A Game of Authors by Frank Herbert Read Free Book Online

motioned for Garson to enter.
    Garson took a deep breath, stepped into the canoe, scrambled to the front and sat down in dampness, his jacket and the empty revolver in his lap.
    Caribe , he thought. Could he mean piranha? But they don’t have piranha in Mexico. Only in South America.
    The canoe tipped and righted as El Grillo took his position in the stern. The dugout moved out into the lake, turned left along the shore. Garson felt rather than heard the rhythm of the paddle.
    Presently, he saw the amber glow of lights ahead. They drew closer. The dugout nosed into a mudbank with bushes bending down overhead.
    El Grillo came forward, leaned over Garson’s shoulder.
    “There is a trail directly ahead of you, Señor . Follow that trail. It leads to a wall with a gate. The gate will not be locked. I will leave you now.”
    “How can I signal if I want you to come and get me?” asked Garson.
    El Grillo remained silent a moment, then: “Tie white cloth to those bushes above you there. I will come after dark.”
    “Will I find your nephew in there?” asked Garson.
    “I have no nephew, Señor .” The hand pressed his shoulder. “Now, go with God.”
    Garson felt a sudden aversion to that phrase. He tucked his bundled coat under his left arm, stood up, reached for the limbs overhead to steady himself. There appeared to be a log beside the canoe. Garson stepped to it, slipped. The limbs in his hand bent down. He found himself flat on his back in a foot of surprisingly cold water. With much splashing and floundering, he scrambled onto a mudbank, still clutching his coat, turned.
    There was no sign of the dugout. Then he saw a faint movement of white along the shore to his right. It disappeared.
    His clothes clung to him with a refreshing coolness. He turned, slipped and scrambled to higher ground, located the trail, paused there while he looked at the lights ahead. They appeared to be windows and some lanterns hung in trees. The weight of the gun and his wet coat pulled at his arm.
    Abruptly, Garson slipped the revolver from the coat, found a rotten log beside the trail, pushed the gun under the log, kicked leaves over the area to hide it.
    Then he strode toward the lights, his senses alert to every sound.
    A low wall loomed ahead, broken by an arched double gate. A gas lantern in a fog of insects hung from a limb just inside the gate. He could see another gas lantern in a screened enclosure beyond the gate.
    Almost as though they were lighting my path , thought Garson.
    Now, he could make out a high-backed rattan chair in the screened enclosure, a table beside the chair covered with papers.
    He stopped at the gate, looked inside the walled area. It was a garden, thick with palms, papaya, mimosa. He could smell jasmine. A brick walkway led from the gate to the screened enclosure, thence to the adobe wall of a house at the other side of the garden.
    Garson lifted the latch of the gate, stepped into the garden. Now, he could see a double door in the wall of the house. He stepped out along the walk, froze as a voice came from the high-backed chair in the screened area. It was a man’s voice, deep and with a touch of querulousness.
    “Is that you, Raul?”
    Garson cleared his throat, felt suddenly weak-kneed with the realization that he was at the moment of discovery.
    “What’s the matter with you, Raul?”
    The back of a grey head arose above the chair followed by wide shoulders in a white suit. A gnarled hand fumbled for a cane beside the chair, found it. The man turned.
    Garson had seen a hundred photographs of this face: the wide forehead, bulging brows, the thin nose and large dark eyes. Only the goatee was new. It gave him the look of a grey-haired Mephistopheles. There would be no mistake.
    This was Antone Luac.
    “Oh, so it’s you,” said Luac.
    Garson’s voice failed him. He had been prepared for almost any other reaction: for outrage, for bitterness—even for violence—but not for casual acceptance.
    “Well,