She was a thin darkhaired young woman, her cheekbones prominent, her large eyes underscored with shadows. “Now what?” she said in a faraway voice when Smith and Saint entered her room.
“Liz?” Smith looked at the young woman sitting up on the floating bed, unsure he had the right patient.
She studied him for a moment. “I don’t see the purpose of this,” she said finally. “Getting someone to look like Jared Smith. How can that hurt me any more than the-”
“I am Jared,” he assured her, crossing to the bed. This was Liz Vertillion, but much changed.
“I don’t think I believe that,” she said. “I don’t believe anything, haven’t for a long time.”
“Dear lady.” Saint perched on the edge of the narrow bed. “You can believe in us. We’ve come here, at considerable risk, to spring you from this vile-”
“Oh.” Liz put her thin hand up to her mouth, rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “If that’s true, you’ve screwed it up by saying so right out loud. They watch and listen to everything I do and say in here and now they-”
“We fixed that before dropping in,” explained Smith, taking her arm. “But in ten minutes or so one of their security mechs may start getting uneasy. Which is why you’d better gather your stuff and-”
“I don’t have anything, Jared. Only this hospital gown.”
“Fear not, dear lady.” Saint reached into an inner pocket of his tunic to produce a small parcel. “This spoiled the line of my outfit, but it couldn’t be helped. You’ll find a lightweight allpurpose shift folded neatly within. Not the most stylish of garments, yet-”
“Is he a conman, Jared?”
“Not at the moment, though usually.”
“Funny. I guessed he was, but I believe him.”
Saint said, “You are a deucedly perceptive wench.”
“Jared?” With his help she left the bed. “Is it all right if I don’t understand what’s going on?”
“Yep, don’t worry about that.” He put an arm around her narrow shoulders.
CHAPTER 21
Cruz landed the skycar in the quiet jungle clearing. “Heckling will do you not a shred of good, my pet,” he told Jazz.
“You’re really being incredibly stupid.” She was in the passenger seat beside him, slouched, arms folded. “Putting yourself into the jaws of Syndek is-”
“Jazzmin,” put in Winiarsky from the back seat, “as a neutral observer, allow me to point out that-”
“But you aren’t a neutral in this,” she said impatiently. “Syndek wants you, too. They want to pump your brain dry, then dump you someplace.”
“Even so, what I hear from my vantage point is-”
“Oh, calamity! Quit lecturing me, since I’m no longer-”
“We all get out here,” mentioned Cruz as he dropped from the cab to the orange moss of the clearing.
Coming toward them from the neolog hunting lodge some fifty yards distant was a large jungle-green robot.
“Ah, it is Bwana Cruz unless these eyes fool me.”
“I think your boss is expecting me, Tomo.”
“He is, most anxiously. For we have a saying here in the Great Jungle…” Tomo paused, raising a metal finger to his metal chin. “But, alas, it appears to have been erased from my store of useful aphorisms. Pity.”
A small, wiry man with shortcropped greying hair stepped out onto the shady verandah of the lodge. He wore a two-piece tan huntsuit. “Glad I could be of help,” he said as he came down the steps.
“If you really want to help, Mr. Macumazahn,” said Jazz, who’d disembarked and was standing close to Cruz, “you’ll convince him to drop his crackpot scheme.”
“This is Jazz Miller,” introduced Cruz. “And Professor Winiarsky.”
Tomo was peering into the skycar, chuckling. “Run-fling true to form, Bwana Cruz,” he said. “Bringing along not one but two pretty ladies. This one in here, though, seems to be out cold.”
“I’d be grateful if you toted her inside, Tomo.”
“Glad to oblige, sir.”
Henry Macumazahn said, “Right after you called, Cruz, I had Tomo run my spare skyvan out of the hangar. It’s beyond the house, ready to take off.”
“We have a saying about gratitude, Henry, but it slips my mind,” Smiling, he glanced skyward. “Nobody tagged us from Jungleland, but I think it’s best that Jazz and the professor make the rest of their trip in another craft. That way-”
“Fooey,” said the reporter. “I’m not budging. Because if you honestly think I’m going to let you commit suicide, Mr. Cruz, you-”
“Young woman,” said Macumazahn. “Take the advice of a fellow who’s led many an expedition in dangerous country. There can be only one leader and if-”
“Who voted him boss?” She jerked a thumb, angry, at Cruz. “I volunteered to tag along, but that doesn’t include standing back while-”
“You don’t seem to have much faith in him,” said the hunter. “I myself am certain Cruz will come out on top.”
“This is not an actual authentic female,” mentioned Tomo, who was carrying the unconscious Camilla toward the house.
“Merely a reasonable facsimile,” said Cruz. “Now, Jazz, I have to see about putting through the pixphone call to Bjorn. You and the professor head on to the Museum.”
Dust swirled up when she stomped her foot. “Why don’t we all go? Then you and Mr. Smith and that polite Mr. Saint can all sit around and discuss-”
“We’re beyond sitting around,” Cruz told her.
“He’s absolutely right,” said Winiarsky. “We’d better get moving, Jazzmin.”
She hesitated, taking a slow deep breath. “Okay, I won’t let the team down,” she said finally. “But I still am convinced you’re being dippy.”
“Skinny is a better word,” said Liz Vertillion.
“On the contrary, my dear, a deucedly more appropriate one is slender.” Saint was looking back at her over the top of the passenger seat of their skycar.
Huddled on the backseat, wearing the simple dress he’d brought, Liz said, “You really are a conman, aren’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean one’s lost the ability to speak the truth,” the green man assured her. “Despite your ordeal, you are still a most attractive young woman.”
“A most attractive skinny young woman,” she said, smiling faintly. “Jared, I feel somewhat less fuzzy-headed now. Maybe you could try to explain what’s going on.”
Smith was piloting the skycar across the night city. “We found out from Boss Nast where you’d gotten to,” he said. “Then we-”
“Backtrack a moment,” Liz requested. “How the heck’d you manage to get him to talk to you at all?”
“Saint and I make a very persuasive combination.”
“In addition to my many manifest gifts, I’m also an excellent telek.”
“I helped rehabilitate a couple of them at the Mission.”
“I’m not quite ready for salvation, my dear.”
“Jared, it’s been years since we’ve seen each…although once, some months ago, I saw a hopeless derelict stumbling through our district. He looked something like you and I tried to follow. But I lost him in the fog and-”
“Probably was me,” he said. “I’m just getting over a protracted bout of self-pity.”
“Still because of Jennifer?”
“Thought I was long cured, but then she married…” He shrugged.
Reaching out, Liz touched his shoulder. “I was going to ask why you came looking for me at all. Not that I don’t sure as heck appreciate it.”
“Originally I was hired, as was Saint here, to track down five missing Horizon House kids,” he answered. “We were told that Jennifer and her mother wanted to have a reunion and were anxious to find every kid who was still alive.”
“Aren’t we all still alive?”
“Nope, but I’ll get to that shortly,” said Smith.
“The first point to grasp, Elizabeth,” said Saint, “is that our employer, the illustrious Whistler Agency, was not entirely candid and open with us. They maintain, by way of mitigation, that their client, Triplan, Ltd., was most stingy with the truth.”