Across the Spectrum (43 page)

Food, Concepçion’s brain repeated stupidly. Shepherds,
herders . . .

Found it battening on
his cattle, and persuaded himself ’tis a hudu—or a brujo in its own right!

Her free hand was driven against her breast, to stop the
heart jumping clear out of her throat.

“You killed that man.”

The devil’s eyebrows tilted. The sneer was the devil’s own
smile.

“You are a cannibal.”

The smile vanished. A feline hiss.

“Am I a pig, to gorge on flesh?”

Two huge holes in a man’s throat. Puncture wounds, pale,
ragged, where the killer sucked.

“You . . .” Concepçion fought down shudders.
“How did you
get
on the train?”

Affront mutated to a mocking half-bow. “My estimable Jesus,
señora. My servant. My slave. Discovered on the Altiplano. Carrier of baggage,
disposer of—arrangements. Eternally dependable.”

He came to me on the
Altiplano, alone, solitary, unique.

“Though growing past his best, I fear.”

Concepçion’s backbone cringed. She could just whisper. “What
will happen to him?”

A tiny shrug. A hand-wave, the turn of the wrist, the
fingers’ droop, eloquent of hidalgos, princes, antique courtesy of a status
Concepçion had never dreamed.

“He will be discarded. Eventually.”

Concepçion tried not to gulp.

“But thou—” The purr altered. “Thou art a woman, true; a
mere castiza. But hast some qualities. Perhaps . . .”

She saw the velvet shoulders firm. Then her heart jerked at
the rasping whisper. “Look at me.”

Concepçion shook her head furiously. She could not speak,
but she gripped the cord and would not raise her eyes.

“Fool woman! Serve me, and become immortal!”

And was that what you
promised Jesus?

Concepçion kept her face down and shook her head again.

A long-drawn hiss. “Dirt-bred mestiza . . .”

At that Concepçion’s head flew up despite herself. “Do not
thou call
me
mestizo!”

The slender figure went taut as a drawn rapier. The whisper
scorched. “
Thou
art the get of a Chilean
roto
and an Aymara slut.
I
am Don Sebastian de la Vega y Vargas, son of an Inca’s grandchild and
a Conquistador.”

Concepçion gasped in utter disbelief for a split second too
long. Blackness loomed suddenly to the roof above her, spread, and swooped. She
saw the dead man on the galley floor and in sheer reflex her hand flew to the
only recourse she had left.

“Madre de Dios, ayudame!”

Her fingers snatched the pure Potosi-silver crucifix that
had been Edouard’s wedding gift.

∞

Concepçion sat shaking in the
Inca
’s first-class
passenger saloon, ears still ringing to the crescendo of the intruder’s final
shriek. The thud of the cabin door reverberated in her memory, and
thought-shards ricocheted in her brain.

A Conquistador’s son. Routed by a crucifix.
Jesus, my
slave
. On the Altiplano.
I promise you will attain immortality.
A
feeder on humans. Old enough to seem immortal. Four hundred years old. On a
train. Then in my cabin. The clothes. The teeth. The protuberant front teeth.
My
precious, precious bat.
The Indian, in the corridor.
Just another
vampire bat
 . . .
A brujo in its own right!

Madre de Dios, what
is
that thing?

And as Edouard had armed her for survival, Edouard offered
the vital clue: Edouard smiling over a lurid book cover, exclaiming, “What a
brujo, this Dracula!”

The shards collapsed into intelligible shapes. Dracula, the
novelist’s legendary monster: a vampire. Blood-drinker, walker by night.
Sleeper by day, enslaving human servants. Travelling in his coffin, going abroad
in human form. Or as a bat.

A vampire bat.

Half-hysterical laughter clogged Concepçion’s throat. Ah,
but here in South America, we have the reality. With the habits, the size, the
teeth . . . oh, to see that haughty Conquistador’s descendant
penned among the luggage, upside down in a cage!

Then comprehension drenched her, colder than Titicaca’s
waves. He would not be in the cage. Jesus had released him. He had reached her
cabin in the night. Had killed in the night. Now it was day. Somewhere, as bat
or human, like Dracula, “Don Sebastian” had found another shelter for his
sleep.

