THIRTY-SEVEN
Mere wakes up as the plane begins its descent into the airport outside of Cusco. She is sitting in the window seat next to me, and her body tightens. Her hands claw at the armrests and she whips her head around, trying to reconcile what she sees.
“It's okay,” I say. I put my hand on her arm.
She stares at me, the muscles of her neck tight. Her eyes don't stop moving. Even though she is frightened, she's trying to figure out what happened, trying to assess what sort of situation she's in.
“We're going to be in Cusco in about twenty minutes,” I tell her.
“How?” she manages.
“Plane,” I tell her. “We chartered one.”
“How?” she says again.
“Lots of cash,” I smile. “And the right sort of influence.”
She presses her body against her seat. “Evidently.” She lifts her head and looks over the seat backs. The plane seats about ten, and Mere and I are the only passengers on the right-hand side of the plane. Across the aisle and two rows up, Phoebe is the only one on the left side of the plane.
“Where's Pedro?” Mere asks.
“We left him behind,” I tell her. As she starts to reply, I hold up a hand and cut her off. “He's well taken care of. More so than he would have been had he come with us.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. Why would I? He's been helpful.”
Mere rubs her hands across her face. “Earlier, you said we couldn't let him out of our sight, and now…?
“An opportunity presented itself,” I say.
“What sort of opportunity?”
“It was just as easy to charter two planes as it was to charter one, and we told the pilot to take Pedro somewhere.”
“Where?”
“We didn't ask.”
She turns on her side and rests her head against the seat cushion. “You have an infuriating tendency for understatement.”
“Would you rather I have woken you up, screaming ‘Oh my god! We've got a secret plan! You're going to love it!'?”
“I'm not sure I would have loved it.”
“Which is why I let you sleep. If you were going to be disappointed, I'm not sure you would have been able to get some rest.”
“That's thoughtful of you.”
The plane tilts to the right, the sound of the engines increasing as we come around for our landing.
“Is he going to be okay?” Mere asks.
“Pedro? Yeah, he'll be okay. I'm sure he went somewhere were he could buy a new scooter. One he could pay for with cash. He's getting a new scooter, remember?”
“Why are we flying instead of driving? What about our passports.”
“Don't worry about it,” I say. “Phoebe knows how to—well, it's a long story.”
“Is it?” Her mouth quirks. “When you say something is a long story, that's usually code for ‘I did something stupid and I don't want to talk about it.'”
“Why do you say that?”
“You didn't want to talk about Easter Island, and it turned out that you had wrecked Escobar's garden.”
“That's one example.”
“Is this one different?”
I look toward the front of the plane. Phoebe has her seat tilted back, unconcerned about our approach to the Cusco airport. There isn't a flight attendant to tell her to return her seat to its upright position. “It's a long story,” I reiterate to Mere.
“Okay,” she says, not pushing. “What about saving me from Kirkov?” she asks. “Was that a mistake too?”
I shake my head. “No.” A laugh bubbles out of my chest. “No, far from it. In fact, it may be the only decision I've made in the last few years that has truly been mine.”
Mere makes a noise in her throat, and my attention is pulled back to her. A little smile haunts the edge of her lips. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
I reach over and brush back a lock of her hair that is hanging over her cheek. She closes her eyes and sighs gently again. Her lips part and I want to run my thumb along her lower lip. My hand moves closer, and then she closes her mouth as she swallows. I take that opportunity to blink and force my hand to move away.
We had ended up at an airport outside of Copiacó; we drove to a private hanger where a Gulfstream 100 waited for us. I carried Mere into the plane, while Phoebe and a large amount of cash made the necessary arrangements. The three cases from the trunk had gone into the luggage hold, and the young woman from the charter company had driven off in our car with Pedro still sleeping in the front seat. Most of our remaining cash had gone with them too.
A similar routine happens at Cusco. The plane lands, taxies to a private hanger, where a car is waiting for us. We see no one on the ground, and the pilot of the charter never leaves the cockpit. Phoebe and Mere get in the car while I retrieve the three cases. They go in the trunk; I climb into the back seat; and we drive out of the airport through a gate that, oddly, is open and unmanned.
Arcadian-style invisibility. Money makes the world go round. I have to admit that I missed the ease with which we had moved about the world. The last few weeks have been a hard reminder of how removed we had become from humanity. Our own choice, but given Phoebe's diatribe last night, I'm wondering how much input I truly had on that decision.
Given the opportunity to submit my own opinion, I also wonder if I would have chosen the same path for Arcadia and its citizens.
A half-hour later, while most tourists are still sleeping in, we're checked in to a pair of suites in a hotel along El Sol, the main boulevard that runs through Cusco. The sun hasn't burned off all the morning fog yet. Cusco's elevation is over three thousand meters; at this elevation, the air quality is usually much cleaner—the pollutants and toxins tend to sink to sea level—but I still need to be cautious. I haven't abandoned myself to the sun as much as Phoebe has.
While Phoebe strips and cleans the guns, I go next door to Mere's suite where she's sitting on the couch, legs curled under her, intent on her laptop screen. She's already on the hotel's Wi-Fi, researching the legacy of Montoya Industry's involvement in local matters.
I make myself useful and order room service. Fruit, a pot of coffee, yogurt, granola, honey.
“There's an Incan spa down the street,” Mere offers. “They do ancient Incan cleansing rituals.”
“Maybe on our next visit,” I say as I hang up the phone.
