surveillance made Reardon an expert on how to be a Reardon. On April 2 his night class was a class of one.
'You're letter-perfect on your cover, Quantrill,' he mused, 'and I watched you tail Cross like an old hand through that mob of tourists today. When Marty Cross says you'll do, you're good. So what's eating you? Afraid you'll choke on your first assignment?'
Quantrill said nothing. His face was denial enough.
'Can't be buck fever; your record shows you've iced two or three people already, and even managed to hide some of it 'til you were under sedation. That takes coolth,' Reardon said, savoring that last word like a rarely- indulged sweetmeat, and then took away the gas-pen. Quantrill had been turning it over, again and again, in his hands. 'Is it this?' Reardon held the innocent little pen up for display. “It really writes. Its pressure cylinder dissolves in a pond or a toilet tank. Lasser tells me you can zap a fly with it. And two minutes after your mark gets a faceful of spray, he'll show no symptoms but classic heart failure. But it's scheduled for Saturday the fifth, which means you leave here tomorrow, and I'm not clearing you 'til I think you're ready.'
'I've memorized the whole campus layout, and the Army annex dorm floor plan. I'm ready.'
'You're not. Look, I've even told you this bastard Fowler was nailed while sabotaging a supply fleet that cost us a lot of men — not once, but twice! Naval Intelligence is dead certain it's Lt. Fowler. The only reason they're not icing him themselves is that Fowler's in Corvallis for a tri-service seminar, and the Army's running it.
'What more do you want for reassurance, Quantrill? I assure you, you won't get nursemaided like this when you graduate.' Reardon waited in vain for Quantrill to meet his gaze. 'I'm tired of guessing — unless you're spooked about your return route.'
'Damn' right,' Quantrill blurted, the green eyes a sullen flash. 'Why didn't Goldhaber get back?'
'Ah. So that's it.' Reardon handed the little weapon back, sat down facing Quantrill, inspected his own cuticles. 'I've heard the rumor. All I know is that he drew an early assignment, and blew it. Maybe he was tortured by those religious fanatics in Flagstaff and asked for termination. Maybe he's still alive; they didn't tell us. You know your implant — what do you guys call it, a critic? Your critic can't help you if you're trussed up in a cave somewhere.'
'So far as I'm concerned,' Quantrill snapped, 'my critic's some guy with a World Almanac and a monorail timetable who won't know shit about what I'm up against or how I'm feeling about it. All I want from you is a promise that Control will leave me the fuck alone as long as I'm doing the job.'
Now Reardon had his anonymous face on: emotionless, impersonal, a system automaton. It occured to Quantrill Reardon might be repeating something he was receiving from a critic of his own. 'You have my solemn pledge that Control will not interfere with you unless you ask for it.'
'Good enough.' Quantrill pocketed the weapon. “Now, where's my ticket to Corvallis?'
Mason Reardon managed a convincing smile, patted his trainee's shoulder, and pronounced himself satisfied now that Quantrill himself seemed satisfied.
The following day, Quantrill flew by Military Airlift Service to Salem, Oregon. Clouds masked much of the desolation below, but he spotted Sacramento through a rift of cumulus. He saw some activity at the docks. For the most part, the city seemed an ages-dead ruin that might have been exposed by shifting dunes that day. What blast effects from the two air bursts had not accomplished, the overlapping firestorms had. The collapsed freeway overpasses had, at least, been cleared. A pattern of faint smudges from survivor hearthfires ringed the rubble- choked city center. It might have been Raleigh, he thought, and steered his mind forward. The Mormons might be able to counter destruction with rebirth; was there any paradox in T Section's development of human weapons, to counter with more destruction?
Quantrill, wearing dark body stain and false gold caps on his teeth, excited no one's interest. His scalp felt tight under the longish tight-fitting black wig. As Vitorio Sanchez, a part-time student and dormitory custodian, he had good reason for the master ID plate in his pocket. He also had an assignment to terminate Lt. Jon Fowler somewhere on the campus of Oregon State University.
