Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (66 page)

Mary frowned. “Are you saying that you can’t believe in impossible things? I’ll bet you do it all the time. You believed that a little girl could survive among the wolves in the Sierras, didn’t you? That’s really not possible, you know.”

Susan thought of
Wild Angel,
then said crossly, “I suppose. But that’s fiction. We live in the real world.”

Mary blinked at her in mild surprise. “Do we? I live in a world I made up. It’s like the monsters that live under the bed. You make them up; you give them power.”

“There are real monsters in the world,” Susan said, thinking of Alice and the monster who killed her.

“That’s true. There are real monsters—but they’re few and far between compared to the monsters you invent. It’s the imaginary monsters that keep people from living the lives they want to live.”

Susan frowned. “Is Weldon an imaginary monster?”

“Hard to say.”

“Was he trying to kill Ms. Murphy?”

“Can you kill someone who isn’t here?” Mary asked.

Susan shook her head in annoyance. “I don’t care whether she exists, I’m worried about her. Weldon said this was a question of who was going to be the Creator. What does that have to do with Ms. Murphy? Or Patrick Murphy or my friend Pat, for that matter. And I’m worried about Max. I think he’s in trouble.”

“He’s working on a new book,” Mary said. “Writing is a creative process. It often involves a descent into madness.”

Susan shook her head again. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

“You may be right. You see, there are times when pen names take on a stronger reality than the original name. Consider Mark Twain. You can know his name was really Samuel Clemens, but most people can remember that only with an effort. It’s Twain that has the reality. Or Lewis Carroll. He’s the fellow we remember, not that stuffy Reverend Dodgson. That Weldon—he’s getting more real by the minute.”

“What about you?”

Mary shrugged. “I’m not struggling for a place in Max’s reality. “And Weldon is?”

Before Mary could answer, Susan heard a sound—the toilet flushing. She blinked in the darkness as Pat crossed the room, returning to bed. Susan was in her stateroom, in her own bed, still without an explanation.

Scientist study the movements of particles and predict their paths. But who can predict the shifts and changes of the human heart?

—from
The Twisted Band

by Max Merriwell

Susan stood on the observation deck as the ship approached the dock. She had woken early after a night of restless dreams. The day was bright and clear and cool, and she had come to the observation deck to watch the ship dock.

They were stopping for a day and a night in the town of Horta on Faial Island. Faial was part of the Azores archipelago, a group of nine islands in the North Atlantic. Susan had read about the Azores in her guidebook. Located 740 miles east of Portugal, the Azores were originally settled by that country and are now a part of Portugal.

From the observation deck, Susan considered the town of Horta. Whitewashed houses clung to the hills rising from the harbor, their red-tiled roofs shining in the sun. A gray horse pulling a cart ambled along the cobblestone street that followed the waterfront. It was still early morning, and she could see shopkeepers opening their shutters, setting out their wares.

The sun was warm on her face, and it looked like it would be a beautiful day. A light breeze tousled her hair. She was looking forward to getting off the ship, wandering through the town. She didn’t want to think about Max or Mary or Weldon or quantum physics.

“Good morning.”

She glanced in the direction of the voice and saw Tom, crossing the deck toward her. “Good morning,” she said, surprised to see him.

He gestured up at the bridge. “I was up there and I decided I’d better come down and protect you.”

She looked up at the bridge. The sun shone on the windows, which reflected the brilliant blue sky. “Protect me from what?”

“From Geoffrey, the ship’s navigator.”

Susan blinked, startled. “The ship’s navigator? Why do I need protection from the ship’s navigator?”

“The other night, when you and I were watching that UFO, Geoffrey was up on the bridge.” Tom gazed at the town, clearly choosing his words carefully. “Geoffrey is a bit of a ladies’ man,” he said slowly. “Yes?” Susan was baffled. She didn’t have a clue where this was going.

“Well, Geoffrey was up on the bridge just now, and he suggested that I ask you out to dinner. Well, actually, he said that if I didn’t ask you out to dinner, he’d come down here, introduce himself, ask you out himself. I figured that it’s my duty as a security officer to protect you from that.” Tom shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to go out with Geoffrey.”

