Single Combat (13 page)

"That's just for starters, Eve! I can't let you keep that thing," he said, his hand shaking as he held it out. "Can you imagine what would happen if the wrong hands got control of your bauble?"

Her open-handed slap metronomed his arm, left his hand numb and his wrist aching. The rosebud lips tucked to reveal small sharp incisors: "Can
you
imagine what will happen if the wrong hand reaches for it?" Her blazing countenance, thought Mills, was not entirely sane.

Mills stood up, massaging his wrist, fighting for self-control. She had warned him long ago that her death or disappearance would cause certain letters to be opened, so his first impulse was really out of the question. (All aside from the fact that Eve could lift bigger men than Mills off the ground. He had videotapes of her with Chabrier, labeled 'The Argument For Celibacy'.) Perhaps he could manage to destroy the amulet. It was worth trying. Besides, he still needed her expertise in media research.

He took several long breaths before trusting his voice to be steady. "We'll consider the topic closed. I believe you dropped in for a chat on something more important," he prompted, as if the tiny synthesizer no longer interested him.

"Oh, yeah; those media relays," she said, shuddering the luminous glow of the amulet down her bodice. "I assume they're stratosphere balloons since you didn't seem to think I had the need to know. But you told me the Air Force had laser-equipped delta dirigibles cruising around Bakers-field and Gila Bend looking for targets."

"And other places. We think the translator relays are stealth-equipped Boucher relays, using Israeli electronics to displace the signal so we can't get a fix on the real antenna. We'll zap one sooner or later."

"You already have. Somebody did anyway." She noted his change of expression with glee; the sonofabitch didn't know everything! "At least, there's been a total lack of outlaw holo across a big piece of the Southwest for a week. Maybe there's a delta cruising around near the Big Bend, too."

"There is. They get momentary blips sometimes, and laser-grid whatever's there."

"Well, Ciudad Acuna's multichannel media station seems to be hors de combat. Just thought you'd like to know," she added, and energized her motorized couch as if to leave.

"You're even starting to sound like Chabrier," Mills gibed. "But thanks for the data. I wonder why the Air Force didn't know?"

"I expect they do. Maybe," she returned sweetly, "they didn't think
you
had the need to know."

Mills accepted this riposte with the sad small grin of one bested in a fair game, knowing it would put her at ease, and saw her out. Moments later he was commanding his console, checking the readiness of the facilities in the desert lab.

If Marengo Chabrier could create one amulet-sized synthesizer, he could create a million of them. The sooner Mills had a factory full of standard 'breadbox' size, the sooner he could have the Frenchman disappeared. It meant Mills would have to dump a lot of personal stock to finance the operation, but that was what assets were for.

Later Mills would call up the Lion of Zion for a chat to discuss the success of the delta sorties Mills himself had suggested. If they'd knocked down one of the damned holo relays, maybe they could zap others. But would they stay zapped?

Sandy's journal, 9 Jun'

Metaphorically, I worked a vein of gold in the caldera of Mount St. Helens this past week: enrichment & terror filled each day. I do not refer to the money, though I finally accepted 200 pesos, returning the rest as my donation to the cause (the only way my honor-bound Lufo would take it).

At first I feared confrontation between Lufo & him but Childe has somehow kept her promise. The 3 men were uneasy on nights when Childe was gone. I gather Espinel has a daughter of his own. How could I tell him that my sister is safer on her mount than any rebel on any fiery stallion?

Later I trembled for Espinel, who sought to protect me from Lufo despite my reassurances that a moonlit stroll on my own spread held no dangers for me—even with Lufo!

Finally I dreaded what I knew must happen: the launch of the graceful Day tripper. Success or failure, it meant the end of their stay. This morn, before the breeze huffed in the cedars, Stan was ready.

Stan: a pitiable red-eyed trembling husk after days & nights with little or no sleep, meals strewn across every work surface, makeshift repair with strips shaved from my weary old bamboo pole after he used all his filament tubes. But last night, Lufo & I returned from a walk to a sight that captured my soul.

A dark form stood near the darker mound of my soddy, both arms supporting a great winged wraith as though offering sacrifice to the moon. We stopped breathless, somewhat fearful, & held each other. I suppose Stan could not wait to make his glide test. I know he wishes he had, now!

