“Mine was a bit more exotic,” her husband added. “I was a pilot for Varig, and we had fuel and mechanical problems coming into Gatwick. We came in all right, but the nose wheel collapsed on landing, and we slid off the side of the runway and into a ground control radar hut. The base was concrete. All the passengers survived with only minor injuries, but we hit the small building head on. It shattered the windscreen, which is very hard to do, and crumpled in a part of the nose around the cockpit. My copilot had eleven broken bones and eventually lost his leg. I, on the other hand, had a piece of metal driven right into my skull. I have a very large metal plate in my head that makes it impossible for me to withstand airport security today— you should see their expressions when they use the hand scanner!—and although there is nothing wrong with the eyes themselves that we know of, there was internal bleeding and damage, and I’ve been unable to see since. I spent three years in British hospitals of one sort or another and remained there, partly because I had little to come home to and partly because, with the military government in power here and Brazil in such a bad shape economically, I could get much better care in the English system. Besides, I had to relearn even the basics of balance and get my confidence as a sightless man, and the therapy was quite good. I met Anne Marie while I was still in therapy.”
“You shared hospitals?”
She laughed. “No, by that time I’d been this way for years. But I found I could sit and rot at home, watching the telly and being spoon-fed by doting relatives and nurses, or I could get out and do something. When an old friend of Father’s who’d been working in the physical therapy wards voiced frustration that many people with relatively minor disabilities compared, say, to my own were so depressed and suicidal that they put themselves beyond help, I thought I might be able to do something. After all, if you’ve lost an arm, or legs, or even your eyes but you are confronted with someone with a more serious disability, like me, actually doing something, what sort of excuse do you have?”
The captain liked them more and more as he heard their stories.
“In truth, we are one person,” Tony Guzman noted. “Most of me works all right, except my eyes, and Anne Marie’s eyes work quite well. So she guides me and describes the world to me, and I do for her what she cannot do for herself. You would be surprised at how one could get used to almost anything.”
“No,” the captain responded, thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t. We all have crosses to bear. Some are just more obvious than others.”
“But what of you?” Anne Marie said. “No wife . . . Do you have family of any sort?”
“No, not really. Well, there is one person, but I have no idea now where she is or what she is doing.”
“A sister?”
“Not exactly. The relationship is rather—complex. Hard to describe. It’s been so long, though, that I find it difficult now to even remember what she looked like. We had some sort of fight. I can’t remember what it was about or even if I understood it then. She walked out, I thought for a little while, but she never returned, not even for her things. I never saw her again, even though I half tore that city apart looking.”
“You speak of it as long ago, but you are not that old, surely,” Tony noted.
He returned a grim smile the man could not see. “I am much older than I look.” Much older. The city, after all, had been Nineveh at the time of its glories.
“I hesitate to say it, but from your account I would say that she met with foul play,” Tony noted.
“Foul play possibly,” he agreed, “although she’s not dead. Once or twice I’ve run across someone who had known her, but never did I learn of it in time to track her. Like me, she is a survivor. If I had a clue as to where she might be, I’d still drop everything and go hunting for her, but, again like me, she could be anywhere in the world.”
“You still think of her like that, even though you say you can hardly remember her looks?” Anne Marie asked, amazed. “Surely there must be someone else for you out there.”
“I’m afraid not. We are bound in a way. Two of a kind. It’s no use going into details, but trust me on that.” He turned. “Ah! Here comes the sun!”
The three of them grew silent and let the great orb appear from the ocean depths, seeming huge enough to swallow the whole world. Finally Solomon said, “Have you two had breakfast yet? There is a cafe just a couple of blocks inland from here that is excellent. I would be honored if you would join me. My treat.”
Tony said nothing but seemed to wait for his wife to speak. She mulled it over, then said, “Thank you, I believe we will. But then we must get back. I have to keep to something of a schedule, and I have some medications to take. But right now I feel all energy. We shall do some things this morning and go to sleep early.”
“What? With all the nightlife here?”
She laughed. “Not tonight. Haven’t you heard? They say there’s some huge meteor that’s going to come in tonight and crash in the western jungle. Some of these bloody locals are panicking and moving out for the night or staying in church or whatever, afraid that God is going to smite them or something. They say, though, that it might be visible here in the early morning hours. Between one and three a.m. Atlantic time. They say it might fragment and give us all a spectacular natural fireworks show. I shouldn’t like to miss that, with the luck of being here when it comes.”
“I had to pull every string I know just to get into our room,” Tony told him. “There is not a vacant room anywhere in the area or farther inland, either. All the scientists and touristas, the sort of people who go on eclipse cruises, are all here for it, as are the newspeople from a hundred countries.”
“I haven’t paid much attention to the news,” the captain admitted. “I did hear something about it when I noticed the shops selling lucky charms and meteor repellent in the last week or so. I thought it was far away and inland, though.”
Anne Marie roared with laughter. “Meteor repellent! That’s wonderful!”
“Don’t laugh,” the captain responded in a serious tone. “I will be willing to wager a good amount of money that nobody who uses it has ever been hit by a meteor.”
They all laughed at his little joke, and then Tony said, “It is supposed to be visible from here—if it is clear. Of course, it is rarely clear here.”
The captain thought a moment. “Look, I’ve got a minivan. If you’re really keen to see it, we might manage the wheelchair and drive up into the inland mountains for a while, maybe above some of the coastal weather. That’s if you feel up to it.”
“Oh! That would be delightful!” Anne Marie exclaimed excitedly. “Sir, I will ensure that I am up to it. It is only one night, and we are on holiday, after all!”
