The Return of Nathan Brazil

Meouit

The advance crew of the Nautilus had done an effective job. The warehouse was dingy and located in a poor neighborhood, but it was close to the spaceport and easily accessible even to someone who had never been there before. The small signboard said, in both the Com trading language and in Zhosa, the local tongue, Durkh Shipping Corporation. It seemed old and worn, not brand new as it actually was.

It was chilly and near dusk in Taiai, largest city on Meouit, and flakes of snow floated in the air here and there. A young Rhone woman clad in an expensive fur jacket studied the scene accompanied by several larger Rhone males.

She looked barely in her teens, not beautiful but pleasant, even a bit sexy, with long, brown hair. Her skin was a light brown, her pointed ears jutted up slightly on either side of her head and seemed to swivel independently of each other. At the waist, the near but not-quite-human torso faded into short-cropped light-brown fur that covered a perfect equine body. She needed only the jacket for warmth; below the torso she was well insulated by fur and subcutaneous fat.

“Not bad,” she said admiringly, “not bad at all.”

The male Rhone who stood closest to her, much taller and more obviously muscular than she, was pleased.

“Shall we go inside and greet the others?” she suggested, and he moved to slide one of the doors open for her. The lights inside created an illuminated wedge in the semi-darkness as the door slid back, admitted them, and then was closed by the last centaur.

The young female Rhone sniffed slightly, then looked toward a corner. “How have you been making out, Marquoz?” Mavra Chang called.

The small dragon stalked out of the shadows puffing on a fat cigar. “Pretty crappy, if you must know,” he snorted. “How’d you like to be locked up in a barn on an alien world with only religious fanatics for company for two days?”

She looked sympathetic. “Sorry, but we had to sneak you all in when we could. You could have let Obie make you a Rhone,” she reminded him, “and have spent the last couple of days out in the open and comfortable.”

“Thank you, I like to remain me,” he grumbled. “I can see Gypsy was the smart one, though. He’s back on the Nautilus sleeping on feather beds and eating like a horse, I’ll bet.”

“Well, we’ll be getting down to the spaceport shortly,” Mavra told him. “The ordeal’s almost over. Our man is in orbit now and due down to sign the customs forms and releases in about two hours.”

An Olympian stepped from the shadows. “Remember your word!” she warned. “He is to be brought to us!”

“We’ll keep our end of the bargain,” Mavra promised. She turned to face two of the Nautilus crew. “Well, come on, bodyguards. I’d like to get down there as soon as possible. I don’t want to miss him.”

She bade the others farewell and turned. One of the crewmen slid the door open and then shut it behind them again. A blast of cold air was all that was left now besides the waiting.

The Olympians stepped back into the shadows, and the leader turned to the other three. “Two hours,” she whispered. “Are you ready?”

One of the others turned and removed her cape, taking from the lining four small, very sophisticated pistols. She handed one to each of the others, keeping the fourth for herself.

This was yet another reason why the Olympians had not wanted to reach Meouit through Obie.

Marquoz was busy passing the time with the Rhone-shaped crewmen; one had some dice. They paid no attention to the Olympians whatsoever; all of them had been trying to tune out the strange women for two full days as it was. Which was just the way the Olympians wanted it.

“Check your charges,” the leader whispered. The small activating whine went unheard.

Mavra Chang lounged around the shipping office trying to look bored, but deep inside her she felt almost like a little girl expecting the arrival of a favorite uncle but afraid at the same time that the uncle might have forgotten her.

Nathan Brazil… The name had been so small a part of her long existence that it shouldn’t mean much at all, yet it had haunted her since childhood. As a freighter captain herself back in the old days, she had known of him, heard the legends of the hard-fighting, hard-drinking captain who never seemed to grow old. From her grandparents she’d heard fairy tales of the magical Well World and Brazil’s name had been there, too, always in the hero’s role. And Brazil had plucked her as a small child from the forces of totalitarian repression that had engulfed her relatives and her world, he had passed her into the hands of the colorful Makki Chang, who raised her on a great freighter. Later, on the Well World, Brazil’s name was mentioned everywhere, sometimes with reverence, sometimes with fear. Then too, there was Obie’s playback only a few months ago of her grandparents’ memories of a hideous, throbbing six-limbed mass that proclaimed itself master of reality, of all space-time, as the creator of the Universe. All Brazil.

