Wild Country

by Dean Ing

  He was pulling his boots off, standing beneath the stairs, when he heard Sorel's footfalls above. He tugged at a sock, then hurriedly thrust his second spare magazine of Chiller ammo into it. If Sorel did not come down on his own, he must be enticed down. But getting Sorel down those stairs was no problem; the Mexican came down cautiously, spotted the door to the storage room, and stood assessing the place.

  It had to be said just exactly right, if either of them was to live. "Don't shoot, Sorel. I'm your only hostage." His words were calm, and from his crouch behind the steel stair he was still invisible.

  Just as calmly, from three meters away: "Show me empty hands."

  Quantrill thrust the loaded sock into a hip pocket and stuck out his hands, very slowly, where they could be seen. "Coming out." He was coughing, tears gathering in his eyes, as he stood up with hands elevated to the height of his head.

  Something like relief, and sadness as well, crossed Sorel's face as he trained the muzzle of his sidearm at Quantrill's belly. "Up the stairs," he said, pointing with his free hand, stepping back with care, coughing softly. Quantrill stepped to the stair, blinking and coughing. Yes, he might still get out of this hole without more bloodshed, but only as a hostage, bested by Felix Sorel. In any case, he had already begun to play his own hand, and Sorel seemed unaware of it.

  Quantrill stood on the first step and turned. "Put the shooter away, Sorel, you can't use it here. And you won't get past me, but you're welcome to try."

  Sorel, too, was now blinking watery eyes as he frowned. "Go upstairs before you suffocate, fool."

  "That's gasoline fumes you smell, ol' buddy." He coughed. "Lots of it, spilled across the floor, and a hundred gallons more in storage. One muzzle flash and this whole building will be scattered from here to Faro."

  Sorel looked around him, saw the puddles and the metal jerry can standing in full view near the storage room. His face clouded. "Idiota, this is not the way men fight."

  "There's a better way. I'm betting you'll take it." Quantrill lowered his hands to his hips, gambling, trying to make his grin a taunt even though he was now a bit light-headed from the fumes. "If you throw that H and K and it strikes a spark, they'll hear it in Austin. Got nails in your boots? Take 'em off. Believe me, I'll wait."

  Slipping the little automatic into its holster, Sorel managed a glacial smile. His confidence seemed unshaken, though for the first time, Quantrill saw in his face the squint of a duped man. "I love to beat a clever Anglo," he said. He stood on one foot, then the other, wrenching his boots off as he coughed. "And you would bar my way, mono a mano!” He might have risked hurling one of those boots if he'd had the chance.

  Quantrill knew he presented a sad spectacle with blood covering one side of his face. But he was through talking, already whipping out that loaded sock, springing forward, hoping his bare feet offered purchase for maneuver as he swung at Sorel's head.

  Sorel was too quick, lashing out in a footsweep that caught Quantrill's thigh and knocked him off-balance. Darting toward the stairs, Sorel felt his left hand caught by both of Quantrill's and whirled to avoid a shoulder dislocation, bringing the heel of his free hand up toward Quantrill's nose, hoping his fingers could reach those hard eyes while he shattered the septum.

  Quantrill avoided the blow, his right hand forcing Sorel's arm to continue its upward sweep as he lunged forward and butted the Mexican under the jaw in a favorite move. That eight-penny nail, still embedded at his hairline, tore a gouge under Sorel's chin. Unlike Jer Garner, Sorel knew that it would be followed by a dozen more; the burst of light behind his eyes said that he could not afford them. Arching backward on the stairs, he pulled his legs up, aiming at Quantrill's groin.

  Quantrill harbored no illusions about the power of those trained legs; sidestepped the ferocious kick but had to release Sorel's wrist to do it. His own heel caught Sorel's left knee at full extension, not quite at the edge of the patella, but tearing at the adjacent ligaments, and Sorel twisted away in agony instead of facing his antagonist. Instantly Quantrill fell on him, scissoring those legs between his own, grasping Sorel's left wrist with his own blood-slicked left hand while reaching for his hair with the right. Both men were panting dizzily now, locked together in a gut-churning embrace.

