“No,” she says balefully. “I don’t like cannelloni.”
“All right. I think I can eat them all.”
“Well,” she says after another minute, the odor of the sauce having completely filled the cabin and the cannelloni already half gone, “maybe just one.” I look at her; she has the beginnings of a resigned, chagrined smile on her lips. “An adventure, the man says. Hand me that silver fork on the counter, will you? I’ll eat my last meal in style.”
Chapter 8
Vietahiti
As we descend in the morning sun, the island Collette names Vietahiti is spread out beneath us as it would be on a chart, surrounded by a rich blue sea. It is shaped into a coarse figure eight by two volcanos, their craters among the clouds. A flat saddle lies between them and contains, I see, one long, wide runway, a starship launch tower, and a group of support buildings. It is a large island, at least five hundred kilometers square. Its entire windward coast is indented with bays and coves inside small islands, and a deep green jungle stretches inland on a rising plain. On the leeward side, steep valleys corrugate the slopes, rising to a band of light green on the easternmost volcano, a forest of tropical hardwoods, Collette says. There’s hardly a sign of human presence, the sight is almost breathtaking after LasVenus. We pass through the clouds just over a mawlike, moonlike crater, break through over continuous jungle, then swing back toward the saddle over the ocean to make a gliding approach. For a long moment the window/wall shows a view straight down into the reef; I see coral alleys racing by with sand bottom, like fine veins in a blue and emerald sea. Then a flash of beach, wide and almost white, then the jungle, dense and ripe, deep green.
Ah, I think, what Guam could be, without the base, without Agana—what Guam could be.
Before we leave the ship, the message pager starts right in, signals live line. I flip the toggle, speak, give in. There is only a simple audio patch through the electronics to the resort; the wall screen is out. “Two-nine-two. Rawley Voorst. Patching through. I’ll take what you have.”
“Negative message,” I hear the girl from traffic say, her voice crackling and hard to hear against the sound of steel guitars being piped through the ship. “There’s somebody waiting for you.”
“Traffic, this is two-nine-two. Do I read ‘someone waiting’? Please identify.”
“Two-nine-two, traffic. He won’t say who he is.”
I look at Collette, she has stopped packing and is watching me.
“What does he look like, traffic? Can you describe? A man with black hair, bushy black hair, glasses? Or short. You did say he.”
There is a crackling silence for a moment, then a small noise. “Oh, no. He says I can’t tell you what he looks like. He says he’ll meet you at your cabana.” “Traffic, what the hell kind of message is this?” There is another crackling silence, it sounds as if the operator is talking with someone standing offmike nearby. I swear she giggles. “Uh, that’s all I’m authorized to say,” I hear. “Uh, two-nine-two, traffic out.”
Once through the crowded disembarkation chute, into the terminal, a Polynesian longhouse, most of the passengers filter toward waiting NaturBuses, third-class program. An older man wearing a ragged straw hat is swaggering drunkenly, jostling the crowd—nervous, I think, without spun-steel surfaces. I’m not so calm myself, wonder if now I’m about to see Knuth instead of Taylor. In the adjacent tramrun lobby the atmosphere acquires the sweet weight of the air of the tropical Pacific, a lush, flowery odor. Collette and I board an A tram for the beach; evidently the island is shared by both the tropical reserve and a resort complex. A dark-eyed, golden-skinned girl waves, smiling, as we whir away.
The tram takes us through a dense jungle that muffles its machine hum. The jungle’s high canopy trees are entwined with lianas through which the sun filters down in sleepy patches the size of children. The green seems to go on and on, the air is marvelous. When we reach the palm-lined coast, the sun is barely obscured by the planet’s mantle of haze—it is brighter and clearer than even the sun over Guam. Who? I wonder.
We’re dropped at another Slot 9. A raffia-thatched cabana lies at the end of a synthetic path through a grove of very real palm trees and just above the high-tide line of a very real beach. Salt air. The ocean stretches away, blue and dazzling, to a vast horizon. As we approach the small cabana the sunlight pains my cabin-soft eyes.
He’s sitting on the lanai of the cabana, in the shade of the thatch, his tan so deep he looks as if he lives in the place. When he sees us his grin goes from ear to ear, his hands rise in greeting.
“Surprise,” he says, getting up to extend his hand in his old-fashioned way; he’s laughing.
I’m laughing, too. “Good to see you, Werhner. Good to see your face. How do you expect to get back on time? How in the hell did you get here?” I shake Werhner’s hand, we pump ridiculously, so dislocated yet so used to one another, we laugh at that, too. The beach stretches beyond us, the sea glassy in the morning sun, the air sweet. It’s like a pleasant dream.
“Getting here was the easy part,” Werhner laughs. “You loafers are resupplied through Hong Kong. I came to see your expression for myself. Have you heard the latest? Look at you, Rawley, I’ll bet you haven’t.”
I look into Werhner’s sharp, intelligent face; his smile is already hardening into something like pained relief. I tell him that Guam’s been under a communications blackout, the last I’ve heard has been from him. “Is it about Cooper?” I ask.
“Cooper.” He shrugs nervously, I notice exhaustion behind his smile now. “That’s still a mystery. No, it’s the whole debriefing. We’re finished.”
A small wave of electricity passes through my body. I ask him what he means.
“Just what I said. We’re finished with the debriefing, officially terminated. Came through from the East about 0300. Full leave, new assignments in eight months.” Now Werhner’s grinning sardonically, his sandy hair splayed out, the smile in his eyes.
“You mean we’re all through on Guam? We’re through?”
“Program terminated,” he laughs, pushing back his hair. “Don’t even have to go back. Can you believe it? Wait till you hear why. Got the story from Tamashiro. Our blow data was misplaced years ago—a generation ago here. So we’re coming back, the computer searches, the search gets nowhere—and the flow chart, a year before we land, triggers an investigation.”
“So the data does exist,” I say.
“The same data is in Cooper’s report.” Werhner shrugs. “So nobody looks to see why the investigation’s triggered, see, the data is buried. These SciCom men are well paid, right? They need something to do, important, busy. In the meantime, military does a trace, they’re paying our salaries. Turns out military has the data. Meanwhile, SciCom is conducting an investigation that has no terminus, looking for that data internally, eating its own tail, while we’re all drawing full military pay.”
“Ooooh,” I say, sitting down in a creaking wicker chair, feeling the light become brighter. “So military got us out? Is this true?”
Werhner nods.
“And what about Cooper?”
Werhner bites his lower lip. “That’s what makes me wonder. Look, Rawley, it’s very weird. He’s not on the death list, there’s no record of internment, there’s no record of his staying in Houston.”
“Then there’s a chance he’s alive. Now what in the hell…?”
“If you trace him, it goes Guam to Houston to Guam to Houston through L. A. A transit loop. That’s from closed SciCom program. Puzzling. Well…”