HONKY IN THE WOODPILE Page 20

  “Of course he should. But he didn’t. Even so he proved himself a damned competent actor. Diego didn’t catch on even when he made his rendezvous with me at the Valencia and—”

  “Diego!” Fierro broke in, turning back to the palace as the boat dwindled into the distance. “Yes, I have a message for you. He’s not dead!”

  “What? How do you know? I’ve heard nothing from him since…” I let the words die away.

  “He contacted one of our forward detachments on Galejo yesterday, and they reported the fact by radio. It seems he managed to dodge the Sabatanos hunting for you at Lastilas, who can’t have been very bright anyway.”

  “Agreed, or they’d have thought of the possibility of my swimming to Aragon!” I shivered against my will.

  “Right. And he lay low until he found a fisherman he could bribe to smuggle him back to his regular hideout.”

  “I’m glad,” I said sincerely.

  “And I’m to tell you that he looks forward to meeting you again, because he assumed you must be done for when he found so many Sabatanos after you. Never mind that, though—he’ll have a chance to tell you in person eventually. You were explaining about Jesús.”

  I spread my hands. “That’s about the lot,” I said. “After that he identified himself, very quickly. Before going out for that crazy tour of Brascoso which I made with Diego, I took care to let Sarita know I would be returning to the hotel without fail, capitals, italics and underlined. I wasn’t sure at that stage whether she was aware of his treachery or not, but either way I felt I could rely on her telling him what I’d said. Sure enough, even though I did the most outrageous and provocative things I could think of the whole day long, the Sabatanos didn’t come after me. They laid an ambush at the hotel instead.”

  “Poor Jesús,” Fierro said after a pause. “One has to pity him. Coming from that poverty-stricken, practically illiterate background, dragging that ball-and-chain of superstition the Sabatanos made such brilliant use of… Was it Moril’s idea to have him cursed?”

  “I think it must have been. I’ve had a chance to talk to Sarita, and I’m putting bits and pieces together. She didn’t much enjoy mentioning such—uh—such an intimate subject, but it’s pretty clear that what they picked on was his virility. They put an impotence spell on him, which is about the easiest kind, and threatened that unless he co-operated it would never be lifted. And offered bribes as well, naturally, but he could have afforded to turn his nose up at those.”

  We had paused on a terrace flanking the main portico of what had been Don Amedeo’s country residence, and were admiring the splendid gardens that sloped towards the sea. Two boys and two very old men were tending a line of bougainvillaeas, clipping off dead leaves and dead flowers.

  “At least his memory was not tarnished by his death,” Fierro said. “Speaking of deaths, by the way, I have not had time since my arrival to inquire about everything that’s been going on. I hear, though, that Gilbert Quentin is dead, Gilbert Martin that was.”

  I told him what had become of Gilbert, as I’d seen it, and he nodded.

  “Appropriate. To be shot by a Sabatano—yes, that was very suitable. He was more of a blagro than Jesús, wasn’t he?”

  “In his way.” I stared at the blue sea beyond the gardens.

  “And his wife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a pain in my memory. It interfered with my voice. I had to swallow hard.

  “I mean, I do know some of it. After the American party from the stadium got back to their embassy and barricaded themselves in, she appears to have been collected from the villa in Buenas Aguas. At least, when I went there later I found signs of a struggle. But no sign of her. And no news since.”

  “A lot of civilians were evacuated through the American base,” Fierro said.

  “I know.”

  And, when the following silence became unbearable, I said almost at random, “The one problem we did have was in getting Praxas to co-operate, but that wasn’t terribly hard. For a guy who believes in the resurrection of the immortal soul he was amazingly reluctant to die… So we got the communion wafers we needed. Fierro, have you ever taken yoma-xi?”

  He shook his head. “Rafé has,” he said. “He sampled the mild kind, the one they give to everybody for the garaxí rite, and he said it was terrifying and he never wanted to face himself so nakedly again… But I guess what you used must have been the same as the Sabatanos gave to the political candidates they wanted to get rid of.”

  “Yes, the strong drink that only trained zacheos can take. You’d better get some analyzed soon, by the way. I was there when Elspeta doctored the wafers, and do you know how much she put on each of them? One drop!”

  And when they did analyze it I was prepared to bet what they’d find: a naturally-occurring analogue of that most potent of synthetic hallucinogens, STP. But that was just guesswork, based on my recollection of what acidheads had told me.

  “Is it true,” Fierro asked, “that you conceived this whole fantastic idea while you were under the influence of the stuff?”

  “Yes. I didn’t even remember the plan myself when I woke up.”

  “Incredible,” Fierro muttered. “It makes one almost want to believe…”

  That the thoughts of gods are not like those of men? I was on the verge of being convinced of that myself.

  “I think you could learn a lot from Elspeta,” I said. “I admire her open mind. She says she learned a lot from you, things which her mother would have taught her if she’d known them, only she didn’t.”

  “Yes, I see your point. Like the Chinese doctors investigating old country remedies.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Once more there was silence, but this time it was tolerable. It was even comforting, marred by only a couple of ulcer-like sores in memory. I’d been overwhelmed with praise during the past couple of weeks, since Fierro and Rafé arrived from Havana, and I was getting immune to that, but there was a pleasantly solid sense of accomplishment in my mind.

  Abruptly Fierro said, “Max, I recall you saying in London that sometimes you’d been tempted to settle in a country with a black government. May I—?”

  “No!” I cut in. I knew what he’d been about to add; word was on the grapevine that I would be offered a cabinet post. But… “Thank you, no! I’m not going to stay in Madrugada. Oh, of course I’ll hang around for a while, see if I can make myself useful. But—well, this is hard to put into words. The way I see it, though, you’re in danger of having a brand-new cult break out, aren’t you?”

  “Criné is incarnated among us?”

  “Yes. And you have to fight like hell against superstition, and it’s going to be a long battle.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “I was expecting you to refuse,” he admitted. “I’m sorry you did, nonetheless, because—well, if we part we may not meet again, and I owe you so much, and so does everyone in Madrugada.”

  “Let them work to build something they owe only to themselves,” I said, and turned away. A pace or two distant, however, I checked and glanced back.

  “Say, I haven’t heard any foreign news for the longest time. Do you know whether they’ve caught the guy who shot Dr. Small?”

  “No, they haven’t. The last I heard, they were looking for him in Australia.”

  “I was expecting you to say that,” I said, consciously echoing his remark of a moment ago. “And there’s one more reason why I should leave Madrugada.”

  I walked away from him towards the quay where a boat was waiting to take me back to Brascoso, with an armed guard in the stern for fear of trouble. After only two weeks the islands were a long way from pacified, even though the new government was incontestably in control. As I passed the gardeners, one of the old men said shyly, “It is the Señor Curfew?”

  I nodded.

  “Señor, I wish to shake your hand.” He doffed the shabby cap he was wearing against the sun, wiped his palm on his trouser-leg, an
d did so.

  “It is good for us, what you have done,” he said simply, and went on with his work.

  From the boat I tried to see whether Fierro was waving to me, but I couldn’t tell. My eyes were too bloody full of tears.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Brunner was born in Oxfordshire in 1934. He was educated at Cheltenham College, where he specialized in modern languages. He and his wife now live in London. He is the author of over fifty books, the majority being science fiction, in which field his novel Stand on Zanzibar won both the Hugo Award and the French Prix Apollo. Honky in the Woodpile is the third Max Curfew adventure thriller, the other two being A Plague on Both Your Causes and Good Men Do Nothing.