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of the Weave long before they ever encountered mankind. Hadn t Caldaq admitted that Earth lay far off
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the beaten interstellar track? No, they would be shown conclusively what Will had been trying to tell
them all along and then they would go, leaving him with a little gold of his own and, if he was lucky,
recordings of their music to inspire and infuse his work with the exotic for the next twenty years. He felt
no compunctions at keeping both. Teaching paid next to nothing, while the history of musical patronage
was old and respected. Wagner had his Ludwig of Bavaria. Will Dulac had the Massood.
Chapter Twelve
It took the shuttle crew several weeks to reestablish themselves in the protective lagoon and extract from
its warm waters a toolbox full of yellow persuasion. The gold was produced in the form of thick-walled
straws. Will assumed it had been condensed around some kind of tube or wire. The toolbox was sturdy
enough to hold it all, but he worried about the handle breaking. It was heavy enough that he had to shift
the load repeatedly from one hand to the other.
You re sure you trust me with this? he asked T var. I ve got a small fortune here. I could go ashore
and disappear and you d have to start all over again. Why would you do that? wondered the short
Second-of-Command. You re right: I wouldn t. You have your cause and I have mine. I m going to use
what s in here to prove to you that you re wasting your time on my world. The Human was very
confident, T var mused. His words repeatedly contradicted the claims of the xenopsychs. Claims were
not proof, however, of either thesis. That would come only with additional study.
This world, he realized, represented a great gamble. Too great, if an injured interfacer was to be
believed. Second-of-Medicine was of similar mind, but the concerns of two members of the medical staff
counted for very little in conference. For now T var found himself agreeing with the majority. This world
offered confusion, but not danger. If its mysteries could be unraveled then its promise might be fulfilled.
The shuttle carried a tender, an air-repulsion craft designed to give a survey crew the ability to explore
the surface of new worlds. It was not large, but it would serve to transport Will to the mainland under
cover of darkness. He d never been farther inland than the port of Belize City, but he knew that the
country was mostly undeveloped rain forest and swamp, a steamy refugee from a Somerset Maugham
novel brought forward from the 1920s and set down whole and intact in the present day. Air traffic was
sparse and the main roads little traveled. They should have no difficulty crossing the coastline
unobserved. They set him down near the main highway, promising to meet him at the same spot in a
week s time. Will was not sanguine about his chances. You may find me waiting for you by myself, he
told T var, the gold notwithstanding. But I ll do my best.
You will choose a representative sample of your people. The Wais was speaking to insure that at this
critical moment there were no misunderstandings. The bird-thing looked more comfortable than the
S van.
Of course, Will lied. He had no intention of being so imprecise. There might be a number of soldiers
on leave in the city. The British maintained a substantial garrison in their ex-colony, to keep chauvinistic
Guatemalans at bay, and the Americans used the country as a base for training their own soldiers in
tropical warfare. The last thing Will wanted was to recruit a mob of poorly paid would-be soldiers of
fortune.
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No, the people he picked up would be much more selectively representative than that. Soldiers and
even ex-soldiers he would avoid like the archaic attitudes they represented.
The ship s techs wanted several dozen specimens. Will patiently explained that a group that large would
invariably attract unwanted attention, even in laid-back Belize. He did not add that the greater the number
of people he brought back, the more likely it was to include one or two individuals of the aberrant type
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