She never isolated the moment decision emerged from that
understanding’s depth. It was simply there, setting her teeth, stiffening her
back. The murdered man, Jesus, my daughters in Potosi, in Arequipa, all that
unsuspecting population: they matter, yes. But that—creature—is using the
Ferrocarril. Truly dishonoring the Ferrocarril. Don Enrique’s Ferrocarril,
Edouard’s Ferrocarril.

She heard again the editorials and encomiums as Don
Enrique’s projects dazzled Peru. Edouard, on leave but still ablaze too:
“Querida, Don Enrique is beyond amazing. The Challape bridge! The Cacray
zigzag! The Galera tunnel—a tunnel, at fifteen thousand feet! This Ferrocarril
will upturn the world!”

And it killed them,
some bitter second voice interposed.
Edouard
in a rock fall, Don Enrique in the national bankruptcy. Ten thousand others
with them, on the Central Line alone. In its way, the Ferrocarril is a greater
blood-sucker than Don Sebastian. Why should its honor be saved?

At last, the first voice replied.

Don Enrique,
it
said,
was a Yanqui, a speculator, a
money-maker, but he was a magnificent engineer. Only a magnificent engineer
could master the Andes’ seaward face.

Edouard understood
that,
it went on.
Edouard used,
Edouard gave his life for that. Will you let old bitterness shame them both?

No, she said at last, answering both voices. I will not
leave their work a means to that thing’s filthy ends.

She settled back in the gilt-edged chair. The Ferrocarril
gave me a cause, she thought. Edouard has named the enemy. But only Grandmama
knew how to handle a brujo.

∞

She allowed time for breakfast to be served and cleared
away. Then she rang her stateroom bell, and asked the attendant the question on
which her whole plan relied.

“Does the crew from La Paz stay with the
Internationale
all the way?”

When he nodded, she took the first, irretrievable step.
“Señor, the two men who found the—body—before Guaqui. Will you ask them to
attend me here?”

“Señores,” she said, when they arrived, “in the confusion,
last night, I never heard your names.”

The taller one was Ramon Flores, the shorter Esteban
Gamarra. She acknowledged their half-bows and said, “I request you in good
faith, señores, to come within here. And close the door.”

They both hesitated. She held her head up as if at Mass.
They took heart at such respectability.

“Señores,” she said, as they stood crowded by the bunk, “in
the matter of the dead man on the train.” Their stances shot from nervous to
alarmed attention. “I have found what killed him. It was a brujo.”

Before the consternation could burgeon she added a counterblow.
“It is on this ship.”

“I saw it,” she went on, when their outcry, irrepressible
even for seasoned railway crew, had begun to abate. “Last night.”

And with their eyes and mouths gone even wider, she
forestalled the obvious question. “It could not abide my crucifix.”

She watched the sequence of shocks level into a first tinge
of relief. “Either the crucifix,” she amended, “or that it was silver. In
either case, señores, we are not unarmed.”

She let the full significance of that “we” sink in. Then she
said softly, “This creature has killed. And it has dishonored—abused—the
Ferrocarril. I seek your help, in finding—in encountering—in removing it.” She
held their eyes and let her own feelings into her voice. “Yes. I intend to
remove it. I have, señores, a plan.”

The engines throbbed vaguely under them. Someone clattered
past in the corridor. Their eyes told her they believed her: because they still
thought her a bruja as well.

Then Ramon Flores tucked his chin down, and straightened the
cap under his arm.

“Señora,” he sounded only moderately shaky. “Remove it . . .
how?”

Concepçion released a breath that seemed to have strained
her stay laces. “Señores,” she said, “do you both possess a crucifix?”

∞

Grandmama never said it would be easy, Concepçion fumed.
Aloud she said, “Señores, no one could ask you to search a first-class cabin,
naturally. And yes, something so small as a bat might be anywhere.
Nevertheless, we must still find it. And before tonight.”

Both men shuddered. Both right hands clamped tightly round a
crucifix, one silver, the other tied to a silver medal of St. Christopher.

“It was necessary to search. To eliminate what places we
could.” But, she realized with relief, one other certain clue remained.

“Señores, the Indian. Jesus, the brujo’s slave. We must
watch for him at Puno, when we disembark. The brujo may evade us. Jesus, we
will see.”

Ramon Flores took the lead as usual. “And—then, señora?”

