Echoes of the Well of Souls

The Beach at Ipanema, Before Sunrise

It was nearly deserted before dawn, this beach that was famous in song and story but would, before the morning was run, be crowded almost to bursting with bodies craving the sun and wind and waves. He liked the waves, the warm bodies wearing nothing or nearly so, the fun and general life of it all, and he came here often to watch, often entertained most by the reactions of puritanical American tourists seeing their first nude and topless bathers in what was basically an urban resort, but he liked this time, too, when he could still hear the waves, smell the salt air, and see that, indeed, there was sand on the beach.

The homeless, particularly the bands of pitiful, roving children, were also pretty much absent now, huddled away in corrugated cartons, abandoned buildings, and other hideaways, away from those who might prey even on them. Also absent for the moment were the hustlers, con men, pickpockets and petty thieves who roamed the area near the beach.

Not that he was alone, nor did he particularly want to be. Here and there, walking along the waves, barely visible in the beginnings of false dawn, were occasional couples and a determined jogger, and, up on the walk, a big man in a colorful shirt was either walking two enormous dogs on leashes or they were walking him. In the small cafes within sight of the beach there was already activity as they prepared for the morning onslaught of tourists and urban escapees, and as always in Brazil, the overpowering aroma of brewing coffee was beyond even the abilities of the morning breezes to completely dissipate.

This, in fact, was his favorite period of any year or season, when he was not working, and had nowhere to go, and could just walk around and enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and, yes, people.

That would surprise those who’d known him over the long course of his life or even the few who currently knew him more than casually. He liked people; he genuinely liked them, else he’d never be here and certainly wouldn’t be stuck in this rut. He just couldn’t, wouldn’t get close to individual people, not if he could help it. No matter how good or how wonderful or fascinating they were, they had a fatal flaw, all of them, that would eventually break his heart.

People grew old. People died.

That was why he particularly relished times like this. A few weeks in a town far from his normal haunts, an anonymous stranger to everybody he might meet. And they in turn were here temporarily from, usually, very mundane pursuits, here to have a good time and be convivial and then go home.

So long as he didn’t stay very long or they remained an even shorter time, all was equal. The people he’d met, the experiences he’d had while on these faraway holidays, were golden; they were, in fact, what kept him going. No matter who he met, they were equals, and, at least in his mind, they would always stay that way, for he could be close and friendly or cold and distant as it suited him to be, and those people with whom he interacted would be forever young, forever alive, because he would never see or hear of them again.

He liked this age, too, or at least he liked things more from this age onward. Those who idealized the past, whether recent or ancient, should have had to live through and endure it. Then, perhaps, they would appreciate what they now had and just how far things had come.

It also continued to astonish him how much of history duplicated itself, sometimes in the smallest details. It would have astonished even great Caesar to know that he, or one nearly his twin, had crossed the Rubicon before, and what measure of futile toil had been done on a Great Wall for inner China long before the first brick was laid for that wall in this world; to know that Michelangelo could accomplish more than one David—and more than one Sistine Chapel; that Great Zimbabwe had stood before, almost but not quite on the same exact spot, and that Alexander had marched and Aristotle had thought not once but over again on more ancient ground. That Cyril, whom they would make a saint, would again and again commit the atrocity of burning the great library at Alexandria, and, once again, what remained of Greco-Roman writings would be preserved for Europe against Europe’s best efforts by black Songhai at its library in great Timbuktu. Only the Hindus seemed to know, as they always did, that the cosmic wheel eternally came back again and again to the same place.

He understood why this was so, that the first natural development of Earth had been recorded through him in a vast data base so distant that none here could comprehend such a gulf and that “reset” meant just that, not a random restart, lest the experiment be spoiled.

He knew more or less what he was and had his own dim memories of before, but even now he found it more and more difficult to recall specific details, to remember all that much. The human brain could manage only so much. It was not a factor with these mortals, who died before they approached a fraction of their capacity, but for such as him it was… spooled off.

