Systemic Shock (24 page)

Then he sat quietly like a young hooded falcon, listening to the faint running monologue in his headphones, unable to see the medic's astonishment at the test results. He accepted the flaccid mouthpiece, drew deep breaths, expelled them, heard the medic compliment him on his lung capacity. When he toppled forward, he did not feel the cradling arms.

Christmas dinner, for Quantrill, was intravenous. So were all his meals for the following week. He was wholly unaware of his encapsulation and shipment in the McDonnell that snatched up two more capsules in Artesia and Flagstaff. Nor did he awaken during that week, though dimly aware of a dream in which faceless interrogators pried at embedded memories.

Shortly before noon on the third of January, 1997, he awoke slowly, stretched until his joints cracks. He winced at a slight pain low on his right abdomen. He sniffed an aroma, salivated, then eased down from the bed and stopped naked before the big windows to stare in disbelief. His first coherent thought was that he had to be dead, or still asleep.

His view was magnificent. Through the multipaned bay window he could see the tops of great trees, rolling wooded hillocks that fell away to a shoreline a few klicks away. The room was more than sumptuous, its furniture and decorations a collection of many early styles. His bed was a four-poster. Tapestries covered one wall and the window niches in a second wall were lined with some of the most intricate laser carvings he had ever seen—either that, or genuine hand carvings, which would make the room beyond price. He was persuaded that the experience was real by the growl in his belly and by the study carrel, a gleaming plebeian model of state-of-the-art efficiency that stood against one wall like a Mondrian among El Grecos. Its terminal display was lit, and above the printed lines ran a legend that a more wakeful Quantrill would have spotted instantly: WELCOME TO SAN SIMEON.

The holo keyboard was standard. Assured that brunch awaited him in the adjoining bathroom, he ignored his belly long enough to read more, sitting nude at the carrel. Quantrill was for all practical purposes a civilian restricted within the fenced hilltop of San Simeon, a California State Historical Monument leased by Hunter-Liggett military reservation for the use of T Section.

Whoever had crafted the message had probably worked for a chamber of commerce somewhere. The location and quasi-public nature of this monument, the fabled structures and grounds of Hearst's Castle, provided an ideal ambience for training the men and women of T Section. Mr. Quantrill would be personally welcomed at four PM in his room. Until then he was at liberty to use the carrel, peruse a vintage slick-paper brochure praising the conceit of Citizen Hearst, or stroll the grounds—so long as he did not enter any structure but his own two rooms in the little (seventeen rooms!) guest house below the castle. He might notice others on the broad balconies and paths, but must ignore them. Mr. Quantrill might find it helpful to orient himself to his quarters by noting the twin towers of the castle.

He found a sybarite's meal—juice, coffee, steak and eggs, sourdough bread with garlic butter, and a tantalizing sliver of cheesecake—awaiting him, each in controlled-temperature containers on a shelf in the ornate bathroom. A vague resentment smouldered in him; had he gone through the rigors of basic to be pampered, or to fight?

On impulse he tried the bathwater taps, realized he had not soaked in a tub for months. His irritation dwindled; the steak and the stroll could wait. Bending to test the bathwater, he winced again, touched his abdomen. The appendectomy scar was clean, but it had not been there before. Quantrill wondered how long he had been asleep; he did feel a bit weak.

He luxuriated in the ancient tub until hunger drove him out, then consumed every scrap of his meal, never once consulting a mirror until after he had found the small wardrobe in the bedroom. The expensive supple brown loafers fitted to perfection; he assumed that the joggers would, too. He chose the beltless fawn slacks instead of sweatsuit or denims, a yellow vee-necked pullover from the half-dozen shirts, and grinned to himself almost apologetically as he strapped the wristwatch on en route to the bathroom mirror.

This kind of coddling still seemed a hell of a way to fight a war.

A hell of a way, indeed. The mirror revealed a well-dressed young man of leisure, whose smooth face was understandably perplexed. The face, Quantrill saw, was older. And not quite his own.

