Pira

by Piers Anthony

  “Make them wash it first.”

  And lo, next day a former college girlfriend called. She was Tina, smart, pretty, educated, motivated, and clearly quite ready to take it to the next level. She had her own apartment, where he visited her; there would be no barriers.

  “You were the best of my passing boyfriends,” she said candidly, tossing her blond tresses in the way he remembered. “Now I'm looking to settle down.”

  “I—have a job now,” he said.

  “That you can't talk about,” she agreed. “I've heard the rumors. Must be important. Like being a secret agent.”

  He smiled. “Maybe.”

  She stretched, showing off her figure. “Are you on the social market?”

  “Not really.”

  She frowned; that evidently was not the response she had been fishing for. “Tell me about Pira.”

  Caught by surprise, he answered before he thought. “I love her.”

  Tina nodded. “So she's the one. Sex?”

  “She's a child!”

  “Who will soon be a woman. Sixteen is not considered childhood.”

  “No sex,” he said tightly.

  “I'd marry you in a moment, Orion, but it's clear you're taken. I wish you the best. But if you're interested in a passing dalliance for old times...” Her eyes flicked toward the bedroom.

  Would he be smarter to take her up on it? He wasn't sure. Pira had given him leave, in her fashion, but did he really want to?

  “Answer enough,” she said, reading his hesitation.

  The date continued, but the promise of it was gone. He regretted that, in a manner; Tina was completely worthy, and he should have given her more of a chance.

  Next day he went to see Pira; he couldn't stay away. “She's in the tub,” Manta said. She was as beautiful as ever. “I'm sure she'd welcome you if you cared to join her there.”

  “She would,” he agreed. “We've had joint baths before.”

  “Mercilessly teasing each other. She'll be out soon. Meanwhile we can chat.”

  “Okay.” He wasn't sure what she had in mind.

  “Pira's grown a magnitude in a year. They gave her a standardized test and she passed it without effort. She can discourse on math, literature, and all day on William Butler Yeats, and she's not nearly so shy as she was. So she has passed 11th grade in fine form. You have been phenomenally good for her.”

  “She applies herself,”

  “As if you had nothing to do with it.” She glanced at him obliquely, just as Pira did. “She tells me that you're in love, that you sleep naked and embraced, but that you haven't touched her, so to speak.”

  “She's right.” He sighed. “You said that when she bloomed she would govern me. She already does.”

  “In that case, who is declining the sex?”

  “She wants to wait.”

  “She wants to wait?”

  “She wants to bloom first. To have the body.”

  “And to be legal?”

  “That too, maybe.” That echoed their own discussion of the matter. “At any rate, it's her decision. She governs.”

  Manta shook her head. “You govern each other,” she concluded.

  “That seems to be the case.”

  Pira appeared. “Orion!” she cried, flinging herself into his arms. “I missed you so bad!”

  He kissed her. “What, not your parents?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “After one day apart,” Manta said, bemused.

  “He's my better half.”

  “So it seems.”

  Pira kissed his ear as he set her down. “Let's go on a date.”

  He made a mock frown. “What, and hold hands in public? What will people say?”

  “They'll be jealous.” She grabbed his hand.

  Manta shook her head. “I never saw two people so in love before, and it's not even time.”

  “We're breaking rules,” Pira agreed happily.

  But they agreed to separate again. It did seem to lend perspective to their relationship.

  The next call came as their week ended. “Washington!” Orion said. “Surely the president isn't holding Congress hostage.”

  Soon they were on the plane. Whatever protocols there were had been waived; there were no delays, no waiting in offices, no chains of command. They met privately with the third assistant to the secretary of state. “We are in a situation,” he said solemnly.

  “Not a local hostage situation?” Orion asked, bemused. This meeting was totally unlike the quiet orders that had directed them before. Pira had retreated to shy silence, as she usually did when in public.

  “Not exactly. We are in delicate private negotiations for a complicated international trade agreement that we would very much like to achieve.”

  Orion spread his hands. “This is not our area of expertise. We just do what we're told.”

  The man smiled. “And are doing it very well, I am told. You have saved a number of lives, and spared our country much awkwardness, while seeking no public credit.”

  “That's our job.”

  “We have done our best to keep Crossed Lasers out of the news. But it seems there has been a leak. There is a request for the Little Fish.”

  Pira looked up. “Me?”

  “You,” the man agreed. “The piranha. They have given us to understand that negotiations will be significantly advanced if the two of you go to South America for two days. The deal we are working on is potentially worth billions. We are obliged to humor them in this if we can.”

  “What do they want of us?” Orion asked.

  “They won't say. It is surely not inimical; they are a friendly nation. They may simply want to question you about Crossed Lasers, which they clearly know about. They promise no publicity. But they definitely want you there.”

  “Maybe they want to set up their own laser facility,” Orion said.

  “Quite possibly. Other nations are doing so. Maybe they are simply fans. There is still no other Number One in the world.” He glanced at Pira. “You are famous, in a classified manner.”

  “Why don't you just send us there?” Orion asked. “We've never been asked before to agree or disagree to a mission. We simply go and do what we can.”

