04. The Return of Nathan Brazil (19 page)

Mavra was entranced, but Marquoz commented, "Funny. I would have thought he'd have kept a low profile—yet here he is, constantly in the headlines."

"Not so odd," Obie replied. "Every man he was was a real person, who was born someplace, grew up someplace, worked his way up and eventually died —never of old age, I might add. He has a penchant for disappearances."

"You say they were all real people," Mavra cut in. "But they couldn't be—could they? I mean, it's all the same man . . ."

"It was, I feel sure," the computer told her. "Yet they were real. I cannot see how he managed it— yet, somehow, he did. It is interesting that all of them came from orphaned families or small families with few living relatives. Also, they were picked for close physical resemblance. At some point Brazil moved in and replaced each individual, usually at a juncture when the man was far from home and fairly young. One thing's for sure—he knew them well enough that he was never tripped up, never once. Everyone, even the people from the man's real past, seemed to believe the impersonation."

"I wonder—did he murder them?" Marquoz asked worriedly. "And, if so, what power did he use to become them literally when he never changed his physical form? It worries me."

That seemed to upset Mavra. "He would never coldbloodedly murder anyone!" she protested. "Everything we know about him says he wouldn't. As a small child I have memories—he spirited me out past the Harvich secret police during the takeover—the only strong memories from that period I have. There was kindness in him, a gentleness."

Marquoz shrugged. "Nevertheless, if he did
not
do them in, what happened to them?"

"That's the key," Obie said over the intercom. "That's the major thing. If we can learn
that
we might find him. For, you see, over thirteen hundred years ago he broke his pattern. He became Nathan Brazil, he purchased a freighter, he went into business. And he stayed Nathan Brazil until just over twelve years ago."

"Interesting," Marquoz muttered. "I wonder why?"

"Fairly simple," Obie responded. "First, that coincides with the development of the rejuve process, which, even then, was good for a century. As time passed the process got better, the possible lifespan longer. Of course, as you know, the brain cells eventually die even in rejuve, but by the time this would have happened to Brazil everyone who knew him and was likely to run into him was dead and he had a new batch of friends. Com bureaucracy being what it was, he had only to renew his pilot's license every four years and that would be that. He became a legend among the spacers—the oldest man still to be flying. He'd drank with them, gambled with them, fought with and beside them, helped them out when they needed it, and they owed him. The spacers thought that he was just the only person lucky enough to be able to take an infinite number of rejuves. With the Com expanding, times between meetings even of old friends was great. The relativity factor complicated matters, and, of course, he'd find little to like in the sameness of the hivelike communal that made up most of the Com."

"But he finally did give it up, huh?" Mavra queried.

Obie was philosophical about that. "Well, yes, of course. If a cult that said
you
were God started a campaign to find you—wouldn't you think it time to change identities? Somehow I think any of us would."

"You've learned this all from the computer files?" Mavra asked, amazed.

"Yes and no. It was there, but only in bits and pieces. It has taken not only the computer files but also the legwork of thousands of Fellowship members on a large number of worlds to correlate," Obie replied. "We could not have done it without them—but now we are stopped until we can unearth some clue as to where he was reborn."

"Did he just disappear again?"

"That's about it, Marquoz. He kept ships an awfully long time—two, three hundred years or more, until they wore out. They were all named the
Stehekin,
a word whose meaning eludes me. The last one was found, a huge hole blown through its midsection. It had been looted. There was blood on the bridge that matched Brazil's—quite a lot of it—but no trace of him or his valuable cargo. It was assumed that he'd been lured out of nullspace by a false distress signal, attacked by pirates, and murdered. There's actually a plaque to his memory in Spacer's Hall."

"You don't believe it, though," Mavra noted.

"Of course not. That sort of thing is his favorite way out. No, I think he found some real person, reached the point he had to reach with that person in order to assume his identity, and did so. He is somewhere else now, as someone else, waiting a decent amount of time before he can resume a normal life again."

