Single Combat (6 page)

A half-century earlier, the Santa Fe Opera complex had been modern, a layered amalgam of steel and adobe on concrete, thrusting up from fragrant serrated hills at the city's edge. Noah Laker, the S & R regular who'd piloted Quantrill and four others into the huge parking lot, stood with him at parade rest stance near the nose of their sprint chopper.

"Quaint," muttered Laker, one of the few regulars who saw nothing unGodly about talking in ranks. "But that open roof is a crime against thermal efficiency. Saints! Just look at all that wasted concrete swooping around. Ever see such a thing?"

"Nope," Quantrill lied, lips barely moving. He had seen it often from the highway when T Section was based in Santa Fe during the war. "But who needs efficiency in Santa Fe?"

"Wha-a?" Minnetta Adams, one of the few female regulars, would not turn her head but eyed Quantrill sidelong. Adams was the kind of ecology nut who'd pick a dandelion salad outside a banquet hall; good-natured but serious in her beliefs.

"Come on, Adams; these people have sunlight to burn. Isn't that sweat you're lickin' off your mustache?"

The comely Adams had no mustache though she was the equal of most men in strength. "I'll get you for that," she murmured chortling.

"Bury me in that compost pile she calls her mummybag," he said, loud enough for the others to hear. Another calumny, for Adams kept her gear spotless. Several snickers rewarded him; any entertainment was welcome when three hundred young people stood sweltering in dress blacks for review.

"Quantrill, are you supposed to be in formation?" It was Control speaking into his mastoid. He guessed from the voice cadence that a human monitor was on-line.

"Um-hm," he hummed his admission softly. You never knew when the damned thing was monitoring you. Whatthehell.

"Is the President reviewing your assembly at this moment?"

Again he agreed. The President strolled a hundred meters away, taller by half a head than S & R's Lon Salter who strode in his shadow like a king's equerry. Young merely glanced at the teams in their formal dress. A score of rovers filled out the ranks, for four teams of regulars had stayed away on alert duty.

"You're a disgrace," said Control as if she could not care less. "Shut up and report yourself to How-ell after your formation is dismissed." Pause. "Do you affirm?"

"
Uhf-furhhm
," Quantrill coughed aloud. It might have been just a cough. It would also probably irritate Control—but if Control demanded acknowledgement, you gave it. Somehow. Whatever Control demanded—you gave.

"This is what we get for giving you a freebie entertainment," Control snarled, all too human for a change, and coded out.

Yep, that's what you got, Quantrill reflected. He hadn't asked for a two-hour cruise bouncing across the Rockies so he could stand on display with three hundred other tin soldiers in heat-absorbent black, waiting for a hulking politician to glance his way under a broiling afternoon sun. The flare-leg black formal synthosuedes had been designed to keep creases in, not to keep heat out. The black vee-necked blouse could have been cool but for its high stiff open collar, and the goddam canary-yellow side-tied neckerchief kept the dry breeze from his throat. Okay, so they looked smart as prodigies with the yellow sunflower S & R patch and suede low-quarters, and the belt medikit with sunflower and caduceus. All that
pizazz
was for the public and for the President who, increasingly for Quantrill, was no more and no less than the controller of Control; his ultimate oppressor.

He turned his mind to more pleasant employment. Somewhere in the front rank was Sanger, among a scatter of other women chosen for the on-camera impact they made. Perhaps, after the awards banquet, they'd find a way to duck out. They could stroll away from the Opera House to sit silently and watch the moon turn the brush-dotted hills to alien country, to smell the night-flower fragrances unique to late spring on a high, dry New Mexico evening.

Most likely, he thought, they'd be burping from the barbecued prime rib which, his flattened nose told him, was already steaming somewhere in the bowels of the place. His belly growled its readiness. In another hour he'd be savoring it, relaxing, glad that he did not have to parade up to a dais and accept a bit of ribbon before holo cameras.

From one-way glass in the Opera complex overlook, Eve Simpson gazed unseen on the Presidential inspection. She grasped the swivel of a magnifier, pulled the scope into position without moving from her motorized lounge chair, and let her mouth water. Eve was not thinking about cooked beef; she was enjoying the human stuff on the hoof which stood in its stalwart innocence, facing her unaware from a distance of three hundred meters. The magnifier made it seem like only ten.