Still, there were differences; there were always differences, but until now, through the countless centuries that preceded it, they were relatively minor ones. Even major changes tended to rectify themselves over time, allowing history to rejoin the original flow. Still, he hadn’t remembered the collapse of the Soviet Union at any point in this age, nor the creeping fascism edging out idealistic if no less abhorrent communism. It was so hard to remember, but that change had jolted him as nothing else he could remember with its sense of wrongness. If such a major departure was somehow allowed, did that mean that the experiment was inevitably corrupted or that perhaps this time history was running true? Certainly it would delay space exploration and colonization, perhaps for a century or two. He recalled fleeting snippets of time spent in the Soviet Mars colony. It was so long ago, and the thought was so fragmented, he could not be certain if it was a true memory or not, but he felt that it was. It sure wouldn’t be now. It would be interesting to see which would be the nation to get out to the stars. Or was there still some “rectification” to come?

It bothered him, not so much in principle—he didn’t really care if things went differently or not, let alone who did what—but the mere fact that the difference existed at all. It seemed far too big to “rectify.” Something just as bad or worse might well come out of it all, but it seemed far too huge a departure for correction, and, lost memories or not, he was certain that a change this major had never happened before.

Could it be some new glitch in the system? He hoped not. He prayed not. He wanted no more of that sort of thing, and anyway, if it was a glitch, the emergency program should call him and provide a means for him to come and fix things. That hadn’t happened. And it wasn’t as if, at this stage of technological development, he could just hop aboard an interstellar spacecraft and steer for one of the old portals. These people had barely made it to the moon the old-fashioned way, and when they had, they’d lost interest. He could never comprehend that; it seemed like social devolution. Oh, well…

His thoughts were suddenly broken by the sight of a couple standing on the walk above looking out at the sea. There seemed something decidedly odd about them, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Curiosity and the lack of anything better to do took him toward them. He saw that the woman was in a wheelchair—one of the elaborate, expensive, motorized kinds. There was something odd about the man, more than the fact that he was overdressed for the area and the occasion, something in the way he stood, in the carriage of his head, and in the sunglasses he was wearing.

It was enough to draw him closer to them. One did not often see a blind man and a wheelchair-bound woman out on these streets at any time, particularly on their own. Perhaps they were merely naive—thieves and muggers were not at all uncommon near the beach, and this couple was in no position to either defend themselves or give chase should they be threatened with violence. But he admired their courage and their obvious insistence that just because they were both handicapped did not mean that they were going to shut themselves away for the rest of their lives.

The woman sat oddly in the wheelchair, a position no one would naturally assume. A quadriplegic, most likely, with some limited control of at least one hand and arm sufficient to move the power joystick but not much else. She looked to be in her early to mid-forties, an attractive woman with short brown hair and lively eyes that seemed to pick up everything in a glance. She saw the stranger approaching and said something to her companion, who nodded.

The man had on a white business suit and a well-knotted dark tie and wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat. He was a handsome man, too, perhaps a shade older than the woman, with signs of gray in the black hair that emerged beneath the hat, and he was fairly tall, almost a head taller than the man who was now walking toward him. He also had a look about him one saw only in this country—a curious mixture of nationalities, part Amerind, part European, part black, that had merged over the past four centuries into a unique and distinct new race, the Atlantic Brazilian.

“Good morning, sir and madam,” the small man greeted them in an oddly accented but still very good Brazilian Portuguese dialect. He could see them both tense, as if they both had also just realized their vulnerability. “Please rest easy. I was simply walking along and could not help noticing you here. This is not a terribly safe place, you know.”

“I was bom only two kilometers from here,” the man responded in a deep, elegant baritone. “I have no more fear of this place or these people than would you.”

“What is he saying, Tony?” the woman asked in English with a clipped British Midlands accent. “I’m afraid I can’t make out more than a word or two.”

The stranger immediately switched to English. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized that you both weren’t locals.” His accent was still odd, but the words were clear.

“Just small talk, my dear,” the blind man assured her.

“I distinctly got the impression of a warning,” she persisted.

“I was just saying that this is a dangerous area these days, what with so many homeless youth gangs, thieves, and the like around,” the small man explained.

“And I told him I was very familiar with the area,” her companion added.

“Well, I said much the same,” the woman noted. “Your memories of this beach are about twenty years out of date.”

“You do not live here, then?” the small man asked.

“No,” responded the Brazilian, “we live in Salisbury, in England, actually. But I have been promising myself that I would return home someday no matter what, and after passing up previous opportunities, I decided that this was the time.”

