The
gringo
lay sunbathing on the fine white sand of
the estuary, just south of the rocky
point that gave the fishing village its
name,
Puerto Peñasco.
Stretched out on a
hotel towel, his body bare but for the
merest scrap of swim trunks, he wore no
uniform or insignia; yet Enrique knew
him for a
soldado,
a soldier. It radiated from his
well-toned body like heat from the sand
as he turned an indulgent eye on the
boy.
“You buy, señor? Good stuff, real
cheap.” Enrique offered his box of
trinkets. Soldiers on leave spent lots
of money, especially when they were with
women. This soldier had three beautiful
norteamericanas
with him, their
chichis
falling out of their swimsuits.
“Oh, look,” said one woman. “Isn’t he
cute!”
Enrique was indeed cute, his round face
saved from the adverse effects of
poverty by Señora Dolores’ cooking. His
dark hair tumbled into brown eyes that
sparkled with the combined joy of the
warm sun, the cool sea breeze, and the
deep conviction that this
gringo
would be the first of many to shell out
US dollars for the bits of carved wood
and folded paper in the box today. Some
days he sold hats, and other days he
sold shells, and sometimes in the
evenings, he sold his mother in her
mysterious mask, but today the
six-year-old sold small ironwood
carvings and paper flowers. Dropping to
his knees in the sand, he set the
cast-off packing carton where the
soldado
could see its contents.
Enrique studied his mark.
That is what a man
should be: strong and handsome like
that, surrounded by women. Not like the
men who hang around the cantina, with
their fat bellies and sagging jowls,
grabbing at every woman who walks by.
Awe bubbled up inside
the boy. This was a man who commanded
respect. And of course, such a perfect
man must have lots of dollars to buy
trinkets for his señoritas. Enrique
tilted the carton slightly, offering a
fuller view of his wares.
The
soldado’s
eyes narrowed shrewdly, and for a moment
Enrique was afraid he would be chased
off. But the man sat up, stretched
artfully to display the muscles in his
chest and arms and said, “Let me see
what you’ve got.”
Grinning, Enrique showed off the shiny
wooden pieces, holding up each in turn:
a turtle, a porpoise, and a swordfish
leaping through the waves. Carved from
the tough, brown-black ironwood that
grew throughout Mexico’s Sonoran desert,
they had been sanded smooth and polished
to a warm, high luster.
“Made by Seri Indians,” he said, though
why that always impressed gringos, he
didn’t know.
One of the women picked up a carving of
a raptor. She had short, dark hair
bleached blond at the tips, and
intelligence glittered in her blue eyes
as she examined the piece. “Here,
Captain—this is you.”
“The eagle!” Enrique exclaimed, pouncing
on this. “Yes,
Capitán,
you are an eagle, no? Very strong bird.
I am eagle, too.” The little boy patted
his chest proudly. “Enrique Aguilar. In
Spanish, eagle is
aguilá.
So I am eagle.
Almost.”
The captain chuckled. “Hunter Robinson,”
he said, offering his hand, “Captain,
Peacekeeper Pilot Corp.”
Enrique shook hands solemnly. El
Capitán’s grip was strong, but not
overpowering. It made Enrique feel he
was treated as an equal.
“What are these?” Hunter asked, picking
up one of the large paper flowers. It
was as wide as his outstretched hand.
“Flores,”
Enrique piped quickly. “Flowers. Very
cheap. Only one dollar.”
Hunter’s eyebrows shot up. “One dollar!
You’re not an
aguilá,
my friend. You’re a
bandito.”
“No, no,” Enrique hastened, not wanting
to offend his mark. “One dollar for two.
Very cheap.”
Still the captain grimaced.
“For El Capitán, special price, three
for one dollar,” Enrique amended. He got
them ten for a dollar, so he could
afford to be generous. “How many you
want?”
“Oh, pay him, Hunter,” one of the ladies
chided. “It’s only a dollar.” Her
polished fingernails fascinated Enrique;
they swirled with colors that constantly
changed, like a kaleidoscope.
“But I don’t want the flowers,” Hunter
complained. “What else do you have?”
“Only what is in the box. But I can do
card tricks for you. You want to see,
yes?” In the surrounding village,
pockets were as worn and full of holes
as the black volcanic rock that lined
the harbor. But here, in front of the
fancy resort, pickings were lush. The
turistas
who came to this beach always had
pockets weighed down by too much money,
and Enrique knew a variety of ways to
help them lighten their load.
Hunter eyed the lad. “What will that
cost me?”
“For El Capitán, first one is free,” the
boy said magnanimously. “Here. Deck of
cards, see?” He pulled a battered deck
from his shirt pocket and fanned out the
cards. His hands were small and the
cards were old, so they did not fan
smoothly, but that daunted him not one
bit. “Pick a card, Señor Capitán.”
