Single Combat (38 page)

Marrow bound the horn expertly with biodegradable tape, slapped the bull affectionately and eased off the tension from head bindings as he talked. As for the necklace, Marrow and two other Indy employees had gone high and nigh looking for it in the
right
places. With metal detectors? Sure, and r-f detectors too! A slow drawl, Marrow twinkled, didn't have to mean a slow brain.

Maybe Marrow could describe what the necklace looked like. Indeed he could, if the picture those young Search & Rescue fellas flashed was any guide. Marrow could describe it with a pencil, he said, and proved it with an exquisite sketch, his stubby fingers moving with surgical skill.

Quantrill studied the piece of polypaper, grubbing into his memory for the phrase Marrow had penciled: 'Ember of Venus'. Wasn't that a priceless jewel all by itself? Pretty near, Marrow admitted, but he suspected the decorations on its mounting meant that the thing was also a memory-storage gadget. Why else would the Feds put so much effort into its recovery? The bastards already had all the money in the country. And by the way, if Quantrill intended to go nosing around on the Schreiner spread, he'd best set up a cover activity. Marrow wouldn't mind having him as a helper for a spell; rumor had it that young Quantrill could tell many a fuzznutted yarn if he felt like it.

As Quantrill tucked the drawing away in a shirt pocket, he asked Marrow his estimate of the chances that the Ember of Venus would be found. Poor to middlin', said the older man. If it ever turned up, chances were the finder would try to sell it to a rich Mex. Meanwhile, did Ted Quantrill need that job?

Well, that depended on what the Governor needed. Quantrill was no great shakes on a horse, and said so. Hell, said Marrow, they had enough wranglers in Wild Country already, and Quantrill was built more like a bull-rider anyhow. What the Schreiner spread really needed was someone with special abilities to counter the poachers and other lawless types that made life cheaper than it should be.

Quantrill wondered why they didn't have U. S. Marshals for that.

Jess Marrow wondered, too.

Quantrill took his leave with a handshake from the shrewd Marrow—and with the air of a preoccupied man. It was already midafternoon, and he had a long ride ahead of him.

He arrived at the soddy with most of the kinks shaken—vibrated, actually—from his muscles, and earned himself another long speech from Childe. "Go wash, Sandy's not ready," was the full extent of it.

He twitched her braid and called her 'sis', washing at the gravity-flow spigot from the big plastic tank that nestled in earth near the soddy's roof. Then he noticed the sweat and caliche stains on his clothes, removed shirt and trousers, applied homemade soap to them in hopes of making himself halfway respectable in Rocksprings. One thing about Goretex clothing: it didn't take long to dry.

He was swinging the trousers to dry them, enduring the chill on his bare shanks, when he heard Sandy's call. Custom was a harsh taskmaster, he thought as he pulled the wet trousers on; Sandy had seen him nearly naked, breathed life into his body—yet custom dictated that he wear those goddam trousers no matter how they chilled his arse.

"Well,—you tried," Sandy giggled as he approached, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. "Surprise." And she drew a flesh-tinted bundle from behind her. Childe burst from behind the door then, shrilling, "S'prise, s'prise," like a Comanche, hovering near as he accepted his new shirt.

It was a lovely supple thing of softest deerskin, a pullover with long sleeves that puffed gently near the wrists. Its collar, its breast pocket with scalloped flap, the cut of it across the shoulders, all had the flavor of prairie tailoring but its slender fringes said 'mountain man'. "Didn't have time for the beadwork," she said shyly.

He turned it about, speechless, wondering how she could have magicked such a garment on a day's notice. Then he was wrestling into it, clasping the velcrolok wristlets, running his hands along the velvety sleeves. "And just my size," he marveled when his tongue came unglued.

"When you rub a man down you more or less take his measurements," she said airily. "High time those snooty girls in Rocksprings envied me a little."

Quantrill hugged her, winked at Childe, then hurried back to retrieve the shirt he had left near the soap. The folded polypaper lay where he had left it. He brought both articles into the soddy, tossing the sketch onto Sandy's wooden table.

Supper was catch-as-catch-can. Quantrill dipped into his toilet articles to shave and assault his unruly hair, talking with Sandy about his job offer at the Schreiner ranch. As though it were of no importance, Sandy asked if the missing necklace had been found.

