The Cool War

XIV

One more complication was not even important in Hake’s head; there were so many, too many, already that it didn’t matter. Obviously Leota was at risk in one additional way. Hake had no way to solve that problem, but he could ease it. He left Leota in the room just long enough to buy her some new clothes. In cloak, ankle-length skirt and hatta w-‘aqqal she was stifling in A1 Halwani’s noonday heat, but not recognizable.

They did not speak as they strolled toward the employment office of the hydrogen-power company. Leota walked a traditional two paces behind him, head demurely down. ^s Hake, in burnoose and caftan, was almost as hot as she, but would have been no better off in any other costume—- the desert people, or the men among them anyway, had long since found that loose, enveloping garments were more protection against the heat than exposed skin. And there was no cultural prohibition against Hake’s looking around him as they walked—for people from the Team, for the sheik’s men, for the Reddis, and even just to sightsee.

The surprising thing, once he saw it, was that A1 Halwani had no fire hydrants. It had no sewers and no water pipes, either, though that was not as apparent. Fat electric tankers carried drinking water to each building’s cisterns from the distillation plants outside the city, and the sewage went right into the thirsty ground. There were spots of green near some of the older buildings, where the outflow from the plumbing nourished growth.

Three hundred years ago this whole part of the world had been uninhabited, bar an occasional wandering tribe or caravan of traders. Then the droughts and famines of central Arabia drove some of the nomads south, just in time to be on the scene when Europe bestirred itself and reached out for colonies. There were no national boundaries. There were no nations, or not until the British named them and drew lines on maps for the convenience of the file clerks in Whitehall. High Commissioners like Sir Percy Cox decreed this patch of sand for Kuwait, and that for Ibn Saud, and these arguable patches in between for no one, or for both neighbors in common; and so it was.

Then oil came, and those extemporized lines became intensely important. A quarter of an inch this way or that on a map meant a billion dollars in revenues.

Then the Israelis came, with their shaped nuclear charges. And no one cared any more.

The cities that had bloomed overnight into Chicagos and Parises became ghost towns. Abadan and Dubai, Kuwait and Basra began to dry up again. The shiny western buildings with their plate-glass walls and ever-running air-conditioners stood empty and began to die. The traditional Moslem architecture, thick-walled, pierced with ventilating slits, survived. And the migrants from all over the Arab world began to move home. Or move on. What was left was a hodge-podge of tribes and nationalities; and then the westerners began to move in, the hippies and the wanderers, the turned-off and the dissatisfied, the adventurous and the stoned. The American colonies had been built out of just such migrants two centuries before. A1 Halwani was the Philadelphia or the Boston of the new frontier, crude, unrulyj polyglot—and promising.

In order to get to the sand-colored headquarters of A1 Halwani Hydro Fuels, Ltd., Leota and Hake had to walk along the esplanade, with the narrow beach to one side and, beyond it, the indigo bay and the stately Sword of Islam at anchor a quarter of a mile out. Leota did not look up. Hake studied the yacht carefully. Although it was a three-masted schooner,. with gay flags in the rigging, he knew that inside the narrow hull were engines and enough technology to exempt it from any problems of wind or currents. He could see the big globe of hydrogen fuel. He could also see figures moving about on its decks, but there was no way of telling which was who. Whether they could see him was a whole other question. He did not really think they could, or not well enough to identify either him or Leota under the headdresses. But he was glad enough to push through the revolving door and enter the Hydro Fuels waiting room.

The employment office was almost empty, and the elderly woman at the desk handed them applications. They sat down at a plastic writing desk and began to fill them out.

The questions on the forms were in four languages, and fortunately for Leota English was one of them. Hake took pride in filling his own in Arabic, drawing the flowing curlicues as neatly as the lettering on an engineering sketch. There were not very many questions. Hake copied the details of his fictitious biography out of the Xeroxed resume Jessie Tunman had made for him—how long ago was that? Only four days? And then the intercom on the receptionist’s desk rattled. “Send them in, Sabika,” said somebody’s voice, and they got up to be interviewed.

The personnel director was male, young and one-legged, and the nameplate on his desk said Robling. He hopped around to get them seated, grinned at them as he propped his crutch on the edge of his desk, and studied the forms. “Nice to see a couple of Americans here, Bill,” he said, “but what are you doing in those getups?”

