Don Pendleton - Civil War II (11 page)

CHAPTER 3

Becky McCoy stepped into her cube, shrugged off her spring coat and dropped it into a chair, and tossed her handbag into the vestibule depository. It had become dark out and the automatic lighting system was operating at about 30 per oent glow, producing a twilight effect in the small apartment. She went to the far wall and waved her hand across the opening of a small box emplaced in the wall. Stereophonic music immediately filled the room, coming from all four walls and quite loud. She swung back and once again raised her hand, palm open, in front of the same box and slowly closed the distance between her hand and the box. The volume lowered with the progression of the hand movement; when it reached her level of taste, she whisked the hand away and marched off toward the recess which served as a kitchen.

The lighting sensors were beginning to react to the heat of her body; wherever she moved, growing brilliance preceded her. She looked through the clear plastic of the refrigerator door, working a little control near the top to cause the shelves to revolve for inspection. Nothing she saw inspired her. She decided she'd better do something with that beef—she was nowhere near her consumption quota for the week. It would sit in there and rot and then

the meat people would be on her butt. She sighed, wondering what she could do with the beef. Then she stepped across to the
Working Girl's Chef,
studied the beef dishes, sighed again, and finally selected beef stroganoff, ignoring the
servings
selector entirely. That selector control had not moved off the "1" digit for so long the thing would probably blow up if she disturbed it.

Becky wondered idly if she would forever dine alone.

The corner of her vision caught the motion inside the refrigerator as a cut of beef slowly disappeared into the Chef Tube. She guessed she'd never fully accept the damn thing. There was something eerie and almost immoral about automated food preparation. If she had a couple of healthy kids to plan for, she certainly wouldn't rely on a damn automated chef to . . .

She farced herself to stop. Becky McCoy would never have a couple of kids, or not even one kid, or not even one husband to plan for. At thirty-five a girl had to face the reality of her life and times. Becky was facing it. And it was a gruesome reality.

She went back into the social, humming along under her breath with the canned music. A cigarette ash was on the couch. She wrinkled her nose and made a mental note to remind Maintenance to check her AVS, the automated vaccum system. Then she sat down and thumbed through the Television Annual, turned to the Marth 9th programming, and intently studied the list. Her mind wandered through the fifty selections and she found herself wondering if Mike Winston had managed to intercept Charles Waring.

Her mind returned to the program list and she began making her selections for the evening. Damn the television!

She wondered why she stayed in Washington. It was the loneliest city in the country. For a girl especially. She smiled grimly. Who the hell did she think she was kidding? It was the same everywhere. And Becky McCoy was no girl. She was slipping rapidly toward forty, and the abundant life had somehow passed her by. Out of all those years, just a few moments, a few golden moments when she had really known that she was live, and a woman, and loved. Couldn't a person logically expect to receive more than just a few golden moments?

Becky had thought, once, that there had been a chance with Mike Winston. Once. Not anymore. She had given Mike up, even the idea. But that had been one mad weekend, hadn't it? Almost her total treasury of remembered moments, that weekend. She sighed, lost in retrospect, and when the little gong sounded she mistook it for the Chef's signal. She got up and started for the kitchen, then she heard his voice in the Announcer, and her heart lurched.

"Becky, it's Mike Winston. May I come up?"

Breathlessly she replied, "Yes, yes, of course—come on up, Mike." Then she made a dash for the dressing room to see what Mike would see when he came through the door.

He did not appear to see much of anything. He was limping painfully, and his eyes were registering an emotion she'd never seen there before. He gave her a wan smile, limped on past her with a brief look over his shoulder, and sank onto the couch. "There was an accident," he explained. "I think I sprained my ankle."

"Let me take a look," she said. She sat on the floor, removed his shoe and sock, and said, "I have just the thing for this."

She pushed him onto his back, peered anxiously into his eyes, and asked him, "It's more than the ankle, isn't it? What's happened?"

He told her, "The world turned over on me, Becky. Don't ask for details, eh?"

She nodded her head and ran off toward the bath. Winston lit a cigarette, took two deep drags, and then she was back, applying some cool jelly-like goop to the injured area. The throbbing immediately began to subside.

"Good stuff," he commented. "Mother McCoy, you're some good medicine."

She said, "Keep your dirty comments to yourself. And keep your leg in this position until the stuff dries. It will take away the swelling too."

"Thanks," he said, and lay weakly back, the cigarette forgotten. Becky removed it from his fingers and dropped

it into the tube. Then she went back to the bath and returned the Spranepak to its place in the medical : dispenser. When she returned Winston was sound asleep.

She dropped to the floor beside the couch and lay her head on his shoulder. Miracles, she decided, still happened. And here was another golden moment for the treasury.

Winston sat bolt upright and tried to make his eyes focus on his wristwatch. The couch had been cantilevered out into a circular bed; the ceiling television viewer was activated. Becky McCoy lay beside him, wearing a lace bedjacket and, he presumed, nothing else, She had obviously been watching the television. She rolled toward him on an elbow, smiling, and asked, "Do you always awaken like King Kong?"

He told her, "My watch is dead. What time is it?"

"Almost ten," she replied.

"I have to get out of here, Becky," he muttered.

"You've hardly arrived," she told him.

"A war game is scheduled to start on the West Coast at midnight. I have to get out there."

"I didn't know you played at war," she said cooly.

"Well this one may not be a play. I've got to . . . uh . ,. say, the ankle's feeling fine. You're a good doctor."

"Awhile ago I was Mather McCoy," she reminded him.

He was up and hobbling about the small room, rounding up his things. He told her, "You know I appreciate the breather, Becky."

"Drop in any time," she said. "Any time you need first aid."