'Sanchez' hauled his bulky bag from the Corvallis monorail, located Western Boulevard in a light drizzle, and used one of his tokens on the automated shuttle to the campus, pleased that his briefing had been so thorough. The nearer the shuttle came to the campus, the more variety he saw in foliage — and the more he saw of a familiar color combination. Either Oregon State's colors were orange and black, or Corvallis celebrated Halloween in April.
He walked in gathering dusk beneath huge dripping conifers from Thirtieth to the modular annex dorms, located the garbage recycling area, trudged behind the dorm annex with shoulders slumped. His fingertip masks were tight even with rain trickling down from his wrists. He pulled a tab on the bag, watched a long jagged rip extend along old seams, drew the antistatic vacuum cleaner from the bag's remains and stuffed the bag into a recycling container. No one would be saving such an article now, even by happenstance.
His entry to the Army dorm annex was merely a matter of offering his ID plate to the door slot and keeping a lugubrious face turned toward his brogans as he passed a trio of young Army officers. The vacuum cleaner unpersoned him, and provided a stash for his change of identity. He turned toward the stairwell that would lead to 'his' room — vacated the previous day by a man in Army Intelligence — and then continued his lackluster pace beyond it as the two Naval officers brushed past.
'… See whether Oregon State coeds are really berserk over uniforms,' the taller one was saying.
The other was compact, aquiline-nosed, with a receding vee of dark hair and thick dark brows. 'Ah, Jon, always the researcher,' he replied softly, glancing at the shabby janitor, holding the sleeve of his dress whites aloof. The lieutenants paused at the entrance to curse the rain, and to don filmy ponchos while Quantrill knelt to pry at an ancient blob of chewing gum in the carpet. A moment later he heard the voices attenuate; hurried back down the stairwell and breathed a long exhalation as his ID plate triggered the door slider.
The room was still furnished. Under a crucifix, the twin-sized bed was unmade. Quantrill sat on it, held up one darkened hand, grinned lamely. The hand wasn't trembling, but he felt as if it should be. The dapper little man with thicket eyebrows might pose a problem, because he obviously knew the tall lantern-jawed officer by name. 'Sanchez' had not needed to hear that name; he'd recognized Lt. Jon Fowler instantly.
And craved his death in that instant. It was cruel sport to meet your enemy the minute you set foot on his turf, like the flaunting of some trophy, and to find that you could not reach out and take it. Quantrill knew that his quarry had a midnight curfew; knew that he slept alone; knew even the position of the bed in which Fowler would lie. He could not know that in icing Fowler he would be compounding an error of Naval Intelligence.
Nor could Jon Fowler assist in setting the record straight. He had a pristine conscience and no idea that he had been isolated, mistakenly, as the Project Phillipus saboteur. By Navy reckoning Fowler was the only man who could have insinuated the subroutines that had twice allowed SinoInd fighter-bombers to destroy Allied supply ships. The Allied presence in India was still not secure, the Mills strategy still undetected.
Quantrill shook the folds from his change of clothing, reassembled the antistatic cleaner, checked the blackout drapes and switched on the wall holo, his alarm set for One AM. Had he chosen, he could have had an alarm sent directly into his head. Yet he did not want that assistance. He wanted to listen to the rain, and to watch Eve Simpson's nightly cameo.
Mason Reardon's promise haunted him like an echo. Maybe Control would interfere only if a gunsel asked for it — but now Quantrill felt sure the cynical Goldhaber had been right.
There were several ways you could ask for it.
Chapter Sixty-One
Quantrill did not sleep. Faint vibrations spoke of late arrivals in the dorm, of spirited military scholars enjoying a brief return to a university campus. The holo spoke and postured of success. Success against paranthrax; in Kazakhstan; in Gujarat; and as always, the heroes of the day were dubbed 'saints'.
Lt. Boren Mills did not sleep either. He had found Oregon coeds with Fowler, but unlike Fowler he'd found them too old, had excused himself early in favor of a cram session in his own room on the floor above Quantrill's. Mills took intellectual delight in applying his notes on linear servo systems to social systems. He paid special attention to the optimal control of human elements in the social circuits of industry.
To Mills, Phillipus was only one step in his progress toward a society of rational control, by the few rational
