Every instinct he had was telling him to sneak up to the camp, to listen to his new comrades, get the lay of the land before he appeared in their midst. Every ounce of training he had ever received insisted that he should act with caution, that he could not count on fortune to save him from his own foolishness. Every plan he had formulated for this mission involved a great deal of careful surveillance before his eventual infiltration.

But he must have inherited Gilligan's luck when he'd been given his face, because he was captured before he could even decide what to do first.

"Ah, there you are, my boy," drawled the capitalist. "Just in time! Lovey and I are heading out for a round of golf. And where would we be without our favorite caddy?"

A strap descended over his shoulder, and 222 staggered under the sudden weight of a golf bag. "But Mr. Howell—"

"No buts, dear boy, it's so vulgar," Mrs. Howell said. "Come along, now."

He went along. What else was there to do? He trailed along behind the capitalist pigs and handed them their clubs, more or less at random, not merely because he had scarcely more than a passing familiarity with golf, and therefore was not entirely certain of the difference between a wedge and a putter in the first place, but, as well, these ridiculous contraptions were nothing more than seashells tied to bamboo canes. After the third time he had handed the financier a clamshell on a stick when he wanted an oyster, or perhaps the other way around, the man lost his temper.

"Heavens to Muirfield, my boy, get the wax out of your ears! I said a nine-iron; this is a three-wood!"

222 looked at them. No, this one is a clam, and that one is a conch, you insufferable parasite. "Gee, I'm really sorry, Mr. Howell. Maybe I should write their names on the handles so I don't forget again."

"I wasn't aware he knew how to write," Mr. Howell stage-whispered to his wife, and rolled his eyes. "No, my boy, let's just get on with the game. Give me my driver. No, not that one—no, the other… not that other, the other other… yes, that one! Finally. Fore!"

It was a very long round of golf, and it would be hard to say which of them was the more relieved when it was over. 222 followed them back to their campsite, the golf bag slung over his shoulder getting heavier by the minute, and threw it into their hut as the Howells settled themselves into deck chairs, apparently exhausted from the effort of recreation. He turned to go.

"Gilligan, aren't you forgetting something?" Mr. Howell said.

I'm beginning to forget what sounded so bad about Siberia. "Um, what is it, Mr. Howell?"

"Our drinks, good fellow. We're absolutely parched after being out in the tropical sun all this time! Bring us our usual post-golf drinks, if you would be so kind."

Their usual drinks? 222 went back into the hut, scanned the sideboard in desperation, and eventually settled on pineapple juice with a splash of gin, mostly because, when the capitalists kicked up the inevitable fuss about these being the wrong drinks, that seemed like the sort of thing he would most enjoy drinking himself. Because of course there was no vodka. Americans had no taste.

Re-emerging with two bamboo tumblers, he handed one to each of them. To his utter amazement, neither one objected to his choice; a surprised blink or two when they tasted it, but no complaints. Not wanting to push his luck, he said quickly, "Well, I hope you enjoyed your golf game, Mr. and Mrs. Howell, but I really do have to go do some stuff," he said brightly, edging towards the jungle.

And he got twenty whole yards away from the clearing before he felt a hand the size of a porterhouse steak seize him by the shoulder. "Hey, there, little buddy… got a minute?"

222 thought fast. The captain was going to be the hardest one to fool, and they hadn't gotten off to the best of starts; the large man had already picked him up by the scruff of the neck and literally thrown him out the door once, and he wasn't really in the mood for a repeat performance. He pitched up his voice a step or two and tried to sound casual. "Sure thing, Skipper. What is it?"

"Well, to be honest, I've been thinking a lot about what you said this morning," the Skipper began.

Chyort voz'mi! He knows. Gilligan must have told him everything; now he knows that their mission here is compromised and—

"And you're right. I really haven't been treating you all that well, have I? I'm sorry," said the Skipper. "I should listen to you more. I should believe you, even when what you're saying sounds farfetched… like the gorilla, or all the other stuff. It's not fair of me to always assume that you're talking through your hat, and I'll try to do better from here on out."

222 blinked. That was… not what he had expected. Perhaps the raspizdyai finally stood up for himself. Good for him… and very good for me! "Boy, I'm really glad to hear you say that," he said warmly. "Thanks, Skipper. That really means a lot." He plastered a big, innocent smile across his face, and for the first time let himself hope that this half-baked scheme might actually work.

At least he didn't have to kill the capitalist peshka quite yet. He didn't really like killing people unless it was absolutely necessary.

OoOoOoO

The walls were haze gray, and the whole room felt… mobile. It vibrated slightly, in the way islands (as a general rule) did not, but which was nonetheless as familiar as his own heartbeat. He groaned a bit as consciousness began peeling through the layers of sleep clouding his brain, mostly because consciousness, for reasons he couldn't yet quite ascertain, involved a pounding headache, a vague sense of nausea, and a spot on the back of his head that hurt so badly he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep in the hopes that a second try at waking up would be less horrible.