“We, uh, converted,” Horny Hake said, after realizing that “Bill” referred to the name on his papers. “We’re not real religious, though,” he added.

“None of my business,” Robling said cheerfully. “All I do is match people to jobs, and looks like you’ve got some good experience. Not too many people show up here with a hydrogen-cracking background.”

“Uh-huh,” Hake said, and recited the invented information on the documents. “That was in Iceland, three years ago. It’s geothermal there, but I suppose it’s pretty much like solar.”

“Close enough. We have a lot of turnover here, of course. People come in, work a while, build up a stake. Then they take life easy for a while. But something ought to open up for you. Maybe in two, three weeks—”

“No sooner than that? I really need a job now,” Hake said.

“Like that? Well—there’s no job right this minute, but if you’re short of money maybe I could help out.”

“It’s not the money. It’s just that—” It’s just that I have to start work on your project so I can wreck it for the Team; but Hake couldn’t say that. “It’s just that I want to get to work.”

The personnel director’s eyebrows went up; evidently that was not a common attitude among the drifters. “Well, that’s a good trait, anyway up to a point. But the only vacancies we have at the moment are pushing a broom.”

“I’ll push a broom.”

“No, no I You’re overqualified. You wouldn’t be happy, and then when something did open up it’d make trouble to jump you over the others. Still—” Struck by a thought, the man picked up Leota’s questionnaire. He scanned it and nodded. “We could put your lady on the payroll for that. She’s not overqualified.” He glanced at the form again and snapped his fingers. “Penn,” he said. “Yeah. Did you look at the bulletin board outside? Because I think there’s a message for you.”

“Who from?” Hake asked, off balance.

“Well, I don’t know. We get all kinds of drif— all kinds of transients coming through here, and people leave messages. Only reason I noticed yours is that it’s kind of a famous name. William Penn, I mean.” He was nice enough not to smile. “So what do you say?”

Hake opened his mouth, but Leota was ahead of him. “I’ll take it.”

“Right. Uh, you said you weren’t real religious, but does that mean you can take the veil off? Because we’ll need a picture of you for the ID.”

“That’ll be fine,” Leota said, loosening the headdress. “Do you want to take it in here? All right. Honey? Why don’t you check the message board and wait for me outside?”

There was no one in the waiting room but the receptionist and a skinny old Yemeni, with crossed (but empty) cartridge belts across his blouse, absorbed in an Arabic-language crossword puzzle. Hake moved toward the pinboard behind the receptionist’s desk and scanned the tacked-up messages. “Milt and Terri, Judy and Art were here and are heading for Goa.” “Patty from South Nor-walk, call your mother.” The one that was meant for him was a small envelope with the name “William E. Penn” neatly typed on the outside. Inside, it said:

You are invited for cocktails aboard the Sword of Islam. The boatman will furnish you transportation as soon as you get this.

Hake folded the note back into its envelope, thinking grim thoughts. Whatever else might happen, he was not letting Leota back on that yacht.

He turned as the door to the personnel office opened, and there was Leota, standing in the doorway. She stopped in the open door, hesitated and then beckoned to him. He could not see her expression through the headdress.

As he approached, she caught his arm, drew him inside and closed the door. “There’s another exit past the camera room,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Robling won’t mind if we use it?”

The personnel director looked them over for a moment, then ghrugged. “Why not?”

Down a cement-tiled hall, out through a metal door, into the stark sunlight. “What’s the matter?” Hake demanded.

“Don’t linger, Horny. That fellow in there is one of the Reddis. I don’t think we want to talk to him.”

“Christ.” They hurried around a corner, then paused where they could see the Hydro Fuels building. “If we go back to the hotel he’ll find us. He must have followed us from there.” He handed her the note. “This was what was waiting for me.”

She read it quickly, and then said, “Wow.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” he agreed. “We can’t go back to the hotel because of the Reddis, and we can’t go to the yacht because of the sheik. You know what, Leota? We don’t have a lot of options.”

She stared through the veil at the building. Apparently Reddi was still inside. “Horny?” she said.

“What?”

“You got your pronouns wrong. It isn’t ‘we.’ It’s you that can’t go back to the hotel, and me that doesn’t want to go to the yacht. The other way around, there’s no problem.”

