Turn of the Cards by George R. R. Martin, Victor Milan Page A

hairy.
    The others shift course, but their song changes, becomes wheedling, cajoling, and their bodies bump against his in a near-erotic way as they try to urge him to turn away. But the human he will become, too shortly, cannot swim, at least as he and his kindred understand it. When the transition inevitably arrives, he must be within wading distance of shore. Or the pale-haired man — and he, and the rest of the beings his own life line is intertwined with in a dance even dolphins cannot comprehend — will die.
    The air above is growing dark with approaching evening; in the west, sea and sky collide in a sheet of copper flame. He can feel the weariness come upon him, and the ache in his side throbs deeper, more insistently. It still takes all his will to keep drawing nearer to the land. The open Aegean water is dark and intoxicant as wine, the songs of his kindred more seductive than the Sirens And a different part of him, swimming down where light never reaches, would even welcome the fumbling and frenzy and final darkness f it meant not having to return to the prison of a land-borne human body.
    But he swims for the island, picking up velocity as he does so until even his speedy cousins can barely keep pace. His sense of time is not exact. If he misjudges, his kinfolk will try to help him even in his floundering human form. But they’re as likely to nudge him farther out to sea as in toward land; they are aware, and their minds are ever-filled with brilliant, flashing imagery richer than any human can ever conceive, but they aren’t really very bright.
     
    Staring out the window at the traffic and construction in Constitution Square, the woman in the high-laced sandals and belted white tunic laced her fingers together and flexed. Muscles popped out all over her bare arms, and stood out like flying buttresses on her neck.
    J. Robert Belew lit his pipe and puffed happily. The Greek national ace had curly black hair, flashing black eyes, olive skin whose natural gloss was augmented by a fine coating of olive oil. The broken nose added character to her face without detracting from its striking handsomeness.
    Hera would be a thoroughgoing babe, thought the unabashed male-chauvinist part of him, if the rest of her didn’t look so much like Lou Ferrigno with breasts.
    Standing by a wall-sized map of Athens, Mistral gave him a quick dirty look for lighting up. Her cheeks were smudged, there were dark scorch-marks on her white cape, and her trademark uniform was in dire need of dry cleaning. Raised since birth to be overwhelmingly conscious of her public appearance, she was visibly suffering from her disheveled state. More’s the pity, he thought. You look incredibly cute.
    The builders had tried their level best to give the offices of the new police headquarters the sterile, ergonomic look appropriate to the new European Community. The briefing room still stank of sweat, wool, and latakia. He faced her glare with total equanimity. If she had a magnanimous soul, she would think of his fine and subtle Virginia blend as air freshener.
    Then the female American ace noticed her Greek opposite number’s dark eyes upon her. She lowered her own and turned quickly back to the map. J. Bob grinned around the stem of his pipe.
    “— estimates property damage at upward of four million drachmae,” Colonel Kallikanzaros was saying beneath his Saddam Hussein mustache. He was a big man with droopy eyes and a face that seemed to have been laid down in several successively smaller slabs. He sat with his big hands propped above the tabletop by arched fingers, as if he were touch-typing. “We have damage caused by excessive and unnatural heat to our single most prized national monument. We have one gunshot wound, treated and dismissed, and two National Police officers with second-degree burns, likewise treated and dismissed. Finally, we have one Bureau of Antiquities employee in a neck brace, who claims an angel of God told him to sue the