by Dean Ing
Yet his nightmare continued as the smaller man handed him a large filmy sack. The voder was already programmed: "Step into bodybag, pull it up over head. When I pick you up, go limp. Whatever happens, play dead until I tell you to speak. May take an hour."
Laird took the huge bag, fumbled as he whispered, "Look, I have to believe you're on my side."
In the dimness, the head nodded.
"How would I recognize the rovers sent to kill me?"
In answer, the man jerked a thumb at his own breast.
"Maybe you would, but—." Laird stopped. "That's not what you meant, was it?"
Slow headshake. Accustomed to the gloom, Laird thought he saw a crinkle around the eyes. A wry smile, perhaps.
Now the body bag was nearly up to his chin. "You're the rover sent to kill me," Laird whispered hoarsely.
Slow nod.
"So you'd have the keys to the perimeter gate and access to a company pickup, wouldn't you? And you still might throw me off a cliff somewhere."
A shrug — but that odd, ugly little automatic was now in the man's hand, held by the muzzle for display.
Yes, if he wanted a man dead he sure didn't lack the means to do it; could have done it already. Over the roof parapet; down the stairwell with a broken neck; or maybe into the bodybag quietly, into the damned company pickup and then out to some canyon where the man could shoot him like a trussed goat.
Laird felt the top close above him, fought an urge to scream, then found himself hoisted in a fireman's carry. An arm slapped at his legs, not hard, and he made himself suitably limp.
All the way out of town and up the old freeway, Laird bounced under a tarp in the bed of that pickup.
And at every bounce he wondered whether he'd been hoaxed into his grave.
When at last he felt himself being dragged feet-first onto the tailgate, Laird vented the smallest of strangled sobs and felt steely hands grip hard against his ankles. Then he was again carried over uneven ground for some distance. He heard the murmur of water; began to breathe deeply, wondering if he could fight his way out of the bag before he drowned.
Laird found himself deposited carefully on grass, then heard the voder again: "Whisper. Pickup may be bugged."
"Where are we?" He helped the man shuck the bag away and now for the first time he began to hope, to truly believe, that he might live.
Pause at the voder. "River near cemetery in Ogden. Good place to lose a deader. Good place for you to walk to monorail." Laird felt, more than saw, the pile of clothes that dropped in his lap. But the voder's glow gave him enough light for him to change.
"Mind if I ask — well, don't you speak American?"
Pause. Then, "Not with a radio planted in my skull. They can hear every word I say. Do not hear this gadget."
"How d'you know they can't?"
Pause. "Still alive. Explosive in the radio in my head. If you get caught…"
Laird jumped and did not hear the last few words from the voder, for the man was suddenly speaking aloud; a young man's voice. "I hear you, Control. No, not yet. Message is in process but not yet delivered." A brief pause before, "You know my em-oh, why not get off my ass until my message is delivered?" Then after a moment, "How should I know? Maybe an hour. I'm already in Ogden so it shouldn't take me long to deliver message two." After the last pause, a sigh: "Into the goddam river. It's the quickest way; quicker still if I don't have to give you a blow-by-blow. Thank-you-Control-and-out,"
he finished in a singsong parody of good cheer. His sigh at the finish seemed only half exasperation. What was the other half? Relief?
Dandridge Laird stood up, tried the fit of the sport jacket while the young rover busied himself with the voder. "A little short in the sleeves," Laird whispered.
"I get the god-damnedest complaints," said the young man aloud, and it was a moment before Laird realized the rover might have been talking to himself for all anyone else knew. The little son of perdition was quick all right.
Then the voder began: "Wait five minutes after I leave. Walk to lights, read instructions, then walk as if you owned IEE."
Laird laughed almost silently. "Only fitting; it owns me."
Pause. "Not any more," said the voder.
Laird nodded; stretched a hand out to be shaken, found it ignored. The rover was busily stuffing old clothes and a hefty stone into the bodybag. Uneasy now, anxious to be on his way, Laird whispered, "Is there any way I can help you?"
Long pause. For a moment the young man did not attack the voder keys. When he had finished, it said,
"Wait a month before telling family. By then I may figure how to disarm this thing in my head. If not it probably won't matter. Best help for me is, you not get caught." He left Laird standing there, and he left on the run.
