Wild Country (5 page)

Sandy's journal, Sun. 17 Sept. '06

And now I have sent Ted away! One day he will tire of my temper, will find some more complacent woman. Perhaps he has already. And that might be best for us all. Let someone else wake on lonely nights to wonder whether Ted Quantrill's luck has finally run out.

I should be more friendly with Jerome Garner, who, with all his father's land hereabouts, is surely
the
catch in Edwards County. He would not care what I did with this damnable steel toy gleaming in the light before me. Not he! His ethics begin at his fence line and stop at his beltline. Or so they say in Rocksprings
.

I would almost prefer Lufo. At least
his
dishonesty was transparent and dependable. A pity I did not consider that before I let him sell the jewel. I am certain it brought a higher price than Lufo claimed, perhaps ten thousand dollars American? Twenty, even. Lufo is canny, though. Since I trusted him with the sale, he knows I had my reasons for not having Ted sell it
.

And if I made a clean breast of it to Ted, "washed my boobies," as they say on the holo, the least that would happen is the end of their old camaraderie. The most? Mutual murder, for neither of them would ever back down.

The truth is that I can do nothing, cannot even move away without leaving Ba'al friendless, unless Childe should choose his wild ways over mine. And she very well might! Without her caution, he would soon be back among the Safari game animals and the Garner sheep, instead of making do with roots and rattlers. And one day, someone like Jer Garner would hunt him down with a rocket launcher. Ba'al may be the most potent gristle ever created by God and Texas Aggies, but he is not invulnerable.

No more than Ted, who is perfectly correct in claiming that his work is vital. And that no one is better suited to it than he. But sooner or later, if I do not stop him, a bullet must. And I, who cannot even bear to think of poor Espinel's killer lying dead on my property: what will I do when it is Ted who is consigned to the worms? Ah, God, how will it end? For it
will
end, I know…
.

The villa of Judge Anthony Placidas shared the breeze off Lake Medina on Monday morning with a dozen other homes, all postwar country residences of neodobe, the envy of those in SanTone whose high-rise windows faced the west. Judge Placidas had done very well for himself while still an attorney; was known in the ringcity as a man sympathetic to the rights of defendants. He was also known as an ardent sportsman; though well into his sixties, he could still shoot an ibex while in the saddle and was not averse to bucking the tiger at the Faro gaming tables—both legal entertainments on the half-million acres of Wild Country Safari. Somewhat less well known were his occasional meetings there with men he would not dream of entertaining anywhere else. The money that changed hands during those meetings had little to do with gambling. It had a lot to do with the rights—and the gravest wrongs—of some defendants.

It was not that Judge Placidas had expensive tastes, but his daughter Marianne was another matter. On this Monday morning, the judge was berobed, earning his money in SanTone. Marianne Placidas had ordered a breakfast for one sent to the villa; chorizo sausage and eggs, fresh orange juice, a double daiquiri, and a slab of butter for the villainous acorn-flour bread that still disgraced the menus of even the rich. (As wheat harvests improved, the acorn content of flour dwindled.)

Marianne slipped off one low-heeled glove-leather sandal by toeing it with the other foot, then shucked the other sandal and stared through the polyglass table. Something would have to be done about those feet, and soon! They were attached to slender ankles, the calves wonderfully long with muscular convexities. The knees seemed too narrow for the demands she made on them, her tanned thighs highly developed. Any dullard knew by staring at the Placidas legs—and who didn't?—that the rest of her was equally athletic and well cared for. Marianne was the perfect image of the synchronized swimmer, but she scorned both the strict discipline and the public titillation involved. Hers were elite sports.

It was only those feet with the heavy veins and prominent sinews that hinted at approaching middle age. Marianne never wore heels before dinner, never wore flats afterward; that was the rule her mother had followed while she was alive. Whether gifted by genes or by constant attention to her body, Marianne had to admit that the regimen hadn't hurt those gorgeous limbs any. She pushed the eggs aside, sipped the daiquiri, and pondered throwing out her dozen pairs of footwear that showed too much sinew. Perhaps a few pairs of ankle-strap pumps? The high straps would draw men's eyes upward. Eyes, and importunate fingers, and perhaps a suitor would not pause to read the message of those treasonous feet as they marched Marianne away from her youth.