Tony frowned and started to say something, then thought better of it, but it didn’t escape the captain’s notice. He had the distinct impression, though, that Tony was not all that thrilled by her being out on an expedition, however conservative. It made the captain wonder if there was something else important he didn’t know but should.
They had an excellent breakfast, and Anne Marie couldn’t stop talking about their good fortune in meeting the captain and how excited she was to be going somewhere where she was sure to see the big show.
After eating, Solomon accompanied them back to their hotel, one of the better ones in the area, as it turned out, with some handicapped-equipped rooms. Tony took his wife from the wheelchair with well-practiced motions and found the bathroom, acting as if he could see very well, indeed. He was certainly well adjusted to his blindness and had the room memorized.
He took some time with her in the bathroom. Finally they were done, and he brought her out and laid her on one of the beds.
“Thank you, Captain, for a delightful morning,” she said, sounding suddenly very tired. “I can hardly wait until tonight!”
Tony pulled up the covers on the still unmade bed, then made his way back to the door. The captain went outside, and Guzman followed, keeping the door slightly ajar.
“Captain, I think there is something you should know,” the blind man whispered, switching to Portuguese.
Solomon responded in kind. “I thought there was something.”
“We are here, at grave expense, because it is the last chance we will have. She has been growing weaker and weaker, and eventually even the automatic organs like the heart and lungs will fail. It is only a matter of time. This is, most likely, our last holiday.”
“I suspected as much. How long do they give her?”
“God knows. The doctors argued against this trip. I asked them how long she might last if she went into a hospital or was under constant home monitoring. They said a few weeks to no more than six months. Then I asked them how long it would be if she made the trip. They responded that it might be a few weeks to no more than six months but that it would certainly shorten her time. You have been with her this morning. I think you have seen why I fell in love with her. If she were to die today, here, it would be as she would want it, still out, still active, still doing new things. I think the doctors are wrong. I believe she would have died far sooner rotting at home. Certainly she would have died in misery instead of here, in my homeland, about which I have spoken all too much, watching the sun rise and smelling the smells and meeting the people. You see?”
He nodded. “But even you think this kind of silly trip tonight might be too much for her, is that it? Shall I make some excuse and call it off?”
“No! Not now. Had this been suggested only to me, I would have refused, but—well, you saw her. Perhaps it will kill her, but not before she sees the meteor. I just—wanted you to know.”
The captain nodded. “I’ll keep it an easy drive. And I suspect you might be underestimating the power of her will. She may die within the period the doctors say, but I think she’ll pick her own time and place.” He patted the blind man on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at six.”
There seemed to be only three kinds of people in metropolitan Rio that night: those who were terrified of the meteors, those who were profiteering from it, and those who were anxious to see what they could of the big show. Bars served meteor cocktails—which differed from bar to bar, but who cared?—and one main hotel advertised an Asteroid Ball in its rooftop club.
The captain found his new friends waiting for him, and once he was shown how the wheelchair collapsed, they managed to get everybody in the Volkswagen minivan. Getting out of town wasn’t difficult, but though traffic normally thinned out going farther inland, the two-lane road through the mountains that formed the natural barrier between the city region and the dense jungle beyond was almost bumper to bumper.
“It looks like everybody else had the same idea we did,” the captain noted sourly.
“Well, there are not many roads back here, and even those give out not far beyond the mountains,” Tony noted. “I do know a few places that might be less traveled, but the road may not be paved.”
“I’m willing, but I don’t want too rough a road, not only for Anne Marie’s sake but also because even though this is a good, solid Brazilian-made car, it doesn’t have four-wheel drive,” Solomon responded.
“These would be service and old military roads no longer in use. I do not know how rough they might be, but you should not need four-wheel drive for them. At any rate, we can take a look and you can make a decision from there.”
The captain shrugged. “If your memory can get me to them, by all means,” he said. He was a bit surprised. It had been Tony, after all, who had worried so much about Anne Marie’s fragility that he hadn’t been enthusiastic about the more civilized trip they had planned.
For a blind man who hadn’t been in the area in twenty years, though, Tony was proving remarkably accurate.
“There should be a dirt road going up the side of the mountain on your right about two kilometers after that intersection,” Tony told him. “It will have a sign marked do not enter—military district road. Ignore it and go on up. It has not been used as more than a lover’s rendezvous in more than a decade.”
The captain was a bit suspicious at Tony’s detailed recall. “How do you know all that?”
Tony smiled knowingly. “Well, I will tell you the secret. For a thousand cruzeiros the head porter was more than willing to suggest this and to write out the directions for Anne Marie. He has used the spot himself, you see. It is not likely, however, that there will be many up there tonight, or so he said, although he doubted we would be alone and suggested we use discretion with our lights.”
“All right, I’ll do what I can,” the captain responded, chuckling. “Yep. There it is. Pretty imposing sign and the remains of a gate and gatehouse.” He pulled off, slowed to a crawl, then went into second gear for the climb. It was steep, and he would not have liked to have met someone traveling in the opposite direction, but it was manageable. The climb also seemed interminable, and he kept a wary eye on the temperature gauge, which was climbing precipitously, but just as he wondered what was going to happen when he boiled over before reaching the top, the road swung around and there was a pulloff. He took it and waited for the temperature to come down. “Hard to say how much farther the top is and how many switchbacks we might face,” he explained. “I think we want to not only get up there but be able to get back down without having to coast.” He looked at the dashboard clock. “It’s a little after midnight. What time did they say the big show was?”