Changer (Athanor) (48 page)

“My husband will kill you,” Amphitrite says coldly.

“Your husband never leaves the water,” Isidro answers, “and we are prepared to avoid his domain.”

“Good luck,” Vera growls.

“Enough talk,” Oswaldo says shortly.  “We need to get back in time to make our calls.  The longer we delay, the longer these ladies need to remain in discomfort.”

“I am just finishing,” Isidro states.  He gives the rope an experimental tug.  “There.  That should do just fine.”

Oswaldo speaks into the radio.  “We’re on our way.”

“I understand,” Cleonice says.

The two men sweep genteel bows and retreat.  In the near distance, the sound of the
Caiman
’s engine creates an uproar among the waterfowl.  Neither Vera nor Amphitrite pays any attention.  Their fingers are busy with the ropes.

In Belém five o’clock has just struck.  Cleonice, Isidro, and Oswaldo have returned to their estate, showered, and dealt with all the little problems with servants and such that always crop up when one is away from home for an extended period.

“Do you think Arthur will ransom Vera and Amphitrite?” asks Oswaldo, his ruthlessness vanishing as the poignant image of the two women stranded in the rain forest touches his poet’s soul.

“I certainly hope so,” Isidro replies.  “Our entire valiant gesture could be misinterpreted otherwise.  Still, this is war, and in war there are casualties.  If we will not take risks, who will speak for the voiceless ones of Mother Earth?”

“Yes, yes,” Oswaldo says, suddenly weary of the other’s revolutionary rhetoric.  “When will you call Arthur?”

“I thought that I would try now—they are four hours behind us.  We should find Pendragon Productions open for standard business hours.  Cleonice is dropping our message bottle in Duppy Jonah’s waters even as we speak.  I want Arthur to realize that the Sea King’s anger is of our making.”

“Wise.”

Isidro lifts the telephone receiver and places the call to Pendragon Productions in Albuquerque.  After a delay and several rings, the King’s recorded voice says: “This is Pendragon Productions.  No one is available to take your call, but if you leave a message, someone will get back to you.”

The beep sounds and Isidro hangs up.

“Well,” he says in response to a questioning glance from Oswaldo, “I couldn’t very well leave a message saying ‘We have stranded Amphitrite and Vera in the Amazonian rain forest as a means of making our continued dissatisfaction with your ecological policies heard.  We also have taken your pet wizard prisoner.  Our number is…’”

“No,” Oswaldo says, grinning slightly.  “I guess you couldn’t.”

“I’ll try again in a few minutes.  Perhaps they are at an early dinner or something.”

Several hours later, the phone has yet to be answered.

“Damn!” Isidro slams down the receiver.

Oswaldo sets down the book of Borges’s verse from which he had been reading.  “Do you have Arthur’s private number?”

“Of course not!”

“How about Eddie’s?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”  A few minutes later Oswaldo again sets down his poetry volume.  “How about leaving an e-mail message?”

“For something as important as this?”

“I was just making a suggestion.”

“I want to hear Arthur’s voice when I tell him.”

“Childish.  You might as well say you want to see his face.”

“No.  I don’t want to do that.  He’s still Gilgamesh the Wrestler under that effete exterior.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  People do change.”

“I don’t want to be the one to find out he hasn’t.”

“Very well.”

Eight hours later, Oswaldo is asleep with his book in his lap.  Isidro scowls at the phone.

“I suppose I should just wait until tomorrow.  Certainly they’ll be answering the phone then.”  He shoves Oswaldo awake and repeats his statement.

“Certainly.”  The tail of the word is lost in a smothered yawn.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Arthur Pendragon notes that the Pendragon Productions phone has stopped ringing.  He smiles.  He’s beaten the bastards at their own game.  It feels good.  He returns to the baseball game he has been watching, relaxing as it heads into extra innings.

Out in the North Atlantic, a blue bottle, stoppered with a cork and sealed with heavy red wax rises and falls with the swells.