“You are staying with family, then?” The small man hesitated, feeling suddenly a bit embarrassed. “I’m sorry. My name is David Solomon—Captain David Solomon.”

“Air force?”

“No. Merchant. My ship is the Sumatra Shell out of Bahrain. One of those huge supertankers filled with oil. I live aboard her for four months at a time, going back and forth from wherever there is crude oil to where they want me to unload it, seldom getting off for more than a few hours or a day at a time. When I’m rotated off, I like to come to places I either have never been or haven’t been to in a very long time.”

“I shouldn’t think that someone with a name like yours would be too welcome in Bahrain,” the man responded. “I, by the way, am Joao Antonio Guzman, and this is my wife, Anne Marie. I generally use ‘Tony’ as a first name because, frankly, the British do a terrible job on ‘Joao.’ They still pronounce Don Juan as Don Jew-an, you know.”

“I can imagine,” the captain replied. “And you’re right. I’m Jewish, and that’s neither popular nor even particularly legal in the Gulf, but nobody really minds so long as I stay out of Saudi Arabia. Besides, I am also Egyptian, which helps a great deal in such things. In fact, for practical reasons I’m listed on my documents as a Coptic Christian. Nobody ever cares or checks, and frankly, as religiously observant as I am, one faith is as good as another. In any event, I’m not there long when I’m there, and quite often I’m nowhere near Moslem territory. I’ve been running from Brunei to Sydney most recently, and neither of them gives a damn what religion I might be. Certainly my Dutch employers don’t.”

“And you’re here on holiday, then?” Tony Guzman asked him. “First time?”

“First time in—a very long time. I’ve rented a small cottage at outrageous rates a few kilometers south but still near the beach. I just started walking and wound up here this morning. I like to watch the sun rise.”

“As do we,” Anne Marie told him. “It’s such a huge, warm sun at this latitude. Tony, of course, can’t see it come up except in his mind’s eye, but he can feel it, and of course he has many more of these in his memories than I do, growing up here. We did this yesterday, too, taking a taxi from the hotel.”

“Then you’re not staying with family?”

“I have little family left here now. None close,” the man told him. “The few that are left tend to be uncomfortable either with my condition or with the fact that I married an Englishwoman and am now a British citizen.”

“And one that makes them more uncomfortable,” Anne Marie put in.

“Well, I don’t find either of you uncomfortable,” he said with a casual honesty they instantly knew was real. “In fact, I find you very interesting people, and I salute you for not letting anything get in the way of your enjoyment.”

“Do you have a wife? Children?” Anne Marie asked him.

He shook his head. “No, no one, I’m afraid. The kind of life I lead, the kind of job, just doesn’t lend itself to marriage, and I’m unable to have children, so that point is moot.”

She sighed. “That’s one thing we have in common. I used to be able, it’s true, but going through it would have killed me, they said.”

“Your accident was early, then? Sorry—again, I don’t mean to pry. If you’d rather not discuss it, we’ll drop it.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a bit. I minded the accident, and I’d much rather be walking about and feel something below the armpits, but I certainly don’t mind talking about it. I just wish it were more spectacular than it was, really, so I’d have a story to tell. An IRA bomb perhaps, or an aircraft accident, or perhaps a sport injury, but it was nothing so dramatic. Truth is, I don’t even remember it. It was winter, I was sound asleep in the family car coming home from some Christmas visit to relatives, we hit a patch of ice, slid off, and rolled down an embankment. I was always a sound sleeper, so all I remember is tumbling and some very sharp pain in my neck and back, and that’s it. I woke up unable to move anything below the neck. Years of therapy got me to this point, where I stuck. There’re just no more connections to make.”

“Mine was a bit more exotic,” her husband added. “I was a pilot for Varig, and we had fuel and mechanical problems coming into Gatwick. We came in all right, but the nose wheel collapsed on landing, and we slid off the side of the runway and into a ground control radar hut. The base was concrete. All the passengers survived with only minor injuries, but we hit the small building head on. It shattered the windscreen, which is very hard to do, and crumpled in a part of the nose around the cockpit. My copilot had eleven broken bones and eventually lost his leg. I, on the other hand, had a piece of metal driven right into my skull. I have a very large metal plate in my head that makes it impossible for me to withstand airport security today— you should see their expressions when they use the hand scanner!—and although there is nothing wrong with the eyes themselves that we know of, there was internal bleeding and damage, and I’ve been unable to see since. I spent three years in British hospitals of one sort or another and remained there, partly because I had little to come home to and partly because, with the military government in power here and Brazil in such a bad shape economically, I could get much better care in the English system. Besides, I had to relearn even the basics of balance and get my confidence as a sightless man, and the therapy was quite good. I met Anne Marie while I was still in therapy.”