The knock came two minutes early; tentative raps on the massive wooden door. Quantrill opened it intending to be surly, but changed his mind in an instant. She was a stunner.

"You're Ted Quantrill, I'm told. May I come in? Or would you rather explore the grounds?" Her voice was musical, her olive skin flawless; her name, she said, was Marbrye Sanger. Quantrill decided she was the kind of college girl for whom tight slacks had been designed.

"I've, uh, looked around some. Getting chilly out there," he waved toward the evening haze, then stumped to one side, made maladroit by her presence. "C'mon in; it's warm."

She tossed him a preheated smile, but he fumbled it badly. Evidently she had grown accustomed to the setting and to youths who fell before her like conversational saplings. "I bet you haven't found the booze." He hadn't. She showed him the false front in the rococo cabinet, the ice cooler, the vodka and bourbon, the mixers; and then she made them each a drink before folding the long legs beneath her on the bench at the big window.

"Don't let all this put you off," she said, indicating the room. “It came with the lease but for God's sake don *t break anything. Unless you're better than I am at asking questions to a library carrel, you must be edgy as a straight razor by now. Any questions?"

He began with the obvious. What the hell had they done to his face, and how? Did Marbrye Sanger have the foggiest idea how this gargantuan dollhouse on a mountaintop could be tied in with pursuing a war, and where the goddam hell was everybody, and when were they going to get on with it, and by the way, what was a girl like her doing in a place like this?

San Simeon, she replied, was a world to itself. Its staff was housed in clapboard bungalows nestled among the slopes below the 'big house', as everyone called the castle, and it had been William Randolph Hearst's royal hostel a half-century before. Then the place became a state monument, with sightseers bussed from a parking lot several klicks away for an hour-long guided tour of the big house and what was left of the vineyard, the zoo, the outrageously lavish mosaic pool, and statuary ranging from the sublime to the plain silly. "It's still open on weekends, war or no war. Now you tell me, what could be a more unlikely place for T Section training than a place with tourists barging around snapping holomatics?"

"Unlikely is dead right. About as unlikely as my face."

She sipped her bourbon, squinted at him in the fading light, cocked her head and let her short chestnut curls fall loose as she studied him. If Marbrye Sanger did not know how delicious she looked, thought Quantrill, she was dumber than she seemed. She took another sip without looking away, licked her lips delicately, said, "Quit bitching, Mr. Q. They did some microsurgery on me, too, but as soon as I quit biting my cheeks I got used to it. You look pretty damn' good to me. Were you even better before?"

His glass was empty, his patience draining away as well. “I was
me
before," he said, heading for the bourbon already a bit light-headed. "How the fuck, 'scuse me, I'm fresh from basic training, how'd they do it so fast? And I'm not 'Mr. Q', I'm Private Ted Quantrill and I wonder when the training starts."

"You're not a private, Ted." The voice was still musical, but low and earnest. "Your pay is a three-striper's, same as mine, and you'll have your fill of training before you leave this lotus-land."

"But there must be somebody I report to."

"You mean Control? Take it from me," she smiled, “Control doesn't impose any hut-hut stuff unless you need it. You'll find out about that in a class we call 'Cover'; the Army more or less took us apart and rebuilt us before we got here. It's a departure from other intelligence schools, but one of the things they know about you is that you don't need saluting or motivating. Gunsels just don't, I guess. None of us do."

Quantrill poured himself a generous slug of bourbon. “What if I motivated myself down the mountain and hitched a ride somewhere?"

"I imagine Control would disappear you—but as far as I know, that's never happened.
They know
what you want, Ted." For a moment the brown eyes lit with an odd intensity, the nostrils flared above an aggressive grin. "You have the right stuff to take direct action; personal action. Once they weed out the crazies—the ones who just get their jollies from icing people in general—they come down to us. We have the natural equipment to face an enemy one-on-one, and we're willing to flog like hell for the chance. I don't think you'd be here if you wanted anything more than you want that."

Studying the girl, Quantrill sensed her zeal to destroy the destroyers, to hunt the hunters. Evidently he had joined the right club. He smiled and tried to sip without choking.