The tugs had already established the craft’s orbit, now the pilot boat would descend with the in-system pilot and the captain to process the cargo through customs, then the wait while cargo ferries transferred that cargo from the massive bulk of the freighter, which never made planetf all.

Mavra watched and her heart seemed to skip a beat as the information board inside the port authority office flashed the namejerusalem, her registry numbers, and the wordsin port.

Outside, lights locked on the small pilot boat as it drifted down and gently settled into the first of the eight cradles around the port authority building. Mavra turned expectantly, watching the far door, where the captain and the pilot would enter in a few moments. She held her breath. Time dragged, and after a while she grew afraid that the captain hadn’t made planetfall, that he was deadheading somewhere.

One of her two crewmen, playing at filling out some forms, leaned over and whispered, “Why don’t you relax? Right now you look like you expect your long-lost husband to come home any moment now.”

Suddenly conscious of how obvious she must have seemed, Mavra turned and pretended to be looking through some cargo manifests stacked in the anteroom. That, she could do more natually. But if Brazil didn’t come out shortly somebody in the port authority was going to wonder why it was taking her so long to choose the correct form.

Suddenly the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. The pilot, his face lined and elderly, which seemed perfect for his spotted gray coloring, led the way, clipboard in hand, and, behind, she saw the massive load-master. Both were apparently talking, and it was a few seconds before she realized that they were talking not to one another but to a third party almost hidden between them.

Mavra’s first thought was that Korf was too tall; almost 170 centimeters, wearing a curious porkpie hat from under which massive folds of gray-white hair drooped and mixed with a full beard of similar color. Only the eyes and the nose were visible, and the rabbi’s general build was obscured by a heavy black coat that reached his knees. If appearances were worth anything, he was twenty kilos too heavy and a century too old.

The voice, too, was unpleasant; very high-pitched and nasal, quite unlike the low tenor Mavra remembered of Nathan Brazil. Her heart sank; this, certainly was not the man they were after. She glanced surreptitiously over her forms and tried to find any of the qualities of that funny little man she’d known as a child—some of the warmth, the gentleness, anything.

That’s it, she decided, crestfallen. We’ve blown it. All that work and we’ve blown it. She looked over at her crewmen and saw the same emotions mirrored in their expressions. One gestured slightly with his head toward the door and she nodded almost imperceptibly. They walked toward the door, hooves clattering on the hard, smooth plastine surface, walking right past the two Rhone and Rabbi Korf as they wrangled over the bill of lading.

“The maize, then, is in two-hundred-ton containers ready for gripping?” the loadmaster’s deep bass was asking.

Korf nodded and pointed. “Yes. Shouldn’t take but two, three hours to get that section. It’s the building supplies that—”

At that moment, her mind now far from this place, Mavra had not made allowances for bureaucracies that wax floors and she stumbled slightly. Korf and the two Rhone looked up.

The rabbi, seeing she was all right, turned back to the papers then did a double-take, head shooting back up to stare at her. Embarrassed, Mavra barely noticed the movement but something in the corner of her eye told her that she had attracted more than usual attention. She stopped, carefully, just short of the door and half-turned her human torso to look at the human; for an instant their eyes met, and something in those eyes and that expression caused a chill to go through her.

Her crewmen, oblivious to what was happening, were already outside before they noticed her absence.

Mavra’s rational mind told her that the strange man was more likely Father Frost than Nathan Brazil, but something in his reaction and her gut feelings said otherwise. No human would look at a Rhone woman that way, no human except one who might not be.

“I’m sorry if I interrupted you with my clumsiness,” she said smoothly, trying to control herself. “My associates and I had been waiting to see the captain of the ship that just came in, but you must be he and I see that you’ll be tied up for some time.” She looked shyly nervous. “I—I’m afraid I’m not used to business yet.”

