Lori was shocked. "I-I never knew . . ."
"Well, we never had the time to get to know each other well. Go if you must-I pray that it is as wonderful as you dream. I don"t know if I can live like this forever or not, but I realized a long time ago that if anybody was to get away without all of us getting killed, I would have to stay. I accept that."
"What? No! I want you to come!"
"You know Alama"s plan. The four of us disappeared here-who knows how long ago now, but they still have guns up there. It will be necessary to have someone who can speak with them."
"But you don"t know Portuguese!"
"No, but it is close enough to Spanish."
"Butyou can"t go up there! You know how they"re sup-posed to be diverted!"
"It is not the same. If it is to work, I must go with them."
"You have spoken to Alama about this?"
"Yes. She made some of the same arguments, sort of, but she said it was up to me. She knew, though, that the plan had a much better chance with me staying behind than go-ing with you."
"You can still change your mind."
"Perhaps. Maybe I"m crazy. Maybe I will always regret this. But the fact is, I have little choice. I really believe I might wind up thinking this was the best choice for me. Time will tell."
Lori could only hug her and say, "I hope for your sake that it is."
Terry shrugged. "Besides, I can always come out some-day. Be the tattooed lady, the sole survivor who lived as a Stone Age savage. TheEnquirer alone would pay me enough, with book and TV movie rights, for me to live out my old age."
Lori sighed. "Then I betterreally see Gus."
Gus was still drugged, as was Campos, but he was con-scious. After a long period of apparent catatonia, he was able to be coaxed out on occasion, although he did not rec-ognize what had happened to him and still seemed only vaguely aware of his surroundings. He was thin and weath-ered; his bindings had scarred his wrists and ankles, and he looked almost like a living skeleton. It was pretty clear that he"d need a lot of help, but he was so wasted away and Lori was in such good shape now that she found she could carry him with little trouble.
"Gus, hang on," she said to him. "One more day and we"ll get you out of here."
He smiled sleepily like a little child. "Big story?"
"The biggest."
"Lots of pictures?"
"As many as you can take."
He seemed happy at that. She squeezed his hand and went over to Juan Campos. Compared to Gus, Campos was in great shape. He was one very tough cookie, and he had eventually made the best of a mostly intolerable situation. After two early attempts at escape, when he"d shown enough strength to break the tough natural rope bonds and shake off the effects of a very mind-dulling drug, he"d ac-cepted his punishment and the improbability of getting away and tried to make the most of it. He had begun to play up to his captors and to show unmistakable invitations and intent, and he"d been taken up on it by many, and one, possibly two, had conceived with him.
He"d still remained drugged and mostly bound and al-ways well guarded, but he had managed by this to gain ex-tra food and drink and, while weak for lack of any regular exercise, might well be able to make it on his own.
He had figured out who Lori and Terry were and found their transformations into native jungle girls highly amus-ing.
"All right, Campos. Listen up. The tribe wants to dispose of you, but the chief has other plans.
Tomorrow your legs will be freed, and we"ll try and give you a little time to ex-ercise them. You"re going for a walk, and you"ll wear a gag and have rope binding your arms. You doexactly what you"re told and you might get out of this alive. Understand? You make one funny move and you"ll be full of darts with enough curare to kill you in midstep. Understand?"
He nodded sleepily.
"Do one thing right and you"re home free. Be stupid and you"re dead. And be aware that n.o.body here really cares which."
There was nothing else to do now but get some sleep and wait for the next day. It was not easy to do.
Please, G.o.d! Let Terry and I bothbe making the right decision tomor-row!
Professor Umberto Alcazar-Diaz, visiting professor of astrogeology at the University of Sao Paulo, director gen-eral of Site A, and, not incidentally, also a research fellow at the National Aeronautics and s.p.a.ce Administration in Houston, had just taken off his gla.s.ses and settled back for a nap. He had been working almost nonstop on the lab findings dropped off by the morning helicopter, and his eyes were killing him.
Suddenly he heard a commotion among the guards out-side. He was curious but too tired to see to it.
