Part 48 (1/2)

'You've brought us as far as we can go,' she said. 'You've done everything we set out to do. We've made our discoveries. We know that a great empire once existed down here. Now it's over.'

'Come with me, Ali.'

'We have no food.'

His eyes s.h.i.+fted ever so slightly, a side glance, nothing more. He said nothing, but something about his silence contradicted her. He knew where there was food? It jarred her.

His canniness darted before her like a wild animal. I am not you, it said. Then his glance straightened and he was one of them again.

She finished. 'I'm grateful for what you've accomplished for us. Now we just want to come to terms with where we've gotten in our lives. Let us make our peace,' she said. 'You have no reason to stay here anymore. You should go.'

There, she thought. All of her n.o.bleness in a cup. Now it was his turn. He would resist gallantly. He was Ike.

'I will,' he said.

A frown spoiled her brow. 'You're leaving?' she blurted, and immediately wished she hadn't. But still, he was leaving them? Leaving her?

'I thought about staying,' he said. 'I thought how romantic it would be. I imagined how people might find us ten years from now. There would be you. And there would be me.'

Ali blinked. The truth was, she'd imagined the same scene.

'And they would find me holding you,' he said. 'Because that's what I would do after you died, Ali. I would hold you in my arms forever.'

'Ike,' she said, and stopped again. Suddenly she was incapable of more than monosyllables.

'That would be legal, I think. You wouldn't be Christ's bride after you died, right? He could have your soul. I could have what was left.'

That was a bit morbid, yet nonetheless the truth. 'If you're asking my permission,' she said, 'the answer is yes.' Yes, he could hold her. In her imagination, it had been the other way around. He had died first and she had held him. But it was all the same concept.

'The problem is,' he continued, 'I thought about it some more. And to put it bluntly, I decided it was a pretty raw deal for me.'

She let her gaze drift around the glowing room.

'I'd get you,' he answered himself, 'too late.'

Good-bye, Ike, she thought. It was just a matter of saying the words now.

'This isn't easy,' he said.

'I know. Vaya con Dios.

'No,' he said. 'I don't think you do.'

'It's okay.'

'No, it's not,' he said. 'It would break my heart. It would kill me.' He licked his lips. He took the leap. 'To have waited too late with you.'

Her eyes sprang upon him.

Her surprise alarmed him. 'I should be able to say it, if I'm going to stay,' he defended himself. 'Can't I even say that much?'

'Say what, Ike?' Her voice sounded far away to her.

'I've said enough.'

'It's mutual, you know.' Mutual? That was the best she could offer?

'I know,' he said. 'You love me, too. And all G.o.d's creatures.' He crossed himself, gently mocking.

'Stop,' she said.

'Forget it,' he said, and his eyes closed in that marauded face.

It was up to her to break this impa.s.se.

No more ghosts. No more imagination. No more dead lovers: her Christ, his Kora.

As her hand reached out, it was like watching herself from a great distance. They might have been someone else's fingers, except they were hers. She touched his head.

Ike recoiled from her touch. Instantly, Ali could see how sure he was she pitied him. Once upon a time, with a face untarnished and young, that might not have been a consideration. But he was wary and filled with his own repulsiveness. Naturally he would distrust a touch.

Ali had not done this forever, it seemed. It could have felt clumsy or foolish or false. If she had contrived it in any way, given the slightest thought to it beforehand, it would have failed. Which was not to say her hands were steady as she opened her b.u.t.tons and slid her shoulders bare. She let the clothing drop, all of it.

Nude, she felt the warmth of the lamps on her flesh. From the corner of her eye, she saw the light from twenty eons ago turn her into gold.

As they moved into each other, she thought that here was one hunger at least that no longer had to go begging.

Chelsea's scream woke them.

It had become her habit to wash her hair at the edge of the sea early each morning.

'Another fish in the water,' Ali murmured to Ike. She had been dreaming of orange juice and birdsong - a mourning dove - and the smell of oak smoke on the hill-country air. Ike's arms fit around her just so. It was a shame to spoil the new day with a false alarm.

Then more shouts rose up to them in the tower. Ike lifted from the floor and leaned out the window, his back dented and pockmarked and striped with text and images and old violence.

'Something's happened,' he said, and grabbed his clothes and knife.

Ali followed him down the stairs, the last to reach the group gathered on the sh.o.r.e. They were s.h.i.+vering. It wasn't cold, but they had less fat on them these days. 'Here's Ike,' someone said, and the group parted.

A body was floating upon the sea. It lay there as quiet as the water.

'It's not hadal,' Spurrier was saying.

'He was a big guy,' said Ruiz. 'Could he be one of Walker's soldiers?'

'Walker?' said Twiggs. 'Here?'

'Maybe he fell off one of the rafts and drowned. And then floated here.'