Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (43 page)

“He knows something he’s not telling us,” I said. “He’s keeping information to himself. Wouldn’t you?”

Owen nodded. Barrels of star rubies and tons of platinum and gold bars shone in his dark Welsh eyes.

When we returned to the table John Martindale had made his breakthrough. Helga was talking and bubbling with laughter. “How did you
do
that,” she was saying. “He’s untouchable. What did you
do
to him?” McShane’s armadillo was sitting on top of the table, chewing happily at a piece of apple. Martindale was rubbing the ruffle of horny plates behind its neck, and the armadillo was pushing itself against his hand.

“He thinks I’m one of them.” Martindale touched the black screen across his eyes. “See? We’ve both got plates. I’m just one of the family.” His face turned up to me. I read the satisfaction behind the mask.
And should I do to your wife, Klaus, what you did to mine?
it said.
It would be no more than justice.

Those were not Martindale’s thoughts. I realized that. They were mine. And that was the moment when my liking for John Kenyon Martindale began to tilt toward resentment.

* * *

At ground level, the western winds skim off the Andean slopes at seventy knots or more. At nine thousand feet, they blow at less then thirty. Owen was an economy-minded pilot. He flew west at ten thousand until we were at the preferred landing point, then dropped us to the ground in three sickening sideslips.

He had his landing already planned. Most of Patagonia is built of great level slabs, rising like terraces from the high coastal cliffs on the Atlantic Ocean to the Andean heights in the west. The exception was in the area we were exploring. Volcanic eruptions there have pushed great layers of basalt out onto the surface. The ground is cracked and irregular, and scarred by the scouring of endless winds. It takes special skill to land a plane when the wind speed exceeds the landing airspeed, and Owen Davies had it. We showed an airspeed of over a hundred knots when we touched down, light as a dust mote, and rolled to a perfect landing. “Good enough,” said Owen.

He had brought us down on a flat strip of dark lava, at three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun hung low on the northwest horizon, and we stepped out into the teeth of a cold and dust-filled gale. The wind beat and tugged and pushed our bodies, trying to blow us back to the Atlantic. Owen, Helga, and I wore goggles and helmets against the driving clouds of grit and sand.

Martindale was bareheaded. He planted a GPS transponder on the ground to confirm our exact position, and faced west. With his head tilted upward and his straw-colored hair blowing wild, he made an adjustment to the side of his visor, then nodded. “It is there,” he said. “I knew it must be.”

We looked, and saw nothing. “What is there?” said Helga.

“I’ll tell you in a moment. Note these down. I’m going to read off heights and headings.” Martindale looked at the sun and the compass. He began to turn slowly from north to south. Every fifteen degrees he stopped, stared at the featureless sky, and read off a list of numbers. When he was finished he nodded to Owen. “All right. We can do the next one now.”

“You mean that’s
it? The whole thing?
All you’re going to do is stand there?” Owen is many good things, but he is not diplomatic.

“That’s it—for the moment.” Martindale led the way back to the aircraft.

I could not follow. Not at once. I had lifted my goggles and was peering with wind-teared eyes to the west. The land there fell upward to the dark-blue twilight sky. It was the surge of the Andes, less than twenty miles away, rolling up in long, snowcapped breakers. I walked across the tufts of bunchgrass and reached out a hand to steady myself on an isolated ten-foot beech tree. Wind-shaped and stunted it stood, trunk and branches curved to the east, hiding its head from the deadly western wind. It was the only one within sight.

This was my Patagonia, the true, the terrible.

I felt a gentle touch on my arm. Helga stood there, waiting. I patted her hand in reply, and she instinctively recoiled. Together we followed Martindale and Davies back to the aircraft.

