'No.' The question, he thought, had been phrased nicely. There were more questions: childhood disease, sexual experiences, enduring friendships, special fears. Quantrill answered it all truthfully.
The psychomotor and sensory acuity tests seemed simpler than they were because the equipment was highly refined. The helmet adjusted snugly, especially around his eyes and ears so that he became momentarily blind and, except for the medic's voice in his headphones, deaf. The gloves were thin knit fabric with slender instrumentation wafers bonded to each gauntlet. When the animated displays were focused, Quantrill saw a red dot move, and snapped his fingers the instant the dot touched an edge of the maze it traversed. Then he found that he could guide the dot by moving his right index finger, and enjoyed the game. He heard various tones, tapped when he first heard them. He touched his forefingers together blindly, then tried it when the display showed an animated view of his hands before him. He smiled grimly as he learned to ignore the false information on the display. Finally came the red dot again, this time an animated mosquito that appeared and winked out repeatedly as he tried to catch it between thumb and forefinger.
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.
Chapter Fifty-Three
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.
Chapter Fifty-Four
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,
