She willed him to say more; not to say more; avoided this booby-trapped psychic territory by-signing,
'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.',
'Confidentially, I never do,' she lied. 'That's why I bring fortifications with me.' She raised her goblet and grinned wickedly. Sipped. 'There's fruit juice at the bar — and more of this naughty champagne if you'd care to join me. Please,' she said it prettily.
Quantrill chose apple juice, a goblet, and the chair near her couch. His choice of liquids didn't matter, she thought; her gratification lay in the lobotol.
And she was half right, though it was disappointment and not gratification she had assured with the drug.
One of the regular additives to the diet of S & R members was anaquery, a substance that migrated to the brain without obvious effects — unless certain physicochemical changes occurred in that brain.
Whether by hypnotic concentration or drugs, minute chemical changes accompanied the blocking of volition and judgment. It was those changes that triggered anaquery, with results that appalled Eve in due time. Anaquery prevented any agency, including S & R, from digging into a rover's mind. It was a small sacrifice, in Salter's judgment, for the added security. After all, you didn't have to care about the guillotine's internal stresses so long as it sliced unerringly.
'I get the feeling I've seen you on holo before,' she said to prompt him. Lobotol did its erosive work slowly.
'Maybe in a group,' he said, eyeing the holocam.
'No. By yourself — a long time ago. Um — talking with Juliet Bixby?' Eve managed to hide her loathing of Bixby, her svelte opponent on another network.
'Quite a memory, Ms. Simpson; I'd almost forgotten. I was on the delta airship Norway early in the war.
We got waylaid by a renegade bunch but — we got away,' he finished lamely.
Her eyes grew round. 'You started a fire or something, I remember now. You saved the Norway and were wounded. You were wearing a thigh crutch, weren't you?'
'Took a round in the leg.' He did not add that he had seen his first lover shot dead by renegade sentries and had made his first kills that night. It had all been a long time ago. Long enough, almost, to forget.
'Care to show us the scar?'
'Not particularly.' Again a glance at the holocam. The lobotol was taking its own sweet time.
'The camera's not on,' Eve murmured. 'We're just getting acquainted, you and I. May I call you 'Ted'?
And by all means, my name is Eve. Tell me, Ted; do you have any special lady? Or maybe a hotsy 'in every port'.'
'I'm a rover, not a sailor, Ms. — Eve. But no; no one special.'
'Surely a young man in his prime,' she smirked, 'enjoys a woman now and then. Do you like a strong full- bodied woman, Ted?'
Those piercing green eyes were slightly unfocused now as he took another sip of apple juice. 'Sure I like'em,' he smiled uncertainly.
'Take another little sippie, Ted.' She watched him do it, his motions less assured, his breathing now shallower.
He just sat there, blinking, his respiration rapid and shallow as he watched her peel the satin away.
Beneath it he saw her enormous breasts resting comfortably against a billowing ledge of fat. 'May I show you what a sex goddess really looks like,' she teased, pausing in her routine. Her legs, below the coverlet, were separate mounds spread for coming attractions.
He blinked. Swallowed. 'I need to find the bathroom, Eve.'
'To relieve your tummy or your tensions, lover? Maybe Eve can help. How would you like—
She never got to describe it. Quantrill lurched up from the chair, but Eve caught at his trouserleg. He fell against her, shaking like a malaria victim, and vomited once, twice, squarely between her breasts, before she could get her great girth underway.
With a squall of revulsion Eve rolled aside, squirmed to her knees while trying to avoid the line of fire from Quantrill's much-used barbecue. She saw the finely corded muscles of his throat grow taut, another spasm building in his belly and working its way up his torso, and then she was reeling toward the bath.