"Nope. Probably just as well, too." Prodded to say what he meant by that, he addressed his cowlick with his comb and replied, "Too many people would kill for it, Sandy. Rumor .says it's got a memory module with some kind of secrets the Feds want kept—but I have my own ideas about it. Matter of fact, there's a sketch of the thing on your table."

She moved to the table. Her fingers trembled but, peering into her broken mirror, Quantrill did not notice. She unfolded the polypaper, studied the sketch for a breathless moment, let the chill pass through her body before she asked, "What's your idea?"

"Oh—a crazy one, probably. I met a fellow up North who'd worked on something for the fu—the bloody Feds. According to the Canadians, it was a gadget that could synthesize stuff—rare metals, even gold. This guy was the boss of the lab, and somehow he got friendly with Eve Simpson. And believe me, he wanted out of his job badly enough that he'd agree to anything." He turned around "Will I pass inspection?"

"You're a wow, and don't change the subject. What about this gadget?"

"Oh. Well, it could make you an aspirin out of thin air, or enough gold to buy a Senator. So this guy gives a necklace to Simpson—but apparently she already owned this huge jewel, a kind of opal to end all opals. All he gave her was the
setting
, you see. And it's supposed to have a solid-state device of some kind in it. Now then: what if the gadget he gave her
included plans for that synthesizer
?"

Her voice was muted: "You tell me."

"No synthesizers anymore. Blooey. The Feds must have the plans for it, but they'd do anything to keep them secret. So maybe, I thought, that necklace has plans for a synthesizer."

Sandy folded the sketch; set it on a high shelf where Childe would not see it. She remembered the odor of very old eggs which Childe had somehow coaxed from the amulet. Teasingly she said, "I've got a wilder idea than that. What if the necklace had a
real
synthesizer built into it?"

Ted Quantrill frowned, cocked his head at her, then grinned. "Nah. Where d'you get those crazy ideas?"

And then he took her to the dance.

Sandy's journal, 5 Oct.'

My first real take-out date! What if I did have to coax Ted into it? Must be near 1 A.M. as my dance instructor snores softly in his mummybag & wanton creature that I am, I yearn to slip myself in with him. Intuition says I must not; it does not tell me
why.

I felt a guilty thrill when Jerome Garner, the swaggering bravo who will one day run Garner ranch, jostled us on the dance floor. I know it was deliberate & his sidelong gaze made my dress transparent. His request for apology was really a challenge. Somehow Ted's open smile & his cordial, "Why sure, hoss, I beg your pardon," conveyed to us all that he perceived no threat worth his notice.

Childish of me to mutter into Ted's ear (while standing on his toes!) that he was free to do some jostling of his own for all I cared. He implied much about his recent life by replying that at last he was free
not
to. If that shamed me, why am I not scandalized by easy allegiances to first one man, then another
?

Perhaps because Ted is not just any man. Too, there is a difference between being in love & being in sex. Lufo, good luck to him, has taught that to me more surely than all the books I have ever read. Perhaps after all I shall find in Ted a kissing cousin of sorts. I am not dismayed by the prospect. Am I?

Childe brings a disturbing report. Men are
his
enemies though
he
kills only if, as Childe puts it, 'madded'. How to be certain Ted will not 'mad'
him?
Mystery
!

No mystery about that necklace. Sipping the muscular punch of the Rocksprings grange ladies, Ted confided that a synthesizer may be a Pandora's box that no one, and no government, should unlock. So what am I to do? One decision, at least, which I can defer. But Childe will not wear it again!

Fingertips raw from sewing, but what an effect that deerskin has below those green eyes. Rocksprings girls would have swallowed him like a gingerbread man.

By Monday, the synthoderm had done its work so well that Quantrill scarcely felt his abrasions. He used the microwave scrambler link on his 'cycle to contact Indy Base and, for an anxious few minutes, felt cast adrift when three successive listeners failed to identify him.

To the fourth, a suspicious knave with a New England accent, he said, "Just pass the word to Lufo or Ethridge that I'd like to know if our, ah, little canister from Sonora was of any use. And ask the Governor if he'd like me to accept a job at Schreiner ranch."

