Of course, the whole point of this target was to surprise the enemy. He pictured them, right now, sleeping like they didn’t have anything to worry about. They didn’t have a clue. Come tomorrow, they would find out that the Long Lean Dude could strike right in their own backyard.
Even though this operation was not part of the primary mission, he thought it was worthy of naming. He put on his thinking cap and then he took it right off again. The name came to him that fast: Watering Hole.
He edged close for one last look. He thought the beads in the water looked like fish eggs.
31
Friday morning dawned bright and clear and hot.
Three days ago I’d seen dawn break at the radioactive waste dump.
Now, over a room-service breakfast, Walter and I began our fourth day. We’d nearly finished analyzing the soils we collected in yesterday’s journey. We’d worked through a room-service dinner until midnight and then we’d slept and then at dawn we put our eyes back to the scopes.
And now, under the twin lenses of the comparison scope, I reached Point D.
The layer-six samples we’d taken in the canyon had slight variations and there was one in particular that stood out. It contained a yellowish chalcedony that matched the yellowish chalcedony of the fender soil. Hue for hue, chroma for chroma, a dead-on match according to Walter’s Munsell color chart.
With some reverence, I moved the Point D specimen dish to its place at the end of the line of dishes I’d laid out on the coffee table. Then I slouched in the wicker chair to admire the map we built. It took us from the talc mine all the way to the echoing depths of a funereal canyon and then it branched into a side canyon and came to an end.
Point D, end of the line for Roy Jardine’s offroader.
From there, he’d borrowed a team of mules to drag the trailer or strapped on a jetpack and flown, and in another moment I’d turn my attention to the fact that we had no way to complete the map. We did have the glop from the trailer tires but it was an unilluminating mix. In another moment I’d admit we were in the neighborhood but had not found the address. Meanwhile, I enjoyed this moment.
Walter glanced up from the polarized light scope.. “You’re not busy?”
I pointed out the chalcedony.
He came over to study the map. He breathed on my neck, smelling of lemon drops. At least it wasn’t donuts.
“Well?” I said.
He smiled. “Why don’t I give your minerals a gander under the polarized scope, and why don’t you go collect Hector and tell him we’re narrowing it down.”
I left Walter’s refrigerated suite and plunged into the morning furnace, on the hunt for Hector Soliano.
Soliano answered his door with the phone at his ear and mouthed wait.
I nodded and headed for the nearest lawn table. And then I saw the table at the far end of the lawn where two people were, to my astonishment, taking morning tea.
I changed course and walked past an abandoned croquet set to the linen-set table. Hap had his nose in his sketchbook and Pria stared stolidly at her clasped hands. Big hands with broken nails and a dirty bandaid on the right thumb. Brown hands on white linen. He could title his sketch Fish Out Of Water.
“Morning Buttercup.”
“Morning.”
“Sit yourself down.”
I took a chair, nodding to Pria. She nodded back. Progress.
“Cherry coke?” Hap indicated the pitcher I’d thought contained iced tea. “Or might we tempt your palate with those croissants? Do, howsoever, leave the chocolate eclairs for Miss Alien. I’m bribing her.”
I stared. He was Hap again. “Is everything okay? With the, ah…”
“The mash note from Roy?” Hap kept sketching.
“Yeah.”
“Hector’s checking into it.”
“You figure out why Jardine’s targeting you?”
“Boy’s real touchy. Never joined in the banter at work. Never appreciated my humor.” Hap shaded in Pria’s bandaid, adding the dirt. “Might have pissed him off. Might be he aims to settle all his grudges.”
“You don’t look too worried now.”
“That’s because I ain’t stuck in a car going down ambush canyon.” He threw me a grin. “Hector and I are confining me to quarters. Safe and sound, here at the Inn.”
Pria said, “Are we safe here?”
Better be, I thought. This is heaven. I bypassed the cherry coke and poured from a sweating pitcher of water into a cobalt-blue glass.
Pria watched. “It’s okay to drink?”
I hesitated, glass in mid-air.
“What if the water’s not happy?”
I set down the glass.
“Like, we were chasing it yesterday?” She lifted a hand and pointed. “Like, here’s where it comes?”
Hap groaned. “Nooo, don’t move, I’m not done with your pattycakes.”
She dropped her hand but I stared in the direction she’d pointed. Up toward the Funerals, highway 190.
“That’s better,” Hap said. “Clasp them like before. Bend in that pinkie.”
I said, “The thing about the aquifer is…”
“Okay fine.” She clamped her fingers. “So drink it. You guys up here hog it anyway with your big fancy glasses just sitting around and then nobody even finishes it, and your fancy grass and all like you can’t even walk on the regular ground like normal people, and them down there,” she broke the clasp, ignoring Hap’s protest, and pointed downfan toward the village, “with their swimming and their golf — and they even got lakes to golf around — and in their campsites they got running water and they wash their hair in it.”
Hap had given up drawing. He just listened.
I thought of the flume we’d seen yesterday, paralleling 190, running down the Furnace Creek Wash toward the Inn. I hadn’t noticed any other piece of the water collection system but it had to be there. I said, “Doesn’t the water system serve the Timbisha, too?”
“We don’t have grass.” Her high voice pitched higher. “We don’t have a pool.”
Hap gestured to the pool on the terrace below. “Jump on in. Buttercup’ll borrow you a suit.”
I wanted to fling my water in his face.
She hissed, “I don’t know how to swim.”
“Well I’ll teach you!”
I stared down at the pool where the lap-swimmers had taken over, where a bronzed blond man swam a beautiful butterfly, and I remembered a pale redheaded man doing a more beautiful butterfly, and a less-pale brunet treading water, preparatory to making a fool of herself.
“The water doesn’t even want to be in your fancy pool,” Pria said.
Hap widened his eyes. “Where does it want to be?”
I made a guess. “It wants to be watering the mesquite and the bighorn.” Instead of the palms and the midnight swimmers.
She shrugged.
I picked up my glass. “You said the water’s not happy. Why’d you say that?”
“The bad guy’s putting atoms in it.”
“He is?”
“Well yeah, I’m not stupid, I know why you’re all so weirded about the aquifer.”
She got that right. We’re definitely weirded. If Jardine wanted to mimic the leak at the dump, all he had to do was dump his stolen resins every time he made the swap for a new cask. Dumping them where is of course the question — somewhere within the vicinity of Point D, I’d say. Spill the beads into some hidden ditch or glory hole and then every time it rains, the beads are washed down into the groundwater. Toward the aquifer. I’d say that’s how Roy Jardine is getting into the virgin.