  It is easier to snap a man's head forward than to push it to one side. Quantrill bounced Sorel's forehead against a steel riser twice before the Mexican managed to thrust up and back, lifting Quantrill's weight as he came to his knees and crashed over. Quantrill lost his slippery handgrip as they rolled, and then Sorel's left elbow caught him in the rib cage with the man's weight behind it.

  As Quantrill's torso rebounded from the stair, Sorel gathered his feet under him and leaped away. He glanced behind him as Quantrill, face now streaming with gore from that scalp wound, vaulted up to follow. The distance was right, and Sorel was certain this Anglo hellion did not expect his next maneuver. It had killed more than one man.

  An upward left-footed sweep, then the follow-through with his right as Felix Sorel began a bicycle kick, a backward flip with a whiplash foot that could fire a soccer ball seventy yards, or crush the skull of the man following. Sorel's glory, and much of his confidence, lay in his ability to use these skills as killing techniques.

  Yet Sorel had failed to account for the synaptic edge honed into the tissues of Ted Quantrill. That murderous flashing kick missed Quantrill's head, and before he struck concrete Sorel felt a hand grip his left ankle to wrench him sideways in midair. He completed three-quarters of his flip, striking the floor on his belly, and this time Quantrill's backward heel kick against Sorel's knee found its target. The snap was audible, and the follow-up against the back of his head knocked him all but unconscious against the concrete floor.

  There might be time, Quantrill thought groggily. to hammer Sorel to mush. Or time to weave up those stairs for lungfuls of fresh air. There would not be time for both. Nearly blind, lungs aflame, nauseated from the fumes, Quantrill reeled up the stairs gasping. He did not look back. If Felix Sorel chose to fire that H&K, it would make no difference where his slugs went.

  Quantrill stumbled from the upper room to the sidewalk, missed his footing, and fell to his knees, retching. His fit of explosive coughs made it worse, robbing him of air, his throat muscles at last beginning to convulse from the deadly fumes. He lowered his bloody forehead to the street cobbles, shuddering, his breath whistling through a larynx that seemed to be on fire. Dimly, he imagined Felix Sorel navigating those stairs, hobbling to the street, raising that handgun. And there was not one—goddam—thing—Quantrill could do about it. He'd been breathing those fumes a half minute longer than Sorel. Coughing, fighting down his gut spasms, he waited for the sound of footsteps.

  No pursuit. Too shaky to stand, Quantrill moved on hands and knees within arm's length of a clerestory basement window. He snapped his palm against the thin pane and heard shards of glass strike the concrete inside. Near fainting, he put his forehead against the sidewalk and closed his eyes, breathing deeply now. He kept down, aware that the sight of him might tempt Sorel to fire regardless of the consequences. God, how that man could move! That bicycle kick had come within a finger's width of taking his head off. "Sorel? You there?"

  A disembodied voice issued from the basement. "Do you need to ask?" Then a fit of coughing.

  Even from that broken window the fumes were overpowering. You were the worst, and the best. Can't let you suffocate. "I can see the stairs, Sorel. Toss your jacket in that patch of sunlight, and the pistol on the jacket."

  More coughing. "No. This weapon is my freedom."

  "Goddammit, I won't come down there for you unless you do."

  "If I fired now, the result would be the same." The sounds of a tortured stomach stifled the voice.

  "Why haven't you?"

  "Cannot walk; the game is yours. My rules. My decision."

  "Game, shit! You're goddam dying down there."

  "Correct, in good time. Leave me. I will not say this a
gain." Still more coughing.

  "I can't, you crazy bastard. I liked you."

  "Odd," said the voice from below. "We are much the same, but could never understand each other."

  "We're not that complicated, Sorel. I'll visit you in Huntsville Prison and prove it, if you like. Don't ask me why."

  "Prison." It was a snort. "Have you ever known the loss of all hope?"

  Quantrill recalled the tiny mastoid implant that had once compelled his obedience on pain of instant death; felt again the helpless rage at learning that his lover lay dead at the hands of his own agency. But years ago. Worlds ago. "Yes. But we always get it back, somehow."

  "Not the loss of youth and freedom."

  "Everybody loses those. One gets taken away, the other we give away," Quantrill answered.

  "Not I."

  "Sure. We give away some freedom to friends, wives, kids—everybody who knows they can depend on us."

  A terrible mirthless laugh, then spasmodic coughs. Then, growling it: "Not I."