“What do you mean, no problem? Those guys are mean, Leota. I’m not letting you face up to them by yourself.”

Her eyes were on him, and once again he wished he could see her face. She said sharply, “I’ve told you before, Horny, I don’t play this big strong man and little weak woman game. I was dealing with the Reddis when you were still running covered-dish dinners in New Jersey. You go on to the yacht. Call me at the hotel when you get a chance.”

“And what do you think you’re going to do?”

“I’m going back in the waiting room and talk to Reddi. And you can’t stop me.” And he couldn’t, because she picked up her skirts and ran, the intricately decorated backs of her legs flashing under the flopping hem of her gown.

There wasn’t just one boatman, there were five of them, and they were armed. Desert Arabs often carry rifles for decoration, like a walking stick or a rolled umbrella. Hake did not think these rifles were ornamental. He paused on the broad, dead esplanade, but there were no more alternatives in sight than there ever had been. He handed over his letter and got into the covered launch. None of the few strollers on the boulevard paid attention as the high whine of the inertial drive changed pitch when the helmsman clutched in the propellor. Two of the other boatmen cast off the moorings, and they pulled away from the little floating dock.

As they approached the yacht, it began to look like a battleship. Its sides towered twenty feet over them as they approached the gangplank, the masts far higher still. Curmudgeon was standing at the rail and looking down, his face granite. Hake hesitated and looked back at the waves. These waters had a reputation for sharks. But what was he going to face on the yacht?

“Move him on,” Curmudgeon called testily, and one of the boatmen prodded Hake with his rifle. “You took your time getting here,” he said, as Hake came up level with him. Nothing could be read in his expression as he stood with one hand on the rail, open shirt, yachting cap, white slacks, rope sandals. Behind him two more crewmen stood, representing, with the five behind him, a great deal more overkill than Hake thought necessary. Their presence was a threat. But Curmudgeon didn’t threaten. Or even reproach; all he said was, “The others are waiting for you below.”

Hake had never before been on a centimillionaire’s yacht. There was less opulence than he might have guessed, no swimming pool, not even a shuffleboard court on deck. But he could not see most of the deck, only a small portion, deck-chaired and awninged, at the stern, and the short foredeck with hoists and coiled cables; most of the deck space was out of sight on the levels above him. Inside there were no murals or carved panels, and the rails were only brass. But they passed an open doorway, with a sirocco of engine heat coming out of it, and Hake caught a glimpse of pipes and stacks going down, it seemed, indefinitely. Sword of Islam was a sailing yacht. But its auxiliaries looked big enough to drive an ocean liner.

Curmudgeon had told the truth, the others were waiting for him, in a lounge with windows looking out the stern of the yacht. There was more opulence here than in the passages—potted palms, a wall of tropical fish tanks, beanbag pillows thrown about by the chairs and couches—but it looked more like some Short Hills playroom than a sheik’s tent. Jessie Tunman looked up from a gin-rummy game with one of Yosper’s youths—Mario?—and snapped, “You’ll get yours, Horny. You had no right to take off with that chippy!”

“Hello, Jessie.” There were a dozen people in the lounge, and he recognized most of them—Yosper and his boys, the young Hispanic called Tigrito and Deena Fairless, the instructor from Under the Wire. They did not look welcoming.

Yosper hopped off a chair and advanced, his bright blue eyes regarding Hake steadily. Then the old man laughed. “You always were a ballsy boy, Hake. Remind me of myself, before I discovered our Lord Savior—and the Team.”

Hake nodded and sat down, trying to look relaxed as Yosper studied him. “What’s it going to be, Hake?” the old man demanded. “You part of the operation, or are you going to go on being a pain in the ass?”

“I’ve carried out my assignment,” Hake said.

“Oh, sure, Hake, I expect you have. And we’re going to take your report, and then we’ll know for sure. I was asking about from now on.”

Hake hesitated. “If I complete this operation, can I retire?”

“That what you want, boy? Why,” Yosper said easily, “that’s not up to me, but we all got to retire sometime, so why not? I guess it depends on how good your report is, and what you do over the next couple of days. Where’s your lady friend?”

“Leota’s out of it!”