Her diet would have swollen the waist of a less active woman, but she was not her father's only daughter for nothing. She eyed the windsurfer sails on the lake, wondering if she would have time for an impromptu race before her tennis date. Her wide smile brought faint crinkles to the corners of her eyes; she could lose at tennis, but rarely did at windsurfing. Usually she won on superior balance. Now and then she relied on the tiny hydrazine propulsion system hidden inside her foam platform. In her lifelong pursuit of admiration, she had found no advantages in fairness. To Marianne Placidas, "fair" was strictly defined as a condition halfway between "pretty good" and "lousy."

She was inside, reaching for her bikini halter, when the phone chimed. It was probably that militarily correct Englishman. Alec Wardrop, calling to cancel their tennis date. No doubt he'd heard of her prowess and did not relish losing his veddy British aplomb. He was hell on horseback, she knew; a steeplechasing, Indian pigsticking fool from a long line of English career officers. Well, if she couldn't test him on a clay court, he would never test her in bed.

"Hello, Alec," she called to the phone. It recognized her voiceprint, but not her bored resignation.

The caller was not Lieutenant Alec Wardrop. Somewhere, on the other end of that connection, someone was holding a cheap commercial language tutor to the speaker. "Marianne Placidas la linda,
par favor
," the voice said.

She almost forgot the correct response, but: "She is out, and she is in," Marianne replied in a rush.

"Stand by to record," the voice said after a moment.

She lunged at the nearest speaker terminal. "Recording."

A long series of phone beeps ensued. They meant nothing specific to her yet, but they came in groups of five, and that meant a great deal in itself. She coded the doors locked, opened her jewel case, extracted a small dispenser with its stack of hormone pills. She swallowed the first pill—it was candy—and sucked furiously on the second, which was something else.

Before the last beep died away, she had dried her saliva from the little information lozenge and was inserting it into her own, very special tutorial voder. Sometimes it taught her French, sometimes the updated slangs of jazz buffs and soccer jocks. This morning it had already taught her that she, and not Alec Wardrop, would have to cancel that tennis date.

She remembered to cancel calls from outside, then placed her voder near the recorder speaker and encoded instructions. She scribbled the letters out in full caps as the voder, functioning as a very fast version of a one-time cipher code, began to recite the message, one letter at a time. There were faster ways to decode a message, but no way quite so innocent in its hardware, given the possibility that some very hard dudes might show up one day with a search warrant.

She smiled grimly as the first two words were assembled. Her father might have heard them in testimony; probably had, in fact. He could have no earthly idea that they referred to his darling, his pampered, his celebrated little girl.

The first two words were a greeting. CIELITA LINDA… No, she was not Judge Placidas's daughter for nothing. She was whatever she was, for all the sorrel-golden gratification she received.

Quantrill handed over his bounty late Sunday night in Junction and slept on a cot in the courthouse annex. It was far from the sleeping arrangements he had intended, and he awoke, Monday morning, with something less than joy. Before drawing his check for hazardous duty he had several things to do.

The most pleasant of those items was breakfast. Then, in descending order, turning in the cycle; filling out forms; and debriefing. In his perverse mood he did them in reverse order—always a mistake.

Marv Stearns eyed the smaller man standing before his desk for debriefing and waved him to a cane-bottomed chair. Stearns had the imposing physique of a defensive end, but these days it was running to meat instead of muscle. His face was more florid than tan. As he spoke, Quantrill listened to the careful diction and wondered, for the umpteenth time, if Steams had spent his college days as an actor instead of an athlete. "If you're going to slouch, Quantrill, I'd rather you sat." He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, not offering to share it; lined up the notes on his desk with geometric precision; studied the younger man's face with growing satisfaction. Rumbling it in false good humor: "Hung over?"

"Nope; just lack of sleep."

