Second Nature

Chapter 6

6 

The van driver's name was Gilberto Timican. He was mestizo, part Mexican, part Mescalero Apache. Gilberto sat on the only chair inside the Level Four Isolation Unit. Eberhard stood, wearing special biohazard suit coated with conductive film; a powerful electrostatic current surged over the suit's exterior as a barrier against microscopic invaders. 

The illegal immigrants huddled on the floor of the glass apartment, wearing masks of confusion and worry: four men, three women, two small boys and a babe in arms. 

Gilberto's tobacco-brown face twitched in a nervous dance between a frown and a grin. He spoke in heavily accented English: "We hear this motorcycle, you know? Then we see him coming toward us over the dunes. We start to yelling, 'Help!" and we jumping up and down, waving shirts." 

The man held a stained cowboy hat in cracked and grimy hands. Tremors in his body made the hat's brim shake. 

"They was a man and a girl. A Chinese man, I think." 

Right! Eberhard's big fist slammed the top of the refrigerator and electric-blue sparks spit and popped from his suit. A stainless steel cup hopped off and clattered on the steel floor. Toshi Yamato, you misguided bastard. I knew it. 

Gilberto drew back with a grimace. Tears of fright shone in his bloodshot eyes, reflecting overhead banks of florescent lighting. 

"Japanese," Eberhard said, nodding, "He's Japanese. Go on, go on. What happened next?" 

Gilberto fidgeted, turning his filthy cowboy hat in circles. "The girl, she was so beautiful, with long, wavy hair and violet eyes. They was in a real big hurry. But to us they gave their canteens of water. They was about to leave, and Consuela-that's her, there..." He nodded toward an Indian woman in a faded flannel dress, an infant asleep in her ample lap. "She beg of them to take her baby, because the little one, he was doing real bad from the much sunburn. He was almost, like, dead." 

His worried smile looked more like a sneer. 

"Go on." Eberhard said. 

"The girl, she ask to hold the baby. She just hold it in her arms, no? But then, it was like a...niebla-you know this word?" 

"A fog." 

"Sí, a fog-a fog come out of the girl. I swear I don't lie to you, señor. I look around and everybody, they seeing it, too. The baby was coated in this, like, wet, shiny fog. Dios mío! When the fog goes back into the girl, the baby-he is perfect! No blisters, no sunburn, no nothing. Perfect. Just look at him." 

Eberhard glared at the infant and Consuela tucked the baby closer to her. 

Gilberto glanced around at the others in the room. They looked back at him with terrified, dark eyes, not grasping a word of the English. One woman shook as if she had palsy; she rocked in ceaseless, tearful Ave Marias.  

"We was all scared real bad. Watching the girl, thinking maybe she is the Virgin, you know? So I'm crossing myself like this and wondering what am I supposed do about it. We all just staring, crying, not saying nothing. Not even thank you, we don't say. She gets back on the motorcycle, and they go." Gilberto's black eyes cast downward. "I wish that we had maybe said, 'Thank you.'" 

Eberhard couldn't catch his breath. He actually checked for a kink in his yellow air hose before realizing the air supply was not the problem. An iron fist clamped his chest, seeming to squeeze his pounding heart up into his throat. Finally, with real physical effort, he sucked air into his lungs. 

He nodded encouragement to Gilberto. "Te oigo, amigo. I'm listening." 

"That's all I know to say, señor. That beautiful girl, she healed the baby." He crossed himself and a tear traced its way down the dark creases of his face. "A miracle, no?"