“No, Hake,” the old man said earnestly, “I have to disagree with you on that. She’s not out of it, unless old Hassabou says she is. Right at the moment I think he considers her a piece of his property that got misplaced, and he’s not too fond of you about it.” _ “Why do you care what he thinks, for God’s sake?”

Yosper said, “Watch your language. We care a lot, dummy. Hassabou used to own this whole country. And after they’re bankrupt he’s going to sell it to us. You going to tell us where she is?”

“No!”

Yosper grinned. “Didn’t actually think you would, but that’s no problem. A1 Halwani’s not that big a place. Jessie? Give us those maps, will you? And now we want your report, Hake, starting with reconnoitering the solar-power plant.”

Jessie picked up the cards and slid the cover off the table, revealing a back-projected screen. As she manipulated the keyboard at the side of the table it displayed a satellite-reconnaissance photograph of the coastline, with map outlines superimposed on it in red. She zoomed it up to a close view of the tower and the ridge of flowering dunes, and then handed Hake a light-pencil.

“Pull back a little,” he said. “It doesn’t show the roads.” Greenish dots flickered and swarmed into a new focus, and he nodded. The squat, rectangular spot in the middle of the bay was the solar tower itself. The crescent beach was a mosaic of green and white, the sunplants half open and facing to an afternoon sunset. The roads were darkened by shadow, but they could be made out.

“That’s the main guard shack,” he said, pointing the arrow of the light-pencil to a blotch atop the dunes. “They were in there all night. I don’t think they patrol—anyway, we didn’t see any signs of them along the road. There’s a path up from the highway. There’s cover most of the way, but not much right around the shack.”

“You listening, Tiger?” Yosper demanded. “That’s your job. Take your position; then when we move, you cut communication and immobilize the guards. What about the beach side of the dunes, Hake?”

“They’re completely covered with the plants, all the way down to water’s edge. There’s something down there that looks like a building—” he pointed with the pencil—“but I don’t know what it is.”

“Control center for the tower. Keep going, Hake.”

“That’s about it, as much as I could see. I don’t know why they’re so important—they could just use mirrors.”

“You don’t know cowflops from custard, boy,” Yosper explained kindly. “You use live plants, you don’t have any problem of guidance for mirrors—the plants aim themselves. Keep themselves clean, too, as you ought to know. Or didn’t I read your 201 file right?”

“I did clean mirrors one year in New Jersey, yes.”

“So why don’t you understand more of what you see? What about the tower?”

“It’s tall and isolated. A few boats around it. No connection to the land that I could see.”

Impatiently, “There’s a tunnel. Keep going.”

“That’s it. I couldn’t see much—except that purple light. That I don’t understand at all. It hurt my eyes to look at it. It just appeared in the sky.”

“Hellfire, Hake, that’s a hologram. That’s the beauty part of the whole scheme. Didn’t they teach you any geometry in school? If they bred the flowers to point directly at the sun, they’d reflect directly right back at the sun, and what would be the good of that? So they breed them to respond to high UV—good thing you didn’t stare at it real long, because most of the radiation’s out of the visible spectrum. Then they generate a spinflip laser hologram in the right UV frequencies and just move it where they want it in the sky, halfway between the sun and tower. Draw yourself a diagram when you get a chance, and you’ll see that all the reflectance has to go right to the tower every time.”

Hake stared at the tabletop, calculating angles in his mind. “Why, that’s brilliant, Yosper.” He shook his head. “Damn it! Why kill them off? Why don’t we just let them go ahead and make hydrogen for us?”

Yosper was scandalized. “Are you crazy, Hake? Do you know how much of a drain on the balance of payments you’re talking about? We’ll make a deal, all right, but we’ll make it with the sheik. After we take these hippies out. Blow up the tower. Kill off the plants—we’ve got a great little fungus specially bred by our good friends in Eatontown. They’ve borrowed beyond their means to get this thing going, and when we’re finished with them they’ll be bankrupt. Then old Hassabou comes back to power, and we make a deal.”

“Let’s get on with it,” Jessie Tunman complained. “Did Horny get the job on the tower so he can let us in?”

Hake glared at her, then admitted, “Well, actually, no. I mean, they’ll give me a job, but not for a couple of weeks. They hired Leota right away.”

“Hake!” Yosper exploded. “You failed your assignment!”

