Single Combat (15 page)

"Tell you when we're through." Riker scrambled back into the delta to winch another pallet into position.

Hours later, when the sixteenth pallet had been trundled to the elevator, Marengo Chabrier spoke in a richly intonated dialect to his lab crew who disappeared with the load. "Perhaps you will join me below for an absinthe," he said then to Riker. "Or perhaps something even stronger." The barest tint of urgency colored his offer.

Riker whistled. "Stronger than absinthe?"

"I am a chemist, mon vieux." Shy and deprecating—but pleading, too.

"Oh. Uh, some other time, maybe. I'm on IEE time, and the light will be fading soon. Cap'n Stevens will be edgy as three cats in a sack after a whole afternoon at his console." Riker restowed the air cushion, turned to shake Chabrier's hand. "See you day after tomorrow if we maintain schedule. Don't worry about the cable releases; that much at least is automatic. We can afford electrics
below
the hull. And we can save lots of time if you can get us a decent moorage. Think about it."

"Unfortunately, Riker, I too am on IEE time, and funding. I fear we must do our best with things as they are. It helps when one can relax with one's liquids and powders. Or even to present a friend with a kilo of them."

This time the air of desperation was unmistakable. Cole Riker knew what a kilo of some alkaloids was worth; knew also that he wanted nothing to do with them. Suddenly he wanted only to get away from this half-crazy frog squatting atop a desert lab croaking friendly overtures to a near-total stranger. "It'll bear thinking about," said Riker, and swung onto the strut handholds.

The props were already turning, the fuel-stingy stirlings warming to thermally-efficient range. Chabrier called up through the cargo hatch. "Riker! You are certain you can complete the shipments in so little time?"

"Barring a malf we can't fix, yes," Riker shouted, then grinned. "I'll tell you why now, if you won't let on to your crew. Just didn't want to worry you during your early experiences with an IEE delta. It's really pretty safe, you know."

"What is safe, mon ami?" Chabrier saw the cables release, to whirl like snakes into belly orifices.

"Hydrogen," Riker called, pointing at the buoyancy cells above him as the belly hatch thunked shut. As Stevens poured full power and actuated the strut pneumatics, the vast delta vaulted safely upwards for the first ten meters. Laughing, Riker watched «the poor Frenchman run full-tilt off the end of the roof and tumble down the berm, away from countless cubic meters of the near-explosive hydrogen. It really
was
fairly safe, Riker told himself. Nothing like the safety of helium, but lots cheaper and with roughly ten per cent more buoyancy. That was IEE for you.

Riker checked the pallet anchors, his smile fading as he mentally replayed his hours with Chabrier. It seemed almost as if the bulky chemist—if that was really his job—wasn't interested in speeding up the shipments. If anything, as if he craved a delay. And friendship. But why would a highly trained scientist crave camaraderie with a delta crewman? As the vast craft slid upward into the last of the sunlight, Riker pondered the question and studied the particle-beam perimeter weapons that stretched away across the trackless desert.

One hell of a waste, he thought, to set up such a P-beam security rig as that. All corporations were a little paranoid about their measly secret processes. What could be so important that anyone would bother to sneak
in
? But that was IEE for you…

For all its gleam and pillared portico, White House Deseret was chiefly a ballroom with a few staff offices, guest rooms and kitchen. And with one particular elevator to whisk senior staff and certain invited guests, far down below the 'bench'—a natural terrace at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. From the bottom of the shaft, Boren Mills took a ten-minute ride in a magnetic sling tube. Mills was not supposed to know—but knew, nonetheless—that the real hardball business of Streamlined America was transacted directly beneath the repository of Mormon genealogical files in Cotton-wood Canyon. If you weren't safe under the Granite Mountain genealogical vault, you couldn't
get
safe.

Mills passed through more security, then forced a pleasant smile despite an urge to gape. The raven-haired young amazon who escorted him to the Presidential apartment was nearly two meters tall in her spike heels, and while the hooded white satin gown fell to her ankles, it was also slit to reveal a lot of luscious apricot-tinted thigh. This was a far lusty howl away from the conservative male staff who had escorted him in previous visits. It unsettled him; told him to expect changes in a man he had studied carefully.

