50 in 50

"I found this on the shore. During the winter. No one had been here for months. It may have come over The Falls. Now I'm not saying it did — but it is possible. You will agree it is possible?"

"Oh, yes — quite possible. How else could it have come here?" Carter reached out and touched it. "I agree, ordinary paper. Torn on one edge, wrinkled where it was wet and then dried." He turned it over. "There is lettering on the other side."

"Yes. But it is meaningless. It is no word I know."

"Nor I, and I speak four languages. Could it have a meaning?"

"Impossible. A word like that."

"No human language." He shaped his lips and spoke the letters aloud. "Aich — Eee — Ell — Pea."

"What could 'HELP' mean?" Bodum shouted louder than ever. "A child scribbled it. Meaningless." He seized the paper and crumpled it and threw it into the fire.

"You'll want to write a story about me," he said proudly. "I have been here over forty years, and if there is one man in the entire world who is an authority on The Falls it is me.

"I know everything that there is to know about them."

American Dead

Francesco Bruno crossed himself, muttered the quick words of a prayer, then turned his attention to the metal plate on the splintered table before him. Hunger possessed him, he had not eaten in over twelve hours, or he would not have been able to face the little beans with the black markings, or the limp, greasy greens again. He ate quickly, aware of the dark figures silently watching him. There was only water to wash the food down with.

"Show him the paper," one of the men said and, for possibly the hundredth time in the last three days, Bruno took the creased and stained sheet from his wallet. A black hand reached out and took it from him. The newcomer carried it to the paneless window and held it to the light to read it. There was a muttered discussion. Bruno looked around, at the gnarled, white-haired woman bent over the stove, at the board walls — with gaps between the boards big enough to get a finger through — the poverty and the barrenness. Even the slums of Palermo, where he had grown up, were not this bad.

The newcomer brought the paper back. "What you got with you?" he asked. Bruno opened the stained canvas pack, with the weathered initials US on it, and began to spread its contents on the rickety table. They had given him this in place of the suitcase he had left the city with. The palm-sized TV camera, the recorder for it, the fuel-cell power pack, the extra reels of tape, a change of underclothing and his toilet kit. The man poked through everything, then pointed to the camera.

"This a gun?" he asked.

Bruno did not bother to explain that he had been through this routine an uncountable number of times since the journey had begun. Patiently, he set the camera, explained how it operated, then shot a brief take. When he reran the tape the men pushed close to look at the tiny monitor screen.

"Hey, Granny, you on the tee-vee. You gonna be a big-time star, you hear!"

He had to replay it again for the old woman, who chuckled in appreciation before returning to the stove. The demonstration had cleared some of the tension from the air, for the first time, the newcomer relaxed and dropped into a chair. He was big and dark, dressed in patched and muddy army fatigues. He had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder and clips of cartridges hanging across his chest.

"You kin call me Chopper. Where you from?"

Bruno spread his hands wide. "From Europe, a consortium of the press…" He saw the quick frown and glower: damn his Oxford English. He tried again.

"I'm from Italy, way down in the south. I work for a newspaper. I write newspaper stories. We have a lot of papers over there, television stations too. We were informed that it might be able to send one man over here. Everyone got together to pick one man. I am the one they picked…"

"You sure nuff talk funny."

"I told you, I am from Italy."

"You say somfin now in that Italy talk."

"Buon giorno, signore. Voglio andare al—"

"He sure talk it, all right," one of the interested bystanders said.

Chopper nodded approval, as though this demonstration of alien ability had made an important point.

"You ready go now? We got some walkin' tuh do."

"Whenever you say." Bruno hurriedly stuffed everything back into the pack, after first wrapping it securely in a sheet of plastic. Walking would be no novelty. He had walked, rode muleback, traveled in a wagon, a truck, cars. Blindfolded most of the time.

They went out into the tiny yard, soaked and muddy chickens squawking out of their way. The early-afternoon sky was dark as evening and a perpetual fine rain was falling, drenching everything. But it was warm, even hot once they started walking, the air almost too humid to breathe.