The captain recovered quickly, although he still kept staring at her with that odd look in his eye. “I am the captain, Madam Citizen. What did you wish of me?”

“My father is in the import-export business. He and his associates are attending a conference at Hsuir where they just completed a big transaction. They asked me to find out what ships were coming in and might be—is deadheading the correct term?—well, leaving empty. I’m not really involved in the business, you understand, but with everybody at the convention I’m the only one they could call.” She sounded so sincere that she almost believed the lie herself. “But I see I’ve come too early.”

The captain nodded. “I’m afraid so. This stuff will take hours, and I wish to have a real bath and sleep soft and long tonight to put myself on your time. I am empty at the moment, though—could we talk tomorrow afternoon?”

She smiled sweetly and nodded. “Of course. Where are you staying? I will call you there. I know your name and ship from the listings.”

“At the Pioneer. The only place here with rooms that also have individual kitchens—I have special dietary requirements.”

She nodded. “I’ll call—not too early,” she promised.

“What did you say your company’s name was?” he came back. “And yours, in case things clear up earlier?”

“Tourifreet, in your pronunciation,” she answered glibly. “It is the Durkh Shipping Corporation—the number is listed.” Again the smile. “We’ll talk tomorrow, then,” she added and walked out, leaving him staring at the door closing behind her.

“You’re sure it’s him?” Marquoz grumbled. “The boys don’t seem to think so.”

Mavra nodded. “I’m as sure as I can be. Our little mimic trick worked. He knows who I look like, all right—there’s nothing wrong with his memory. It was like he’d been hit with a stun bomb. You could see it in his eyes, the war between his mind, which told him that this just had to be an amazing coincidence, and that emotional backwash that was winning control.”

One of the crewmen who had been there said, “I still think you’re nuts. He’s too tall, too broad—nothing at all like the descriptions of Brazil.”

She smiled slightly. “He wore well-made thick boots, I noticed, very much like those I normally wear when I have feet instead of hooves. With that long coat he has on to further disguise things he could have been on stilts for all we know, certainly lifts high enough to give him a dozen centimeters of lift. He had the old man’s walk, which would further discourage things—and he’s had a long time to practice, too. The coat is padded, who knows with what, to make him broader. Even the dark gloves poking out of those oversize sleeves obviously came from arms too thin and too short for that body. The beard’s good, but I’ve seen good false beards before. And the hat helps. No, it’s him, all right. I’d bet my life on it.”

“Don’t you think it was a bit risky just to let him go like that?” the Olympian leader asked Mavra. “We have no idea that he wasn’t put off by your appearance so he would suspect a trap.”

“I seriously doubt he suspects a trap, but he’ll check anyway. There really is a trading convention in Hsuir, which is about all he can check, since it’s on the other side of the world. The next thing I’d expect him to do is punch in the company name and see if he gets a number—he will. Finally, he might sneak over here late this evening or in the morning to establish that there really is a company warehouse. He’ll find us here, old sign in place.”

“And if you’ve made a mistake somewhere?” the Olympian pressed.

Mavra chuckled, reached into her coat, and pulled out a small transceiver. She switched it on and a tiny red light glowed. “Halka? How’s our man doing?” she asked into it.

“He cleared port about an hour ago, Mavra,” came a tinny response. “Went immediately to the Pioneer with one large bag. Went straight to his room, four-oh-four A, and hasn’t been out since, nor has anyone else gone in.”

She composed a knowing smile to the Olympian, a smile caressed with confidence and frost. “Satisfied? We’ll be on him every step of the way now. Borsa will even have his hotel line tapped in short order. We’ve got him.”

The Olympian remained skeptical. “If he is in fact Nathan Brazil, I wonder?…”

“Well, I’m satisfied,” Marquoz announced, yawning. “I would suggest that we all get some sleep. It looks to be quite a busy day tomorrow, and none of us knows how or when it’ll turn out.”