I.

It is difficult, truly difficult, to understand how hellish hot the sun over northwestern Mexico can get in the summer. It goes from a friend that dispels the gloom of winter to a hated enemy in a day's travel; leaving that beaten land, no man respects the sun again in all of his natural years. He welcomes the snow and the rain and the gloom of the loath winter, he sings in the rain and he thanks God that he lives somwhere that has been spared the special wrath He saw fit to pour down upon Chihuahua.

This is where our story begins: off the road somewhere a while southwest of El Paso, the June sun oppresses a windless, wild, dry territory, marked only by an untopped Jeep trailing industriously through. It is at once utterly alien; it kicks up clouds of indignant dust in its wake as it barrels through at a speed no well-meaning creature would maintain. As the sun rises to its midday throne a siestic air falls over the world like the uncaring caress of an iron palm, and the Jeep, an ignorant and unwelcome guest in a strange land, ignores it.

James Harrison had heard 'mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun', as we all have, but he didn't remember it when his vehicle suddenly refused to run any farther. It was hot, miserably hot, and only the wind he had kicked up gave him any comfort against the oppressive heat. He didn't have a thermometer that he trusted, but he knew that it was just too damned hot. He knew the Jeep had overheated, but for a moment, greed overtook him: he didn't want to waste his drinking water. He was certain there was more somewhere; he just had to find it. Right. So out he went to look for a pond, a stream, anything he could stumble upon to save his precious, cool water. He'd turn back anyway.

When he came to, James's memory was quite foggy, but he did remember that he did not lay down to rest on a cot indoors. He rose to find himself in a small room made of what seemed to be mud, with no windows and a doorway; the door was opened, letting the harsh light of the Mexican sky pour into the room. He was thirsty. God damn, but he was thirsty. An inspection of the room turned up no water. He realized water wasn't going to come to him, so he rose and walked out of the adobe chamber.

The first thing he saw was another mud wall, low and sun-beaten, immediately ahead, which seemed to belong to a smallish building: utterly featureless, only distinguished from the ground around it by a slight shadow. He turned his head, and the second thing he saw was a large compound. A building which he supposed could comfortably hold twenty or thirty people, shaped like an L and made partially of wood and partially of adobe, dominated it; from each end of the L stretched a length of old, battered-looking wooden fence, the both of which met to make the entire thing into a rough square. In the middle of the area enclosed by the fence was a rather odd sight: a verdant garden in the middle of the red-brown desert, which seemed vibrant, alive. More so than anything else in the entire country he had seen so far; the plants were not the teals and off-whites that he had come to expect from survivors of a hellish environment, but lush greens and all the colors of the rainbow in flowers. And in the large garden, near the spring that seemed to feed it, sat a dark figure -- a man, he realized, wearing tattered clothes and seemingly unaffected by the heat. The paradoxical fellow rose deliberately to his feet and waved.

"Hello there!" He spoke with an odd accent that James could not place. "You are the one they found in the scrub."

"I don't know. I'm very thirsty, though. Can I have some water?"

"I shall get the Spaniard, then. He is in charge of these things."

James didn't get it. "In charge of what?"

"The water. You will understand very soon why the Spaniard's post is necessary and vital. We have stories that we may well share with you."

The dark man disappeared into the compound and returned with another man -- this one larger than him, and more weathered by the ravages of age; he was far paler, and wore clothing in similar disrepair. "Ah, you again! I apologize for not being present when you came to." The man approached briskly -- far more briskly, James thought, than could be natural for such a sweltering area of the world -- and it was then he realized how small the Spaniard was. He could not have been five foot six. "I suppose you'll require an introduction."

"I'd like one."

"Esteban Ramirez, at your service." James's suspicions were confirmed. "I am in charge of the water here; I am so appointed because I am considered a stable-headed and brave man, and so I can brave the terra incognita with new arrivals."

"What?"

"We have something very interesting here, very interesting indeed. It is only by a miracle we have hidden it from the outside world; our location in a box canyon helps significantly. We wish to remain in secrecy, so we have taken an active role in ensuring none who have found this place once ever find it again."

He wondered why all the secrecy, so he asked. "What here requires so much guarding?"

The Spaniard cracked a grin. "The garden. There are plants there, well-maintained, which exist in no other corner of the Earth. So you must make your choice -- if you are willing to stay, say so. If you are not, say so. You will be well-accomodated either way, but I promise you that staying, you will be amply rewarded."

James thought on it, and looked at the Spaniard again. His curiosity overwhelmed him. "What is this place and how many people live here?"

"We call it only the Villa, and it houses a score and four souls."

"Twenty-four? How can it sustain itself with so few?"

"It manages. If you wish to know more, you must stay."

"I'll stay." He was wary of the talk of leaving. He wanted to know more, and he knew that if he walked out right now, he'd regret it for the rest of his life, and that the garden would haunt his nightmares. He figured he could always leave later if he truly needed to. Besides, he was thirsty. So very thirsty.

"Good. Tell the gentleman over there to give you the right water. Exactly that. It is, ah, a code-phrase." The Spaniard's smile remained.

"Okay..." James did not feel paranoid; the Spaniard was, in spite of being small and apparently only in his early forties, a very avuncular and trustworthy man. He would feel almost disappointed to distrust him and the Villa. The sun didn't feel as hot, and the ground beneath his feet felt much more solid, than had been true when he was riding through the countryside for God knows what before. He approached the dark man in the garden. "Give me the right water," he said confidently. The man nodded and produced a cup; he dipped it into the spring and handed it to James. James drank.

The water tasted heavenly, as water chasing down wracking thirst is wont to taste. The dark man inclined his head and opened his eyes, preparing to tell a story he had told more than twenty times but still happened to like:

"Man has searched for decades for the secret to immortality; for mankind, it is this that marks them from their various gods and idols. Mankind has not yet found the keys to eternity, but we have. The water you have drunk will sustain you forever. While it remains within you, you will suffer none of the internal turmoil that marks our daily lives. If you choose to remain, you will do so with a handful of men and women who have stumbled upon the same thing as you. If you believe in the creatures that prowl the sky above and the earth below, believe that they are real and separated from humanity mainly by their unending endurance, you have in your hands the ability to become one of them. If you do not wish to stay, you do not have to; you can take the dose of eternity with you in your belly and leave it in the dirt some hours hence, and live a mundane life with a mundane end, and you and I shall never meet again. Through the mouth of this canyon is east, and the domain of humanity. Through the nearest door is south, and the domain of the immortals. Choose as you believe is correct; history shall not pass judgement either way." He tilted his head back down, closed his eyes, and assumed the repose that James had interrupted once more.

With a few short and deliberate steps, James passed through the rickety-looking doorway into the common hall.

II.