The Annihilators by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

20

When I awoke to daylight, I found that most of the events of the night had lost all reality, assuming that they’d ever had any. With sunshine at the window I couldn’t really believe that I’d experienced miracles of telepathic communication, watched a human sacrifice, and solved by means of an induced dream—if you’ll buy that, I told myself, you’ll buy anything—a problem that had baffled generations of trained archaeologists.

It all seemed very unlikely and really very unimportant beside the one event of the night I did believe. I was aware of an empty sense of loss; and the fact that what I’d lost was another man’s wife didn’t make it any more bearable. She’d been perfectly right about the involvement. I was discovering that it had gone considerably deeper than I’d suspected—strange in a way, because I still remembered very clearly a small girl who’d died, whose memory I could be said to have betrayed, although Elly Brand herself would have laughed at the sentimental notion of being faithful after death.

I got into yesterday’s grubby jeans, my .38 revolver, and my desert boots; and I found a clean but suitcase-wrinkled guyabera shirt to top off my costume respectably. Frances was already at breakfast with the Putnams when I reached the dining room. All three gave me the same kind of casually cheerful good-mornings as I found an empty table overlooking the pool and tucked the big camera bag under it. I gave my order to a pretty waitress, in a crisp huipile. She reminded me of the lovely priestesses who, in’ my dream, had brought my Melmec axemen their cups of death.

“Do you want company or do you prefer to brood alone?”

It was Miranda Matson looking bulky and shapeless in a short-sleeved green jumpsuit that, I realized, was actually a faded military coverall with the sleeves partially amputated. The washed-out black-stenciled name and unit of the original owner could still be deciphered, if anybody wanted to take the trouble.

“I’ve just decided that the last thing in the world I want to do is climb another goddamn pyramid,” I said. “Sit down, sit down.”

She sat down. “Well, we’ve all got something,” she said easily. “With me it’s horses. Honest. Every so often I have to climb on one of the brutes out in the boonies because it’s the only way to get to the damn story; and every time I tell myself it’s a perfectly friendly and harmless animal, a docile servant of mankind, and every time I’m in a total helpless panic the whole time I’m aboard the crummy beast.” Her pale blue eyes studied me shrewdly out of her wide red face. “Why don’t we ever tell the bastards to shove their lousy nags and pyramids, hey?”

“Machismo?” I suggested.

“That may be the answer for you, but what the hell have I got to be macho with? No, cojones aren’t the-answer, Flash, but I’m damned if I know what the answer is. Incidentally, nothing’s come in for you since last night.

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