“I couldn’t help it! They said I was overqualified—whose fault is that? I didn’t make up the cover identity!”

“Boy,” said Yosper, “you just lost most of your bargaining power, you know that? We spent five effing months getting you ready for this because you spoke the languages, could get by with the locals—and now you’re no place!”

Jessie Tunman looked up. “Maybe it’s not so bad,” she said.

“Don’t talk foolish, Jessie! If we wanted to storm the tower we wouldn’t have bothered with lover-boy in the first place.”

“He’s still here. He just doesn’t have an ID to get into the tower.”

“That’s right, but— Oh,” Yosper said. “I see what you mean. All we have to do is get him an ID.” He beamed at Hake. “That shouldn’t be too hard, considering our resources, at that. You got anything else to say, boy? No? Any more questions about what this mission is all about?”

“I do have one. Why do we have to destroy it? Why don’t we just steal the plants and build our own?”

Yosper shook his head. “Boy, don’t think. Just do what you’re told. We’ve had the plants for three years. They’re no good to us.”

“Sure they are. That coast looks a lot like Florida.”

“Hake,” the old man said kindly, “Miami Beach is in Florida. All that land’s built up, or didn’t you notice? God has chosen to give these creeps just what you need for this kind of installation—sunlight, water, port facilities. Most of the U. S. of A.‘s too far north. Even around Miami you’d only be getting forty or forty-five percent yield in the winter. Get it up to where you really need it, around New York or Chicago, not to even think about Boston or Seattle or Detroit, and you just don’t have power to speak of at all for three or four months of the year.”

“Yosper,” Hake said, “doesn’t that suggest to you that maybe God is telling you something?”

The old man cackled. “Bet your ass, boy. He’s telling me that we’ve got to use the gifts He gave us to do His will! And that’s just what we’re doing. If God wanted the Persian Gulf to have our power, he would have put Pittsburgh there. Oh, maybe we could use it around Hawaii—or even better, like Okinawa or the Canal Zone, if we hadn’t given them away when we didn’t have to. You got to figure the useful areas are between twenty-five north and twenty-five south, and in God’s wisdom He has seen fit to put nothing but savages there. Switch that thing off, Jessie.” He stood up. “I got to go talk to Curmudgeon and the sheik,” he said. “You people just take it easy for a while. You, Hake? I think you better stay in your stateroom till we need you. Tiger’ll show you where it is.”

As it began to grow dark they fed him. A very young black child in a tarboosh knocked on the door and passed in a tray. “Bismi llahi r-rahmani r-rahim,” he piped politely. Hake thanked him and closed the door. The polite form was an invocation of the compassionate and merciful Allah, and Hake could only hope that the sentiments were shared by the members of the crew whose voices had finished changing. The food was lamb, rice and a salad, all excellent. Hake ate cheerfully enough. He was getting used to the patterns of working in the cloak-and-dagger business, long periods of waiting for something to happen without knowing what it was going to be, long periods of doing something without quite knowing what it was for. And now and then, for punctuation, somebody hitting him or blowing up his car.

He had not only got used to it, he was almost coming to accept it. At least for himself. For Leota— That was something else, and worrisome. Neither Yosper nor Jessie Tunman had said where they proposed to get an ID to copy, but Hake was far from sure they would not think the one Leota had been given a good source.

No one had told him he was a prisoner, and nothing stopped him from opening the door and joining the others.

He didn’t want to. Watching them play their silly spy games was unappealing. They acted like—

They acted like half the world, he told himself, playing a role. Dramaturgy. “Thinking with.”

As The Incredible Art had said, if you looked with open eyes, that explained so many of the fads, lunacies, causes, passions, meannesses and incongruities of human behavior! It even explained Hake himself. It explained why he had played the game of being a minister so long… and then the game of cloak-and-dagger spook… and then the game of rebel against the skullduggery. It explained why Yosper played Christian and criminal at the same time, why Leota played revolutionary and harem slave; and it explained how the world got into such a mess to begin with. Because we all play roles and games! And when enough of us play the same game, act the same dramaturgic role, at one time—then the game becomes a mass movement. A revolution. A cult. A religion. A fad.

Or a war.

He put his tray outside the door and leaned back on the neat, narrow bunk. There was an important piece missing in all of this. The cause. How did all these things get started?

