Wild Country (18 page)

"I'd rather watch football. I'm just not ready to think about that."

"Then
get
ready. Because it's gonna happen. What ever made you think you can direct all the changes you trigger off? All we can do is try. Speakin' of which"—he turned to glance at the digital clock on the holo—"I'll have other fish to fry soon as the game's over. No, sit tight," he added, seeing Quantrill start to rise. "I'll need to know where to send, um, a sizable hunk of money. And one more thing: If you stand to get much of a commission on it, you might not want to stay on with me, nickelin' and dimin' and riskin' your ass. We could put other brick agents out there in Wild Country, instead of you."

Quantrill had little doubt that other agents were already out there; Lufo among them. "Maybe later, Gov. Right now I'm just too damn interested in seeing how this game turns out."

The contest on the holo turned, as Street had said it must, on the three-deep strength of the Longhorns: Texas 41, T.C.U. 30. But the old man knew that Quantrill had not been referring to a football game.

In Oregon Territory, the October madness was soccer. Keith Ames risked hemorrhoids on cold bleacher seats with two hundred others and cheered his Ashland junior high team, a losing cause this season. Later he gave a rough hug to his twelve-year-old on the sidelines. "I'm proud of you, Chris," he said, tousling the kid's sweat-damp hair. "You scared the heck out of the district champs."

"We need three more guys like Paulie," Chris gloomed, and traded handslaps with a taller boy who had just taken consolation from his own father. Paulie Ewald would be Ashland's star wing in another season or two.

"Better hit the showers, kid. I'll wait here," Ames promised, and watched the boys trot away to the gym. Then, catching the eye of Paulie's father, Ames strolled over to talk.

They dissected the game briefly. Dom Ewald had a surgeon's keen eye for analysis, while Keith Ames, like many engineers, tended to suggest odd experiments. Paulie as a fullback, for example.

"You'd make a terrible coach"—Ewald chuckled—"but a great ambulance driver."

"Hey. I meant to call you," Ames replied. "How's that woman getting along?"

"Beats me. She walked out on us night before last," said Ewald. With his almost offensive good looks, Ewald compensated with a low-key delivery and an occasional practical joke.

Ames thought this might be one of those occasions. "Su-u-re she did. Seriously, Dom—or can't you tell me?"

Ewald cocked his head and thought about it. "Well… she was unknown and foreign, and you have a close mouth. You'll have to keep it closed, Keith." Ames nodded. "Seriously: she had a ruptured spleen with a lot of internal bleeding, so I repaired the splenic capsule first. And still we almost lost her because of something else. Good thing she was in such great physical condition. We pumped three liters of perfluosol into her, just getting her stabilized for surgery. Man, she's going to have some scarring, to judge from her mammoplasty."

"Dom, you're gargling Greek again."

"Silicon breast implants. They're what saved her life."

"I never know when you're bullshitting me," Ames said wryly.

"A breast implant is a little polymer bag full of liquid silicone. Keith. It goes about a centimeter under the skin and subcutaneous fat. Well, before she went over that cliff, somebody shot the lady with a tiny flechette." He saw Ames lift his eyebrow. "Swear to God. This little dart carried some kind of botanical alkaloid—a poison. I still don't know what the devil the stuff was, but it was lots more potent than, say, belladonna. Her pupils were dilated, heart rate like you wouldn't believe, hair standing on end, hallucinations worse than jimsonweed. Stuff like that might be used to immobilize you, make you so suggestible you'd answer any question—and then you'd die anyhow. Nice, huh? If she'd got the whole dose into her bloodstream, she'd have been dead before you got her to us. But the flechette lodged in the silicone implant. She just lucked out."

Ames shook his head, staring out across the valley to distant heights where he had found the woman. "Well, that explains why Chief Gannon came to my office last week. I didn't know much to tell him about it, and he wouldn't tell me a damn thing."

"I'm not surprised. He's got some, ah, other problems on his hands that are probably connected, and I can't talk about that. She said a lot of weird things while that alkaloid was in her. 'Course you couldn't understand much. Her face had gone through a glass mapfiche."

