Second Wind Part 32

I had done neither.

If there was a path through a maze if there were a maze would the riddle be solved by going outward, or by searching deeper in?

The folder with the Vera copies in it could have been explained as a further teasing of Oliver Quigley. I had meant to laugh it off and could have done. My had I run from Robin?

I chased the reason in the end to a dream of delirium, when Robin and Kris stood hand in hand beckoning me towards a gun to end my life. Subconsciously from then on I'd thought of them as allies, yet not believing Kris capable of real atrocious crime. Believing two opposite things at once was highly common though, like people who couldn't abide the rich but bought lottery tickets every week, hoping to become what they said they despised.

Look at things sideways... What did he mean?

I tried looking sideways at the island of Trox. At mushrooms and cattle and worldwide anarchy.

Looked sideways at Odin...

Went to sleep.

When I woke at six I found that my sleeping brain had sorted out the sideways factor. Sideways, I yawned, was fast asleep.

No one had disturbed me during the four or five hours I'd spent in my huddled corner, but a quick glance in a looking gla.s.s disguised as a beer advertis.e.m.e.nt on the wall there revealed that although the rash had faded to a mottled pinkish brown, my eyes had now swollen to pufib.a.l.l.s and my unshaven chin was a stubble field in black. As no one, I imagined, would recognize this wreck as the well-brushed me, I left things as they were and sorted out the contents of my grandmother's Sherlock Holmes cape-coat pockets, which I'd filled the evening before.

Apart from the folder of Loricroft's German papers and copies, they chieXly contained Vera's originals, my camera and my wallet. Camera contained Trox Island mud, but the wallet, more helpfully, disgorged pa.s.sport, credit card, check, phone card, international driver's licence and a fistful of cash borrowed from Jett.

As soon as lights came on in a nearby photo shop which boasted of its eight o'clock "instant pa.s.sport photos, " I was knocking on its door, aiming to test the abilities of the sloppy looking teenage boy in charge, who astonished me by actually waking up to interest when I asked if he knew anywhere that I could get specialty work done at this early time of day. He looked at the camera and peered more closely at me.

"I say, aren't you Perry Stuart? " he said. "Something wrong with your face, isn't there? " "It's getting better, " I said.

"I can lend you a razor, " he offered, absentmindedly prodding the camera with a pencil. "Do you want to see if there are still O. K. exposures under this muck? " "Do you know anyone who could do it? " "Do me a favor! " He took my question as an affront. "I spent four years in night school learning this job. Come back in an hour. And it's an honor to do your work, Mr. Stuart. I'll give it my best shot. " My expectations sank. A sloppy voice, a sloppy mouth. I wished I'd gone somewhere else.

There were more advantages, though, than drawbacks in a face. When I went back an hour later I found a tray, laid with a cloth, bearing a pot of coffee, a basket of hot rolls, and many other comforts. Even a cleaned electric razor in a folded and frilled paper napkin. I thanked the shop's inc.u.mbent for his thoughtfulness and then had to listen to multiple detail while he told me how to resurrect negatives from a cow-pat tomb.

I ate, I shaved, I admired his skill sincerely. I watched him make expert color prints, and I signed autographs for him by the dozen when he refused to be paid any other way. His name, he said, was Jason Wells. I shook his hand, speechless, and asked for a card with an address.

"It's my uncle's shop, " he said. "I'll get my own, someday. Do you mind if I take a photo of you, so I can hang it on the wall? " He snapped and snapped away, and seemed to think himself well rewarded for the thirty-six clear clean negatives and the amazing enlargements I presently bore away.

' - - - |N SOME STRANGE way the adulation and respect s.h.i.+ning out of Jason Wells's sloppy face, together with his professionalism and dedication, reawoke in me the feelings of self-worth that had slept through a wretchedly debilitating illness and had for far too long let a brain used to ten thousand revs a minute waste time looking for one across.

Jason Wells might find that a sloppy exterior was right for him, but it didn't match my normal on screen self. It was time, I decided, for the on screen self to go to work.

My grandmother's grand tweed cape-coat wasn't just Edwardian, it was splendid, it had presence. My clean-shaved chin was after all much better smooth. My hair, recombed, fell naturally again into its usual shapely BBC cut. I bought enough in a pharmacy for cleanliness, and a s.h.i.+rt, tie and pants in an outfitters, in order to look pressed. I acquired an overnight bag to contain everything, and some films, a new camera and batteries from Jason Wells.

All I needed after that was to stand up straight, give out my name, explain my needs and ask. Never mind that I still felt uncomfortably queasy. I'd forgotten, during the past battering weeks, the extent of my clout.

I wish to take a train to Heathrow airport, I said.

"Certainly, Dr. Stuart, this way. We have the Heathrow Express which takes fifteen minutes nonstop to the airport. " I want to fly to Miami.

