by Dean Ing
"All right, all right," Salter interrupted; "get to the point."
"The point," said the whiskey tenor of Seth Howell, "is a top-level effort to find him; take him out. Track him down in Canada or wherever, make an example of him. Pretend we've bought that amateurish yarn about him getting graunched in machinery, keep a sharp eye out in case he tries to turn other rovers — and see to it that we're the machine that graunches him."
"I agree," said Lasser, who knew Quantrill better than any of them. "If he's abroad, we might try talking Smetana out of retirement."
"Negative," Howell rapped. "That's one of the ways he can hurt us! We have other linguists who can pass as foreign, and Smetana's female. She used to have a letch for Quantrill — hell, find a cunt in S & R who didn't! He snuck Sanger right out from under me—"
Lasser, recalling Sanger's admissions: "Now that's just too freudian to let pass, Seth," intended as a jolly reproof.
Howell, his ruddy face blackening with rage, scanned their faces one at a time: Lasser, Reardon, Cross, Salter. "Anybody here think that little turncoat sonofabitch is a better man than I am?" Dutiful headshakes and, from Lasser, an abstention. "Then that settles it. We need a team ready to respond the instant we learn where Quantrill is. The very best S & R team ever mustered. That's me —"
"And me," Cross hissed, his eyes glistening.
"And maybe Ethridge," Howell said.
Lasser and Reardon together: "Why Ethridge?"
Howell: "Because in some ways he's a better athlete than Quantrill. And because Ethridge wanted Sanger so bad you could see the hard-on in his face. All we have to do," he smiled, "is to tell Ethridge it was Quantrill who blew her away."
Amid the buzz of discussion, Lon Salter rapped the table for order and called for opinions. He knew it was purely pro forma, a sop to his title. The major decision had already been made.
That decision would have varied in crucial details, had they known that the electronic half of Quantrill's critic still existed. But the old priest had described the detonation, and they'd found traces of the event in the surface of a butcher block, verified by gas chromatography. They had not wrenched a vital datum — Keyhoe's recovery of the solid-state module — from Father Klein because the priest had not noticed it, engrossed as he was in Sanger's desperate scrawls.
And why go through the dull formalities of removing access channels into the central computer when the remote terminal in question had been blown into white-hot gas?
CHAPTER 43
In even the simplest of stratagems, one must proceed on the basis of certain assumptions. Yet nothing is more deadly than a false assumption.
Search & Rescue assumed that when the shaped charge of the critic blew, it atomized the solid-state terminal to CenCom.
Quantrill assumed that his enemies thought him dead.
CHAPTER 44
After a week, Quantrill could wake without a rush of despair for Sanger, and of guilty elation in his freedom. Later he might recover his old reticence, but now he welcomed the men who came to Malheur Cave to talk (a little) and to listen (a lot) while he completed his recovery. It pleased him to talk freely after six years of practice at remaining mute with caution, reinforced by the pitiless puppet-masters of Control. Those talks were not all pleasant; he learned from Dr. Keyhoe how Sanger had died. He would not accept it as final until Keyhoe, in exasperation, snarled that the poor creature was dead, dead, dead.
Quantrill never made a friend of Keyhoe, sensing the man's dislike for him, unable to pinpoint a reason.
The reason was simply this: Quantrill was the catalyst who had precipitated Keyhoe from a life he had enjoyed, a practice and a group of friends he missed. Keyhoe had abandoned his old life to save a young assassin and was beginning to wonder whether his sacrifice would ever have any important outcome.
Precisely because Keyhoe did not want his sacrifice to be pointless, he made careful inquiries through his contacts in and beyond the Masonic orders, giving no particulars that, in his opinion, might identify Quantrill. Because lodge brothers in Streamlined America were increasingly concerned with the country's internal affairs, he got prompt responses from New Denver, Cincinnati, Corpus Christi, and the sprawling new port city of Eureka. And because nations are inordinately fond of finagling with each other's internal affairs, he got responses from New Ottawa, Ankara, Canberra, and, again, Eureka.