The night was quiet, the breeze holding its breath so completely that I could smell the earth—& Lufo's pungent masculinity. The figure moved forward, gathering itself, the enormous bird flexing its pinions like a live thing, & then Stan—freed it. Moonlight flashed long shards of cold white light from the lifting body. In utter silence the lovely thing slid down the night, & I saw that Stan had intended it to find a cradle among my tender young lettuce & peppers
.

But a Daytripper spurns vegetables. Vast graceful wings wavered, tips flexing, & responded to a sudden renegade breeze that reached my upturned face moments later. The craft ghosted shadowlike above my garden, rising, rising, nosing into the breeze, tasting its freedom. Lufo chuckled, hearing Stan's 'Oh, shitshitshit,' but I was terrified. The wind is a treacherous ally in Wild Country, Stan raced into the soddy
—as I
learned, to retrieve the microwave control unit. By now, the soarer was high enough that I could see its spindly skeleton through the transparent skin, wheeling gently toward us, a silent specter drifting across the moon. My tears were testament not to fear now but to its eldritch beauty
.

Lufo, of course, was not transfixed as I was. Stan had explained that the languid reverse curves of the flight surfaces make the Daytripper float at scarcely more than a walking pace. Slithering with the wind, now, it moved faster than I can run. Lufo must have realized he must keep it between himself & the moon for visual contact. He leaped away, racing, head turned over one shoulder—& crashed headlong into a small cedar. Curses & consternation, for he had lost sight of the Daytripper while wrenching free
.

Stan reappeared from the soddy's nightshadow, & suddenly splinters of moon glinted above me. The Daytripper was answering its homing signal, wheeling ecstatically, now bereft of its lifegiving breeze but striving to clear the trees. I knew that it could not.

I was nearer than Lufo, saw the noiseless craft straighten & begin its descent. It was no more than five meters over my stumbling feet when a wingtip sliced into a cedar top.

The Daytripper pivoted so slowly that I ducked under the long ghostly sweep of the free wing, held my arms out, felt the cool sleekness of plastic film, fell on my backside in the brush. A number 3 'owie, but it could've been prickly pear!

Lufo rushed up gasping, took my dead albatross from me, & stalked back to Stan Thompson on the crest of a wave of curses. I followed, fearful of bloodshed, but Stan had been punished enough. Once we disassembled the wings, we found no damage worse than torn film and a broken wingtip. Stan would not sleep until he had made penitent repairs. Lufo had long-since stormclouded off to relieve Espinel at picket duty with the horses.

The launch, this morn, was almost anticlimactic. Stan drilled Lufo & Espinel until they chafed. After all, snarled Lufo, it didn't even need its chingada propeller last night! The launcher was merely a stake driven into the ground (facing my garden, for Stan is a great believer in failure) with a 20-meter elastic band as thick as Childe's finger, leading from the stake to a rigid loop. A single-post slingshot, then, stretching nearly a hundred meters.

I imagined it would hurl the Day tripper away with great force but, at Stan's command, Espinel severed the tiedown and the gleaming craft accelerated with a sort of langour. It kited to 20-meter height before the elastic slackened and dropped into my corn. Lufo, standing where he might catch it if it faltered, leaped among my tomatoes like an idiot and waved his grungy sombrero, employing last night's curses but this time in joy.

Then Stan engaged the electric drive by remote control, kept his bird's beak facing what breeze there was, & did not let it circle until it was—how far up? Perhaps half a km. In early sunlight the canard shape made it seem a skeletal buzzard soaring backward against sundrenched clouds. I had never seen Stan laugh—& he had never seen me cry. He thought it was because the machine was leaving & I did not enlighten him
.

Stan says the Daytripper yields almost no radar echo when its rectenna is inactive (it actually unfolds like a hothouse flower inside the lifting body!). Little danger of an intercept after noon, when Stan risked a telemeter check. It was fifteen klicks up, near the Rio Grande—unless the lovely thing was lying. I wouldn't be surprised, for it seemed a living and whimsical creature
.