A new voice said, "Well, I think he should be pretty easy to find." They whirled, saw that it was Gypsy. Marquoz nodded but Mavra looked at him strangely, an odd thought passing through her mind. It was ridiculous, of course, but . . . No, he was a little too tall, a little too muscular, a little too dark. She wondered, though. When Obie had picked them all up from the Temple that first time, the computer had not done anything more than simple teleportation. He'd made no detailed analysis; he hadn't stored the mind and memory of Gypsy and Marquoz. Later, they'd refused to use Obie's teleportation system. Both Gypsy and Marquoz had insisted on using spaceships. Afterward Mavra and Obie had run a check on Gypsy, just out of curiosity, and found nothing. Absolutely nothing. When even Mavra Chang's early history could be found in the files and all travel and expenses required records, there was not even a travel document showing that he existed. His thumbprints, retinal and blood patterns had matched nowhere at all.

Finally she couldn't resist it. "Gypsy? Ever heard of Malta?"

He looked a little surprised but didn't bat an eyelash as he replied, "Sure. It's the capital city of Sorgos, I think."

Marquoz chortled lightly. "I know what you're thinking. I've sometimes thought it myself. But, no, he has the wrong physiology. Brazil has occasionally been able to alter thumbprints but never retinal and blood patterns. Forget it. He's another mystery."

Gypsy looked confused. "What's that all about?"

"The lady was just wondering if you were Nathan Brazil yourself, that's all."

He chuckled. "Oh, hell, no. Whoever heard of a Jewish Gypsy?"

They all had to laugh at that. Still, Mavra told herself, there was something extremely odd about the man. His strange powers went beyond empathy. In an age in which everyone showed the proper papers just to go to the bathroom and even Mavra's had had to be carefully faked, Gypsy, according to Marquoz, had never been asked for them. In a customs line he would simply be ignored; stiff-necked hotel clerks, even when robots, never thought to ask for his documentation. Even on New Pompeii he strolled into high-security areas without a challenge. Why? What strange power did he have? Where did he get it? Could he influence Obie? Was that why the computer had taken no readout?

Seemingly ignorant of this mental speculation, Gypsy plopped down in a chair, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.

Even as Mavra stared, her preoccupation passed; her mind turned to other channels, dismissing the mystery of Gypsy as unimportant to their present work. She turned to the intercom and Obie and never once even questioned why the problem of Gypsy had suddenly become something she shouldn't concern herself with.

Nautilus

THE COM COMPUTERS WERE, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF Obie, the greatest and fastest gatherers, analyzers, and disseminators of knowledge in the Com sector of space. To this had been added Obie, a pleasantly human personality that masked the ability to do millions of different, complex projects all at the same time. The speed and rate of human conversation and the slowness of the human mind must have been agonizing to him, yet he never complained about it or seemed to think of himself as something apart from man. Obie thought of himself as a human being and acted accordingly.

Still, with all the speed and versatility at their command they had the problems of bureaucracy and interstellar distances. The information they needed would probably be available to Obie in fractions of a second—if he had all the data. Data, however, were gathered on a thousand planets over an immense area. The data were collected by millions of departments, eventually stored, eventually correlated, eventually— sometimes after years—sent on to higher authorities. The searchers couldn't wait for this information finally to reach the Com; they had to go out and get it.

And that, of course, was where the Fellowship of the Well came in. The Acolytes probed, sifted, stored, and passed on all they could. They were everywhere. If they could obtain the information freely, they did; if it took official sanction, they got it; if they couldn't obtain official sanction, then they begged, bribed, or stole what they wanted. Mavra Chang had once been an expert at computer thievery; Obie was an even better tutor.

Occasionally, Acolytes were caught with their hands in the informational till. In such cases, human and lower-government agencies were taken care of directly by Marquoz; if all else failed, Mavra and the
Nautilus
crew could break anybody out of anywhere. If a coverup was needed, Obie could be counted on to provide one.

Obie was working on the three common points in Brazil's history. Certainly he would try to disguise himself, but it would be a true disguise, not one of the new popular shape-changing techniques. He wouldn't risk exposing himself by resorting to an experimental device.