Concepçion’s brain ratcheted like a runaway windlass. “Then
we find means to—dispose of it. But first we watch: I at the passengers’
gangway. Señor Flores, the luggage? And you, Señor Gamarra, if you watch the
ticket-checkers?”

Esteban Gamarra licked his lips. “And if one of us sees?”

“We follow. We find where he settles himself. He must have
baggage.” One way or another, Don Sebastian had to leave the ship, and by day,
Jesus would have to carry him. A coffin like Dracula’s would be impossibly
conspicuous. He would have to be in bat shape. “Do not approach him! Only come
to report. We will meet on the Puno platform. While the train loads.”

∞

“Señora! Señora!” Esteban Gamarra’s voice overrode the din
at the station entry, as Concepçion struggled to keep her footing in the crowd.
“Señora, the train is not going to load!”

Concepçion hauled herself round, to find his eyes staring
wide. “The engineer says the descent to Arequipa is too dangerous in the dark—”

“But surely, we could advance to Juliaca?”

“Señora, Juliaca has no hotel! Nor enough room for half
these.” His gesture flashed about the hallway, first-, second-, third-class
passengers entangled in protest and demand. “The train must stay at Puno.
First-class passengers at the hotel, billets for the others. Señor el Jefe is,
ah, very angry. But the engineer will not budge.”

My fault. Concepçion felt her ears burn with shame.
Single-handed, I delayed the
Inca
at Guaqui, and for nothing of use. Now
Don Jose will be rabid. And his wrath will fall on this one honest man.

“Yes, have someone take my baggage,” she cut into Esteban’s
next outburst. “But I must see the engineer.”

At the very least, she told herself, I must explain. Take
the blame. Apologize.

Not surprisingly, the engineer was by his locomotive.
Evidently he had prevailed, for the boiler was uncompromisingly cold.
Underlings ran about with oilcans, tools and water buckets, but the engineer
himself was tapping the left-hand drivers with a small hammer, wheel by wheel.
Painted black like all Southern Rail engines, the locomotive loomed in the twilit
station-shed like some great machine demon, the arrogant jut of funnel, the
long prow of the cow-catcher, the squared lines of cabin and tender only
emphasizing the breadth of the massive, glistening boiler’s flank.

Under that wall of weight and power, against the serried
rank of pilot and driver and trailing wheels, the man looked insignificant. Yet
it is he who controls all this in motion, Concepçion thought. He who, for
conscience’ sake, has brought the whole enterprise to a halt.

Esteban coughed. “Señor Vivanco?”

The engineer straightened. Concepçion met grave dark eyes in
a rawboned face. The bones were uncompromising as the look. A gravel-rough
voice said, “Yes?”

Mestizo, she thought. Castizo, one mixed-blood parent, as I
have, but Indian blood somewhere close. “I am Concepçion Gonzaga,” she said.
“Edouard’s widow. I am also the person who delayed the Inca at Guaqui. Since
this has caused such trouble, I have come to apologize.”

For Don Jose’s undoubted demands, curses, threats of
dismissal, and at the least, copious abuse, all directed at this man. Both of
them knew what she meant.

Vivanco examined her for another unblinking half-second.
Then, briefly and slightly, inclined his head.

“Edouard’s widow,” he said.

Concepçion inclined her head in turn.

“The delay. It was then for good cause?”

Concepçion blinked.
Edouard
, she said silently,
what
a reputation you left
. “Señor, you are of the Ferrocarril. A person of
reason. Rationality. Science. But not all things, yet, can be explained by
science.”

Vivanco’s silence answered,
Go on
.

“A man died on the train, outside Guaqui. Señor Gamarra here
can attest: something bit his throat and drained his blood.”

Vivanco glanced at Gamarra and back to her.

“I wished, I demanded that the Guardia Civiles investigate.
They did not find the killer. On the steamer, I learned that—it was a brujo.”

Someone on the boiler housing overhead banged metal on metal
with a vicious clang. The iron roof reverberated. Unmoved, the locomotive
towered over them, black in the dimness as the vampire himself.

“It feeds on human blood,” Concepçion said. “It means to go
to Arequipa, to find more people. It told me this. When it tried to enslave me,
on the steamer last night.”

She could feel Esteban Gamarra’s gasp. Vivanco merely
shifted the hammer to his other hand. Stared another endless moment. And said,
“So it will try to board this train?”