“You shared hospitals?”

She laughed. “No, by that time I’d been this way for years. But I found I could sit and rot at home, watching the telly and being spoon-fed by doting relatives and nurses, or I could get out and do something. When an old friend of Father’s who’d been working in the physical therapy wards voiced frustration that many people with relatively minor disabilities compared, say, to my own were so depressed and suicidal that they put themselves beyond help, I thought I might be able to do something. After all, if you’ve lost an arm, or legs, or even your eyes but you are confronted with someone with a more serious disability, like me, actually doing something, what sort of excuse do you have?”

The captain liked them more and more as he heard their stories.

“In truth, we are one person,” Tony Guzman noted. “Most of me works all right, except my eyes, and Anne Marie’s eyes work quite well. So she guides me and describes the world to me, and I do for her what she cannot do for herself. You would be surprised at how one could get used to almost anything.”

“No,” the captain responded, thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t. We all have crosses to bear. Some are just more obvious than others.”

“But what of you?” Anne Marie said. “No wife… Do you have family of any sort?”

“No, not really. Well, there is one person, but I have no idea now where she is or what she is doing.”

“A sister?”

“Not exactly. The relationship is rather— complex. Hard to describe. It’s been so long, though, that I find it difficult now to even remember what she looked like. We had some sort of fight. I can’t remember what it was about or even if I understood it then. She walked out, I thought for a little while, but she never returned, not even for her things. I never saw her again, even though I half tore that city apart looking.”

“You speak of it as long ago, but you are not that old, surely,” Tony noted.

He returned a grim smile the man could not see. “I am much older than I look.” Much older. The city, after all, had been Nineveh at the time of its glories.

“I hesitate to say it, but from your account I would say that she met with foul play,” Tony noted.

“Foul play possibly,” he agreed, “although she’s not dead. Once or twice I’ve run across someone who had known her, but never did I learn of it in time to track her. Like me, she is a survivor. If I had a clue as to where she might be, I’d still drop everything and go hunting for her, but, again like me, she could be anywhere in the world.”

“You still think of her like that, even though you say you can hardly remember her looks?” Anne Marie asked, amazed. “Surely there must be someone else for you out there.”

“I’m afraid not. We are bound in a way. Two of a kind. It’s no use going into details, but trust me on that.” He turned. “Ah! Here comes the sun!”

The three of them grew silent and let the great orb appear from the ocean depths, seeming huge enough to swallow the whole world. Finally Solomon said, “Have you two had breakfast yet? There is a cafe just a couple of blocks inland from here that is excellent. I would be honored if you would join me. My treat.”

Tony said nothing but seemed to wait for his wife to speak. She mulled it over, then said, “Thank you, I believe we will. But then we must get back. I have to keep to something of a schedule, and I have some medications to take. But right now I feel all energy. We shall do some things this morning and go to sleep early.”

“What? With all the nightlife here?”

She laughed. “Not tonight. Haven’t you heard? They say there’s some huge meteor that’s going to come in tonight and crash in the western jungle. Some of these bloody locals are panicking and moving out for the night or staying in church or whatever, afraid that God is going to smite them or something. They say, though, that it might be visible here in the early morning hours. Between one and threea.m. Atlantic time. They say it might fragment and give us all a spectacular natural fireworks show. I shouldn’t like to miss that, with the luck of being here when it comes.”

“I had to pull every string I know just to get into our room,” Tony told him. “There is not a vacant room anywhere in the area or farther inland, either. All the scientists and touristas, the sort of people who go on eclipse cruises, are all here for it, as are the newspeople from a hundred countries.”

“I haven’t paid much attention to the news,” the captain admitted. “I did hear something about it when I noticed the shops selling lucky charms and meteor repellent in the last week or so. I thought it was far away and inland, though.”

Anne Marie roared with laughter. “Meteor repellent! That’s wonderful!”