"Carlos. You want to see what that"s all about?"
"Si,Professor," the young man replied, getting up from his bunk and putting aside the routine security report he"d been writing up in English so that his bosses at the Agency could quickly read it back in Washington. He opened the frame door on the elaborate tent with a casual air and felt something sting him in the neck. He fell back inside, out cold.
The professor couldn"t see much without his gla.s.ses, but he knew that the young man had fallen, and he jumped up and went to his aid. Seeing that he was unconscious, Umberto Alcazar-Diaz opened the door to call to the guards, but he felt a sting in his neck before he could call out, and that was the last he remembered. The door came shut again.
Outside, the guards were oblivious to the happenings in the tent some twenty meters from any of them, but the armed soldier on duty in the camp was staring at something in the evening sun and had his rifle to the ready, while the other off-duty guards stopped what they were doing and tensed, guns not far away.
"No tire! Somos amigos simpaticos!"a young wom-an"s voice called from not far away. It wasn"t Portuguese and was oddly structured, but one of the men at the card ta-ble made it out.
"Antonio! Hold up!" he called in Portuguese. "It"s some woman speaking Spanish!"
"Woman? Women?" the duty guard called back in amazement. "Can you understand them?"
"Let me see." The Spanish-speaking sergeant looked out and saw a number of native women standing nervously in a clearing just in front of one of the few immediate stands of trees that had survived the blast.
They were all naked and painted up, but that wasn"t all that unusual, although he"d never seen markings quite like those before.
"Habla espanol?"the same woman asked. She seemed to be the leader.
"Si. Quien es?"the sergeant called back, not too ner-vous but puzzled.
"Soy llamado Teysi."
"Donde viene de?"
"Somos de la aldea."
"She says her name is Teysi and that they come from the village. That must be the one about three kilometers south-east that refused to evacuate."
"What are they doing out here so late in the day and all by themselves?" the duty guard asked, not suspicious but just as curious. "I have been out here so long that eventhey look good to me."
"You never know about these natives, but the ones in the village are friendly so long as you don"t ask them to leave." He turned back to the small group of women-six, noseven of them!"Porque vienen ustedes ninas aqui? " he asked them.
The answer came in halting, not very good Spanish, but the message was clear.
"Nuestros hombres son enfermos o muertos," Teysi ex-plained. "Nos mantienen lejos de hombres.
Ninguno de nosotros ha tenido un hombre en mucho tiempo. Nos mantienen lejos de hombres. Somos muy solo y triste. Vemos que hombres guapos son aqui. Vamos fuera verle. Le gustariamos vernosotros?"
The sergeant grinned. "I wonder . . . She says that they are the widows of men who are dead or something like that. That they are being kept locked away and haven"t had men in a long time and that they are very lonely. They heard that some handsome men were here and snuck out to see us. I think they want to come up and see us close."
"Some of these tribes are sneaky," another guard warned.
"You ever heard of any of the tribes using women as bait? It would be dishonorable to the men. No, they are too simple and too primitive to be other than what they say. What do you think? Should we invite them up?"
"Why not?" one guard asked. "If they do not smell too bad, maybe we can have some fun. I do not think we will have to search them for concealed weapons!"
They all laughed at that.
"Yes, but what about the professor and his shadow?" an-other asked.
They glanced at the tent, whose door was shut.
"If they want some, let them get their own," the sergeant joked. "Maybe they will just sleep through it, eh? If they object, I will handle them."
With that, he gestured the women to approach the camp.
"Soy el unico aqui que hablo espanol,"explained the leader, a dark girl with a ring of bone in her nose.
She might be h.e.l.l to kiss long and hard, but she had quite a body, and her other a.s.sets were . . .
outstanding.
The sergeant responded that he was the only one who spoke Spanish among his crew, too.
The lead girl gave a soft laugh. "Queremos tocar y palpamos, no hablamos."
"I think she says they want more touch and feel than talk, boys! Her Spanish is terrible, but what the h.e.l.l! I think we will finally break the monotony of this wretched post!"
