“We’re not doing anything,” said Alise.
“Naw!” sneered Shockley. “You’re just breaking the law in plain view. Plain fucking view!” His fists clenched, and I thought for a moment he was going to hit them. They were so much smaller than he that they looked like children facing an irate parent.
“You won’t have to be concerned with us much longer,” said Tom. “We’re leaving soon.”
“Good,” said Shockley. “That’s real good. But lemme tell you something, man. I catch you smoking out here again, and you might be leaving quicker than you think.”
“What do you mean?” asked Alise.
“Don’t you worry about what I fucking mean,” said Shockley. “You just watch your behavior. We had a good scene going here until you people showed up, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you blow it.” He snatched the pipe from Tom’s hand and slung it out to sea. He shook his finger in Tom’s face. “I swear, man! One more fuckup, and I’ll be on you like white on rice!” Then he stalked off around the point.
As soon as he was out of sight, without a word exchanged between them, Tom and Alise waded into the water and began groping beneath the surface, searching for the pipe. To my amazement, because the shallows were murky and full of floating litter, they found it almost instantly.
I was angry at Shockley, both for his treatment of the twins and for his invasion of what I considered my private preserve, and I headed toward his house to tell him to lay off. When I entered I was greeted by a skinny, sandy-haired guy—Skipper by name—who was sprawled on pillows in the front room; from the refuse of candy wrappers, crumpled cigarette packs, and empty pop bottles surrounding him, I judged him to have been in this position for quite some time. He was so opiated that he spoke in mumbles and could scarcely open his eyes, but from him I learned the reason for Shockley’s outburst. “You don’t wanna see him now, man,” said Skipper, and flicked out his tongue to retrieve a runner of drool that had leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Dude’s on a rampage, y’know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Fucker’s paranoid,” said Skipper. “Be paranoid myself if I was holding a key of smack.”
“Heroin?”
“King H,” said Skipper with immense satisfaction, as if pronouncing the name of his favorite restaurant, remembering past culinary treats. “He’s gonna run it up to Copenhagen soon as—”
“Shut the hell up!” It was Shockley, standing in the front door. “Get out,” he said to me.
“Be a pleasure.” I strolled over to him. “The twins are leaving tomorrow night. Stay off their case.”
He squared his shoulders, trying to be taller. “Or what?”
“Gee, Rich,” I said. “I’d hate to see anything get in the way of your mission to Denmark.”
Though in most areas of experience I was a neophyte compared to Shockley, he was just a beginner compared to me as regarded fighting. I could tell a punch was coming from the slight widening of his eyes, the tensing of his shoulders. It was a silly school-girlish punch. I stepped inside it, forced him against the wall, and jammed my forearm under his chin. “Listen, Rich,” I said mildly. “Nobody wants trouble with the Guardia, right?” My hold prevented him from speaking, but he nodded. Spit bubbled between his teeth. “Then there’s no problem. You leave the twins alone, and I’ll forget about the dope. Okay?” Again he nodded. I let him go, and he slumped to the floor, holding his throat. “See how easy things go when you just sit down and talk about them?” I said, and grinned. He glared at me. I gave him a cheerful wink and walked off along the beach.
I see now that I credited Shockley with too much wisdom; I assumed that he was an expert smuggler and would maintain a professional calm. I underestimated his paranoia and gave no thought to his reasons for dealing with a substance as volatile as heroin: they must have involved a measure of desperation, because he was not a man prone to taking whimsical risks. But I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of my actions. After what I had seen earlier beyond the point, I believed that I had figured out what Tom and Alise were up to. It seemed implausible, yet equally inescapable. And if I was right, this was my chance to witness something extraordinary. I wanted nothing to interfere.
Gray clouds blew in the next morning from the east, and a steady downpour hung a silver beaded curtain from the eaves of my porch. I spent the day pretending to write and watching Alise out of the corner of my eye. She went about her routines, washing the dishes, straightening up, sketching—the sketching was done with a bit more intensity than usual. Finally, late that afternoon, having concluded that she was not going to tell me she was leaving, I sat down beside her at the table and initiated a conversation. “You ever read science fiction?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and continued sketching.
“Interesting staff. Lots of weird ideas. Time travel, aliens…” I jiggled the table, causing her to look up, and fixed her with a stare. “Alternate worlds.”
She tensed but said nothing.
“I’ve read your notebooks,” I told her.
“Tom thought you might have.” She closed the sketchpad.
“And I saw you trying to open the tunnel yesterday. I know that you’re leaving.”
She fingered the edge of the pad. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous or merely thinking.
I kept after her. “What I can’t figure out is why you’re leaving. No matter who’s chasing you, this world can’t be as bad as the one described in the notebooks. At least we don’t have anything like The Disciples.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” she said after a silence. “The Disciples are of my world.”
I had more or less deduced what she was admitting to, but I hadn’t really been prepared to accept that it was true, and for a moment I retrenched, believing again that she was crazy, that she had tricked me into swallowing her craziness as fact. She must have seen this in my face or read my thoughts, because she said then, “It’s the truth.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you going back?”
“We’re not; we’re going to collapse the tunnel, and to do that we have to activate it. It took all of us to manage it before; Tom and I wouldn’t have been able to see the configurations clearly enough if it hadn’t been for your drugs. We owe you a great deal.” A worry line creased her brow. “You mustn’t spy on us tonight. It could be dangerous.”
“Because someone might be waiting,” I said. “The Disciples?”
She nodded. “We think one followed us into the tunnel and was trapped. It apparently can’t control the fields involved in the tunnel, but if it’s nearby when we activate the opening…” She shrugged.
“What’ll you do if it is?”
“Lead it away from the beach,” she said.
She seemed assured in this, and I let the topic drop. “What are they, anyway?” I asked.
“Hitler once gave a speech in which he told us they were magical reproductions of his soul. Who knows? They’re horrid enough for that to be true.”
“If you collapse the tunnel, then you’ll be safe from pursuit. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why leave Pedregalejo?”
“We don’t fit in,” she said, and let the words hang in the air a few seconds. “Look at me. Can you believe that in my world I’m considered beautiful?”
An awkward silence ensued. Then she smiled. I’d never seen her smile before. I can’t say it made her beautiful—her skin looked dead-pale in the dreary light, her features asexual—but in the smile I could detect the passive confidence with which beauty encounters the world. It was the first time I had perceived her as a person and not as a hobby, a project.
“But that’s not the point,” she went on. “There’s somewhere we want to go.”