Set in the red-wax seal is an amulet made from moonstone and gold, an amulet that emits a siren song meant for only one person, a person who is certain to be swimming in those waters, for his love and his wife is visiting those shores.  The moonstone gleams like a particularly solid reflection of the starlight in the dark heavens above.

A great bull elephant seal, eight thousand pounds of rubbery flesh, amazingly graceful for all that mass, swims nearby, tasting the faint freshwater taint of the Amazon as morose lovers throughout time have savored some fine liquor to soothe their bruised hearts.  The amulet’s call reaches out to him and, surprised to find his solitude so broken, he heeds it.

He does not locate the bottle instantly.  Even within a limited range, the ocean’s waters are still vast.  When at last he finds it, he swims over to the bottle, nudging it with his heavy, trunklike nose.  

Immediately, his mournful thoughts leave him, for the amulet informs him that the bottle contains a message intended for none but him.  His first thought is that the communication is from Amphitrite, but he banishes that hope instantly.

She would telephone or, if that would not work, command Lovern to do her bidding and make sorcerous contact.  In any case, she lacks the sorcery to create what he senses here.

Shifting shape into a handsome triton, Duppy Jonah unstoppers the bottle, unconcerned about the effect of the salt water on the contents.  Whoever has sent this will have proofed the missive against water.  A spill of what appears to be heavy parchment falls into his webbed and finned hands.  

Unrolling it, he reads glowing violet and silver letters:

Arthur’s minion has failed to protect your consort—even as the King’s policies have failed to preserve the planet that is our joint heritage.  Amphitrite lives, but is lost.  If you join us in our efforts to change the world, we shall return her to you.

Isidro Robelo

(for the South American Contingent)

A typhoon of fury rises in Duppy Jonah’s broad chest.  Howling in primal fear and rage, he stirs the ocean with his hand.  Unheeding of the consequences, he releases a swirl of fury that will beat itself out as an impossible
pororoca
within the broad mouth of the Amazon River.

Then he dives.  He must speak with his land-born counterpart.  Things have gone too far.

18

God gave burdens, also shoulders.

—Yiddish proverb

R
esting in hammocks strung between broad-leafed tropical giants, Amphitrite and Vera awaken on the first day following their marooning.  Thus far, they have stayed near the spot where they were left.  The minimal supplies left by their captors had not inspired a desire to roam.

In addition to the promised guidebooks there had been the hammocks, a first-aid kit, two machetes, a box of electrolyte-replacement powder, some water-purification tablets, two filled canteens, and two neatly packed meals.

The meals more than anything else had encouraged them to remain where they were, for they seemed to speak of a limited expected duration to their stay.  After the two athanor had untied themselves and made certain that they were indeed stranded, they had inspected their packs.  Their first step was to string their hammocks—Isidro’s stories of the native ants were still vivid in their imaginations.

Their anger had been intense, but not to the extent of making either of them foolish.  Dakar Agadez or Katsuhiro Oba might rage at injustice.  Practicality and responsibility were more typical traits of the women once hailed as a goddess of wisdom and the Queen of the Sea.

As dawn is announced by a booming chorus of unseen howler monkeys, some of this calm is giving way to worry.

“How long do you think it will be until someone comes for us?” Amphitrite asks.

“I don’t really know,” Vera admits.  “Isidro…”  She spits at the name.  “Isidro planned to contact Arthur.  I had thought we would have heard something by now.”

“Maybe I frightened them,” Amphitrite says, not looking at all unpleased by the thought, “when I threatened them.”

“Maybe.”  Vera doesn’t look precisely dubious, but she sounds far from certain.  “Still, Arthur may have insisted on coming himself—or at least sending an emissary like Jonathan Wong to handle negotiations.  Even if Isidro called Arthur as soon as they returned to Belém, there could be a delay.”

Amphitrite frowns.  “I hope not too much of a delay.  Lovern’s spell will grant me these legs only for another week or so.  I’d hate to be stranded as a mermaid…”