I did not care about the dark things in Lufo's past, nor that his real name carries a death sentence with it. I do care that I may never again feel those cruelly callused hands, the furnace of his mouth, the—well! One day Childe will learn to read
…

I hope Lufo lied to impress me, but not when he promised to return. They lit a shuck for the border in midaftemoon, and they paused to wave as they topped out on the South ridge. I suspect they'll wetback it from something Stan let slip about the Indy supply dumps. How could they imagine I don't know about the caverns that undermine this entire region? I watched my daddy slowly die of radiation poisoning in one & we made it his tomb. Wonder what some future explorer will think when he discovers my hoard of playthings in my own cavern. A plastic tea set & debris from a ghastly air crash. Pathetic toys but my childhood treasures. Should I tell Lufo what I suspect of the canister I found?

At dusk, long after my sorrowful goodbyes, he came in. Those dainty little strides don't fool me, I know he was smelling manscent & nothing would serve but to let him inspect the soddy, me, the windmill which Stan rewired for me
,—
everything. He finally relented, plopped his great breast flat until I took a ride. First time I've done that in ages. That was his idea of reconciliation! Mine was a five-kilo hunk of horsemeat, not even half smoked, & of course he made a pig of himself with it
.

Piedras Negras is holocasting again tonight. Glorious to think that I'm now a tiny fleck of that rebellious voice, if only on XEPN, Channel 3.

At 8:03, the shift whistle finally blew. A fading sun cast the shadow of the construction crane across the City of the Saints. Soon it would be dark.

Dandridge Laird stood with his legs apart and mopped his brow with one khaki sleeve, proudly gazing down on his departing work crew from his perch atop the unfinished building. It had been only a few years since the airburst nuke that had blossomed far out North Temple Street, obliterating the airport, the monorail interchange, and many buildings almost to the Salt Palace and the State Capitol.

Already, though, Salt Lake City had repaired much of herself through prayer and twelve-hour shifts by a beehive of sturdy Mormon citizens. Already, Laird could smile down on the rebuilt state fairgrounds, noting the subtle LDS gable motif that graced strictly secular buildings just as the old ones had. And already, Dandridge Laird had marked himself for death by insisting on workmen's compensation for his laborers.

Laird limped to the nearest crane pillar, his scuffing gait masking softer footfalls in the elevator control room behind him. He did not catch the movement of the khaki-clad 'workman' in the un-glazed window; would not have recognized the man in any case. Laird was testing his gimpy forty-two-year-old leg, wondering if the Church would be able to help his family much when he could no longer earn a living as construction supervisor.

Laird's own LDS 'stake', his local church organization, had so many helpless mouths to feed already! And as for the gentile workers,—Laird shook his head in honest commiseration. The proper solution was industry-funded insurance. The stumbling block was the blind refusal of management.

Or maybe the consortium that owned the construction company saw, and then looked away. None of the big conglomerates seemed likely to allow such reforms. Laird had gone to his congressman, to his elders, even to local reporters without achieving much. But somewhere along the line he'd been overheard by the people who'd come to him with help—and asking
his
help. Laird would have laughed to think of himself as a conspirator, yet he knew better than to talk about those meetings to anyone but trusted workers. You didn't keep a strawboss job after they spotted you as a union organizer.

Nor could you expect to keep your life if you were the first Mormon convert to organized labor in Salt Lake City since postwar reconstruction began, a crucial nucleus of Indy reform in the very shadow of White House Deseret. Dandridge Laird did not know how carefully he was groomed by labor 'outlaws'; how high were their hopes for him. Certainly he did not know that a man hidden in the lengthening, softening shadows had been sent to shatter those hopes.

Laird sighed, limped slowly to the control room, intending to walk down the interior stairs. The blow that caught him below the sternum did not wholly paralyze him but shocked his diaphragm muscle into a spasm. Exhausted by his twelve-hour shift, now robbed of his ability to breathe,

Laird fell to his knees at the stairwell, clutching the rail with both hands.

His assailant hacked twice at his upper arm, pulled Laird around to a sitting position with his back to the stairwell. The man didn't match Laird's bulk—seventy-five kilos, at a guess—but O Lord, what pitiless strength! A bandanna covered the face, only the eyes showing, and the ugly snout of an automatic pistol was leveled at Laird's breast. The crouching man's other gloved hand came up slowly to the bandanna, its forefinger vertical over where the mouth must be. Laird tried to speak, folded his hands over his belly, felt his chin jerked roughly upward. Again the forefinger, this time over Laird's own mouth. The head nodded vigorously, then paused and cocked sideways.