“Don’t laugh,” the captain responded in a serious tone. “I will be willing to wager a good amount of money that nobody who uses it has ever been hit by a meteor.”

They all laughed at his little joke, and then Tony said, “It is supposed to be visible from here—if it is clear. Of course, it is rarely clear here.”

The captain thought a moment. “Look, I’ve got a minivan. If you’re really keen to see it, we might manage the wheelchair and drive up into the inland mountains for a while, maybe above some of the coastal weather. That’s if you feel up to it.”

“Oh! That would be delightful!”Anne Marie exclaimed excitedly. “Sir, I will ensure that I am up to it. It is only one night, and we are on holiday, after all!”

Tony frowned and started to say something, then thought better of it, but it didn’t escape the captain’s notice. He had the distinct impression, though, that Tony was not all that thrilled by her being out on an expedition, however conservative. It made the captain wonder if there was something else important he didn’t know but should.

They had an excellent breakfast, and Anne Marie couldn’t stop talking about their good fortune in meeting the captain and how excited she was to be going somewhere where she was sure to see the big show.

After eating, Solomon accompanied them back to their hotel, one of the better ones in the area, as it turned out, with some handicapped-equipped rooms. Tony took his wife from the wheelchair with well-practiced motions and found the bathroom, acting as if he could see very well, indeed. He was certainly well adjusted to his blindness and had the room memorized.

He took some time with her in the bathroom. Finally they were done, and he brought her out and laid her on one of the beds.

“Thank you, Captain, for a delightful morning,” she said, sounding suddenly very tired. “I can hardly wait until tonight!”

Tony pulled up the covers on the still unmade bed, then made his way back to the door. The captain went outside, and Guzman followed, keeping the door slightly ajar.

“Captain, I think there is something you should know,” the blind man whispered, switching to Portuguese.

Solomon responded in kind. “I thought there was something.”

“We are here, at grave expense, because it is the last chance we will have. She has been growing weaker and weaker, and eventually even the automatic organs like the heart and lungs will fail. It is only a matter of time. This is, most likely, our last holiday.”

“I suspected as much. How long do they give her?”

“God knows. The doctors argued against this trip. I asked them how long she might last if she went into a hospital or was under constant home monitoring. They said a few weeks to no more than six months. Then I asked them how long it would be if she made the trip. They responded that it might be a few weeks to no more than six months but that it would certainly shorten her time. You have been with her this morning. I think you have seen why I fell in love with her. If she were to die today, here, it would be as she would want it, still out, still active, still doing new things. I think the doctors are wrong. I believe she would have died far sooner rotting at home. Certainly she would have died in misery instead of here, in my homeland, about which I have spoken all too much, watching the sun rise and smelling the smells and meeting the people. You see?”

He nodded. “But even you think this kind of silly trip tonight might be too much for her, is that it? Shall I make some excuse and call it off?”

“No! Not now. Had this been suggested only to me, I would have refused, but—well, you saw her. Perhaps it will kill her, but not before she sees the meteor. I just—wanted you to know.”

The captain nodded. “I’ll keep it an easy drive. And I suspect you might be underestimating the power of her will. She may die within the period the doctors say, but I think she’ll pick her own time and place.” He patted the blind man on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at six.”

There seemed to be only three kinds of people in metropolitan Rio that night: those who were terrified of the meteors, those who were profiteering from it, and those who were anxious to see what they could of the big show. Bars served meteor cocktails—which differed from bar to bar, but who cared?—and one main hotel advertised an Asteroid Ball in its rooftop club.

The captain found his new friends waiting for him, and once he was shown how the wheelchair collapsed, they managed to get everybody in the Volkswagen minivan. Getting out of town wasn’t difficult, but though traffic normally thinned out going farther inland, the two-lane road through the mountains that formed the natural barrier between the city region and the dense jungle beyond was almost bumper to bumper.

“It looks like everybody else had the same idea we did,” the captain noted sourly.

“Well, there are not many roads back here, and even those give out not far beyond the mountains,” Tony noted. “I do know a few places that might be less traveled, but the road may not be paved.”

“I’m willing, but I don’t want too rough a road, not only for Anne Marie’s sake but also because even though this is a good, solid Brazilian-made car, it doesn’t have four-wheel drive,” Solomon responded.