A gleam came into Hunter’s eyes. He
tugged four unrelated cards from the
deck. “What if I pick more than one
card?”
“Okay,” Enrique agreed.
Hunter stuck the cards into the sand
facing him, then set Enrique’s box in
front of them, completely blocking them
from the boy’s view. He motioned the
three women to look over his shoulder at
the cards. “All right, my friend,” he
said to the boy. “I have four cards.
What are they?”
Enrique covered his eyes with his
forearm, blew out a breath, then inhaled
slowly. As he did, the images on the
cards swam toward him. “Ten of spades.”
One of the women gasped. It created a
ripple in the images.
“Two of ...” The boy hesitated, confused
by the ripple. “Is red, yes?”
“Yes,” the captain confirmed quietly.
The ripple faded, stilled by the steady
pull Enrique exerted. “Hearts. Two of
hearts.” He peeked to see Hunter’s
reaction, but the man’s face revealed
nothing. Kaleidoscope Nails and the
Gasping Girl, however, exchanged a look
of amazement, while the woman with short
hair grew more intent.
“And the next one?” Hunter prompted.
Enrique covered his eyes again and
concentrated. He had never done this
many cards at once before. The image of
the card bounced like a driftwood boat
on the surf. Was it a face card? He
thought so, but ...”Jaaaack—no, no, is
no jack. Is ...”
“Go to the next one,” Hunter suggested.
“Sí.”
The boy’s mind
shifted, groping. “Seven of ...
diamonds, yes?”
“Yes. And the one you missed?”
Enrique tried to steady the turbulence.
“Is ... queen of clubs.” He uncovered
his eyes and smiled brightly at his
audience. “Right? Yes?”
“How did he do that?” Gasping Girl
demanded.
“I’ll be damned,” said Kaleidoscope
Nails.
Short-Hair said, “Kid’s almost as good
as you, Captain.”
Hunter smiled with quiet satisfaction
and picked up the wallet he had folded
into a corner of his beach towel.
Handing a dollar to Enrique, he said,
“Here. That was worth a dollar.” Then he
pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “Now, if
you can tell me the number I’m thinking
of, I’ll give you this. It’s two digits—comprende
‘digits’? And it’s ...” He leaned over
and showed the women something on the
bill. “ ... between one and fifty.”
Enrique’s eyes widened in perplexity,
the thought of that ten-dollar bill
pounding as rigorously as his heart. It
disturbed the image of the numbers on
the bill.
“Relax,” Hunter soothed. “Close your
eyes and picture a circle. Big round
circle.”
Enrique obeyed. The instant he closed
his eyes, the agitation abated as though
a great wind had died.
“There’s a number in the circle. What is
it?”
The soothing lines of the circle cleared
a space in the boy’s mind; the number
popped into it. “Thirty-eight.”
“How did he know?” asked Gasping Girl in
amazement.
“We told him,” Hunter replied, handing
the bill over to Enrique. “Mental
transfer. The boy’s a natural psionic
talent.”
“Very talented,” Enrique agreed as he
stashed the bill in his shirt, although
he had no idea what
psionic
meant. “I can sing, too.”
Hunter handed the box of trinkets over
to the ladies with instructions for them
each to pick one, then settled back on
his elbows and studied the child before
him. “Have you ever been in an airplane,
Enrique?” he asked. The boy shook his
head. “Do you know who the Peacekeepers
are?”
“Sí, Capitán,
you are soldiers,” Enrique replied
promptly. “From the stars.”
Hunter chuckled. “Well, I’m from Canada,
actually. But I serve in the military
branch of the Peacekeepers, and yes, we
fly through the stars to get to and from
the war zone. But mainly, I’m a pilot. I
fly jet aircraft.”
Music sang in the little boy’s head as
the captain uttered this charm, this
incantation:
pilot.
Hunter asked, “Do you
think you’d like to fly someday?”
Enrique gaped at the captain in
amazement. Him? Fly an airplane? Until
that moment, Enrique’s ambitions in life
had not extended beyond making enough
money at something to buy his own scoot
cycle. Maybe he would work on a fishing
boat when he grew up, or build houses,
or get a job at the fancy resort where
people said you could make good money.
But fly? Be a pilot in the Peacekeepers?
It had never occurred to him to dream
such a thing.
The idea seized him so profoundly, from
that moment on, he could dream of
nothing else. It burned like the sun
overhead, like the white sands of the
beach. “How do I be a pilot?”
“Go to school,” Hunter told him. “Study
hard. Learn math and science.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “Is that all?”
“It’s harder than it sounds. But keep at
it—never give up. And keep playing with
the cards.”
