They called him Gypsy, nothing more. A tall, quiet man, dark-complected and without the almost universal Oriental cast of the human race, he had a strong Roman nose and dark, flashing eyes that were a hypnotic mask. Gypsy was not a Com Policeman; in fact, he seemed to hate all authority and authority figures. Marquoz had run into him some years before on a backwater planet where Gypsy was playing his pipe and passing the hat. That had been the first time Marquoz had performed the dance, impromptu, and they became fast friends. Even now, the Chugach knew little about his human companion and understood less. Deep down, though, each seemed to sense a kindled spark in their attitudes toward themselves and others.
They had hit upon the act almost at once, and it proved even more effective when they discovered that, on most planets, people took the little dragon for some sort of exotic animal—not so unusual when you consider that most Com citizens never left the planet of their birth and knew as little about elsewhere as ordinary people had since time immemorial.
Marquoz was snoozing in the stateroom while Gypsy strolled on the deck. The Chugach awoke with a snort and a tiny puff of smoke from his nostrils as the door opened and the man entered. There was no pretense at being a pet on ship; spacefarers generally recognized all the races.
One reptilian lid popped open and watched as the man entered. "So? Find anything you didn't find on the last three thousand ships we've been on?"
Gypsy flopped on the bunk, sighed, and spat. "Naw. I got up to the passenger lounge and there was one of those superwomen there—the ones with tails, you know?—spoutin' all the religious guff. Maybe I should'a gone into the religion racket—lots of bucks and an easy life. I did do some faith healing once."
Both dragon eyes popped open. "You? A faith healer?" Again the smoky snort, this time of derisive amusement.
Gypsy's shaggy head nodded slightly. "Yeah. Great scam. Whip 'em all up, sing a lotta hymns, then summon the sick to be cured. Put a shill or two in the crowd so's you can have a couple of real cures to get things started. Bums'll do it for a fiver—good actors, too, if you don't pay 'em until after the scam. Who knows? If you actually cure anybody legit you make a fortune; if you don't, well, it's because they didn't have enough faith. Part of the secret of a good scam—always put the blame for the breakdown on the mark."
"Did you really cure anybody?" Marquoz asked, skeptical but interested.
"Oh, sure, one or two here and there," Gypsy responded matter-of-factly. "The mind can cure a lot of ills on its own if the person really believes. Hell, I can stop my bleeding at will and refuse to recognize pain—the needle scam, you remember."
The Chugach nodded. "I still don't know how you do that. Must be something different in our two races. Put a needle into me anywhere and it hurts like hell. I'm still feeling the Dreel immunization shot."
Gypsy chuckled. "Naw, I don't think it's anything racial. I think anybody with a good brain can do it. It's really willpower."
Marquoz shrugged. "Have it your way. No one of my race has come close to it. I think there's more to it than you believe—something humans can do, and perhaps some others, but not we, any more than you can snort fire and smoke."
"Have it your own way." Gypsy sighed, then changed the subject. "That Olympian is really a stunner. All the attributes of every dream woman anybody can imagine, but I can't get turned on by her. There's something about her—other than the horse tail, of course—that just isn't human. In some way I think she's a lot less human that you, Marq."
The Chugach chuckled at that. "Perhaps I should go up and see her." He stopped a moment, then snorted slightly. "I wonder if she'll ask me if I'm Nathan Brazil?"
"Probably," Gypsy responded lightly. "I dunno what she'd do if you admitted it, though. Crazy kinda religion. I wonder how Brazil stands it? He's probably gone far underground to keep the hounds off, poor guy."
Saurian eyelids rose. "You really think there is such a person?"
"Oh, sure," Gypsy replied. "Him and me we tied one on a couple years ago, before this cult thing became big and spread out. Hell of a nice guy, too. I wonder how these alien beauties ever got fixated on him."
Suddenly Marquoz was lost in thought. Finally he said, "Gypsy, are you sure there is such a person? I mean, he just wasn't putting you on? The cult's been going a good decade, after all,"
"Nope, he was Brazil, all right I was on his ship—freighter a lot like this one only a lot older and noisier." His brow furrowed. "Lemme see—the Stepkin—no,that's not right. The Stehekin, I think. No luxury, spartan cabins, old-style everything, but it carried a hell of a load and he kept it up. Brazil was the name on his pilot's license. We used to joke about it—according to the renewal stickers it looked like he'd been alive forever." He paused. "Hmmm . . . Maybe that's why they got stuck on him. Something of a legend, I think. Oldest pilot in service though he looked about twenty-five or thirty to me. Knew some spacers who said their father and their father's father had known him. Some folks are just born lucky—I guess he's got a greater tolerance for rejuves than most."
The dragon nodded but he was still thinking hard. Gypsy was a bundle of surprises; he would never tell anybody his age and it was almost impossible to tell, but he'd been around countless planets and ridden on equally countless ships. His experience was fantastic but never volunteered—you just had to ask the right question or be in the right conversation.
"What was he like, this Brazil?" Marquoz pressed.
Gypsy shrugged. "Little runt—couldn't 'a weighed more than sixty, sixty-five kilos, maybe a head shorter than me. Long black hair, scraggly beard. Liked to dress in loud but ratty clothes and smoked really stenchy cheroots. A tough guy on the surface but something of a softy deep down, you could sorta tell. I wouldn't want to have ta outfight or outdrink him, though. Always real full of life, didn't seem to take anything or anybody serious at all. But down there, buried with that soft spot, was a real serious sort—cold, calculating, pure mind and raw emotion. You'd never guess it to look at him, but in a fight I'd want him on my side."