After too many minutes the knave was back, no longer suspicious but not very helpful either. Ethridge was in briefing but sent word that the canister would make a fine suppository for someone named Control. Neither Lufo Albeniz nor the Governor were available. If the Gov wanted Quantrill at Schreiner's spread, seemed like plain yankee horse sense to get on a payroll. And don't bother Indy Base again for a few days; they were busier than a one-armed man in a bull-milking contest.

By mutual consent, Quantrill and Sandy passed up lunch, forearm deep in a lime-and-'dobe mess with which they plastered crannies between the upper logs of the soddy walls. When the blue northers swept down from Canada, she warned, the wind would chew up his spine with icicle teeth. With Mex heating oil so expensive and mesquite so damnably plentiful, the provident settler built ricks of mesquite firewood near the North side of a dwelling and hoped part of that windbreak remained for spring barbecues.

Child came frisking into the clearing near dark. Quantrill knew better than to ask her about her playmate; if and when they were ready, he would know. He knew on Wednesday.

He had worn through a pair of work gloves cutting mesquite and stacking it on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, he paused with a tender biscuit halfway to his mouth. "It just occurred to me," he said in puzzlement, "that you don't have any vehicle big enough to pull all those damn' mesquite trunks into the clearing. How'd they get here?"

Childe exchanged glances with Sandy who smiled, "Don't believe the old saying, 'pigs is pigs', sometimes pigs are trucks!"

He took a bite, thinking of the heavy red-hearted tree trunks, some as thick as Childe's body. "Good God," he said.

"You ought to be glad he can use those tusks for peaceable chores," Sandy replied. "By the way, do you mind if Childe takes that shirt you're wearing? You can wear the new one instead."

To Quantrill's puzzled glance, Childe piped, "He wants your smell." The earnest little face said that the request was no small matter.

He exchanged shirts slowly, almost reluctantly, muttering about the unbelievable hocus-pocus a man had to undergo, just to get on good terms with a hog.

Sandy: "Quit complaining; your smell is your personnel file. If you'd rather not meet him today, I can—"

"No, the sooner the better." He handed the shirt to Childe who performed her usual limber disappearance. "I want to know where I stand with Ba'al before I leave—and that might be any day now."

"But you'll only be in the next county."

That depended, he said. "If something goes wrong with the Indy plans, I might, um, have to disappear into Mexico for awhile." He did not add that Mexico would be only his conduit back to Eureka for a singleton mission on his own. It was all very well for Jim Street to talk of bloodless surgery against a secret police system; but if Ethridge failed, Quantrill would wield a deadly scalpel until they caught him.

"You don't fool me, mister," Sandy said. "You're just looking for an excuse to get out of cutting firewood."

To disprove that charge, Quantrill spent his next hours among the gnarled mesquite. But he worked slowly. He was not going to tire himself when he might need all his energy later.

Late in the morning he heard a familiar whistle. He turned, surveying the scrub, and then laid the saw aside as he saw Childe above the brushtops seventy meters away. She towered over the shrubs, his shirt slung over her thin shoulder, and with one hand she gripped the neck bristles of the demonic Ba'al. For one stunned moment Quantrill considered calling the whole goddam thing off.

Ba'al stood quietly, his enormous bristly shoulders aimed at the soddy, head turned in Quantrill's direction. Downwind, of course; oh yes, Ba'al knew where Quantrill stood. The long muzzle lifted, the tip of the snout flexing as it tasted manscent, the flywhisk tail switching impatiently. Childe whistled again, a subtly different tune. Quantrill estimated the great beast's weight at a full five hundred kilos, most of it forward of the sloping hindquarters. Childe actually sat astride his neck, feet hooked under his chin.

As Sandy strode outside, Quantrill saw the vast bulk suddenly trotting toward her, grunting, Childe leaning forward in effortless unconcern as she waved. Quantrill watched the movements of her huge steed with wariness, noting how suddenly those little hooves could accelerate such a massive bulk. Little? Well, only when compared with Ba'al himself. Quantrill was more concerned with the great head, as big as a horse's, and the twin scimitars that flanked the snout.

From long practice, Quantrill assessed the strengths of the boar, and wondered where weaknesses might lie. Such an opponent could accelerate like a big cat; would probably lower its head to bring those tusks into position for goring—and eviscerating. For all its thickness, that grizzly neck could twist sharply, directing the ivory tusks in any direction. The hooves would be murderous, and the brute was anything but stupid.