All Around Atlantis Read Online Free PDF Page B

wide, embroidered Indian trousers that Mick and Suky were headed toward the village to buy.
    â€œHoo hoo!” Mick said. “Worth the trip?” But his hand, extended for Suky’s cigarette, was unsteady. How long, Rob wondered; how much longer until they reached the village?
    When they arrived, he would eat something with Mick and Suky, maybe even check into the hotel, but he would look around for some way to get back to town immediately. There would be other tourists with cars, and there was supposed to be a boat, a little boat that carried mail across the lake, between town and the village to which they were going on the far side. In any case, he could hardly say it was Mick and Suky’s fault that he had come; the fact was, he had knowingly—no, eagerly—given himself over to them, to these people he never would have dreamed of getting into a car with at home. And if something happened—if the guerrillas reappeared, or if there were robbers, or if he got sick, or if, most terrifying of all, they were stopped by the army—he would have only himself to blame.
    Suky’s small, tanned arm, draped across the seat, sparkled faintly. Her shoulder, the back of her neck…The car fishtailed and Rob turned his gaze to the steaming lake. Himself, himself to blame, himself, only himself. Perspiration—forming below the surface, squeezing its way up to collect in basins around each gold stalklet of a hair, in tiny, septic, bejeweling drops.
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    According to Mick, the crumbly, bunkerlike building they checked into was the village’s premier hotel, the dirty pavilion where they sat now under a swarming thatch was the village’s premier restaurant. “Only restaurant,” Suky amended lazily. “Well, yeah, there’s one other, but Mick got a wicked parasite there last year.”
    What difference did it make? Rob would be back on his way to town soon enough.
    â€œChicken everyone?” Mick said. “Always tasty, always safe.” He put down the sticky menu and turned with a little bow to the child who was swinging idly against a chair, waiting to take their orders. “ Tres pollos .”
    The child considered Mick before responding. “ Pollo no hay ,” he said impassively.
    â€œ Pués ,” Mick said, “ pescado. Bien fresco .”
    â€œ Pescado no hay ,” the child said.
    â€œ Bueno ”—Mick folded his arms and leveled a ferocious grin at the child—“ Carne .”
    The child stared back.
    Suky yawned. “ Qué hay? ” she said.
    â€œ Frijoles ,” the child said, already wandering off. Pleased, Rob wondered, because he could offer them beans, or because he could offer them nothing else?
    The pavilion sat on a rise overlooking the muddy road, and beyond that, the lake. In front, just next to each of the poles that supported the thatch, a soldier stood, aiming a rifle at the shabby ladinos walking below, and the soundless Indians, in their elaborate, graceful, filthy textiles. From town, the lake had seemed blue, and the air over it tonic, a pure ether in which the volcanoes and the hills presided, serene and picturesque. But on this side the air was green, heavy with a vegetal shedding, sliding, with a dull glint, like scales. The water, the volcano, the dense growth, and the crust of tin-roofed shacks that covered the hills all appeared to be discharging skeins of mist that made everything waver, as though Rob were under the lake, here, looking up.
    â€œA gourmet paradise it may not be,” Mick said. “But you’ve got to admit it’s beautiful.”
    In cred ible. Was Mick aware of his callousness? Even if you were to succumb to some claim of the dark and protean landscape, you could hardly ignore those soldiers. Their faces were smeared with anarchic black markings, and their eyes glittered red with exhaustion or hatred, or illness.
    Of course, Rob was not unprepared for some kind of