A couple of the women pointed to the guards and made comments.
"Le dicen son hombres muy bonitos,"the dark one said as she reached them.
"She says they think we lookpretty, boys!" the sergeant laughed. "If it wasn"t coming from them and out here, I think I"d be insulted!"
Terry had been nervous before they had revealed them-selves. Using the halting, stilted, not quite correct Spanish had been easier; it wasn"t as if the soldier"s Spanish was much better.
She found that she actually was turned on, too, perhaps as much by the danger as by the desire.
Somehow it was poetic that here, on almost the very spot where they had been taken captive who knew how long ago, she had re-turned as one of her captors to break, in the most dramatic of ways, all ties to her past.
That left the guard near the equipment.
It would have been easier to have just taken him out, but they weren"t at all certain they could do it without the oth-ers seeing or perhaps calling to him. He had seen and heard most of what was going on down at the camp and had come almost halfway back to see the scene he"d liked to have been a part of.
Each of the women had one of the men, but that left two women, and they came toward the remaining guard with in-nocent smiles, strutting to be sure he understood them. It wasn"t very long before he was totally distracted and effec-tively out of direct sight of the crater itself.
Alama nodded. Lori again picked up poor Gus, who seemed light as a feather, and Alama pushed Campos for-ward. "Downthere ?"he said with amazement, but he knew how many of these women were around and knew that Lori"s threat wasn"t an idle one. He might escape even now if he felt he could, but he wasn"t going to do anything until he was pretty d.a.m.ned sure he"d live through it.
The crater wall was thick with fine dust and shiny fragments-it wasn"t as easy as it had seemed to get to the meteor. The ground was littered with micalike hexagonal fragments, like tiny odd geometric forms from some bizarre workshop, many of which were fairly sharp, making walk-ing difficult. Lori almost lost Gus once, and Campos actu-ally slipped and fell.
"Up there! Fast!" Lori ordered.
"What? On themeteor ?We will get burned!"
"There"s nothing to burn you. Do as I say. You"re almost free."
Alama had already scrambled up, showing the way, and was now standing on a jagged outcrop very near where the so-called doorway to the stars was. She was keeping an eye on Campos, and she had a poison-tipped spear poised in case he tried to flee. She felt a moral obligation to take him along, but she understood what slime he was.
There was a sound of happy commotion coming from just beyond her line of sight, and she smiled to herself and thought,Do good, my children. Get many fine babies. Fare-well.
Butwas it farewell? Where the h.e.l.l was the doorway?
d.a.m.n it, it had beenexpecting her!Beckoning her! Why didn"t it show up?
Campos pa.s.sed her and at that moment gave her some-thing of a shove. It was hard to tell if he"d slipped or if it was deliberate, but it knocked Alama down, sending the spear clattering down to the bottom of the crater.
He turned, looked at Lori, struggling up with Gus, smiled, and said"Adios, muchachas! I will return, and your tribe will serve me forever!" He turned his back, took a step . . .
And vanished as if a three-dimensional television image had been abruptly turned off.
"Alama! Are you all right?"
The small woman struggled back to balance. "I am good enough. Where is he?"
"He winked out!"
"Ah. It knows when to come, as always." She gave Lori a hand, and together they hauled Gus the last little bit. Alama pulled him a little, then said, "You will have to take him in with you. When I go, it goes."
Lori nodded, saw the blackness, but hesitated, looking back toward the camp.
"I know what you think. If she do that, she will make it. Now hurry! Go!"
Lori picked up Gus once more, half dragging him, and backed into the black area. As soon as Gus"s feet cleared the black boundary, there was total darkness all around her and a sensation of falling.
Alama sighed and for the first time noticed the cameras. She hadn"t ever seen their like, but she knew what they were. It didn"t matter. Not anymore.
She stood there for a moment in all her Amazonian glory, bowed to each, then jumped into the blackness and winked out.
Terry lay on the blanket next to the sergeant and tried to catch her breath. A whole range of strange emotions and thoughts whirled in her head, and she needed time to regain control.