"Made me sick to look at her," Ames muttered. "I hope she wasn't a pretty girl… ah, hell, you know what I mean."

"I gather she was very fond of her face," was all Ewald said.

"Can't it be fixed?"

"Maybe, but not by me. I got her cheek sewn together, had to swing some little skin flaps down to cover denuded places at the jaw; put a few stitches in tension areas. But her face looked like a jigsaw puzzle, and from those old mammoplasty scars I'd say she was a keloid former."

"The only Greek word I know is
skataa
," Ames said with a mock-dangerous squint.

"That
proves
you're an engineer," Ewald riposted. "I'm saying that she develops scar tissue. I injected some proprionit—uh, I did what I could to keep the scarring to a minimum. But I guess we'll never know now. I'll say one thing: she's one determined lady, just to walk out in that condition."

Ames jerked in astonishment. "No joke? She really did disappear on you?"

"Would I kid you?"

"If you'd spread cracked corn on a ticklish, sleeping buddy and turn a chicken loose on him—yeah, maybe."

Ewald hung his head and murmured, "Mea maxima culpa," but his mouth would not stop twitching. "The woman did pull out on us, really; wearing a roller bandage that covered everything but her eyes."

"I really feel sorry for her." Ames sighed.

"Me too. But I got the idea she knows who tossed her into the blender. That's probably whom we should feel sorry for," Ewald finished. They began walking toward the gym, comparing notes on the hunting season. For them, Marianne Placidas would remain an enigma.

Felix Sorel sunned at his poolside near La Mariposa and, for the umpteenth time, scanned the proposal in his hands. The letterhead from Pelfculas Clasicas, classic pictures, seemed genuine enough, and the return address was in Argentina. It was not the first time a holodrama producer had offered a part to Sorel, who was still something of a hero in Latin America.

But that cover letter smelled wrong; had probably been intended to smell wrong; perhaps it was the passing reference to financing from New Israel. Sorel understood the real proposal on his first reading of the "treatment," a brief synopsis of the plot with one scene included as a sample. .

Sorel had never said yes to a holodrama, but on reading that single scene he felt compelled to agree to this one. He would play the role of a courageous smuggler, running guns to insurgents in some (unnamed) country ripe for overthrow. An arms manufacturer had lost three men trying to contact him, but bygones
might
be bygones.

On the surface, the scene made as little sense as most holodramas. It was when Sorel mentally substituted drugs for guns, and the prospect of legalized drugs for a liberal gun law, that he saw the part they
really
wanted him to play.

Stripping away the clever camouflage from the Argentine treatment, Felix Sorel wondered if, indeed, this were an offer he could refuse and live to brag about it. Probably not. No matter what he claimed, the Israelis took it for granted that he had iced their men in Oregon Territory.

Now, reading between the lines of a holo script, he saw that they were willing to forgive that small lapse of politeness. They had something far more important to discuss, something that might powerfully affect his fortunes and those of New Israel.

No doubt of it: if Americans could cheaply and legally synthesize drugs, there would be no further point—certainly no money—in Sorel's conduit through Wild Country. Besides which, the Israelis saw clearly that any country that owned synthesizers would have a tremendous advantage over those that did not. It was almost like membership in the nuclear club of the last century, but with an edge that was economic instead of thermonuclear.

New Israel—if Sorel was interpreting the plot correctly—had reason to hope they would soon get their hands on a synthesizer. Meanwhile, having long since abandoned emotional ties to Earthbound countries, they could throw sand in the American gears in two ways.

One, they just might be able to sabotage the American production plant. That would delay the American advantage while others fought to create, or steal, the same technology.

Two, they could certainly provide a sudden and dramatic increase in hard drugs to the American heartland, at dirt-cheap prices. They would need someone to push the stuff through Wild Country for a year; perhaps longer. Very soon, old addicts could wallow in the stuff and give samples away. It would probably mean new addictions, overdoses, and a widespread national revulsion.

At exactly the time when legalization was under debate.

The scenario had loads of appeal for Felix Sorel, especially when he saw that the producer offered him something highly unusual: the right to select alternate endings. In plot one, his character made alliance with the arms suppliers and lived happily ever after. In plot two, Sorel refused that alliance.