Only a small number of Jewish communities remained, and those were carefully monitored. Then there was his occupation—Brazil had always been a captain. It gave him mobility, peace and quiet, and anonymity, all of which he required. Mavra would check in with Obie daily on the
Nautilus
to keep up with events. Having just returned from bailing out two Fellowship adherents accused of stealing garbage disposal records on the largest city of an obscure frontier world, she was eager to hear of any progress.

"Progress is where you find it," Obie said philosophically. "So far I have amassed a lot of information on Jewish captains—there are a surprising number considering how tiny a minority they are— but very little that is specific. Material that came in this morning seems to add to what I need, yet it's not enough. I have a number of suspects, none of which might be Brazil. I need an additional correlation."

"Of what with what?"

"All the Jewish captains and Brazil's life and disappearance—that's the data still coming in. Check back in a couple of hours when I have the rest of it. I may be able to pinpoint it accurately."

So she went Topside and asked Marquoz and several of the Olympians to meet her later on. They would come running, although it could take a day or two to assemble everybody on the
Nautilus.

By late afternoon, when Mavra contacted Obie again, he had the search narrowed down fairly well.

"First of all," he began, "do you know what a rabbi is?"

She admitted she didn't, so Obie continued.

"Well, he is a priest in the Jewish faith—except he has no mystical powers, real or imagined. Literally the term is 'teacher' and means that his education has specialized in Jewish law and culture so that he's an expert—just as any other profession is the product of education. Each Jewish temple has a rabbi selected by the congregation for his knowledge of the faith— but there are numerous rabbis who have no congregation, who have other jobs, even, but who are considered experts and can instruct others. Many of these specialize in fine points of the law and live the faith, yet make their money in secular occupations. It's really a fascinating thing. Do you know, for example, that there are
three
rabbis who are also freighter captains?"

She was surprised. "Captains? Religious teachers?"

"See what I mean? And yet it's a triply good living, since it's not only lucrative and provides a lot of time for study but also is the best way to reach the small congregations scattered across hundreds of worlds. Of the three,
all
have at one time or another worked jobs in which Brazil's ship, as a private contractor, was also involved, so they all have met him. Two of them seem to have had extensive contact with Brazil over the years—decades, in fact—and may be considered close friends. But only one of them owns his own ship; the others work for shipping companies. I had encountered this before but had rejected the man because he was Hassidic—the strictest of the sects, or degrees, of Judaism, whose members are bound to rigid laws of dress, of eating, of religious form and observance. The Hassidim function in a modern world without compromising, basically keeping the laws that are thousands of years old. I had not expected to find Brazil in such a role since, clearly, he has observed very few of those laws himself. Also, this particular rabbi, is old; he's already undergone two rejuves, and he's taller and stouter than Brazil, with a full white beard. But, then, data that came in today persuades me of the logic of it all."

Mavra frowned. "Well, I can see that it would be an easy disguise—some padding, a false beard, some lifts in the shoes like I use. Yes. But beyond that?"

"Well, I was able to reconstruct route descriptions of this man's ship and Brazil's
Stehekin
for a period of three decades. You would be shocked at how often their routes are congruent—and remember, they both owned their ships, so they weren't bound by a traffic manager. Their side trips particularly interested me— they touched practically every strict Jewish community at some point in a two- to -three-year period. During the twenty years prior to Brazil's disappearance, they had celebrated the highest of Jewish holy days together at one or another congregation. They knew each other
very
well over a
very
long time."

"Doesn't that rule him out, though? Wasn't it Brazil's M. O. to find a young man to replace?"

"This is just as good. An old man who has outlived all his contemporaries. A freighter captain of repute and reputation. But, more important, roughly six months before his disappearance Brazil and this man met on a small planet. Our man was old, he was having medical problems, his physical was coming up and he couldn't possibly pass it without a rejuve— but medical records indicated that he just couldn't stand another rejuve. Yet, some four months later,
with no rejuve,
he took and passed a complete examination with flying colors!"