  "Have it your way," Quantrill said. "But when you pass out, I'll have you. You'll feel different after a spell in the slammer."

  So faintly that Quantrill almost failed to hear it: "Not I. If you love me so much, then go with me."

  Because the H&K's safety would make no audible click, Quantrill rolled and staggered to his feet, trying to put some distance between himself and that fume-filled hell. There was something hideously final about Sorel's final comment.

  The shot was muffled, and Quantrill blinked in astonishment as he realized that it had not caused a vast explosion. The reason was not hard to find; a man's mouth will sometimes contain a muzzle flash.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  "I wouldn't worry about it, Teddy," said Jess Marrow, reaching for the bottle of sherry that sat between their cane-bottomed rockers. He poured a dollop into his cup, shifted his feet before the bulbous little woodstove at the corner of his office. "You coulda let a hundred Lufo Albenizes go and they wouldn't indict you now. You're a goddam he-ro, according to the holo. You'll be so uppity now, I got half a notion to fire you," he added with a grin, swirling the dark liquid in the bottle. "Let me top off your cup."

  "One's plenty," Quantrill said. A week had passed since he'd begun a manhunt with a hangover. That was one thing he'd avoid now for the rest of his life. One of several things. He was in stocking feet at the moment, saddle-soaping one of those sharkskin boots for the third time. They hadn't felt right since he'd retrieved them from a puddle of gasoline in that basement, along with the ruin that had been Felix Sorel. It was a hard thing to admit, but on learning the full extent of Sorel's activities he knew that he would not have visited the man, even on death row. A man is not what he has. but what he does, and Felix Sorel had done all the damage he possibly could.

  Now Quantrill rubbed gently at the scab near his hairline, feeling a faint twinge through the bandage covering his left palm. "I saw that holocast at Sandy's place night before last, Jess. You know as well as I do, enhanced video's a bunch of horseshit. Half of those scenes never happened."

  "Try and tell that to your adorin' public."

  "That's what really worries me. I remember what you said the other day."

  Marrow sipped and nodded. "Well, it's true; there'll be a few fools lookin' for you, tryin' to make their reputations."

  He sighed, fell silent for a moment. "You could take a new name. Wild Country's full of people who did."

  "Like Lufo? I'd be found out just like he was." Smiling, Quantrill elevated his cup in a toast to the memory of the big TexMex. "I'd still like to know how he disappeared right under everybody's nose. He didn't get help from Marv Stearns; from what the Gov says, Stearns was already in custody. Lufo just vanished—with a nine-millimeter hole in him. Christ, he deserved to get away!"

  "Prob'ly hid 'til the next day when the roadblocks were down and all those network people were clutterin' up the place. Made WCS management happy as a pig in shit to get all that publicity, Teddy. They'd like you to do an encore every week."

  "Su-u-re they would. Like I told the Gov, Jess: I'm retired. I damn near got retired."

  Marrow, with a sidelong leer: "Finally got your good strong sign, I reckon. Don't take this wrong, Teddy, but… you think you've slowed down? Or are you packin' it in at your peak?"

  A long, thoughtful pause, flexing the fingers of that bandaged hand. "I was rusty. You have to keep your edge, and you can't do that and settle down, too. No, I don't think I've slowed down. Next year or the year after? Maybe."

  Marrow nodded, listening to the moan of a cold prairie wind around the porch outside. He got up, chose a hunk of mesquite from the nearby pile, and thrust it into the belly of the cast-iron stove before sighing back into his rocker. Somehow the woodstove, across the office from a computer terminal, said all that needed saying about Jess Marrow. He kept what he enjoyed of the old while learning the best of the new. And he knew how to broach an idea. "There's a way to duck all that celebrity, of course." Pause. "Naw, I guess not."

  "What?"

  "Forget it, you wouldn't go for it. You'd say some fool thing like, it ain't your style."

  "Try me," Quantrill insisted.

