Diana Sward was looking at him strangely. “At least all this helps my ego. I’ve been wondering why, no matter how provocative I try to be, you haven’t made the slightest effort to get into my pants. I thought my girlish charms must be fading.”
He looked at her emptily. “Don’t think I’m not susceptible. But how would you like to have a lover, every word of which he said was being listened to by a computer, or a parole officer, or two? Can you imagine these characters sitting around, some afternoon when things are slack, playing back some of the conversations that are put on the magnetic tapes? A love scene? The things a man says to a woman in bed?”
He clasped his hands suddenly to his head. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered in agony. “I’ll have to go.”
They stared after him as he stumbled away.
“Good grief,” Di blurted.
Bat said, “I’d think it’d almost be better to be in a cell.”
“Oh, Bat,” she said. “The poor sonofabitch.”
Bat said in disgust, “Subversion! In this day and age? What possible chance could there be of overthrowing the government when every slob in the country is getting a free ride with his NIT? Not one person in twenty is dissatisfied with Meritocracy.”
She viewed him from the side of her eyes. “I wonder.”
As usual in the privacy of the camp ground, Diana Sward was both barefooted and topless. Her clothing bill must have been truly minimal; she seldom wore more than a pair of men’s denim pants, cut short. Now, she knocked at the door of the camper before her.
It opened and a wan Ferd Zogbaum said, “Oh, hi Diana. Come on in.” He stepped back to allow her entry.
She looked about the small, neat interior and shook her head. “All you bachelors are the same. Neat as goddamned pins. Bat’s trailer is disgusting; it’s so much cleaner than mine.”
“Partly military training,” Ferd said. “They teach you to be neat in the military, or you get the works. Sit down, Di. Could I get you a drink?”
She said, still standing, hipshot, “In a minute. Did you make your report?”
He took her in, almost as though suspiciously, “Well, yes, I did.”
“No more headache?”
“No,” he told her. “No more headache. The report was accepted. I was able to use the words that they monitor me on since I was talking to a police officer.”
“Listen,” she said deliberately. “When they monitor your conversations, do they hear what the other person says as well? What I mean is, are they picking up what I’m saying now?”
“No, of course not. Only what I say. They only hear one half of the conversation.”
“All right. If you say nothing more than yes and no, then they don’t give a damn?”
“Of course not. At first it’s difficult, but after a while you learn to avoid saying words that are taboo.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
She stepped closer to him and put her arms around his neck and pressed her fabulous breasts against his chest. “Don’t say anything except yes or no to me. And how do you get the bed out in this camper?”
XIV
In the very first flush of dawn, Bat Hardin took off his police car. He wasn’t pulling his mobile home. He had left it for Ferd Zogbaum to draw behind his camper. It would slow Ferd down but he’d be able to manage.
Bat and his deputies had been lining the town up for the past two hours and it was as ready to roll as it would ever be. There had been a great buzz of excitement but for some reason everybody had tended to speak in whispers.
He had both Al Castro and Luke Robertson on his car phone; the screen split so that both of their faces could be there at once.
He passed Linares. The town was dead at this hour of the morning. When he was two kilometers along the road he looked at Al Castro and said, “Okay, Al, let the town roll.”
Al Castro yawned mightily and murmured, “Here we come.”
They had agreed to attempt to keep at a one hundred kilometer an hour clip, if possible, and Bat Hardin remained at that speed. Light was coming on fast now and his head was continually in motion, peering to the right of the road, to the left, continually checking his rear vision mirrors.
He kept in continual communication with Al Castro and Luke Robertson, checking their speeds. Everything was going fine. All during the night, the town’s mechanics had worked on the engines of any electro-steamers that were suspect of possible breakdown. Thus far, all was tight, no stragglers.
At almost the exact spot where he had been halted the morning before, he came to a sudden halt. Leaning nonchalantly against a lone mesquite tree by the side of the road was the one they had called José. He seemed to be alone, nor was there any cover in the immediate vicinity which might have held others.
Bat said into the phone screen, “Al.”
“Yeah.”
“Slow down to about twenty-five. One of the clowns who picked me up yesterday is here.”
“Okay.”
His Gyro-jet carbine, which fired the exact same 9mm rocket shell as the pistol which had been appropriated yesterday, was on the seat beside him but he left it there. The other had no weapon#longdash#in hand, at least.
Bat got out of the car and approached. José stood erect and looked at him scornfully.
“So, gringo, you didn’t bother to listen to our warning.”
Bat said, “Some did. About a hundred of our mobile homes turned back to return to Texas.”
“It isn’t enough,” the other told him. “This is your last warning, gringo. Turn back now and return to the States or what will happen is your own fault.”
Bat shook his head. “We’ve made our decision. We have permission of the Mexican authorities to enter and travel through Mexico.” He added, “As you know, there are women and children and elderly people in this town.”
“We did not ask them to come to our country,” the other said flatly. “They too contribute to the corruption that you gringos bring wherever you go.”
Bat Hardin, in a quick flow of motion, stepped closer and drove his left fist into the other’s stomach. José, his eyes popping in agony, folded forward and Bat slugged him brutally in the jaw. The Mexican collapsed onto the ground. Bat reached down and frisked him. The other was out cold.
Bat Hardin grunted satisfaction as he retrieved the Gyro-jet pistol which had been taken from him the previous morning. He stuck it into his belt and returned to his car.
He said into the car phone screen, “Okay, Al, back to full speed. Ignore the seeming corpse at the side of the road, if he’s still there when you go by. He’s just unconscious. Ran into my fist by accident.”
“Fun and games,” Al said.
Bat said to Luke, even as he got his car under way, “Everybody still keeping up?”
“Seem to be,” Luke said.
They rolled on past the tiny town of Iturbide, also still asleep, only one or two sleepily shuffling locals on the streets, going about the duties of those whose work demands early rising.
Bat was doubly alert now and unconsciously chewing away at his lip. He said to Al and Luke, “That fellow I slugged knew that we were coming.”
Luke said, “How could he have, Bat?”
“Somebody told him.”
There was no answer to that.
They were getting out of the mountains now, and Bat Hardin felt moderately happier. He hadn’t liked being caught in the canyons, mountain crags to both sides that could have sheltered snipers. For that matter, an enemy knowledgeable about dynamite could have, with a comparatively small charge, set off an avalanche that might have buried a score of homes. And he might have done it in such a manner that the police would have had their work cut out finding evidence that the landslide had not been an act of God.