That man was also just a tad drunk. "Go and ponder your sins," Blanton Young told the improbable vision, and waited until she had gone.

"Future sins, I hope." Mills could not resist it.

"How'd you guess?" Young took the small Mills paw in his big one, held the Mills forearm with his other hand. The ritual communicated great physical vitality, which Young could squander. "I tell you, Mills, there's no end of wisdom in that scripture."

Mills let his gaze follow Young's open-handed gesture. On one wall of the lavish ultramodern room was a tablet of black onyx, and inset in flowing script of richest polished gold was the legend: "…
And it is by the wicked that the wicked shall be punished
."

"Interesting," said Mills, not knowing what else to say.

"Interpretation of the Book of Mormon is just a matter of Divine guidance," said Young, as if that guidance was self-evident, leading his guest to the wet bar. "For instance, in '97 it told me I should shunt that bunch of Army assassins into S & R as soon as my," he paused to savor some personal joke, "
sainted
predecessor shuffled off this mortal coil." With that, he performed a shuffling two-step, then took a sip from his goblet.

To say that Mills was aghast was to claim a delta dirigible was a penny balloon. Mills did not care what caprice a man chose, so long as he chose it predictably. This was not the Blanton Young he had seen previously—or was this, at last, the private Young emerging? Mills managed to say, "Got it: wicked hit men punish wicked Indys."

Rumbling: "Rebels, son; an Indy is a rebel only when I interpret him as one. But it took me awhile to realize that you can make a sinner punish himself-herself," he winked, with a wave of the big head toward the door, "by a penance consh—consisting of more wickedness. You take a girl brought up strict, caught lifting a smoked ham to feed a few useless mouths; and if she's not too keen, after a week or reconditioning you can argue her into, ah, any position."

"Reminds me of an old joke," Mills essayed.

"Bet I've heard it."

"About druggies. Their idea of a round-table religious debate is to see who can commit the most original sin on your lazy susan."

Young guffawed after a two-beat pause. Mills would never know whether he really got it. "Well, I owe you one for that," said the pixillated Prez. Staring into his sour mash as if it were a crystal globe, Young went on in softer tones: "So I'll pay off now. A certain industrial concern whose initials are LockLever is pressuring a Texas rancher to sell his whole spread, which LockLever will turn into the wildest, wooliest, modernest dude ranch in the world."

Mills was astute enough to break his chuckle off. "Hah-I'don't-get-it."

"It's not a one-liner, Mills. The pressure comes by way of LockLever's control of the aquifer North of Texas Wild Country. There isn't a drop of running water on the Schreiner ranch; they water the stock and imported game animals from wells—always did.

"As it happens, LockLever
could
pollute or divert the whole underground supply from their experimental rigs nearby. The Schreiner spread used to be a hundred square miles back in the 'eighties. It's grown since. I don't know if they'll sell—they've always been a tough bunch of Texas pecans, I hear—but if they do, LockLever will need cheap power to run the kind of Wild-Country Disneyland they have in mind. And there isn't any good place to put a line-of-sight tower on the whole, million-acre ranch."

Now Mills got a glimmer. "Where's the nearest mountain?"

"Ten klicks North of the ranch boundary. And there
is
enough federal enforcement to that prominence—couldn't call it a mountain but an LOS tower could narrowcast cheap power to the ranch; and that little old prominence is now federal land."

Jesus, God and Moroni, thought Mills; to think he'd swapped an old gag for a chance to screw LockLever! "I should think LockLever would've made a handsome bid for such a natural LOS site," he murmured.

"They did. Some hitches developed. Old lawsuits, title irregularities; you know. You can always find something if you look hard enough."

"I've always wanted to own a small mountain in Texas," Mills said with a straight face.

"Oh, I don't think your government could show that kind of favoritism to an individual," Young tutted. "But of course, some survey crew might find signs of oil, or something else that Streamlined America badly needs. That's an argument LockLever hasn't used. Yet."

Mills: "And what might a geological study turn up?"

