The rover fell on his face as she slammed the door. She could hear him retching, gasping, as she turned the needle-shower on full force. If the little bastard suffocated in his own gorp it would be good enough for him.
Eve soaped herself furiously as she cursed and lathered, lathered and cursed. Eve was convinced that she had simply moved faster than the laggard lobotol; that the sight of her naked body had prompted this ultimate rejection from a man. Eve was not often embarrassed, and all her half-acre of skin blushed under the needlespray.
Reject her, would he? The scrumptious little hick would be sorry for this. She felt like rushing back into the boudoir to stamp out his life, and in mounting frustration Eve flung open the door.
Quantrill lay in his filth, repeatedly pushing himself up on trembling arms only to fall again, his limbs twitching in a way to make Eve suspect a seizure. To someone or no one he was grunting 'mayday', over and over.
She could not go near him, could not even stand his smell. She slammed the door; found that she liked the fury of it; slammed it again, and again, bellowing her rage and vindictiveness. She was still screaming when the hotel staff arrived.
CHAPTER 13
Sean Lasser had grown too old for active training operations, but he knew far too much about S & R to be turned out to pasture. It was Lasser, alone among rover instructors, who drew the gentle chores.
'No question about it,' Lasser muttered as he studied the printout of Quantrill's vital signs; 'you took a fair- sized dose of some narcohypnotic, to judge from your condition when they brought you here last night. Anything from PZ to lobotol could have done it. We're assuming it wasn't an injection.' Lasser tapped his front teeth with a thumbnail, usually a sign that he was brainstorming. 'Did you sit down to watch the holo? God knows you're not a likely subject, but some people can be put under by the right holo presentation. Had you been drinking anything alcoholic?'
'Not even beer. I remember sitting by Eve Simpson with a glass of apple juice while she asked fool questions about the love life of a rover.' Quantrill, propped up in a bed in a very private room in Los Alamos clinic, was still a bit gray under the eyes but obviously on the mend. 'I don't think it was the holo.
Could it have been during the banquet?'
'Too long a delay. My lad, I'm afraid it was Simpson herself who zonked you. Any idea why?'
'Jesus, Lasser, I was picked out of a hat for the interview! Ask Cross or Howell.'
'I've already gone around and around with them both on this — and with Salter. Eve Simpson told them she wanted to record an informal chat with a rover. She didn't specify you. But we know something about that lady and—' Lasser grinned apologetically, ' — there is evidently nothing she won't do for a roll in the hay with a studly young buck.'
Through gritted teeth: 'I'll give her a roll off Truchas Peak! What if she'd asked me something Control doesn't want answered?' Quantrill did not know he got regular doses of anaquery. He assumed that Control would sooner see him dead than see S & R compromised — a fair assumption.
Lasser's tongue filled his cheek: 'Well, — I suppose that's a risk she was willing to take.'
'So who's she really working for: Mexico? I don't envy the rover who has to stuff that broad in a bodybag.'
'Eh? Surely you don't think—'
'Howell told us once, 'media star, bishop or bird colonel; if Control says he goes, — he goes.' I don't see why Eve Simpson should rate any special immunity.'
'You don't? Well, she does.' Lasser dropped the printout, clasped his hands over his little belly in a familiar lecture pose, and considered his words before using them. 'Eve Simpson and Boren Mills are the heart and soul of IEE. Mills is as close to our President as Lon Salter — and we don't want to get into a pissing contest with the CEO of the most powerful industrial arm in Streamlined America. I may as well tell you: Mills was one of the few Navy people during the war who knew T Section's charter — and he knows about rovers too. We couldn't prevent him from telling the Simpson woman. It's my guess she was toying with you in several ways at once; don't underestimate her. Young and the Fed party owe more to Simpson and Mills than they do to S & R. Between 'em, those two can do more for an image through media than all the rest of us put together.' The portly little man sighed, made a helpless gesture with one hand. ' Now d'you see why we have to shrug this little fiasco off, Quantrill?'
'Do you see that she's no more responsible than a spoiled brat?'
'Granted.' Lasser began to chuckle, shaking his head in gentle disapprobation. 'You should've heard the hotel staff report, it fairly begs description. First thing they saw was you, facedown on the floor, and they got the idea there was a hand-to-hand fight going on in the bath. So they broke the door down, and found your, ah, friend Eve alone, naked as a thousand-pound jaybird and ready to toss them all out. She damn' near did. But Control picked up your mayday and there's no shortage of S & R teams in Santa Fe at the moment, so…' Lasser spread his hands; seemed to take the whole thing as a great joke.
'At least you've explained something about Mills,' said Quantrill. 'I thought I'd seen him before, and now I know when. It was the night I did my first hit, on some Navy saboteur. Mills was Navy too; saw me coming out of the guy's room. I had cosmetic cover but I think he made me last night at the banquet. It was one of those deja vu things; you look around and you're staring at him, just like the first time.'
'I wouldn't worry about it,' Lasser said after a moment of reflection. 'If you wore cosmetic cover, Mills probably isn't sure — and if he is, so what? He knows what you do for a living.'
Quantrill narrowed his eyes, cocked his head at Lasser, sat up straight. 'If he has the need to know, he's in my chain of command.'
The two stared at each other a long moment.
Lasser said, 'What's good for IEE is good for this country. But you are not, repeat not, to repeat that irresponsible notion.' The flush across Lasser's cheeks said,
CHAPTER 14
Quantrill was on his feet in a day, and in a sprint chopper a week later en route to Indianapolis. From the air he spotted two of the three old nuke scars, vast gray dustbowls with shallow lakes at their centers, that had all but killed Indianapolis in '96. Both bombs had targeted soft military sites, a Naval weapons plant and an Army post East of the city's center. The third strike had come during a later nuclear flurry, taking out the Municipal Airport after its conversion to a military base.
Slammed by airbursts, partly consumed by firestorm, the Hoosier heart of the city had refused to quit.
Some of the of the old buildings still stood, monuments to an architectural style that had wasted energy when the stuff was cheap. Now, this very morning, one of those old structures had succumbed.
Dropping toward a parking area off Burdsall Parkway, Noah Laker banked their sprint chopper over the felled trade center, now no longer burning but smoldering still. Adams strained at her harness, craning her neck as Laker's deft work brought them over the collapsed edge of the structure. 'One of those long-span deathtraps of the eighties,' she said. 'Rain load, you think?'
Quantrill shrugged. Heavy rains might have been the last straw, but Howell had told him to look for earlier straws. They'd found rebel arms along the border, but in Indianapolis? It'd been a deep cache, the kind you might expect in a region of heavy industry. So deep they'd excavated a bit too far under the old blast-damaged foundation. The acres-wide roof had collapsed only on one corner, kneeling into its parking lot, an obeisance toward Monument Circle in the center of town.
Three of the stubby black Loring sprint choppers were already at the site. Laker's group brought their strength up to nineteen, not twenty; they expected the rover, Quantrill, to disappear. He did not disappoint them.