The big one on the front row would be delightful, those long legs and slender hips stripped bare by lobotol and lust. Or—there, the lank towhead on the end, with the bulge at the crotch of his syntho-suedes, the honest farmboy face gleaming with perspiration, the slender delicate nose straight and clean under his blue ingenue eyes.

They were all so photogenic Eve could not—suddenly did not want to—choose.
Let kismet choose
, she thought,
and surprise me
. She would go light on the barbecue, heavy on the man. In an hour she would be with S & R's top dog, the glum Salter, who managed to seem a harried bookkeeper while he kept secrets that could topple an administration.

Should she ask Salter specifically for one of his war dogs, a rover? Anytime an interviewer singled rovers out, Salter's pale eyes fairly jumped in their sockets. She would make her eyes huge, innocuous, and propose a brief private interview with a rover for FBN. Salter could hardly refuse under the circumstances—the whole evening was a media event.

The interview would be in Eve's suite at the De Vargas, naturally. She entertained no illusions about the impression her flesh made; she would ask Salter to choose someone, ah, typical of the S & R rover and to send him alone to her hotel in the city.

Eve giggled at the sweet tickle between her thighs, pushed the magnifier away, wrinkled her button nose at the scent of barbecue. Yes, she'd feed delicately on that.

It would be another matter when they sent the meat to her raw.

Boren Mills stood in the reception room amid the hubbub of young voices, the clink of glasses, the exhalations of food and fruit juices, loathing the unstructuredness of it all. The banquet and the award citations, he admitted, had been well-staged and orderly. It was all this chaotic socializing afterward that gave him offense. Idly he sipped his execrable carrot cocktail and, over the rim of his glass, studied the throng for the layers of order he knew were woven through the gathering.

He spotted one of the heroes of the moment, resplendent in dress blacks, his citation ribbon a white satin slash against his breast. Mills murmured something appropriate, shook the youth's hand, touched glasses and moved on.

The President, as usual, stood stockaded within a crowd that was one-third celebrity-seekers and two-thirds Secret Service. Of course it was easy to spot Young's men among the uniformed S & R members, their dark blue suits almost festive against the yellow-accented black of the Search & Rescue people.

Mills began to smile. Order was on hand, you merely needed to know how to spot it. The foci were Young, surrounded by his praetorians; the regulars with the virginal white ribbons, accepting kudos from envious peers; and Salter, talking earnestly to a pair in dress blacks who were twice as old as most regulars—hence had to be S & R supervision.

He'd seen Eve, flirtatious and charming as a vampire whale, gently badgering Lon Salter over the salad course, but he hadn't seen her since the awards ceremony. Who knew what the self-indulgent slut was up to? She was as hard to figure as a Chinese speedfreak. Well, it probably had nothing to do with Mills's own troubles. He sidled to the refreshment table for a change of poisons—
celery
juice, for God's sake! Young's Mormons would kill him with nutrition—and moved toward Salter as if by Brownian motion.

Salter was saying to the craggy one, "—And she knows what rovers do, for better or worse; but all the same I'll feel better if you choose a rover who doesn't like to ham it up. Don't give the assignment to Ethridge, for example."

"Ethridge isn't a ham," said the smaller one. "Grandstander, maybe; ham, no."

"But you get the idea. The more laconic, the better—ah, Mr. Mills; salud," Salter finished, raising his glass with a manful attempt at good cheer.

"Health it is," Mills agreed, eyeing his own glass as though undecided whether good health were worth such sacrifice. The men laughed, taking their cue from Salter.

"Boren Mills, let me introduce two of my right arms; Seth Howell," he indicated the long-legged topheavy man with unruly brows, "and Jose Marti Cross," he went on, nodding at a man of Mills's own slight build. "Marty, Seth: Mr. Mills of IEE."

Mills had intended more polite conversation, but found this Mutt and Jeff team intriguing. Both were training supervisors—chiefly, Salter explained, of the rovers. To Mills it was obvious that the President hadn't told Salter just how much Mills knew about the S & R operations. Obvious: but true? In some ways, Salter was an opposite number to Mills; they both performed crucial operations for the Lyin' of Zion. They even did favors for each other—but at Young's direction.