  “Because you will in your fashion become American envoys. We want to be sure you make no inadvertent errors of protocol that might torpedo the deal.”

  “You don't want us to fuck it up,” Pira said.

  He looked startled by her term, taking her for the child she appeared to be, but agreed. “That is the essence.”

  Orion glanced at Pira, who nodded faintly. “We'll do our best.”

  They were treated to a rapid course on international manners and sent on their way. There were no dignitaries at the other end, no ceremony, no explanation. They were quietly met and hustled into a limousine that took them swiftly to they knew not where. They arrived not at a hotel but in a wing of what looked like a prison. And to a lone prisoner.

  “All this hullabaloo about getting our visit, and no welcoming party?” Pira asked quietly. “What's wrong with this picture?”

  “They surely have reason.” But he wondered too. Something odd was afoot.

  The prisoner was a bedraggled boy who appeared to be no older than Pira, which meant he was probably younger. He sat hunched in a corner of his barred cell, not looking at them. They were here to meet this?

  Yet there was something about him. “Hello,” Orion called.

  The boy flinched and hid his face.

  “He's been abused,” Orion murmured. “I think this is your play.”

  “My way,” she said. “Guard—the key.”

  The man who had brought them here had faded into the background, but now he stepped forward and gave her a key. She took it and unlocked the gate. She entered the cell, startling the guard. Orion let her, knowing she could take care of herself.

  She went to the boy. “Hello,” she said.

  He looked up at her, not resp
onding.

  “You're lonely and unhappy,” she said. “I will help you.”

  He did not move. It occurred to Orion that the boy did not know her language.

  She got down beside him, leaning back against the wall. She took his hand.

  His eyes widened. He turned to her.

  “Yes, I am one,” she said. “I know about being outcast and lonely.”

  It was surely her tone and manner more than the words, but the message got through. He turned into her, put his face against her shoulder, and sobbed. She held him as well as she could, patting his back, comforting him. They remained that way for some time.

  Finally it passed. The boy drew back and gazed at her.

  “I am Piranha, the little fish,” she said. “Who are you?”

  He said something in his language that sounded vaguely like Acorn.

  “Acorn, I will play a game with you,” she said. “Stand up.” She clarified her words by standing up herself.

  He copied her and stood facing her.

  “Put your hands out, like this,” she said, holding hers out, palms down.

  She was going to play hot hands with him!

  Acorn held out his hands, and she put hers palm up beneath them. “Ready?”

  He seemed to understand.

  She flicked her right hand around and over, slapping at his left with blinding speed. And missed.

  “Your turn,” she said, turning her hands over.

  He put his hands under hers. Then both his hands moved, slapping at hers. And missed.

  He stared. Then he smiled.

  “Now we are friends,” she said. “Orion!” she called over her shoulder.

  Orion entered the cell. The boy watched him nervously, so he moved slowly.

  “Acorn, this is my friend Orion,” Pira said, nodding to him. “Orion, this is my friend Acorn.”

  Acorn stood there blankly.

  “Friends,” she said. She stepped forward and hugged Acorn. Then she let him go and went to Orion, and hugged him.

  “Friends,” Acorn repeated, catching on.

  But there was something else. “Cameras,” Orion whispered in Pira's ear as they separated. She nodded faintly, understanding that they were being observed and recorded.

  Orion took the initiative. “You look hungry,” he said to Acorn. “Hungry.” He rubbed his stomach.

  “Hungry,” the boy agreed, rubbing his own tummy.

  “Guard,” Orion called. “Bring some food.”

  “He won't eat,” the guard replied.

  “Ah.” Orion pondered a moment. “You must have tried to feed him the wrong kind. He's Indian, by the look of him. Do you have cornbread? Fish? Whatever it is the Indians eat.”

  The guard departed. “Acorn is as fast as I am,” Pira said. “You know what that means.”

  “Crossed Lasers! The potential.”

  “That's why they wanted me. They knew I could relate. He's like living gold: enormously valuable to them, if they can just get him into it. I don't think he likes them, though.”

  The guard returned with a loaf of cornbread and a roasted fish on a platter. Pira took it and presented it to the boy.

  Acorn grabbed it and took a bite of the bread. Yes he was hungry! In moments he had eaten all the bread and the fish, bones and all.

  While the boy ate, Orion approached the guard. “What's the story here? Why do you have this native boy in prison? You know he's special.”

  “There was a fire. His village got burned out, his family killed. We managed to rescue him alone. There was no safe place to keep him but a wing of the prison.”

  Orion pondered that. It was entirely too pat. The one person to survive was the one they wanted for Crossed Lasers? More likely they had spotted Acorn's potential, been unable to recruit him from his family, so had deliberately torched his village to cover the raid that abducted him and wiped out his family. Latin American politics could be deadly, particularly with respect to Indians. Naturally they hadn't said anything to Orion and Pira, and made sure there were no officials in the know present. But what could he say? He could not recover Acorn's family. It seemed better to let it be, much as that griped him. They would surely take good care of the boy, once that potential was harnessed.