Laird did not wonder whether the young man's next 'message delivery' would be of life or of death. He was too busy just inhaling the scent of grass, and of flowers, and of life; and of the joy he would take in it for as long as he lived. One day Laird might recognize the inestimable value of Ted Quantrill's gift.
CHAPTER 23
Only a crazy wolf, or a very hungry one, would be hunting at midday on the unprotected flank of the mountain that soared above the San Rafael desert. The gaunt gray loafer had made hors d'oevres of one ground squirrel and the yellow eyes glittered toward another when, simultaneous with the great shadow, an unearthly rustling drone moved down the wind. The little varmint fled. The wolf looked up, then padded swiftly into one of the abandoned man-made caves that once had followed crystalline yellow ore into the belly of the mountain.
Before the war, the huge delta dirigible had been as yellow as that uranium oxide ore. Repainted for wartime cargo missions, it had at last been decommissioned and bought, on very special terms, for industrial use. Now the delta carried the IEE logo on its tan polymer hide. Its crew were veterans of a war and many an unscheduled cargo drop, but they seldom flew over Utah's central desert. In Cassidy-and-Sundance days the region had been dangerous because only desperate men lived there.
Now it was dangerous because, for the most part, no men lived there. The few who did, were desperate for modern reasons.
Cargomaster Cole Riker leaned over the shoulder of the delta captain, pointing to their two-hundred-meter shadow that raced across the mountain.
"If that's Temple Mountain, Steve, we're a little off-course."
Stevens nodded easily, switched off his headset so he wouldn't be recorded. "Thought we'd take a look at Goblin Valley on the way in. Since the war nobody but a few plutocrats can afford sight-seeing in these parts."
"It's a shame what crosswinds can do to a flight plan," Riker said facetiously, and saw Stevens's reflection grin back through the windscreen.
Though the delta had been designed for a crew of eight, wartime mods and peacetime cost-accounting had reduced the crew to two. Neither of the men knew that the corporate CEO, Boren Mills, had personal reasons for employing the fewest men possible on a cargo drop into the San Rafael.
Stevens increased buoyancy, actuated the enormous elevens, and eased more power to the shrouded, stirling-engined props that whirred like a billion muted sopranos on the lifting body of the delta. He could always explain such anomalies on the flight recorder in terms of the plain orneriness of a delta. It was overloaded, for sure; so much so that it could barely climb above three thousand meters. Wind currents were haphazard, too.
At maximum altitude, with the video magnifier, they could study Goblin Valley longer. The bizarre wind-rounded sandstone blobs sat like so many gargantuan sepia biscuits baking on pedestals in the bone-dry Utah heat. Then Stevens thought to flick his headset on and, "I'm getting the lab signal," he said.
"Wonder if they've installed an honest-to-God mooring pad."
Of course they had not. Stevens asked for help in securing the big retractable landing struts which, in a proper moorage, found sockets to fit. The huge delta rocked gently as it lost headway, passing over earth berms that sloped ne
arly to the roof of the lab complex.
Riker counted nine men below, all in lab smocks, and swore as he noted a braided pigtail on one of the men. When a Chinese rejected the revolution of his elders, he tended to do it up brown. Riker didn't mind working with wartime enemies, but when securing a delta you needed flawless communication.
Riker dropped the cargo hatch himself and nearly fell while shinnying down handholds of a mooring strut.
The lab staff was willing but maladroit; not until Cole Riker had snapped a cable latch into a mooring ring did the Chinese understand how to secure the others, and naturally Stevens couldn't cut the stirlings as long as vagrant winds might tug, slap, or tilt the motionless vessel. Finally Riker toggled the winch pneumatics, saw the strut pads squash against concrete, and pronounced the delta secure. The bellicose rustle of the props died and, with the Chinese and one incredibly hairy Caucasian, Riker got the air-cushion pallet in place.
