Conquistador (42 page)

He lay for a while, savoring the sensation of physical well-being and of waking up without a chemical hangover, and with a lot less of that glassy sense of dislocation. He put his hands behind his head and grinned at the plaster.

Here I am, on a whole new world,
he thought.
A whole, fresh, non-mucked-up new world to see. Hell with a vacation in Yosemite or even Glacier National Park!

Well, it was probably
relatively
non-mucked-up. Socrates had complained that Attica was eroded and barren due to overuse back in . . . well, it had been a couple of hundred years B.C., at least.
I should have studied more history; I only know that bit about Socrates because it was in a textbook on environmental studies.

“Of course, Ms. Rolfe thinks I'm here for good. We may have to agree to differ on that,” he continued out loud.

She'd used a fairly cunning dirty trick to cover her tracks, but if he got out of here he could probably get enough proof to expose the disinformation. And in the meantime, he
was
here.

“Christ, what an . . . hell, an adventure!”

Adventure usually meant someone else, in deep shit, very far away. This could turn out like that, but the scenery would be some compensation.

Suitcases stood at the foot of his bed. He looked at them, blinked, looked again. They were
his
suitcases—and his old army duffel bag, as well. He heaved one up on the bed and snapped open the catches; it was filled with his clothes, as well.

“Well, that settles the question of what to wear,” he said, caught between fury and amusement. “Ever thoughtful, our hostess.”

The bathroom was a little daunting; it gave out on a veranda that looked downslope. Objectively he knew it was perfectly private—the closest thing in sight was another small block of flats, a hundred yards downslope. Then he forgot everything for a moment as his eyes lifted to the fog-streaked grandeur of the bay, lit by the morning sun. Right below him roofs were emerging as the silver-white vapor retreated, and the tops of trees. . . .

And for the first time in my life, I don't have to mentally edit out the works of humankind,
he thought after a moment.

By the time he'd showered and shaved, the scent of the coffee had driven even that sight from his mind. The kitchen and bedrooms were on the same level; he walked in to find Adrienne at the stove, dressed in a thigh-length bathrobe with her hair hanging in a loose, damp fall down her back. The urge to run his fingers through it was almost irresistible.

But will be firmly resisted,
he thought.
Once burned, twice vulnerable—and there's business to attend to.

Tully was sprawled at his ease, the remains of his breakfast before him on a table of some satiny reddish-brown wood. He was in one of his Banana Republic safari suits, a mug of coffee in his hand, grinning ear to ear as Adrienne threw some remark over her shoulder. The kitchen was a rectangle set along the same veranda that fronted the bathroom; the floor was tile, the countertops smooth granite, and the appliances upscale-familiar, with a flat-surface cooker.

“Coffee's fresh,” Adrienne said, nodding to him. “There's scrambled eggs, bacon, flapjacks, fruit and cream.”

“You don't have a cook?” Tom asked.

“Not here,” she replied, turning back to the stove and flipping a pancake. “This is just where I hang my hat in town, when I've got business and don't have time to go back home to Seven Oaks. I could stay at the Rolfe townhouse, but Dad and I get along a lot better when we're not at close quarters outside business hours.”

“You can cook for me anytime,” Tully said enthusiastically, mopping his plate with a piece of toast.

Tom frowned at him behind her back. His partner scowled back, briefly extending the middle finger of his free hand and mouthing a word.

The taller man cleared his throat. “I'll have the eggs and bacon, and some of the pancakes, thank you,” he said coolly, and poured himself a cup of the coffee. The milk came in a glass bottle, which was something he'd heard about but never seen; the cream on top had separated.

Well,
he thought,
they would have checked all the cattle they imported for infection. No need to be as finicky as we are.

His first sip of coffee brought his brows up. “Where do you
get
this stuff?” he said, despite himself. Rich, nutty, mellow, strong but not a trace of bitterness . . .

“Hawaii,” Adrienne said. “The Big Island, to be precise—it's Kona Gold. One of the few forms of farming in the Commonwealth that actually makes money. The sugar comes from the islands as well.”

He nodded noncommittally and tucked into the breakfast.

“Roy was right,” he said after a moment. “You
can
cook. Let me guess: all organic ingredients?”

The eggs were done with cream and diced scallions and a little tangy paprika, and they had a smooth intensity of flavor that perfectly complemented the smoky richness of Canadian-style bacon smoked with apple wood.

“Not exactly,” she said. “But it all comes fresh from close by Rolfeston. Farming's an artisan-scale industry here. There's no point in anything capital-intensive, and we don't have to squeeze out the last bushel. The Old Man likes it that way; he also likes ‘food that tastes like food,' as he puts it.”

“Mmmph,” he said, mouth full of the boysenberry pancakes. “I'll have to find a gym,” he said, when he could.
If I'm here any length of time,
he did not continue aloud.

The orange juice had tiny bits of pulp floating in it, and a wild, sweet flavor he'd never met before. He suppressed an appreciative noise and went on: “Otherwise your Gate will be absolutely safe—I wouldn't
fit
through after a couple of months.”

“Well,” she said, chuckling as she brought her own plate to the table, “Roy and I were talking about something related to that.”

Tom gave his partner a brief glance that he meant to be quelling; apparently he was getting entirely too friendly with her. She
was
the opposition; at best, an ally against someone worse, and that wasn't proven yet.

The way Adrienne was sitting and Tully was leaning back from the table, she couldn't see his face. That let Tully mouth words; long practice made them easily comprehensible:
Fuck you, Kemosabe.

