Гарри Гаррисон - Montezuma’s Revenge

“Underwater,” she said, “we cannot talk. Therefore we communicate with hand signals. When we want you to come up we put our thumbs up like this, when we want you to go down we put our thumbs down like this. Do you understand?” The baby blipped a milky bubble.

“It seems simple enough. But how do I breathe?”

“You have already paid?” There seemed a limit to free information.

“No. Sorry. Here you are. The man said you have swimming trunks?”

“These should fit you.” The money went into the front of a drawer from the nether reaches of which was produced a sort of knitted wasp costume of alternate black and yellow bands, large buttons on the front, long in the leg, neck high.

“If you have a place I can put this on?”

“In the back, the bathroom. You can leave your things back there too. They’ll be safe, there’s always someone here.”

The bathroom opened off the smallish room to the rear that was cluttered with tools and workbench, a throbbing compressor in one corner, cluttered shelves above. Tony entered and locked the door behind him and sat down on the commode in tiled white solitude and wondered just what to do next.

Up until now it had been simple flight with the hot breath of the police on his neck all of the time. He had no idea they were so shoes and unlocked the door. The girl was putting the sleeping baby in a plastic carrier under the workbench.

“You can put your clothes on that rack,” pointing. Yankee English twanged from the other room and she went out to care for the newest customers.

As Tony hung his clothes from the hook and pushed his shoes against the wall he saw the shelves and the boxes above the bench, cigar boxes for the most part, many of them dust coated, rarely touched. Spare parts, old nuts and bolts. Yes, of course, a box could probably stay here for years without being noticed. The voices were busy outside, the rustle of money. Quietly as possible, Tony lifted the pile on the top shelf and slipped the box with the painting in under them. It vanished as easily as a pebble tossed among its fellows on the beach.

Heat shimmered in the air outside the open window while he tried to keep his attention on the new skill of scuba diving. A finger across the throat, I am running out of air. To clear water from the mask, seal the exhaust valve with the palm, lean backward, blow out through the nose. Trees and high-rise hotels fringed the sand along the great arc of the bay, all the way up to the hills beyond. Sport fishing boats bobbed at the wharf; the deep blue of the water did not look inviting. The lesson ended as sturdy, damp men in bathing trunks carried in tanks and equipment, seizing up filled tanks for the empty ones. The six new students were herded together; a very schoolteacherish pair of girls plunking away at the nasal cords of their New England voices, a newly wed couple playing constant handsies with each other with grim continuity as though they would be parted forever if flesh no longer touched flesh, a pimply youth and Tony. Carrying their breathing masks, goggles, fins, towels, weights, they straggled down the steps and across the road following the school employees with the tanks. Tony came last, biting into his mouthpiece and holding his goggles to his eyes as they passed the police car at the curb. He was ignored. They were too much a part of the ordinary Acapulco scene. As they walked along the stone at the water’s edge Tony looked down at the debris-strewn surface, the murky depths. As good a place as any, probably better. A few feet down nothing could be seen. He walked slower until all of the others were ahead, then fumbling so he did not drop anything else, he eased the knife from its nest inside the towel and let it fall. A silver shimmer, a slight splash, it was gone.

Behind him there were high-pitched shouts and a larger splash. The boy kicked a brown leg and went deep, surfacing a moment later, blowing and smiling and holding up the knife. Horrified, Tony took it back and put it away quickly, nodding thanks with ill grace, ignoring the waterfront urchin whose smile turned to an angry scowl as he cried out for some reward for retrieving the dropped knife. Tony tried to pantomime that he had no money with him, hard to do since there were no pockets in the trunks to turn out empty, and in any case the boy was having none of it. He swam alongside shouting for money for the knife while the student divers looked on with interest. Tony stared straight ahead, walking swiftly. A moored boat intervened and the shouts died away; were the others looking at him suspiciously? He cursed silently to himself.

An incongruously small outboard was clamped to the transom of the battered, twenty-foot boat. A faded awning gave some relief from the blowtorch sun. A small boy with a coffee can worked industriously to bail out the brimming bilges. The divers found their seats, the tanks were passed in, the outboard fluttered to life and they moved slowly out onto the swelling waters of the bay. The pimply youth at Tony’s side began to grow palely green and Tony pointed over the side, not feeling so well himself.

“How far out do we go?” Tony asked the man at the tiller.

He smiled and shook his head, the other employee in the bow nodding equal linguistic ignorance. No matter, it was all cutting throats with fingers and thumbs up under water, the same in Spanish and English. The boat putted up and down over the rollers, Tony nodded half asleep, the speckled youth made retching noises over the side. When the others looked away in embarrassment Tony came quickly awake and slipped the knife from the towel, waited for a shuddering moan to cover the splash, then let it slip from his fingers, this time vanishing for good. It was a marked relief to have it gone.

It took the struggling boat over half an hour to round the point and reach an anchorage in the lee of the rocky walls of Isla la Roqueta. Here, away from the silt and floating debris of the harbor, the water was incredibly clear, limpidly blue. One by one the novices followed their instructors over the side, sitting on the gunwale and falling backward, dropping into the soft embrace of the sea. Tony was amazed how easy it all was once he sank beneath the surface. Another world of different dimensions with a new-found freedom. Silent too, other than the whistling of his breath as he sucked at the tank, comfortable and calm.

When he became more secure in this new medium, Tony dived deeper along the rope secured to the bottom. The instructor floated over and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger with the other fingers raised, reminiscent of a television beer ad but meaning underwater Are you OK? Tony returned the same signal signifying that indeed he was. A school of small fish moved past him, turning together on some secret signal. On the bottom among the rocks there was an aureate glint. Gold perhaps, lost treasure? He kicked down to it but the treasure was only a discarded beer can. His cares were lost for the moment in the depths of the sea.

But, when his air finally ran out and he had to surface, memory and reality returned. What next? He was still on the run and in addition, he realized with the onset of a stabbing complaint in his middle, he was very hungry. Other than the nocturnal pastrami he had had no food in—how long?—twenty-four hours at least. Flight was important, but hunger became of more overwhelming urgency as the ancient boat struggled slowly toward the land. When they finally did touch shore he was first off, even before the painter was tied, rushing to the Long Porker premises and changing quickly out of his wet trunks. His wallet and papers were intact, the redhead and infant had been on guard all the time, and when he unlocked the bathroom door he could see the box with the painting still safely buried under the pile on the shelf.