Wild Country (33 page)

"After siesta, then?"

Quantrill pushed his chair back and returned Sorel's smile. "Probably around dark," he hazarded, getting up. "I kinda thought I'd catch a stage to Soho and the Thrillkiller this afternoon."
And keep an eye peeled for Sorel
, he added to himself.

"An excellent idea," Sorel replied. He had his own reasons for learning the layout adjacent to the delta landing strip. Quickly he turned his smiling glance to the others. "Would you gentlemen be my guests for such a trip?"

"Whatever," said Longo lazily.

"Okay by me," Slaughter replied. "How 'bout it, Coulter?"

Quantrill made a quick decision. This was probably a wild goose chase anyhow; why not combine business with pleasure? Good sense should have told him why not; yet, "Fine," he said. "See you at the tables."

Watching Quantrill's exit, Longo muttered, "You sure we want that guy underfoot?"

"As cover, yes. We may even find that we need him. A man who uses my money can be surprisingly grateful," Sorel murmured. As he signed the tab, Sorel reflected that this was true only for simple, friendly fellows like Coulter. San Antonio Rose was a different sort: short on gratitude, long on greed. He would follow orders—making three singleton reservations for that delta at separate hotels, for instance—only because he would be paid in cash for his services.

Quantrill had found the same to be true of desk clerks. Even if he'd had a shield to flash, he would have used a crisp bill instead. It got you the information, sometimes more of it than you expected, without giving your own status away. This time he learned that the Early Bird housed a pair of tough-looking gents who might be the "friends" he sought to surprise. For a second bill, the clerk arranged to be relieved for ten minutes and, finding the pair's room empty, made his brief reconnaissance of the gaming rooms. He returned beaming, having found both men at the roulette table.

Quantrill made a wary approach, reminded himself that the Gov had insisted he obtain backups before drawing on Felix Sorel. He found one man consulting a programmable calculator, nervously scanning the display as he muttered orders to a companion. They were only men with a system to beat the wheel, and it was clearly failing. They did fit the general descriptions he gave the desk clerk, but he'd wasted forty dollars to locate a couple of incurable optimists. Quantrill sighed and moved on. Whatthehell, he might as well find Matthias and escort him to the Thrillkiller complex. There was something about the Mexican that he liked, beyond his willingness to spend money. Maybe, he thought, it was that aura of easy self-confidence…

The stage to the Thrillkiller complex was loaded to its running boards, and two small boys were "forced" to sit up with the driver to their whoops of delight as they looked down on the rumps of the four-horse team. Their parents sat with Sorel's party and discussed the Thrillkiller; that is. until they saw it. Rounding a bend, the occupants of the stage all fell silent before the spectacle that sprawled the length of the valley.

They passed the quaint urban jungle of Soho to the left, on their way to a broad ground-level parking area a kilometer or so farther. A pair of sunken hotels flanked two sides of the parking area, and a vast hangarlike structure, housing most of the amusement rides, loomed beyond. Stretching alongside these structures, angling toward the butte at the head of the valley, was a well-surfaced airstrip with hangar space for small visiting craft as well as Heinkels and Spitfires. But no one spent much time staring at these secondary attractions. Even Sorel, who had come solely to see the delta moorage, stared in awe, speechless as the two boys who were first to spot a Thrillkiller capsule spiraling down from the lip of the butte several kilometers away.

From this distance, only the silver two-place capsule and its maglev rails glinted in the sun, the support structures painted to blend into the ochre tints of Wild Country. When Quantrill spotted it, the tiny bubble-topped dart was emerging from its downward spiral and onto the high-speed straight, heading in their general direction. It dropped from sight as the stage negotiated a gentle bend toward the parking area and did not come into view again until they were passing the natural earth berm of the nearest hotel. It was still nearly a kilometer away, but now over the clip-clopping and homely squeaks of a horse-drawn stage they could hear the synthesized turbine howl of the capsule. Even at this distance, they found it easy to believe that the thing was streaking along at supersonic velocity.

The little capsule banked into a broad turn, arrowing nearer, then sweeping to parallel the parking area before braking for its last series of gut-wrenching chicanes. In seconds it had disappeared, heading for the start-finish arcade near the other rides. "That tears it," said the father of the boys in a hushed voice. "Nobody in his right mind would let his kids ride that thing by themselves."

