I was face down in the dirt with my hands tied behind my back and a knife wound in my shoulder. My assailant was kneeling on my back with the knife still in his hand. I had been in other perilous situations whilst on this world, but death had never seemed as imminent as it did at this moment.
The other four men had raced over, and there was a heated discussion going on over my prone figure. I felt somebody pull at my wounded arm and shouted out in pain. I wanted them to just get it over with, but I was amazed to hear one of the men, not the original speaker, speak to me in heavily accented but recognisable Spanish.
"Lo siento, amigo, pronto te tendremos libre."
He was saying sorry and that he would soon have me free!
I heard the rasp of a knife cutting through my bonds and felt gentle arms turning me onto my back.
I gasped, and somebody cradled my head and poured water between my lips.
I coughed most of it back, and when I had regained my breath, he eased off my coat and made a cushion for my head.
I was bleeding heavily, and he reached into a bag by his side and swabbed the wound with a strong antiseptic, but I clenched my teeth and, as a matter of honour, made no sound. When he had the bleeding under control, he expertly stitched the wound and bandaged me up, making a sling for my arm.
He was an obvious professional, and I said.
"Gracias, doctor."
"No es nada," he replied, meaning it was nothing.
He added,
"Te llevaremos de regreso a la base y te haremos un examen hospitalario completo; ahora estamos seguros de que eres humano."
He would take me back to the base and give me a complete hospital examination, now that he knew that I was human.
So that is what it had all been about! The man with the knife must have insisted that they find out if I was human or an android, and the test was to see if I had red blood inside me. I saw his point, but wished that he could have been gentler with his blood taking.
[I was later to learn that the knifeman's whole family had been wiped out by the machines, and I understood his hatred and desire for revenge. He must have hoped that I was an android so that he could kill me.]
I said that I was capable of walking back, but they insisted on my sitting on the cart beside the scrap metal. The cart was pulled by two men in turn, and it seemed not to be a strenuous task for these native mountain men. The doctor walked by the cart and was not expected to take a turn in pulling.
I tried to exchange a few words with the doctor, but he was very uncommunicative and walked in silence. I had plenty of time to think and decided it was in my own interest not to mention my friendship with Hector. They would not be able to understand a machine with a human mind. To these people, all machines were the enemy whom they both hated and feared.
It took some hours to reach the summit, and when we went over the top, I saw the base in the distance, looking the same as before.
It was full daytime now, and although the air felt as cold and fresh as before, the former ice-blue sky looked a little washed out, and there were a few muddy grey clouds that sometimes blocked out the sun.
I may have exaggerated the blueness of the sky in my imagination, but I did not think this was the case. In a world so nearly the same as the one I remembered from my first visit, it seemed odd that the sky, which almost defined the spirit of the mountain summit, should be so different.
The thought was troubling, but I brushed it aside.
Maybe I should have given it more attention.
There was an armed guard at the gate. The type you find on any military base, but not on the base I remembered from the past. The doctor spoke at some length to the guard commander, who continually glanced in my direction. They seemed to come to an agreement, and the barrier was lifted to let us through.
As we progressed further into the main township, we saw an increasing number of people, but they showed no interest in us. The streets looked familiar — not identical, but close enough to what I remembered. People moved about their business, carts rattled, and a circular service droid hummed past us collecting rubbish from the gutter. Ordinary. Almost too ordinary.
But I detected a difference in the voices of the townsfolk.
The buzz of conversation had a strange rhythm, a cadence that sounded artificial and machine-like, and when I smiled a greeting to a well-dressed old man passing by, he smiled warmly in return – too warmly – and he bowed his head and wished me a good day in recognisable Andean Spanish.
"Muy buenos días, señor. Un gusto grande poder conocerlo."
("A very good morning, sir. A great pleasure to meet you.")
It sounded artificial, like a bad actor speaking from a script, and my unease increased.
I had got down from the cart and walked alongside the doctor.
"¿A dónde vamos?" I asked.
"— A la municipalidad, para registrar tu llegada." He replied.
(The town Hall to register your arrival.)
That was it. He refused to elaborate any further.
Something strange was happening.
I had the sense of withdrawing into myself. All around me disappeared, and a mist descended.
My physical body remained rooted on the spot where I had last spoken to the doctor, but another version of me stepped out of the empty shell and walked on until I came to a clearing where the mist had partially lifted.
It was like looking through grey-tinted glass, and I saw the Lingze emerge—not as bodies, but as shifting silhouettes, their voices braided like wind through reeds. They do not speak in unison but in counterpoint, each line echoing and refracting the last in a celestial choir.
"Are you the butterfly, dreaming of a man?
"Or the man dreaming of a butterfly?
"Which flutters? Which wakes?"
I did not doubt that they were speaking to me, and I was humbled by their presence.
"You chase the light.
"But light casts a shadow.
"And shadow reveals form."
"To know evil, you must forget good.
To know yourself, you must forget knowing."
Was this an instruction? Were they telling me that to find Satan, I must reject the Good?
I did not understand, but I felt myself drawn back into my body, walking alongside the doctor. Nobody seems to have noticed my brief absence. Or perhaps, it only happened in my mind. Whatever the answer, there were powerful forces at work here, and a final confrontation would end in victory or death.