Young: "Surprise me. But the discovery would have to come from a reliable company with a good track record."

"IEE owns Latter-day Shale—if memory serves," Mills said.

"A good reliable company," Young nodded sagely. "Excellent track record—in which I may have some stock if, as you say, memory serves."

"Sonofabitch," Mills exulted.

"You're another," said the President of Streamlined America, and drank as if validating his reply.

Over his next glass of sippin' whiskey, Mills learned why the President chose IEE as leverage to balance the proposed LockLever project. LockLever claimed that such an entertainment center would bring wealth to the area and would be welcomed by the locals; but Young had learned something more. The giant consortium had further hedged its bets by paying off some people who had clout in Wild Country. In a word: rebels. Federalists suspected that much of the payoff wound up in the hands of the Indy leader, old Jim Street. Maybe LockLever hoped to accommodate all sides while carving out a region of influence where the government had little or no influence.

"You mustn't think I'm against reconstruction in Wild Country, Mills. It'd bring law and order back to those crazies—on our terms. And LockLever
could
build those ten-kilometer thrill rides and restage the Battle of Britain there twice a day, just like they claim. But I can't trust 'em."

"True," Mills murmured. "When LockLever owns foreign companies, foreigners have clout with LockLever."

"Which reminds me that your own people have a little romance going with—um, what's that firm at the Turk Ellfive launch complex?"

Mills smiled. "ECI; Electronics Corporation of Israel. Those, initials also stand for electronic counter intelligence, which was too near the truth. So they've changed it to Tuz Golu R & D, which makes their Turkish landlords happy."

Very quietly: "But they still do research with microwave relays, or so I am reliably informed. Any gadget that can project multichannel holo from a point in empty space would be ours, or Israeli. And it isn't ours."

At last, Mills felt he was about to learn why he had been invited to Young's inner sanctum. "Those Mex stratosphere relays," he guessed. "You think they're using Israeli equipment, Mr. President?"

"The National Security Agency thinks so. And I want those rebel holocasts stopped! You seem the logical conduit for us to find out how it might be done."

"My people tell me you've zapped one already," Mills said, pleased to show how well-informed he was. "Congratulations."

"It's casting again."

Mills shrugged. He was damned if he'd admit he hadn't known
that
.

"Let's understand each other," said Young, evidently still clear-headed though his tongue played him false at times. "You'll get the LOS site for trying to wangle us a media countermeasure. If you're successful, you could get the Schreiner land for IEE to develop—assuming you want it."

Mills laughed ruefully. "It's a great idea. Battle of Britain, eh? Some old Lockheed thinktank man is still plugging away in LockLever." He shook his head in grudging respect, then grew serious. "Sure, IEE could do it, if we can get that land. And if we can get protection without paying off Jim Street."

"Our guess is that you could get a ninety-nine year lease from the owner,
if
the federal government allows some special tax incentives to Schreiner, and
if
you could convince the Schreiner family you'll keep it all unpolluted and mostly unraped. As for protection, just hire most of the locals and name the goddam place Wild Country Safari."

"My God," Mills muttered, thinking it over. For that matter, the ersatz Spitfires and Messerschmitts for a Battle of Britain show could carry live ammo, just in case. IEE could train those leathery Texas lunatics as maintenance people and let 'em carry sidearms.

And the gambling! IEE could thumb its nose at state laws in Wild Country. A refitted delta could ferry in six hundred high-rollers a trip and could run the games at it pleased. The LOS tower meant cheap power. Nothing need be said about the gambling. A replica of old Dodge City? That would be the first step Mills took after taking the place over.

Inside a year, the gambling sincity could be running at a profit. In two years, mach one thrill rides! Oh, yes, this was too good a thing to pass up. Mills needed
something
from which he could secretly siphon cash during the next year or so.

Because otherwise, the synthesizer factory would bleed him to death before it came on-line.

Imagine the most complete array of RF sensors available to the National Security Agency to secure a President's lair against bugging. Next, imagine that guests are profiled, fluoroscoped, interviewed and voice-stress analyzed by NSA professional paranoids whose sole raison d'etre is to screw those who would try to screw Blanton Young.