But whoever was shaking his shoulder didn't want to hear it. "I'm up, I'm up," he mumbled. "Sorry, Sarge; I'm up…"

But the sergeant still wasn't happy, because he let fly with a long stream of syllables, none of which Gilligan could understand. Not, in and of itself, terribly unusual, but as a general rule, most of the syllables that made up a large portion of Sarge's vocabulary were at least somewhat familiar. Gilligan had seen most of them written on bathroom walls, and, besides, Sarge always interspersed them with a lot of regular words like 'now,' or 'and,' or 'you,' so even if you didn't know exactly what the man was suggesting, and chances were that you didn't really want to, you could get the gist of it with relatively little trouble.

Not this time, though. He couldn't understand a single word. The man was talking so fast, the syllables blending into one another, that Gilligan wasn't even sure where each word began or ended. Panic began sifting through the groggy haze in his mind, shouldering aside the pain. What was going on here? Why did everything sound like gibberish? Had he gone crazy for real?

He blinked. And why was he on a ship? And he was, no question about that; all it took was one glance at the stark gray walls, one moment of feeling the engines thrumming through the deck beneath his feet, to tell him that much. And the man still shaking him couldn't possibly be Sarge, because Sarge was career Navy, while he, Gilligan, had been out of the service for at least a couple of years now. But this was a ship. This was a Navy ship; it couldn't be anything else. Had they been rescued? If so, when? How? Had he slept through the whole thing? "How did I get here?" he asked.

The man shaking his shoulder laughed. "You are still playing part of Gilligan, eh? Very good, tovarisch, but mission is over! No need to keep using funny voice."

Adrenaline cleared the last of the daze from his mind. He swallowed, finally taking in his surroundings. This was a ship, a military ship, all right, but between the man's uniform and his accent, there wasn't much doubt about whose military it was.

Oh, my God. I've been captured. I'm a POW. Wait—can you even be a POW when there isn't a W going on? He was fairly sure that the answer to that was 'yes.' He put his hand to his throat, to the chain looped around his neck, but there were no dog tags there; just the steel four-leafed clover he wore for luck. He hoped it was still working.

"But what happened? We find you in boat, out cold, with blood in hair. Hit from behind! Did Americanskis attack you?"

"They wouldn't do that!" he said reflexively, stung.

"True. Would never have courage to attack Soviet agent," the man agreed, clapping Gilligan on the shoulder. "Commandant wishes to see you, to discuss mission. Where is tape recorder? I must make transcriptions of information you have collected."

"Uh, the pocket knife?"

Now the other man looked concerned. "Comrade, you must have hit head harder than I thought. Yes, of course, the pocket knife."

He checked his pockets, and somehow was not surprised to find the knife. They think I'm him. The other me. But the other me was the one with the knife, because I never had it, but now I do have it. Am I the me they think I am, or the me I thought I was? Wordlessly, he handed over the knife.

"Spasibo," said the man. "You rest. I will tell the Commandant he must wait to debrief you until you have recovered."

"Er… okay. Spazzy bowl," Gilligan said, trying to mimic the other man's pronunciation.

Apparently without success, because the Soviet agent just shook his head, visibly concerned, and left. The click of the lock engaging was very loud in the suddenly silent room. Obviously, whether he was Gilligan-the-first-mate or Gilligan-the-spy wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference in the long run. Either way, he was Gilligan-the-prisoner.

All right. He tried to reason it out the way the Professor would, the way the Skipper would. He was aboard a Soviet naval vessel. That was a fact. The men on that vessel seemed to think that he was his double. He was pretty sure that they were wrong, because he remembered being Gilligan for his whole life, and he didn't remember anything about being a Soviet spy. He didn't even remember how to speak Russian. On the other hand, the pocket knife death ray had been in his pocket, and it had only ever been in the other Gilligan's pocket, which might mean that—

He started. Wait a minute… how could it have been in his pocket? The Professor had found it on the beach! Were there two spies? Was all this just a hallucination? Maybe the Professor was right, and there never had been another Gilligan, just an ego distastement, after getting clocked over the head with something. He put a gentle, tentative finger to the back of his head and winced at the pain. Yes, getting clobbered had definitely happened somewhere along the line. So maybe this was all just a crazy dream. Except, if it was just a dream, how had he gotten on the ship?

Enough. There were, somehow, two Gilligans. The Soviet had thought he was the second one, the spy. Whether he was or not—and he was almost positive that he wasn't—might it be a good thing to pretend that he was? He thought about it for a moment, then discarded the notion. He didn't know for sure what the Soviets might do with him, except that it probably wasn't going to be very nice. Even so, all he had to tell them was his name, rank and serial number, and he knew all of those answers. If he tried to pretend he was a Soviet spy, he wouldn't know any of the answers, and they might decide that he was an American spy. And he was pretty sure that, whatever they did with captured sailors, what they would do to captured spies was a whole lot less nice.

And maybe, just maybe, if they told Washington that they had him, the Navy would figure out that, if one member of the missing Minnow's complement was alive, the others might be, too, and they would be rescued, he thought, grasping for any shred of optimism he could manage.

Or maybe Siberia wouldn't be as bad as everyone said...

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

* Chyort voz'mi—damn it

* Raspizdyai—idiot

* Peshka—worthless person. Literally 'chess pawn'

* Tovarisch—comrade

* Spasibo—thank you

* Spazzy Bowl—extremely mangled version of above

All translations and transliterations still courtesy of Google, and thus ought to be taken with the requisite grain of salt.