Marquoz nodded attentively. Despite Gypsy's tendency to fractured purple prose he had an incredible knack for reading other people, human and nonhuman. Sometimes Marquoz thought his human companion had supernatural or at least psychic power—an empath, perhaps. Marquoz had learned to trust the man's judgment of others. And why not? Gypsy was almost always right.
"I wonder what the Olympian would say if you told that to her?"
Gypsy sat straight up on the cot, looking stricken. "Jesus! I wouldn't dare! I'd be knocked on the head and smuggled off to one of their Temples for interrogation! I had some friends disappear like that around those broads!"
A small reptilian hand flashed palm out in mock defense. "All right, all right, I was only interested." Marquoz laughed. "Seriously, though, I think there should be a thorough Com Police check on him. If he's the free soul you say he is, he might be cashing in on this cult himself."
It was Gypsy's turn to give a derisive chuckle. "Not likely! No, if I know him at all I'd say he's gone and buried himself so far underground the best security force we have couldn't find him. Besides—I know a couple of Com biggies who've tried to get the records on him. No go."
"You mean there aren't any?"
"Of course not," Gypsy responded impatiently. "Everybody leaves a trail of records a kilometer long. Even I could be tracked down by a computer match of ticket and travel information with ship schedules throughout the Com. No, that kind of record hold they only give to people involved in something nobody should ever know about. What he could have been involved in I don't know, but he sure isn't the type to be a Com agent or anybody else's. Nonetheless, he paid for that ship somewhere."
"You've heard rumors, though?" Marquoz prompted.
The man nodded casually. "Yeah. Mostly that at one time he had blackmail on every Councillor who could make a decision. There's something awful shady about that Brazil. Lots of tales, too, about him showing up in trouble spots, working angles all over, like that. I think he's an operator."
To Gypsy, an operator was one of the movers and shakers, one of the men and women behind the government who really controlled things. Among other attributes, Gypsy was extremely paranoid.
Marquoz just nodded. "Anybody able to get a Com block on his entire past history would be able to hide real good, wouldn't he?"
"Why're you so interested in him, anyway?" the man pressed. "I don't know anybody who ever had a really bad word to say about him. Operator or not, these Olympians have him in a real bind. I feel sorry for the little guy."
The diminutive dragon shrugged. "I just wonder. The more I hear about him, the more I wonder. God or not, the man seems to have a lot to hide and a lot of clout to help the hiding. Such men interest me."
Gypsy was about to say something when the ship's intercom came to life.
"Attention! Attention!" The throaty soprano of the captain came through. "The Dreel are making forays into the sector just ahead of us and we have been ordered to heave to and stand by. Since it appears the wait may be a long one, I am preparing to put us in orbit around Cadabah, and for safety I must insist that all passengers debark there. When the danger is over we will reload and continue our journey. This decision is in the best interests of all concerned. Please be ready in the docking chamber in twenty minutes with enough luggage for an overnight stay. We apologize for the inconvenience."
That was all, but it was enough—standard procedure in a combat zone, of course. The passengers would be safer and more comfortable in a spaceport, customs and immigration aside, and the captain could make ready for a fast getaway.
Gypsy sighed and got up. "I didn't realize we were that close to the fighting." His voice was tinged with concern.
"We weren't," Marquoz responded. "This is bad. The war news wasn't that wonderul when we left, but if the front's shifting this far in we're in worse trouble than I thought."
The war was not going well. Shorn of their ability to take over worlds by stealth, the Dreel had closed on the weakest and most vulnerable systems with what looked like its whole fleet. The fleets and weapons-locker teams had gone to counter them and been drawn in. This time the Dreel were on the defensive; no longer could they be surprised by the Com weapons. The Dreel's were faster by far and more maneuverable than anything the Com had—and the weapons locker was as fully stuffed with terror weapons as legend had made it. That was the problem. The weapons-locker weaponry was built to destroy suns and reduce planets to cinders, but not for ship-to-slip fighting or wading into an enemy fleet. It was meeting the deadly fly with nothing less than an atomic bomb.
In ship-to-ship combat, the Dreel were far superior. They had the middle ground of weaponry and the fast ships for it, and much better generalship. They were winning, since their main fleet and combat control ships could not be touched. Only their lack of numbers had kept them from totally overrunning the Com in weeks. Now it had been years, of course, many years—but the Com was losing. The Dreel were overrunning more worlds than the Com could vaporize—and if you blew the worlds up, you didn't hurt the Dreel very much anyway.
As Gypsy and Marquoz made their way aft, the Chugach asked his companion, "What do you know about this Cadabah? Anything interesting there?"
"Cruddy kind of place," Gypsy almost spat. "One of the old Com Worlds when Com was a corruption of Conformist, not Community. A bunch of farmers, mostly, all looking alike, thinking alike, acting alike. One of those human insect hives."
Marquoz sighed. "Deadly dull, then. Well, there's no helping it."
The docking chamber was already filling with the other passengers.
The Olympian was there; she stood out, like true royalty in a pigsty, clad only in a great cloak.
"She looks pissed," Marquoz noted with some amusement.
"Ah, boy! She'll be a pain in the neck for us before long," Gypsy predicted. "Once she gets bored she'll start trying to convert the lot of us."
He was right. Even before the shuttle touched down at Cadabah spaceport she was at it with a fanatic's fervor. One thing Marquoz gave her, no matter how crazy her religion, she believed it utterly. The more of her total zeal and commitment he observed, the more he agreed with Gypsy. If Nathan Brazil was indeed a real person, he was to be pitied.
He wondered how long the most sacred of seals on Council and Com information would hold as the Dreel advanced.