She watched him drink. "They say bourbon affects people's sex drive. D'you think it interferes or helps?"

He spilled a little, gulped a little. "I'm not sure."

She uncoiled, kicked off her wedgies, a smile of bogus innocence transfixing him as she stepped nearer. Her free hand went under his arm, her cheek nuzzling his. “We could find out. Actually I have a little coke; they didn't search me for my stash—and guess where I keep mine," she giggled.

Too kittenishly. He felt lithe muscle in her casual embrace; sensed a tension, a spring-loaded trigger, in her willingness.

His erection died at birth, and he knew she was crowded near enough to notice. “Maybe later, "he murmured, patting her shoulder.
Jeezus
but she was tempting; and so was the free alcohol, and for that matter the offer of a free body-search to find forbidden drugs within other delights.

Which made it all clearly a setup. He strode to the cabinet again, filled his glass with mixer. Some small imp made him sway his hips as he moved to the bed and sat down, kicking off his shoes in bald imitation of her, patting the rumpled coverlet. He was uncertain about the twitches on the lovely face, but she sat with him and sipped again. “Now," he said with as much nasal sensuality as he could muster, "tell me about T Section."

Her smile was dazzling this time, her body shaking with repressed mirth. "Don't you like me?"

He stared at her breasts, her high-arched insteps, her mouth. "You are without question a Nobel Prize pussy, Sanger, and I promise to think about you later tonight," he said in open insolence.

Her smile faltered under his scrutiny. There was something of relief and of genuine wistfulness in her, “I 'll accept that, Quantrill. It's costing me, but I'll accept it."

"Now about T Section," he prodded.

It was a zero-sum world, she sighed. Every move you made in T Section was a step forward or backward for somebody. If you had minor weaknesses they would be found and expunged. Major weaknesses got you bounced. You were issued recorders, keyboard cassettes, anything within reason for the classes which were held in upper rooms of the big house, far from the tourist route. You could spend as little time as you liked studying. You were smart to study a lot, because Control was anxious to use only the very best candidates. T Section would give you every tool to succeed, every opportunity to fail—and cardinal sin number one was the failure of common sense.

Quantrill stared at his drink. Common sense told him he'd gulped that first glass too quickly; anything that impaired your control had to be an error. “I can't read your mind," he said. "When do I get a list of do's and don'ts?"

"Tomorrow's Saturday," she said as if she thought she were answering his question. "Your carrel will wake you early and someone will come for you. We'll be doing covert weapons work on the range—there's half a county for us to use here—so wear jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and sneakers." She took a deliberate sip of her drink, eyed him. "Are we going to let this nice big bed go to waste?"

Instantly: "Is sex a failure of common sense?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," she shrugged, and used a finger to trace the seam on his pullover. “Mm; nice shoulders."

He stared into her eyes, smiled sadly. "I think I'd like a rain check," he husked.

"It'll be a long time before the rain stops," she said with nonchalance, slipping to the floor, scuffing into her shoes. "I live on the floor below, and I have some cramming to do. See you in class."

He walked with her to the door, suffused with a mixture of relief, desire, and uncertainty. "I'll tell you something, Marbrye Sanger, this has been the damnedest welcome I ever got, I need to sort things out."

"Don't worry about it," she said with the barest hint of pique. "You haven't flunked yet." Her departing footfalls were almost noiseless in the evening gloom.

Quantrill was still standing in the doorway when the carrel chimed for attention. He found that his name was now an input code and the terminal would answer certain queries from typed input; no voice input accepted.

When and where would he find supper? He wouldn't, that night.

What was the status of Marbrie Sanger? Marbrye—the correction was underlined—Sanger was an advanced trainee in T Section; 'Q
¹
clearance, no on-site restriction.

Why had Sanger visited Quantrill? A multiplex enticement-frustration test.

"Shit," he muttered, and typed another question: had he passed? No comment.

The terminal verified Sanger's instructions for the next day, adding that meals would be provided. As afterthought, he asked what courses he would take. He found the list daunting:

COVER, Unofficial, and Control

CRYPTANALYSIS