Stearns glanced at his desk terminal. "Maintenance found several empty beer bulbs in your cycle."

Quantrill knew the rules well enough. And, as a lovely assassin had taught him long before, you don't touch alcohol while under heavy stress. He hadn't so much as risked a cold Pearl until after the Rawson encounter. "Picked 'em up for the deposit," he lied. "They'll buy breakfast, if I ever get out of here. Sir."

"I'd have you out of here permanently, if it weren't for your connections," Stearns said. "Where the hell, and why, did you steal that old android?"

A sigh. "Call Mr. Marrow at Wild Country Safari; he'll tell you it was a junker he used for practical jokes. Rawson used it for target practice thinking it was me. And why is maintenance going over my cycle when I haven't turned it in yet?"

"I'll ask the questions," Stearns said, tapping with a forefinger on his desk placard. "Let me make it perfectly clear that I am chief deputy, and I don't like the way you operate. I think you drink on duty. I think you probably goaded Michael Rawson into drawing on you. The first time I catch you in a slip-up, you may end up on a rock-hockey gang at the county farm, or worse. And you're never in uniform, Quantrill. Never!" Stearns fondled the tan silk tie of his own spotless, sleek uniform. "Ties will be worn, mister. No deerskin shirts."

"Regulations permit a certain latitude in the dress code during hazardous duty," Quantrill said, quoting exactly from the book. "That's all you use me for, you know it and I know it. Sir. I could ask why, but you're asking the questions."

Steams bit back a furious reply, took a sip of coffee, and chose to let the harassment lapse for the time being. Most men, knowing they were under constant scrutiny for the slightest infraction, began to make more mistakes from sheer nervousness. Chief Deputy Marvin Stearns liked his world orderly, neat, and predictable. Wild cards like Quantrill were burrs in his personal blanket; he would rather remove them neatly than be surprised by their unconventional ways. Neatness, for Stearns, was a powerful measure of success.

In a trivial bureaucratic way, Stearns was right. But Quantrill had been harassed by experts. No one could have convinced Stearns that he was less than an expert judge of men. Pleased with his strategy. Steams continued the debriefing. He even agreed when, at the end, Quantrill asked to study some files before writing out his final report.

"Go ahead, if it'll make your report sound less like a goddam telegram and more like a professional job." He dismissed Quantrill with a wave.

The little deputy walked out without argument, knowing it was argument that Steams craved. Obvious insubordination or admission of drinking on duty—anything that might give Stearns an excuse for disciplinary action; perhaps even a suspension. Alone, Quantrill studied holo sequences from official files, imprinting the faces and mannerisms of Harley Slaughter and Clyde Longo. He was on his own time now, but those two were free on bail and they might know who had iced Mike Rawson. For some time now, Quantrill had suspected a leak in the Justice Department. If Slaughter and Longo had access to that leak, they might just come calling under false names.

An hour before noon, he cashed his hazardous pay chit and checked the schedules of freighters heading from Junction toward SanTone, then hotfooted it to the pickup point near Interstate 10. With the LOS—line-of-sight—power tower nearby, the huge-wheeled freight rigs often stopped to soak up energy through their antennae. Since the war, a lot of the big rigs were equipped with seats for several paying passengers. It wasn't first-class travel, but if you couldn't afford a hovercycle and couldn't borrow one from the motor pool, a freight rig was the best way to travel through the rough margins of Wild Country.

He found a black double-tandem Peterbilt with a full load revving its flywheels for pullout onto the freeway and waved a five-dollar piece. Headshake. A second coin with the first earned him a wave up, and Quantrill monkey-climbed the steps into the empty compartment behind the driver's.

She was a surly old specimen who took his money and heard his destination with only a nod. Pocketing the coins, she sealed his compartment off, engaged the flywheels, and hauled her freight with nary a word. She didn't need to speak; a sign in American and Spanish informed Quantrill that the passenger compartment was fitted with gas projectors and bulletproof glass "FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION." In a sense it was true. Few rigs were hijacked when, at the first sign of trouble, a teamster could fill that separated compartment with an assortment of nasty stuff.