Plot two had a tragic ending.

Sorel flopped onto his belly to toast his back a deeper golden brown and thought about living happily ever after. This new alliance could not last forever; a year, two or three at most. But in that time he would gain much, and his enemies to the north would suffer much. Whether New Israel gained or lost, in the long run, was of no importance whatever. Whether the Israelis blew him away in the short run was of the utmost importance, and those
chingaderos
were very good and uncommonly patient at doing exactly that. Did he want to spend the rest of his life in shadow, running from other shadows? Or did he prefer to make amends for his little breach with Maazel and company and haul more
mierda
through Wild Country to be spread across Reconstruction America?

Felix Sorel knew when he was co-opted. He could admire a bunch that absorbed their losses with such easy grace. "Kaiyi," he called lazily, "bring Cipriano to the study. We must tell San Antonio Rose to alert our Anglo friends. It seems," he added, smiling to himself, "that I have a contract with a producer."

Quantrill wasted several hours during the next week, wondering how to get himself fired convincingly. His time was wasted because, internally, he had already quit. He had endured the buffeting of Chief Deputy Stearns this long only by applying discipline he had learned during the war. Tuck away that discipline, that cautious reserve, and you had a man who exactly fitted old Jim Street's complaint: one insubordinate son of a bitch.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, ten days after he returned the Garner hovervan to Sandy, when he and a half dozen other deputies arrived in Junction, summoned by calls from Stearns. The men lounged on wicker chairs, sipping soft drinks and talking shop as they waited for the meeting to begin.

The deputies were all young men, the kind who preferred backslaps and hard work in the open to handshakes and soft cushions at a desk. Three or four times a year they were assembled like this, and good-natured rivalry was likely to involve horseplay. Quantrill accepted his share of it but never kept it going.

Randy Matthews, a stump-legged farmer from Menard with a quick wit, was offering his plug of tobacco to Quantrill as Marvin Stearns strode into the room. "You'll need a chew to keep you awake," he muttered, selecting the chair behind Quantrill's.

Stearns stepped to a lectern, looked over the men, consulted the display screen of his flat 'corder. "Settle down, boys, there's good news."

Quantrill smiled and shook his head at Matthews as he took a seat. "Thanks anyway, Matthews." Words could not convey his distaste for plug tobacco, but he tried: "I'd rather chew a horse muffin," he whispered over his shoulder.

Matthews whispered back: "So would I, but this is the next best thing."

So Quantrill was laughing as Steams began his spiel: "…a seminar in DalWorth next week, and that means you, too, Quantrill." The younger man nodded, trying to wipe the mirth from his face. Trouble was, anything that is the least bit funny becomes twice as funny when you're not supposed to laugh.

"You'll all go by air from SanTone, all expenses paid, with a little per diem you can spend at Six Flags if you don't find the cathouses first," Stearns said smugly, then in an aside: "Goddammit, Quantrill, if you're gonna choke, do it quietly."

Quantrill struggled with his expression, honestly trying to look alert, expectant. A week at government expense in the Dallas—Forth Worth area was a rare treat, and he was as pleased as his fellows for the opportunity.

But Stearns misread amusement as insolence in the green eyes. Midway up Stearns's list of punishable offenses was insolence from a deputy. At the top of that list was insolence
in the presence of other deputies
. No matter that he had his own reasons for wanting his part-timers far from Wild Country during a particular week soon. If one of those peons asked for disciplinary action, he was going to get it. Especially that deadly little bastard who seemed to be laughing at him now, in public.

"I've had enough, Quantrill." Steams tried to stare the other man down. It wasn't a wild success. "How funny would it be if I canceled your freebie to DalWorth?"

Even the most trivial threat can be a trigger. Quantrill leaned back in his chair. "A side-splitter," he said.

In a cold fury: "Consider it done." Stearns saw a new sobriety on the faces of the other men. This was as good a time as any to demonstrate his power over them. To the group he said, "I was processing a commendation for Mister smartass Quantrill. I can still hold it up."