The question was wrong. It was like asking why the locusts came to Abu Magnah. No individual locust had made the decision to attack the city, there was no plan, there was not even a shared genetic intent. If one examines the fringes of a locust swarm, what one sees is a scattering of individual insects flying blindly out, twisting around in confusion and then flying back in to join the cloud. What moves the locust swarm from one place to another is the chance thrust of wind. The swarm has no more volition than a tumbleweed.

And he, and Yosper, and Leota, and everyone else—what were they doing, if not devoting all their strength to being a part of their particular swarm? Causes and nations moved where chance pushed them—even, sometimes, into a war of mutual suicide, when both sides knew in advance that neither winner nor loser could gain.

Exactly like locusts—

Someone tapped at his door.

Hake sat up. “Yes?” he called.

It opened on the child who had brought his dinner, looking fearful. In barbarous English he said, “Sir, I have brought you tea, if God wills it.”

Hake took the tray, puzzled. “It’s all right,” he said kindly, but the boy’s fright did not diminish. He turned and bolted. Hake sat down and put the tea on the night table, his train of thought shattered. Not that it mattered. None of it was really relevant to the present problem, which was pure survival, his own and Leota’s.

Something rolled across the floor as he shook the napkin open. When he retrieved it, it was a double golden finger-ring.

There was no note, no word of any kind, but he didn’t need one. On this yacht at this time it was not likely that there was more than one person with the double-ring of an American group marriage. So Alys was aboard.

“Wake up now, Mr. Hake. There is to be a briefing.”

Hake staggered to the door and opened it on Mario, looking sleepy but oddly pleased with himself. “Now? It isn’t even five a.m.!”

“Not just at this minute, no, but soon. Immediately after the sheik’s morning devotions. However,” he smirked, “there is an interesting development which I think you will wish to see.”

Hake groggily pulled on his shoes. “What is it?”

“Hurry, Mr. Hake. See for yourself.” The youth led the way back as they had come, to the aft deck. It was just sunrise, and the slanting light laid long shadows across the city of A1 Halwani, and on the launch that was whining toward them. “They radioed that they were bringing someone,” Mario said over Hake’s shoulder. “There, do you see? She is sitting by herself, just inside the canopy.”

“Leota!”

“Yes, Mr. Hake, your dear friend, for whom you risked so much. So now you will be together again—or, at any rate, not more than a few hundred feet apart. I don’t suppose Sheik Hassabou will invite you to his harem.”

“How did you catch her?”

Mario frowned. “It was not difficult at the end,” he said. “She was simply strolling down the esplanade by herself. The boatmen recognized her, and she offered no resistance.”

Hake leaned over the rail to watch, as the launch came up to the float. A woman in veil and headdress was waiting; it was only from her wrinkled and age-spotted hands that Hake could tell she was ancient. As Leota came aboard she shrank from the old woman, who angrily thrust her inside.

“Mario— Mario, I want to talk to her. Just for a minute.”

“Why, Mr. Hake! What a ridiculous request! Of course that is impossible—and now,” the youth said merrily, “if you do not come quickly you will miss your breakfast.” The confused baying from across the water was the muezzins’ calling for five-o’clock prayers. Down on the landing stage the boatmen were dropping to their knees, and on deck those of higher status were spreading their prayer rugs, checking the built-in magnetic compass for proper orientation, before doing the same.

Hake followed Mario to the dining salon. He did not eat, did not join in the conversation, accepted only coffee. His mind was full of quick plans and instant dismissals, and when the Team members got up for their briefing he trailed after them silently. Only when they passed an arms locker, with one of the armed boatmen standing silent before it, did he hesitate. For just a second. He could overpower the guard. Seize a couple of the rapid-fire carbines and a dozen clips of cartridges. Shoot up Yosper, Tiger, the crewmen and everyone else. Find the harem. Arm Leota. Make a run for the launch.

And what were the chances of getting away with it? At the most hopeful estimate, one in a million? Something in Hake’s upbringing had taught him to risk anything to save a woman from debauchery… but did Leota share his view?

A crewman with an actual scimitar pulled back a gold cloth curtain, and they were in the sheik’s private salon.

