Wild Country

by Dean Ing

  "I could get him drunk as a coot on rotten apples," Sandy reflected. "But only for one day, and when he wakes up you don't want to be around here."

  Quantrill thought about that and shivered. "Christ; Ba'al with a hangover! Boggles the mind," he said, chuckling as he chased a hunk of kidney around his bowl with more bread. "By the way, it's nearly eight. Sandy. Wasn't there something you wanted to see on the holo?"

  "Umbrellas of Cherbourg," she said. "An old classic. A kind of opera, really. You'll see." With that promise, she began to clear the table.

  Soon Quantrill had a good subdued fire of mesquite going in the fireplace, and with its flicker for a nightlight they settled down on the couch with hot mugs of coffee. Childe nestled between them, secure under her old rabbit-fur blanket, and ten minutes into the show she had begun to snore. Sandy gathered her sister up, kissed the small brow, placed Childe in the closetlike bedroom. Then she returned for some serious snuggling. She knew the power of this bittersweet old film and the tenderness it provoked even if it was in the old "flatvision" style.

  A big down comforter can cover a multitude of sins. They massaged each other while watching the holo; eventually—despite her earlier decisions on the matter—made slow, careful love made more delicious by Sandy's fear of waking Childe. When Quantrill began to moan, Sandy muffled his mouth with her own. Then they lay silent, inert, and watched the ancient film to the end.

  Quantrill was gently licking away a tear from Sandy's cheek when the late Deadline news began. The opening item stole their attention completely.

  "… announced a breakthrough at Bell Laboratories in development of a matter synthesizer," said the announcer. "Doctor Marengo Chabrier, Bell project scientist, refused comment, but a spokesman for the Federal Recovery Administration did respond to CBS reporters. More from Denise Young."

  Cut to a stunning blonde in smart tweeds who may even have understood her pitch: "Ever since the last days of the war, rumors have persisted that China developed a machine that could create many substances starting with any simple chemical."

  Quantrill sat bolt upright. "Rumor, hell. Sandy, you remember that lab I trashed in Utah?" He saw her nod. "The guy I brought out with me was Marengo Chabrier. I see he landed on all four feet." But Sandy had a finger across her lips, staring at the holo.

  The lady in tweeds continued her upbeat tempo: "… and only small fragments of the devices survived the blast, which leveled a secret laboratory funded by Boren Mills, the former head of IEE. Mr. Mills pulled a vesco; his whereabouts are still unknown.

  "But Dr. Chabrier did survive. As supervisor of the IEE lab, he provided the one living link to reconstruction of the matter synthesizer. Under hush-hush contracts with Bell Labs, he has spent the past four years, in a phrase he has since disavowed, reinventing the torus. Chabrier would not comment tonight, but Mr. Kelvin Broadie of the Federal Recovery Administration spoke with me here in Missouri, D.C."

  Flick to a taped sequence where a graying, conservatively dressed man faced several microphones with a look of triumph. "We always felt it was just a matter of time. Bell's people deserve a lot of credit; they never lost hope. Only in a dying culture can any important technical breakthrough be truly lost." A faint wry grin, suggesting years of doubt: "Or not for long, anyway. And Reconstruction America grows healthier by the day."

  At this point Broadie paused to hear a question off mike and fielded it cleanly: "Not at any price, for a while. You have to realize that a synthesizer is about the size of a bread-box; in theory we can make them smaller, but not larger; and the yield is rated in kilograms a day. We have a few of them now at Sandia National Labs, producing exotic metals."

  Another unheard question, and a cautious gnawing at his lower lip before Broadie replied. "I doubt it. We might synthesize living tissue one day, but that's a tall order. Right now we can use air as input and select cobalt or a passable bourbon as output, and"—a grin creased his face—"what more could you ask for a few cents' worth of electricity?"

  Cut back to the tweedy Miss Young, whose doubtful smile faded as she showed, to millions of investors, the other side of this coin. "Trading on the Columbia market was heavy and mixed as the news broke this afternoon. Bell stock showed a sharp upturn, but firms engaged in the production of rare metals and Pharmaceuticals did not fare so well. Trading in stocks of both Teledyne and McDonnell Douglas was suspended by closing time.

