was covered from head to toe with an even coat of powdered dust. Wright looked back along his body, moving his lips.
"What?" yelled Jenson, still deaf from the vanished motorcycles.
Wright moved a dusty object around, pointing it at Jenson. After several seconds, Jenson recognized it as the M-16. Wright mouthed the words "Let go."
Jenson let go. They stood up. Jenson's ears began to clear. He spat once, turning the dust on his lips to mud. He began slapping his clothes, raising a small dust cloud around himself.
Wright leveled the rifle at Jenson.
"After you."
Jenson stopped slapping himself. "Listen to me."
"Let's go, Jenson."
Wright swung the muzzle of the rifle toward the arch, indicating Jenson was to go first.
"Please! Listen!"
"What is it?"
"I made a mistake."
"Mistake?"
"In the program."
"What kind of mistake."
"If I'm right, they just materialized thirty feet off the ground."
"Thirty—" said Wright, his expression, under the dirt, stunned. "When did you figure this out?"
"Yesterday. I left it in the program."
Slowly, Wright lowered the rifle. A broad grin surfaced on his face. His teeth were mottled with dirt. "But that's sabotage, Fred."
"Why not," said Jenson. "We can get a truck at the village."
They started toward the village. At the edge of the mesa, Wright stopped, looking at Jenson. Except for Wright's eyes, glistening through the dirt, his face looked mummified.
"I think I owe you an apology."
"What for?" asked Jenson.
"1 thought—" Wright shook his head from side to side, finding either the apology or the reason it was necessary difficult to express.
"You thought what?"
"I thought you were as much a fanatic as the rest of them."
"Forget it," said Jenson, glancing back at the arch. It was a lifeless structure of concrete and metal, nothing more. "I almost was a fanatic."