"That's the hypersonic track," Quantrill offered. "Besides, WCS won't let children ride alone."

"Then that
really
settles it," the man replied. "I'm not crazy."

"I'm with you," Quantrill said, grinning. He could see his new friend Matthias studying the curve of the maglev rails, nodding, smiling. Chiefly for the Mexican's benefit and mindful of their heavy lunch, he added, "It can empty a full stomach in a hurry, they say."

Stepping from the stage near a berm walkway, they watched a double-decker London bus lurch away, half-filled with patrons, toward the distant Soho. The other passengers ambled away to leave Quantrill and his party alone. The place might be thronged by holiday season, but today the hubbub of foot traffic was light. Still gazing at the rails gleaming laserlike in the near distance, Sorel said, "I would not have thought you could resist a challenge like that, Mr. Coulter. You have been here before, without trying this Thrillkiller?"

On his first trip Quantrill had been on duty for WCS, and in any case he had not given expensive thrill rides much thought at the time. A manhunter, even a part-time deputy, found challenges enough without creating them. "I was with a miz," he lied, and followed it up with another. "Which reminds me, a girl I knew from Alpine used to work at one of these places. Really should look her up. If she's homesick, I could get lucky." He winked. "Where'll you three be in… oh. an hour, I reckon?"

Sorel laughed, accepting the fact that Sam Coulter liked to cruise for women alone. It also occurred to him that he could better study the delta moorage without Coulter. He looked around, saw the concession signs beyond an ornamental cactus garden, and pointed. "Under the 'Dee and Dee' sign, then, in an hour."

Quantrill entered the nearest hotel while Sorel and his companions strode off in the direction of the concessions. Longo, noting that the crowd was too sparse for his liking, said, "I feel like we're naked out here in the open."

"I must get a close look at the air terminal, such as it is," said Sorel. "Perhaps it would be better if you two separated and mingled with the tourists. If you pick up a little
puta
or two, so much the better." With that, he struck off on a perimeter path toward the airstrip, a ten-minute walk away.

Quantrill drew a total blank in the modem hotels. The patrons sleeping in Soho, he teamed to his surprise, could only make reservations a week or more in advance. It made sense; WCS was not about to run such an expensive spectacle as the Battle of Britain when only a handful of paying guests were scheduled. The casual tourist was encouraged to visit Soho, but the last bus left Brewer Street at Big Ben's last stroke of ten every night. A very few hardy souls might stay in the pubs until someone called, "Time, gents," but they faced a long walk in darkness to the glow of the distant hotels, and Texas rattlers did not go to sleep with the sparrows.

Logically, even if Sorel were somewhere near, he could not have known he needed reservations a week before. Besides, "Little Vegas" was a term reserved for Faro. Quantrill promised himself to visit Soho with Sandy someday but saw no reason to search the place now. The desk clerks of every hotel in the area now knew that they could earn easy money by leading one Sam Coulter, room 212 at the Long Branch, to men traveling together and matching certain descriptions. If he merely canvassed the hotels and showed up when passengers boarded the big delta at dusk the following day, he would be doing his job. The plain fact was that, by now, Quantrill did not expect—in fact, did not particularly hope—to meet Felix Sorel. Half-aware of this potentially fatal mindset, Quantrill walked across the grounds expecting, and hoping, to meet Ernst Matthias.

He saw the tall man from behind, waiting near the sign of the popular "Dee and Dee" concession, and checked his stride while tallying details with his last photo of Sorel's sidekick, Harley Slaughter. But this man had a sizable rump on him, whereas Slaughter was one lean machine. He saw as he moved for a better view that this one also had the beginnings of a comfortable paunch, was gray at the sideburns, and—hell, it was only his companion, Leo Cherry! Laughing silently at himself, Quantrill greeted the man with the palm-up "how" gesture of holovision Indians and real-life Texans.

"See anything that looks like fun?"

"Little brunette, but she ain't sellin'
or
buyin'." Slaughter shrugged. "You?"

"My Alpine chick has flown," Quantrill said, aping a line from a current western ditty, complete with the catch in his voice.