“I don’t even know Geoffrey,” Susan said. She was having a hard time getting a handle on this.

“Trust me—you don’t want to know Geoffrey. Do you have any plans for tonight?” he asked.

Susan shook her head.

“I know a restaurant in a little village, not too far from here have the night off, and I thought you might like to get off the ship. This restaurant has the best seafood on the island.”

She finally realized that he was asking her out on a date. How strange. She hadn’t been on a date with anyone except Harry since college, when she and Harry had started going together. “Seafood,” she murmured. She studied his face, then returned his smile. “And you’re just asking me out to protect me. As part of your duty as a security officer.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Of course, there are some duties I enjoy more than others.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess if it’s your job, I have to go along with it.”

He nodded. “I suppose you do,” he said solemnly.

She glanced up at the bridge. “Shall we wave to Geoffrey?” she suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Tom said. “I think it would just encourage him. I’ll tell him you’ve been taken into protective custody.”

Susan returned to the stateroom where Pat was just waking up. Susan told her friend that she’d be having dinner with Tom that night.

“That’s great!” Pat said.

Susan shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been on a date since before I married Harry I never liked dating anyway.”

“Yeah? Why not?”

“It always made me feel like I was participating in some kind of ritual that had rules I didn’t understand. Seemed like everyone understood the rules except me. Getting engaged to Harry was such a relief.”

“You make your own rules,” Pat told her.

Susan nodded. That sounded like something Mary Maxwell would say.

“Or ask Tom what he thinks the rules are,” Pat said. “Tom’s a nice guy. You’ll go out to dinner. Sounds like he has a lovely romantic evening planned. You’ll have a fine time.”

Susan hoped she was right.

Late that afternoon, Susan stood on the promenade deck, near where the gangway led down to the dock. It had been a lovely day so far. No sign of Weldon or Mary. No uncontrollable dancing. No wolves. She and Pat had left the ship and wandered around the small town, having lunch in a cafe by the waterfront. They hadn’t talked about quantum physics at all.

A breeze carried the aroma of roasting sausage up from the dock below. A man had set up a grill at the end of the dock, and he was doing a fine business selling to the vendors who had come to offer their wares to the tourists.

Vendors selling jewelry, postcards, and souvenir trinkets had set up their stalls on the dock. They called out their wares in Portuguese and English; passengers shouted to each other over the crowd.

“Sam, come here and look at these bracelets,” called a woman in a pink-flowered muumuu. “They’re such a bargain!”

“Never buy anything at the dock,” Tom said from the railing beside Susan. “It’s never a bargain.”

She turned to look at him. She hadn’t seen him since early that morning.

He wasn’t in his uniform. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt patterned in turquoise blue flowers and his eyes looked very blue. He was wearing faded jeans, well-washed and comfortable. If he hadn’t spoken before she looked at him, she might not have recognized him.

“You’re out of uniform,” she said.

“Out of uniform and off duty. At least, I’ll be off duty as soon as I’m off the ship. When I’m on board, I’m never really off duty. But tonight, I’m leaving my pager behind.” He grinned.

Seeing him in civilian clothes, she felt nervous.

“You’re frowning,” he said. “Why’s that?”

“Just thinking,” she said. She hesitated, then said, “I guess this is a date. This may sound silly, but I’ve never known how to behave on dates. It always seemed to me that there were some kind of rules that I never learned.”

He frowned. “Only one rule,” he said. “What’s that?”

“Once we’re off the ship, we don’t talk about the ship any more.” She thought for a moment. “I can manage that.”

He spread his hands. “That’s the only rule.”

She smiled at him. “You look good out of uniform,” she said. She thought she saw an expression of relief flicker across his face.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready when you are.”

He led the way to the top of the gangplank, greeting the man who checked her cruise card at the security station. “Hey, Don, how’s it going?”

“No problems.” Don’s eyes lingered on Susan for a moment. Then he smiled. “Have a good time.”

Susan had the definite impression that she had been sized up.

As they walked down the gangway, she said, “So I suppose Don will be asking you about me later.”