“I found what I was looking for,” Martindale said, when we were all safely inside. The gale buffeted and rocked the craft, resenting our presence. “It’s no secret now. When the winds approach the Andes from the Chilean side, they shed all the moisture they have picked up over the Pacific; and they accelerate. The energy balance equation is the same everywhere in the world. It depends on terrain, moisture, heating, and atmospheric layers. The same equation everywhere—except that
here
, in the Kingdom of the Winds, something goes wrong. The winds pick up so much speed that they are thermodynamically impossible. There is a mechanism at work, pumping energy into the moving air. I knew it before I left New York City; and I knew what it must be. There had to be a long, horizontal line-vortex, running north to south and transmitting energy to the western wind. But that too was impossible. First, then, I had to confirm that the vortex existed.” He nodded vigorously. “It does. With my vision sensors I can see the patterns of compression and rarefaction. In other words, I can see direct evidence of the vortex. With half a dozen more readings, I will pinpoint the exact origin of its energy source.”

“But what’s all that got to do with finding . . .” Owen trailed off and looked at me guiltily. I had told him what Martindale was after, but I had also cautioned him never to mention it.

“With finding Trapalanda?” finished Martindale. “Why, it has everything to do with it. There must be one site, a specific place where the generator exists to power the vortex line. Find that, and we will have found Trapalanda.”

Like God, Duty, or Paradise, Trapalanda means different things to different people. I could see from the expression on Owen’s face that a line-vortex power generator was not
his
Trapalanda, no matter what it meant to Martindale.

* * *

I had allowed six days; it took three. On the evening of June 17th, we sat around the tiny table in the aircraft’s rear cabin. There would be no flying tomorrow, and Owen had produced a bottle of
usquebaugh australis;
“southern whiskey,” the worst drink in the world.

“On foot,” John Martindale was saying. “Now it has to be on foot—and just in case, one of us will stay at the camp in radio contact.”

“Helga,” I said. She and Martindale shook heads in unison. “Suppose you have to carry somebody out?” she said. “I can’t do that. It must be you or Owen.”

At least she was taking this seriously, which Owen Davies was not. He had watched with increasing disgust while Martindale made atmospheric observations at seven sites. Afterward he came to me secretly. “We’re working for a madman,” he said. “We’ll find no treasure. I’d almost rather work for Diego.”

Diego Luria—“Mad Diego”—believed that the location of Trapalanda could be found by a correct interpretation of the Gospel According to Saint John. He had made five expeditions to the
altiplano
, four of them with Owen as pilot. It was harder on Owen than you might think, since Diego sometimes said that human sacrifice would be needed before Trapalanda could be discovered. They had found nothing; but they had come back, and that in itself was no mean feat.

Martindale had done his own exact triangulation, and pinpointed a place on the map. He had calculated UTM coordinates accurate to within twenty meters. They were not promising. When we flew as close as possible to his chosen location we found that we were looking at a point halfway up a steep rock face, where a set of broken waterfalls cascaded down a near-vertical cliff.

“I am sure,” he said, in reply to my implied question. “The data-fit residuals are too small to leave any doubt.” He tapped the map, and looked out of the aircraft window at the distant rock face. “Tomorrow. You, and Helga, and I will go. You, Owen, you stay here and monitor our transmission frequency. If we are off the air for more than twelve hours, come and get us.”

He was taking this
too
seriously. Before the light faded I went outside again and trained my binoculars on the rock face. According to Martindale, at that location was a power generator that could modify the flow of winds along two hundred and fifty miles of mountain range. I saw nothing but the blown white spray of falls and cataracts, and a gray highland fox picking its way easily up the vertical rock face.

“Trust me.” Martindale had appeared suddenly at my side. “I can
see
those wind patterns when I set my sensors to function at the right wavelengths. What’s your problem?”

“Size.” I turned to him. “Can you make your sensors provide telescopic images?”

“Up to three inch effective aperture.”

“Then take a look up there. You’re predicting that we’ll find a machine which produces tremendous power—”

“Many gigawatts.”

“—more power than a whole power station. And there is nothing there, nothing to see. That’s impossible.”

“Not at all.” The sun was crawling along the northern horizon. The thin daylight lasted for only eight hours, and already it was fading. John Kenyon Martindale peered off westward and shook his head. He tapped his black visor. “You’ve had a good look at this,” he said. “Suppose I had wanted to buy something that could do what this does, say, five years ago. Do you know what it would have weighed?”