Stevens could not leave the controls with such primitive moorings. Damn a corporation, Riker thought, that didn't give a rat's ass about the working stiff. It wasn't so bad with the small companies, only they tended to get gobbled up by the big ones. In his last state-of-the union address, the President had quoted gross national product figures and claimed that things were improving. For the big boys, maybe. But to Riker it seemed that the split between haves and have-nots was widening.
The Caucasian, Chabrier, signed for the first palletload. "I gather we shall see more of each other in the coming weeks," he said in gallic accents.
"Damn right. And if you can install some strut sockets we can do it a whole lot quicker."
Chabrier asked, as they maneuvered the air-cushion load to the roof elevator, how many trips would be necessary. Riker thought five trips might do it. "So soon?" Chabrier's deepset eyes, Riker thought, were those of a thinner man — at least thin in spirit.
Riker: "Well, we're stripped to the bone and carryin' eighty thousand kilos each trip. With some good cargo handlers and proper moorage we could have all this stuff — whatever it really is — delivered in ten days." Riker had intended a harmless joke along with the pointed hint about trained handlers. In every industrial cargo there were bound to be items that wouldn't match a manifest list.
But the Frenchman's face clouded. "It is merely automated machinery and tunneling equipment," he said quickly, tapping the fax sheet. "How is it that you can carry such loads?"
"Tell you when we're through." Riker scrambled back into the delta to winch another pallet into position.
Hours later, when the sixteenth pallet had been trundled to the elevator, Marengo Chabrier spoke in a richly intonated dialect to his lab crew who disappeared with the load. "Perhaps you will join me below for an absinthe," he said then to Riker. "Or perhaps something even stronger." The barest tint of urgency colored his offer.
Riker whistled. "Stronger than absinthe?"
"I am a chemist, mon vieux." Shy and deprecating — but pleading, too.
"Oh. Uh, some other time, maybe. I'm on IEE time, and the light will be fading soon. Cap'n Stevens will be edgy as three cats in a sack after a whole afternoon at his console." Riker restowed the air cushion, turned to shake Chabrier's hand. "See you day after tomorrow if we maintain schedule. Don't worry about the cable releases; that much at least is automatic. We can afford electrics below the hull. And we can save lots of time if you can get us a decent moorage. Think about it."
"Unfortunately, Riker, I too am on IEE time, and funding. I fear we must do our best with things as they are. It helps when one can relax with one's liquids and powders. Or even to present a friend with a kilo of them."
This time the air of desperation was unmistakable. Cole Riker knew what a kilo of some alkaloids was worth; knew also that he wanted nothing to do with them. Suddenly he wanted only to get away from this half-crazy frog squatting atop a desert lab croaking friendly overtures to a near-total stranger. "It'll bear thinking about," said Riker, and swung onto the strut handholds.
The props were already turning, the fuel-stingy stirlings warming to thermally-efficient range. Chabrier called up through the cargo hatch. "Riker! You are certain you can complete the shipments in so little time?"
"Barring a malf we can't fix, yes," Riker shouted, then grinned. "I'll tell you why now, if you won't let on to your crew. Just didn't want to worry you during your early experiences with an IEE delta. It's really pretty safe, you know."
"What is safe, mon ami?" Chabrier saw the cables release, to whirl like snakes into belly orifices.
"Hydrogen," Riker called, pointing at the buoyancy cells above him as the belly hatch thunked shut. As Stevens poured full power and actuated the strut pneumatics, the vast delta vaulted safely upwards for the first ten meters. Laughing, Riker watched «the poor Frenchman run full-tilt off the end of the roof and tumble down the berm, away from countless cubic meters of the near-explosive hydrogen. It really was fairly safe, Riker told himself. Nothing like the safety of helium, but lots cheaper and with roughly ten per cent more buoyancy. That was IEE for you.
Riker checked the pallet anchors, his smile fading as he mentally replayed his hours with Chabrier. It seemed almost as if the bulky chemist — if that was really his job — wasn't interested in speeding up the shipments. If anything, as if he craved a delay. And friendship. But why would a highly trained scientist crave camaraderie with a delta crewman? As the vast craft slid upward into the last of the sunlight, Riker pondered the question and studied the particle-beam perimeter weapons that stretched away across the trackless desert.
