Secret Of The Slaves

What she did encounter was Dan Seddon, wearing a pair of weathered jeans and a look at once furious and bewildered. His own hair stood out in random directions. Annja thought he resembled Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons she’d loved growing up. She fought a semihysterical impulse to giggle.

“So I wasn’t the only one who had a night visitor,” Dan said. “You look like an avenging angel on a bad-hair day.”

“You’re a great one to talk, Calvin,” she said.

He looked confused. “Never mind,” she said. “What did you see?”

“A woman,” he said. “Tall, thin, looked African. Had one of those headdresses on, the ones with the flared tops.” He had extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa, Annja recalled. “She warned me not to keep seeking the quilombo of dreams.”

“And I suppose she vanished without a trace?”

“Absolutely. I rolled over to turn on the bedside lamp. When I rolled back I was all alone. Creepy.”

He made a sound deep in his throat that might have been a chuckle, or passed for one. “Something like this tempts a man to believe there might actually be something to the stories about these Promessans possessing mystic powers.”

It was Annja’s turn to produce an inarticulate noise, this a distinctly unladylike grunt of confirmed skepticism. “It’s some kind of trick. It’s got to be.”

“Was your window open? You find any sign the door had been jimmied?” Dan looked at her intently for a moment. “From your expression I’m taking that as a no on both counts.”

“Well…still. I’m not ready to buy into astral projection or anything,” Annja said.

He shrugged. “Come to that, if they have some kind of technique of holographic projection, that’d be pretty significant in and of itself, wouldn’t it? Moran seems to think whatever secrets the Promessans have are primarily technological, although he doesn’t say much about the mystic-powers thing one way or another.”

“But I smelled him. He smelled of soil and plants. Like the rain forest.”

Dan shrugged. “The Department of Defense was claiming to be able to stimulate various kinds of sensory hallucinations by beaming microwaves directly into people’s skulls in the late 1990s,” he said. “Maybe the Promessans are using a technology that isn’t really that advanced. Just secret.” He uttered a short laugh. “I’m surprised the capitalists haven’t started using it for ads, though. Imagine billboards beamed directly into your brain!”

“I’d rather not, thanks.” Annja compressed her lips. “Still, I had the absolute conviction he was really, physically there. That I could have hit him with my…fist…if I’d only been quick enough.”

Dan laughed again, in a lighter tone. “Publico said you were a martial-arts expert with more than a little rough-and-tumble experience. I like that in a woman. And yeah, I had the same sense about the woman in my room. Although it didn’t occur to me to hit her. But which impossibility is going to upset your worldview the most? Astral projection, some kind of technological projection, or teleportation?”

“I think I’ll just go back to bed,” she said, “and try not to speculate in the absence of sufficient data.”

“Or an overabundance of uncomfortable data.”

“I thought you were the hardheaded, skeptical type, too,” she said.

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m more a reflex skeptic. Sometimes being a skeptic means distrusting the official explanation. Especially when you’ve seen official explanations revealed as flat-out lies as often as I have.”

Standing in the hallway there was a sudden sense of awkwardness between them.

Dan grinned. “Guess I’ll go back to bed, too,” he said. He tipped his head from side to side, stretching his neck muscles.

They stood there a moment longer, not precisely looking at each other, not precisely looking away. The dingy off-white wallpaper was starting to come away in patches on the wall, she noticed. No wonder, in this humidity.

“Well,” he said, drawing it out just a little, “good night.” He turned and padded on his bare feet into his room and shut the door.

“Night,” she said. She stood looking at his door for a couple of breaths longer. Then she went into her own room.

She shut the door with more force than necessary.

“ O LÁ , M AFALDA !” Annja called as the little brass bells strung on the inside of the door jingled merrily to announce their entrance. “Where are you?”

Followed closely by Dan, she pushed inside. Outside it was full noon. Their eyes, dazzled by the brightness of the equatorial sun, took time adjusting to the darkness within the shop.

“Maybe she’s stepped out,” Dan said dubiously.

“And left the door unlocked?” Annja said. “This may not be Rio de Janeiro, but that’d be pressing her luck even here.”

“Maybe the locals are afraid of her magic,” Dan said.

“You don’t believe in magic.”

“But they do.” He stopped as the door jangled shut behind them and sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

It hit Annja, too. Beneath the astringent smells of herbs and powders, of dust and the moldering bindings of old books, lay a smell of sweetness. And something foul.

“Christ—” The word came from Dan’s throat as though around something choking him.

On the counter to the right of the door Mafalda lay with her head, still wrapped in its bright turban, propped on the cash register. Otherwise she was nude. She stared fixedly at the ceiling.

Feathers had been stuffed in her mouth. Mystic symbols had been scrawled on her bare belly in blood.

Her blood. Her throat had been slit.

8

Fast motion caught the corner of Annja’s eye. She spun, reflexively bringing up her right forearm in a deflecting block.

A wooden pole struck her forearm. It was the haft of a spear, and its bright metal tip slid forward to graze her ear. A bundle of feathers tied behind the spear tip slapped her cheek.

Above the far end of the spear she saw the eyes of her visitor of the night before, burning in the gloom like dark stars.

Before she could react further the spear was withdrawn. With lightning speed it darted straight for her eyes. She twisted her body clockwise and leaned back, allowing the weapon to thrust past her.

She caught a flash impression that Dan was struggling with an opponent of his own. She had no attention to spare him. Her own foe was remarkably fast and determined.

His third thrust came low. Annja jumped high into the air to avoid the strike at her legs. She lashed out with her right foot, kicking a set of stout jars filled with different-colored powders and crushed leaves off the top shelf of a display toward her attacker. As one heavy jar tumbled toward his head, spilling orange powder that glittered even in the gloom, he reflexively jerked the spear back to interpose the haft.

Annja used some of the energy of her fall to add momentum to a spinning straight-legged reverse kick. The back of her heel caught the spear haft and wrenched it right out of the man’s hands.

He spun and darted toward the back of the shop. Annja chased him. A pair of machetes hung crossed on the back wall. The man snatched down not one but both at once, and turned on his pursuer. He waved the heavy two-foot blades in a whistling figure-eight before him.

He advanced on her, apparently unconcerned that she was unarmed. Should I expect chivalry from someone who’d ritually murder a harmless shopkeeper? she thought. Unless she intended to flee—or die where she stood—he wasn’t leaving her any choice.

Hoping Dan was too busy with his own assailant to notice anything else unusual she held her right hand as if gripping something, focused her will, reached…

The sword appeared in her hand.