"Certainly, Dr. Stuart. First cla.s.s, of course? " I need to deposit this check with the credit card company in order to be in funds for the whole of my trip.

"Certainly, Dr. Stuart, the credit card company will send a representative to the first-cla.s.s lounge at once to arrange it.

And you'll need some dollars, of course. " I have time for a shower before boarding.

"Certainly, Dr. Stuart. Our Special Services Department will see to your every need. " I have to make a phone call to my publishers in Kensington, and I would like to use a private room for a business meeting.

"No trouble at all, Dr. Stuart. Our business center is in the Executive Club lounge. " Cosseted in every way I found myself inevitably watching a television set. Equally inevitably, someone had switched on a channel showing the weather in store across the Atlantic.

"Bad weather ahead in Miami, Dr. Stuart, " I was told, with happy nods. They thought bad weather was naturally the motive for my journey, though only my last call, to the Met Office, had given me even a five-day notice of coming trouble.

Standing in front of Heathrow's best accurate weather update I heard that a weak cyclonic system might be developing in the Caribbean very late in the season. If it developed, which on past probability was unlikely, it would be designated tropical storm Sheila.

At present the millibar pressure of 1002 looked bound for a fizzle-out, but then so had Odin not so very long ago.

An announcer was explaining how modern methods of storm prediction saved money and lives. Preparedness, he said, couldn't deflect a storm but it could lessen some of its effects.

Knowing in advance was invaluable.

A world-weary businessman standing beside me, gla.s.s with ice in hand, looked with cynicism at real advances in atmospheric technology, and in boredom said, "So what else is new? " Doppler radar was new, I thought, and research had led to new satellites and computer generated three-D models... and there were idiots like hurricane hunters who flew into hurricane eyes and all but drowned. All those tremendous efforts had been made so that bored cynical businessmen could keep their gin and tonics dry.

Special Services collected me from there, offering armchairs, things to eat, newspapers with crosswords... London area telephone calls. I punched in my grandmother's number and, as I'd rather hoped, found my call answered byJett, who'd started her week there and sounded relieved to hear my voice.

"Where did you get to last night? " she asked anxiously.

"Kris says he has been looking for you everywhere. I was talking to him just ten minutes ago. He thought you might be here. "

"And I don't suppose, " I said regretfully, "that he was at all pleased with me. " "I wouldn't have told you, but no, he was very very angry.

So where are you, anyway? " I thought, if I can swim through a hurricane I can find my way through a labyrinth. I'd begun to understand where I was going, and I felt a shade reckless and lightheaded.

"Wait for me, " I said, smiling, "Forsaking all others... " "You'll be lucky! " "Keep the only unto me. " Why in h.e.l.l, I thought, did I ever say that?

"For as long as we live? Do you know what you're quoting from? " I answered her this time with conviction, "For better or worse. " "Are you sure? " she said uncertainly. "Or is this just a joke? " "No one jokes about marriage on a Monday morning. No --, , or yesf "Then... yes. " "Good! Tell my gran that this time it's for keeps... and.

er... if I solve that crossword I'll be back later this week.

" "Perry! Is that all? It's not enough. " "Take care of yourselves, both of you, " I said, and put down the receiver as she said protestingly, "Perry! " not wanting me to go.

Did I mean it, I thought wildly? Did one really coolly suggest marriage on a Monday morning? Was it a stupid impulse or a forever sort of thing? Impulses like that, I answered myself, that seemed to come from nowhere, they weren't really impulses at all, they were decisions already made but waiting for an opportunity to be spoken aloud.

WHILE I DAYDREAMED aboutJett both John Rupert and Ghost traveled to Heathrow, finding their way to the business center, and both, from their expressions, were unprepared for the grandeur of my grandmother's cape-coat and the tidiness, strength of purpose and revived power of Stuart P. I smiled. How did they think I had ever climbed the meteorology ladder? And, thinking about ladders, were my publisher and my ghostwriter on rungs going up or going down?

On the telephone I had promised them an interesting package if they would drive to Terminal 4, and when they arrived I gave them the German orders and invoices, and also fresh copies I'd just made on the machines all around us.

I said, "These copies are enough to madden Oliver Quigley and Caspar Harvey, the Traders who are searching for them day and night. The originals were the collected works of George Loricroft, Trader deceased. He collected these orders from customers who met him for the purpose on racecourses, mainly in Germany. If he hadn't died he would have distributed these orders, one by one, to those who could either fill the order themselves, or pa.s.s it to someone who could. I suppose the contents of these folders are always fluid--I should think the number of buy or sell items is sometimes small, but this time, by good luck, there are fourteen. " I briefly paused.

"Belladonna Harvey, " I said, "doesn't know what's going on.

Nor does my fellow meteorologist, Kris Ironside. If you have any influence at all with whoever you call in to unzip the Traders, see if you can keep those two out of trouble. " My "authorities" said they would try, but even if they succeeded, I thought, I'd lost two friends for ever.