  "The FRA's news release hinted that this amazing device will not be used to compete against private enterprise. But as of tonight, the matter synthesizer is no longer legend or rumor. Now back to you. Matt."

  In the soddy, Quantrill sipped cold coffee and stared at the mesquite embers. "Jesus freeze us," he muttered, ignoring the rest of the news. "I thought that thing was dead and gone."

  Sandy snapped off the holo, leaned back, worried at a cuticle with her teeth while she watched her lover. "Dead, maybe, but not gone. It's been haunting me for years." She saw his puzzlement and tried to smile, but it was a rickety construction that collapsed into silent pleading. She had to tell him now; not "someday," and not tomorrow, but tonight.

  She rose from the couch and rummaged on a high shelf near the kitchen, among her few keepsakes, for the only existing miniature of a matter synthesizer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  She held the amulet by its chain. With its great oval jewel missing from the bezel, it pendulumed slowly in the firelight, the silvery stainless steel and black diamonds gleaming. She let him grasp it before she released the chain. "I sold the big opal in the center," she said, and set about warming their coffee.

  Quantrill had never seen the thing but recognized it from sketches. "They said Chabrier gave this to Eve Simpson," he murmured, turning it over to see the display on its back. The amulet had been a calculator as well! He saw that the thimble-sized yield chamber unscrewed, sniffed at it, glanced up as Sandy handed him a hot mug. "How did you get hold of this?"

  "Believe it or not, Ba'al brought it here. The chain was caught over one of his tusks, but if it had bothered him, it wouldn't have been there long."

  "When?" She could read nothing from his face.

  A slow sip; then, "The day after the Simpson woman was killed at the dude ranch. I didn't make the connection until you told me about the amulet—how important it was. I let Childe play with the damned thing until she managed to synthesize a stink like last year's eggs." No response; he just kept looking at the device cupped in his hand. "When I did realize what it was… well, you were the one who said a thing like this would change the world." This time she saw him nod, sun-bleached straight hair falling over his brow. "Ted, will you please say something? Or hit me, if that's what you feel like. My love, I was afraid! I don't want my world changed, Ted; I like it pretty much as it is—with a few reservations."

  He dropped the amulet in her lap, flicked his forelock back with one hand absently, and leaned back cradling his mug in both hands, staring at the fireplace. "Well, it isn't important anymore, Sandy. You had four years to mull it over. Do you realize you could've been filthy rich with this thing?"

  "In some ways, I am. Maybe I thought you'd understand."

  "Maybe I do. Hell, I don't know, honey. Hold it: you sold the Ember of Venus from this thing? My God, no wonder you could buy all the stuff I see around here. You must have a king's ransom squirreled away somewhere."

  She told him, to the penny. "Lufo probably cheated me," she added gloomily.

  "That goes without saying. But it's too late to worry about that now. Sandy. The real question is, what do we do with that amulet?"

  "Give it to a museum? You said it isn't important."

  "I hadn't thought it through. You tell me: what would the Japanese give for it?"

  Aghast: "You wouldn't!"

  "No. And I really have to talk to Jim Street."

  Sniffing it: "Huh. That old man put you in harness, and you'll die in it."

  "He's the nearest thing to an incorruptible man that I know of. and thi
s time I don't want you to get chiseled out of what's coming to you. Will you trust me on this?"

  "I already have, Ted." She moved nearer, her hand caressing his arm, setting his coffee mug aside. "Are you… terribly angry with me?"

  "Oh, I'll survive," he said, trying to keep it light, pulling her near for an embrace. Then, feeling her tremble in his arms, he realized how seriously she took the matter. "Look," he murmured, "you did what you thought was right. It was your decision."

  "But not one of my better ones, hm?"

  "I don't know. Maybe we'll know more when I get back from Corpus."

  "And it's late, and you need to be fresh tomorrow," she said, beginning to arrange the couch so that he could stretch out. She would sleep with Childe, as always.

  He helped her in the dim light of embers, then sat down while she stood above him, his chin in his hands. He was laughing softly. "To think that blowsy bitch is still running our lives, four years after she dies," he said.