  Marrow took his time, slipping into the slow cadences of the tale-spinner. This was the kind of day for it, a sunless day before a potbelly stove, waiting for this "blue norther" weather front to pass. "Well, I was at a WCS staff meeting yesterday at the New Driskill. Seems they expect big holiday crowds, weather or no weather, after all that holo coverage. And this robotics bigbrain named Hyson showed us a tape of some new androids they've got in California." The older man pursed his lips, shook his head. "Teddy, you would not believe it. You know that Copycat 'droid near the Thrillkiller?" He saw Quantrill nod. "It ain't a patch on the ass of what we saw on tape. They'll cost ten thousand each, but you could enter one in a decathlon and nobody would be the wiser. 'Cept for urine tests." He chuckled. "I bet they could rig that, too." .

  "That tape could be enhanced video," Quantrill replied.

  "Nope. Hyson's got a rep to uphold; he says what we saw is what WCS can get." Pause. "Now, the problem is how to make one of those things pay without breakin' any laws. After the staff meeting I jawed awhile with Schreiner, Stewart, a few others. Somebody came up with a real dipshit idea. A minute ago you said, 'Try me.' You're a household word now. What if anybody at all could try you—not you, of course, but a'droid built to your specs?"

  Recalling the swiftness with which that busty mechanical bimbo had drawn a tiny derringer on the doomed Sorel, Quantrill shrugged. "No fun in that, Jess. A'droid could beat anybody, me included."

  "You still don't see it, do you? I mean, exactly to your specs. It would have your speed, but no more. In other words, your limitations. Your size and weight and, as near as possible, programmed to make the kind of decisions you'd make. Your face and voice, too." A dramatic pause: "Teddy, it would fool your mother."

  Quantrill's expression suggested that he had just inhaled a fat green fly. "What the hell for?"

  "For the money it could rake in; Stewart thinks it'd pay for itself in a year. And for the royalties you'd get, if you let 'em run you through a battery of tests and answer a bushel of dumb questions by programmers." He saw a look of negation in Quantrill's face, then added his clincher. "And it'd do the one thing you say you want most, Ted. It would give those piss-and-vinegar types a way to try you out on the streets of Faro, without havin' to hunt you up personally. Ultrasonics instead of lasers in the pistols; hell, it oughta double the crowd. But it was just a dipshit idea. I said you wouldn't go for it."

  Quantrill sniffed his sherry and thought it over, taking Marrow's reverse psychology for granted, also accepting the fact that it worked. Finally, "Just whose dipshit idea was this?"

  Marrow looked away. "I forget."

  "Uh-huh. You realize that a copy of me might kidney-punch some poor bastard's lights out?"

  "They swear it can be programmed not to. And just between me and y
ou, they intend to do it anyway, Ted. As long as they're gonna copy somebody, why not you?" . After a moment's reflection, Quantrill began to laugh. In explanation he said, "Jim Street may try to get that 'droid drafted."

  "More likely, they'd be interested in anybody that beats it."

  "Never happen," said Quantrill.

  Both men were laughing now and ignored the buzz of the telephone until its eighth repetition. "Awshit," Marrow grumped. and stumped over to his desk. The call was for his assistant.

  Jess Marrow tried to ignore the conversation, cussing his stove and shaking its lower grate even though it was working perfectly, on the theory that if he made a hell of a racket, he couldn't be listening to a private confab three meters away. He looked around as he heard his name called and saw Quantrill press the "hold" button.

  "Jess, just how much money could I pry out of WCS for that scheme you mentioned?"

  Marrow showed a pair of callused hands. "Five thousand. Maybe ten—if somebody on the staff thought you were worth a shit," he said. The higher offer was implicit, of course, because Marrow was a well-regarded staff member of WCS.

  Quantrill punched another button and said to the phone, "How would those payments look if I could put ten thousand down?" He waited, then his face became impassive. "Well, thanks anyway. Oh, sure, it's fair, but I couldn't make the spread pay enough to make payments that size for a long time." Then he was listening again.

  Marrow seemed to be rumbling it to himself, but that rumble carried: "'Course, the royalties off a concession can go a thousand a month." He saw Quantrill looking his way and returned to fiddling with the stove. Jess Marrow was not about to open himself to a charge, ever, that he wanted to make a man's decisions for him. But a young stud needed a prod into the right chute now and then. It sounded as if someone was turning Ted Quantrill out to new pasturage—literally. And why not? Marrow smiled to himself. My daddy always told me real estate was for youth. "Get lots while you're young." he said. And I only thought it was the oldest joke in the world, but it's a good way to settle a man down, too.