Now, the Bocca do Inferno was on our left, the majestic and terrifying waterspout that’s a tourist attraction when it’s playing gently, as it does sometimes, but is a thing to keep well clear of when the wind’s in the southwest, as it is once in a while. It was showing off gently now, sending a great white sweep of spray over the hot tarmac of the road as the driven waves smashed into the confining caves sixty feet below and funneled up violently into the hot blue air. There were notices there to keep the over-inquisitive away, and the danger area was well fenced off; even at its gentlest, the Bocca was a good place not to get too close to.
The road straightened out again, swinging gently back west, and Fenrek said: “Two and a half miles.”
I dropped down to a hundred, down to ninety, did a racing change, and heard the whine as the powerful motor took over and braked us down to sixty, then began to play with the foot brake, the Maxaret system that oscillates so that you can’t lock your wheels and spin out of control whatever your speed. And when Fenrek pointed and said, “There...” and the track to the beach was only a hundred yards ahead, we were down to fifty, and I swung the wheel hard over, bouncing over the sand towards the sea.
He said suddenly: “There she is.”
I’d seen her; her little rented Mini-Moke, like a toy green box on four wheels, was lumbering easily over the broken ground, five hundred yards ahead and below us. I sounded SOS on the horn, and saw the white-blond head turn to look, and then she waved, a bright young girl in a red cotton shirt and a white scarf at her neck. She waved again, and I growled at Fenrek, “You’d think she’d know an SOS when she hears one.”
She was looking back at us and waving one hand in a friendly gesture, recognizing Fenrek and perhaps wondering who I was; she was wearing huge round sunglasses with pink lenses, halfway down her nose. And then I banged on the horn again, imperiously, and swung the Jensen over to jump the ditch on my right, pushing hard on the throttle to get her over, landing ten feet off the track and swinging round to get back on it again at a lower level, in second gear now.
She’d seen the maneuver, and now she stopped. She was just barely close enough for the puzzlement to show, knowing that you don’t treat a car like mine quite so disrespectfully unless there’s a good reason. She swung round in the seat and waited, and Fenrek stood up, grabbing hold of the windshield frame, and waved his arm and yelled: “Back, Astrid, get back, back up the hill, hurry, fast...”
By now we were close beside her, moving at no more than twenty mph, and I swung the Jensen in front of the Mini and braked hard. Fenrek fell out, somehow landing lightly on his feet, and vaulted in beside the girl and shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here, fast, every second counts!”
She didn’t waste any more time. She pushed the tiny toy car straight at the steep sand of the bank, bounced it up till its nose was almost in the air, and found her way back on the track once more. I followed, more sedately now that the immediate danger was over, fifty feet behind them in their fine red dust, and when we reached the tarmac road again and she’d stopped, I switched off the motor, got out and went to join them.
Fenrek made the introductions. “My old friend Cabot Cain, Astrid Tillot. You’ve both heard about each other.”
Her face was grave, a child’s face with shiny pink skin and wide blue eyes. Her cheekbones were high, her forehead broad with the silver-white hair piled high on her head. There were tiny lines at the side of the mouth, as though she was always ready to smile. It was not a beautiful face, but a very attractive one, none the less. The red sweater was high at her neck, the breasts tight and pointed.
She held out her hand. “And are you as inexplicably worried as my uncle, Mr. Cain? It’s nice to meet you after all these years of eulogy.”
I said: “Just as worried. And I wish our first meeting could have been less...hectic.”
She looked puzzled. “But it’s not in the least contagious—there’s no danger at all. So why you should go to so much trouble...”
I interrupted. “No danger if we know what it is. But we don’t.”
“But we do!” She said, insisting: “We do know what it is. I don’t want to be technical, but...”
“You can be as technical as you like.”
She took a moment to smile briefly: “Yes, of course. Well, most people call it mussel poisoning, because it’s often caused by eating poisoned mussels. But more correctly, it’s dinoflagellate fever, and you can get it from eating any fish that’s been contaminated. It’s just that mussels carry it more easily, in a much higher concentration, but so do shrimps, and mullet, and sardines, and anything else. A nasty business, but it can be contained fairly easily, and anyone who gets it can be cured if you catch it in time. That’s what I’m here for.”
“It’s not dinoflagellates,” Fenrek said quietly.
She stared. “Uncle, it is! Take a look out there.”
She pointed out to sea, and I followed the sweep of her bare arm. A couple of hundred yards offshore there was a wide red patch in the sea, half a mile wide and perhaps three or four miles long, a deep red dye against the bright blue of the Bay of Biscay.
She turned and looked at me almost scornfully. “You’re from the west coast, you must have seen that once or twice. The ‘red tide’ they call it, over here as well as back home, and it’s quite common in California and Florida. There’s a reason for it that we know all about, and though it’s pretty deadly it’s nothing to worry too much about, unless you’re a fish.”
I took the Leitz Trinovid binoculars from their case under the dash and handed them to Fenrek. “Take a look, tell me what you think,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’ve never seen it myself. Heard all about it, of course. A bad case of it up in the North Sea last spring. Thirty people died from eating contaminated mussels.”
He took the Trinovids and stared out to sea, and then those elegant shoulders shrugged again and he said: “Well named, at least. Just what it is, a red tide.”
“And the question is, who put it there?”
Still using the glasses, he murmured: “Who, and why.” He grunted. “Everybody out looking for it, and there it is, just what they expected to find. Interesting.”
I said: “I can make a pretty good guess at why, but...”
I looked down at Astrid. She was eyeing me over the top of those ridiculous sunglasses as if she thought we were out of our minds. She said, exasperated: “But, for God’s sake, nobody put it there, it just...just comes. To get technical again, the dinoflagellates are single-cell organisms in plankton, and when there’s an admittedly unknown combination of marine and climatic conditions, they multiply at an explosive rate for a while, and then just as inexplicably die. But while they last, you’ve got a red tide, and any fisherman who knows what he’s doing keeps away from it till it’s gone, and doesn’t net fish that turn up dead in the general area. Those poor people down there on the beach ought to have known that, but since they didn’t they’ve taken sick and we’ll have to do something about it. Now, if you wouldn’t mind...”
I said, “It’s cochineal.”
She was already reaching for the ignition switch on that ridiculous little car. Her hand stopped, and she stared up at me in the most complete disbelief: “Cochineal?”
I felt it was my turn to be technical, just to teach this obstreperous young woman a thing or two. I wouldn’t have done that with a stranger, normally, but Fenrek was the strong link between us; it was family. I said: “The females of the Dactylopius coccus; if you want more precision.” She still stared, and I filled in some time for her. “Did you know that the females of the Dactylopius outnumber the males by two hundred to one? But the males are very vigorous, which is just as well, or else we’d never have had any crimsons or scarlets in our history before the invention of the aniline dyes. Have you ever thought about that?”
She said again, incredulous: “Cochineal?”
“They brush the insects off the trees in Southern Spain, dry them in the sun to release the carminic acid...”
“Are you sure?” It was impossible for her to believe.
I said: “Quite true. I have a doctorate in Entomology, among other things.”
She said, impatiently: “No, not that. Are you sure that it’s not dinoflagellates?”
“Not a dinoflagellate in sight. That red tide has been tested and analyzed a dozen times. They can’t believe it at the Research Center either.”
She shook her head, blinking away the astonishment. We heard the dual-note of an ambulance coming along the road from Lisbon, and soon, white-painted, its red light flashing, it slowed down briefly while the cheerful, swarthy driver leaned out and waggled his hand at us, asking a question.
Fenrek pointed to the beach and said: “Ali, na praia, there, on the beach.”