  "Who? Oh; Eve Simpson. Should I be jealous of her?"

  "That's obscene, Sandy. Forget how she looked on holo; she was very fat and very kinky."

  Sandy put her hands on his shoulders. Almost whispering: "For all I know, that turned you on. You once said that if Eve Simpson had been on the Titanic, it couldn't have sunk—but it might have gone down."

  "OM-rageous," he chuckled. "There was a time when you wouldn't repeat such a thing."

  "It was just a monkey do," she said, teasing him in a near whisper, playing the contrite schoolgirl as easily as she had played the whore for him in SanTone Ringcity. "You know; monkey see, monkey do."

  "Cute," he growled, and began to chuckle through it. "If you're not careful, your monkey will get something to climb on."

  Now she stepped astride his legs, flouncing her skirt to free her movements, and now she was lowering herself down facing him, hands gripping his shoulders, hips gyrating over him, whispering, "Ah, yes," and, "There, love," and, "Yes, there; easy, quickly, yes and yes," as she bent to find his mouth with her tongue.

  Evidently, thought Ted Quantrill as he drifted into sleep, her monkey was about half rabbit…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Quantrill found Concannon true to his word. The van never coughed once, either in fan mode across open country to Hondo, or on its wheels down decent roads to Corpus Christi. He checked export prices on Friday evening, slept in the van, and wired over five thousand dollars to Sandy's account late Saturday morning after buying spare parts to accommodate Garner Ranch.

  En route to Alice at noon, he wondered if some of those parts would help ferry hard drugs through Wild Country. Supposing the answer was "yes," had he unwittingly crossed his own ethical borders? Perhaps not, so long as it was unwitting. The more you know, he reflected, the more you're responsible for. By the time he reached Jim Street's ranch home near Alice, he was ready to envy fools.

  He recognized the area by the creek that lazed between grassy banks, and the huge pecan trees nearby. Street's place was less inviting now, robbed of some of its charm by cyclone fencing that stretched out of sight and a polite giant manning the gate. On earlier visits he had thought of the rambling stone house as a gracious lady; now she was a suspicious old dame with a leashed Doberman. There would be no parking inside for any van—explosives were too easily hidden—but Quantrill's appointment and his thumbprints gained him entry for a long walk along a flower-lined path to the house. The groundskeeper patted him down but showed no concern over what was in Quantrill's pockets; it happened again with the receptionist, a plain-faced woman to whom Ted Quantrill was no more than a side of beef. They found Attorney General James Street puttering among potted shrubs before a huge solar window of his study, and then the woman left them. Quantrill suppressed an urge to stare.

  "Looks like you're stayin' healthy, boy," said Street, extending his hand. It had the mottled color of great age and, noting the Gov's liverish complexion, Quantrill took the twisted hand carefully. He smiled at the old man's firm grip and his welcome: "Enjoy it while you can; one of these days they may turn you into a gawdam machine, too."

  Street's motorized walker surrounded the old man's squat bulk with linkages, fiber rods, and slender hydraulic tubing. It cupped him in pads up to his beltline. its power source hidden inside a hard plastic pack at the small of his back. Ungainly as it looked, it permitted the old fellow to move around without the agony of earlier days. Arthritis had ruined his hips and feet long before. Seeing Quantrill's scrutiny, Street turned back toward his potted plants. "Don't ask how I take a leak with all this plumbing, boy. You mind if I cultivate my coffee while we talk? This and football are two things I can still enjoy."

  Quantrill showed interest that delighted the hobbyist in the old man. Harsh winters following nuclear war had at least brought a few small improvements: hardy, knee-high citrus and corn, even tiny coffee bushes that produced a good crop in a windowbox. It wasn't a real economy, Street admitted, now that you could get the "reg'lar stuff again. It was just something to make an old curmudgeon want to rise in the mornings.

  Presently the old man leaned back, locked his walker so that he could relax, and clicked his pruning clippers with a gnarled hand. "I don't like clippin' live branches without a good reason, son. Did you know somebody clipped Boren Mills this past week?"