The day Keyhoe removed the last bandage he seemed particularly surly. "You'll want to keep a hat on until your hair grows back," he advised. "If your brains haven't all leaked out, you'll head North and talk Ottawa into giving you a new identity as I'll have to do myself. If you have no more sense than a goose, you'll be flying South."
Quantrill tried to make it light: "You have your profession and I have mine. It'll be easier now that I'm a deader."
Tiny wrinkles gathered at the Keyhoe temples, as though Quantrill's face were on some far horizon.
Without fondness: "Selling death to the highest bidder?"
"You know better than that, doc. It won't take me long to find a slot with the rebels. I can be useful."
"Money? Contacts? Routing? Have you thrown in with any of the people you've met here?"
A slow headshake.
Now with something like grudging respect, Keyhoe said, "Good. How much do you trust me?"
A grin. Quantrill held up his thumb and forefinger, spaced so that a knife blade might have passed between them. Then he said, "And that's a hell of a lot."
"I know a man in Eureka who buys Oregon wood for LockLever's shipbuilding company. All he knows is that you were a field agent of some sort. You wouldn't be the first man he's filtered back into the system. But you'd have to shell out."
" So who foots the bill?"
"Not money; information. But if they suggest drugs for your debriefing, my advice is to say no."
Quantrill appreciated Keyhoe's candor and his caution; agreed to meet the man from Pacifica Marine on neutral ground. Two evenings later he was flown in a creaking underpowered Boxmoth with dacron wingskin, no running lights, and almost no radar signature to an abandoned road near Jacksonville, Oregon Territory. He became one of three thousand strangers inundating the little town during a nocturnal outdoor concert at something called the Britt Music Festival. As advertised, he quickly located the two men sharing the big jug of California wine, and covertly studied them until intermission. Keyhoe had been right: in Oregon Territory, nobody else drank California wine in public.
Quantrill followed the older of the two men to an outdoor toilet and murmured the ID phrase through the polymer back wall. He got the right response, half-lost in a snort of merriment. "You sure have a knack for finding my vulnerable moments," said the man. "You'll be the young buck in the baseball cap behind us, I take it."
Quantrill admitted it. If they'd been enemies, they would've already had time to collect him — or to try.
Five minutes later, under the marvelous thud-and-wonder of John Williams overtures, Quantrill again sat in near-darkness just behind the two.
"Call me Brubaker," said the older one, passing the jug back. He indicated the heaveyset younger man at his elbow: "Call him Brubaker too."
Quantrill named himself as 'Conrad', pretended to drink, and complimented the Brubakers for arranging a meeting where Fed surveillance would be hamstrung by white noise and public uncertainties. During the remainder of the program he traded wisps of vital information without mentioning the vacuum-packed device he carried in an armpit pocket of his turtleneck sweater. He did mention that he needed a contact with some group well-versed in electronic countermeasures.
Old Brubaker said there were several ways, all unspecified, to get Conrad in touch with ECM wizards.
Nashville, in the Confederacy, was one option, if Conrad had his paranthrax shots. The other ECM
center was Corpus Christi, near Wild Country; and in Corpus he would be near the rebel nerve center.
Conrad would have to pay his way, of course.
Now, IEE was promising Blanton Young an endless, cheap supply of strategic materials from an extraction plant near Eureka. At this point old Brubaker chimed in: "But that's a blind. IEE is outfitting an anchored barge from the air with a delta dirigible, and we've traced its route from a lab 'way the hell and gone out in the central Utah desert. That barge is doing something, all right — but it isn't sucking up enough sea water to yield a hatful of chromium, cobalt, platinum — the stuff that's starting to trickle off that barge.
"There's isn't a commonwealth or a kingdom on Earth that wants to see Young grow independent of foreign trade; Canada sells a lot of platinum here, so you can see why we — uh, they — get nervous when pure platinum starts pouring off that barge. So where's it really coming from? We think it's from that lab — which is the private property of IEE's chief, Boren Mills."