Something in her tone pierced his mental turmoil and turned him around. He looked at her through a long moment of silence, then grinned and told her, "I'm a hell of a guy. Becky, you're a woman in a million. Thanks. I mean it, thanks."

She said, "You're welcome, and I mean that. You're welcome to anything you can find around here, Mike Winston."

He said, "Becky . . . something wild is going on. I can't tell you about it, but believe me, it's wild. And it's about to

eat me, maybe all of us. I have to get out to California. Will you give me a raincheck?"

"For what?" she asked quietly.

"For whatever I can find around here."

She dropped her eyes. "You've had one for three years. You know that."

He sighed. "Yes, I've known it. Becky ... I really
must
get to California."

"The next commuter doesn't leave until midnight," she informed him.

"Is that right?"

"That's right."

He sat down and pulled his feet onto the bed. "Well, I can't think of a nicer place to wait for midnight."

Her eyes thanked him. She said, "I'm too old for pride, Mike. I'm dying of loneliness."

He told her, "You're too much woman for that. You're not built for solo."

She sighed and said, "Amen, and I am open to suggestions."

"I think I'd like a drink," he told her.

Her face brightened. "Me too." She flipped about to all fours and crawled to the wall-headboard, slid open a cabinet, and started punching buttons. "The last time we drank together," she reminded him, "you had whiskey, lemon, and water."

She pressed a frosted plastic tumbler into his hand and toasted him silently with her eyes. Winston tasted his drink, winked at her, and took a mansized pull at it. "You know, that stuff does help," he commented.

He stared at her for a thoughtful moment and allowed his eyes to roam the luxurious figure beneath the lace. Then he soberly asked her, "Do you feel in the mood for a bit of sexplay, Becky?"

A tear squeezed beyond control and rolled down the smooth plane of her cheek. She gave her head a dainty toss and admitted, "I'm half-dead for lack of some. But I don't want it as a gift, Michael."

He smiled soberly and told her, "It's the nicest gift one human can pass to another, Becky."

"I'm in love with you," she said.

He said, "Your drink is getting flat."

"Story of my life." She smiled brightly and swiped angrily at another tear. "I've been in love with you for three years."

He threw his glass across the room and swept her into j his arms. The lace fell away, and one hell of a lot of
^!
woman came alive in his embrace. He whispered, "This is no gift, Becky."

"Yes, yes it is," she gasped. "It's the gift of life."

And he knew that it was—not for her, but for him. There were two ways of looking at the AMS society, he decided. Some people buried themselves in quivering flesh. Others, if they were very lucky, found themselves there. And, for awhile, Mike Winston gloried in the paradox of sexual love; and he lost himself to the problems of the || world, and found himself in the problems of two very | lonely people.

At eleven o'clock he told her, "My God!" with a longdrawn sigh.

Her head was nuzzled into his shoulder, her rhythmic breathing was traveling through his flesh in some strange 3 osmosis of empathy. She stirred, traced the outline of his jaw with an exploring fingertip, moaned softly, and moved j her face onto his chest.

"I'll take half of that any time," she murmured.

"Then I think we ought to get married," he announced j lazily.

"Some things we just don't joke about, my love," she said languidly.

"I wasn't joking."

"You mean a real true-blue AMS card in the slot | ceremony?"

"Yeah, even that," he said, sighing.

"Okay."

"Okay? Is that all? Okay?"

She giggled. "Okay, I'll marry you. But you'll have to give me time to prepare. At least ten minutes."

He rubbed a hand lightly across her hip and told her, "I'm serious, Becky."

She said, "Okay, serious, tell me about Leslie, your other love."

He sighed. "Leslie was a fracto. She died tragically at the uncomely age of twenty-two. And I've mourned her long enough."

She had raised up to peer into his eyes. "Did you say fracto?"

"Uh huh. That's what killed her. She didn't know it until the day before we were to be married. She jumped out of a window on the 20th floor of the Eisenhower Building." He sighed. "And I guess I've been leaping out that same window every day since."

The light mood between them had vanished. Becky moaned, "Oh Michael."

He said, "One of life's little cruelties. Didn't even get a newspaper mention. It was during the Arlington purge of '92.1 was with the justice Department then, and she was an adorable little thing in the programming section." A muscle worked in his jaw and he added, "I told her it didn't matter to me. It did, of course. But not that much. It wasn't that she was any better looking than the average woman. You've got it all over her in the body-beautiful department. And, let's face it, you're probably twice the woman Leslie would have ever been. But there was ... I don't know, something about the way she carried herself. The tilt of her head ... a sort of vibrant something ... a fire, I guess, an inner fire. She just stood out. In my vision, anyway. I loved her very deeply, I think. Think, hell. I loved her like the flowers love the sun."

"What did the purge of '92 have to do with it? I thought that was a subversives' purge."

He reached beyond her and snared a cigarette and lit it, then watched the smoke drift away and said, "Well, that was when the Asian panics began. And there was some sort of nutty fear about the Asian-African pact. All the blacks in government service were given the fine-sieve treatment, especially those in the military arms and in those civil branches regarded as quote sensitive unquote. Justice was regarded as one of those. I was on Harold Postum's staff then, that was in the days before FPB. They would not have checked Leslie so closely if it hadn't been known that she was engaged to marry me." He exhaled a long column of smoke. "They found a nigger in the woodpile, four generations back. They call that an
octoroon.
And they told me that the Attorney General's number one man could not be married to an octoroon. So I told the Attorney General what to do with his job. I begged them—I mean I
begged
them to not tell Leslie. But they had to. The AMS override, see. They had to classify her as an Aunty Tom. She fell apart. I tried to hold her together, and I thought I almost had it whipped. Then Postum called her in and told her what she was doing to my quote fine career unquote. And she went right out of his window. Head first."