Mills turned his attention to the supervisors. Most men preened for Mills, hoping to be remembered. These two seemed to care so little, they might have been members of some other species; Howell a middle-aging grizzly, Cross a graying weasel. To tempt them, Mills tossed out a small bait: "I'm always looking for good security men."

Howell, his wispy tenor suggesting an old larynx injury, his hard eyes amused: "Folks're always mistaking us for the fallen-arch brigade," he said easily.

Mills missed the connection for one beat, equated fallen arches with flat feet, and smiled. Seth Howell might look and sound like a brawler, thought Mills, but like a gosh-and-grits politician he could sandbag you. Or maybe break you like twigs in those huge paws.

Cross, his faint sibilants and high cheekbones tagging him as part Amerind: "Our kids are more like anthro field men—and women, Mr. Mills. Remember those hobo jungle fires two years back? Our rovers saved S & R lots of grief by a little field work."

Mills nodded. He knew rovers would have cover stories and wondered how much scrutiny they could stand. "Tell me about it."

"Army-issue canned heat," Howell husked. "Poor buggers thought it was gel alcohol and tried to process it to drink. But GI stuff makes good incendiary bombs these days." His eyes refocused on someone just behind Mills. "Yes, Quantrill?"

"When you have a minute," said a very young man with a faint southern accent.

Mills turned, smiled, and held that smile while a vague memory of violent death thudded at his diaphragm. He'd seen this youth somewhere before in dangerous circumstances, but couldn't place him.

Ted Quantrill's green gaze flickered in recognition, then returned to Howell's face. "Reporting for extra duty," he said, using their term for disciplinary action.

Cross grinned, big wide-spaced teeth shining in his small dark face. "Let me guess, Quantrill: you spiked your fruit juice."

Quantrill did not smile, but his tone was sadly whimsical. "Talking in ranks during inspection," he said.

"I'd sooner believe it of the Sphinx," Howell joked, then pursed his mouth in thought. "Marty, seems to me that Quantrill has just volunteered for Salter's little tete-a-tete."

"If he's all through talking," Cross said with a grunting laugh.

Mills felt the conversation sifting around him, knew he was not supposed to understand it—and besides, the sturdy Quantrill made him uneasy. "If you gentlemen will excuse me," Mills said, lifted his glass again, and moved off to mull it over.

From a distance, Mills studied the muscular young rover. Somewhere he had met Quantrill face to face. And the kid knew it. Eventually, watching Quantrill's stoic acceptance of some duty as Cross explained it. Mills shrugged away the problem and slid into the vortex around Blanton Young.

Quantrill took it impassively. He was damned if he would tell Marty Cross and Seth Howell just how much he loathed interviews. It would only give them another key to the small punishments they could use against him. Then he excused himself and made a point of stopping several times, swapping greetings with regulars, on his way to Marbrye Sanger.

She leaned against a partition of decorative 'dobe, which told Quantrill she'd laced her fruit juice with some local lightning. You drew penalties for slouching in dress blacks. "I've already seen the old village," she was saying to one of the new regulars who hadn't yet given up on her.

"No harm in offering," he said equably, nodding as Quantrill moved near. "If you don't mind my saying so, you could use the fresh air. What's in that drink, anyway," he went on. It was half curiosity, half rebuke.

"Manna from hell," she grinned, smacking her lips.

"Most regulars don't believe in hell," Quantrill said.

"Show me a rover who doesn't," Sanger challenged, slurring it a bit as she turned toward Quantrill. "Hello, compadre."

In the private lexicon of Quantrill and Sanger,
compadre
served for
chum, lover, alter ego
. Quantrill had kept the word as tribute to a friend in the business, Rafael Sabado; long since gone, long since avenged.

Quantrill glanced at her drink, shrugged to the other man as if to say, 'what can you do? She's a rover.' "He's right about the fresh air," he said to Sanger. "Let's get about five minutes' worth of it."

"Five minutes? Don't do me any big favors," she said, nodding to the disappointed regular as she strolled with Quantrill toward an exit. "And where the hell have you been?"

"Drawing extra duty," he grumped. "That's why I've got only a few minutes. Gotta catch a monorail to the Alameda in town so I can give a goddamned interview." They passed outside, negotiating steps toward a scatter of trees near the parking area. Sanger stumbled once, caught his arm for support, spilled some of her drink. "You ought to dump that, compadre," he said gently.