“
Weighed?
” I shook my head.

“At least a ton. And ten years ago, it would have been impossible to build, no matter how big you allowed it to be. In another ten years, this assembly will fit easily inside a prosthetic eye. The way is toward miniaturization, higher energy densities, more compact design. I expect the generator to be small.” He suddenly turned again to look right into my face. “I have a question for you, and it is an unforgivably personal one. Have you ever consummated your marriage with Helga?”

He had anticipated my lunge at him, and he backed away rapidly. “Do not misunderstand me,” he said. “Helga’s extreme aversion to physical contact is obvious. If it is total, there are New York specialists who can probably help her. I have influence there.”

I looked down at my hands as they held the binoculars. They were trembling. “It is—total,” I said.

“You knew that—and yet you married her. Why?”

“Why did you marry
your
wife, knowing you would be cuckolded?” I was lashing out, not expecting an answer.

“Did she tell you it was for her skin?” His voice was weary, and he was turning away as he spoke. “I’m sure she did. Well, I will tell you. I married Shirley—because she wanted me to.”

Then I was standing alone in the deepening darkness. Shirley Martindale had warned me, back in New York. He was like a child, curious about everything. Including me, including Helga, including me and Helga.

Damn you, John Martindale
. I looked at the bare hillside, and prayed that Trapalanda would somehow swallow him whole. Then I would never again have to endure that insidious, probing voice, asking the unanswerable.

* * *

The plane had landed on the only level piece of ground in miles. Our destination was a mile and a half away, but it was across some formidable territory. We would have to descend a steep scree, cross a quarter mile of boulders until we came to a fast-moving stream, and follow that watercourse upward, until we were in the middle of the waterfalls themselves.

The plain of boulders showed the translucent sheen of a thin ice coating. The journey could not be done in poor light. We would wait until morning, and leave promptly at ten.

Helga and I went to bed early, leaving Martindale with his calculations and Owen Davies with his
usquebaugh australis.
At a pinch the aircraft would sleep four, but Helga and I slept outside in a small reinforced tent brought along for the purpose. The floor area was five feet by seven. We had pitched the tent in the lee of the aircraft, where the howl of the wind was muted. I listened to Helga’s breathing, and knew after half an hour that she was still awake.

“Think we’ll find anything?” I said softly.

“I don’t know.” And then, after maybe one minute. “It’s not that. It’s you, Klaus.”

“I’ve never been better.”

“That’s the problem. I’ve seen you, these last few days. You love it here. I should never have taken you away.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“That’s part of the problem, too. You never complain. I wish you would.” I heard her turn to face me in the dark, and for one second I imagined a hand was reaching out toward me. It was an illusion. She went on, “When I said I wanted to leave Patagonia and live in Europe, you agreed without an argument. But your heart has always been here.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know . . .” The lie stuck in my throat.

“And there’s something else. I wasn’t going to tell you, because I was afraid that you would misunderstand. But I will tell you. John Martindale tried to touch me.”

I stirred, began to sit up, and felt the rough canvas against my forehead. Outside, the wind gave a sudden scream around the tent. “You mean he tried to—to—”

“No. He reached out, and tried to touch the back of my hand. That was all. I don’t know why he did it, but I think it was just curiosity. He watches everything, and he has been watching us. I pulled my hand away before he got near. But it made me think of you. I have not been a wife to you, Klaus. You’ve done your best, and I’ve tried my hardest but it hasn’t improved at all. Be honest with yourself, you know it hasn’t. So if you want to stay here when this work is finished . . .”

I hated to hear her sound so confused and lost. “Let’s not discuss it now,” I said.

In other words, I can’t bear to talk about it.

We had tried so hard at first, with Helga gritting her teeth at every gentle touch. When I finally realized that the sweat on her forehead and the quiver in her thin limbs was a hundred percent fear and zero percent arousal, I stopped trying. After that we had been happy—or at least, I had. I had not been faithful physically, but I could explain that well enough. And then, with this trip and the arrival on the scene of John Kenyon Martindale, the whole relationship between Helga and me felt threatened. And I did not know why.