Nathan Brazil sighed. “So that’s the way it is. I’d kind of hoped nobody would spot me and I could be kindly Captain Solomon. So even the colonel knew all the time.”
“Oh, he knew, all right. Kept givin’ them regular reports on you. I stood there and listened to him give ’em. For now he was just gettin’ orders to stall, stall, stall, so I guess they still ain’t made up their minds. The guy was a perfect toady, I bet, back home, and he might have changed race, form, and loyalties, but he’s right at home doin’ just the same here. Uh—just out of curiosity, are you the guy they’re scared of?”
Brazil shrugged. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to admit what most of the leadership already half believes. Yeah, I’m the same guy. And yes, they have some reason to be scared of me, too. More reason now than before, if they get me too pissed off.”
“They say you’re some kind of like, well, god or something. That you’re really one of them guys who built this nutty place.”
“Well, that’s a bit exaggerated. Right now I’ve only got one important power they don’t, pretty much like your one big power. The Well—the master computer that keeps things running here—won’t let them or anything else kill me.”
“Huh! I’ll trade you!”
“Don’t tempt me! But still, it’s not as big a deal when you think of it. I can be hurt, hurt bad. If it’s really bad, I can take a very long time to heal. I can be kept prisoner, drugged, you name it. In other words, they might not be able to kill me but they can sure stop me, and if everybody and their sister knows about me, then I’ve got real trouble. I had this kind of situation once before, but then I had a number of friends and allies. Now—I don’t know. And Mavra Chang’s just like me, Gus. She’s heading where I’m heading, too. If she gets there before I do, all bets are off, including on me. She doesn’t really know how complicated this business is, but she can get me out of the loop, anyway. She could even…” He paused a moment, as if the very concept were hitting him for the first time. “She could even kill me.”
“Yeah? Would she do that?”
“She might. I don’t know, Gus. I haven’t seen her in… well, a very long time. We’re strangers, really, at this point. And you say she was leading a band of Amazons in the Brazilian jungle?”
“Yep. The Stone Age type, too. Naked and painted and little poison darts and all that. I wouldn’t worry as much about her as you are, though.”
“No? Why not?”
“Well, they like got the same idea about her as about you. She’s not in their legends and stuff, but the ones that believe the stories about you also believe she’s another one like you. They’re doin’ the exact same thing to her. You can bet on it.”
That made him feel a little better, but not much. “So they have us both running on treadmills, pushing hard and hardly moving.”
“You’re movin’ now,” Gus pointed out.
“Yeah, I guess. But sooner or later I have to land this thing. Hell, maybe sooner than later. I haven’t exactly had a chance to check below and see if we have any usable provisions. If not, we’re all gonna get very hungry and very thirsty very fast.”
“Well, that’s a point. Is there anything I can do?”
Brazil thought a moment. “Yeah. I don’t want to try you at the wheel in this weather, not unless you have some experience with these kind of ships.”
“Canoes are my speed. Canoes and speedboats.”
“I thought so. But you know what we need and you know what you need. You could look below and give me an inventory.”
“No problem.”
“Gus? Also look for charts. I know you probably can’t read the stuff here, but you know what I mean by nautical charts. They have to have them somewhere. We’re going to have to get our bearings when we get out of this blow and then decide where we have to go.”
“Will do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Uh—Gus?”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“One more thing. You never answered my question as to why you didn’t contact me before.”
“Well, I started to, but then I saw Terry, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, you didn’t know her before, Cap. She was bright and educated, spoke a half dozen languages, damned brave and good at her job, and real pretty, too. But more important, she was a talker, a real extrovert. I wasn’t so sure I’d seen her lookin’ anything like she did before, considerin’ what happened to me and the colonel and all, but I didn’t figure she’d be any more changed, you know, inside, than I was. Then I see her, and she don’t notice me—it’s not invisibility, Cap, it’s just that folks don’t notice me unless I wanta get noticed. And then she’s stark naked, which is weird under most conditions but particularly weird in a climate like that one, she don’t say a word, and she’s got this weird blankness about her, even in her eyes. I mean, it didn’t take no Einstein to know that somethin’ far worse than what happened to me happened to her. Thing was, Cap, I didn’t know how or why it happened, see? I mean, for all I knew, particularly with what they was sayin’ about you, I mean, you coulda done it to her. I couldn’t do nothin’, see, until I was sure which side I wanted to be on.”
Brazil didn’t immediately look around, dealing as he was with keeping the ship righted, but finally he said, “Okay, fair enough. Let me know what you find!”
There was no response, and he looked around and saw nothing at all. For a moment he wasn’t sure he’d seen the creature at all, but then he spotted the open hatch to the main cabin below and realized that the Dahir hadn’t waited but had gone on down after their last words. Gone on down, and he hadn’t seen him!
In a way, though, it was reassuring. The girl—Terry—hadn’t seen him, either. Hadn’t in fact seen him yet. There were limits on her as there were on him, after all.
He wondered just what the trick was about something that big being so invisible to others. Gus said it didn’t work with cameras, so that meant it wasn’t some kind of blending in, no chameleonlike attribute that somehow masked even so large a creature against a background. Sounds, too, seemed to be masked somewhat, maybe totally. He’d heard the creak of the timbers in that warehouse, and that had brought a sensation of footsteps, but had he really heard them? He certainly hadn’t seen a damned thing when Gus hadn’t wanted to be seen.
He also wasn’t sure what Dahirs ate, but he certainly had sympathy for any of their menu items.
His thoughts drifted back to the girl. It was impossible to even imagine her as a worldly, vibrant mistress of technology and show business, a producer of highly visible news who’d probably been in a hundred danger spots all on her own and managed to survive and even thrive on that kind of thing. He had no reason to feel that Gus was putting him on; both he and the girl had, after all, been completely at the Dahir’s mercy over the long haul, and Gus’s own explanation of his actions rang true. But squaring the Terry that Gus had known, worked with, perhaps even loved, considering his devotion to finding her, with the eerie wordless mystic with the icy heart and strange and terrible powers who was back sitting behind the mast was next to impossible.
How much of that old Terry was still somewhere inside her? Had her essence simply walled off, or had she been reprogrammed beyond any hope of recall? Or was Terry the newswoman somehow still all there and along for the ride? Was her old personality erased or suppressed? Were her old memories gone or modified or merely filed under “old business” somewhere?