"There's no sea water in the middle of Utah," young Brubaker muttered, "so our guess is that the enterprising Mr. Mills has a synthesizer operating there. We can't find out much about the layout, beyond the fact that it's underground. But it should be possible to get a man stowed away on the IEE supply delta — which, by the way, is filled with hydrogen and has only a two-man crew. Mills is buying tunneling equipment for the lab from overseas. We just might be able to switch some crates of machinery in the Port of Eureka for a few crates full of greeting cards.
"Our man could be put down at that lab inside one of our crates. It'd be nice to pick a team but we're afraid time is short, and we'd be willing to go with one man. If he were a one-man team, that is."
Quantrill felt a distinct tingle at the base of his skull; the signal that his muscles could tap a great surge of noradrenaline on command. "And you're asking me to raid the place for some kind of machine?"
"It's probably the size of a barge, so we're asking you to blow the whole place sky-high," old Brubaker murmured.
The crates, young Brubaker added, would also contain weapons and explosives, all untraceable. "We've established that the lab perimeter is guarded by P-beam towers. Nothing you can't get past with a hovercycle, provided it carries a covey of little Homingbirds. If you get back in one piece, you've got a free ticket to anywhere he can route you." He nodded toward his companion.
Quantrill resisted the urge to run. No professional would outline such a plan to a stranger with such vague credentials as his. Lazily, as though he were not humming with readiness: "For a couple of guys who don't know me from Adam you're telling, and asking, a lot. Hell, I could just boost a 'cycle and head for Nashville on my own with less risk than you're suggesting."
Young Brubaker lay back on the grass, face up, fingers interlaced behind his head in a position that could not have been more vulnerable. He smiled and said, "Don't kid yourself. D'you think Canadian intelligence would send me here without proper briefing? The offer is absolutely valid. We happen to know you're familiar with the innards of a delta. Also with munitions, and the word is that a little extra risk hasn't stopped you yet.
"We don't often get a man and a mission that fit together this well — but as you can see, I'm, ah, bending over backwards to keep from putting you under any pressure. The decision is up to you, Ted Quantrill."
Sandy's journal, 11 Sep'
Lufo accompanied 'Mr. Gold' back as far as my soddy & lingered alone for the night. I do not mourn the shortened days when nights are this rewarding!
We talked for hours, straining to find common ground for small talk. Since I had no news of interest, I told him stories of my childhood. He avoided the past & spoke of the future. Told me that an old companion has fled the life of a slave-assassin & may migrate to these parts soon. No name, but if Lufo is to be believed, the man must be the equal of him. No doubt a hard-faced old lobo, for he has killed easily and often in the service of our enemies. Lufo spoke of him with brevity & perhaps envy. Already I loathe him. Why would good men want to associate with the likes of such a monster? La-de-da: who am I to speak ill of monsters?
CHAPTER 45
What was the point in being a mover and shaker, Eve asked herself as she lazed at a window of her delta stateroom, if a girl couldn't have a few amenities for her troubles? In Eve's case those amenities were more than a few. She alone occupied one of the rearmost rooms near the delta's center of balance, where the gentle maneuvers of the great craft were least disturbing. The engine pods were so far away, so muted, that only a whisper reached her. And she'd had caterpillar treads affixed to her motorized chaise so that she would not find it necessary to waddle back and forth on the long voyage from Salt Lake City in a gondola that might undulate a bit.
But if her status was high, her spirits remained low. She ignored the ever-changing view as United's behemoth — one of five which offered expensive passenger service — ghosted to the high rolling wind-racked grasslands of Cheyenne, to the awesome abrupt crunch of flat plain against majestic gray-blue peaks near La Junta, to the vertiginous bluffs near Lubbock where plains crumbled into river valleys in their long slope toward the Mexican Gulf hundreds of klicks farther off.
