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.
She cast it onto the ground. "Sure. My source has more." Her hands mimed a sign: Ethridge.
"I thought so. I wish he'd drawn my duty tonight."
"Maybe he will," she said, dripping saccharine sexuality.
"Unfuck you," Quantrill parried. "I was thinking about the docudrama that was made when they were forming S & R. One of our people met Eve Simpson then; said she was fat as a pig, no matter how she looked on holo." It had been the ex-Iowa State gymnast, Kent Ethridge, who'd made that discovery.
Ethridge was still a rover but had suffered too many disillusionments. Now he spent most of his leaves spaced out on pills and booze.
"Rumor says Simpson's a washed-out druggie; that they use a double for her interviews," Sanger mused, then jerked around. "Is that who's going to, quote, interview you tonight? Doesn't sound like extra duty to me, compadre. Sounds like fun and games."
"Reciting cover stories for a cooing sow? Some fun. Some games," he muttered, and drew a polymer poncho form his medikit. "Here; let's just sit and cool off for a minute."
In the pale glow from distant fluorescents, Sanger's honey-tinted skin took on a deathly greenish cast. It reminded him that life was brief, and that they had little of it to call their own. And Control could always be listening. Their shoulders touching, he rested his forearms on his knees, stared out across the dark line of hills under a billion stars.
He felt her hand slide into his lap, provocative, familiar; but shook his head. "What's the point," he said. "I don't have the time."
"Or the urge," she said.
He took her hand, placed his fingers in her palm, began a slow laborious manual conversation learned through moonless nights to deny Control their communion. "I could just forget the interview."
She signed back: "And find yourself packing chutes or overhauling choppers for a month at Dugway?"
"Done it before," he replied. "Can almost fly damn' things myself, been on so many test hops."
"You'd hate me every minute of it."
"Not hate," his fingers insisted.
She willed him to say more; not to say more; avoided this booby-trapped psychic territory by-signing, "If only Quinn had made it."
"We don't know he didn't; only what Pelletier said," he signed.
"We know you have to go," she said aloud, rising, offering her strong hands to pull him up. They took little risk in allowing Control to suspect momentary sexual alliances, but there were some things as verboten as genuine love affairs. One of those things was talk about Desmond Quinn, who'd refused to accept the Army's word that a mastoid critic could not be removed. Quinn had disappeared at the war's end rather than continue his assassin's work in the new guise as S & R rover.
Max Pelletier, Quinn's closest ally, had backtracked Quinn months later. Apparently Quinn had found a Mexican surgeon willing to try removing the critic; a surgeon who had lost two fingers when the critic detonated during the operation, with poor determined Des Quinn the only fatality. Or so Pelletier had said.
"See you when I see you," said Quantrill as they parted near the monorail terminal. "Take it easy. I mean easy," he repeated, miming a sip from a nonexistent glass.
"Don't chide your elders, sonny," she said in false gaity, giving him a fanny-pat toward the approaching transit module. "And take a good deep breath before you submerge in all that blubber."
Quantrill squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkled his nose at this deliberate gross-out from Sanger's lovely lips.
Taking the steps to the platform three at a time, he called, "You've turned words into a martial art; you know that?"
"Don't let it put you on the mat," she called back, made cheerful by their brief moment together, hands on hips, her head thrown back to let the chestnut hair fall free.
He fought down a nearly overwhelming impulse to return to her side, but imagined that Sanger would have considered it weakness.
CHAPTER 12
Eve Simpson, alone in her suite, cancelled her outgoing video before answering the phone. What she saw incoming pleased her immensely. "Ted Quantrill, ma'am; Search & Rescue." You couldn't tell a lot from a room video but he looked like a hunky morsel. Unconsciously she moistened her lips with her tongue.
"Of course," she said; cordial, not too cordial. "Come right up. I'll leave the door unlocked, Mr. Quantrill, I'm — doing a few things," she ended vaguely, and punched off.
Chiefly she was doing one thing: sloshing lobotol in the bottoms of the crystal goblets she had brought, except for the one she would use herself. Faceted crystal didn't reveal trace coatings as a clear glass might.
When the young rover arrived with a diffident tap on the door, Eve was carefully arranged on a couch amid pillows and a satin coverlet. She saw his bemused glance at her camouflage and did not give a damn. She was used to it. "I'm a little dizzy after all that rich food, Mr. Quantrill," she temporized.
"Forgive me for taking my ease this way."
"Oh. You were at the awards banquet?"
"I was there," she agreed, her eyes approving their scan of this splendidly uniformed creature, then abruptly shifting ground. She waved a languid hand toward the inert holocam rig nearby. "I hope these things don't make you nervous."
His headshake was too quick. "We get used to 'em.",