“These would be service and old military roads no longer in use. I do not know how rough they might be, but you should not need four-wheel drive for them. At any rate, we can take a look and you can make a decision from there.”

The captain shrugged. “If your memory can get me to them, by all means,” he said. He was a bit surprised. It had been Tony, after all, who had worried so much about Anne Marie’s fragility that he hadn’t been enthusiastic about the more civilized trip they had planned.

For a blind man who hadn’t been in the area in twenty years, though, Tony was proving remarkably accurate.

“There should be a dirt road going up the side of the mountain on your right about two kilometers after that intersection,” Tony told him. “It will have a sign markeddo not enter —military district road.Ignore it and go on up. It has not been used as more than a lover’s rendezvous in more than a decade.”

The captain was a bit suspicious at Tony’s detailed recall. “How do you know all that?”

Tony smiled knowingly. “Well, I will tell you the secret. For a thousand cruzeiros the head porter was more than willing to suggest this and to write out the directions for Anne Marie. He has used the spot himself, you see. It is not likely, however, that there will be many up there tonight, or so he said, although he doubted we would be alone and suggested we use discretion with our lights.”

“All right, I’ll do what I can,” the captain responded, chuckling. “Yep. There it is. Pretty imposing sign and the remains of a gate and gatehouse.” He pulled off, slowed to a crawl, then went into second gear for the climb. It was steep, and he would not have liked to have met someone traveling in the opposite direction, but it was manageable. The climb also seemed interminable, and he kept a wary eye on the temperature gauge, which was climbing precipitously, but just as he wondered what was going to happen when he boiled over before reaching the top, the road swung around and there was a pulloff. He took it and waited for the temperature to come down. “Hard to say how much farther the top is and how many switchbacks we might face,” he explained. “I think we want to not only get up there but be able to get back down without having to coast.” He looked at the dashboard clock. “It’s a little after midnight. What time did they say the big show was?”

“Sometime after two,” Anne Marie told him.

“We’ll make it,” he assured them. “Plenty of time. How are you holding up?”

“I’ll be all right. I had hoped to nap partway, but I was too excited earlier, and at the moment this drive is a bit too unnerving and too steep for any such thing. I’m afraid to close my eyes.”

“Don’t blame me,” Solomon responded. “I’m not the one that came up with this place. All I can say is that there better be a nice view of a clear sky up there or I’m gonna be mightily pissed off. Uh—pardon the language.”

“Take no mind of me,” Anne Marie responded. “I’m feeling a bit, well, you know, myself.”

He started up again and, three switchbacks later, reached a level, debris-filled area that went back quite a ways. The headlights revealed it to be deserted.

The captain looked at the crumbling remains of buildings and gates and fences and frowned. “Did your porter tell you just what this place used to be for?” he asked.

“No,” Tony admitted. “It would have to be either something very secretive or something very mundane, such as a storage area for road-grading equipment—there are many rock slides through here, or there were in my day.”

The captain took the minivan on a very slow circuit and stopped when the headlights illuminated a large concrete pad. “A helipad. That’s what that is,” he told them. “Either this provided a quick getaway for VIPs or it was used to spirit people out of the city in secret. You could take somebody out from a rooftop in Rio, bring him here, then transfer him to just about anywhere. The buildings seem too small for a real jail but perfectly adequate for some quiet interrogation with no prying eyes around.”

“Oh, dear,” muttered Anne Marie.

Tony just nodded. “As military governments go, the one that ruled here for more than a decade wasn’t all that horrible, but particularly in the early days, they went after communists, labor union people, vocal opponents of the regime… It wasn’t as bad as Argentina or even Uruguay, but the military mind is rather consistent, and security is always the most zealous and secretive, particularly at the start of a military regime. It was because they were not totally fascist that the army is still held in some esteem here, and they were not overthrown—they finally admitted they hadn’t the slightest idea how to run a large country and essentially quit. Still, there was probably much sadness here, and now it has become a lover’s hideaway and a refuge for would-be stargazers. There is something very Brazilian in that.”

“Well, we’ve got a fairly clear view from here except in the direction of the city,” Solomon noted. “We still have a lot of light pollution but if there’s anything to see in this area, we should see it.”

“Try the radio,” Tony suggested. “There is most certainly some coverage of it somewhere.”