“They have an oxygen lounge…”
“Oh, well, that's different. Do they have mud baths too?”
She grabs a throw pillow from the couch and throws it at me. I catch it and spend a few moments staring at the pattern woven into the cotton fabric. It reminds me of the facade of Montoya's building in Santiago. Dimly, I can recall the walls of the well room at the Arcadian spa on Rapa Nui.
It's the same pattern.
Are our minds actually wiped, I wonder, or do we just not remember everything? Phoebe said it was the Grove who inspired Mother. Arcadia—collectively—participated in the idea of Mother. Had we programmed ourselves into thinking she existed as a defense mechanism? As a way to explain why we did the things we did to ourselves? If Mother was responsible, then we weren't. We were simply agents of her desire. Worker ants, responding to the commands of a distant queen. An unconscious hive mind, working intuitively to protect itself. Was that worth saving? Or was my concern about Arcadia simply the ingrained survival mechanism of an ant whose only thought was to serve the queen and the nest?
“Hey.”
I shake myself from my reverie and look up. “Hmm?”
“What do you know about terrace farming?” she asks.
“The Incans were very good at it,” I say.
“I could go so far as to say ‘exceptional,'” Mere says. “There's a bunch of sites in this region that are still in use.”
“Escobar's?”
“Undoubtedly. Okay, so think of this region as being shaped like a pot. If you look at it from the side, the Urubamba River is the handle and top edge of the pot. The Andes would be, ah, the lid.” She holds her hands to illustrate her point. “Along the river are these series of forts that used to protect the valley. Ollantaytambo”—she holds one hand flat to indicate the pot's arm and lid and walks down it with her other hand—“Urubamba, Calca, and Pisac.” Her hands move down the line. Then she cups her hand under her other one. “Down here is Cusco.”
“The bottom of the pot.”
“Right. Where everything goes. Down to the bottom.” She taps the underside of her wrist. “Now, back here is a place called Maras—it's known for its salt fields. Slightly uphill from it is a ruin called Moray, which is this ancient Incan installation with some serious concentric terraces. Apparently, they're deep enough that the climate changes dramatically from the top to the bottom.”
“Handy if you're experimenting in different crops,” I interject.
“You think?” she says. “A couple of years ago, there was a record rainfall. The sort that tends to wipe out existing settlements or, in this case, serious ancient Incan ruins. Ah, but we can't have our national heritage ruined, can we? No, that just won't do. Guess who steps in and funds the reconstruction work at Moray?”
“Hyacinth.”
“Hyacinth Worldwide, in fact. Which almost doesn't happen when someone makes some noise about the fact that Hyacinth Worldwide is mainly a hospitality and services company, but then there's a big donation to the city of Cusco and plans to open not one but three hotels within the city limits.”
“Hyacinth hotels?”
“Absolutely.”
“So it's double duty. Hyacinth Worldwide gets into the cultural heritage business and makes it easier for tourists to visit. Everybody wins.”
“And with everyone paying attention to the construction in town, which is way more exciting, no one notices what's going on at a crusty old cultural restoration site. It's the same thing they must have done on Easter Island. Move in on the land. Build a hotel and boost the local economy, and then when things are ready, lease the real prize to a different arm of the company.”
“Is Escobar building something at Moray?”
“Who knows? The area's all closed off.”
“So we can't take a tour bus?”
“Only if you want to hijack it.”
“You think that might be a little obvious?”
“Well, it's sort of been your modus operandi so far. Why change now?”
“Probably a good time to change it up then. Keep them guessing.”
“I'm all for that.”
“Should we go now?”
“How about after we eat whatever it is that you ordered from room service?”
I concede that point. “I'll go tell Phoebe.”
Mere laughs. “I doubt it'll take her more than a few seconds to pack up her guns.” She pats the couch next to her. “Sit down for a minute. I won't bite.” She bites her lower lip as soon as she says the words and drops her gaze to her laptop screen.
I might, I think. Why not say it? I wonder, and so I do.
She blushes, and shakes her head slightly, a smile fighting to spread itself across her moving lips. She doesn't say anything out loud, but I can read her lips plainly enough. I'll bite you back.
I sit down on the couch next to her, close enough that our shoulders brush. As she continues to fuss with the windows on her computer, I turn and lower my face toward her neck. Her hair is in the way, and I carefully lift it up with a few fingers. She shivers and sits up, her back straightening. She lifts her head, tilting it to the left. I smell her exposed neck, my mouth hovering less than a centimeter from her bare flesh. I exhale slowly through my nose, and she quivers beneath me. She grips the laptop with both hands. “Do it,” she whispers.
I press my lips against her skin, carefully keeping my teeth away. My mouth stays closed, but I can still taste her. The ripeness of her flesh, the honeysuckle sweetness of her blood so tantalizingly close beneath her skin. The warm heat of her excitement. The sound of her heart, pounding in her chest.
“No,” I say as I break the contact of the kiss.
I stand up and walk to the door of the suite. I don't leave. I simply keep my back to her as I wait for room service to arrive.
I hear her close her laptop and set it aside. She gets up and walks up behind me. My hands are shaking and I clasp them together to keep them still. She wraps her arms around me, pressing her head against my back. “It's okay,” she says.
I unclasp my hands and raise them to cover hers. She's shivering as much as I am, and we must look silly. Standing there, staring at the suite door. I don't care. I feel…
Remember your priorities.
… safe.