“You said you needed to see the Commonwealth,” Adrienne said. “Roy suggested that he take a look around Rolfeston, use the archives and library and meet people. You could come up to Seven Oaks with me, and get a feel for how the countryside functions. Rolfeston's the only city here; most people live in smaller settlements or on farms or the estates of Family members.”

Roy Tully was nodding his head vigorously behind her back and mouthing:
Yes! yes!

Tom rubbed his jaw. “What's your total population?”

“About two hundred thousand, according to Nostradamus,” she said. “Just over three thousand in the Thirty Families, a hundred and fifty thousand Settlers, and fifty thousand
nahua;
there may be ten thousand or so wild Indians left in what you'd call California, say thirty or forty thousand between the Rockies and the sea from Baja to Alaska, but we don't have much contact with them. More than half of us live around the bay; there are pockets of settlement down the coast to San Diego—we get our oil from the Long Beach field—and another outpost up around the site of Portland in Oregon. A few thousand in Hawaii and the Australian colony near Adelaide. And a chain through the Sierras to Nevada, with some small outposts further east; that's the hardest to keep up, so far from the sea.”

“Then why—” He stopped and thumped himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh, right. The Comstock Lode.”

“Not to mention Tonopah and Alder Gulch and Cerro Gordo and other places,” she said.

“Yah,” Tom said, nodding slowly. “That sounds reasonable. Sure, I'll drive north with you. But . . . what's that got to do with a gym?”

She grinned, and despite himself he felt his mouth quirking up in response for an instant before he forced his face back into an expressionless mask.

“Well, the reason I want to get back to Seven Oaks today is that my
mayordomo
”—she pronounced it Spanish-fashion—“my manager, that is . . . says that we have to begin on the wheat tomorrow. And rest assured, that'll work off a lot more breakfasts than one.”

“You always put your guests to work?” he said.
Or just lowly peasants from FirstSide?

“At harvesttime? Damned right I do,” she said. “Since I intend to be out there helping too. You have no idea how hungry a landholder here can get for men when something gets ripe. Ogres ain't in it by comparison; everyone pitches in. And it'll give you a chance to see the Commonwealth from the bottom up, as it were.”

She paused for a moment. “Also, I've spoken with my grandfather, and he'd like to meet you too. Seven Oaks is close to Rolfe Manor.”

And I'd like to meet him,
he thought, a hunter's eagerness behind the expressionless mask of his face.

“Look, Tom, you've got to be professional about this,” Tully said, as Adrienne left to dress.

“I'm
trying
to be,” Tom said. “You're the one who's acting like she's your long-lost sister.”

“No, you're
not
being professional,” Tully said, his face serious. “I
am
being professional; I'm doing my Roy the Friendly Goblin shtick.”

“You think she's falling for it?”

“No, but she thinks I'm funny—and knows it's an exaggeration, not just an act.
You
are pouting, except when you forget and it slips. You're letting your resentment at being led around by the dick and made a fool of risk alienating our only source of information here.”

“Not to mention she made everyone back home think we're dirty,” Tom said grimly.

Tully shrugged. “Hey, Kemosabe, there are two possibilities with that. First, we never get back. In which case, who gives a flying F-word what people on the other side of the Gate think? It just plain doesn't affect us here. Second, we
do
get back—and chances are our names are cleared. Hell, we'll be heroes, famous, and rich after the interviews and quickie book deals!”

“It still grates.”

“Without her, we've got zero chance of finding out what's going on here—not to mention of ever doing anything about it. We'd have to give up and start looking around for jobs, because we'd be citizens of the great and wonderful Commonwealth for the rest of our lives whether we liked it or not. That still may happen, but do you want to make it a sure thing?”

Tom opened his mouth, flushed, and closed it again. After a moment he replied: “OK, Roy, you've got me. I
am
being resentful. But Christ, I'm not an actor or an undercover type. She
did
lie to me and I
do
resent it.”

“Yeah, but you don't have to keep hugging it tight, do you? Flashing between warm and chilly according to whether you're remembering to be mad that moment? Jesus, Tom, the woman really does like you, you know.”

“And . . .” Tom hesitated, but if you couldn't talk to your best friend, you were limited to conversations with your mirror. “And she didn't just lie about what she did. She lied about what she
is.
She's a killer.”

Tully let the chair he was leaning back in fall forward onto all four legs with a thump. He stabbed a finger at his partner.

“Hey, Kemosabe, I've got news for you! I don't see nooobody but
killers
in this room!
I
killed a fair number of people 'cause Uncle Sam said they deserved to die, and sometimes I killed people who happened to be standing too close to Those Officially Classified as Evil when I set off the area-effect munitions. So did you, not to trade war stories. You think it's worse because she's got different plumbing? And she did what she did in the line of duty; she could have offed Perkins, but she didn't. Have you never done something that stuck in your craw because it was the only way to get the job done?”

“Not quite on that level, but I see what you're driving at. OK, OK.”

“She's got her job to do,” Tully said, driving home the point with his customary subtlety. “We've got ours.”

Tom grunted in reply and picked up a newspaper from the table, looking for refuge from the embarrassment that made him squirm slightly. Instead he half choked on a sip of coffee as he read the headline: TWO FISH AND GAME WARDENS FROM FIRSTSIDE TO COMMONWEALTH!

His picture was there next to Roy's; neither of them were looking at their best, and the prints must have come from the ID machine at Gate Security. No matter how high the tech became, official photographs always made you look like a criminal degenerate, a moron, or someone who'd been dead for several days. Often all of those at once. Apparently that was true in all possible universes.