From the evidence of a slow turning of the dial, the “coverage” was mostly Brazilian music, the only obvious tie-in being a classical station playing The Planets. At the half hour, though, after the general world news headlines and local stories, the announcer said, “And finally, throughout the region, thousands of people are up in the hills or on rooftops or out at sea awaiting the arrival of what scientists say will be the most spectacular meteor display in centuries. If you are still up and listening to me, you should delay going to sleep another three-quarters of an hour and go outside and find a clear view to the northeast. Scientists tracking the meteor state that it should land somewhere in the remote upper Amazon basin, possibly near the Peruvian border, but it should be quite low over Rio when it arrives at approximately two-fifteen local time. Authorities state that the meteor will probably look much like a huge burning moon, but traveling very fast. Nothing is expected to strike Rio or anywhere within a thousand kilometers of the city, but as a precaution, police and fire teams are on the alert. Remain tuned to this station for updates.”

“I’m not at all sure I like that last business,” Anne Marie commented. “It sounds like they aren’t bloody well sure of anything.”

“Hundreds of meteors strike the Earth every single day,” the captain reminded her. “Most are very small, and most fall into the ocean, but getting hit by one is not exactly the sort of thing sane people worry about. This one is unusual because it’s so large, because it’s going to strike land, and most of all because it was spotted early, so we know it’s coming. But your odds of winning the Irish Sweepstakes three years in a row are far greater than the odds that even a splinter of this meteor will strike where you are. All that was, as he said, just precaution. You can never predict these things a hundred percent, and if it breaks up, pieces of it might fall in the region. Even then, it’ll just make a more spectacular show for us to see—but it’ll also mean even less damage to the world when the main body hits.”

“Is that true?” Anne Marie asked. “Can the thing really do damage to the world? I realize I shouldn’t like to be under it when it crashes, but—the world?”

“One of them killed the dinosaurs,” Solomon said. “The whole climate of the planet was changed because so much dust and debris was kicked up high enough that it gave us twilight for several years. The plants died, the swamps dried up, things grew too cold, and the giant creatures couldn’t eat or adapt to it.”

“But that is just a theory, is it not?” Tony put in.

The captain was silent for a moment, staring off into space. “Yes, just a theory,” he responded. “But the right one.”

Anne Marie stared at the strange little man in the darkness and frowned. “Indeed? And how can you know that?”

Because it was a pain in the ass, even with the greatest computers in creation, to figure out just the exact spot to aim it where it would do exactly that, he thought to himself. Aloud, in a lighter tone, he said, “Well, I told you I was older than I looked.”

They weren’t sure whether to laugh or edge away from him at that, but since he had the car and the keys, a nervous laugh seemed the most prudent choice.

The captain got a blanket out of the car and spread it on the ground, then went back and got out a small hamper and a cooler. He then helped Tony get Anne Marie’s wheelchair set up and her into it.

“Some light snacks, sinful sweets,” the captain told them. “And some good wine, although in case you couldn’t or wouldn’t drink, some fruit punch as well.”

The stars were out, not as many as would be visible farther out from the city but far more than could be seen in Rio itself. There was a quarter moon at this season, but it was a late moonrise and had not yet shown itself, nor would it until almost an hour after the meteor arrived. That much luck was with them.

The captain amazed them with his knowledge of the stars and constellations. There didn’t seem to be a single one he couldn’t name, or tell its distance from Earth and details about its composition.

“You know more than most astronomers could keep in their heads, I think,” Tony noted, unable to see the stars but nonetheless fascinated by the tour. “This is from navigating a ship?”

“From navigating a lot of ships, and of different types,” the captain responded.

“Do you think there is other life out there?” Anne Marie asked him. “Strange creatures, alien civilizations, all that sort of thing?”

“Oh, yes,” he answered confidently. “A vast number. The hugeness of the cosmos is beyond anyone’s comprehension. Some of them may already have spaceships and be in contact or even commerce with one another.”

“You mean in this solar system?” Tony responded. “I would doubt it.”

“No, no, there’s nothing else in our solar system worth mentioning. I mean beyond. Far beyond. Thousands and millions of light-years, in this galaxy and many others.”

“You are a romantic, Captain,” Tony said skeptically. “What you say about other creatures and civilizations might well be true, but those same distances would prohibit contact. The speed of light alone says no.”