If Cherry was amused, he kept it to himself. "Where the hell are—those other two?"

The others straggled up within moments, and Sorel proposed that they see what the inside concessions had to offer. A chattering jostle of parents and kids had lined up to tour the Haunted Mine, which packed four people in each artificially tacky orecart for a five-minute ride. Sorel thought it might be a trifle too tame.

The Copycat sounded tame but looked more like a challenge. Perhaps a score of tourists stood watching through large windows as a young woman, inside what seemed to be a large padded cell, vied with a programmed android. The legend "ATHLETE" glowed near the top of the windows. It seemed that patrons could choose their level of challenge, from "beginner" through "athlete" and "gymnast," to "expert." Quantrill suspected that the jeans-clad girl was a WCS shill. drumming up business by demonstrating the game. Lithe and pretty, the girl was good.

The android was better. Dressed in a floppy sweat suit, crafted to look like a burly drill instructor, it was one of the recent models with a small range of facial expressions, a belly full of energy cells, and no extension cord. It had already done push-ups, a one-legged deep-knee bend, and a cartwheel—an astonishing improvement on androids of previous years—but each time the girl copied the maneuver. As the men watched, the android performed a deep split. The girl matched it. From the scatter of objects on the padded floor it picked up a tennis ball in each hand; tossed the balls one by one up behind its back so that the arc continued over its shoulder; and caught the ball with the same hand. The girl did the same. Then, without changing its grim expression, it tossed both balls in over-the-shoulder arcs simultaneously.

"No fair," the girl laughed, and, after one or two false starts, tossed her tennis balls. She caught one, missed the other, and snapped her fingers in good-natured chagrin. The android placed its tennis balls precisely where they had been before, faced the girl again, gave an awful mechanical grin, and bowed before folding its arms and closing its eyes, inert as a concrete pillar. The girl wiped a wisp of hair from her face as she exited, smiling.

Sorel turned to his companions. "We could do that, I think. Mr. Cherry? Mr. Collier?"

The tall one made a wry face, shook his head. That coldgas weapon down his arm prevented such flexibility, and Sorel damned well knew it. The barrel-chested man lifted an eyebrow and moved his arm as if to display it. "With this gimpy elbow? Shit, no. You try it. wetback."

Sorel put his tongue between his teeth in real amusement. Longo knew he could get away with the abusive term because it formed another layer of cover over their real relationship. The Mexican glanced at Quantrill and grinned as if to say that he was not easily offended. "Then you. Mr. Coulter, and then I. My treat."

Quantrill hesitated. Old training had taught him to avoid spectacular shows of prowess. Given those uncanny reflexes, he had the ability to recover from a poor move and correct it; not in tenths, but in hundredths of a second. But nothing required him to punch the high-level options. He agreed, letting Sorel pay as he punched the "athlete" option at the Copycat doorway.

Again, the android was better. Quantrill managed the ball-toss maneuver, leaping forward to catch a fumbled ball and turning back to wave, hearing the cheers from Sorel and others. He also copied the Russian leap but found himself unequal to the android in "hackey sack." He kept the small leather beanbag bouncing from his feet and knees for only a moment before he forgot and snatched the leather bag with one hand. The android performed that ludicrous grin, bowed, and turned to stone again.

The sturdy Mexican led the scatter of applause, handed his boots to his taller companion, and punched his option. Out side, watching through the glass, Quantrill saw the glowing word "GYMNAST" and found himself hoping that Ernst Matthias was up to the challenge. An instant's memory fled through his mind of his gymnast friend Kent Ethridge, now becoming dust in a government-furnished coffin. Quantrill had been quicker at their lethal work but had never doubted Ethridge's superiority in gymnastics. Was Matthias a gymnast, too?

Whatever else he was, the Mexican was good; no, he was great. The android began with the Russian leap, and the stocking-footed Matthias did it better, legs absolutely horizontal at chest height as he touched his toes. He caused a bit of reprogramming as the android began its hackey sack routine. He flicked a foot out to intercept the leather bag, popping it upward with his other knee, crossing his other foot behind the leg he stood on to snap the bag over the android's head. The android missed, unable to whirl the massive weight of its energy cells and thermal-response plastic muscles in time to keep the hackey sack airborne.