Enrique shuffled through the greasy deck
in his hands, wondering what one had to
do with the other. “You play cards on
the airplane?”
Now the señoritas laughed, and Enrique
grinned with them. He had no idea what
had amused them, but he was perfectly
willing to take credit for it.
“The cards are just a way to practice,”
Short-Hair told him. Enrique thought she
must be a soldier, too. “One of many
ways. It’s your psi rating that makes
you a good prospect for the Peacekeeper
Pilot Corps, not the cards.”
“What is ‘sigh rating’?”
“Psi is short for psionic.” Hunter
stretched out again, propped up on one
elbow. “There are several aspects of it,
but in the case of pilots, they’re
looking for people who can pick up
images of things they don’t actually
see. Like knowing what the cards are
when you can’t see them.”
“Is not magic?” Señora Dolores, who
owned the cantina where his mother
worked, called his card tricks magic and
implied they were a waste of time.
“We used to think so,” Hunter said. “And
some people still do. But whether you
believe the images are coded in alpha
waves, or that brain cells develop
sympathetic vibrations, or something
else we have yet to discover, the fact
is that people with high psi ratings
respond better to neural implants.”
“Noor—newer—”
“Neural implants,” Hunter repeated.
“It’s a—device. A
thing
that connects to your brain. Inside your
head. Flying machines are very
complicated, you see; they have a lot of
sophisticated instruments—instrumentos—to
give the pilot all the information he
needs. But sometimes the pilot forgets
to look at his
instrumentos,
or he looks at them wrong, or he goes by
instinct instead of information. Then
bad things can happen.”
Short-Hair made a whistling noise and
used her hand to pantomime an airplane
crashing nose-first into the sand.
Enrique shuddered.
“But if a pilot has a neural implant,”
Hunter continued, “he can connect
directly to the plane’s computer, and he
can
feel
the readings. You
become
the plane.” A quiet passion filled the
captain, and though Enrique did not
understand all the words, he understood
the emotion behind them. “You see what
the plane sees, you feel your pitch and
yaw, your trajectory, you
know
if you’re damaged. Your reaction time is
much quicker, and you make fewer
mistakes.”
“So is like a Pepper game?” Enrique
asked, for he had seen that toy
company’s virtual reality games with
their sleek headgear and complex control
packs.
“Not exactly.” Hunter gave him a
lopsided smile. “It sounds a little
scary, but instead of headgear, they
actually take a small network of fibers
and slip it
inside
your skull. Connect it to your brain.”
Enrique drew back in revulsion as he
pieced together what El Capitán was
saying. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“No!”
“Really,” Hunter insisted. “The fibers
attach to the places in your brain that
register sensation—smell, taste, sight.
Then information from the aircraft’s
navigational computer can send impulses
to this implant—we call it a spider. It
gives the pilot the sensation of being
the aircraft. Here.” He parted his
thick, dark hair and showed the boy a
tiny white scar, no more than an inch in
length, on the left side of his scalp.
“See?”
Enrique had a terrifying image of a
spider crawling around inside El
Capitán’s head. “Does it hurt?”
“No!” Hunter laughed. “You don’t feel it
at all. And most of the time, it’s
turned off—you only use it when you
fly.” He showed Enrique a small slit in
the skin of his left forearm, a tiny
pocket concealing a switch. “But when
it’s on ...” His voice trailed off and
his face acquired a satisfied glow.
“It doesn’t work for everyone,”
Short-Hair cautioned. “But the captain
here is one of the best spider brains in
the business.” Enrique rubbed his own
scalp, which tingled at the thought of
letting someone put a machine, no matter
how tiny, inside his head. “What is
like?”
“Like nothing you can imagine.”
Overhead, a gull wheeled and dropped
like a stone toward the water. Snatching
a small fish from the shallows, it
soared upward again, beating the air
with powerful, graceful wings. Hunter
gestured toward it, a movement
resembling a shrug of helplessness.
“Like him,” he said. “You feel like
him.”
The bird veered off into the sun,
becoming a dark splotch against its
glare. Enrique followed the gull with
his eyes, trying to imagine what it must
be like to ride so high in the air,
looking down on things; to know the push
of the wind on your chest, to feel it
stream past your face. Lifting his arms
like wings, he raced down the shore
toward the incoming tide, feeling the
gentle surge of a sea breeze that sought
to lift him skyward, and he leaped up
into the air. For a thrilling moment his
spirit lifted, buoyant as a bird, and he
knew a rush of sensation unlike any he
had ever felt before. Then he splashed
down into the shallow tide, sending up a
spray as exuberant as it was tangy with
salt.
I am an eagle,
Enrique dreamed.
I am an eagle
flying through the air ...