  The parallel took Quantrill by surprise. "First I heard of it, Gov. I thought he vescoed out to Cuba or some such."

  "Or some such," said Street vaguely, with a keen glance at the younger man. He did not reveal that he had the news from Canadian sources in Oregon Territory. "I suppose you can account for your whereabouts last weekend."

  Quantrill folded his arms, leaned against a huge Mexican pot, and took his time answering. Much of that weekend he had been wearing contact lenses and dyed hair as randy Sam Coulter. For damn sure, he did not enjoy the prospect of explaining that. "Yessir, if I have to. But I didn't come here for confession. All the same. I don't even care who took Mills out, or why. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," he finished, grinning.

  "I'll buy it," said Street, laying down the clippers. "Why did you drop in? To watch the Teasippers and Horned Frogs on the holo this afternoon?" Like most native Texans, the old man would never outgrow his passion for football. Names like Cy Leland, Jack Crain, Doak Walker, and Earl Campbell were permanently etched into his memory.

  "Should be a close game," said Quantrill, and followed as the old man's exoskeleton walked him to a library that smelled of leather and wood polish. "I had two reasons, Gov, both business—besides seeing you again."

  Street waved away the pleasantry, took his hand comm set and used it to order a tray of munchables before folding himself into a semiupright couch and adjusting the wall holo set. "Good news or bad?" he asked, dialing the audio low.

  "Both, I think. You knew I took Judge Anthony Placidas's dying statement?"

  The old man seemed to be watching the pregame show but shook his head. "I didn't even know he had died."

  "I thought as much. So you can't know he admitted being part of a drug-running operation and fingered a young rancher while he was bleeding out."

  Street sighed and dialed the audio completely out. "Maybe you'd better take it from the top, son."

  Top to bottom, the account lasted through the first quarter (Texas 14, T.C.U. 3). Quantrill kept skipping details he assumed the old man knew, and Street kept spearing after those details like a linebacker. Gradually, Quantrill began to appreciate that this tenacious old codger now watched over a dominion far greater than Wild Country, with interests far more diverse than a handful of high-tech rebels. It was astonishing, now that he thought about it, to find America's top cop willing to give personal attention to the unease of a deputy marshal. Still, Texas tradition overflowed with such experts at informal one-on-one: Houston, Allred, Johnson.

  "So Steams has been trying to dump you, but now he dangles a commendation at you to keep the heat off this young Garner fella," said Street, adding an excited, "Dum
p it off!" as a purple-jerseyed quarterback on the holo disappeared under behemoths in orange and white. No doubt about it, Jim Street could boss two outfits at once.

  "And the judge said to tell you that your channels are not secure. I'll give you odds that's not audible on the tape you get, Gov. If you get it at all."

  The old man shook his head in disgust at a broken play. "The horny toads got to settle down if they're gonna win this one," he said of the T.C.U. team. "So do you, son. Now let me tell you something that doesn't go out of this room: I've known my channels were tapped for a long time. If it's Stearns, I'll soon know."

  "Look, look," Quantrill burst out happily, always elated when the underdog rolled to the top. A horned frog receiver had taken a pass on a dead run from between two defending Longhorns and was streaking for a distant goal.

  "Always expect that fourth down pass when the other fella's rattled. Get him desperate enough and he'll do anything," Street said, cackling. "We don't want the other side rattled, son," he added soberly. "And we don't know if Stearns is ours or theirs. You aren't an unbiased observer."

  "True. I know Marv Stearns's record, it's good," Quantrill admitted. "A week ago I would've thought he was immune to a bribe."

  "Nobody's immune if the right coin comes along, son. Take me, now; I might do most anything for a new set of bones that'd let me run eighty yards for a touchdown. But there's only one thing I can do, outside normal channels. That's to use the one man with young bones that I can sure-'nough trust in this matter." He watched the extra point, Texas 20, T.C.U. 10, then tapped a forefinger toward Quantrill.

  Ted Quantrill slid down in his overstuffed chair and groaned. "Christ, and I was about ready to pack it in. I was telling Lufo Albeniz the other day, it was time I turned in my ID."