Loveless said nonchalantly: “Did you know he escaped? Ah, I see you did.” My face had been absolutely blank. He said: “Histermann’s all right. He runs scared once in a while, but all right really, for a bloody Australian.”
He was relishing the talking as much as I was. And now, that little muddiness in my evaluation of him was clearing itself up. What it was I’d seen in Loveless was a terrible kind of loneliness. And it occurred to me that I should have expected to find just that, except that I hadn’t really looked for the intelligence that such a frightening loneliness demands. A mercenary? Fighting a savage war for anyone who would pay him, right or wrong, black or white, it didn’t matter which?
He said to me irritably: “Talk to me, tell me what your name is.”
“Cabot Cain.”
“And you’re a microbiologist? Who brought you into this? The Portuguese police? Or Interpol?”
“Neither. And I’m not a microbiologist either.”
“A doctor then? You look more like a prize fighter.”
“Not a doctor either.”
“But you knew what to do when Histermann went down with that godawful poison. How come he managed to get over it so quickly?”
“He was suffering from a small dose of psilocybin.”
“And what the hell’s that, for God’s sake?”
“LSD, mescaline—it’s in the same field. He was just on a trip, only he didn’t know it. It would have been a lot worse if he’d really been contaminated by that toxin you’re carrying. There’s no antidote to that stuff at all.” I was waiting for him to ask me how Histermann had managed to get himself a dose of psilocybin, but he wouldn’t. Pushing him hard, I said:
“Natural botulin is bad enough, there’s no antidote to that either. But a manmade toxin is nearly always far more potent than the stuff nature turns out. More potent, and less predictable. The doctors can’t always diagnose it, and they can never treat it with much hope of success. The patient just lies down and dies.” Looking for an opening, I said: “You do know just how dangerous it is, don’t you?”
“Aye.”
“I wonder. You know that the island of Gruinard—that’s not far from where you come from, is it?—is likely to remain infected for another hundred years because of an accident that took place there twenty-five years ago? With the same stuff you’re toting around so casually? You know that half a dozen innocent fisherfolk were killed by it just outside this cave?”
“Aye, I know that too.”
“Why, Loveless?
He shrugged. “The wrong people got killed, does it matter? It told me what I wanted to know.”
“Its precise effect?”
“Roughly, yes. There was an Army unit landing on the beach that night, and I wondered what a pinch of that stuff in the water would do to them. My tame chemist had told me it would wipe them all out, but I wanted to be sure.”
“A pinch? For God’s sake, that’s not salt you’re fooling around with.”
He said calmly: “I know that. He said, my chemist, a pinch so small you can’t see it.”
“It’s in a glass vial?”
“Aye.”
“Then within ten minutes after you uncorked it, you ought to have been dead, you realize that?” It was true; he’d had the most colossal luck, part of that unpredictability.
He showed some uneasiness now, for the first time. In his mind it meant I wasn’t telling the truth; but he couldn’t be sure. He said angrily:
“How can you say that, you said yourself you’re not really a microbiologist. And I used rubber gloves anyway.”
I sighed. “I’ll explain to you one day just how they handle that stuff on Gruinard. I’ll tell you some of the precautions they use to keep it well wrapped up. The way you plan to use it, your mercenaries are going to be the first casualties.”
He grinned suddenly. “Maybe that was true a while ago, but not anymore. We were going to cut it with flour, but now” — he laughed shortly— “now we’ve got a better idea. And you know what? You gave it to me. I told you, you weren’t as bright as you thought.”
I said, looking puzzled: “I did?”
“Aye. We’re going to use aerosols, your own idea. And it was you who told me too that I didn’t have to hang around here with every cop in the country looking for me while my tame chemist made up some more. I didn’t realize I had so much of it till you told me. And how do you like that, bright boy?”
I’m not very good at looking aghast, but I had a shot at it anyway. I said: “Nacimento!”
He laughed again. “A pity you’re not on my side, isn’t it? Between us, we’d give the non-people hell.”
I said calmly: “Exactly. A new weapon is all that’s needed, except for someone who knows how to use it. You need that too.”
Now the seed was planted. Either he didn’t see it at once, or wanted time to think about it a lot more. There was a veiled look in his eyes as though he’d just had a brilliant idea and wanted to hide it from me. And so, he kept talking.
He said: “Aye, I figured you’d found out just what I was up to. We’re fighting organized armies now, the old days have gone, and...Cain, was it?”
I said: “Aye.”
“There was a time when the non-people had beat-up old rifles they didn’t really know how to use, and they weren’t very much opposition for us. But now, it’s America, or England, or Russia, or sometimes China were fighting, and when those bloody non-people lose their rifles, the major powers are in there quick, fixing them up with bazookas and flamethrowers instead, and a hundred more rifles thrown in for good measure, just in case they feel like losing them all over again. We’re fighting tanks and aircraft now, and the odds are getting too heavy against us. So I took a quick look at the arsenals of the big boys and came up with something they’ve got but are afraid to use in any of their bloody fool little wars. They’re scared of their own products. But I’m not, Cain. I’m not. I’ve got something now that’s going to turn the scales, all over Africa. Anywhere I want to fight, they’ll hire me, and I’m going to win hands down, overnight. Do you realize that with a few ounces of this stuff in Katanga I could have wiped out the United Nations Force in the space of twenty-four hours?”
I said quietly, making a question of it: “And you’d have done that?”
He thought for a while and sighed, and said: “No, probably not. I’d not take on a serious army, they’d have been backed into a corner and they just might have used the same weapon on me. No, I only fight the non-people. You’d be surprised how many of them there are around.”