Tom shrugged, looking sheepish. “Well, he’s already congratulated me on asking you out. I think Geoffrey’s been talking. Or maybe Ian.” Tom glanced at her. “Sorry. Being on the crew of a cruise ship is kind of like living in a very small town.” They reached the end of the gangway. “You ready to stop talking about the ship?” he asked.

“Ready.”

“Then come on.”

He took her arm and led her through the crowd, waving aside vendors who held out trays of jewelry, handfuls of postcards. He called out to them in Portuguese and headed in the direction that they waved.

“You speak Portuguese?” she called over the noise.

“A little. I speak a little Portuguese, a little French, a little Spanish, a little Italian, a little Greek. Just enough of every language to get myself in trouble around the world.” He glanced at her, grinning. He seemed much more relaxed now than he had on the ship. “Just enough to find a cab. Here we are.” They had reached the waterfront street. He waved to a battered black Toyota with numbers painted in yellow on the side. The car pulled over.

“Hello, my friend,” the driver called through the open window. He was a gray-haired man wearing a cap tipped back on his head at a jaunty angle. His neatly trimmed beard and thin mustache gave him a roguish look. “Where are you going?”

Tom named a village and a restaurant and the driver smiled. “Very good,” he said. “There is a festival in the village today.”

Tom opened the taxi door for Susan, then slid in beside her. “What sort of festival?”

“Music, dancing, a carnival! It is to celebrate the miracle of Saint Erasmus. Five hundred years ago, he rescued all the fishermen of the village from a terrible storm. So today, the village feasts.”

“Saint Erasmus,” Tom said. “That’s Saint Elmo, the patron saint of sailors.”

“I’ve read about Saint Elmo’s fire,” Susan said. “But I’ve never seen it.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’ve never read about it. But I’ve seen it a few times.”

She bit her lip, wondering if he was laughing at her. Then she decided that she didn’t care. He could tease her if he wanted. “Then we have the perfect balance,” she said. “Book learning and real life experience.”

The taxi had turned away from the waterfront and was jouncing up a narrow cobblestone street. Through the open windows, Susan could see the whitewashed walls of the houses, so close she could have reached out and touched them. Where the whitewashed walls were chipped, Susan could see black stone.

The driver kept up a running commentary as he drove. “These houses, they are built of black lava rock, cut from the hills. They come from the fire of the volcano. The white—it comes from limestone, which came from the sea. So our houses come from fire and water, the volcano and the sea.”

Children playing in the street scattered to the sides as the taxi approached, standing by the houses and staring in the taxi windows at Tom and Susan. When Susan smiled at them, they waved and called to her in Portuguese.

The taxi was approaching the edge of town when Susan heard goats bleating. The taxi slowed and stopped. A herd of goats filled the cobblestone street. The goatherd, an old man with a crooked stick, shouted at his goats and urged them forward. The animals crowded past the car, peering in the windows with wide yellow eyes.

“It is good luck,” the driver shouted over the bleating goats. “Meeting one goat on the road is good luck. Meeting so many—it is the very best luck.”

Susan laughed as a goat stuck his head in the window, then leaned back as he stretched out his neck, trying to nibble on her shirt. She bumped into Tom and he put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. He was laughing, too. He reached past her and tapped the goat on the nose. “That’s enough luck,” he told the goat. The animal looked offended and withdrew. “I think it’s even luckier to have a goat eat your clothing,” Tom told Susan.

The car lurched, throwing them together, and turned a corner, leaving the goats and the houses behind. Suddenly, the harbor was spread below them. The
Odyssey
was a toy boat, sparkling white against the blue water. The sun was a flattened red disk, bisected by the horizon.

“Look,” Susan said. “The sun is setting.”

“Maybe we’ll see the green flash. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read about it in Bowditch’s
American Practical Navigator.
When conditions are just right, the Earth’s atmosphere bends the light of the setting sun so that the last bit of light is a brilliant green.”

Susan laughed. “I read about it in a Jules Verne story, but I’ve never seen it either.”

The taxi slowed, following a rough, winding road that ran along the top of a ridge. For a moment, they passed behind a clump of trees, and the sun vanished from sight.