Jeff had always imagined the savannah, with its shrubs and dry trees dotting the large expanses of grass ranging from yellowish to intensely green, as something uniquely African, and so never imagined such things existing in Brazil. So he studied the terrain with a watchful fascination from the passenger seat while Mireya did the driving. He had nothing to distract him, for they hadn't spoken since leaving the inn.
It was his fault. Mireya was unhappy—worried—about his presence. She had even told him off, saying he could be as reckless as his brother! That comment led to an argument as he in turn challenged her recklessness in going off alone, and accusing her of letting her emotions cloud her good sense. The fight finally climaxed when she lit into him about his clothing, insisting that he change into something thicker with long sleeves and pants as a protective measure. Jeff had gone along, despite the hot, dry wind that scraped across his face as they tore down the road in their rented Jeep. The argument had long since ended, but the memory of it still hung about them, like fading thunder.
It was a little past noon when they stopped at the shabby little township that housed the mineworkers. Mireya found that she didn't like it. For a start, it had the sterile air of facility and not of a town. with bunker-like buildings of concrete laid out in a grid that was far too precise and regular. The International Zinc logo was painted everywhere, and was also patched onto the uniforms of a trio of men with guns who stood on a street corner and watched with beady eyes as Jeff and Mireya sped past.
The place also felt empty—half-abandoned—so that Mireya was startled when, after she had parked near what appeared to be an inn, a man stepped out from around a corner and shouted at her. "Ei! O que vocês dois estão fazendo aqui?"
"Desculpe-me," she replied. "Eu...no falo portugués. Falo español."
The man's expression darkened. But Will intervened, flashing a small leather wallet in the man's face and addressing him in what, to Mireya's astonishment, sounded like fluent Portuguese. And as she watched, the man took off his hat and began to docilely answer Jeff's questions. After thanking the man, Jeff plucked Mireya's elbow, and together they casually strolled away. "That was amazing," Mireya said when she had recovered from her surprise, "but I need you to explain how you know Portuguese."
Jeff smiled. "Inmersión profunda en el lenguaje. Recuerda que pase varios meses aquí en Brazil con Miranda. Ella insistió que aprendiera portugués; justo ayer, mientras salí a dar un paseo, me quede en una barra hasta que lo recuperé."
It took Mireya a moment to recover from a second shock. "When did you learn Spanish?" she demanded.
"Okay, I'll come clean. Listen and watch carefully," he said, and pointed to his lips. "Inmersión mmm mmm. Pase mm meses mmm Miranda mmm yo aprendí portugués mmm noche mm mm yo mm mm en una barra mmm lo reaprendí. I don't know Spanish, Yiya," he continued, "and I don't know Portuguese. Well, just a tiny bit, enough to get out a few words of what I want to say. But you know Spanish and he knows Portuguese, so when I spoke, you both filled in the bits you were expecting until it made sense."
"That still doesn't—"
"It's based on an old Viritrilbian trick," he said as he took the wallet out again. "Nash and I—"
"You're not Viritrilbian, Jeff."
"No, but Nash and I used it to come up with these. We call them 'flash papers'. If you show them real quick, people see what they expect to see. Like, if I say I'm John Smith, FBI"—he flipped the wallet open just long enough to show her its interior—"you'll see exactly what you expect an FBI agent to be carrying."
It was true. In the brief moment the wallet was open, Mireya saw a badge. She would even have sworn it was inscribed with the name "John Smith". "¡Ay Jesús! You’re right!"
"Sure. I showed him the flash papers and said something about the Ministry of Health and the local deaths. He filled in the rest of what he expected to hear and see. It was pretty crude," Jeff admitted, "and I to him I probably sounded like a real mush-mouth. Joe or any other Viritrilbian would have sounded to him like a native speaker. Because, like I say, it's adapted from a Viritrilbian prodigy."
"Would it work for me?"
"Well, no. Sorry, Yiya. It's based on a Viritrilbian trick, but it's adapted for Sulvans. You know, the whole 'mirroring things back' thing."
"Huh. But you talked to him like you understood what he said."
"Oh that. Simple." Jeff touched his ear, and Mireya suddenly noticed there was an earpiece lodged in it. "Something else Nash and I cooked up. A mike-slash-earpiece connected by bluetooth to my phone." He touched his pocket. "I've got a massive translation app loaded onto it, and it fed me his answers in English."
It pleased Mireya to see how cool, confident, and professional Jeff could act. But she also couldn't help worrying that he acted a little too confident. That was the trouble with youth, and she had seen it in other Stellae she had trained. Sometimes they got too confident too quickly.
--
The trek to the mines was treacherous, for they were stopped on the road by the first group of guards they met, and not even Jeff and his "flash papers" could talk his way past them. So they had clamber up the hillside, keeping under cover of bush and tree as much as possible. After several hours of slow, careful climbing, they emerged onto a shoulder of the hill, and Mireya sucked in a sharp breath and pulled Jeff down behind a bush.
"That looks like a side entrance," she said, pointing to a deep and ugly scar in the cliff face a hundred meters off. It was guarded, too, by three uniformed men, and when she peered through a small pair of binoculars she also noted a surveillance camera. She passed the glasses to Jeff.
"Wait here," he said after handing them back.
"What are you going to do?"
"Try to get the door open for us." From his jacket pocket he took a suede glove and pulled it onto his hand.
Mireya grabbed his arm. "You haven't graduated yet," she reminded him.
"If I pull this off, maybe Rick won't even bother to give me a final exam."
Mireya bit her lip as Jeff left her, scuttling across the open ground toward the guards, pausing only once to flick his wrist as though to toss something in their direction. It was a gesture she'd seen him make before. He was casting the "cloak" that he used when he desired to pass unseen.
But would it work on the camera? Mireya was doubtful.
And Jeff still moved carefully even though he was now "invisible" to the guards, sidling crabwise until he was against the cliff face some dozen yards from them. By the way he moved, Mireya could tell he was trying to stay out of camera's gaze. Slowly he edged toward the guards, and he must have made a noise, for at one point of the men turned sharply to glare right at him, before turning back to his comrades. Jeff froze.
Then, to Mireya's astonishment, he detached himself from the wall and walked calmly up to the men. He touched one on the back of his neck, and the man slumped to the ground as though felled with an axe. As the other two bent over him, Jeff touched them, and they fell senseless to the ground as well. Jeff turned, and gestured Mireya to join him.
"The camera!" she hissed as she ran up to him, and she stopped just out of what she judged to be its range.
"Forget it," Jeff said. "It's busted. That's why there was a guard posted. I lost a lousy ten minutes trying to get past it, too, until that one"—he pointed at the first guard he'd taken out—"said something about, when are they are going to get the camera fixed. They don't like being out here. They're scared of something."
"Are they okay?"
"They'll be fine, but we've only got an hour till they come to."
"What did you do to them?"
"Knocked them out." Jeff held up his gloved hand, into the palm of which was stitched a complicated sigil. "First thing I made all on my own, for Nash. Knockout gloves, I call 'em. These guys won't even have a headache when they come to."
--
The slit in the hillside widened into a crude tunnel which eventually intersected a smooth passageway. It didn't feel like a mine, Mireya thought, but more like an underground facility. She had time to study the walls, for Jeff moved ahead as they explored, casting his cloak before him, then would gesture her to catch up.
Eventually they came to a junction, where he left her alone for longer than usual as he explored around a corner. When he came back, his eyes were wide, and his hair seemed to be standing on end.
"Yiya," he whispered, "there's supposed to be a Basilisk lair around here, right?"
She nodded.
"Well, what I just saw doesn't look so much like a lair as like a breeding facility!"
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