“That’s what wrapping paper is like,” she agreed. “What are you writing?”
He paused to add a word, then covered the sheet with his hand. “You could call it a diary,” he said. “We don’t have much privacy here, and there are some things I’d just as soon not advertise to the world.”
She frowned. There was something odd about his tone. “So we can’t see it?”
“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t say that. I guess a few friends could take a look.”
“Like me?” Rosaleen offered. “It’s my pen.”
“Why not?” Dannerman said. “Only do it like this, please.” He cupped the scrap in two hands and lifted it to his eyes, opening the hands at the thumbs just enough to peer inside. “Can you do that?”
Rosaleen gave him a baffled look, but did as instructed. “Thank God for radial keratomy,” she muttered. And then, “Oh.”
She closed her hands again over the scrap, looking at Dannerman with interest before she passed it to Pat. “You know the drill,” she said. “I hope your near vision’s in good shape.”
It wasn’t, particularly, but when Pat had done as ordered, opening narrow slits between fingers for light, she managed to make out the blurry scrawl:
If anybody has any useful ideas for escape etc let’s share them like this.
“Oh,” Pat said, too. “I see what you mean.” By then Martin and Jimmy Lin were clamoring for their own turns, and Dannerman was already writing something else. When he passed it to Pat it said:
Concealed weapons? I have flex, glass knife in belt. Martin, what’s in lapel? Anybody else?
By then they were all industriously writing little messages of their own, squabbling over their turns at Rosaleen’s pen. “Hold it,” Rosaleen ordered. “Let’s make sure everybody sees everything. How about if we pass them around in alphabetical order-Adcock, Artzybachova, Dannerman, Delasquez, Lin. Then you can dispose of the messages when you’re finished with them, Jimmy.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, swallow them, maybe?”
Lin looked rebellious, but Dannerman said, “Maybe we can burn them up in the cooker?” And when they had all seen the first message he gave it a try; it worked. The crumpled scrap of paper became ash, and he teased it out and ground it into powder with his heel for the floor to remove.
By the time they had finished taking inventory they had discovered they possessed a remarkable little armory: Dannerman’s glass blade, Martin’s plastic stiletto, a garroting cord from Jimmy Lin. Even Rosaleen had a pair of knitting-sized needles in her boots; apologetically Pat admitted to being the only one who had entered the Clipper without fallback arms.
But when they had exchanged all the information they had to offer, secure from the prying outside eyes, the temporary euphoria subsided and she felt let down. It was nice to know that they had some weapons. But what was the good of weapons when they had no plan to use them?
Passing secret messages around was a kind of pleasure Pat hadn’t experienced since high school, but it palled. There was really nothing for them to say, and besides they were all getting hungry again.
While they were cooking their individual meals Rosaleen was investigating the cooker. “There must be a power source for this thing somewhere,” she said puzzledly. “I can’t find it. Maybe it’s in the base? The rest of it’s nothing much but sheet metal.”
“Funny sheet metal,” Martin rumbled. “It isn’t even warm on the outside.”
“Like a microwave,” Pat offered.
Rosaleen shook her head. “It’s not a microwave. Those vegetables Jimmy put in were foil-wrapped, and it didn’t spark. I don’t exactly know what-oh, hell!” Tardily they all smelled the scorching as the container of beef stew inside began to burn.
“Damn,” Dannerman said. “I had my mouth all set for that stew.” But it was powdery ashes before they could lever it out, and in the long run Martin simply picked the cooker up and shook them out of it for the floor to dispose of.
It was Martin, then, who noticed another curiosity. “Look here,” he said, pushing at the device. “The wheels don’t roll anymore.”
Pat looked and discovered that they weren’t actual wheels, anyway; they were just metal balls. When she pushed at the gadget hard enough it slid sluggishly over the rubbery floor, but the wheels weren’t turning. “But it rolled easily enough when Dopey pushed it in,” she said, perplexed.
“Maybe,” Rosaleen said thoughtfully. “Or maybe they never did turn. I think we’ve got another piece of that far-out technology we were looking for here.”
