[Magazine 1967-­01] - The Light-­Kill Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 3

Solo gave the children candy and placed ten dollars in Senora Carrero's trembling hand. "Buy yourself a hat, Senora, and I vow to bring your husband back safely—and with a huge butterfly to wear on your bonnet."

But before they were ten miles into the swamplands, Solo found the shuffling gait of the lepidopterist too slow, and the large net, which caught on every obstruction, a burden and he discarded both.

Carrero regarded him with sick eyes, seeing they were not on the trail of insects after all.

That night the drizzling mists in the rain forests washed out the last traces of dye from Solo's dark brown hair. When he wakened the next morning from his sleeping hammock, he tossed aside the rimless glasses.

Carrero stared at him in sick horror.

Solo winced, knowing the man was seeing a bearded young man in place of a kindly gray elder.

Carrero looked about as if seeking an escape.

"Don't run," Solo warned him.

"You are no butterfly hunter. You are here to seek trouble. Bad trouble. I owe you nothing. I do not have to stay."

Solo gazed at him levelly. "If you stay with me, I'll make every effort to protect you. I vowed to your wife I'd return you safely, even if I begin to wonder what it is she prizes about you. If you run, I promise you, you'll never make it back—except in pieces."

Carrero stared at him a moment defiantly, and then lost all defiance. "Senor, I am a simple man. I want no trouble. Please. A simple man."

"Then, let's leave it that way. You take me where I want to go and I'll bring you back."

Carrero rolled his black eyes, and crossed himself three times.

On the third morning Solo stared at the small round object Carrero had puzzedly watched him study often since they entered the jungle.

"We've reached the place I was looking for," Solo said. "Relax."

"How do you know the place if you have never been here?" Carrero asked, shaking his head.

"By this gadget. It was set be fore I left New York. Not even disturbances that throw off a compass will alter it. The horizontal and the vertical red lines are exactly one on the other. Do you see that?"

Carrero nodded, but he hardly dared look at the small object—undoubtedly witchcraft. He glanced about, seeing nothing except the grassy knoll, like an island in the sea of jungle pressing in upon them.

But Solo had forgotten the frightened guide. He opened his kit and set up a long-view scanner exactly like the one Sayres had used in this place except that it was set as to range and distance to the markings given in Sayres' report.

Solo tuned in the gear. The small viewer showed him nothing but a rectangular area of marshy under growth. Every test proved that the settings were right.

Solo swore.

Carrero ventured forward timidly. "What is wrong, Senor?"

"Everything," Solo spoke mostly to himself. "There's no building down there. Nothing."

"Building, Senor? Naturally not. Not here in this jungle."

"Well, there's supposed to be! There's got to be!" Solo spoke vehemently and the guide retreated a step.

He reset the dials, glanced at Carrero. "You want to go with me?"

The guide nodded, eyes wide. "I wish only not to be left alone in this place, even for a minute."

"Then stay close behind me."

"Senor need not worry about this, either. As his shadow is there, so will I be."

They plodded through under growth until the red lines of the dial matched again. Solo spent an hour chopping away the high swamp growth.

He felt the emptiness of defeat. According to Sayres' final report, a glass-walled lab had stood only days ago in this place, a cleared area with space for landing a helicopter.

He shook his head. There was no trace of building and it seemed incredible that vines and trees could grow so lush in such a short time.

"No!" He spoke aloud. "There's got to be an answer." He stared at Carrero without really seeing him. "We've got to find it, that's all."

Solo prowled the underbrush a moment. Then he said, "Carrero, you're a jungle man. You could find out where you were by the growth, feed yourself, if you were lost, eh?"

"You think us hopelessly lost, Senor?" Carrero's face twisted.

"No. But I think if these plants are younger, newer, it should show. Do you understand?"

"Young plants, no matter how tall, are more tender than the older. Young plants seldom have the berries that sustain life."

"Now you're thinking, Carrero. That's what I want. You find where these young plants meet older growth. We should be surrounded by it. Mark it all out, and we'll narrow down the area that much."

In less than an hour, Carrero had hacked out a rectangle that could have been the base for a glass-walled laboratory. Inside this area, Solo hacked with machete until he found what he had been sure must remain, the foundation for those walls.

He shouted in his pleasure. Carrero came running. Solo was smiling through his three days beard, sweat and mud.

"Here it is! Here it stood. Look, traces of garbage, food tins, broken glass, inside this foundation footing. We've found our butterflies, Carrero!"

"Si! Si!" Carrero looked around timidly. "We can now go home, no?"

Solo nodded, hardly hearing what the guide said.

He returned to the long-range scanner on the knoll. It was as if he had found the key piece of a jig saw puzzle. Everything else fell into place.

He found bits of electronic gear to show where Sayres' scanner had been destroyed. He found bones and teeth that must once have been Diego Viero and after a long search he found shoes with the x-marked identification tags.

He gazed at the tags before he dropped them into his pocket. His face was bleak. Not only had Diego and Sayres been slain, but their bodies and their equipment had been destroyed.

"All right, Carrero," Solo said at last. "Let's go home."

FOUR

THE NIGHT BEFORE they reached the village where Carrero lived, Napoleon Solo stepped back into his stooped, gray-haired person as the naturalist. Carrero watched in disbelief as he dyed his hair, donned rimless glasses.

Carrero spoke hesitantly. "You are a man for whom I have learned great respect, Mr. Solo. You are a very smart man, but more, you are a brave one. I am glad, now that I reach safety, that I accompanied you on this strange trip, even if I went reluctantly."

Solo nodded absently. "Thanks, Carrero. You're a brave man, too."

"No. I am a man who thinks of his wife—fat as she is—and his children. I worry if I do not return alive to them."

"It won't be long now."

"I know. This troubles me. You return now to your disguise. This means that though trouble has ended for Carrero, it is not over for you."

"I'm afraid it hasn't really begun yet," Solo said in that bland tone, peering over his glasses.

At ten the next morning, Solo tottered into the shipping office at the San Miguel docks.

A young man stared at him across the desk. "May I help you, sir?"

"Yes. You can." Solo's voice was testy. "Indeed, you'd better. I have been expecting a shipment of scientific equipment. I can't even preserve my priceless specimens without it. It should have been delivered to me days ago."

"I'm sorry, sir," the young man said in a voice that couldn't have cared less. "If your materials had arrived, they would have been delivered to your hotel."

Solo pounded on the desk. "They arrived on the same boat with me, young man! Don't take that tone to me! Ill report you to the head of this company."