I lay quietly, watching Amoretta's deep, regular breathing. Her legs, slightly parted, were half-turned toward me, her round, full breasts stood out eagerly, as though she waited in her sleep for me to waken her in that most wonderful way of all. I wished I had the time but I didn't. The ISS seminars got off to an early start. I slipped from her encircling arm across my chest without waking her. I had shaved and dressed when she woke. She pouted some but eventually came and put her head against me.
"I have no words to tell you how it was last night," she said.
"You don't need words, Amoretta," I answered. "You told me already."
She smiled, a slow, comprehending smile, and I went to answer the polite tapping on the adjoining door. The professor was very much all right. After I took the alarm device from the front door, we went down and breakfasted together in the hotel lounge. If anything in the food was going to turn him into a vegetable, there'd be two of us.
The day was taken up with more seminars, more meetings and more of those brilliantly dull papers. I concluded, by the end of the day, that every scientist should be forced to take a course in creative writing. If there was anything sinister going on at the seminars it was those papers. In the evening Karl Krisst had arranged a conducted tour of the resort area. I stayed close to the professor and Amoretta stayed close to me. She wasn't purposely trying to be a distraction. She just couldn't help it. By ten everyone was safely locked up for the night and Amoretta was in my room waiting. She didn't have long to wait. She was everything she had been the night before, everything and more for she'd learned a few things. When dawn came neither of us had had too much sleep, but then, I consoled myself, how much sleep does a fellow really need? I'd stopped growing long ago.
It was the last day of the meeting, the time glad-hand Karl Krisst had called Relaxation Day, and he'd arranged a buffet at the beach.
'This is a happy day and a sad day," Amoretta said, running a slim finger down my chest. "Happy, because you will be with me all day and sad because when the day ends we must part. I will never see you again. I know it."
"Never is a word I never use," I grinned. "You may come to America or I may get to Calabria. Our paths may cross. I get around."
I didn't know it then, naturally, but I wished, later, that I had not been such a good prophet. As I hadn't figured on beach parties, I hadn't brought swimwear so I just took off my shut when we reached the beach, arranged the beach chairs so I could keep a constant eye on the professor, and relaxed. He was more than content to stay resting in his chair, and Amoretta curled up alongside me like a contented kitten. I brought the lunch from the buffet Krisst had set up, taking no chances on this last day. When the afternoon finally wore to an end, Karl Krisst made the rounds, looking even more rotund in shorts and a bright, yellow shirt of terry cloth. I watched him as he went from member to member, clasping an arm around each one, giving each a fond pat on the back, telling each one what a wonderful tan he had gotten. I found myself watching him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The irritation bothered me and I decided it was because he seemed so out of place amongst these sincere men who were, for the most part, both brilliant and simple at once. When he reached Professor Caldone, he helped him struggle out of the beach chair, and between pats on the shoulder, helped him into a beach robe.
"I hope you enjoyed your brief visit with us, Mr. Carter," he said, turning to me. "Not that we do not welcome having you, but whatever reason prompted your government to send you along with the professor will soon disappear, I hope."
"I hope so, too," I smiled. "If it hasn't, I'll be back for another meeting."
"And we will look forward to having you again," he said, easily outsmiling me. He turned after a brief handshake, made his way through the others, and, as I watched him bound up the stone steps leading from the beach, I felt a touch of sympathy for him. I'd always felt there was something pathetically lonely about the professional glad-hander. The true face of the clown behind the mask is so often a very different one.
Feeling a little like a mother hen with her brood, I herded everyone back to the hotel, checked out every piece of the professor's luggage, and we piled into the professor's little Fiat for the drive to Rome.
I wasn't risking any last-minute occurrence after the meeting or just outside the immediate area. In Rome, there was another round of good-byes and thank yous. The professor and his wife had been nice people to know, erudite, pleasant and honest. Amoretta's eyes held a silent message. I knew she didn't want to return to the mountains of Calabria, and I was sorry for her. She really wasn't ready to leave the hills, there were still too many unfinished edges about her; yet she deserved something better than she could find there. Another few visits with her uncle and aunt ought to do it for her, I was sure.
I left for the Rome airport with the feeling of a job well done. If anything had taken place at the previous ISS meetings, it hadn't taken place this time. If there had been a plot against Professor Caldone, it hadn't come off. Of course, I also knew that this one instance couldn't be looked at as a victory. The horrible sinisterness of it was still very much there and it raised an even bigger question. Where did we go from here? We had prevented whatever might have been planned for this meeting, which left us really nowhere. I put aside those irksome questions for my meeting with Hawk. I had something I wanted to clear up first. I caught a direct flight from Rome to London. It was my turn to pop up unexpectedly, which is exactly what I did, only to have the thrill of talking to Denny's landlady. Denny was away at a horse show and wouldn't be back for two days. The woman, a pleasant-faced old gal, was kind enough to take a note from me which I scribbled on the back of an envelope. I made it short. There was too much to say for a note. I wrote:
Sorry, again. One of these days I will explain and you'll listen.
V
The sky fell in. The world stopped spinning. I hadn't heard correctly, I told myself. It just couldn't be! Hawk's steel-gray eyes facing me across his desk were expressionless. Maybe I was dreaming.
"Say it again," I asked. He nodded slowly.
"Professor Caldone is a vegetable," he repeated. "His wife contacted us last night."