  Pira and Orion had established relations with Acorn in a way the local government could not. Soon they were teaching Acorn a few words of English, a language he did not know.

  “We need more,” Pira decided. “We have only two days and this may get complicated. We have to get better dialogue.”

  “Flash cards.”

  She nodded. “Maybe that will do it.”

  Orion faced the guard. “We need a set of flash cards, the kind they use for retarded children. Pictures of things, with words.”

  The man disappeared. During his absence Orion whispered “ugly background.” He could not risk saying more, because of the surveillance cameras. But Pira's lips thinned. She got the message.

  Soon the man returned with a set of cards. Probably the surveillance cameras endorsed the request; the hidden authorities wanted this as much as Orion and Pira did. They were in Portuguese, but that didn't matter for this purpose.

  “Ideal,” Pira said. She picked up a card with a standardized picture of a man and held it for acorn to see. “Man,” she said, ignoring the printed word.

  “Man,” Acorn echoed.

  She indicated Orion. “Man.”

  The boy nodded. He got it.

  She got another. “Woman.”

  “Woman.”

  Another.“Girl.”

  “Girl.”

  She pointed to herself, and waited.

  “Girl,” Acorn said.

  She got another. “Boy.”

  “Boy.” Acorn smiled. He pointed to himself. “Boy.”

  “You got it!” she exclaimed, and kissed him on the cheek. Plainly he liked that. Pira was, as it turned out, an effective teacher. She understood motivation as well as substance.

  They went over other words, establishing the basics. They had rudimentary communication.

  Now Pira tackled a new aspect. “Get us better fish pictures,” she told Orion. “Not generic; I want types, including piranha.”

  Orion explained to the guard, who in due course fetched more specific fish pictures.

  Pira found the one she wanted. “Piranha,” she said.

  “Piranha!” he agreed. He recognized that fish; it was probably a danger in the jungle where he must have lived. Then he looked at her, confused. Orion was perplexed too; where was she going with this?

  “Yes, that is my name,” she said. “The Little Fish.”

  He made a gesture as of pulling his leg from water. He said a word that might have meant Danger. He made exaggerated biting motions.

  “The piranha bites,” Pira agreed. “So do I.”

  Acorn was understandably confused.

  Pira gestured to his bare foot, and made a bite in the air.

  Acorn jerked back his leg. She had lasered him!

  She gestured to his hand, air biting again. He jerked it back.

  “I can bite at a distance,” she explained. Then she used cards and gestures to clarify what she could do, concluding with a flash card on the floor which burst into flames. It did not take him long to get the essence.

  “Now we will take a walk outside, and I will show you more.”

  Orion spoke to the guard. “Take us outside. To a park. No people.”

  The guard led them through a labyrinth of passages to a private park.

  Acorn gazed at it with longing. Yes, he was a forest boy.

  “We will walk,” Pira said. She glanced at the guard. “Alone.”

  The man balked. “No.”

  “Do you not understand?” Orion asked him. “We are not running away. We merely want private time with the boy. A walk in the park alone. Is this not reasonable?”

  But the man stood his ground. “No.”

  “You'll have to encourage him,” Orion t
old her.

  Pira nudged Acorn in a conspiratorial manner. “Watch,” she murmured.

  “Return to the prison,” Orion told the man. “We will rejoin you there shortly.”

  The man stood, going nowhere.

  “Do it,” Orion said to Pira.

  The guard suddenly jumped up. “Yow!” She had given him a hotfoot.

  Acorn laughed. “Piranha!” he said, making a biting gesture.

  “Now let us be,” Orion told the man. “Your superiors will agree. You won't get in trouble. Don't make the little fish bite you again.”

  The man retreated, returning to the building.

  They walked through the park. “Cameras?” Pira asked.

  “Not here,” Orion said. “We surprised them by coming out here.”

  “Good.” She turned to Acorn. “Watch.”

  “Watch,” he agreed.

  He watched as she oriented on dry leaves at the base of a tree. “See my hands,” she said. She held them up close to his face, so he could see the veined gloves. Then she slowly aimed them at the leaves.

  The leaves burst into flame.

  “Piranha!” he said, understanding the power if not the technology. To him it probably seemed like magic, but it was clear that she controlled it.

  “Yes. There are beams. Where they cross, boom!” She aimed her hands again, slowly, so that they faced the tree. She angled them, and it was almost possible to see the invisible beams reaching out. The two beams intersected, and there was more fire.

  “Two beams,” Acorn said, getting it. He was plainly amazed.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  He looked at her in alarm. “Burn—no—please.”

  “No burn,” she agreed, removing her own shirt.

  “Pira, what are you doing?” Orion asked, alarmed.

  “I'm going to have him use the harness,” she said. “So he knows exactly what it's all about.”

  He was horrified. “But--”

  “Trust me.”

  Orion raised his hands in surrender. This was a side of her he had not seen before.

  Pira removed her harness, then put it on Acorn, who was of similar size. Then she touched his hands, using a code to activate the power. “Careful,” she told the boy.

  “Careful,” he agreed, frightened but fascinated.

  “Aim at the leaves.” She pointed to another small pile near the first.