She did not rejoice to know that a rack of lamb awaited her at dinnertime. The plain fact is that Eve Simpson had been bored out of her mind since her second hour in the delta. She knew her antidote, and learned that it was not to be found aloft; most of the delta staff were colorless middle-aging men, and the rest were svelte young women. Eve told herself that she had high standards, and cursed the delta staff collectively.
Her mood was not improved when she found that dinner would be no leisurely feast. Favorable tailwinds were boosting the great delta toward Kerrville Municipal Airport and Eve had barely sealed her closet-sized wardrobe when the craft slid down to grapple against mooring sockets built during the war.
This was as far into Wild Country as commercial airship skippers cared to risk their craft, a full hundred klicks West of the rebuilt ring-cities around the ruins of Austin and San Antonio.
Though the platform lowered her as smoothly as any elevator, Eve's uneasiness mounted. Across the field were the lights of the old Mooney aircraft plant where, if Eve's briefing was correct, assembly bays were sometimes used by Texas renegades to refit or overhaul rebel equipment. And despite advertised claims of safety, the Shreiner hoverbus would waft her another fifty klicks into this lawless region.
To bolster her confidence, Eve touched the bubble-smooth surface of the Ember of Venus that lay cushioned between her breasts. Mills had argued against her taking it, but Eve had not been swayed.
Confidence rekindled, Eve guided her chaise from downramp to bus, alert lest United mishandle her luggage. You couldn't trust the idiots, she reflected, to shift a cube of solid armorplate without shattering it in the process. And only if you were an Eve Simpson could you depend on fair compensation. But that was how it went in Streamlined America; as long as reconstruction lasted, the name of the game would be screw Joe Small'.
In no respect could Eve be considered small. United took special care with her wardrobe and dropped it only once.
Soon the lights of Kerrville swept by on her right, and then the hoverbus was droning on its diesels through hamlets and between limestone bluffs. The other passengers, two sporting types and a middle-aged couple, chattered away in what could have been Arabic. Eve was not surprised; the cost of such a spa was most easily borne by Islamics, who had not fought the war but nonetheless had won it.
The combatants had all lost.
Soon after the bus passed the ranch entrance, Eve perceived that she was truly in a different world, one in which vehicle h
eadlights might pick out exotic ibex, aodad, or bounding gemsbok as often as native wild whitetail. The hearty, "Howdy, and welcome," by a squint-eyed young man in tight jeans and dusty boots filled her with suspicion. Surely, she thought, these people were putting her on. She would learn that century-old habits were genuinely alive and well in Wild Country.
She trundled to the main stone lodge, trading frank states with the ranch staff who found her as arresting a spectacle as she found them. Yet the curious glances were friendly and the twangy greetings more so.
Nobody who'd seen Schreiner's albino elephant would think Eve particularly unusual.
She tried to work up a small fury on learning that her spacious, bath-equipped cabin had no telephone or holo, but found the effort taxing. The western trappings in pavilion and cabin, and the trim lank rumps that paraded past her in worn denim, pierced the dikes of her reserve and let the anger leak away. Eve retired to her cabin an empty vessel — but she knew how these cow-pokes could fill her.
Two days later, se felt privation. From the phone in the central lodge, Eve coupled a scrambler module to the jack in the bezel of her amulet and let her tiny computer talk to CenCom in its lair under Granite Mountain near Ogden. Satisfied that her synthesizer was accumulating a dollop of lobotol at last, she used her scrambler for a second call.
Her initial words to Mills were, "Talk about primitive! I can't even talk to CenCom without a goddam telephone, that's how far I am from a relay. Do you know what it's like to be without a snort of THC in these parts?"
"I'm sure it must be just sheer hell," was his laconic reply. If this were all she could bitch about, the accommodations must be very good indeed. Mills waited until she had adumbrated a media freak's list of horrors: no terminals to electronic sugartits. He tut-tutted at the right moments and finally said, "Nobody's checked with me about your authorizations from IEE. Haven't you told Schreiner's management you're not down there just for the atmosphere?"