If opulence had been missing below decks, it was all concentrated here. Iced fruits in crystal bowls, tiny coffee cups and squares of sweetmeats on hammered silver trays; chests of glazed tile, covered with rugs that had not been woven to rest on any floor. Even the gold cloth drapes were not cloth at all; as the yacht moved, the way they swung showed that they were actual gold.

The sheik was already present, sitting above the others in a cushioned chair. He was older than Hake had remembered, and better looking: olive skin and nose like a bird of prey, the eyes brilliant within their circle of black kohl. Next to him, half a foot lower down, Curmudgeon was sitting erect and impatient. The meeting was short. There was little discussion and, to Hake’s surprise, not even any recrimination. Even Jessie Tunman confined herself to glaring poisonously at him from time to time. Curmudgeon spelled out the plan, pausing to defer to the sheik every time Hassabou stirred or cleared his throat, and it was all over in fifteen minutes.

Hake’s part was simple. He was to report to the control shack with his fake ID and the story that he had been assigned as a sweeper. It would be too late for them to bother checking up at night, even if they became suspicious, and by the time the personnel office opened in the morning it would be all over. Hake would remain in the tower at sunrise—there was some danger there, Curmudgeon noted grudgingly, but he would simply have to take his chances. Yosper, his boys and others would come to the tower in scuba gear, and he would let them in. They would be armed with sleep gas, missile weapons and canisters of fungus spores. The sleep gas was to knock out the people in the control shack when they came to it through the tunnel under the bay. The guns were in case the sleep gas didn’t work. The fungus was to destroy the sunflowers. Another party was to take out the guard shack on the dunes, and when all was secure they would blow up control shack and tower—having first photographed everything and taken off any interesting-looking equipment. The yacht would pick them all up, and then—

No one said anything about “then” as far as Hake was concerned. It was as if his life had been programmed to stop when the tower was destroyed.

Ten minutes after he was back in his cabin the twelve-year-old, trembling, brought him an unordered bottle of mineral water. “I will be back in half an hour,” he whispered, and disappeared; and when Hake picked up the napkin, he found a tiny cassette recorder, with a tape in place.

Leota!

But it was Alys’s voice that came to him from the tape. “Keep the volume down!” it ordered at once. Then, “Horny, Leota came aboard wired. God knows how long it will be before they find the radio, so don’t waste time. Tape all the information you can, put the recorder under your pillow and go for a walk. Jumblatt will get it when he cleans up your room. Don’t talk to him. Don’t try to see either one of us.” Then, incredibly, a giggle. “Isn’t this fun!”

An hour later Hake was back in the lounge, looking as much like a loyal member of the Team as he could. That involved some sacrifice. Yosper was holding court, explaining to Jessie Tunman that men were better than angels (“The Lord never picked no angel for our Redeemer, did he?”), offering to bet Mario and Carlos that they could not find any reference to the Trinity anywhere in the Bible, informing Dieter that, whatever he’d seen in medieval religious paintings to the contrary notwithstanding, neither he nor Albrecht Diirer nor anybody else knew what the face of Jesus looked like: “It’s right in the Bible, boy! His face was like unto the face of the Sun! You see any blue eyes and scraggly blond beard on the face of the SunV’ Having settled that, he looked around for someone else to instruct, but Hake had had enough. He got up and joined Tigrito at the pool table. They were all up, all their glands flowing, ready for adventure, like kids on the way to Disneyland; even Jessie Tunman was flushing and giggling like a teenager. Hake was up in a different way. He knew, without question, that the next few hours were going to make a change in his life, and part of him was terrified. When at last he became aware of stirrings outside he dropped his cue and ran to peer over the railing.

The landing stage was packed with penguins. It was the women of the harem, all in long black gowns and headdresses, stepping clumsily into the launch. One looked up toward him, but he had no way of telling who it was.

From behind him Tigrito said irritably, “Come on, man, take your shot!”

“Sure. What’s happening?”

Tigrito glanced casually over the side, then grinned. “Going into battle, you know? They send the women and children to the hotel, get them out of the way. Don’t worry, old Hassabou will bring them back tomorrow morning.”

“I wasn’t worried,” said Hake, coming back into the lounge to take his shot, but it was a lie. He was worried about a great many things, not the least of them whether the tape he had just made had had time to reach Leota.