“For all the good it will do us,” Martin said grumpily.
Dannerman and Pat took their food over to sit against the wall. Dannerman was deep in thought-probably, Pat supposed, about ways of getting them out of their prison cell. She hoped so, anyway. She was just getting used to the fact that her own cousin was a gumshoe; the annoyance was fading, curiosity was beginning to assert itself. She said, “Feeling talkative, Dan?”
He blinked at her. “What? Oh, sure. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, you told me that after college protsy they drafted you into the army-all right, the protsy-“
“Had to be the protsy, Pat. They had snappier uniforms and no thirty-kilometer hikes.”
“Then what?”
He chewed reflectively for a moment. “Well, when they called me up it turned out they didn’t need any more people in uniforms. They needed undercover ops. They thought I’d do just fine mingling with the white-collar criminals and the yuppy terrorists. I objected. I said I didn’t want to spy on my old friends, so they said, sure, we can give you something else. And they did.” He shook his head wryly. “They ordered me to infiltrate one of the ultra light plane gangs in Orange County-you know, like the Deadly Force and the Scuzzhawks? The gangs that had been taking over little towns and scaring the hell out of the citizens? It meant wearing the same leathers for three or four weeks at a time and never taking a bath-not all that different from here, you know? Except that there were occupational hazards. The reason they needed gang infiltrators so badly was that they were having a pretty high attrition rate with the agents that managed to get in at all. All kinds of casualties: one plane crash, two ODs-and one guy who was found washing up with the surf. It didn’t take me long to call in and say that, after all, I thought investigating tax frauds and radical-chic terrorists was more along my line of work.”
Jimmy Lin had settled down nearby, listening intently. Pat gave him a glance, then grinned at Dannerman. “I think you made the right pick. I can’t really imagine you as a Scuzzhawk. But, look, that was eight or ten years ago, at least? And you didn’t quit when your hitch ran out?”
He said simply, “I found out I kind of liked it.” Fascinated, Pat persisted. “What else did you do?” “Whatever they told me to do, pretty much. That outfit I used to work for in New York before I came to you-that was drugs. And I did a lot of antiterrorist stuff, too: the Free Bavarian movement, the Spanish guys that blew up Nelson’s column in London, all that.”
“And you’d go in and make friends with them, and then the end result of all these adventures was you put somebody in jail.”
Dannerman gave her an injured look. “Only the bad guys.”
Pat looked at him wonderingly. “Dan-Dan,” she said, “you know what I think about you? I think you didn’t keep on being a spook for the money. I think you did it because you want to protect people. You’re a kindergarten teacher, you know that? Jose pees on Elvira’s milk and cookies, so you give Jose a good swat-but you’re doing it for his sake as much as for hers.”
Dannerman looked as though he was getting hot under the collar. “Somebody has to keep the peace. Do you have any better way of doing it?”
“No,” she said, studying him analytically. “I don’t. Actually, I think it’s kind of sweet.” He shrugged. “You weren’t that kindly a kid, you know. What happened? Do they teach compassion in the spy school?”
“Not exactly. We did take a course in sensitivity training, but basically it was to teach us how to manipulate people.” He looked at Jimmy. “Of course,” Dannerman said, “I’m not the only one with experience in this area, am I?” Lin was silent, waiting, watching Dannerman’s face while the bowl of goulash was cooling on his outstretched thighs. “I mean,” Dannerman went on, “you knew I was an agent. You had to find out from somewhere.”
Lin sighed. “If you’re asking if I’m a professional spook like you, the answer’s no. But, yes, I did know. They told me at the consulate, first thing, as soon as I got back from Houston. That’s why I started cozying up to you.” He glanced penitently at Pat. “See, Pat,” he said, almost pleading, “I want to go home, I mean without getting arrested. They’ve got a warrant out for me at Jiuquan. It’s a chickenshit political charge, but they’re serious about it; jail’s involved, and, trust me, you don’t want to be in a Chinese jail. They told me I could square it by performing a little service for the state. So, I ask you, what could I do?”