One hell of a waste, he thought, to set up such a P-beam security rig as that. All corporations were a little paranoid about their measly secret processes. What could be so important that anyone would bother to sneak in? But that was IEE for you…
CHAPTER 24
For all its gleam and pillared portico, White House Deseret was chiefly a ballroom with a few staff offices, guest rooms and kitchen. And with one particular elevator to whisk senior staff and certain invited guests, far down below the 'bench'—a natural terrace at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. From the bottom of the shaft, Boren Mills took a ten-minute ride in a magnetic sling tube. Mills was not supposed to know — but knew, nonetheless — that the real hardball business of Streamlined America was transacted directly beneath the repository of Mormon genealogical files in Cotton-wood Canyon. If you weren't safe under the Granite Mountain genealogical vault, you couldn't get safe.
Mills passed through more security, then forced a pleasant smile despite an urge to gape. The raven-haired young amazon who escorted him to the Presidential apartment was nearly two meters tall in her spike heels, and while the hooded white satin gown fell to her ankles, it was also slit to reveal a lot of luscious apricot-tinted thigh. This was a far lusty howl away from the conservative male staff who had escorted him in previous visits. It unsettled him; told him to expect changes in a man he had studied carefully.
That man was also just a tad drunk. "Go and ponder your sins," Blanton Young told the improbable vision, and waited until she had gone.
"Future sins, I hope." Mills could not resist it.
"How'd you guess?" Young took the small Mills paw in his big one, held the Mills forearm with his other hand. The ritual communicated great physical vitality, which Young could squander. "I tell you, Mills, there's no end of wisdom in that scripture."
Mills let his gaze follow Young's open-handed gesture. On one wall of the lavish ultramodern room was a tablet of black onyx, and inset in flowing script of richest polished gold was the legend: "… And it is by the wicked that the wicked shall be punished."
"Interesting," said Mills, not knowing what else to say.
"Interpretation of the Book of Mormon is just a matter of Divine guidance," said Young, as if that guidance was self-evident, leading his guest to the wet bar. "For instance, in '97 it told me I should shunt that bunch of Army assassins into S & R as soon as my," he paused to savor some personal joke, "sainted predece
ssor shuffled off this mortal coil." With that, he performed a shuffling two-step, then took a sip from his goblet.
To say that Mills was aghast was to claim a delta dirigible was a penny balloon. Mills did not care what caprice a man chose, so long as he chose it predictably. This was not the Blanton Young he had seen previously — or was this, at last, the private Young emerging? Mills managed to say, "Got it: wicked hit men punish wicked Indys."
Rumbling: "Rebels, son; an Indy is a rebel only when I interpret him as one. But it took me awhile to realize that you can make a sinner punish himself-herself," he winked, with a wave of the big head toward the door, "by a penance consh — consisting of more wickedness. You take a girl brought up strict, caught lifting a smoked ham to feed a few useless mouths; and if she's not too keen, after a week or reconditioning you can argue her into, ah, any position."
Reminds me of an old joke," Mills essayed.
"Bet I've heard it."
"About druggies. Their idea of a round-table religious debate is to see who can commit the most original sin on your lazy susan."
Young guffawed after a two-beat pause. Mills would never know whether he really got it. "Well, I owe you one for that," said the pixillated Prez. Staring into his sour mash as if it were a crystal globe, Young went on in softer tones: "So I'll pay off now. A certain industrial concern whose initials are LockLever is pressuring a Texas rancher to sell his whole spread, which LockLever will turn into the wildest, wooliest, modernest dude ranch in the world."
Mills was astute enough to break his chuckle off. " Hanh-I'don't-get-i t."
"It's not a one-liner, Mills. The pressure comes by way of LockLever's control of the aquifer North of Texas Wild Country. There isn't a drop of running water on the Schreiner ranch; they water the stock and imported game animals from wells — always did.
"As it happens, LockLever could pollute or divert the whole underground supply from their experimental rigs nearby. The Schreiner spread used to be a hundred square miles back in the 'eighties. It's grown since. I don't know if they'll sell — they've always been a tough bunch of Texas pecans, I hear — but if they do, LockLever will need cheap power to run the kind of Wild-Country Disneyland they have in mind.