“Well, that is something of a stopper,” Solomon admitted, “but not as much as you’d think. Gravity bends space, light, even time itself, and it’s but one of a great many forces at work. If a ship could be built to withstand those forces and make use of them, both space and time might be bent, reducing a journey of many centuries to a matter of days or weeks. They once said that heavier-than-air craft could never fly under their own power, and for many years it was believed that the sound barrier was so absolute, its vibrations would tear an airplane apart. Nothing is impossible—absolutely nothing. It just takes a lot of time, work, ingenuity, and guts to eventually figure a way to cheat.”

Tony shook his head. “My education was as an engineer, and I know about solving such things, but I believe that practical interstellar flight is just outside the rules of God.”

“Well said, sir! You sound like a medieval pope!”

“Oh, stop arguing, you two!” Anne Marie scolded. “I don’t care if it’s possible or not, since even if it is, none of us will live to see it, but it is fun to imagine. I wonder what sort of creatures there are out there.”

Captain Solomon looked at the stars. “Oz, and Olympus, and Fairyland, and a hundred other lands not quite imagined here on Earth. If you like, play a game. Suppose you could wish yourself up there, become one of those other creatures—what sort of creature might you like to be?”

She laughed. “I’m not much good at imagining creatures, and most of the ones on the telly are pretty slimy.”

“Well, there’ll be slimy ones, of course. But, if you can’t think of some creature out of whole cloth, pick one out of mythology or classical fantasy.”

“Umph!It’s so difficult to do! I suppose I should fall back on the obvious, as my therapists would say in the old days. Lying there, unable to move for so long, I used to dream of being a racehorse. Isn’t that a silly thought, even if an obvious fantasy for me? Anne Marie, interplanetary racehorse!”

“Well, be a centaur, then, or is that ‘centauress’?” the captain responded in a light mood. I knew another centauress once, but I can’t even remember her name…

“What about you, Tony?” Anne Marie prompted. “What sort of creature would you be? How about an eagle? Flying about, and with remarkable eyesight as well.”

“Possibly,” Tony responded, sounding a bit irritated with the game but nonetheless going along for Anne Marie’s sake since she was getting such a kick out of it. “But, and I am being fully honest here, if such a thing were possible, then I should like to be whatever you were.” And he meant it, too. The captain could feel the love that was there and was almost consumed with envy for this unfortunate blind and crippled pair of mortals.

“How sweet, my darling,” she said with a smile. “But what of you, Captain? We haven’t heard your own choice.”

“I’m afraid I have grave limits on that part of my imagination,” he answered seriously. “I can think of myself only as Gilgamesh, or the Wandering Jew. Always the same, never changing, walking through the world but unable to fully become a part of it.”

“I believe I’d like that,” Tony said. “Never changing, never aging, and never beyond repair, as it were. Watching the ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and great events as they occur. Yes, I might find that quite enticing.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” the captain came back a bit sharply. “Suppose you had to do it without Anne Marie? Without anybody to share it with? Watching everyone you knew or liked grow old and sick and then die, watching as many horrors as great things and being unable to do more than bear witness to them? Always alone, without even anyone to talk about it with or share experiences with on an equal basis? Is that a blessing or the worst of curses? You tell me.”

“Without Anne Marie? Hmmm… I think I see what you mean. But I would insist on Anne Marie as well!”

“I’m not so certain of that myself,” she put in. “I mean, after centuries together I’d expect even the most loving of people to get rather sick of one another.”

Both men were startled by her comment, Tony because he could not conceive of such a thing and the captain for far different reasons.

Was that ultimately what it was? Did I need her so much that I failed to realize that I could be a pretty boring and predictable stick-in-the-mud that might eventually drive anybody nuts? Could it be as simple as that?

“You might grow sick of me?”Tony asked her, genuinely a little upset.

“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll give you a few thousand years or so,” she answered playfully. She paused for a moment, sensing that her response had really bothered him. “Oh, come off it, Latin lover! It’s just a silly game to pass the time!”

The captain turned and looked back toward the northeast. “Sorry I caused any problems. As Anne Marie said, it’s just a ga—Holy smoke!”

Anne Marie suddenly looked up in the same direction and gasped. “Tony! The whole sky is lighting up! It’s like the sun’s about to rise!”

But it was thirteen minutes after two in the morning.